TinyChat

I have a lantern and torch. l guess I'll need lantern oil.

I am woking on finalizing training but here are the rough basics.

Downtime
Each time veteran parties return to town they will rest and recover doing less dangerous activities for about a week. During this time they can engage in one activity, training, study, or developing a hobby.

Downtime training
Each week Costs 2 gold/week and reduces the cost of weapon proficiency by 1 XP up to a max of 4

Study
Character can engage in study of a specific topic. Each week spent in study grants 1 point of knowledge in that field. at 6, skilled, and then 12,expert, points they raise their expertise in this field.

Hobby
Each character can, with GM approval, pick one area of knowledge or basic skills similar but more focused than a background. XP for this can only be accumulated during down time. With a teacher/tutor/instructor 2 XP is gained per week(10 days) otherwise 1 XP are earned each week. After 8 XP are earned in this manor hobby is added to the character.

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Note that this is not standard but adding basic weapon proficiencies and some secondary knowledge or a hobby shouldn't break it.
If you wish to track this then do so in your character history section.

To keep it simple I would limit it to only 1 downtime activity at a time. Ealdwig can study with another if yo uwant to do something else. Also, downtime can not be used to gain a trait. only basic knowledge and skills. If you study psionics as downtime then you would simpy have more background knowledge.

Players Post adown time activities in individual threads and your sheet

I've been thinking about downtime some more, and I'm going to suddenly take a bit of a contrarian view: I don't think XP should be able to be gained through downtime. XP must come from Adventuring!

Instead, I think downtime should be used for three things:
1) This is when XP is spent, not earned. You need some downtime to be able to actually gain that Trait (or whatever) you finally have the XP for.
2) This is when you learn a non-XP related skill or ability. You learn to cook. You learn some drawing. You learn to play the lute. You learn a new language. You learn how to use a magic item or something like that. In theory, this is when you learn to use the bow (or whatever) enough so that you can actually have that 1d6 chance to hit.
3) This is when you craft. Whether you are experienced enough and have enough house rules to do the crafting yourself, or you want for an NPC to craft something for you, this is when the actual crafting takes place.

But, I think the general rule should be that Adventuring is when you get to earn. You earn Gold and you earn XP. Downtime is when you spend. You spend your Gold (on things or living) and you spend your XP (for Proficiencies and Traits). I think that dichotomy should be maintained.

EDIT: The above all said, I'll go with whatever the final decision is. This is just my recently forming opinion.

I totally get that.
I am thinking of allowing weapon proficiency as it is something that could be done in a similar manor. But no mastery or traits.
How about proficiency with a single weapon instead of an entire type?
Thinking.

Good feedback

What if you can gain proficiency with any one skill? Like, for cooking: instead of rolling 2d6, I can gain advantage?

Or, I need one week to roll 2d6, and another week to roll 3d6? If it were me I’d choose animal handling as a skill to work on.

Earn and spend do seem to be a good way of looking at things in general. Maybe you're both thinking about it just slightly differently. The XP gained adventuring is different from the XP gained during downtime activities. If time is spent on a hobby, call it playing an instrument. The longer you work at it the better you'll get so your XP or experience points will go up. Then if you ever need to make a check using your new hobby, maybe you'll have some proficiency in it. Maybe this "XP" just needs to be called something else.

As for training with a weapon, Daryen, you don't believe you should be able to get batter over the week you're off practicing? I would imagine during your adventures you gain XP to use on traits, and weapon mastery, but couldn't you gain proficiency through practice as well. If I missed all the time on an adventure, never hit anything, but came back with more XP I could get a weapon proficiency, but I couldn't get it by using targets. What if I worked on different fighting stances and got into bar fights, wouldn't I at some point be able to use that experience as well to help upgrade my defenses?

I believe there is a point here to have both of these ideas used.

First, let me preface this by stating that this is a newly forming opinion based on not having really thought about this issue before. It is also based on reading a lot about TTRPG. I am perfectly willing to be "wrong" or out-voted or whatever. This is not a hill I want to die on. However, since you asked, I'll explain myself a little more ...

The base idea is that this is an adventuring game that is not meant to depict or model real life, but rather encourage players to get out into the adventure. As such, that means adventuring should be rewarded and not-adventuring should be discouraged.

As for all of the practice, here's how I'd explain it: Downtime practice provides two benefits:
1) This is what your character does to make sure he doesn't lose the skill they have already gained. Having the ability to efficiently stab things with your sword is a hard thing, and the practice makes sure you don't lose what you have already gained.
2) This is where your character actually gains the improvement based on the practical experience they have gained. I.e. the practice is where they are spending those 8 XP to gain a base proficiency or weapon mastery.

So, all that practice is very important and very useful for the character. It just doesn't have an obvious mechanical benefit because the XP is only earned while adventuring.

As for the "soft" skills, I'd never make a character roll to cook a meal or play an instrument or speak a language. Now, if they are trying to cook a very fancy meal for in-game purposes, or play an instrument as a performance in front of the king, or speak to the Elven emissary in Elvish, then, yes, you have to make a roll. But those roles will rely more on your Education, Charisma, or whatever, than they will on your soft skill.

And I am not 100% on board with being able to even add a new "background". Remember, it took your character their entire life to gain that background. I don't think someone should be able to duplicate that in their spare time between adventures.

I think I generally side with Daryen’s opinion here. We should focus on adventuring and then RP when we can. And maybe there’s something we could do for downtime if that comes up as an option. In most of my other games we don’t ever really have much downtime. I think this happened now because we had all these things we wanted to craft with and there were so many characters coming in at one place and regrouping.

That’s my opinion. Maybe just a really simple couple of options for downtime. Crafting and then maybe doing some odd jobs for extra cash. But I don’t imagine we’ll do a huge amount of that in the future.

Down time will never give benefits equal to traits earned with XP. I am open to flavor adjustments, like learning to read, and maybe a bit more. But as stated this is just ideas. Studied knowledge and hobbies could remove disadvantage from 'not being familiar with that'.

So of you pick up knitting as a hobby you sweaters are functional but still ugly. Without the hobby they only fit shape shifters and octopi.

I also agree with the general framing of earning in adventure and spending within downtime. It would really make downtime exciting in a shopping-spree kind of way, instead of feeling grindy. For instance, it's best if swordfighting XP is earned in battle rather than during downtime, mechanically speaking.

What about learning instruments? Well, I guess that it's best if we leave that for character archetypes, we don't want to ruin the bard, though you're welcome to buy a flute and torture your companions during their travels.

Regarding crafting/gathering I backtrack Oliver's intentions: I think gathering should be done during the adventures and crafting is best suited for downtime. So I would rule out Oliver going to gather herbs by the riverbank; that friggin otter should go to the herborium and buy buy buy instead.

You can go to the riverbank to look for herbs. Probably harder to find near civilization since other may have found them already. But there is nothing wrong with being resourceful.

I'm still surprised Oliver never tried to get components from the mimic's body.

You can check with
The Grippli shaman Gulfis
The local druid Uallas who had a garden in town
Fiznik and Valpip can sell don't stuff
The general store

I created a basic formula of costs for Skeeve he or I can look up later.

Ah drats, I forgot! Well, making a mental note for next time we're around that cave.

…we just walked past that cave?

Also, more heritage traits! Awesome! I only need to save up 25 XP to get my penultimate trait options! Luckily this group is totally awesome and I’m going to be here forever... Forever.