DM help! Downtime activities and crafting guide?

[Clone]

Hey all, I was looking through the DMG and PHB, and downtime activities and crafting caught my attention. There are minor guidelines, but no tables or general ideas with what you can spend your time doing. While this gives the DM lots of space to create their own rules, the DMs I have don't have much time to prep for their sessions and so this kind of extra work isn't a priority at all, despite a few of the players in each group wanting to utilize the features. The DMs want to also, so they asked me for help (same group, different campaigns and different DMs)

From a DM's perspective who has used these features, or even a player who used some sort of system, how were they handled? Did you make it up completely or use a premade guide, or even a variant of Pathfinder/3.5 D&D rules? I'm eager to see how people tackled this!

[Tanarii]

Ask your player what they want to craft. Determine if the know how (ie do they need magical formula first), determine cost, determine time.

But it's the first part that matters. What does the player want to make?

If the answer is 'gold by selling things' that's already covered in the PHB. If the answer is mundane equipment, that's covered in the PHB, unless it's a non-PHB item, in which case you make up the price. If it's magical items, that's covered in the DMG (see formula and price guidelines by how common they are).

If it's something mundane with magical effects (almost always alchemical or steam/Mage-punk engineering IMX) decide if you want that in your setting, then you have to work with the player to figure out what the effects are. At this point, you're probably going to end up raiding older edition material or UA for ideas, posting home brew on forums, or generally putting in work despite not wanting to. :smallwink:

[hymer]

I'm currently running a West Marches-esque campaign, where players participate when they can, and when there's room in that session's group. Those who don't participate in a given session get a period of downtime instead, which they can use in various ways. One of these ways is to craft. In a period of downtime, you make progress on your project worth (20+lvl) x 2gp.

[X3r4ph]

I know it isnt completely the same. But recently our group, who are level 15, saved Nesme from total destruction. Their following task became to rebuild the ransacked city. To do this i buildt a card game around Splendor.
Rule wise the game was the same, but i changed all cards to represent things to build in the city. City gates, farms, mage wright academy etc.
The nobles was replaced with NPCs and so forth. The winner would become the new duke of Nesme and the game would corespond to one year play time.
It was a really fun, and meaningful, way to have a "one year later" cutscene.
So now the PCs all have Bonds in the world. the buildings have been named after them and everything.

I know iy isnt exactly a ruleset to make magical items etc. But using a simple card game to represent building/crafting worked really really well.
DND is a game. No matter how roleplay heavy your campaign is the game relies on an element of strategy and chance. Why not add these elements to the crafting process? Just off the top of my head. Why not use Jenga. Where you collect the bricks as a metaphor for your crafting advances. Each bricks represent a certain type of magic (defence, offense, healing, utility etc.). When the tower falls the campaign begins again. And then you count how many bricks of certain color you got. You as a DM then consult you table to see what magical property they made. you can control the outcome with your table. But their choices represent what kind of item they will get.
Its like rolling treasure, only the players can nudge the result in a direction that suits them.