D&D 5E How Much Downtime Do You See in Campaigns?

[S'mon]

So I'm looking at the magic item crafting rules and seeing that it takes a PC somewhere in the neighborhood of five years to make a single Very Rare magic item. In the experience of those here, do many campaigns have weeks, months, years, or even decades of downtime? It seems to me that most published campaigns at least assume very little downtime.

I use 1 week long rests so inherently there tends to be some 'downtime'; PCs can do crafting etc during their LR if they wish.

I normally speed up high level crafting rates, eg at a wizard tower or temple the wizard/high priest may be able to craft at x10 rate.

Of my current campaigns Primeval Thule has gone over a year of game time in 6.5 months of real time, Princes of the Apocalypse has gone 3 months of game time in 8 months of real time. Red Hand of Doom has gone 16 days game time in 1 month of real time. Runelords of the Shattered Star has gone 9 years 3 months game time in 3 years 10 months of real time, but that includes a break of 14 months real time & 5 years 10 months game time, so could be classed as 2 separate campaigns.

 

[Blue]

Because I have a whole bunch of plot threads in play at once, players very rarely have their characters take downtime. They can have as much as they want - but other plots and such are still moving in the meantime.

 

[MarkB]

My campaigns feature very little straight-up downtime. My latest one has featured a lot of travel via airship, which allows for the use of travel time as downtime.

 

[Myrhdraak]

We had two years of downtime to fill up the time before the next big adventure track started. We did not follow the downtime rules. Instead it was more joint story telling where the players told what they spent 3 months a time doing. Was very creative and allowed the players to follow up on personal quests and story arcs. As a DM it gave me new story arcs I could use in the new game as well as deepen the characters background. Should have used this concept earlier.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[MarkB]

Do you at least allow enough time for every PC to recover any lost HP naturally?

Do you count a long rest as downtime?

 

[ad_hoc]

We do one week between adventures and use Xanathar's downtime. So each player picks one thing that they do.

We do modify the rules a bit.

Thievery and combat can both provide consumable magic items for example. Research allows the player to ask X amount of questions next adventure and get a true answer (as long as it could have been researched).

Buying magic items gets rolls on the treasure tables. No crafting of permanent items but we can craft scrolls.

 

[ccs]

Do you at least allow enough time for every PC to recover any lost HP naturally?

That's a long rest, not downtime.

 

[Seramus]

Downtime means the bad guys are making progress.
Can’t have that!

 

[Lanefan]

I'd love to see more downtime, in campaigns where there's no time pressure. Problem is, people (and thus PCs) get bored, trouble erupts in one way or another, and downtime becomes uptime. Rare indeed is the situation where the players/PCs say "hell with it, we're taking the winter off and staying put in town".

(my current campaign has some time pressure, so while some characters get downtime others are fairly seriously under the gun at the moment)