Downtime Buildings; How long do they take to build?


Rules Questions

Sovereign Court

As far as I can tell, Downtime from Ultimate Campaign establishes two contradictory systems for creating buildings (and organizations).

System A
Spending limit per day depending on settlement size
Use a downtime activity day to spend capital, once spent building is AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY (uppercased for exact wording)

System B
Buildings take many days to create, sometimes even over a month regardless of settlement size
Settlement type might cause further delays
Starting to build only requires you to be in the settlement, no downtime activity day is required.

This leads to two contradictions;
System A is done as soon as capital is spent, System B takes much longer.
System A requires downtime activity days, System B does not.

Neither system is obviously wrong, as both spending limits and the long amount of time to create buildings make sense. They just don't work together at all. So what's the deal with this section? Am I missing something?


I too would like to know. Sorry I don't have the answer VF but I'm struggling w/that in my home game as well. My players decided to be super nice and help build some homes for refugees. They went nuts, assembled teams and spent a week gathering and spending MASSIVE amounts of capital on the project; they thought System A would dictate that after a week 3 houses would be built. I reminded them this is not Extreme Home Makeover and that System B dictated it would take their 3 teams building simultaneously about a month to get all the work done. There was...frustration.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I can't see the contradiction.

You must spend the total capital and time to construct a building, at which point the building becomes available immediately.

UCam, Construct Building wrote:

Construct Buildings

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.

(Emphasis mine)

The time requirement is possible to modify by spending more capital, may be modified depending on the nature of the settlement, and the rate at which you can spend capital is limited by the settlement size. Also note that the Downtime activity for Construct Buildings does not say that it requires a Downtime Day to do it - it is an activity that you can undertake just by being there, and you do not need to be present for the entire time price - as long as you have earned sufficient capital, the construction of the building is paid for out of your earned capital once it is started.

It is quite possible for a building to begin construction, for you to spend all of the capital to pay for it, but for the time price to not have been met. Until it is, the building isn't finished. Likewise, it's very possible for you to have to take much longer than the time price to construct a building because the settlement size means you can't spend your capital fast enough.

No contradiction that I can see.

[SIGNIFICANT EDIT: Corrected a misunderstanding I had about the rules and the question being asked]

Edit: Expanding on my answer:

So, to use Mark Hoover's house example. No Downtime Days are taken to construct the houses.

If they just spend the basic 32 Goods, 1 Influence, 31 labour for each house, it takes 72 days to construct each one. By increasing the Labour cost to 124 for each house, it will only take 18 days. However, if they are in a Thorp (spend limit of 2 capital per day), it will take 62 days to spend that much Labour. Which is still faster than the basic time. If they only pay double labour (62), which they can spend in 31 days, the time price drops to 36 days. So, 36 days. At 3xlabour, time price drops to 24 days, but it takes 45 days to spend. In a Metropolis, they can spend the 4x Capital in 2 days, but it still takes 18 days to meet the time price.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / Downtime Buildings; How long do they take to build? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.