D&D 5E Downtime: When, How, and How Much?

[Tales and Chronicles]

When you describe the town to them, do you present them with a range of possible activities they could perform while they’re there, or does the onus fall on them to propose actions over which the DM may or may not have veto power?

Oh, they know they can spend some time to do some activities other than rushing toward the next adventures, they just dont get why they would do that.

In the words of one of my players: ''You really expect me to spend some time on research and working a job!?'' or ''You guys tell me in advance if you intend on wasting time in the next town, I'mma go breastfeed the monster'' (This player brings her baby to the game, its nothing weird )

 

[billd91]

When you say you allow “leeway”, do you mean the players propose a certain amount of downtime and then you either allow it or limit it in some way, perhaps by exerting external pressure in-game?

They can generally have as much as they want, as long as they realize time marches on. I don’t limit it directly, but if they take too much and an army is on the way, their downtime may get interrupted...

 

[DND_Reborn]

This seems fairly straightforward. I’m imagining the PCs roll into town for the winter, and the DM says, “The roads are impassable for the next three months. What would you like to spend your time doing while waiting for the thaw?” I assume the players declare various activities, and the DM adjudicates the result of their efforts. Yes?

As for the five years of downtime, who decided it was time to pick up the sword, the players or the DM?

Well, it isn't so much that the roads are impassible as much as not worth it (typically). And so we shop, train, etc. Sometimes it turns into a winter town adventure, other times the months pass by and after the downtime is resolved we hit the road again.

The 5-year break was because our party had plans. We had a castle build, some characters got married and had kids, started businesses, etc. We had predetermined 5 years would be our time and then we would meet up again to resume our adventures. Our wizard researched spells and we crafted magic items. The best was the adventures that followed. We weren't "epic" but we had some pretty darn memorable games... the type you tell other groups about almost twenty years later and they wish they had been part of it.

 

[Jd Smith1]

So generally do the players tell you they want to level up, do research, craft potions, gather info., etc., and you tell them how much time it will take? Is that how that works at your table?

Well, by the end of a scenario they head back to dispose of loot, and re-supply. Once at whatever place they are using for their base, the party leader determines how much downtime they will take by polling the other players.

The rules for most of those activities are clear (leveling, potions, etc), so the group figures out how much time they need, and then the party leader adds on a certain number of days and there we are. I leave it all up to the players.

Once the time is allocated, I go around the table establishing the specifics of each PC's (most players run 2) downtime. Then we all attended to the admin work involved (they deal out shares of loot on downtime, check on their investments, etc), deal with roleplay and research, and off we go. I try to get downtime at the end of a session or the start of the next session, but we play it as it falls.

Here's our timelime: Dark Age | Adventure Log | Obsidian Portal

 

[Hriston]

I just started running an Acquisitions Inc. campaign. The party cleared out the first big dungeon and hit level two. They're about to go report back in to head office, and they'll have a few free days (they can go identify and sell off / trade some of the magic items they found, or whatever). They also have a new goblin sidekick and young dragon friend that wants to meet up with them in a week or so.

When they get to head office, they'll be officially assigned franchise duties, but Head Office will need a few days to requisition their supplies. In the meantime, they need to take care of HR's paperwork, and they'll probably want to research some other strange artifacts they found, as well as some old cult ruins they stumbled through.

Normally we'd just waive the HR stuff, but you do NOT mess with HR when there's a lich in charge. No one else wanted to run HR and Bob volunteered... To be fair, he HAS cut down the intern turnover rate, and our insurance premiums are lower than ever, but his methodology is maybe questionable.

So the party will go through the Intern Selection, Testing, And Ranking facility, which is going to become a ridiculous Portal-style madhouse. After that, they'll finally be sent on to their new franchise location for "chapter 2" of their campaign.

Who says downtime has to be boring?

Okay, so the party arrives back at headquarters. Do you, the DM, then tell them they have two days to a week or so if downtime and the options they have for spending it (i.e. Identifying/selling magic items, doing HR’s paperwork, doing research, and going through the intern facility)?

What’s the players’ role in choosing which activities to pursue, and how do they get resolved?

 

[Hriston]

I decouple downtime and campaign time. Downtime is a resource that players earn for attending games, usually 5 downtime days per game. So after 5 games, a player has 25 days that they can spend at any time (between sessions) to craft, research, etc. The assumption is that the work involved was done during rest periods.

Crafting can be done just about anywhere, but some things, such as investigating and gathering information, have to be done in town.

Okay, so in this setup, downtime “days” are an abstract resource players can spend to declare that their characters have been pursuing activities, correct? Are the rest periods limited to short and long rests, or are there other periods of downtime that are considered to have elapsed?

 

[Hriston]

Speaking for my current Eberron campaign, we don't use downtime activities because it doesn't fit with the pacing and focus of the adventures as I see it. Time passes between cases the PCs take up, but we don't fill in that time with downtime activities. The focus of the game is really on the amazing stuff the PCs do, not what they do when they're not doing that amazing stuff. That's better for other campaigns in my view such as the one I'm planning next (see above).

That sounds like there’s downtime which isn’t detailed in the game with activities, which is fine if that isn’t something on which you want to focus. The case to which I was responding was one in which there seemed to be nonstop adventuring with no downtime either detailed or skipped over (which is also fine).

 

[Maestrino]

Okay, so the party arrives back at headquarters. Do you, the DM, then tell them they have two days to a week or so if downtime and the options they have for spending it (i.e. Identifying/selling magic items, doing HR’s paperwork, doing research, and going through the intern facility)?

What’s the players’ role in choosing which activities to pursue, and how do they get resolved?

They totally get to decide what they do with their downtime.

They can also use their franchise staff to run downtime activities while they're out crawling a dungeon. They can say, "hey we found this weird MacGuffin but we don't know what it is. Jimbo, head to Candlekeep and do some research on what this thing is and where it came from. In the meantime, this dragon out east of town is screwing with our shipping lanes, so we're going to go kick it's ass. Tell us what you learned when we get back."

Rules for resolution can be downtime rules from the DMG or Xanathar's, or there are more options int he AcqInc book. If it doesn't go so well for Jimbo, maybe he couldn't find anything, so he tried a bit too hard to persuade an archivist to help him, and now he's in jail for attempted bribery and the PCs need to go break him out.

If they stall out and run out of ideas, I drop something in their lap. "That lizardfolk merchant you met on the road shows up at your HQ. They supply ingredients for potions of water-breathing, and they want you to be their distributor in the region so they don't have to go try to sell to every alchemist in the area." or "You get a letter from Head Office; one of their researchers turned up a little information on your MacGuffin - they think you can find out some more info in Luskan. Meet up with X contact at the Y tavern."

 

[Tonguez]

I can’t quite make out what’s happening at the table from this description. Are you saying that you give the players the balance of the season in downtime after the adventure to use as they please? Or is it more that downtime activities are handwaived as having taken place sometime during the season?

characters in my games tend to be part of organisations (church, academy, merchants guild, museum, circus etc) and I also use a influence mechanic derived from 3e Leadership. So in addition to the stuff in the book, In downtime PC get to use their influence to do stuff with their organisations and communities.

Players can if they want roll PFs downtime events, and I drop random events for characters to react to if they choose Eg

Thieves' Guild Events

d%	Event
01—10	Big Heist
11—30	Crime Spree
31—45	Rivalry
46—60	Crackdown
61—70	Entrapment
71—90	Meddling Adventurers
91—100	Mutiny

 

[Hriston]

Depends on the scenario.
For ToD sometimes a few weeks of downtime made sense. I used the rules in... one of the supplements. They worked well and introduced interesting NPCs to the campaign.

For CoS the pace is much higher and downtime doesn’t seem to be a thing for the characters.

I’m not all that familiar with either of the two adventures you’ve mentioned. I have some passing familiarity with CoS from watching some DCA, and I would guess that some of the difference you observe is due to the mists trapping the party in the adventure and isolating them from their normal lives.

I wouldn’t normally expect downtime to happen during an adventure. I think of downtime being something that happens between adventures. Is ToD easily broken up into smaller pieces such that it’s more conducive to breaks in the action?