How long should downtime be?

[Yehudi]

So I have the next set of adventures under construction for my players. I'm also planning on creating a calendar so that downtime and aging can be more accurately tracked.

The question is, how long should downtime be? The characters are members of an adventuring guild and mostly just wait for jobs to be posted. (If you haven't seen my previous thread, it's post-undead-apocalypse and only one city (that the player's know of) is functioning in a walled-in enclave in a valley.) I could give them some control over that of course, but I figure there should be a minimum or maybe a random amount.

How do other GMs handle downtime length for their players?

[jbadams]

Examine the PCs (and maybe just outright talk to the players) and figure out what sort of things they're likely to want to do with downtime. Is there a crafter? Will they be trying to earn money? Is re-training likely?

If they're crafting, what sort of items are they likely to be after?
If earning money, how much can they earn?

What will the effect of either of the above have on WBL?

So, you should now have a rough idea of what the players are likely to want to do with their downtime. Give them enough downtime to make reasonable progress on their goals, but not to do EVERYTHING they want; this way they have to make choices and prioritize their usage of the time.

Are there sections of the game you want to be easier? Provide more downtime before (and potentially during) those sections. Likewise, you can potentially make some sections relatively more difficult by providing less or no downtime beforehand.

Personally, I also like to introduce a certain level of randomness, and will sometimes give the players choice; delaying longer might provide more downtime but make a fleeing bad guy harder to catch and better prepared, etc.

Hope that helps!

[Mark Carlson 255]

Unfortunately I do not have any info on this subject except to say it depends on the setting, story, group and you the GM.
All of the above factors play into what I would refer to down time as well as simply story concepts such as need and desire. ie you need to get food before winter so you have to go out and find or grow it.

Good Luck
MDC

[Ascalaphus]

Most of the time I find it harder to come up with reasons to give downtime at all - I tend to write adventures with lots of loose threads which also seem urgent to follow up on.

The most elegant way we've handled it was in a campaign taking place on the tribal steppes, where winter was not a season fit for traveling. So winter was when we came back and did downtime stuff, including learning more skills (2.x homebrew thing where you could basically learn feats in downtime, for enough money. We tried very hard to earn enough during the summer so everyone could learn more stuff in winter.)

I've never seen tracking aging be relevant; pre-written campaigns tend to go the far opposite way, raising you to level 15 in about half an in-game year.

Scarcity of downtime is one of the brakes on itemcrafting as a way of breaking WBL.

I'd say look at the typical time needed to craft a level-appropriate item, and make downtime last about 110% of that. That way you don't make it entirely impossible, there's time for the caster to attend a birthday party in between, but crafting doesn't get out of hand either.

[PossibleCabbage]

I handle downtime largely as a function of however much time it takes for the various NPCs working behind the scenes need in order to set up whatever the next thing that will occupy the PC's time and attention. If it takes weeks or months to move an army from point A to point B, if the PCs are at point B they're going to get slightly less than that amount of time before they are made aware said army.

Particularly if they're just waiting for problems to pop up in order to solve them, down time lasts however long it takes until another problem pops up and how long that should be depends on how long it took that problem to develop. This conveniently roughly corresponds with how much effort will be involved in solving the problem. So before the PCs have to deal with big, messy, difficult, complex problems give them more downtime before than if the the next thing is less involved.

[Yehudi]

Thanks for the information guys, I think I've got something to work with.

[Mathmuse]

I let the players control downtime. It typically ends when they run out of money.

They are playing the Iron Gods campaign and the PCs have successfully (through lots of roleplaying) kept below the radar of future enemies. This means they are not on a deadline. Therefore, they cn conveniently head back to their hometown Torch, use their underworld contacts to sell contraband technology, and apply their new cash to crafting the adamantine and magic items they want.

One PC has greater ambitions than the other players and tries to craft as much as possible. Thus, he asks for more time. Then he adds up his budget, learns that he does not enough funds for the crafting, and asks if he can use party funds for his individual outfitting. The other PCs shout him down and arrange the next mission. At low levels, the party did not bother with dividing the treasure into shares, but then they added up the numbers and learned that the ambitious PC would keep crafting until he spent everything. So they created an equal-share system with some funds reserved for all-party needs, such as wands of Cure Light Wounds.

Downtime lasts from 14 days to 60 days. The adventure began in early spring and it is now middle of autumn. I doubt that the characters will age noticeably.

Of course, the enemies busily conduct their own improvements, too, during the party's downtime. I like altering the setting so that the party's actions have a visible effect, and twice the bad guys have take advantage of the party having cleared out competing bad guys.

[PossibleCabbage]

I feel like tracking aging is only a good idea if everybody in the party is from a species that ages at approximately the same rate. If something like 50 years passes, and the Human and Aasimar are now venerable but the Elf and the Dwarf aren't even middle aged, that's going to make people regret choices they made at character generation, and choices they can't unmake to boot.

[relativemass]

I think it depends on the flavor of game you want to run. If the campaign is some rapidly escalating event with a sense of urgency, then your players may opt for no down time (undead are getting stronger and smarter, and someone has prophesied that "doom comes with winter"). On the other extreme, if the characters are only called upon in times of great distress or war, then down time could be years (an undead dragon and its army are threatening to conquer the city).