Downtime in D&D 5e doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t be) boring!
Between quests, this gives your players a chance to meet NPCs and pursue individual goals. Embracing downtime as a chance for character development and more social activities is a fantastic way to add to the immersion of your campaign’s world.
While the downtime activities in the Players Handbook give you some ideas, one of my favorite things about Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is that it provides tons of information for the various downtime activities that your party may want to do.
Whether it’s making some coin in the fighting pits, finding a buyer for a magic item, or catching up on some research, there are downtime activities for every interest and class.
Use Your Downtime to Meet New NPCs
If your group loves roleplaying and interacting with the world around them, they are sure to enjoy meeting the inhabitants of the village/town/city that they’re resting in. As the party levels up and accomplishes increasingly more heroic deeds, they are likely to find people who are curious to hear their stories. (Side note: this a great way to introduce a Renown or Reputation system into the game!)
The party may even encounter some rivals during downtime. These NPCs aren’t necessarily evil, but they have interests that go against the party’s. A High Priest may be worried that the party’s efforts are diminishing the temple’s prestige or an opportunistic noble may view one of the party members as an excellent scapegoat in their quest for more political power.
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything includes tons of ideas for creating rivals that are sure to add immersion and intrigue to your world.
Learn a Skill
Is there a particular tool that you want to gain proficiency with? Maybe you’d like to learn a new language so that you don’t have to keep casting Comprehend Languages or Tongues if the other person doesn’t speak Common.
Downtime is a great way to add some extra depth to characters. It takes an average of ten weeks with an instructor to develop proficiency with a new skill or language, but having a high intelligence can speed the process up greatly. As it just so happens, spending this downtime with the instructor can also be useful in establishing familiar NPCs for your story.
Do Some Research
Characters may choose to spend downtime researching the lore of a particular topic. This could be a magic item, location, legendary creature, or anything else that may be available for study at a library or by consulting a sage.
Gaining knowledge about what lies ahead can greatly tip the scales in the party’s favor. A character who spends their time hitting the books can learn incredibly useful information such as the type of spells favored by a group of enemy mages, legends of the location of an ancient and powerful item, or the weaknesses and habits of a dangerous local monster.
Make That Money
The party are skilled adventurers and can each use their particular skills to turn a profit during downtime. Fighters and Barbarians may take a special interest in competing in fighting pits for glory and gold. Others may prefer to risk their current wealth for a huge payday by gambling. Even still, some characters may prefer some more… unsavory… methods of making extra coin between adventures by committing some crimes and terrorizing the local merchants or nobles.
Depending on the world, it’s possible that the average merchant may not be able to afford to buy magical items at a fair price from the party. However, they may still find the interest of collectors and nobles with deeper pockets who would be interested in purchasing magic items from the party’s latest adventure. While it may take some extra work to find a suitable buyer, the high price can certainly make it worth it with even common magic items selling for a value of around 100gp.
An entrepreneurial party may look into building a business to create an income stream. This seems to happen in a lot of my personal games. By hiring some locals to run the business for them, the characters able to still go on adventures and will look forward to getting an extra payday from their business in addition to what they acquired in their latest dungeon crawl. In a later article, we’ll take a deeper dive into the mechanics of building a business in D&D 5e.
Personally, I tend to consider it a bit of a win if the players are asking about this. It means that they are truly invested in the world that we’re creating and looking for a base of operations. Which reminds me…
Build a Stronghold
Characters may find themselves wanting to build a stronghold. This gives them a base of operations and an entirely new way to influence the world around them. The options for strongholds are virtually limitless and especially appeal to players who enjoy getting in on the world-building aspect of Dungeons & Dragons.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide contains some rules and uses related to strongholds that are sufficient when combined with your group’s own creativity. However, if your group is interested in building a stronghold, I highly recommend checking out the Strongholds & Followers supplement from Matt Colville and MCDM Productions.
Craft Items
Some things take time that the typical long rests in the wilderness or musty dungeons just aren’t suited for. Things like brewing potions, crafting weapons or armor, and scribing scrolls are far more possible during the party’s downtime.
Magic items can be crafted, but require more time, expertise, and rare or costly materials. Characters who are looking to craft a specific magic item may need to go on a quest to get some of these materials and then take a sizeable amount of time to properly craft it.
Go To Church
Clerics, Paladins, and other pious members of the party may choose to spend some time attending the services and helping out at the local temple. By actively supporting the temple’s efforts, these characters can find themselves generating favors from the temple’s leadership or even the deity themselves.
Hey, it never hurts to have friends in high places!
Mix Up Your Game With Downtime Activities
So while downtime may not see the character’s rolling for damage, it provides some much needed time to accomplish goals, interact with the world, and make/spend some hard-earned gold.
Players can find themselves adding tons of new factors into the story through social encounters and efforts like building strongholds. Adding downtime activities to your Dungeons & Dragons game is one of the best ways to mix it up with social encounters and new plot hooks.
What I noticed you did NOT reference was “LEVELING UP”. What’s your take on making “leveling up” a downtime experience, complete with finding and studying with a mentor, etc.
I know there is a “school of thought” (pun intended) that says “characters learn all they need to know to level up during normal adventuring”. Personally, I don’t buy it that new “skills/feats/capabilities” pop into the PCs head unbidden on the day they pass a milestone/collect the right number of XP. You could argue that HP increases are just “increased stamina/CON” and happen automatically. Maybe even “higher likelihood to hit” just from having taken more swings. But does a druid just “suddenly” know how to turn into a bear? Do casters have new spells they have never seen before spring into mind?
Personally, I *love* downtime – for all the reasons you mentioned and then some. But it seems that players don’t think that is “fair”. Your thoughts?
If I am not mistaken, it is assumed that a Wizard or an Artificer, for example, conducts theoretical research and practical exercises during rests and downtimes. Bards find new ways of channeling their art forms. Sorcerers’ magic is already innate, so it can be explained by meditations and calling to their inner source of power.
Clerics, Warlocks and Paladins are self-explanatory, actually – they get their new spells from the higher powers. Druids are more difficult to explain, and I would prefer to leave it to Joab, who has much more Druid experience than me. However, I may assume that a Druid unlocks new circle while communing with nature or reflecting upon memories.
Unfortunately, DnD level progression is often removed from realism. That is sad,but it is a trait of the system since – I assume – the initial editions.
Hi Majorgs15!
For the sake of keeping things moving, there’s a certain expectation (as V-Z) mentioned, that characters are doing activities relevant to their class between levels.
However, I also see exactly what you’re saying. Where’s the buildup to learning new skills/spells/etc?
In the past, I’ve encouraged players to make a kind of “wishlist” for their character between our Session Zero and first game (as well as privately as time goes on). If they are considering multiclassing, want certain magical items, or wish to learn certain powerful spells (when they reach that level), I try to make as much happen “in world” as possible to help that make sense.
But that can also be a TON of extra work for the DM, especially if players don’t specifically know what they want. (The “wishlist” worked well for my group of long-time players but my group that has only been playing for a couple of years struggled with this approach and the “analysis paralysis” that it can create.)
So we tried to do as much “in world” as possible. (For example, a player who wanted her Fairy character to have lost their natural ability to fly. When they completed the quest to help her regain her power back, she would be able to fly again.)
So there’s a bit of a trade-off there.
Ultimately, if the players don’t want to feel like they have to do “sidequests” to gain the benefits of leveling up, I would recommend not doing that. The group having fun ultimately matters more than verisimilitude.
However, you could still likely get them to meet you halfway. If finding a mentor (for example) would add to the character’s story and experience, then by all means make that a thing.
For example:
Perhaps the party is up against a foe that they can’t seem to stand against.
The party’s Monk learns of a legendary master who could teach them a powerful technique that might help the party overcome said enemy.
As the party finds the master, they are given a quest of trials to determine if the Monk is worthy of learning the technique.
The party reaches level 6 upon overcoming the trial and the master teaches the Monk the legendary Stunning Strike. Should the Monk continue their training, the Master has other techniques that they can teach in the future.
Maybe the master mysteriously pops up at significant levels (when the Monk would gain a new major feature) to issue a lesson via sparring or meditation.
Something like this could be a way to give the verisimilitude that you’re wanting but in a way that keeps things feeling personal and action-oriented (even during downtime) for players!
Hope this helps! 🙂