Freestanding Walls

A freestanding wall is any wall that isn’t part of a stronghold component. You must purchase, modify, and augment freestanding walls separately from your stronghold components. They tend to be much thicker due to the lack of structural support found in a more complex structure.

Sometimes, stronghold builders construct freestanding walls (also called curtain walls) after the stronghold is already in place, whether to guard against unwanted visitors or simply to add privacy.

Some older strongholds add a freestanding wall due to population growth beyond the stronghold’s ability to house them. In fact, in older cities or towns that once began as much smaller strongholds, you might find several rings of freestanding walls encircling the original stronghold and everything that has grown out of it over the years. In other cases, a common wall going around them both or simply attaching the two, leaving a common courtyard between them, might unite two strongholds.

Occasionally, a group of allied adventurers build separate strongholds for each member, then combine funds to build a freestanding wall to surround them all. In this way, they share the costs of the wall and sometimes even the guards that watch over it, agreeing to come to the mutual defense of their fellows.

Building Freestanding Walls

You can purchase any freestanding wall in multiple units. The wall sections on the table below are assumed to be 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide each. See the DUNGEON MASTER’s Guide for more on how the different kinds of walls work in the game. Freestanding walls are cheaper than those inside a stronghold because of the greater ease of building in the open, with fewer considerations of engineering and design.

If you want to build freestanding walls higher than 10 feet, you must add an extra layer of thickness to each lower 10-foot layer on the stack. This addition is cumulative; for example, a 20-foot tall wall of masonry has a single 2-foot thick layer for the top 10 feet and a double-thick (4 feet) layer for the lower 10 feet, while a 30-foot-tall masonry wall would be 2 feet thick at the top (one layer), 4 feet thick in the middle (two layers), and 6 feet thick at the bottom (3 layers). The accompanying illustration shows examples of masonry and hewn stone walls of 10-foot, 20-foot, and 30-foot height, indicating the number of layers required.

You can purchase freestanding walls of different thicknesses than those noted in Table 2–6. Simply multiply the cost by the fraction of thickness you choose. For instance, a 3-foot-thick freestanding wall of hewn stone costs only 40 gp per section, while a 12-foot-thick freestanding wall of hewn stone costs 160 gp per section.

Table 2–4: Interior and Exterior Walls

Stronghold Size, in Spaces	Percentage of Interior and Exterior Walls
1–5 ss	20% interior, 80% exterior
6–10 ss	30% interior, 70% exterior
11–20 ss	40% interior, 60% exterior
21–45 ss	50% interior, 50% exterior
46–120 ss	60% interior, 40% exterior
121–450 ss	70% interior, 30% exterior
451–3,800 ss	80% interior, 20% exterior
3,801+ ss	90% interior, 10% exterior

Decide what kind of exterior wall you want. The exterior walls for your stronghold cost a number of gold pieces equal to your stronghold size in spaces × material cost per space × exterior wall percentage.

After you assign and price your exterior walls, follow the same procedure for your interior walls. Interior walls cost a number of gold pieces equal to your stronghold size in spaces × material cost per space × interior wall percentage.

If you want to be clever, you can split things up. If you have a two-story castle, you can assign half your walls as masonry (the ground floor) and half as wood (second floor), and price accordingly.

If you want a single room that’s unusually strong, figure out how much it costs by noting what percentage of the total stronghold that particular space is, then paying for that.

Table 2–6: Freestanding Walls

Material	Thickness	Hardness	HP	Break DC	Climb DC	Cost per Section	Notes
Adamantine	6 in.	20	240	46	25	3,000 gp	-
Bone	2 ft.	6	120	25	10	600 gp	-
Deep coral	6 ft.	8	1080	164	15	200 gp	Available underwater only.
Earth, packed	3 ft.	2	30	19	15	10 gp	-
Glass	6 in.	1	6	21	25	300 gp	-
Ice	20 in.	10	60	35	30	1,000 gp	Half price in cold climate.
Iron	6 in.	10	180	33	25	600 gp	-
Living wood	1 ft.	5	120	26	21	200 gp	-
Masonry	2 ft.	8	180	35	15	250 gp	-
Masonry, superior	2 ft.	8	180	35	20	300 gp	-
Masonry, reinforced	2 ft.	8	360	45	15	450 gp	-
Mithral	6 in.	15	180	41	25	2,000 gp	-
Obdurium	6 in.	30	420	72	25	6,000 gp	-
Stone, hewn	6 ft.	8	1,080	164*	22	600 gp	No cost if below ground; –5% cost in mountain terrain
Wall of force	as spell	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	4,000 gp	-
Wood	1 ft.	5	120	26	21	100 gp	No cost for ground floor; –10% cost in forest terrain.

*Note that this is different from the values listed in the DUNGEON MASTER’s Guide. These statistics use the guidelines for stone walls given in the wall of stone spell.

Using Freestanding Walls

Military structures, such as barbicans, guard posts, towers, and drawbridges can be placed adjoining a freestanding wall. For the purposes of designing your stronghold and calculated the costs of walls, these castle components should be calculated as independently, as tiny independent strongholds.

Specialized Wall Sections

Walls are generally sheer structures that grow thinner as they grow taller, thanks to the need for a thick, stable base. However, most stronghold builders have walls that are customized for defense.

Crenellation:The most common customization to a wall, this notched battlement is made up of alternate crenels (opening) and merlons (square sawteeth). They provide cover to castle defenders standing upon the wall. No cost exists to carve merlons into the top feet of a wall.

Machicolation: Adjusting a wall’s design so that a section extends outward beyond the exterior edge of the wall provides a point at which defenders can drop arrows, rocks, flaming oil, or other unpleasantries upon those assaulting the wall directly below. To construct a machicolation, the wall must be at least 15 feet in height. The wall sections to be extended cost twice the listed price; see Windows below for pricing arrow slits.

Parapet: If defenders have sufficient width to walk along the wall’s top (preferably 5 feet, but as little as 2 feet can suffice), it’s common to build a wall-walk (also known as an allure). This wall can be made out of any substance as a freestanding wall that crowns the rest of the wall. Another choice is to construct a wooden platform to act as a wall-walk. Braced with beams on the inner wall, cost it as if an additional wooden wall for whatever length of the freestanding wall you wish to equip with the wall-walk. You need not construct a thicker wall base to support the wall-walk.