Life in the Heartseekers is not just all about venturing into dangerous unknowns, your characters have their own lives and dreams in the city which they can explore during the Downtime between your adventures. From every Sunday every active character can engage in one of the activities described below, some of which can even lead to their own adventures.
All manner of knowledge lies scattered throughout the city of Anatos, and enterprising or just curious characters can spend some time uncovering fragments of it. When you begin Research you may ask a single question to an Admin or DM, who will assign what skill you need to use and the DC for it.
Arcana. Delve into magical knowledge, spirits and the elements
Investigation. Learning about a character or a place
History. Learn something about the past
Nature. Gain knowledge about a creature or the forces of nature
Religion. Insight into the Gods, their practices and their faiths
Once you pass a check an Admin or DM will tell you everything you’ve been able to discover about your question. This knowledge however may not be complete, or in some instances even true, and you’ll have to use your own best judgement how to pursue the full truth.
Many Heartseekers are also some of the city's greatest minds and forward thinkers, applying their skills to practical purposes inside the dungeons. While home some dedicate all their days to experimenting with magic and devices, hoping to create something new and wonderful. Crafting an item or a spell requires a lot of skill and materials. The table below determines the difficulty to craft each type of item or spell, you must pass the skill check and spend the associated cost to receive the reward. If you fail the check you can spend a quarter of the material costs to roll again, or wait to try again at the next downtime.
Any items or spells crafted this way can not be traded with other characters, they are keyed for your specific use and cannot work for others.
Spell Check. Arcana, Religion, Nature
Magic Item Check. Arcana, Religion, Nature, Toolkit. All Magic Item Crafting Checks recieve one free re-roll.
Downtime is not just work, sometimes your character just needs a break from all their troubles. When you start the Relaxation Downtime describe what your character does to unwind, where do they go? Do they have a favorite restaurant? Friends or family they catch up with? Find peace in training their powers?
Once you’ve finished relaxing your character gains Advantage on their next Downtime check.
Some characters are driven by a burning passion, an ambition to change something about themselves or their environment. Some ambitions are small, while others are grand dreams, but regardless they all require steps to achieve. When starting an Ambition set a goal for your character, something that would help them progress towards it and describe what happens after you achieve each step towards it. The higher the scale of your ambition the more succuses you need, but if you can achieve all your steps you can request a resolution (A description of what happens once your ambition is put into motion) or a DM Event to play out it’s final step (Try to make the last step inclusive in some way, so you can invite other players to aid you during the event).
When making an Ambition check you can use any Skill or Proficiency of your choosing (That would make sense for what you're trying to achieve), but once you succeed on a step you cannot use that Skill or Proficiency for any subsequent check. Be sure to save your best skills for the last few steps.
Not all Ambitions are destined to succeed, some dreams are too lofty or out of reach for just one person, but even pursuing the impossible always brings about some kind of change.
You take some time to pursue your personal interests. This could be anything from catching up with friends and family, trying to overcome a flaw, advance a plotline from your backstory, create a plotline for yourself, or do something over downtime not covered by the other options. Describe what your character is doing, and if you want work with another player or DM to roleplay it out. Personal Time does not require a check to start or advance, but you can earn additional milestones for good roleplay outside of a normal session.
Players can choose to assist each other with any kind of Downtime activity (including Relaxation if you really want). When assisting another character with a check the person with the highest skill bonus rolls, and every additional person assisting adds +1 to the roll or +2 if they are also proficient, to a maximum of +6.