Strongholds & Domains

Around ninth level — later for some callings — a hero is expected to be somebody. This is the moment the game calls name level, and it changes what your character does with their life. The fighter who was a wandering blade becomes a lord who raises a castle; the cleric a patriarch with a temple; the wizard a master of a tower; the thief a guildmaster with fingers in half a city. You are no longer climbing toward power — you are holding it, and the world is watching.

The name levels

Each calling reaches its threshold at its own point, and founds what suits it:

The stronghold

A domain begins with land — won by royal grant, bought, conquered, claimed from the wilderness, or inherited — and with a stronghold built upon it. Construction costs gold and time measured in months and years: a small keep might run 25,000 gp and six months; a great castle 200,000 gp and three years. Your class's followers arrive as you build, and the land begins to pay — farmland, forest, hills with mines, rivers with trade — a monthly income that makes you a power in the world rather than a wanderer through it.

The two magic words are delegate and return. Build a stronghold, and your campaign does not end; it deepens. A loyal castellan or steward runs the day-to-day while you adventure. Sending and Animal Messenger keep you in touch; a wizard's Teleport carries you home between forays; and your followers can go on minor quests in your name. The domain should generate adventures — border disputes, monster incursions, spies, feuds, the envoy from a rival king — not prevent them.

Followers and the changing game

Reach name level and raise a stronghold, and followers arrive — for a fighter, soldiers to garrison (5d4 × 10 of them, plus a loyal castellan); for a cleric, faithful who tithe and defend the temple; for a druid, disciples and guardian beasts of a hallowed grove; for a thief, a guild of 3d6 members working their rackets. You gain a domain: income to manage, expenses to pay, morale to keep, taxes to balance. Too greedy a lord breeds revolt; too absent a ruler's lands decay.

This is not bookkeeping for its own sake — it is the game's answer to the question every long campaign asks: what does a hero do after they have won? Build, rule, defend, and weave your stronghold into the stories you still go out to tell. The tower and the blade are not rivals; the lord who also adventures is the one whose name outlives them.

A quiet note on scale

Name level is a milestone, not a mandate. A table that wants nothing to do with realms and taxes can simply not build, and the game loses nothing — the stronghold rules are a door, not a wall. And a hero does not stop being an adventurer at name level; the best name-level characters are exactly the ones who keep the torch lit and the blade sharp even as their banners fly. Rule from the saddle when you must, but never let the tower keep you from the road.