I know that most people don't play an LotR style game with tons of travel, but I always find it weird how much people feel like characters get no downtime.
In chapter 8 of the PHB the rules describe how far the PC's can go in a day without suffering exhaustion (8hrs of travel). With an 8hr long rest, this leaves you 4 to 8hrs of downtime each day to craft, study, and do stuff. PC's have a lot of possible downtime, especially if the DM makes their maps a bit more spread out.
Does your party get plenty of downtime, or not really?
My first thought is that in the Lost Mines of Phamdelver, you start off after 10 days of travel, so you have 10 days of downtime on session 1. It's a really easy thing to let PC's experience.
Most groups I know define downtime a little more strictly - holidays are downtime, the weekend is downtime, Monday night after work is not downtime. None of us feel like we need all that much downtime in the first place though. Scribing a new spell in a spellbook, attuning to a new item, practicing sword techniques, seeking peace in prayer - those require a bit of time, not downtime.
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I know that most people don't play an LotR style game with tons of travel, but I always find it weird how much people feel like characters get no downtime.
In chapter 8 of the PHB the rules describe how far the PC's can go in a day without suffering exhaustion (8hrs of travel). With an 8hr long rest, this leaves you 4 to 8hrs of downtime each day to craft, study, and do stuff. PC's have a lot of possible downtime, especially if the DM makes their maps a bit more spread out.
Does your party get plenty of downtime, or not really?
You also are neglecting that throughout the day players take Short Rests, which don't factor into a Long Rest. It is not unreasonable for your 8 hours of travel to be a 12 hour day, when you factor in encounters. If you go camping, where you are portaging with canoe, or carrying a 50 pound pack all day, trust me, you don't have 8 hours of "downtime" in a day, once you factor in setting up camp, breaking camp, making meals. If I had the additional hypothetical issue of 3 or 4 encounters with bears and wolves, that would be a jam-packed day.
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity — at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity — the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
A normal pace gives a distance per day of 24 miles. Since they only need 6 hours of sleep, they can go for 18 hours a day without any risk of Exhaustion. They won't even get tired. They can make 54 miles per day easily. That is of course in ideal conditions. There are a whole shipload of factors to consider. Do they have mounts? There is difficult terrain, different modes of transportation like flying, vision and lighting to consider... It's a long list. Combat along the way stops them (hopefully just short of) dead.
That's not even considering Forced Marching. I leave that to you and your calculations and calculators. There isn't going to be much Downtime so far as I can see.
Have you read Lord of the Rings? Frodo and Aragorn travel for 3 months with about 4 days of adventuring and the rest is all uneventful travel.
Heck, 10/25 is when he agrees to take the ring to Mordor, and he splits up from the fellowship on 12/25 with one exciting day total over that time.
As I said in the Lost Mines, you start off after 10 days of uneventful travel.
As another poster said, you need 6hrs to eat. The rules don't say that boring days need short rests. Getting attacked by wolves 4 times a day every day for years is completely unrealistic. One exciting day, sure, but every day? Not a chance.
The point is, there's no reason players wouldn't have time to use their tools to craft things, or learn a new skill.
I haver heard that 6 to 8 encounters per day is considered about right in D&D. I don't know of anyone who actually does this, but that's what is recommended. I have read Lord Of The Rings and watched the movies in addition. I think the movies are great fun in spite of all the liberties taken. In the movies it is hard to tell just how many days go by unless they specifically say. They didn't show any downtime to speak of. How many times did the Hobbits encounter danger on the way to Bree? They were hardly doing a Forced March. The still stopped for all the 5 or 6 meals they like to eat each day. They were in a hurry. There was no downtime visible in the movies.
That's how I run my games. They may take all the Downtime they want between adventures. They can email me about what they did and what they want and I'll email them back with what they get. All of us have little enough of our own Downtime in real life and I'm not inflicting problems on my players. My games need to be fun and exciting if I want to catch and hold my player's attentions. I'm not going to get that with a dull recitation of what they did off camera.
I see no possibility of Downtime during a Forced March. I hope that helps.
I haver heard that 6 to 8 encounters per day is considered about right in D&D. I don't know of anyone who actually does this, but that's what is recommended.
This is a bit of an urban myth of D&D. Its often repeated and somewhat based on a truth, but its actual meaning has been warped over time. Here is what the DMG actually has to say on the matter.
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.
6-8 medium/hard encounters is the upper limit of what a party should be able to handle. It is not a recommended number of encounters that the party should be consistently facing every day. In the case of long periods of travel, I think it'd be incredibly reasonable and even expected to have multiple days with no real activity.
As far as downtime goes, mixing in certain types of downtime might be possible if you have a day with absolutely no combat, but there are a couple things to keep in mind.
Downtime activities require 8 hours of work per day in order to make progress. Any less than that doesn't actually count towards anything.
Forced March Traveling takes up 8 hours.
Long resting takes up 8 hours, 2 of which can be spent on "light activity", such as reading.
While the downtime days do not need to be consecutive, they do need to be close together.
The only downtime I could see players realistically achieving would be light activities that could overlap with their long rest. Things like research, scribing a scroll, or certain types of non-intensive crafting might qualify as light activity. An elf with Trance might be able to accomplish more difficult tasks thanks to the extra time they get.
Additionally, nothing prevents your party from only traveling for 5-6 hours a day in order to squeeze in downtime activity. Maybe your timeline is flexible, or the day's weather is especially bad and forcing you to move slow anyways.
The downtime rules start with "Between adventures, the DM might ask you what your character is doing during his or her downtime.". It isn't simply a case that you can travel for 8 hours, sleep/rest for 6 hours, and then expect to spend the other 8 hours doing "downtime" activities.
The downtime activities assume a certain amount of relaxation or spare time, since when you are doing nothing else in town you can still only perform 8 hours of downtime work in the day.
The 8 hours that you aren't sleeping or doing downtime/travelling are most likely spent just chilling out.
IRL, have you tried doing 16 hour days, or walked for 8 hours in the country and then come home to work for 8 hours? Normally the 8 hours in the country and 8 hours of working are done on different days.
I think there's a misunderstanding on what "between adventures" means. It's written for AL where each session is a different adventure. It ultimately means "time your PC isn't under your control".
Besides that, anyone who has a hobby understands that 8hrs of work followed by your hobby (regardless of what it is) isn't unreasonable. Sure, someone trying to craft in a way they are unfamiliar will find it overly taxing, but it's a great time to use tool kits that you're proficient in.
I think my biggest flaw as a DM is NOT giving enough downtime to the players - they always have 2-3 urgent things on their to-do list and have to decide which to do, which to decide not to do - but they haven't really had the choice to do "nothing" for a while (make potions, create a spell, etc.).
I've been working on that in my current campaign, but I find it tough - I want them to feel engaged and anxious to go do things and I don't think my players like the critical role style shopping/downtime episodes - but I feel that we could do some of that "offline" (in discord, etc.) instead of at the table.
I know that most people don't play an LotR style game with tons of travel, but I always find it weird how much people feel like characters get no downtime.
In chapter 8 of the PHB the rules describe how far the PC's can go in a day without suffering exhaustion (8hrs of travel). With an 8hr long rest, this leaves you 4 to 8hrs of downtime each day to craft, study, and do stuff. PC's have a lot of possible downtime, especially if the DM makes their maps a bit more spread out.
Does your party get plenty of downtime, or not really?
My first thought is that in the Lost Mines of Phamdelver, you start off after 10 days of travel, so you have 10 days of downtime on session 1. It's a really easy thing to let PC's experience.
Most groups I know define downtime a little more strictly - holidays are downtime, the weekend is downtime, Monday night after work is not downtime. None of us feel like we need all that much downtime in the first place though. Scribing a new spell in a spellbook, attuning to a new item, practicing sword techniques, seeking peace in prayer - those require a bit of time, not downtime.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
You also are neglecting that throughout the day players take Short Rests, which don't factor into a Long Rest. It is not unreasonable for your 8 hours of travel to be a 12 hour day, when you factor in encounters. If you go camping, where you are portaging with canoe, or carrying a 50 pound pack all day, trust me, you don't have 8 hours of "downtime" in a day, once you factor in setting up camp, breaking camp, making meals. If I had the additional hypothetical issue of 3 or 4 encounters with bears and wolves, that would be a jam-packed day.
A normal pace gives a distance per day of 24 miles. Since they only need 6 hours of sleep, they can go for 18 hours a day without any risk of Exhaustion. They won't even get tired. They can make 54 miles per day easily. That is of course in ideal conditions. There are a whole shipload of factors to consider. Do they have mounts? There is difficult terrain, different modes of transportation like flying, vision and lighting to consider... It's a long list. Combat along the way stops them (hopefully just short of) dead.
That's not even considering Forced Marching. I leave that to you and your calculations and calculators. There isn't going to be much Downtime so far as I can see.
<Insert clever signature here>
Have you read Lord of the Rings? Frodo and Aragorn travel for 3 months with about 4 days of adventuring and the rest is all uneventful travel.
Heck, 10/25 is when he agrees to take the ring to Mordor, and he splits up from the fellowship on 12/25 with one exciting day total over that time.
As I said in the Lost Mines, you start off after 10 days of uneventful travel.
As another poster said, you need 6hrs to eat. The rules don't say that boring days need short rests. Getting attacked by wolves 4 times a day every day for years is completely unrealistic. One exciting day, sure, but every day? Not a chance.
The point is, there's no reason players wouldn't have time to use their tools to craft things, or learn a new skill.
I haver heard that 6 to 8 encounters per day is considered about right in D&D. I don't know of anyone who actually does this, but that's what is recommended. I have read Lord Of The Rings and watched the movies in addition. I think the movies are great fun in spite of all the liberties taken. In the movies it is hard to tell just how many days go by unless they specifically say. They didn't show any downtime to speak of. How many times did the Hobbits encounter danger on the way to Bree? They were hardly doing a Forced March. The still stopped for all the 5 or 6 meals they like to eat each day. They were in a hurry. There was no downtime visible in the movies.
That's how I run my games. They may take all the Downtime they want between adventures. They can email me about what they did and what they want and I'll email them back with what they get. All of us have little enough of our own Downtime in real life and I'm not inflicting problems on my players. My games need to be fun and exciting if I want to catch and hold my player's attentions. I'm not going to get that with a dull recitation of what they did off camera.
I see no possibility of Downtime during a Forced March. I hope that helps.
<Insert clever signature here>
This is a bit of an urban myth of D&D. Its often repeated and somewhat based on a truth, but its actual meaning has been warped over time. Here is what the DMG actually has to say on the matter.
6-8 medium/hard encounters is the upper limit of what a party should be able to handle. It is not a recommended number of encounters that the party should be consistently facing every day. In the case of long periods of travel, I think it'd be incredibly reasonable and even expected to have multiple days with no real activity.
As far as downtime goes, mixing in certain types of downtime might be possible if you have a day with absolutely no combat, but there are a couple things to keep in mind.
The only downtime I could see players realistically achieving would be light activities that could overlap with their long rest. Things like research, scribing a scroll, or certain types of non-intensive crafting might qualify as light activity. An elf with Trance might be able to accomplish more difficult tasks thanks to the extra time they get.
Additionally, nothing prevents your party from only traveling for 5-6 hours a day in order to squeeze in downtime activity. Maybe your timeline is flexible, or the day's weather is especially bad and forcing you to move slow anyways.
The downtime rules start with "Between adventures, the DM might ask you what your character is doing during his or her downtime.". It isn't simply a case that you can travel for 8 hours, sleep/rest for 6 hours, and then expect to spend the other 8 hours doing "downtime" activities.
The downtime activities assume a certain amount of relaxation or spare time, since when you are doing nothing else in town you can still only perform 8 hours of downtime work in the day.
The 8 hours that you aren't sleeping or doing downtime/travelling are most likely spent just chilling out.
IRL, have you tried doing 16 hour days, or walked for 8 hours in the country and then come home to work for 8 hours? Normally the 8 hours in the country and 8 hours of working are done on different days.
I think there's a misunderstanding on what "between adventures" means. It's written for AL where each session is a different adventure. It ultimately means "time your PC isn't under your control".
Besides that, anyone who has a hobby understands that 8hrs of work followed by your hobby (regardless of what it is) isn't unreasonable. Sure, someone trying to craft in a way they are unfamiliar will find it overly taxing, but it's a great time to use tool kits that you're proficient in.
I think my biggest flaw as a DM is NOT giving enough downtime to the players - they always have 2-3 urgent things on their to-do list and have to decide which to do, which to decide not to do - but they haven't really had the choice to do "nothing" for a while (make potions, create a spell, etc.).
I've been working on that in my current campaign, but I find it tough - I want them to feel engaged and anxious to go do things and I don't think my players like the critical role style shopping/downtime episodes - but I feel that we could do some of that "offline" (in discord, etc.) instead of at the table.
Are they on a timeframe in terms of days, or months? Of days, you'll always be strapped for downtime.