250 days rest

[Doomwhispo]

Basically any group can take a 250 day break in the adventure to learn a new skill. This takes about 10 seconds in real time. Any downside to it or am I missing something? Assuming a group has enough gold they can just do it a couple of times in a row to learn what they want. Am I correct?

[Sneak Dog]

It's restricted to tools and languages and 250gp is quite a bit.

[Mando Knight]

Basically any group can take a 250 day break in the adventure to learn a new skill. This takes about 10 seconds in real time. Any downside to it or am I missing something? Assuming a group has enough gold they can just do it a couple of times in a row to learn what they want. Am I correct?

That'd be really convenient, having the world stop for 8 months or so while you go learn a new skill... few tabletop games function the way computer RPGs do, where you can sidequest for "years" of in-game time and the main plot will pick up right where you left it.

[Coffee_Dragon]

The characters haven't read the rulebook and don't know this is a thing that can be gamed. Why are they doing it? With a good enough reason, they might.

[rollingForInit]

Meanwhile, the demon lord they were going to stop just destroyed the world. The orc hoard just massacred their city and family. The kingdom's heir you were going to rescue got executed, and the king interrupts your peaceful period of rest by hunting you out of the kingdom, possibly murdering you. You have to run, run run for the rest of your lives.

This mechanic is 100% under the DM's control. It's something the DM can allow players to do when it is appropriate.

[Temperjoke]

It's not really the sort of thing you do during the middle of an adventure, because as others have mentioned, time does not stand still for the bad guys. If the players are attempting this, a reminder like another village being wiped out by the enemy (or some other plot relevant event) would hopefully be enough to get them moving again. I'd make an exception for things that can be done during "offpeak" times, like during long rests in safe areas, or while riding in ships, carriages, etc. This would be things like learning new languages, intellectual skills like history, religion, or medicine; heck I'd probably allow learning a new music instrument (with social charisma rolls every so often from npcs that happen to be nearby :P).

[Slipperychicken]

-They have to pay living costs for every day. That means it's a little more than 250 gold. If they have a modest lifestyle, the total cost is 500 gold to train and sustain themselves.

-The bad guys will still be doing stuff while the players train, and the PCs will age (250 days is most of a year!). This may become a problem if they want to train all the time.

-The lovely quests I wrote for them will expire, and other heroes will probably rise to the challenge. Players might gripe about the "god-mode NPCs", but they brought it on themselves. For my fury at having to recycle quests, I'll have NPCs generally dismiss the PCs as has-been losers who abandoned their duties.

-I will tell them "look, do you want to play the game or not?", or I'll tell them they're not allowed to train like that. Normal NPCs train like that, but PCs learn much faster or die.

[NecroDancer]

Meanwhile, the demon lord they were going to stop just destroyed the world. The orc hoard just massacred their city and family. The kingdom's heir you were going to rescue got executed, and the king interrupts your peaceful period of rest by hunting you out of the kingdom, possibly murdering you. You have to run, run run for the rest of your lives.

This mechanic is 100% under the DM's control. It's something the DM can allow players to do when it is appropriate.

But now you know how to use a banjo

[Grod_The_Giant]

As mentioned, it's really a "between campaigns" amount of downtime, not a "between adventures" kind of thing.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

If you have a time jump in your campaign, this is one of the things your character reasonably could have been doing. That's pretty much it; otherwise, PCs generally speaking should have a laundry list of loose ends to tie up even if there's no big overarching plot.

[Knaight]

As mentioned, it's really a "between campaigns" amount of downtime, not a "between adventures" kind of thing.

That's very pacing dependent. Everything being hectic all the time is a valid pacing (and in 5e it's strongly encouraged), but there's no reason to think that every single campaign is going to be set to that time scale. Some will span years with most of the time being downtime.

[mephnick]

I pretty much force the year rest between campaigns as a way to push my world forward. The players like it because they gain something new and I get to come back next time we get together with a list of things that have happened in the last year. But yeah, if they take a year off in the middle of a mission they'll fail their quest.

[Doomwhispo]

Ok i guess i won't allow it then. But thwn Besides using the feat skilled it's impossible for a player to learn a new tool. Should I allow for a player to train a skill or learn a language during resting hours? And if so what's a reasonable amount of time one should spend? Because saying it takes 250 days I might as well say it's not possible

[Blue Duke]

i think the 250 days thing -is- them saying its not possible....i know when i was told thats how long it took to learn something i got really sad and kind of started to give up on the character because there is no realy way to improve them.

[Slipperychicken]

i think the 250 days thing -is- them saying its not possible....i know when i was told thats how long it took to learn something i got really sad and kind of started to give up on the character because there is no realy way to improve them.

Leveling up isn't good enough for you?

[Blue Duke]

sure but it so seldom happens in my games and 'oops you didnt get that tool proficiency from your background, sorry your screwed !' sucks to hear

[rollingForInit]

sure but it so seldom happens in my games and 'oops you didnt get that tool proficiency from your background, sorry your screwed !' sucks to hear

Do you mean that you just play level 1 characters, constantly ...? I can see what that would be boring. I don't even play games where they start at level 1 anymore, if there are options. Level 3, at least. But if you almost never level up, that's kind of an issue your DM should address. Characters are meant to level up fairly frequently.

[Malifice]

Basically any group can take a 250 day break in the adventure to learn a new skill. This takes about 10 seconds in real time. Any downside to it or am I missing something? Assuming a group has enough gold they can just do it a couple of times in a row to learn what they want. Am I correct?

http://pad3.whstatic.com/images/thumb/a/a2/Be-a-Dungeon-Master-Step-3.jpg/aid134586-728px-Be-a-Dungeon-Master-Step-3.jpg

This guy may have something to say.

Six days into your studies, your mentor calls to you with an important quest...

[Giant2005]

Ok i guess i won't allow it then. But thwn Besides using the feat skilled it's impossible for a player to learn a new tool. Should I allow for a player to train a skill or learn a language during resting hours? And if so what's a reasonable amount of time one should spend? Because saying it takes 250 days I might as well say it's not possible

If you want them to learn something new, make it a plot point. Give them a reason for them to learn something new rather than simply because they can. Don't even make it take 250 days if you want - the players can learn something from a really, really good teacher as fast as you want them to.