Tanya’s group had a moment to rest. The mage that once owned this tower turned himself into a lich, and left undead servants behind to guard his secrets. The most recent fight gave them all a reason to stop and recover, but it also let Tanya look over the treasure. Spell scrolls. With glee, she carefully read them and started methodically adding them to her own spell book, little by little. Meanwhile, the others…

 Well, that’s the trickier part.

Downtime isn’t uncommon Dungeons & Dragons. The time when you aren’t doing the usual adventuring business of slaying monsters or raiding dungeons. Maybe it will be months or years until the realm once again requires your heroics. Or maybe you just have a few hours to kill after making it to a new town. It’s a perfect opportunity to flesh out characters and locations, by giving them something to do that isn’t about fighting. The problem is what options you do have.

Short-term downtime is easy to cover. It may take a few days at most, but possibly mere hours. The best example in the system right now is that of wizards and their spell books. For anyone unaware, wizards are able to add new spells to their repertoire by copying them from scrolls, for the low price of a couple hours and a bit of gold. Not only is this the best example, but it’s also unfortunately the only example. Wizards are the only ones that get a downtime activity like this.

Long-term downtime doesn’t fare any better either. There aren’t any unique options in this area, and the generic ones are poorly written, a hassle to use, and more likely to create problems than give opportunities. But I don’t think it needs to be like this, and I have a few ideas.

For the former, I think that each class should have their own unique options. Fighters could sharpen their weapons or discuss tactics with their allies, and bards could compose tales for different effects. For the latter, I think a return to prior editions’ base building could be cool. As a rogue, assembling your own gang of thieves or network of spies is an appealing idea. Wizards could construct a tower for the purposes of arcane research and experimentation, guarded by summoned minions or animated constructs.

I definitely think that there’s design space to mechanically expand on characters when they aren’t in the midst of combat, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Share them below, and join us on the Boss Rush Discord too!

Featured Image: Keith Parkinson

The Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast About Video Games

The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of The Boss Rush Network and Boss Rush Media. Each week, hosts Corey Dirrig, Stephanie Klimov, LeRon Dawkins, and Pat Klein come together with their friends, colleagues, and fellow creators to talk about their week in video games, discuss industry topics, conduct interviews, answer listener questions, and more. New episodes every Monday. Get each episode one week early and more perks over on the Boss Rush Network Patreon page.

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