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research magic item(s): cost 10 downtime days tier of item + 100 GP x Tier of item x Tier of item, invest time and money to research a specific magical item, this item becomes a possible reward for you upon completion of your next adventures (until picked or a new item is researched) ← as a compromise/expansion on bufobufo’s idea of allowing a DM to reward less downtime and provide more choices of rewards (normally this would probably be accompanied by a random roll or skill checks, but for the sake of keeping things simple I’d forgo that)
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if we do 5.5 probably can do a couple of things related to bastions
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beseech deities - cost 10 downtime days, receive a minor blessing from the following list, you can never have more than 1 minor blessing from this downtime activity at a time (this list for the time being is only a suggestion to show what kind of things I’d consider minor blessing for this) - everything on this list is a single one time use effect
- Survival: convert a death saving throw attempt by you or an ally within 30 ft to being stabilized instead
- Balance: choose to give an ally within 30 ft advantage on 1 d20 roll, your own next d20 roll will be with disadvantage instead
- Trickster: when you or your ally within 60 ft of you take damage from a directed single target attack choose 3 creatures other than yourself within 60 ft of the target, number them from 1-3 and then roll a d4 if their number comes up they take the damage instead, if you roll a 4 you take the damage
we probably could do a “community goal” thingie with downtime, something along the lines of
Improve the Bastion of VALUE invest an amount of downtime days into expanding our shared bastion, every x (250, 1000, whatever) amount of downtime days invested will have the designated scrollkeeper (a venerated member of our community that is deeply entangled with VALUE) roll a d3 to determine which tiers evergreen list gets expanded by 1 item for the rest of the season and then determine the newly added item by random according to the tier and other item restrictions
oh I like that idea … just to get it right, so to get a rare item (Tier 2?) it would be 20 downtime days + 400 gold … a bit cheap, but if we considered common T1 and rare Tier 3 … then 30 downtime days and 900 gold seems like a good threshold for essentially picking any item you want.
and you would still have to do an adventure and not take another item as a reward, that’s why I would keep it on the cheaper end of things
yeah @katnyx was working on something last year
It could also be trading for another item of the same grade, from the VALUE item list, for downtime days. (So like the current purchase option, but instead of money + DD, we pay with current item + DD)
Or anything else that adds more opportunities what to do with unused magic items
Hi,
I have a few suggestions and observations as a newer player.
As others have already mentioned, there are a lot of Tier 2 adventures and some Tier 1 adventures, but there are no higher-tier ones. Before anything else, I think the downtime issue needs to be addressed, as others have suggested. However, as a player, I would also love opportunities to play higher-level adventures and, occasionally, even max-level content .
Part of the appeal is simply experiencing what it feels like to be an overpowered hero or demigod for a session or two each year. Higher-tier adventures could feature epic-scale battles involving armies (for example, treating an entire squad as a single monster), fighting powerful generals, or even challenging a god. Perhaps the guardians (angels) could instantly kill intruders, forcing players to sneak around and discover a way to defeat the god without being detected. The final confrontation itself could then be a truly intense battl e.
I understand that higher-tier adventures require more preparation and that combat can take longer, but they would still be exciting to experience. Sometimes I just want to cast 40+ Scorching Rays as a max-level warlock and enjoy the fantasy of being incredibly powerful. Higher tiers would also provide more gold, which could eventually allow characters to purchase things like a warship.
That would be a very cool long-term goal for a high-level charact er.
For higher-tier adventures, using tools such as D&D Beyond for rolling attacks might also help speed things up. I know that rolling dozens of attacks manually can take quite a wh ile.
That said, I agree that if the Tier (0)1-2 adventure structure is improved and additional options are introduced, there is already more than enough content to enjoy a character for a long time.
Some thoughts on possible downtime activities (some of these may have already been suggested, but I’ll mention them an yway):
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Market system:Allow players to spend downtime to purchase items from a market. There could even be a black market with rare or unique items. Some items could require both gold and downtime to obtain. The inventory could be partially fixed and partially rotated on a regular basis.
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More variety in potion br ewing.
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Downtime-to-gold conversion:Perhaps players could exchange downtime for money in some way (so I can eventually buy that warshi p
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Risk/reward options:For example, using forbidden magic and downtime to temporarily lose a level in exchange for a powerful magic item or another unique benefit. This would likely need to be class- or race-specific and would require balancing.
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Gathering resources:Allow players to acquire herbs, reagents, supplies, ore, and other materials during downtime. It gives players opportunities to imagine what their characters are doing between adventures: investing, brewing potions, mining, crafting, and so on.
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Skill development:Characters could spend downtime honing skills, learning language, gaining even proficiency with tools, or progressing through homebrew systems such as herbalism, hunting, gambling, etc. Maybe my character develops a gambling addiction, buys some dice, and loses all the money they earned. Just having options like that adds flavour. Maybe even learn a custom (third-party) spell or enchant items. Or I become an excellent cook and my food give some minor buff.
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Player housing:Owning and upgrading a home could be a fun long- term project.
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Multiclass training:I’m not sure whether multiclassing has any restrictions here (for now I just play single classes), but perhaps downtime could be spent learning a new class. It should require a substantial amount of time, representing study, training, and attunement to a differe nt discipline.
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Guilds and organizations:Establish guilds, orders, or other organizations that players can join. During downtime, characters could improve their rank within these groups and unlock rewards, contacts, or special opportunities. Maybe even sometime own a shop or inn inside this framework. Or run smuggling operations (for morally flexib le characters).
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Reputation system:Characters could spend downtime helping factions, guilds, or cities to earn influence and reputation. Higher reputation could provide shop discounts, better rewards, access to special services, or unique story opportunities. Maybe they are invited into noble balls or get honorary titles. Some additions would have in game effect but mostly it could be c osmetic/flavour?
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Personal Story Activities**:** Players could fulfil their personal goals a nd find new ones.
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World-building projects:Players could collectively contribute downtime toward building things such as a guild hall, library, museum, shop, or armoury. This could tie into the reputation system. Alternatively, two factions could be at war, and players could donate downtime over a set period. The winning faction would influence the world state, available market items, prices, and ot her benefits. Etc.
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Secret missions:After accumulating a large amount of downtime, a character could undertake a secret mission. Success and rewards could be determined through a random r oll or event table.
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Leisure/exploration activities:Small flavour activities that provide cosmetic rewards, roleplay opportunities, or fun character moments. Maybe my character got a unique wine bottle in his travels using downtime. So, the party can drink it next t ime they meet again.
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Monster Taming:Rather than gaining a combat pet, characters could attempt to tame unusual creatures.
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Establish a Legacy:Characters could invest downtime into shaping the world around them through monuments, temples, libraries, or public works. These contributions would outlive the character and become part of the setting’s history. In future campaigns or adventures (with the help of a firendly DM), players could encounter these landmarks as pieces of world lore (perhaps even while playing a descendant of the original character, witnessing firsthand the legac y they left behind).
I realize that many of these ideas would be difficult to implement and could require a significant amount of manual work. Perhaps community members with programming or AI experience could help create a website or app to automate some of these systems and make them easier to manage.
My few cents of thought 
thanks for your input 
we had something like that once, it did not work as indended
- e.g. tons of characters created with minimum Strength who all had gauntlets of ogre power, or every druid was running around with a staff of the woodlands, etc.
- there were other reasons why it did not work as well, but that
was the main reason - also it was a lot of work
someone else wished for that (quite a while ago), so that will highly likely be on the “to potentially change list” - result dep. on the upcoming vote^^
imo that is best used for Homebrew Downtime Awards - so you kinda can do that anyway^^
imo that is best used for Homebrew Downtime Awards
- e.g. / as inspiration - used that in my old open Primal table 2 years ago
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- these obv. only worked at my table though
last time we talked about we settled on allowing exchanging (skill/tool) proficiencies, so this does not get out of hand and devalue Feats like Skilled and the new [5.5] Crafter feat
one of us is working on a Bastion system; will only come to a vote if we change to [5.5] this time
we use the official restrictions for multiclassing (so far)
imo those are best used for Homebrew Downtime Awards
- e.g. / as inspiration - used that in my old open Skullport table 3 years ago
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- these obv. only worked at my table though
hmm prolly best if there is a multi-dm adventure epic
- we had one such an epic last year
those is def. handled with a Homebrew Award best 
imo that is best used for Homebrew Downtime Awards
- e.g. / as inspiration - used that in my old open Primal table 2 years ago
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- these obv. only worked at my table though
sounds awesome - prolly best a Homebrew award for finishing an open VALUE campaign
- examples from the end of Age of Worms from 4 years ago
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- these obv. only worked at my table though
I think plenty of people agree here. I don’t think that’s really a rules question we can adapt or change, though - like you said, higher tier games are more work to prepare, the combat is longer which even with digital dice rolling means there is less time to kind of frame the premise of the high stakes that a group at T3 or T4 would encounter to make it meaningful during pre-combat role-play.
At the end of the day, DMs run what they want to run. T3 does pop up every once in a while, but T4 is quite rare.
Ad Brewing: with 5.5 we have an adjacent topic, crafting got more spotlight. How that is handled has significant impact on how the foundations of character, party and encounter design play out. Basically the pyramid of resources available becomes much broader.
The DM: I guess it couldn’t hurt to let them have a boat. Might even give the game a more serious tone. Hardship on sea and all that …
The players:
so far we ruled that our "brewing potions / scribing scroll "-stuff can be done by anyone regardless of tool proficiency
… else we would need to balance all av. tool proficiencies downtime-wise
Heya! Love seeing this and took the time to read the thread. Can’t say I could read the entire discussion so I might repeat some suggestions. Here are my 2 cents
(I know I am a person of too many words when I am passionate, so here is gpt’s tldr: Prefers moving to 5.5 due to appealing design changes (origin feats, unified archetype levels, weapon system), though not strongly attached to it.
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Fine with point buy as long as everyone uses the same system.
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Strong preference for slower progression and low-level starts; level 1–5 creates stronger attachment, immersion, and meaningful character growth.
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Suggests removing T0 and instead allowing experienced players to start new characters at level 2–3 after leveling previous ones.
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Feels leveling was too fast last year and caused character fatigue/disconnection.
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Supports downtime activities overall and suggests adding proper rules/support for ritual spell acquisition for Wizards, Ritual Caster, and Warlocks.
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Neutral-positive on Bastions as long as optional.
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Dislikes downleveling; players can simply stop leveling if desired.
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Prefers either:
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fully committing to 5.5 content only, or
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staying entirely with 5.0.
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Strongly values immersion and setting coherence:
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too many exotic races in Faerûn breaks believability for them.
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would prefer either tighter race limitations/unlock systems, or a completely custom setting built around that diversity.
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also suggests reskinning mechanics instead of using every lineage directly.
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Clarifies this preference is about worldbuilding/immersion, not exclusion of players.
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Likes named/story-based magic items over generic enchanted gear.
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Overall preference leans toward a more grounded, immersive, slower-paced, character-attached style of play over maximum flexibility/convenience.
---------------------Tldr ends here-------------------------)
Personally I’d like to move to 5.5, but it isn’t a serious reason. Simply that I haven’t really given it a fair try and I find limited opportunities to do. And the fact that it has many things that in theory appeal to me (which I can’t vouch for when it comes to practice) namely: origin feats, all archetypes come at the same level to all classes, the whole weapon system.
Point buy - anything flies as long as everybody has to use it.
Starting Levels - I liked it when we couldn’t make a new character past level 5. As a matter of fact I would even vote for only starting at level 1 because it appealed to me much more once upon another AL. It simply made people more attached to their character, less nonchalant about character’s death and it made each level 4 character feel like an established persona with stories to tell. I see the downsides to this, but I relate to what @truecrawl mentioned above regarding the gives and takes each approach to an AL is with that we give up a big part of immersion with each corner we cut towards flexibility. I admit that to me personally the way it was last year, caused me a severe character fatigue and I lost almost all sense of attachment to characters.
I don’t think T0 is necesary, but maybe it is fair to let players start from 2nd/3rd level as soon as they leveled at least one character all the way up to 5? Level 1 is kind of bizarre. It is oddly too easy to simply die, there is a HUGE power difference between classes, to most there are no subclasses, and it limits the kind of backstory such characters can have by a good margin. So My suggestion would be "for each character you leveled above t1 you get to start at at a higher level if you so wish to create a t1 character again. (only relevant if we get rid of t0 of course)
I love the idea to slow down level-up speed. I feel like it was way too generous. Especially considering the fact you can simply take that character, remake it in any upper tier anyways.
I am for all the aforementioned downtime activity suggestions. Not big on the “get inspiration” but also feeling like “sure why not”.
Follow up part: If we do with 5.5, i say only new stuff. Otherwise let’s just keep to 5th.0 I feel little to nothing regarding the bastion system. As long as it isn’t mandatory, i see no harm.
“Downleveling” feels wrong to me. I don’t see any reason for it. I get that it is to let people keep playing characters they do not want to over level, but one does not have to level up your character.
suggestion for downtime activities: I see nothing mentioned for when it comes to wizards, ritual caster feat and the warlock invocation that allowed learning ritual spells. I get that it is a niche but think we need some solutions in order to make this options appealing. Firstly, it is strange to me that there is no real table to acquire scrolls/spellbooks (including a set of spells) from in exchange for downtime activities or downtime shopping, which could solve that problem all by itself in my estimation. Secondly, I think ritual caster and the relevant warlock invocation should either follow the already established wizard rules for learning spells during down time or recieve their own.
Sharing my preference
In all honesty, I feel like I might be either too old fashioned when it comes to our hobby, or simply fond of a style that became less popular. Simply put, I do not like that we allow so many races for player characters and that on top of that we still claim to be running in Faerun (for the most part). It simply breaks all immersion for me. We are playing a very different game when we are basically everything the multiverse has to offer. We end up treating it as if this whole medieval fantasy world is a huge capitol mixed city, as if a fantasy world was birthed by only what can be observed in a select few 21st century globalized city. I grew up, a white boy in 1990’s Tokyo and I was still not an every day thing. As much as I try, I can’t take it seriously when “a plasmoid, a bugbear, a reborn and 2 Tieflings walk into a remote little town” and the town reacts as if we have all seen this before and it is just another market day. My entire immersion is destroyed every time i sit down to play with a group that has more than 2 out of PHB races. At the very least, it ruins my sense believeability.
As I predict that it doesn’t speak to a lot of people, then I’d alternatively like to forgo any established DND or roleplay setting and simply decide we have our own cool thing. If we simply are from such world where PHB races are the bigger minorities among all kinds of people who never dominant enough to be a majority, then I am on board. I simply can’t shake how it breaks it for me within these established worlds even if it is “our on version” of them.
I would love to see it limited in some way, shape or form. Maybe as “unlockable” 2nd and onward character races? “reach X or Y with a character that started at T1 and unlock a race/lineage from the following books:” kind of thing. To give players something to work towards while including the possibility to create these race characters, and make sure we’re not overpopulating groups with them. That is not to say that I do not get the appeal. where we decide to simply limit the races for theme and immersion purposes with no means to “unlock” them but still want to keep the mechanical appeal of these options, my idea is: Reskin! Many of the racial abilities could be reskinned to fit a class/background narrative as well as reskinned to be the “quirks of the individual”. Say, if that is something that actually speaks to more people, I have more suggestions for this kind of change to the race system. I do however predict, that I am a lone rower on my boat regarding this thing.
(Clearification: I am all the way inclusive for ANYONE above table. anybody willing with enough respect to basic social norms, should be welcome to play TTRPG including all kinds of identities, races, gender, etc. I hope it doesn’t put me on the spot, because for some reason online and in the circles that speak my native language it often marks me as racist adjacent for not willing to be “more inclusive”. So I am sorry if this clarification seems borderline stupid, I am making due to past experiences.)
Another thought: Named items. I think a +2 sword is cool. I think a name for a sword that has a story is way cooler. It can impress npcs and other player character. I know it is extra work, but I myself always try to make my magical items unique that way to give more flavor to my character. Simply something that appeals to me so I share the thought.
Thanks for reading and the consideration <3
Who says most one-shots play in Faerun?
In my experience both as player and as DM most our settings are homebrew or vague enough to not explicitly be on Faerun or even Toril. Why? Because either ppl want to make their own worlds or because for a one-shot the global politics usually don’t matter enough to warrant establishing whether you’re close to Waterdeep or not.
And even if you play at published locations you have Spelljammer, Eberron, Strixhaven, Ravnica etc that all have seen content released in 5e/5.5e.
It’s generally okay for a DM to say “in this setting these species are very rare, so if you play them please tell me ahead and maybe find a good reason”.
And yes I’m biased coz I almost exclusively play unusual species xD
I stumbled upon this on the 2024 suggestion thread.
I like this.
Trading for evergreens (costing downtime days) seems like a good way to be actually able to get the +2 (rare) version of those evergreens while playing T2 without having to hope the DM uses one of his two item drops to drop a thing only your [insert class] can use.
Even if we decide to allow dropping more items, dropping class specific stuff might still be rare.
- In favour of switching to 5.5
Ifeel like it has been cumbersome for new players @ VALUE who assume we use the most current rules and then arrive with their DnDBeyond characters, that default to 5.5 and then us telling them that their char aint VALUE compatible. I’ve even seen some newer DMs arrive with 5.5 materials and pregen characters, which then created a mish mash of 5e and 5.5.
Also I like some of the new stuff like origin feats and weapon masteries. Also like a lot of the new cleric stuff (my fav class) like divine order or the new divine intervention.
- In favour of allowing backwards compatability
This is much more of a personal preference, since I recognize that a lot of ppl seem to prefer to just use new content only. I really like the variety of old content while also getting excited bout every new release.
I agree with Vishous that the vast majority of old content can easily be made compatible like switching some early subclass features to Lv3 instead of 1 or 2 like for ex 5e.tools already does automatically.
And yes there are the well known examples like Shephard Druid who gets a feature that allows its summons attacks to count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistances. That is a dead feature in 2024. Also there are the old warlock subclasses who RAW don’t automatically get their patron spells for free, since that aspect of the new warlocks is backed into the subclasses themselves instead of the main class. Imho up to the players if they would still wanna play these subclasses.
Also the DnDBeyond factor imho is relevant here as well. If we do or don’t allow old content, how well does it work for new players who use tools like DnDBeyond to generate their characters and what is the default mode for these tools. In this case I have to rely on others to judge that, since I do all my characters manually, so I’m lacking experience with DnDBeyond etc.
Edit
- Standard Point Buy limits
I could see this being a healthy change for newcomers as well. Not that big of an issue, in case we keep it, since standard point buy is compatible with VALUE point buy but not vice versa. So newer players might sigh in dissapointment, knowing they could have had a different stat allocation.
Are you trying to engage in a genuine discussion with me? I am genuinely asking.
If so, how should I respond to you building your entire counter argument to the 1 line from the TLDR made by Chat GPT, instead of engaging with my actual text? I assume good faith, so I am under the impression that you didn’t even read it and simply scanned something to build this counter argument on. Biased or unbiased. I don’t know how to react to that, I don’t see how it takes any of my words into consideration.
Edit I COULD react to what you’re saying, I just feel I already did before you wrote your piece. but say I entertain that with a “1 sentence”: I didn’t say we have to run in established places, that nor that we have to always play on hardbuilt world locations. (if to add a 2nd) I said, don’t tell me "we’re playing in the setting X but we simply turn a blind eye to the fact you are THE most unusual thing that happened here in decades, because what makes X X is lost on us for the sake of whimsical fun. <-let’s just establish whimsical fun settings then. I am not sold well on “this is middle earth where we now have artificer bunny people who are friends with warforged echo knight and a turtle man”.
With all honesty, I put a lot of effort to expressing myself, I wish that only reaction to my text wouldn’t choose 1 line from the part I gave for a TLDR written by AI.
I strongly object to the tone of your message and the implications.
Calling my reply a “piece” or assuming that a quote means I only read that line is unwarranted for, as is accusing me of not being genuine.
My reply to you was neutral, not confrontational and explicitly not responding to your opinions on what breaks immersion, as that is your personal feeling and I have no business invalidating that.
At no point did I say “oh that’s stupid that you’re so focused on immersion”, because it’s not stupid, and even if it was it wouldn’t be my place to judge that.
Again, I explicitly refrained from attacking your personal opinions. If this felt like an attack on you personally, then well I’m not gonna say sorry, coz I simply didn’t attack you.
I just objected to the claim or statement that
as this seems to be your main criteria why having a Vedalken or a Plasmoid show up is immersion breaking, essentially the idea that by default we’re in Faerun (a feeling which I can understand, even tho I don’t share that notion)
I’m not sure we claim that. It’s not my experience in DMing and playing in the last 5 months at I’d say about 20-25 tables. Maybe this isn’t representative, but I just thought I’d bring it up coz at least it implies that your statement could be wrong.
The rest of my argument was mostly that by now we have many source books part of our allowed sources that aren’t set in Faerun or even Toril.
That was all.
Literally to drive the point home. you say take the 1 line I didn’t personally write on the matter which mentions Faerun as the thing you are reacting to as what seems to be “my main criteria”.
I ctrl+f the entire chunk of text which I wrote on the matter. Excluding the clarification within the parentheses, I wrote 487 words, mentioning Faerun once. The sentence is “Simply put, I do not like that we allow so many races for player characters and that on top of that we still claim to be running in Faerun (for the most part).”. Not only I regard to it as “on top of the problem” i regard to it as “for the most part”. But somehow that seems to be my “main point of criteria”?
This is why this feels like 1) very much besides the point and even a little frustrating to have that as the focus, or 2) not genuine. The fact it makes it feel this way, isn’t a tone to object nor an implication.
Anyway, I explicitly refrained from making it about 1 setting, which makes you raising it to be my main point to bounce off of all the more frustrating. It doesn’t feel like an attack, but makes me feel disrespected. Which under my impression you deny apologizing for in advance.
I am not implying that you only read that line or that there was any ill intention to begin with. I was/am simply stating that you high key ignored the rest. To which I ask, “why?” and add that it is very frustrating and I don’t know how to respond to that in a meaningful manner"
“that was all”.
Look, yesterday I read your post and most of the stuff I either agree with, or topics I have already stated my opinion about at an earlier point in this thread, or, and that is the case with the species and immersion, they are purely personal preferences, where it makes no sense to reply unless I wanna do idiotic replies like “it doesn’t break MY immersion”.
This means for 95% or so of your post I had nothing to add or respond to.
The claim/statement/belief about us mostly playing in Faerun (or mostly claiming we that we do) was the only part that was not stating your personal preference but making a claim, which I tried to refute with my personal experience as a player and DM at VALUE, where the setting is mostly either unspecified or homebrew.
That’s all.
Yes, because the rest is your personal preference, hence not a criteria/argument, as personal preferences should neither be arguments nor criteria. A totally valid preference but not the basis of any rational argument, so I cannot and should not focus on that. Again, it is not my place to make counter-arguments to your personal preferences.
You’re suggesting some limits or changes to species and allowance thereof and it seems you’re mostly basing that off your personal experience of having your immersion broken. I can’t very well respond to that other than saying it’s of course a valid preference.
Hence the only objective claim was the Faerun thing, so I replied to that and that only, explicitly, in order to NOT attack your personal preferences … but then you feel disrespected that I didn’t?
I honestly do not understand, why someone replying to one of your subpoints without making any statements whatsoever about the rest of your statements is considered disrespectful.