Table of Contents

Overview

On the Road

In Town

Overview

Downtime allows characters to initiate new objectives, advance their proficiencies and competencies, and generate resources. A "downtime period" is a four hour block of activity. Downtime activities may have additional requirements beyond a single downtime period - money, contacts, information, or may simply take multiple periods to complete.

Contacts

Contacts are NPCs that can provide useful knowledge to PCs. A contact could be a local sage, a shady arms dealer, or a noble's servant. Contacts provide a way for characters to mechanically represent useful people, whether for their knowledge or their social influence. Contacts fall into one of five types: Craftsman, Laborer, Noble, Professional, Warrior. These types broadly group the kinds of services a contact can provide. For example, a "professional" contact might be a medic or sage, while a "warrior" contact might be a bounty hunter or beat cop.

In addition to their general description, contacts have two statistics: Loyalty and Connection. Their Loyalty rating measures the closeness of their relationship to a character, while their Connection rating illustrates how well connected they are to the world around them. The Loyalty rating ranges from 1 to 6 while the Connection rating ranges from 1 to 12.

A given contact may or may not be available, depending on the needs of the plot. A given contact may too easily resolve a point of plot tension or may be necessary for the advancement of the plot. If a contact is instead just one possible avenue, roll 2d6 against the contact's connection rating - if the roll equals or exceeds the connection rating, the contact is available, reflecting that well connected people stay busy.

In addition to their use in the Carouse, Investigate, and Shop downtimes, contacts can be used to network or receive favors. Networking involves a contact creating a bridge to a temporary new contact, usually a specific person a character doesn't personally know but knows of and would like to arrange a meeting with. Favors might involve discounts on services, unusual services, or other personal requests, and are typically repaid in kind. 

Connection Rating Table

Loyalty Rating Table

Crafting

Crafting is the process of converting raw materials to usable goods. Depending on the location and nature of the downtime, some forms of crafting may not be possible. 

Each downtime period you can make progress on a certain gold value of goods based on your level. This can involve creating a number of cheap goods or making partial progress on something more expensive.

Heroic Tier Crafting chart

Return to Top

On The Road

While on the road, you can choose one downtime activity per day. You work on this while walking, riding, or while in camp.

Craft

On the road you can perform the following kinds of crafting

Forgery (Competency required): Forgery creates false documents, such as IDs or letters.

Mundane Items: Mundane items cover most ordinary adventuring equipment such as 10' poles.

Poisons (Competency required): Crafted poisons are intended to be used outside of combat, such as an ingestible sleeping poison or a dangerous paralyzing toxin applied to the handle of a chest.

Forage

Foraging acquires rations based on the Survival skill. The difficulty of foraging depends on the terrain you are foraging in. A strong success generates two rations, a moderate success generates one ration, and a weak success generates half a ration.

Forced March

Key Skill: Endurance

The forced march downtime action can only be taken as an entire group, as it entails pushing forward an additional 50% travel distance. Each player participating in the forced march must make an endurance check, with the success or failure determining any bonus resource expenditure or possible negative long-term conditions.

Hunker Down

Key Skill: Endurance

Hunkering down helps mitigate the dangers of travel, giving advantage on endurance checks to resist diseases, poisons, and inclement weather effects. You also regain one missing healing surge.

Research

Key Skill: Research

While traveling you may spend downtime investigating arcane runes, dead languages, and other old and magical things. After declaring what you're researching, make a check to find out three pieces of information. The better the result the more pieces of information will be true and useful as opposed to false and misleading. 

Treat Condition

Key Skill: Medicine, Repair

Characters can use medicine to can treat allies diseases or injuries during their downtime, making a medicine check and helping their ally depending on the result. Alternatively characters can use Repair to fix up mechanical devices and constructs.

Transcribe Ritual

Key Skill: Arcana

Transcribing a ritual allows you to copy a ritual from a ritual scroll or an acquired ritual book into your own ritual book, enabling you to cast the ritual. Transcribing a ritual costs money in special inks equal to the component cost of the ritual. The "Market Price" of buying a ritual covers these ink costs. Characters trained in Arcana can instantly appraise the value of any inks found as treasure.

Transcribing a ritual transcribes a number of pages equal to your level into your ritual book (Rituals take pages equal to level, so a level 2 character could transcribe on 2nd level ritual or two 1st level rituals). You can make partial progress on transcription, e.g. if you are level 3 you can transcribe one 2nd level ritual and get one page transcribed out of another 2nd level ritual. You may attempt to transcribe rituals with a level higher than yours, however doing so progresses at half pace (So a first level character would take 4 days to transcribe a 2nd level ritual).

Return to Top

In Town

While in town you can choose two downtime activities per day. Usually one will be in the morning to early afternoon and the other would be in the evening. Each town has a level associated with it and a wealth value based on that level. Different activities will earn or spend gold proportional to that wealth value.

Carouse

Key Skills: Socialize

Carousing involves celebrating, drinking, and partying. To go carousing, choose a level of carousing and spend gold based on that level. You cannot choose a level higher than that of the town or your character's level.

While carousing, your character spends the time enjoying themselves, acquiring 1d4 contacts according to the table below, rolling percentile dice for each to determine the type of contact. The player should work with the GM to establish the details of those contacts. 

Before carousing you may choose to incorporate one of your contacts into your carousing. If they're available, you may either increase their loyalty rating by 1 or use their network to choose the contacts you gain. If a contact is not available to carouse you may try again until you find a contact that is available.

Carousing Table

Craft

While in town, more intricate types of crafting are possible.

Alchemy (Competency required): Alchemical items include beneficial potions, throwable flasks, and other consumable goods.

Magic Items: Permanent magic items can be crafted by any character trained in Arcana. Common magic items only require Residuum and a base mundane item to be enchanted, but rarer items require special ingredients like Manticore Hearts that can be hard to buy,

Crime

Key Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Appeal, Debate, Impress, Insight, Stealth, Sleight of Hand

Crime generates currency but comes at the risk of getting caught. Four skill checks are required, with the difficulty of the skill checks based on the town's level.

If committing a crime as an individual, you must make each of the checks listed for the crime. Working with a group, you may delegate skill checks amongst members. Working as a group usually will make the job easier through specialization, but does not increase the value of the reward gained. Multiple party members may commit separate crimes to earn separate rewards, but this requires each to make their own skill checks and risk failure.

0 successes results in getting caught. 1 success means narrowly escaping, resulting in a reward for bringing you in. 2 successes earns gold equal to four times a town's wealth value. 3 successes earns gold equal to six times a town's wealth value.

Fraud is based in deception, convincing others that whatever you're hawking is worth far more than it actually is. The skill checks for fraud are Appeal, Debate, Impress, and Insight, as you establish marks and use every trick in the book to get them to hand over their money

Theft is the direct acquisition of others' property without their permission. The skill checks for theft are Acrobatics, Athletics, Stealth, and Sleight of Hand, as you break into secure places and bypass security measures.

Gamble

Key Competency: Gambling

When you choose to gamble, set a wager value in gold pieces. The minimum wager is equal to one-fifth of the wealth value of a town, and the maximum wager is equal to four times the wealth value of a town. Roll a twenty sided die, or if you are competent in gambling roll two and choose one die to keep. You receive your wager multiplied by the result of the die in silver pieces (This is equal to multiplying your wager by your die result then dividing by 10)

Investigate

Key Skills: Research, Socialize

When a character needs information, they need to investigate their problem. While an investigation can take up an entire adventure, the investigate downtime is intended to progress a single character's interests rather than an entire plot. Investigations use the research or socialize skills depending on the target - static sources of information, like libraries, use research, while people use socialize. Contacts can be useful in investigations to get access to sources of information that otherwise wouldn't be available, such as a private archive or an exclusive party. Alternatively, a character could spend a downtime period to gain illicit access to a source of information by sneaking or conning their way in.

To investigate, the player first declares what topic their character would like to investigate. Next, the player declares what specific source(s) they are drawing from, such as a specific library (with Research) or tavern (with Socialize). The player character then spends a downtime period investigating and will turn up three pieces of information. Depending on the roll, between zero and three of those pieces of information will be true and useful, while the others will be false or misleading.

Religious Service

Going to a temple and praying can acquire contacts, quests, and potentially result in miracles. Your first visit adds the chief minister of the temple as a contact, while further visits add a  single contact of a type of your choice.

Rest

Key skills: Endurance, Medicine

Resting restores one missing healing surge (in addition to any you regain on a long rest). Furthermore, your character has advantage on any endurance checks they need to make to recover from diseases and injuries.

If you are already at max healing surges, you instead gain a temporary healing surge. A character can have no more than their constitution modifier + 2 temporary healing surges. Like temporary hit points, temporary healing surges are the first to be consumed and are not automatically recovered by rests.

Shop

Shopping involves both buying and selling items. A given shopping trip only takes 1 downtime period for one character, and can cover any amount of purchasing or selling. Mundane items can be reliably procured in almost all towns, however buying and selling magic items is subject to some restrictions. In all situations contacts can help buy and sell magic items where you would otherwise have issues.

Buying magic items For any magic items with a level no more than 2 below the town's, the party can easily find the item. If the magic item is between the level of the town - 1 and the level of the town + 2, roll a twenty sided dice. On a 10 or higher, the item is available. If the item is above the level of the town + 2, the item is most likely unavailable unless a contact has specific knowledge of the item's availability.

Selling magic items is generally straightforward if the town is a sufficiently high level for the item. However, if the town is 5 or more levels below the level of an item, the item is too powerful and expensive to sell in the town.

Strongholds

If you are in the same town as your Stronghold, during your downtime you may interact with one of the services provided by your Stronghold. These services might be from your specific Stronghold, benefits related to your class, one of your artisans, or even another source like a legendary magic item.

Train

Training allows characters to develop new competencies or training with a weapon or Skill. Training takes significant amounts of time, taking 50 downtime periods per competency. You do not need to spend all of this time consecutively - you can make partial progress then finish your training later.

Starting training requires finding a trainer, which takes 1 activity period, but may also be provided by an existing NPC contact. A given trainer usually covers a group of competencies, e.g. "Knowledge of Creatures". Trainers usually stay local to a town, so once you find a trainer in a town then you don't need to spend time finding them again.

Training Time Costs

Work

Working generates gold based on a town's level. Skilled labor, represented by competency in Artisan's Tools or any of the Performance options, generates double that.

Return to Top