D&D 5E A Year of Downtime
Stormonu
Legend
Pendragon had some excellent guidelines for downtime, as it assumed the PCs were generally inactive during the winter months.
A bit of dice rolling and a few minutes of interactive roleplayers could be fun, as long as no one gets too carried away.
Stormonu’s Quick & Easy Downtime Chart (Interval as chosen by DM)
2D6 Roll
2 - Misfortune; make an ability save, on a failure wealth, fortune or health suffer
3-4 - Unexpected cost; pay 50% of your normal wealth gained or treat this as a roll of 2
5 Close call; you have an interesting tale of a brush with bad luck, but nothing more
6-8 - Nothing happens of note
9 - An Interesting tale; something unusual happens that gives you a good story, but nothing more
10-11 - Good luck; You have an opportunity to gain a small token of wealth or use, make an ability check to acquire it
12 - What Luck! You gain a small token of personal significance and your income increases by 25%
A bit of dice rolling and a few minutes of interactive roleplayers could be fun, as long as no one gets too carried away.
Stormonu’s Quick & Easy Downtime Chart (Interval as chosen by DM)
2D6 Roll
2 - Misfortune; make an ability save, on a failure wealth, fortune or health suffer
3-4 - Unexpected cost; pay 50% of your normal wealth gained or treat this as a roll of 2
5 Close call; you have an interesting tale of a brush with bad luck, but nothing more
6-8 - Nothing happens of note
9 - An Interesting tale; something unusual happens that gives you a good story, but nothing more
10-11 - Good luck; You have an opportunity to gain a small token of wealth or use, make an ability check to acquire it
12 - What Luck! You gain a small token of personal significance and your income increases by 25%
I'd look to Xanathar's for this. I would, for sake of ease, let the players know ahead of time roughly how much time they'd have to spend on their own things.
"Make a fortune," is big. It typically takes more than a year to make a fortune by mundane means. So, probably not that. But build relationships, craft, buy, or sell items? Sure.
I'm usually pretty loose with allowing players to rework character builds if something's really not working for them. So, a lot of different forms of retraining would be on the table, if the players wanted it.
jgsugden
Legend
There is a one year time gap in the first season of Critical Role, after the dragons and before Vecna. It was handled well.
The DM took the players aside and asked them each what they wanted to do with that year, and then let the characters quickly speed through the year. Then they all came together and shared their years collectively before picking up the action.
When I've had prolonged downtime, the usual activities for PCs have been magic item creation, forming their own guild, colonizing, public service, starting a family, and building a facility (mage tower, church, etc...)
The DM took the players aside and asked them each what they wanted to do with that year, and then let the characters quickly speed through the year. Then they all came together and shared their years collectively before picking up the action.
When I've had prolonged downtime, the usual activities for PCs have been magic item creation, forming their own guild, colonizing, public service, starting a family, and building a facility (mage tower, church, etc...)
