Downtime rules fix - can we get the most reasonable houserule?

[Prof. Löwenzahn]

Apologies in advance, if there is a similar thread. I'm having a hard time searching for discussions about specific aspects of this rulesystem.

My GM spontaneously awarded us with a nice manor in a big city - an orphanage, but we plan to use the kids for our purpose (huahahaha)

Since no one of our group has yet read through the downtime rules, especially rooms,I took the job and soon stumbeled upon the inconsistencies of the system. With your help I woould like to find a reasonable way to handle this.

For simplicity, i suggest working with an example: I'm aiming to generate as much magic capital as possible for the hundreds of wondrous items I want to craft. I found out that a classroom (thematically fitting with the orphanage) has the best cost/prize ratio, then the magical repository is a must, besides a scriptorium, alchemy lab, courtyard, storefront, maybe furnishings...
These are the questions I have to solve. As far as I see they are not clearly worded or broken. I'm not asking for RAW here, unless they are totally reasonable. Im looking for a balanced way to make it work

a) Beginning construction: I want to earn capital to reduce prizes. So me and my 4 co adventurers spread out into the city, doing stuff to gain the capital. Each has a skill modifier so that they will earn 2 capitals each, so it will not last too long, but is it resonable I have to wait till I gathered all compontents, before I can start construction? I think workers should be able to start with 2 goods, 2 labor and 2 influence.

a²) More important: We want to build multiple rooms, but the building section of the rules indicate that we have to add the time of all rooms together. Now if my herbalist mate wants to build a beautiful garden, my dhampir builds some Gothic stuff in the cellar and I start my classroom, why should we not be able to construct simultanously? I really have no time to wait half a year for my business to become useful. We could forgo this rule by stating each player runs his own business, and even when we want to have more than one construction per person - what stops us from giving my favorite orphan all the money and goods and let him start construction time. It should be allowed for everyone to start as much construction as possible. They paid the labor price for each individually, so each construction site should have its own workers...

b) Room size: There is a range of how many squares a room takes, but it says you can reduce the size below the minimum if you wish. So since we don't have infinite space, we should build each room at 1 square - even the classroom o.O Even wihh the minimum squares listed, it is only 5 squares. Are there any penalties for small rooms that I am missing? Should there be? I'd really like a fix number of squares, otherwise it feels too cheeesy.

c) Building vs. rooms: The rules suggest that you add up all modifiers for one sort of capital per building. It seems to be no must, so logically it is much more effective to take 10 on alchemy lab, take 10 on magical repository and maybe roll on the classroom. Every modifier below 10 becomes worse with this system, but it is still better than combining. What are your rule suggestions here?

c²) Working at a room: Now I have some days to spare and want to work at the magic repository to increase magical income. Rules say I get a +10 bonus to my 1d20+12, fine. I did not quite understand if I also add my Spellcraft modifier as in the skilled work section. Is it 1d20+10+12+Spellcraft or 1d20+10+12? If the latter, it is much more productive to let the business work on its own and go spellcrafting in the city. Even with the former rules, it is only slightly better, because (taking 10) 10+Spellcraft and 10+12 are the same, except when you'd reach the next 10 points.

d) Splitting income: The rules say we can split a modifier to serve different capital incomes. Assume we are at the beginning of the whole process and only have our classroom. Would it not be much more effective if we just split the +8 to +1 Goods, +1 Labor, +1 Influence, +5 Magic? Thus we get 1 of each while we are away, opposed to only 1 magic capital. Or does the room only get one check per day? Then it is impossible to split the earning...

e) Running a business with all PC's: We are a nice team and want to run the business as a group. Assume we play with the combining modifier rule, so my 5-7 magic generating rooms all add up to +50 or something. Since my cook and bartender mate wants to have a belt of giant strength and my herbalist mate is tired of earning gp at a very bad rate, they want to help with acquiring magic capital. Can I give each of them another room to boost the income with their skilled labor?

f) Earning gp from a room: If I work at some room to earn money, what skill check do I apply to my result? Is it up to the player to come up with a creative way and to be nodded by the GM? For example a Spellcraft check to craft and sell small magic items at the magical repository?

___________

If I were GM, my ruling would be:

- All modifiers to the same capital add up, while the adventurers are away and when only one of them takes care of the business.
- you cannot split modifiers for one room, unless you have another room generating the other income (e.g. Bar makes gold, my magic capital earnings check results in 42, so I spend 2 points of one modifier to the gold production of the bar.
- Characters that work in the room roll seperately, as if in the city. Then they add the +10 bonus and make the normal check for the room, adding all together. That results in effectively +1 capital (compared to earning capital seperately)
- When multiple or all party members take care of the business, they can divide the modifiers to the same capital earnings between them. So I take magical repository+classroom for a +20 modifier, while my herbalist mate runs the alchemy lab for +10 (thus you gain one additional check for each PC, which is reasonable, since we could also just build our own business and run nothing together).

I'm open to suggestions and corrections of my misunderstanding of the rules. Thanks for your help!

[Ravingdork]

You want Chemlak. He has the answers you seek.

[Chemlak]

I am just heading to bed.

I'll pick it up after.

Thanks for the heads up, RD!

[Prof. Löwenzahn]

haha I was ready to summon you, but instead take this Slumber Hex and lets wait till tomorrow.

[Chemlak]

Okay, I've slept (not enough, but I've slept), so here goes on some of it before I head to work. Downtime is really meant for individual projects rather than the group all working on the same one, but it can be done. These are mostly how the rules actually work, with my own commentary on house rules:

A) Oddly, the Construct Buildings (and the similar Recruit for an Organisation) activity does not require any expenditure of capital. You can begin construction on a day and not spend any capital that day. Note, however that a building isn't finished (and therefore provides no benefits at all) until all capital and time has been spent on it.

Tip: start small, build a one or two room building to start getting benefits quickly, you can always expand it later.

A2) Yep, this one we all dislike. Technically, all rooms in a building are constructed one after the other, so the time cost is added up, and it takes forever. Note that you can increase labour costs to reduce time taken.

Suggested houserule: Require the building floorplan to be mapped out in advance. Rooms on the ground floor may be constructed simultaneously. Rooms on the next floor may only be started if there are completed supporting rooms underneath. Each character may begin construction on a single room per downtime day. Be mindful of the settlement capital spending limit (which is per character).

B) Nope, no penalties for smaller rooms. They'll just be stupid.

Reasonable houserule: for every square smaller than the listed minimum size, reduce the bonuses the room provides by 1.

C) This one gets lots of people. Rooms cannot roll for capital. Buildings can. The exception is if the building is a single room. This is intentional. I do not recommend changing it, as it seriously increases earning capital.

C2) Eeek! You and your building are two completely separate things when it comes to earning capital. You generate capital during the Activity phase of the downtime turn. Your buildings earn it during the Income phase. Again, don't change this, it'll throw off balance, most likely against the players.

D) Yep. You're right. But I'd suggest +1 to each type of capital and +4 gold.

That's it for now, more later!

[Chemlak]

E) No rules exist for non-followers helping you out, and NPCs don't use the downtime rules unless the GM wants them to. If you really have a couple of friends who are prepared to work for you that way, either use the follower rules (not my preference), or let them aid another on your skilled work checks.

F) It's up to you and your GM how you describe your skilled work checks: you are not required to even be in your building (see answer C2), and you can use whatever appropriate skill you want.

More later!

[Chemlak]

Okay, so, hopefully I've managed to partly clarify the existing rules, but in case I haven't, here's the quickie version, assuming you're trying to earn capital (I'm ignoring gold for a moment):

Upkeep phase: blah blah. Seriously.
Activity phase: you make your skilled work check with your skill of choice and earn the right to buy an amount of capital, which you may or may not have the money to pay for.
Income phase: your building(s) split up their bonuses and roll for each type of capital which you assign at least a +1 bonus to. You have earned the right to buy an amount of capital based on the result of the roll
Event phase: more blah.

Gold just comes in, you don't have to pay for it, which is why any odd amount of bonus (from an optimisation perspective) that is not +1, +10, +20, +30, etc should be shunted to gold when possible.

The rules assume separate characters, not groups working together, so adjustments have to be made, but those should be around construction, not earnings.

Hope this helps, yell if you need/want more.

[Prof. Löwenzahn]

Thank you very very much, I think my understanding of how downtime should work has improved.

Your suggestions are good enough to make it work. Some things that still came to my mind:

a) I'd really appreciate if it was that easy to start a construction. I was sure that I have to spend the capital before, because of this:

Quote:

Each room and team costs one or more kinds of capital (gp, Goods, Influence, Labor, or Magic). When you construct a building or create an organization, determine what rooms or teams you want, add up the gp, Goods, Influence, Labor, and Magic prices for these rooms, and spend that capital to begin construction or start recruiting.

The rules in other sections however indicate I just have to spend capital and time during the process...

a²) Your suggestion makes sense. In my case we already have an entire house with walls and ceilings, so it does nnot apply. I think we will go by one construction at a time per PC, as that is a balanced way between one-year-construction and abuse by starting 30 rooms at once and completing them while we collect capital without having to wait too long.

b) /

c) I'm with you here, and since in the example we have one building preconstructed, we should definitely combine results, but maximizing players who have some land would separate their rooms into different buildings and build no room next to another to get a roll for each.

c²) Not sure if I understood it right... you say I should make my skilled work check separately and let the business take care of its own. But then the rule mechanics to manage the business myself (with the +10 bonus) are obsolete. Or how would this work?
I agree it is easier and propably more efficient to handle things separately, but I dislike the idea of being the owner of some businesses who is not involved himself. I would prefer working there myself and getting some kind of benefit for running the classroom myself instead of paying a teacher to do it.

d) /

e) /

f) /

I think I agree with your suggestion to involve multiple PC'S into construction but not into earnings. It makes sense at least under the assumption that we roll our skilled work checks indepentently from the business, which I don't like personally, but which might be the most reasonable rule.

You helped a lot, thank you very much!

[Chemlak]

C2) You always roll your own earnings check, and your business rolls its own earnings check, but instead of earning capital through skilled labour, if you have a business you can instead choose to run that business, which grants you a +10 to your check.

Example time (completely made up).

I have a +15 bonus on a skill I can use to earn income (diplomacy is your friend). I also have a building which I've decided gets +10 magic, +1 to goods, labour and influence, and +4 gold.

Day 1. I do skilled work to earn magic capital, take 10 on my roll, get 25, and earn 2 magic capital. My building takes 10 on all its rolls and earns 2 magic, 1 goods, labour, and influence, and 1.4 gold.

Day 2. I spend the day running my business. This means I get to roll with +25 bonus (extra +10 from running the business), which gets me 3 magic capital. Then my building does exactly what it did on day 1.

Going back to A)

Hmm.

I need to check that in detail. I'm absolutely positive that construction does not require all capital to be spent ahead of time, but I'll need to dig through the rules.

[Ravingdork]

Where's the rule that says you have to build rooms one after another? I've always played it the way you house ruled, Chemlak.

Also, when you run your business, don't you add your business' modifiers to your own in addition to that free +10 bonus?

[shadowkras]

Quote:

Day 1. I do skilled work to earn magic capital, take 10 on my roll, get 25, and earn 2 magic capital. My building takes 10 on all its rolls and earns 2 magic, 1 goods, labour, and influence, and 1.4 gold.

Wait, a building can roll on all four checks? I was under the assumption that it followed the same restrictions as the PC's (one roll per day).

EDIT
Just checked, its one roll per building, and another roll per organization, you can make your own roll as normal (or run a business with +10).

[Chemlak]

Quote:

If the room or team's Earnings entry says "capital" and a number, it can contribute a bonus on the building's or organization's skilled work check for any type of capital (gp, Goods, Influence, Labor, or Magic). If the Earnings entry lists specific types of capital, it can contribute a bonus on its building's or organization's skilled work checks only for capital of those types. You can apply each room's or team's bonus to any one listed type or capital each day or divide it among multiple listed types of capital. For example, an Alchemy Lab can generate only gp, Goods, or Magic, and not Influence or Labor. One day you could use all +10 of its bonus on the building's capital check to generate gp, on the next day you could use +5 on a check for generating gp and +5 on a check for generating Goods, and so on.

[Chemlak]

RD, the stuff about rooms being consecutive is an inference, but I'm pretty sure SKR posted a confirmation about it somewhere (I'll try to find it).

It's one of those awkward "rooms are not buildings" things, and the building construction example:

Quote:

Inn

Suppose you want to spend downtime constructing a friendly traveler's Inn. It needs a Bar so it can sell drinks, and a Kitchen so it can serve food. Guests need a place to eat and rooms to sleep in, so it must include a Common Room and a Lodging. To keep your guests' horses safe, it must include a Stall. By adding up all the Goods, Influence, Labor, and Magic values in the Create and Time entries of the rooms' stat blocks, you get a total of 33 points of Goods, 3 points of Influence, 32 points of Labor, and 90 days. By spending that capital, after 90 days of construction time your inn is finished.

As for running a business, I've re-checked that - the downtime activity Run a Business refers solely to using "your check", and since you make earnings checks during the determine other income step of the income phase, and your buildings make their checks during the determine building income step, I can't see how RaB can incorporate the bonuses from the business. Willing to be wrong on this, but it'd be letting you double dip on your business bonus.

[Edit to correct timing.]

[Chemlak]

And back to the Professor's question A...

Yay, rule contradictions!

Quote:

You can use your downtime capital to create a building that suit your needs, such as a temple, guildhall, or mage tower. You construct a building out of component rooms that allow you to configure the building exactly how you want it (see Rooms and Teams).

How much capital you can spend per day is limited by the size of the settlement you're in. Once you've spent the total capital and time needed to finish your building, it's complete and you can use it immediately.

Quote:

Each room and team costs one or more kinds of capital (gp, Goods, Influence, Labor, or Magic). When you construct a building or create an organization, determine what rooms or teams you want, add up the gp, Goods, Influence, Labor, and Magic prices for these rooms, and spend that capital to begin construction or start recruiting.

Okay, not a direct contradiction, but requiring all capital be spent before the time requirement starts would seriously slow construction. Really badly.

I'm of the opinion that since the Construct Building activity doesn't require any capital expenditure, and because "once you've spent the total capital and time [...] you can use it immediately" is in a section about capital spending limits per day, it makes more sense to allow gaps in spending. But this would be a houserule since it does contradict the rooms and teams lead-in text (which I would contend is more flavour than crunch, but I can't back that up).

[shadowkras]

@Chemlak
The rule you quoted says you must divide your bonuses on your rolls, not that you can roll once for each capital and apply the total bonus from the building.

Quote:

I have a +15 bonus on a skill I can use to earn income (diplomacy is your friend). I also have a building which I've decided gets +10 magic, +1 to goods, labour and influence, and +4 gold.

Day 1. I do skilled work to earn magic capital, take 10 on my roll, get 25, and earn 2 magic capital. My building takes 10 on all its rolls and earns 2 magic, 1 goods, labour, and influence, and 1.4 gold.

Your business has:

+ 10 magic
+ 1 goods
+ 1 labor
+ 1 influence
+ 4 gold

Unless one of those bonuses applies to more than one type of capital, i dont think you can roll for multiple capital at all.
Say this +10 was for "magic or gp", like this:

+ 10 magic or gp
+ 1 goods
+ 1 labor
+ 1 influence
+ 4 gold

Then you could divide it and obtain either +10 magic or +14 gold, as that bonus can apply to either type of capital, but you still only make one roll per downtime day per business.

Otherwise, the easiest way to obtain multiples sources and quick farm capital would be to open a bunch of companies (or individual rooms scaretted around the city) with +1 to each capital type.
You would make 5 rolls per business you own.

[Chemlak]

If you're not getting multiple checks explain how this makes any sense:

Quote:

you could use +5 on a check for generating gp and +5 on a check for generating Goods, and so on.

[Chemlak]

Just missed the edit window. Can we take this discussion to Rules Questions? Better chance of input from the other rules nerds there.

[Knight Magenta]

Is there any drawback to building a bunch of 1-room buildings? If not, then why would you ever build a multi-building room? Making them separate just gets you more gold.

[Ravingdork]

Knight Magenta wrote:

Is there any drawback to building a bunch of 1-room buildings? If not, then why would you ever build a multi-building room? Making them separate just gets you more gold.

Because you you have a sensible GM who says "no" in most cases? I for one ask that the players use the example buildings as a baseline when designing their own. I"m pretty sure I remember reading something in the downtime rules that basically instructed the GM to keep players from doing inane things, like building a whole bunch of graveyards.

And you don't profit from a building until the entire thing is complete.

Chemlak, do you remember this? You do get to add your business' bonuses to your own when running it.

[Prof. Löwenzahn]

Ravingdork wrote:

doing insane things, like building a whole bunch of graveyards.

Chemlak, do you remember this? You do get to add your business' bonuses to your own when running it.

Is building a lot of graveyards really insane? For a necromancer, after a long civil war with towers of dead people rotting in the streets? :P

Thanks for pointing out the rules about running a business. I still feel like there is one 10 missing. Losing the building's checks equals the +10 bonus out, but there is small to no benefit from running the business.

I think the main problem with these rules are the "you may...." sentences, which in most cases mean a disadvantage, if I did as I "may". Why should I lose two checks by combining organization and business boni instead of rolling separately?

As to multiple checks per business, I'm with Chemlak. One capital check simply doesn't work if you have 3 buildings that produce only goods and 3 buildings that produce only influence. It makes no sense that only one half of them can work while the other is doomed to sit around scratching their balls.

Another question is if you can divide a room's earnings to capitals that are not produced by any other room. If we want to stop abusing this Splitting option, we could say there must be a room already producing goods, so we can add a +1 from the classroom towards this other room's income. Something like: Every room gets to make one check for a capital (multiple rooms producing the same capital have to combine and roll once), but they can contribute a part of their modifier to another room's check to increase their income.

[Chemlak]

Ravingdork wrote:

Chemlak, do you remember this? You do get to add your business' bonuses to your own when running it.

<.<

>.>
<.<

S*#¥.

Okay, I have a busy couple of days ahead of me as well a serious case of "damn we voted to leave the EU" on the go.

I'll get back on this.

[shadowkras]

Quote:

As to multiple checks per business, I'm with Chemlak. One capital check simply doesn't work if you have 3 buildings that produce only goods and 3 buildings that produce only influence. It makes no sense that only one half of them can work while the other is doomed to sit around scratching their balls.

Even if you have multiple business, you roll them all and sum the result, then divide by 10 to check the result in gp. If you are rolling for capital, each business must make a separate roll.

Quote:

Step 1—Determine Building Income: Attempt a capital check (see the Earnings section) for each building you control in the settlement that generates income and is able to provide you benefits. Add the results of all of these checks together, then divide by 10 to determine how many gp you earn that day. For example, if your total result is a 47, after dividing it by 10, your earnings come to 4 gp and 7 sp.

Source

Which is another reason why i believe you cannot roll for multiple different capital on a single downtime phase on the same business.
You can roll for different capital as long as each business is providing a different check.

Say you own 3 business, a magic shop with +20 magic or gp, a shrine with +5 influence or gp, and a tavern with +10 goods, influence or gp and want to make some capital. You have a couple of options:

A) all will make gold (gp): roll thrice (or take 10 three times) for:
shop: +20 gp
shrine: +5 gp
tavern: +10 gp
Sum the result of your checks (total 65 if you take 10), divide by 10 for the result (6,5 gp).

B) they will make different capitals: roll thrice (or take 10) for:
shop: +20 magic
shrine: +5 influence
tavern: +10 goods
For each capital, you will have to sum the result of the check and then divide by 10, if you take 10 on each check the results are:
shop: 30 magic (3 magic capital earned)
shrine: 15 influence (1 influence capital earned)
tavern: 20 goods (2 goods capital earned)

C) they will mix their income for capital, roll thrice (or take 10) for:
shop: +20 magic
shrine: +5 influence
tavern: +10 influence

Same as B, but you cannot sum the result for capital, so the result is like this:
shop: 30 magic (3 magic capital earned)
shrine: 15 influence (1 influence capital earned)
tavern: 20 influence (2 influence capital earned)
So you earned 3 magic capital and 3 influence capital.

D) they will mix between capital or gold, roll thrice (or take 10) for:
shop: +20 gp
shrine: +5 influence
tavern: +10 gp
Same as B, but you will sum the result for gold, then divide by 10, like this:
shop: 30 gp
shrine: 15 influence (1 influence capital earned)
tavern: 20 gp
You earn 1 influence capital, then sum the gold check results for a total of 50, divide by 10 and you will earn 5 gp that day.

[Prof. Löwenzahn]

Yeah, according to the rule you quoted it works that way.

But there are two other rules that contradict your method (from my understanding):
- the "you can split your modifier to different capital types checks" rule
- the text that says you should/may add all boni to the same capital from all businesses you own.

Which leads to the question, when is a business a business. A tavern is called business, but is in fact a loose collection of rooms. You can rearrange them as you want, but what defines that it can make a check on its own? I could build an alchemy lab and a storefront and call it a business and I could build a garden and call it a business just to get 2 checks.

The 3 businesses you mentioned might be divided into 10 businesses or into 1, whatever you or the GM sees appropriate. The rules are a mess here, so I think it makes more sense to eliminate the possibility to split checks: combine all the bonuses you have, no matter from which room or business or building, and roll them together. This results in one check for each capital (assumed you gave at least a +1 bonus to each capital). Possibly abusable by leeching some types of capital (1/day for a simple +1 modifier spent), but not abusable for players with lots of buildings...

[shadowkras]

Quote:

- the "you can split your modifier to different capital types checks" rule

This rule is contradicting itself on the example given, maybe he should have thought twice when writing it that way.

But from what i understand, if a room has multiple bonuses for capitals, you can pick any of them when making your check, in the sense that they arent fixed once the room is built.

Maybe the example is simply refering to this rule:

Quote:

If you have multiple buildings or organizations in a settlement and they can generate the same kind of capital, you don't have to roll for them separately—you may add all their capital modifiers together and attempt one check for that kind of capital.

So you can make a single check, which will result in less capital earned than multiple checks, but you will have the benefit of using different buildings to produce the same type of capital and produce a higher amount of a specific capital you need most.

Quote:

- the text that says you should/may add all boni to the same capital from all businesses you own.

Yeah i realize this, at first i wrote my post with that in mind, then i tried to lookup that rule and couldn't find it, so i changed it.

In the end it will only matter if you have the bonuses in non-multiples of 10, like a building with +15 and another with +5 (for a total of +20). But you are correct, i would edit my post to reflect that but i can't anymore. The examples i gave are correct though.