D&D 5E Revised Xanathar's Downtime Rules (Finalized)

[ad_hoc]

What I found is that the PCs had an reasonable time ensuring everyone had something magic to throw at resistant monsters, but that the really badass stuff either required a giant portion of their (collective) treasure or came out from random table rolls. Obviously as DM I exercised my right to fudge treasure hoards from time to time.

This is probably another game preference thing.

I like resistant monsters. I like them to change up combat. I also like having characters with magic attacks shine.

For example, the Horizon Walker Ranger's main thing is having magic attacks at level 3. The Devotion Paladin also gets a magic weapon from their Channel Divinity. Magic Weapon is a level 2 spell.

There are lots of ways to get magic attacks and non-magic ones still do half damage (I allow easy access to silver weapons for lycanthropes).

XgtE Magic Item Pricing:

+1 Sword is 100-600gp.
+1 Arrow is 50-300gp.
+2 Sword is 2000-20000gp.
+2 Arrow is 1000-10000gp.

It's silly. So how far up do we go is the question.

My current prices have consumables at 1/10th the price and stocks other activities with them (eg. Pit Fighting).

Conversely the price of rare items is way too high. 350gp average vs 11000gp average is a huge jump.

My jump is 2x. Very Rare at 5x uncommon.

So my base uncommon price is higher than other people's I think. My reasoning is that just getting a magic item is a big deal. I could see in another game that doesn't use treasure hoards and has tons of items that getting more powerful ones would be more sought after. I've just never played in such a game (nor would I want to).

 

[ad_hoc]

I did the math on the gold from treasure hoards.

Each level from levels 5-10 the party is expected to find about 12 000gp.

So when the party takes their downtime between levels 5 and 6 they're going to have around 12 000gp on them.

Now, I think that is too high as well. The treasure hoards have a lot of gp relative to their magic item offerings. Many rolls amount to 4000gp but no items at all.

So in my games I cut that back too. I think in light of that 3500gp for a +1 Sword isn't that expensive.

 

[Lanefan]

I did the math on the gold from treasure hoards.

Each level from levels 5-10 the party is expected to find about 12 000gp.

So when the party takes their downtime between levels 5 and 6 they're going to have around 12 000gp on them.

So for a 4-character party that's 3000 each; which at 5th+ level isn't that much. And if there's more than 4 characters it gets a bit thin, particularly if the answer to my first question below is 'yes'.

Questions:

Does that 12000 number include the cash value of magic items?
Do you use any sort of training rules/expenses?

 

[ad_hoc]

So for a 4-character party that's 3000 each; which at 5th+ level isn't that much. And if there's more than 4 characters it gets a bit thin, particularly if the answer to my first question below is 'yes'.

That is per level though. Every character in a party able to (almost) purchase a permanent magic item after 5th level is a bit much for me. That's on top of what they find out there.

I wouldn't want a +1 sword to be 1k, that's 3 of them, every level. That's a lot of magic items by 10th level.

My ideal game is where every magic item is special and treasured, even that +1 sword. I don't want a situation where the party just has a bunch of 'junk' lying around that people don't much care for. I do like the option of selling though for the cases where they get something none of them have much use for.

Questions:

Does that 12000 number include the cash value of magic items?

Nope that's coins plus gold value of gems/art pieces.

Do you use any sort of training rules/expenses?

No. Standard expenses in 5e are too low to matter unless we're talking about a long time between adventures. Right now we're playing an adventure path that I'm stretching to 2 weeks between adventures. So 1 week in Waterdeep for downtime plus travel there and back.

Expenses are something I have used before. Tweaking treasure hoards and introducing expenses are a way to manage the economy on the other end.

So yeah, if the PCs are not getting a lot of gold then magic item prices could be much lower.

I think I like my ratios. 1/10th for a consumable and x2 for rare, x5 for very rare.

Was it you who didn't like the variation in prices? I could see using a d4 instead of a d6. I do think the book's 2d10 is too much of a swing.

 

[Fenris-77]

Adjudicating favors earned in downtime is pretty campaign specific. Personally, I use a reputation mechanic based loosely on the one in the DMG. Players have options when they earn a 'favour'. One favour can be traded in for a minor actual favour. Multiple favours can be traded in for bigger asks (from 1 to 5 based on the risk to the contact). Alternatively, players can trade in some number of favours for a permanent increase in their reputation with the group in question. The number needed to bump reputation is relative to the influence of the group in question. Reputation within a minor trade guild or noble house might only cost two favors, but reputation at court probably costs 5 plus some extra work.

The mechanic, whatever you chose, needs to be based on campaign and story needs. A deep intrigue campaign probably warrants a deep set of mechanics and a lot of different interlocked groups and political currents. As a nice addition to a normal adventuring campaign you'd want something light and easy to manage, with maybe only a handful of groups and not a lot of complexity.

 

[tetrasodium]

Price depends on supply and demand. What would be sane for Eberron, where magic items are plentiful, is very different to a sane price for Greyhawk, where magic items are rare.

Indeed,many of the patrons in Rising are pretty up front about granting access to library, spellbooks, between 1gpday and 100gp/month for expenses & expense accounts, or just outright mgical secrets/spellbooks/etc. Some of them come with dues, others come with the strings of becoming someone's puppet in an employment/political sense. Those are only a fraction of the things that can be benefits with some of the various patrons. The patrons are dripping with lore & flavor in ways that would be hard to convey without transcribing wayy too much to convey their cost/benefits more fully but there are also various orders & groups. Rising 158/159 cvers the esoteric order of aureon, the guild of starlight & shadows, and the closed circle (I know I've seen others, but I wss able to find these first). At a thousand gold join & 250gp/year for membership they are kind of like many real world professional societies with specializations & rivalries of their own, but adventurers guids are good for access to other & lower level stuff on 157 at like 12gold/year. All combined they work very well & solve many of the problems with downtime by giving ways to farm out the labor of long term research & boring to the table long term stuff that would otherwise just be "I'd like to... but can't yet & will one day just do it" to an npc you can occasionally interact with for interesting updates & status reports. There are lots of other organizations & groups but I just picked a couple of the most applicable.

 

[ad_hoc]

Adjudicating favors earned in downtime is pretty campaign specific. Personally, I use a reputation mechanic based loosely on the one in the DMG. Players have options when they earn a 'favour'. One favour can be traded in for a minor actual favour. Multiple favours can be traded in for bigger asks (from 1 to 5 based on the risk to the contact). Alternatively, players can trade in some number of favours for a permanent increase in their reputation with the group in question. The number needed to bump reputation is relative to the influence of the group in question. Reputation within a minor trade guild or noble house might only cost two favors, but reputation at court probably costs 5 plus some extra work.

The mechanic, whatever you chose, needs to be based on campaign and story needs. A deep intrigue campaign probably warrants a deep set of mechanics and a lot of different interlocked groups and political currents. As a nice addition to a normal adventuring campaign you'd want something light and easy to manage, with maybe only a handful of groups and not a lot of complexity.

Yeah, for sure.

These rules are meant for a typical dungeoneering campaign. A bit of characterization between adventures and opportunity for customized advantages.

With the 0-3 favours for 1 downtime week; and with downtime only coming between levels, I see the favours as pretty big.

Codifying them would be hard and put constraints on player creativity. For me, I think we can come to an agreement together. I do see the need for codification if this were something that was published.

 

[Lanefan]

That is per level though. Every character in a party able to (almost) purchase a permanent magic item after 5th level is a bit much for me. That's on top of what they find out there.

I guess it also depends on how often magic items get broken or destroyed. If you're going by 5e RAW that would be pretty much never, thus long-term accumulation becomes an issue.

Personally, I much prefer more of an easy come, easy go situation; where magic items are (relatively) plentiful but they also risk destruction much more often, a la 1e.

I wouldn't want a +1 sword to be 1k, that's 3 of them, every level. That's a lot of magic items by 10th level.

Only if they roll low on the value dice in your system.

That said, there's utility in using spare magic items as a convenient means of carrying cash: a +1 longsword weighs way less than 1000 coins....

My ideal game is where every magic item is special and treasured, even that +1 sword. I don't want a situation where the party just has a bunch of 'junk' lying around that people don't much care for.

My experience is that while there's a certain percentate of 'junk', it's not as much as you might expect: characters with leftover money will often claim* or buy secondary items just in case they ever come in handy.

I do like the option of selling though for the cases where they get something none of them have much use for.

Completely agree!

Nope that's coins plus gold value of gems/art pieces.

OK. This comes into my '*' above: we get every magic item evaluated (thus, using our prices a +1 longsword would be 1800, a potion of healing 200, etc.); then all those evaluations are totted up plus the value of cash and non-magic found, and that's the overall treasury.

If a character wants to claim an item from treasury they in effect 'buy' it out of their share value. Thus, if my share is 7000 g.p. and there's a +1 sword (1800 g.p.) I want to claim, my share would end up as the sword plus 5200 g.p. Cases where two or more characters claim the same item are almost always settled by roll-off.

We do it this way because whenever we've tried any other method some characters invariably ended up far wealthier than others via gaming the system (both in the fiction and at the table).

For example, we tried a 'draft' system for magic items once, where the characters each picked one in turn, repeating till there were no items left. This broke when one character drafted specifically for value rather than need, then went and sold what he'd drafted and bought or commissioned what he really needed and pocketed the (vast amounts of) change.

Expenses are something I have used before. Tweaking treasure hoards and introducing expenses are a way to manage the economy on the other end.

I read a bit of this between the lines of your downtime system; that you're using it as a means of introducing expenses.

Was it you who didn't like the variation in prices? I could see using a d4 instead of a d6. I do think the book's 2d10 is too much of a swing.

Yes, that was me.

Lock the prices in at single values by item (a la 1e or 3e) and have done with it. I can't urge this strongly enough!

Yes it's arbitrary, but it saves you from opening yourself up to characters spending their time playing the item market rather than adventuring (been there, DMed that, never again!), starting with buying items at low value in one town and trying to sell them at higher value in the next and potentially expanding into transaction brokering, leverage and loans, item futures....bleah!

 

[ad_hoc]

Yes it's arbitrary, but it saves you from opening yourself up to characters spending their time playing the item market rather than adventuring (been there, DMed that, never again!), starting with buying items at low value in one town and trying to sell them at higher value in the next and potentially expanding into transaction brokering, leverage and loans, item futures....bleah!

(sorry to cut out the rest of you reply but I think we are pretty much in agreement there)

I think where this can't happen in my system is that characters only get 1 week of downtime per level.

That week can be spent either purchasing 1 item or selling 1 item.

Purchasing a +1 Sword costs 1000-6000gp. Selling one gets you 1000-3000gp (depending on your ability check roll). That's even if you get a +1 Sword on your buying attempt, you may roll low and only get a chance to purchase a potion or whatever.

Trying to game that system just wouldn't be worth it. It's a waste of precious downtime.

This whole system only works if downtime is limited. Favours and Lore and such would also be overpowered if characters had a lot of downtime.

Now, one alternative is to have an additional ability check to determine the cost of the item rather than leaving it up to chance. This would mirror the 'sell a magic item' system but would be more complicated, esp. if the player gets to choose from multiple items.

 

[Lanefan]

I think where this can't happen in my system is that characters only get 1 week of downtime per level.

How can you enforce this, though? If they decide they want to take the whole winter off and resume adventuring in the spring, are they not allowed to?

That week can be spent either purchasing 1 item or selling 1 item.

Purchasing a +1 Sword costs 1000-6000gp. Selling one gets you 1000-3000gp (depending on your ability check roll). That's even if you get a +1 Sword on your buying attempt, you may roll low and only get a chance to purchase a potion or whatever.

Trying to game that system just wouldn't be worth it. It's a waste of precious downtime.

Downtime isn't normally seen as a limited resource.

And even beyond that, having prices vary that much is IMO just asking for trouble...never mind that if you're going to use ranges then realistically the selling-price range (or fixed amount!) should be the same as the buy-price range.

Bigger headache: if the range for a +1 sword is 1000-6000, how much is it going to cost me to claim the one that's in the party treasury; and thus how much is that claim going to boost (or not) everyone else's share amount?

This whole system only works if downtime is limited. Favours and Lore and such would also be overpowered if characters had a lot of downtime.

Ah - maybe that's why some bits of the system made me wonder. I always assume, barring unusual circumstances, that the PCs have exactly as much downtime as they decide to take.

Perhaps for some of those activities the time can be made malleable - you get what you get in however long it takes, and that's all you're gonna get this time around even if you immediately try again.