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TimothyAWiseman
TimothyAWiseman
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A PC can hire hirelings to guard the dungeon, add traps, bind exotic guardians such as elementalsgolems, and even capture and free "monsters" if they wanted to.

  • ItsIt's the PCs home base and has something worth protecting inside. Perhaps the PCs have valuables they don't routinely carry everywhere because they are no longer murderhobosmurderhobos. So they live in a castle. They hire guards and install traps to protect the most sensitive areas. You have a complete Dungeon in the D&D sense with adversaries to stop looters/adventurers, and treasure that the PCs just view as their home.
  • The PCs have something they cannot destroy and need to make sure it never falls into the wrong hands, so they build a Dungeon deliberately to make sure its protected. Imagine the PCs have an artifact that they cannot figure out how to destroy and it is too dangerous for them to use. They might lock it in an underground room, surround it with traps, seal that room, leave traps through the path add, bind magical guardians along the path permanently, and then seal the final entrance. They want to make it hasas hard to get as possible, but they may need to be able to leave open the possibility of retrieving themselves later. You have a D&D Style Dungeon.
  • Similar to the last one, perhaps it is a tomb for a fallen comrade that was buried with his valuable gear.
  • Perhaps it started as something else and happenstance effectively made it a dungeon. Perhaps the party Wizard has a major experiment go wrong in his tower and the place becomes overrun with demons or something similar. The Wizard needs to flee, regather his party, and go through the dungeon he accidentally created just to get his stuff back.

Those, and more, are all reasons that a PC might intentionally or semi-accidentally make a dungeon. They are a little outside the way D&D is normally played with the party as murderhobos...err...wandering adventurers. But there are rules that cover at least the basics of what you need to do these things with costs for keeps and similar buildings, costs for laborers, rules for traps, and PC accessible spells allowing certain types of guardians such as golems to be created and bound.

A PC can hire hirelings to guard the dungeon, add traps, bind exotic guardians such as elementals, and even capture and free "monsters" if they wanted to.

  • Its the PCs home base and has something worth protecting inside. Perhaps the PCs have valuables they don't routinely carry everywhere because they are no longer murderhobos. So they live in a castle. They hire guards and install traps to protect the most sensitive areas. You have a complete Dungeon in the D&D sense with adversaries to stop looters/adventurers, and treasure that the PCs just view as their home.
  • The PCs have something they cannot destroy and need to make sure it never falls into the wrong hands, so they build a Dungeon deliberately to make sure its protected. Imagine the PCs have an artifact that they cannot figure out how to destroy and it is too dangerous for them to use. They might lock it in an underground room, surround it with traps, seal that room, leave traps through the path add, bind magical guardians along the path permanently, and then seal the final entrance. They want to make it has hard to get as possible, but they may need to be able to leave open the possibility of retrieving themselves later. You have a D&D Style Dungeon.
  • Similar to the last one, perhaps it is a tomb for a fallen comrade that was buried with his valuable gear.
  • Perhaps it started as something else and happenstance effectively made it a dungeon. Perhaps the party Wizard has a major experiment go wrong in his tower and the place becomes overrun with demons or something similar. The Wizard needs to flee, regather his party, and go through the dungeon he accidentally created just to get his stuff back.

Those, and more, are all reasons that a PC might intentionally or semi-accidentally make a dungeon. They are little outside the way D&D is normally played with the party as murderhobos...err...wandering adventurers. But there are rules that cover at least the basics of what you need to do these things with costs for keeps and similar buildings, costs for laborers, rules for traps, and PC accessible spells allowing certain types of guardians such as golems to be created and bound.

A PC can hire hirelings to guard the dungeon, add traps, bind exotic guardians such as golems, and even capture and free "monsters" if they wanted to.

  • It's the PCs home base and has something worth protecting inside. Perhaps the PCs have valuables they don't routinely carry everywhere because they are no longer murderhobos. So they live in a castle. They hire guards and install traps to protect the most sensitive areas. You have a complete Dungeon in the D&D sense with adversaries to stop looters/adventurers, and treasure that the PCs just view as their home.
  • The PCs have something they cannot destroy and need to make sure it never falls into the wrong hands, so they build a Dungeon deliberately to make sure its protected. Imagine the PCs have an artifact that they cannot figure out how to destroy and it is too dangerous for them to use. They might lock it in an underground room, surround it with traps, seal that room, leave traps through the path add, bind magical guardians along the path permanently, and then seal the final entrance. They want to make it as hard to get as possible, but they may need to be able to leave open the possibility of retrieving themselves later. You have a D&D Style Dungeon.
  • Similar to the last one, perhaps it is a tomb for a fallen comrade that was buried with his valuable gear.
  • Perhaps it started as something else and happenstance effectively made it a dungeon. Perhaps the party Wizard has a major experiment go wrong in his tower and the place becomes overrun with demons or something similar. The Wizard needs to flee, regather his party, and go through the dungeon he accidentally created just to get his stuff back.

Those, and more, are all reasons that a PC might intentionally or semi-accidentally make a dungeon. They are a little outside the way D&D is normally played with the party as murderhobos...err...wandering adventurers. But there are rules that cover at least the basics of what you need to do these things with costs for keeps and similar buildings, costs for laborers, rules for traps, and PC accessible spells allowing certain types of guardians such as golems to be created and bound.

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TimothyAWiseman
TimothyAWiseman
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Yes

I'm assuming you mean whether a player character could build a dungeon.

In that case, the answer would be, yes. There is no reason that a PC could not hire the workers needed, and build out a dungeon, and populate it with guardians.

The DMG has guidance for building a keep and similar buildings. In the real world keeps often had real dungeons in the sense of an underground secure area often used for prisoners. ("Dungeon" the word also had long obsolete meanings associated with certain types of above ground towers, but those can be present in keeps too).

While I suspect you are asking for something more of a Dungeon in the D&D sense of a large area populated with guardians, a keep can form the basis of that type of dungeon too.

A PC can hire hirelings to guard the dungeon, add traps, bind exotic guardians such as elementals, and even capture and free "monsters" if they wanted to.

So certainly, a PC with the right resources could build a Dungeon in the sense of a large space populated with adversaries and with something valuable making it worth exploring. The DM would of course have to agree to permit it, but the necessary items are covered by the rules if the PC wanted and the DM consented.

As for why a PC would build a Dungeon in that sense, its mostly for the same reasons an NPC would. Those include:

  • Its the PCs home base and has something worth protecting inside. Perhaps the PCs have valuables they don't routinely carry everywhere because they are no longer murderhobos. So they live in a castle. They hire guards and install traps to protect the most sensitive areas. You have a complete Dungeon in the D&D sense with adversaries to stop looters/adventurers, and treasure that the PCs just view as their home.
  • The PCs have something they cannot destroy and need to make sure it never falls into the wrong hands, so they build a Dungeon deliberately to make sure its protected. Imagine the PCs have an artifact that they cannot figure out how to destroy and it is too dangerous for them to use. They might lock it in an underground room, surround it with traps, seal that room, leave traps through the path add, bind magical guardians along the path permanently, and then seal the final entrance. They want to make it has hard to get as possible, but they may need to be able to leave open the possibility of retrieving themselves later. You have a D&D Style Dungeon.
  • Similar to the last one, perhaps it is a tomb for a fallen comrade that was buried with his valuable gear.
  • Perhaps it started as something else and happenstance effectively made it a dungeon. Perhaps the party Wizard has a major experiment go wrong in his tower and the place becomes overrun with demons or something similar. The Wizard needs to flee, regather his party, and go through the dungeon he accidentally created just to get his stuff back.

Those, and more, are all reasons that a PC might intentionally or semi-accidentally make a dungeon. They are little outside the way D&D is normally played with the party as murderhobos...err...wandering adventurers. But there are rules that cover at least the basics of what you need to do these things with costs for keeps and similar buildings, costs for laborers, rules for traps, and PC accessible spells allowing certain types of guardians such as golems to be created and bound.

On the off chance you meant a literal player could create one, the answer would still be yes. Even putting aside the fact that many players also GM from time to time, player can certainly design a dungeon. Now, you might not want to put a player through a dungeon the player personally designed, they would know it in detail, but that isn't always a huge obstacle. Some groups play pre-written modules more than once and some players play pre-written modules at more than one table.

Either way, the answer is yes.