It is time again for a preview of Pathfinder 2 over at the Paizo blog. Today they take a look at downtime for characters.
According to the blog post, "[d][FONT=&]owntime mode is measured in days and gives you a chance to enact your long-term plans. You might craft items, heal up, conduct rituals, retrain some of your character options to choose other ones, or work at jobs or stage performances to make money. These are all things that take time and can't really be done in the middle of a dungeon.[/FONT][FONT=&]" It sounds kind of like something that already exists in most games, and without codification. "[/FONT]Of course, just like with the other modes of play, these are all things you could do previously in Pathfinder. The difference in the Playtest is that we've more clearly defined these tasks in terms of what you can complete in the number of days you commit to them. This means if the GM wants to codify how long things take, it's more obvious what the value of a day spent at a task is."
One of the things that they talk about regarding the new edition is that the game will utilize three modes of play: encounter, exploration, and downtime. Both encounter and exploration are pretty easy to understand, as they are standards of fantasy role-playing games. "When you have a day or more off, you can choose a defined downtime activity (or decide to do whatever else you want to). A few of these are general, like taking bed rest to heal more quickly or retraining your feats, skill choices, and selectable class features. Most of downtime activities, however, appear under skills and require skill checks. The ones appearing in the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook are Craft, Create Forgery, Gather Information, Practice a Trade, Stage a Performance, Subsist on the Streets, Survive in the Wild, and Treat Disease. All of these require a skill check to determine how successful you are, and a few are explained in more detail later in this blog."
Interestingly, it looks like some characters will be able to make money during downtime. "Because downtime can include a really large number of days, performing these activities long-term requires rolls only for interesting events; you can continue doing the job and earning money at a steady rate until the job is completed or your audiences run out. This means you can cover long periods of downtime quickly and embellish your activity with interesting details, rather than getting bogged down with 30 rolls for a month of downtime."
"If you're a Game Master, downtime lets you pace out your game and show the passage of time between adventures. Characters and their circumstances can change in tangible ways during their downtime. Adding color and storylines to downtime, as well as recurring characters, helps the PCs form bonds and feel they're more a part of the world around them. It also means that PCs with long-term goals have a clear way of attaining them, with a clearer structure than the game had before. Less guesswork for you, and immense expandability!"
Like with some of the previous previews, Paizo really isn't giving us enough to extrapolate anything meaningful about what the rules of downtime will really do, but it does give us plenty to speculate about in the meantime. It is only a couple of months until the Pathfinder 2 playtest document will come out.
According to the blog post, "[d][FONT=&]owntime mode is measured in days and gives you a chance to enact your long-term plans. You might craft items, heal up, conduct rituals, retrain some of your character options to choose other ones, or work at jobs or stage performances to make money. These are all things that take time and can't really be done in the middle of a dungeon.[/FONT][FONT=&]" It sounds kind of like something that already exists in most games, and without codification. "[/FONT]Of course, just like with the other modes of play, these are all things you could do previously in Pathfinder. The difference in the Playtest is that we've more clearly defined these tasks in terms of what you can complete in the number of days you commit to them. This means if the GM wants to codify how long things take, it's more obvious what the value of a day spent at a task is."
One of the things that they talk about regarding the new edition is that the game will utilize three modes of play: encounter, exploration, and downtime. Both encounter and exploration are pretty easy to understand, as they are standards of fantasy role-playing games. "When you have a day or more off, you can choose a defined downtime activity (or decide to do whatever else you want to). A few of these are general, like taking bed rest to heal more quickly or retraining your feats, skill choices, and selectable class features. Most of downtime activities, however, appear under skills and require skill checks. The ones appearing in the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook are Craft, Create Forgery, Gather Information, Practice a Trade, Stage a Performance, Subsist on the Streets, Survive in the Wild, and Treat Disease. All of these require a skill check to determine how successful you are, and a few are explained in more detail later in this blog."
Interestingly, it looks like some characters will be able to make money during downtime. "Because downtime can include a really large number of days, performing these activities long-term requires rolls only for interesting events; you can continue doing the job and earning money at a steady rate until the job is completed or your audiences run out. This means you can cover long periods of downtime quickly and embellish your activity with interesting details, rather than getting bogged down with 30 rolls for a month of downtime."
"If you're a Game Master, downtime lets you pace out your game and show the passage of time between adventures. Characters and their circumstances can change in tangible ways during their downtime. Adding color and storylines to downtime, as well as recurring characters, helps the PCs form bonds and feel they're more a part of the world around them. It also means that PCs with long-term goals have a clear way of attaining them, with a clearer structure than the game had before. Less guesswork for you, and immense expandability!"
Like with some of the previous previews, Paizo really isn't giving us enough to extrapolate anything meaningful about what the rules of downtime will really do, but it does give us plenty to speculate about in the meantime. It is only a couple of months until the Pathfinder 2 playtest document will come out.
I stopped stacking my shelves with PF books about two years ago as my 5E habit which paralleled it rolled along nicely. While I didn't mind parts of it, I find most "downtime activities" to be prime role playing time. There are times when you want to "automate things" (i.e. an established business that has a manager and largely runs itself) and times when you want the players down in the mud of doing it. And getting involved in various adventures that result from these activities. I've always handled these things as continuations of ordinary player time rather than a different mini-game. When players dedicated time to learning new spells, training in skills (or the training time technically required to level up in 1E), and so on, I wanted them to play out, or at least outline, what they were doing in their spare time, be it bar hopping, gambling, charitable activities, recruiting NPCs, catching up on their reading, or what have you. In a couple of cases the "downtime activity" was getting married. I don't recall that among the down time activities in UC. And a really memorable duel fought by the best man (known gender neutrally as "the Champion" in my setting) at one wedding. I know in some APs (especially) you want time to pass so they can get back to business, but some of the most interesting parts of a characters (if not players) lives occur in downtime. And if the players lives are boring they often have NPC friends whose lives are too interesting. My game is a sand box and that probably gives time for daily life I guess... unless of course events are pressing and there are friends / villages / cities / nations / worlds to save 
