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brightshore:rules:downtime

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Downtime Activities

Downtime and what you do with it is a major part of character development in Brightshore. What you do in between adventures is just as important, if not more so, than what you do during your time spent delving in dungeons and slaying monsters.

Between your adventures, you must use whatever downtime you have earned. You can do this at the end of the session in which you earn the downtime, at the beginning of the next session you play at, or by talking to one of the Weavers on Slack sometime between adventures. Regardless, describe how you are spending your time and what you wish to do with it, and the Weaver will adjudicate the results.

This means that you have total freedom to spend your downtime in any way that makes sense to you within the limits of whatever resources and skills you have available. Some activities have associated rules (crafting, researching, etc.), many activities you might think up do not.

Unless the Weaver decides otherwise, you must pay lifestyle costs for downtime used. This represents the quality of life you live while you're in Brightshore, and Weavers and DMs will frequently use a combination of what you did with your downtime and your lifestyle choices to determine how the world perceives you.

Each week of real time represents a full month in Brightshore. (A Brightshore month is 30 days.) For each real week that you participate in an adventure, your character will gain 30 days of downtime minus the number of in-game days that you spent adventuring in any sessions that week. You do not gain downtime for weeks in which you did not participate in an adventure.

If you participate in multiple adventures in the same week, both adventures subtract from your downtime allowance, but downtime gained will never drop below 0 days. In other words, even if you spend more than 30 in-game days adventuring during a single real week, it won't cause you to accrue “negative downtime.”

Another way to think of this is:

  • When you play the first time in a week, you gain 30 days of downtime
  • You then lose X days of downtime for that adventure
  • (Optional) You play a second time that week and lose X days of downtime for that adventure
  • Now, you can spend downtime

So, for the current month/week, you can't spend any downtime until after 5:00PM if you play on Sunday, and if you play on Wednesday with the same character, you can't spend any downtime until after 9:00 PM Wednesday. Spending downtime will indicate that a character is done adventuring for the week.

Lifestyle Expenses

For each day of downtime you spend, you must also pay your character's daily lifestyle expenses. Each one comes with its own cost and benefits. The wealthier your lifestyle, the more your character can associate with other wealthy characters, allowing them to gain influence among the town's elite.

Your lifestyle expenses include the cost of food, shelter, and everyday activities. You do not need to pay for these expenses individually during adventures or downtime if they are within the level of lifestyle expenses you paid for that day.

Note that if you perform activities during downtime that provide a lifestyle at a certain level and you choose to live at a lower lifestyle, you do not get a rebate for the difference between the lifestyles. However, you are allowed to pay the difference between the granted lifestyle and a higher lifestyle to upgrade to that one.

Wretched (no cost). You live in inhumane conditions. With no place to call home, you shelter wherever you can, sneaking into barns, huddling in old crates, and relying on the good graces of people better off than you. A wretched lifestyle presents abundant dangers. Violence, disease, and hunger follow you wherever you go. Other wretched people covet your armor, weapons, and adventuring gear, which represent a fortune by their standards. You are beneath the notice of most people.

Squalid (1 sp). You live in a leaky stable, a mud-floored hut just outside town, or a vermin-infested boarding house in the worst part of town. You have shelter from the elements, but you live in a desperate and often violent environment, in places rife with disease, hunger, and misfortune. You are beneath the notice of most people, and you have few legal protections. Most people at this lifestyle level have suffered some terrible setback. They might be disturbed, marked as exiles, or suffer from disease.

Poor (2 sp). A poor lifestyle means going without the comforts available in a stable community. Simple food and lodgings, threadbare clothing, and unpredictable conditions result in a sufficient, though probably unpleasant, experience. Your accommodations might be a room in a flophouse or in the common room above a tavern. You benefit from some legal protections, but you still have to contend with violence, crime, and disease. People at this lifestyle level tend to be unskilled laborers, costermongers, peddlers, thieves, mercenaries, and other disreputable types.

Modest (1 gp). A modest lifestyle keeps you out of the slums and ensures that you can maintain your equipment. You live in an older part of town, renting a room in a boarding house, inn, or temple. You don’t go hungry or thirsty, and your living conditions are clean, if simple. Ordinary people living modest lifestyles include soldiers with families, laborers, students, priests, hedge wizards, and the like.

Comfortable (2 gp). Choosing a comfortable lifestyle means that you can afford nicer clothing and can easily maintain your equipment. You live in a small cottage in a middle-­‐‑class neighborhood or in a private room at a fine inn. You associate with merchants, skilled tradespeople, and military officers.

Wealthy (4 gp). Choosing a wealthy lifestyle means living a life of luxury, though you might not have achieved the social status associated with the old money of nobility or royalty. You live a lifestyle comparable to that of a highly successful merchant, a favored servant of the royalty, or the owner of a few small businesses. You have respectable lodgings, usually a spacious home in a good part of town or a comfortable suite at a fine inn. You likely have a small staff of servants.

Brewing Healing Potions

Brewing healing potions requires proficiency with the herbalism kit, knowledge of how to brew the level of potion you require, and ingredients, which may be both mundane and special. Below is a table of the recipes, downtime costs, and materials it takes to make them. The recipe for a simple potion of healing is known by all characters with proficiency in the herbalism kit.

Potion Downtime Mundane Ingredient Cost Special Ingredient
Potion of Healing 5 days 25 gold None
Potion of Greater Healing Unknown Unknown Unknown
Potion of Superior Healing Unknown Unknown Unknown
Potion of Supreme Healing Unknown Unknown Unknown

Crafting

You can craft non-magical objects, including adventuring equipment and works of art. You must be proficient with tools related to the object you are trying to create (typically artisans’ tools). You might also need access to special materials or locations necessary to create it. For example, someone proficient with smith’s tools needs a forge in order to craft a suit of armor.

For every day of downtime you spend crafting, you can craft one or more items with a total market value not exceeding 5 gp, and you must expend raw materials worth half the total market value. If something you want to craft has a market value greater than 5 gp, you make progress every day in 5-gp increments until you reach the market value of the item. For example, a suit of plate armor (market value 1500 gp) takes 300 days and costs 750 gp to craft by yourself. Trade goods count as raw materials and you must expend other raw materials to make them equivalent to their cost instead of half their cost.

Multiple characters can combine their efforts toward the crafting of a single item, provided the characters all have proficiency with the requisite tools and are working together in the same place. Each character contributes 5 gp worth of effort for every day spent helping craft the item. For example, three characters with the requisite tool proficiency and the proper facilities can craft a suit of plate armor in 100 days, at a total cost of 750 gp.

While crafting, you can maintain a modest lifestyle without having to pay 1 gp per day.

Guild Activities

For the purposes of Brightshore, a guild is any organization to which a player can belong that has a collective purpose. This includes the Guard, the Arcanum, the Defenders, trade guilds, and the like. This does NOT include the religious orders, shrines or businesses.

A player must spend 15 days of downtime per month to stay in good standing with the guild. If they do so, they can live the entire month at a modest lifestyle at no additional cost.

Being a member of a guild carries with it some benefits beyond lifestyle. A character may, if they spend 15 days that month working for a guild, make up to three distinct, guild appropriate checks of their choosing. This does not count any checks that might arise as part of arbitrating those three checks.

For example, a Defender on patrol outside the city may make three Survival checks to track threats, or perhaps three Charisma checks to chase down rumors, or some combination thereof.

Additionally, the character will have access to knowledge and contacts that make sense within the guild. Guards will know of other guards, but may also know of repeat offenders, or rumors about certain people, or information of a similar nature.

Practicing a Profession

You can work between adventures, allowing you to maintain a modest lifestyle without having to pay 1 gp per day. This benefit lasts as long as you continue to practice your profession.

If you have proficiency in the Performance skill and put your performance skill to use during your downtime, you earn enough to support a wealthy lifestyle instead.

Recuperating

You can use downtime between adventures to recover from a debilitating injury, disease, or poison.

After 3 days of downtime spent recuperating, you can make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a successful save, you can choose one of the following results:

  • End an effect on you that prevents you from regaining hit points.
  • For the next 24 hours, gain advantage on saving throws against one disease or poison currently affecting you.

Researching

The time between adventures is a great chance to perform research, gaining insight into mysteries that have unfurled over the course of the campaign. Research can include poring over dusty tomes and crumbling scrolls in a library or buying drinks for the locals to pry rumors and gossip from their lips.

When you begin your research, the Weaver determines whether the information is available, how many days of downtime it will take to find it, and whether there are any restrictions on your research (such as needing to seek out a specific individual, tome, or location). The Weaver might also require you to make one or more ability checks, such as an Intelligence (Investigation) check to find clues pointing toward the information you see, or a Charisma (Persuasion) check to secure someone’s aid. Once those conditions are met, you learn the information if available.

For each day of research, you must spend 1 gp to cover your expenses. This cost is in addition to your normal lifestyle expenses.

Scribing a Spell Scroll

Though demand for spell scrolls is quite low in Brightshore, you may be able to sell scrolls to other adventurers. This is also the table that is used should you choose to sell any scrolls you find during your adventures.

Spell Level Time Cost to Scribe Base Purchase Price
Cantrip 3 days 15 gp 25 gp
1st 5 days 25 gp 75 gp
2nd 7 days 250 gp 150 gp
3rd 10 days 500 gp 300 gp
4th 15 days 2,500 gp 500 gp
5th 20 days 5,000 gp 1000 gp
6th 40 days 15,000 gp 5000 gp
7th 80 days 25,000 gp 10,000 gp
8th 160 days 50,000 gp 25,000 gp
9th 240 days 250,000 gp 50,000 gp

Training

You can spend time between adventures learning a new language or training with a set of tools or musical instrument. Weavers might allow additional training options.

First, you must find an instructor willing to teach you. The Weaver determines how long it takes to find an instructor, and whether one or more ability checks are required.

The training lasts for 250 days and costs 1 gp per day. The full cost must be paid up front. After you spend the requisite amount of time and money, you learn the new language or gain proficiency with the new tool or instrument.

Travel

If you wish to travel a significant distance through the wilderness outside of Brightshore to get to another area (for instance, Boviomatua, Avismere, Kevonia Ma, Saltrock), use these rules for determining whether you can make the trip:

  1. Decide where you are going.
  2. Form a group of characters to go with you.
  3. Choose one character in the group to be the Navigator.
  4. Tell the Weaver adjudicating your downtime:
    • The Navigator's Survival bonus.
    • The level of everyone in the group.
    • The CR of any NPCs you're bringing with you.

With that, the Weaver will tell you if there is a chance that someone in the party will die, which may be none. If there is a chance that someone will die, it is highly recommended that you either not undertake the trip or find higher level/CR party members. If you choose to head out with a chance of death, a percentile die will be rolled to determine how many people die.

Other Downtime Activities

There are almost certainly other activities your character could spend their downtime on. If you have an idea, consult with your Weaver. Also, this list will likely grow as the world itself grows!

brightshore/rules/downtime.1574562273.txt.gz · Last modified: 2019/11/23 20:24 by atwood