Downtime

Downtime Work
In the interest of not having to RP every minute of every day of 10 PCs scattering to the wind I'm going to ask for a schedule from everyone for each day of what the character's going to do for that day.

For simplicities sake the "day" is six 4-hour chunks. You'll generally want to spend two of these chunks sleeping (and many spellcasting classes require it). You generally can't spend more than two hours "working." The other two can be spent at whatever sort of recreational or low-impact activities you want.

Examples of "work": Using craft/perform/profession skills, researching, recruiting followers, gathering information, training animals, basically anything that would be physically or mentally exhausting.

Examples of "not work": Hanging around at the tavern socializing, going on dates, visiting the zoo.

Examples of "sleep": Sleeping. Preparing spells will generally be included in this time.

You don't need to include time for very short activities (anything that you'd expect to spend less than an hour on would be my rule of thumb. If it gets abusive though I'll let you know.

You might note that this explanation (despite it's tl;dr) is rather vague as to what you can and cannot do. This is intentional. Use your imagination. If I don't think you can do it I'll be sure to let you know.

Generally speaking as a player I expect a certain amount of downtime between adventures. This allows players to craft new items, research spells, and generally seems more "realistic" in the sense that adventuring is a high stress career.

That said, as DM it is my job to keep you on your toes so just because you  want to spend a week of downtime doesn't mean that I will let you

Fatigue
So you might note that I use weasle-words up in the sleep and work sections up there as to how much time you can/must spend on these activities. In the interest of keeping things simple here's my fatigue rules:

- Working one or two blocks of time in a day generates one point of fatigue. Every additional block of time worked in a day after that generates an additional point of fatigue. (And for our purposes "adventuring" and traveling are "work")

- Sleeping two blocks of time in a day removes one point of fatigue.

- Going a day without sleep generates one point of fatigue.

- Sleeping two blocks of time in a day you don't work at all removes two points of fatigue.

Each point of fatigue is essentially treated as a temporary negative level (tl;dr rules you basically have a -1 to all rolls for each of these and are treated as one level lower). There's no chance of them becoming permanent.

<span style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:11.818181991577148px;line-height:normal;">So in example if Drell decides she's going to spend a full 24 hours working on some top secret project she would end the day with 6 points of fatigue (1 for the first 8 hours of work, 1 each for the other four 4-hour blocks, and 1 for going a day without sleep). And would take -6 to all rolls and would generally be treated as a 1st level wizard/alchemist until she could recover.

Research/Training
<span style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:11.818181991577148px;line-height:normal;">I've said something to the effect of "this could be something you could research" a number of times now. For my purposes I'm going to call it "research" though in many cases it might be more applicable to call it training. Whether it's pouring over tomes in a library somewhere, experimenting with alchemical agents, practicing sword-drawing techniques against a dummy, or something else.

<span style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:11.818181991577148px;line-height:normal;">Step 1: Talk to the DM about what you want to do. I will give you a tentative green-light in the sense that I think it's doable (and/or I think your character thinks it is doable). Between us we'll determine the appropriate skill or check to contribute to it.

<span style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:11.818181991577148px;line-height:normal;">Step 2: Devote time to "research," for each block of time roll the check we determine. For every 5 points of result you'll generate a point of research towards what you're looking for.

<span style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:11.818181991577148px;line-height:normal;">Step 3: When you get enough research I'll start giving you information about how close you are to and possibly what other requirements you'll need (depending on what you're trying to do).

<span style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:11.818181991577148px;line-height:normal;">Step 4: Gather enough RP and complete any other requirements I throw at you and complete your project.

<span style="color:rgb(31,31,31);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:11.818181991577148px;line-height:normal;">What's fair game for this? Hypothetically anything. New abilities, new uses for existing abilities, combining abilities with others, identifying the pesky magic items that I throw at you that defy standard identification, creating non-standard items. Go ahead and be creative.