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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
Player Core / Chapter 8: Playing the Game

Downtime Mode

Source Player Core pg. 440 2.0
Downtime mode is played day-by-day rather than minute-by-minute or scene-by-scene. Usually, this mode of play occurs when you are in the safety of a settlement, maybe recovering from your adventures or studying an artifact you found.

Downtime gives you time to rest fully, engage in crafting or a professional endeavor, learn new spells, retrain feats, or just have fun. You can sell items acquired during your adventures, buy new goods, and perform other activities as determined by your feats, your skills, and the settlement where you are spending the downtime.

Earning Income

Source Player Core pg. 440 2.0
The Earn Income skill action allows you to make money using a wide variety of skills. You can get creative with the skills you attempt to use, working with the GM on the details. Some skills might be much harder to earn money with than others. Crafting, Lore, and Performance are the most reliable. Jobs in a fantasy world tend not to be particularly stable, so you might need to look for new tasks on a fairly regular basis.

The GM determines the levels of jobs you can find, as noted in the Earn Income activity. It's often in your best interest to determine what types of jobs are available for a small variety of skills, so you can take on the most lucrative or interesting option.

Long-Term Rest

Source Player Core pg. 440 2.0
You can spend an entire day and night resting during downtime to recover Hit Points equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum 1) multiplied by double your level.

Retraining

Source Player Core pg. 440 2.0
Retraining offers a way to alter your character choices, which is helpful when you want to take your character in a new direction or change decisions that didn't meet your expectations. You can retrain feats, skills, and some selectable class features. You can't retrain your ancestry, heritage, background, class, or attribute modifiers. You can't perform other downtime activities while retraining.

Retraining usually requires you to spend time learning from a teacher, whether that entails physical training, studying at a library, or falling into shared magical trances.

Your GM determines whether you can get proper training or whether something can be retrained at all. In some cases, you'll have to pay your instructor. Some abilities can be difficult or impossible to retrain (for instance, witch can retrain their patron only in extraordinary circumstances).

When retraining, you generally can't make choices you couldn't make when you selected the original option. For instance, you can't replace a skill feat you chose at 2nd level for a 4th-level one, or for one that requires prerequisites you didn't meet at the time you took the original feat. If you don't remember whether you met the prerequisites at the time, ask your GM to make the call. If you cease to meet the prerequisites for an ability due to retraining, you can't use that ability. You might need to retrain several abilities in sequence in order to get all the abilities you want.

Feats

Source Player Core pg. 441 2.0
You can spend a week of downtime retraining to swap out one of your feats. Remove the old feat and replace it with another of the same type. For example, you could swap a skill feat for another skill feat, but not for a wizard feat.

Skills

Source Player Core pg. 441 2.0
You can spend a week of downtime retraining to swap out one of your skill increases. Reduce your proficiency rank in the skill losing its increase by one step and increase your proficiency rank in another skill by one step. The new proficiency rank has to be equal to or lower than the proficiency rank you traded away. For instance, if your bard is a master in Performance and Stealth, and an expert in Occultism, you could reduce the character's proficiency in Stealth to expert and become a master in Occultism, but you couldn't reassign that skill increase to become legendary in Performance. Keep track of your level when you reassign skill increases; the level at which your skill proficiencies changed can influence your ability to retrain feats with skill prerequisites.

You can also spend a week to retrain an initial trained skill you selected during character creation.

Class Features

Source Player Core pg. 441 2.0
You can change a class feature that required a choice, making a different choice instead. Some, like changing a spell in your spell repertoire, take a week. The GM will tell you how long it takes to retrain larger choices like a druid order or a wizard school—it is always at least a month.

Shopping and Crafting

Source Player Core pg. 441 2.0
If you're at a location with shops that buy or sell magic items, you can buy, sell, or trade. Ask the GM what types of shopping options are available to you—it can vary greatly depending where you're spending your downtime!

Because of the complexities of finding shops that are looking for items you want to sell or that offer ones you want to buy, dedicated shopping takes 1 day of downtime. It might take longer if you're selling a large number of goods, expensive items that require a wealthy buyer, or items that aren't in high demand.

The Price of an item indicates the full cost to buy it. You can sell an item for half its Price. The GM might adjust these once in a while due to supply and demand or the particular merchants you're dealing with.

Skill Downtime Activities

Chapter 4: Skills includes several downtime activities, which are summarized here.

Craft: Using the Crafting skill, you can create items from raw materials.
Create Forgery: You forge a document.
Earn Income: You earn money, typically using Crafting, Lore, or Performance.
Subsist: You find food and shelter in the wilderness or within a settlement.
Treat Disease: You spend time caring for a diseased creature in the hope of curing that creature.

Cost of Living

You might need to pay your cost of living for days spent in downtime. To avoid paying the cost, you can Subsist, using Society in a settlement or Survival in the wild. Experienced adventurers often have friends or patrons who take care of their living expenses. They might even have so much treasure that their cost of living—even one of the more expensive options—becomes a pittance.

Item Crafting

Source Player Core pg. 441 2.0
You can spend downtime to use the Craft skill activity, making new items out of raw materials. Crafting can be an excellent way to refine the gear the party uses, including upgrading items and preparing ones you’re likely to need on an upcoming quest.

Other Activities

Source Player Core pg. 441 2.0
Work with your GM if there are other ways you want to spend downtime. You might acquire property, manage a business, become part of a guild, curry favor in a large city, take command of an army, take on an apprentice, start a family, or minister to a flock of the faithful. Though there are efficient options for making money or adjusting your character, it’s often better to seek out fun and interesting activities that can open up new opportunities for character building, adventures, or relationships.

Goals

Source Player Core pg. 441 2.0
You can help guide the course of the campaign by setting long-term goals that take multiple periods of downtime to complete. Talk them through with the GM and the rest of the group. Consider alliances you want to develop further or changes you want to see in the game world.