Summary

• A good home base for your party allows for downtime and future adventure hooks in a safe space.
• Taverns make perfect urban adventure homes with plenty of NPCs, roleplay opportunities, and rumor/adventure hooks for players.
• Consider vehicles, pocket dimensions, castles, mansions, temples, or schools as unique base options for different campaign types.

Sure, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons is a game about going on epic adventures, but your party isn't going to spend every moment dungeon crawling. Having a good base of operations gives your group a place to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:spend downtime sessions, but it can also provide them with hooks for further adventures in a ꧅safe space.

A good home base should suit the campaign's vibes and allow for some degree of customization from your players, adding features until the structure becomes one that's perfectly suited to the party. With that in mind, here are some of the best setting-agnostic locations for your group to call home.

If you want some detailed rules for building a home base, the Dungeon Master's Guide has got you covered. There's also the third-party supplement Strongholds and Followers by Matt Colville.

10 A Tavern

Why Limit It To The Start Of A Campaign?

Taverns are the perfect home base for an urban adventure campaign. They provide your players with a comfortable place to stay, plenty of NPCs to interact with, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:countless roleplay opportunities. If your group is so inclined, you can also encourage them to decid꧅e on things like menus and e💫ntertainment for their tavern.

The biggest strength taverns have as a home base is the opportunity your players have for more rumors and adventure hooks. You can justify NPCs from pretty much all walks of life doing business with your PCs. Be sure to encourage your players' efforts in running the tavern with more interesting and rewarding plot hooks as the establishment grows more popular.

9 Vehicles

Perfect For Hex Crawls

Modern D&D campaigns often confine themselves to a specific region, but sometimes you want to traverse across an entire continent. For globe-t🍷rotting (or even multiverse-trotting) c📖ampaigns, taking your base with you is a practical solution that can be adapted to plenty of circumstances.

You'll want a vehicle large enough to fit your party and their equipment, and which everyone can ideally sleep in without issues. This isn't too hard, but can get complicated if your group has a lot of pets and retainers. For nautical campaigns, your base of operations might be a ship, while airships are perfect for a more steampunk-themed game.

8 🐲 Pocket Dimension ✃

Only For Certain Campaigns

This is an idea that doesn't make sense for most groups, but it can work extremely well in the right context. If you're running a campaign that focuses on planar travel or scouring a megadungeon, pocket dimensions are a practical solution. Otherwise, you might want to look at other options.

You might nee🌼d to finagle a bit with game mechanics to justify a pocket dimension. The Demiplane spell only allows characters to access their own space for an hour, but you can extend this due to the actions of a god or some other plot device. You can also try tying the pocket dimension to a magic artifact for a more portable base.

7 Castles

Can't Beat A Classic

Castles are the traditional option for home bases, and can easily be adapted and customized to fit a variety of different campaign settings. They're great if your campaign has been going strong for a while and you want to reward your players with something more exciting than another magic item.

Depending on what time period you want to emulate, you have countless options for upgrades and fortifications to your castle. There's nothing wrong with making something up purely for the sake of fantasy, but if you really want to get inspired, try researching some of the more interesting features that graced real life castles.

6 A Mansion

If Castles Just Don't Make Sense

While there's some overlap, mansions and castles serve different needs for different settings. If your campaign is set anywhere that resembles roughly the 18th century or later, a castle is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Mansions, meanwhile, dispense with some of the bulky defenses of a castle in exchange for more modern amenities.

Unless your group is more wargaming-focused, the lack of fortifications shouldn't be too much of an issue. Try researching features of old houses in real life to get some ideas on what to throw in. These additions include things like dumbwaiters, secret passageways for servants, and those nifty secret doors that look like bookcases.

5 🅷 Temples And Monasteries

Add Some Divine Flavor

In real life, places of worship offer more than somewhere to pray: they're also an important gathering spot for their congregations. Unless the building is tiny, it's likely to have classrooms, libraries, and activity spaces for the community to use. As long as you don't get too weird and don't mind sharing with the community, your group can probably justify adding facilities as the need arises.

Given the polytheistic nature of most D&D settings, you can even dedicate your temple to multiple gods as long as those deities get along. This is the perfect home base if your party has more than one spiritually-minded member, but it's not without its caveats. While you can keep the temple's operations funded with regular donations, your cleric will also be expected to handle Actual Cleric Duties like weddings, sermons, and holiday events.

If your group's cleric is excited about the roleplay opportunities, point them to the Ceremony spell from Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

4 ♌ ♑ Schools And Libraries

Perfect For Nerdy Parties

G⭕reat for spellcaster-heavy groups, a school campus gives your players plenty of story hooks and NPC🐓s in the form of students and faculty. Certain features should be considered a given for this type of base, such as libraries for your players to research in or labs they can use for crafting items.

If an entire campus seems inappropriate for your party, you could give them control of their own building while 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the rest of the campus stays beyond their influence. Perhaps every 🔯member of the party is part of a magical fraternity or sorority, with their frat house as a base of operations.

3 Caves, Caverns, And Sewers 🌳

Mind The Mold

Perfect 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:for Underdark campaigns, caverns provide a great deal of natural privacy and security. The main drawbacks are the lack of doors and the potential for unwanted critters, but thes♒e can be circumvented with the right natural and magical modificat🌳ions.

If your party is really nasty and in an urban environment, you could also opt to set up a base in the sewers. This is a great option for PCs who want to make sure absolutely no one wants to come near them, provided they don't mind the smell.

2 Groves And Wilderness Lodges 🐽

Reconnect With Nature

If your group consists of a ranger, two druids, and an outlander barbarian, you shouldn't look any further. Wilderness lodges and simple encampments are the perfect option for a nature-focused party or a survival-based campaign. They might not be very fancy, but they're thematic enough.

Upgrades to this type of base take on different forms than more traditional bases. Instead of building new structures, you might have your group spend time cleaning up a polluted river or befriending the local crows. You could even have the area's natural features take on more magical qualities as the campaign progresses.

1 Your Own Dungeon ๊

Okay, Hear Me Out

A party's home base is typically where they're supposed to rest and recuperate after their adventures in whatever dungeon they just crawled out of. You can turn that concept on its head by giving your players their own dungeon to rule over and manage, especially if they're higher level.

If your campaign revolves around navigating a megadungeon, you can attempt this on a smaller scale by giving your players control of a level in the greater dungeon network. Whatever the case, you'll be able to milk endless fun and story opportunities from rival adventuring parties arriving to annoy your PCs.