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When I play Pathfinder I’m typically playing a game where adventurers do exciting things like delve into dungeons and fight dragons. If this sort of bookkeeping makes your game fun, go for it. Allow the players to micromanage every minute of every day into maximising whatever benefits they’re trying to get.
Personally that sounds like drudgery to me. I keep it simple. If the party is trying to travel overland for the day then that’s what they’re doing. I don’t need to carve it up into 6.9 hours of walking, 23 minutes to strike camp or 32 minutes to set it up. I don’t typically ask them where they’re digging the latrine pit and check whether they’ve contaminated any local water sources. They start the day with daily preparations and packing up camp, they eat halfway through the day and then setup camp when the day has ended. A player trying to eke out 42 minutes of downtime would result in a dice getting at them for trying to make the game boring and complicated. Once the party has stopped working for the day, they’ve stopped because they’re tired. Certainly too tired to try to squeeze in some downtime.
Similarly downtime days are downtime days. If you have 4 days of downtime, you don’t get 5, 6 or 8 days of downtime simply because you did some calculations on a spreadsheet. You get 4.
But if you think letting people spend 2 days of downtime in 1 day makes your game more fun, go for it! Just be sure to check what the PC is eating because if they get a bit clogged up they might lose 0.1 days of downtime.
How much time actually goes into the "working" part of a downtime day? Suppose the party travels for 8 hours; can they spend the remaining 8 hours on a one-day-long downtime activity?
I can find nothing in the downtime rules clarifying how much time is actually spent working during a downtime day.
The rules for rituals say 8 hours per day, but that is specifically under the context of using rituals in exploration mode.
Suppose a downtime "day" is actually just 8 hours of work. What is stopping a character with the spare time from just working for 16 hours, thus squeezing in two downtime "days"? Or, alternatively, what is stopping a character from dedicating a downtime "day" of 8 hours of work, and then spending a couple of hours adventuring somewhere?
At the very least, I'd assume that "working" for 8 hours in a day of downtime and trying to do any other activity should leave the characters fatigued and give penalties to any other activity they attempt to complete in the day. Especially traveling and trying to accomplish any physically or mentally strenuous activity should at least kick up any associated DCs.
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Agreed. I understand Downtime to be like a 9-6 workday. Morning routine, 4 hours work. 1 hour lunch. 4 hours work. Time to run an errand. Evening routine. Bedtime.
It doesn't seem like PF2 breaks down the day into a minutiae of hours and minutes. Instead, you have the time to accomplish a goal, whether that goal is exploring, raiding a dungeon, or cobbling shoes.
EDIT: super ninja'd. This was in response to Rysky.
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Suppose the party travels for 8 hours; can they spend the remaining 8 hours on a one-day-long downtime activity?
They cannot, unless they're just trying to Subsist. (How many hours that takes is undefined.)
Unlike most downtime activities, you can Subsist after 8 hours or less of exploration, but if you do, you take a -5 penalty.
Okay, it says "unlike most" not "unlike other," but I think that's just futureproofing; for practical purposes, you can't engage in downtime stuff (except penalized Subsist) in the post-exploration part of the day.
Earn Income says you roll after the day is done, Not after the part of the day you earned income is done. Not sure what in the text for earning income suggests you can squeeze two days into one.
Downtime Mode is measured in days, not hours. And it’s for when you’re somewhere safe, not when you finish traveling in Exploration Mode for the day.
This.
In downtime, you can sum up the important events of a whole day with just one roll. Use this mode when the characters return home or otherwise aren’t adventuring. Usually, downtime is a few minutes at the start of a session or a break between major chapters of an adventure. As with exploration, you might punctuate downtime with roleplaying or encounters when it’s natural to do so.
I'm pretty sure part of downtime being measured in days was to simplify the system so players didn't have to micromanage downtime to get the "optimal" benefit (or be behind the one player that did). After all, it kinda fails as a system for handling longer stretches of time if every day has to be micromanaged at the expense of play time.
Okay. If Subsist says, "Unlike most downtime activities, you can Subsist after 8 hours or less of exploration, but if you do, you take a –5 penalty," then this means that "most other" downtime activities require you to devote essentially the entire day to it, right after waking up and all the way until you go to sleep, with no travel or other exploration mode activities in the same day. That is on the stricter side, but maybe it is for the best.
It certainly makes the GM's job easier. The only thing that bothers me is the ring of sustenance, which still gives you an extra six hours per day awake. In exploration you can stand watch while everyone else sleeps, thus reducing the total time camping, but in Downtime AFAICT it just lets you achieve Legendary proficiency in twiddling your thumbs. I see no way to let it be useful in Downtime without violating the simplicity the rules work hard to create. Maybe that's why it's Uncommon.
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A day working downtime isn't just "you go and complete a task for n hours" it's a whole day including things like meals, naps, various self-care activities, and also whatever it is that you're doing.
It's not "you sit down to complete a task" it's "you are a person who is doing a job."
Okay. If Subsist says, "Unlike most downtime activities, you can Subsist after 8 hours or less of exploration, but if you do, you take a –5 penalty," then this means that "most other" downtime activities require you to devote essentially the entire day to it, right after waking up and all the way until you go to sleep, with no travel or other exploration mode activities in the same day. That is on the stricter side, but maybe it is for the best.It certainly makes the GM's job easier. The only thing that bothers me is the ring of sustenance, which still gives you an extra six hours per day awake. In exploration you can stand watch while everyone else sleeps, thus reducing the total time camping, but in Downtime AFAICT it just lets you achieve Legendary proficiency in twiddling your thumbs. I see no way to let it be useful in Downtime without violating the simplicity the rules work hard to create. Maybe that's why it's Uncommon.
I reckon that's part of it, but it is more that in general the ring profoundly breaks assumptions about how people live, which can be disruptive for more than just downtime mode.
That being said, depending on what Trade You're Practicing, you might find you're limited to the working hours of other businesses to actually be productive. Even the more independent activities like Crafting requires a workshop space to use, and renting them during the middle of the night might not be an option. If I'm a blacksmith, I might be willing to let the local hero use my forge that I live above, but I don't want them hammering away below me while I'm trying to sleep.