Downtime Revisited

It's possible for characters to start a campaign at 1st level, dive into an epic story, and reach 10th level and beyond in a short amount of game time. Although that pace works fine for many campaigns, some DMs prefer a campaign story with pauses built into it—times when adventurers are not going on adventures. The downtime rules given in this section can be used as alternatives to the approach in the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide, or you can use the material here to inspire the creation of your own options.

By engaging the characters in downtime activities that take weeks or even months to complete, you can give your campaign a longer timeline—one in which events in the world play out over years. Wars begin and end, tyrants come and go, and royal lines rise and fall over the course of the story that you and the characters tell.

Downtime rules also provide ways for characters to spend—or be relieved of—the monetary treasure they amass on their adventures.

The system presented here consists of two elements. First, it introduces the concept of rivals. Second, it details a number of downtime activities that characters can undertake.

Rivals

Rivals are NPCs who oppose the characters and make their presence felt whenever the characters are engaging in downtime. A rival might be a villain you have featured in past adventures or plan to use in the future. Rivals can also include good or neutral folk who are at odds with the characters, whether because they have opposing goals or they simply dislike one another. The cultist of Orcus whose plans the characters have foiled, the ambitious merchant prince who wants to rule the city with an iron fist, and the nosy high priest of Helm who is convinced the characters are up to no good are all examples of rivals.

A rival's agenda changes over time. Though the characters engage in downtime only between adventures, their rivals rarely rest, continuing to spin plots and work against the characters even when the characters are off doing something else.

Creating a Rival

In essence, a rival is a somewhat specialized NPC. You can use chapter 4 of the Dungeon Master's Guide to build a new NPC for this purpose, or pick one from your current cast of supporting characters and embellish that NPC as described below.

It's possible for the characters to have two or three rivals at a time, each with a separate agenda. At least one should be a villain, but the others might be neutral or good; conflicts with those rivals might be social or political, rather than manifesting as direct attacks.

The best rivals have a connection with their adversaries on a personal level. Find links in the characters' backstories or the events of recent adventures that explain what sparked the rival's actions. The best trouble to put the characters in is trouble they created for themselves.

Example Rivals

• Assets: Think about the resources the rival can marshal. Does the character have enough money to pay bribes or to hire a small gang of mercenaries? Does the rival hold sway over any guilds, temples, or other groups? Make a list of the rival's assets, and consider how they can be used.

• Plans: The foundation of a rival's presence in the campaign is the actions the rival takes or the events that occur as a result of that character's goals. Each time you resolve one or more workweeks of downtime, pick one of the ways a rival's plans might be advanced and introduce it into play.

  Think about how a rival might operate in order to bring specific plans to fruition, and jot down three or four kinds of actions the rival might undertake. Some of these might be versions of the downtime activities described later in this section, but these are more often efforts that are specific to the rival.

  A rival's action might be a direct attack, such as an assassination attempt, that you play out during a session. Or it might be a background activity that you describe as altering the campaign in some way. For example, a rival who wants to increase the prestige of the temple of a war god might hold a festival with drink, food, and gladiatorial games. Even if the characters aren't directly involved, the event becomes the talk of the town.

  Some elements of a rival's plans might involve events in the world that aren't under the rival's control. Whether such an event can be easily anticipated or not, the rival's plans might include contingencies for taking advantage of such happenings.

Example Rival: Marina Rodemus

Background: The Rodemus clan was a small but powerful family of traders in the city, but years ago, they pulled up stakes and left town overnight. Marina Rodemus, the youngest child, has now returned to restore her family's prestige.

In truth, the family fled because its members became afflicted by lycanthropy. They joined a clan of wererats and delved into smuggling in a distant city, out of fear that their secret would be impossible to keep in their former home. After fighting her way to the top ranks of the wererat clans, Marina—along with a small army of followers—has returned to claim her place among the elite of her home city. She vows that if she doesn't succeed, she'll leave the city in ruins.

• Goals: Marina wants to become the most respected, most important merchant in town—someone to whom even the prince must yield.

• Assets: Marina has a small fortune in gold; her abilities as a wererat, alchemist, and necromancer; a group of wererats dedicated to her; and a shield guardian that protects her.

• Plans: Marina works to discredit and ruin other merchants. Her wererats spy on her opponents and sneak into warehouses, unleashing hordes of rats to spoil goods. Marina even victimizes a few of her own warehouses to avoid suspicion.

  If Marina's plans fail, she has a terrible alternative. Her knowledge of alchemy has enabled her to create a plague that she will unleash on the city through her rats. If she can't rule, then no one will.

Rival Table

Use this table to quickly generate a rival for your campaign:

d20	Rival
1	Tax collector who is convinced the characters are dodging fees
2	Politician who is concerned that the characters are causing more trouble than they solve
3	High priest who worries the characters are diminishing the temple's prestige
4	Wizard who blames the characters for some recent troubles
5	Rival adventuring party
6	Bard who loves a scandal enough to spark one
7	Childhood rival or member of a rival clan
8	Scorned sibling or parent
9	Merchant who blames the characters for any business woes
10	Newcomer out to make a mark on the world
11	Sibling or ally of a defeated enemy
12	Official seeking to restore a tarnished reputation
13	Deadly foe disguised as a social rival
14	Fiend seeking to tempt the characters to evil
15	Spurned romantic interest
16	Political opportunist seeking a scapegoat
17	Traitorous noble looking to foment a revolution
18	Would-be tyrant who brooks no opposition
19	Exiled noble looking for revenge
20	Corrupt official worried that recent misdeeds will be revealed

Marina's Plans

Element	Event	Action	Action	Action	Event	Action
Rats become a noticeable problem in the streets, with swarms sighted in rundown neighborhoods. Folk demand that action be taken.	Caravan raids by goblinoids become more common, and folk talk of gathering a militia. Marina contributes generously to the effort.	Warehouses are overrun with rats, ruining thousands of gold pieces worth of goods. Marina blames the city for a lax effort in pest control.	If the characters interfere, Marina sends her assassins against them.	A sudden storm creates minor flooding, washing dozens of dead, bloated, diseased rats from the sewers. Terror over the plague rips through town.	Marina fans the flames of panic, spreading rumors that the characters or other rivals in town are responsible for the disease.

Example Rival: High Priest Cheldar

Background: The temple of Pholtus, god of the sun, seeks to bring as many folk as possible under its sway. Though it has been in town for only two years, the temple is already an influential force because of the determination and the brilliant oration of Cheldar, its high priest.

• Goals: Cheldar wants to make the temple of Pholtus the most popular religion in town by bringing about peace and security for all. He believes keeping adventurers in check or driving them out of town is an important step in that plan.
• Assets: The charismatic high priest has his oratory skill, divine spellcasting ability, and a few hundred common folk recently converted to the temple's cause.
• Plans: Cheldar is stern but fundamentally a good person. He tries to win support by providing charity, promoting peace, and working to enforce law and order. He is skeptical of the characters, however, convinced that they are troublemakers who will undermine the peace. He wants only officials of the town or the temple to be involved in handling any crises that arise. He strongly believes in his goals, yet he might still be made into an ally by good-hearted characters.

Downtime Activities

Downtime activities are tasks that usually take a workweek (5 days) or longer to perform. These tasks can include buying or creating magic items, pulling off crimes, and working at a job. A character selects a downtime activity from among those available and pays the cost of that activity in time and money. You, as DM, then follow the rules for the activity to resolve it, informing the player of the results and any complications that ensue.

Consider handling downtime away from the game table. For example, you could have the players pick their downtime activities at the end of a session and then communicate about them by email or text, until you next see them in person.

Resolving Activities

The description of each activity tells you how to resolve it. Many activities require an ability check, so be sure to note the character’s relevant ability modifiers. Follow the steps in the activity, and determine the results.

Most downtime activities require a workweek (5 days) to complete. Some activities require days, weeks (7 days), or months (30 days). A character must spend at least 8 hours of each day engaged in the downtime activity for that day to count toward the activity’s completion.

The days of an activity don’t need to be consecutive; you can spread them over a longer period of time than is required for the activity. But that period of time should be no more than twice as long as the required time; otherwise, you should introduce extra complications (see below) and possibly double the activity’s costs to represent the inefficiency of the character’s progress.

Complications

The description of each activity includes a discussion of complications you can throw at the characters. The consequences of a complication might spawn entire adventures, introduce NPCs to vex the party, or give the characters headaches or advantages in any number of other ways.

Each of these sections has a table that offers possible complications. You can roll to determine a complication randomly, pick one from the table, or devise one of your own, and then share it with the player.

Example Downtime Activities

The following activities are suitable for any character who can afford to pursue them. As DM, you have the final say on which activities are available to the characters. The activities you allow might depend on the nature of the area where the characters are located. For example, you might disallow the creation of magic items or decide that the characters are in a town that is too isolated from major markets for them to buy such items.

Buying a Magic Item

Purchasing a magic item requires time and money to seek out and contact people willing to sell items. Even then, there is no guarantee a seller will have the items a character desires.

Resources: Finding magic items to purchase requires at least one workweek of effort and 100 gp in expenses. Spending more time and money increases your chance of finding a high-quality item.

Resolution: A character seeking to buy a magic item makes a Charisma (Persuasion) check to determine the quality of the seller found. The character gains a +1 bonus on the check for every workweek beyond the first that is spent seeking a seller and a +1 bonus for every additional 100 gp spent on the search, up to a maximum bonus of +10. The monetary cost includes a wealthy lifestyle, for a buyer must impress potential business partners.

As shown on the Buying Magic Items table, the total of the check dictates which table in the Dungeon Master’s Guide to roll on to determine which items are on the market. Or you can roll for items from any table associated with a lower total on the Buying Magic Items table. As a further option to reflect the availability of items in your campaign, you can apply a -10 penalty for low magic campaigns or a +10 bonus for high magic campaigns. Furthermore, you can double magic item costs in low magic campaigns.

Using the Magic Item Price table, you then assign prices to the available items, based on their rarity. Halve the price of any consumable item, such as a potion or a scroll, when using the table to determine an asking price.

You have final say in determining which items are for sale and their final price, no matter what the tables say.

If the characters seek a specific magic item, first decide if it’s an item you want to allow in your game. If so, include the desired item among the items for sale on a check total of 10 or higher if the item is common, 15 or higher if it is uncommon, 20 or higher if it is rare, 25 or higher if it is very rare, and 30 or higher if it is legendary.