7 Big Things D&D PCs Could Do With a Little Downtime

Many D&D campaigns assume that the players change the world most by their adventures. But downtime activities can be every bit as important to shaping the campaign and the world. Sometimes the things done during downtime turn out to be the most memorable parts of your game.

We recently talked about how we handle downtime in our games – admittedly, we probably don’t give players enough of it. There are a lot of good ideas in the Dungeon Masters Guide about what to let them do with downtime if they have it, and more things you might allow even beyond that.

To me, as a DM and a player, here are 7 of the coolest things I could see players do with downtime and how I would adjudicate them off the cuff. Do you have any ideas you’d add to the list?

Disclaimer: None of these recommendations are playtested. They are how I would handle the situation on the spot, and I encourage you to adjust them to whatever feels right for your game.

1. Create Magic Items

The only thing stopping your players from making their own sword that shoots blades like rockets, the lute of strangling, or a D&D lightsaber is the DM’s say-so. If you relax those rules a bit, really cool things can happen.

The basic rules for magic item creation are right on page 129 of the DMG: Creating a magic item costs 100 GP to 500,000 GP and 1 day for every 25 GP spent – but the days don’t have to be consecutive. (Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has more involved rules if you want this to go more in-depth. I would be careful about making it too tedious for players to create something you could easily give them in the next dungeon.)

That mostly covers creating book magic items, but it’s up to the DM (you) if the PCs can create unique items. If so, I would base the costs on the rarity of an existing item with similar and equivalent powers.

You can also turn unique item creation into an adventure opportunity by calling for the players to retrieve a rare ingredient to make their dream a “reality.” Perhaps the ingredient is in the depths of a dungeon or held by a shady dealer that the players have to navigate.

Magic item creation can get out of hand in a hurry, so it’s going to be up to the DM to make sure unique creations don’t break the game. Having said that, some of our best stories come from players creating unique items, so it can really pay off to give them creative license.

There’s nothing quite as memorable as a unique, PC-created magic item.

2. Learn New Spells (Wizards)

This is specific to wizards, as the other 5E spellcasters cannot learn new spells willy nilly. But if a player has a wizard, the ability to learn new spells is an important part of their class. You should provide the chance to go into libraries, perhaps at a fee (see the cost to copy a spell into your spellbook), and try to expand their knowledge/arsenal.

3. Research a Unique Spell

There are no rules for PCs to create new spells in 5th Edition, but you could absolutely allow your players to try it as long as you’re careful not to let it become overpowered.

The easiest way to do this is to let players recreate existing spells with slightly different effect types. For example, a fireball that deals lightning damage (Erasmus, Tony’s character in my games, has something like this), or a Sleep Walk spell that mimics sleep with a random movement element (perhaps at a higher level or have it affect fewer HP).

The core skill to doing this is benchmarking. Look for equivalent abilities on other spells that you can use to compare the power level of your players’ creation. Don’t just look at dice and duration, but also similar effects. A 2nd level spell can paralyze a person, or a 2nd level spell can cause blindness AND deafness, for example.

Creating new spells is a lifetime’s work, so I would put some high requirements on it. First, I would require the researcher to be able to cast spells of at least the next higher level (so, you’d need access to 4th level spells in order to try to create a new 3rd level spell).

In terms of investment, I would price new spell research at something like 1 month per spell level squared (1-81 months) and 100 GP per spell level per day of research (so, not cheap). Spells that can be upcast should count as higher than their base level (I’d split the difference between its lowest level and highest level).

I also might include a hard limit, such as they can only create a number of unique spells, total, equal to their intelligence modifier.

4. Conduct Surveillance

This isn’t necessarily infiltrating a secret base or anything like that (which would likely be part of an adventure). But I would give players the chance to trail parties of interest and learn about their routines, so long as they could get close enough to them.

Call for a skulking skill check at the end of each day. I’d make that stealth, deception, persuasion or performance, depending on how the PC wanted to go unnoticed (truly hiding vs. disguises or other tricks). Then call for an investigation or perception skill check to see what they learned.

5. Conduct Research

The DMG has rules about using research to learn lore. This doesn’t have to be a tedious series of rolls unless they have to talk their way into the resources. Otherwise, I’d just give them a few interesting story points, and perhaps let them roll to reveal some optional “reward” lore or rumors.

6. Shop for Rare Items

Not every item the players may want is available at every general store. If the players want something big (like a boat) or rare (like exotic weapons), downtime is a good time to let them look for those. I’d follow a process similar to research for them to find out where, how and how much for the rare purchase, and allow it to be acquired by the end of the downtime.

7. Start a Newspaper

Perhaps not the first thing you’d think of, but I’ve always liked the idea. If you can get around the cost of ink, it actually wouldn’t cost that much to hire some literate small folk (every PC can read and write in 5e, so why wouldn’t commoners?) to copy out a couple hundred sheets and distribute them to the crowds. Spells and machinery could help as well (there’s a label printing press at the winery in Curse of Strahd, for example). The PCs should be able to crank out an edition for 10 GP to 100 GP and make their workers wealthy in the process.

What makes this worthwhile? Well, if there are no newspapers in your world, it gives the PCs a chance to control their narrative. The full extent of the impact will depend on your DM, but having your version of events circulating (and the ability to say what you want about other people, businesses or institutions in the town) should help them shape public opinion and gain political favor.

As a DM, it gives you the chance to hear how the players want to be seen and work that into your world, too.

Downtime and Player Agency

A lot of these activities open the door to your players having a bigger impact on the shape of the campaign and the world it’s in. And there’s a lot more you can delve into (I’m out of time and didn’t even touch on romance, retraining or running for office). The real question is, what kinds of things will your players want to do? And will you be able to help them make it happen?