Downtime and Earn Income worth the trouble?

[Ravingdork]

Just wanted to check to see if I was reading this right. It seems too absurd to be real, falling right smack in the TOO BAD TO BE TRUE category.

At 1st and 2nd level, for my first SIX PFS scenarios, I can only ever earn 5cp per day for Earn Income IF I make all successful checks for a grand total of 2gp, 4sp.

If specialized towards it by taking Field Commissioned, it's only 3gp, 6sp.

If this is correct, is this some sort of a joke? Who designed this system? Who could possibly think that, that level of headache for peanuts pocket change that can't even buy you peanuts would be worth all the trouble of rolling and reporting it?

Does it get better at higher levels? Am I overlooking something?

EDIT: Though I've not seen it personally, I'm hearing rumors of GMs from multiple contacts simply handwaving auto-successes on these checks because even they don't think it's worth all the trouble. That to me is a BIG red flag indicator that something is wrong and that the system should probably be reviewed for eratta.

[Pip Hip Hooray]

"The pay of interns is, um, pretty bad," Pip admits. "So 8 days of work when you start out is about 4 silver pieces in total. But it can get better."

★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★

At higher levels, Pip is now pulling from the Level 6 Earned Income, where her successes total 2 gold a day, because her Legal Lore is Expert (and above.) When she crit succeeds, which happens sometimes because she is a Master at Legal Lore now, she earns income from the next level up, which is 2.5 gold a day. This means that she regularly at Level 6 earns either 16 gp or 20 gp.

★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★

If she were a Horizon Hunter, she could become a Storied Talent and earn income of her own level, Level 8, but she's too loyal to Envoy's Alliance to do that.

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

I feel like the system is overcomplicated, and I dislike that 'Storied Talent' is locked behind one faction. Still, the downtime system is never supposed to compete with your real job as an adventurer. Because the pay isn't so great, I often take advantage of the downtime system to retrain feats and other aspects of my character. I have several characters who never bother to roll day jobs but instead learn languages with the Grand Archive or do other things.

Likewise, I have never made a Field Agent in society play because I feel that the consumables that we get from the Society are generally worth more than 4 days of extra day job, and with less complexity. As for GMs hand-waiving day jobs and making everything a success, they are not supposed to do that. On the other hand, they don't have to deal with downtime now at all if they do not want to do so.

Reporting downtime on chronicles is now actually supposed to be the Players job. But I still report it on chronicles (after having a player help with figuring out totals, since I have dyscalcula) because for some of my players it is too confusing for them to make sense of the table in the CRB. I'd rather have the information there on the chronicle than have them miss out.

I so much prefer day jobs in Starfinder Society. Roll your day job. Double it. Write that total on the chronicle sheet.

Hmm

[Ravingdork]

Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:

I often take advantage of the downtime system to retrain feats and other aspects of my character.

As an aside, how does one retrain with Downtime in PFS exactly?

I'm told you can't "bank downtime." That it must be spent before the next session.

Doesn't that make any retraining requiring more than 1 week, such as changing your wizard school, impossible?

[Pirate Rob]

The pay for 0 level tasks is particularly bad, with 1st level tasks getting 4x per day than 0 level tasks. It's an unfortunate result of the earn income table. Don't forget that you do earn more on a crit success.

It gets better and there are feats and boons to make it more profitable but it's never spectacular. There are a fair amount of people that have come to the conclusion that it's not worth it and just skip it and that's okay. I do wish there were more boons like the Playtest Ramlock's tower that unlocked more interesting downtime activities. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually some book like Business and Bureaucrats came out providing additional downtime options.

Personally I enjoy the fun little game for extra pocket change, but I'm an accountant so my desires for spreadsheets and optimizing out a few extra pennies seem to frequently be greater than average. It's probably for the best that it doesn't give me a large financial advantage and just a small one.

All that said with a bit of effort maximizing downtime the monetary benefit gets to about +10-15% additional expected income after the first couple levels which is actually a notable amount. That does require spending character options that could be spent on other things though.

Also: players are responsible for resolving their own downtime so it's appropriate for GMs to not police downtime activity, players have to do that themselves. I do wish the simplified option didn't even involve rolling and was just a set amount of cash though. That's be a nice improvement to give people that don't want to engage a small stipend at least.

PFS tries to deviate from the game rules as little as possible though so access to downtime is important for retraining and as a small benefit those who enjoy Shoppings and Savings can squeeze out a few extra coins.

I do agree that it feels particularly bad at level 1/2 though.

[Ravingdork]

If players are managing their own downtime (when was that change made?) does that mean it's all largely operating on the honor system then?

If so, I'm just going to start marking my players' chronicle sheets with "[X] days downtime" and let them deal with as much or as little headache as they wish.

[Gary Bush]

Ravingdork, What do you believ a character should earn on a partime job?

[Pirate Rob]

Ravingdork wrote:

If players are managing their own downtime (when was that change made?) does that mean it's all largely operating on the honor system then?

If so, I'm just going to start marking my players' chronicle sheets with "[X] days downtime" and let them deal with as much or as little headache as they wish.

That is the correct way to do it. I believe it was changed at the beginning of season 3, so about 16 months ago. (Most Major guide updates coincide with a new season starting at GenCon)

OP Rules wrote:

Players are responsible for rolling and recording their own downtimes, and may chose not to do so if they prefer to simplify play. Alternately, for players seeking a more in depth downtime, rules for using the entire set of downtime rules appear in "Additional Character Options"

Almost all of PFS record keeping is on the honor system. There used to be more signing off of things and the like in PFS1 but it was largely security theater.

As for retraining.

OP Rules wrote:

Retraining: Using Downtime to retrain character options(Core Rulebook 481) works as written with a few clarifications.

Some items are changeable for free, such as name, gender, appearance, or other cosmetic designators.
Pathfinder training may be changed and costs 14 days.
Changing a selectable class feature, takes 28 days.

If characters earn enough XP to level while still in the process of retraining they can choose options legal for their new build, though the ability is unusable until the retraining is complete. An option being retrained is lost at the time the new option becomes usable.

Normally for most people starting off in PFS I don't recommend reading the OP guide all the way through since it's rather dense, but you seem to have a lot of technical questions which are actually addressed in said guide so I'd recommend giving it a read.

Here is the Single page version which I vastly prefer over the sectioned off one. (I'd still skip the Retired Rewards Section)

For retraining, just like crafting an item, you continue spending the downtime until you're finished, you don't need to have it banked ahead of time.

[Ravingdork]

Pirate Rob wrote:

Normally for most people starting off in PFS I don't recommend reading the OP guide all the way through since it's rather dense, but you seem to have a lot of technical questions which are actually addressed in said guide so I'd recommend giving it a read.

Here is the Single page version which I vastly...

*GASP!*

Thank you! That's going to make searching for things SO much easier! *Bookmarked*

[Super Zero]

Ravingdork wrote:

I'm told you can't "bank downtime." That it must be spent before the next session.

Doesn't that make any retraining requiring more than 1 week, such as changing your wizard school, impossible?

You can't say "Having tomorrow come tomorrow is really inconvenient for me. I'm going to put tomorrow in my back pack and save it for later. I'll install it next week between Tuesday and Wednesday."

You can say "Tomorrow I'm going to start on a project that I won't get to finish until next week."

[Jared Thaler - Personal Opinion]

I did the math a while back* on down times and earn income.

It works out to be about equal to 1 treasure bundle per level up to about 3 tb if you optimize. A bit more if you are Field commissioned / Storied Talent / obsessively optomised.

*a long, long while back...

I am not sure it would be a good idea for it to provide more than that.

[Jared Thaler - Personal Opinion]

Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:

I

Reporting downtime on chronicles is now actually supposed to be the Players job. But I still report it on chronicles (after having a player help with figuring out totals, since I have dyscalcula) because for some of my players it is too confusing for them to make sense of the table in the CRB. I'd rather have the information there on the chronicle than have them miss out.

I so much prefer day jobs in Starfinder Society. Roll your day job. Double it. Write that total on the chronicle sheet.

Hmm

Have you tried using the chart in the Org Play guide?

Roll your check.
Look up your level.
Write down the number in the relevant column (Fail, if you failed, your skill level if you succeeded.)
If you Crit Succeed, treat your level as 1 higher (minimum of level 3)

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

That chart is nicer. I will have to bookmark it.

Hmm