5e and Tower Defense

So, I had this weird idea. I want to combine D&D 5e and tower defense. Essentially characters will kill waves of enemies defending a town and gain gold. They can then use this gold to upgrade the town to give them help.

They’d have to blacksmiths first better weapons and armor. Barracks to get more people into the town. Guard towers to improve defense. Stuff like that.

They’d also have to purchase buildings to level themselves up (wizard academy, training grounds, etc.)

How does this sound as a game?

I think that sounds like a cool mode of gameplay, and probably could work mostly with the rules the system comes with. I think the main obstacle is the amount of math you have to do to calculate wave rewards and difficulties and all that fiddly stuff that most tower defense games have.

That is true, it’s a very new idea. The gold count is definitely something I’m thinking about.

Interesting for sure.

At the end of the day, tower defense isn't much different from a dungeon crawl, it's just reversed. Whatever rewards you'd get from normal leveling should suffice. Add in the content from Legendary Games' Kingdoms for city improvements and you're set.

Honestly, I think 5e wouldn't be a great fit for a concept like this - not quite tactical enough. If you're dead set on D&D, 4e would be perfect to handle it, given the stricter grid-based combat.

Otherwise, Falcon would be dead on the money here - it's a reverse dungeon crawl. Would make for a fun one-shot game, but I don't see a lot of longivity behind a tower defense campaign.

I agree that 4e would work better.

Thirded.