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Downtime / Downtime Overview / Downtime Phases

Activity Phase

Source Ultimate Campaign pg. 82
During the Activity phase, you declare new downtime activities or continue existing ones. Activities like beginning construction on a new building, continuing construction on an existing building, recruiting for a new organization, crafting magic items, or retraining skill points or a feat occur in this phase. You may also use this phase to take actions that do not require the downtime system.

Step 1—Perform Free Activities: You can perform any activities that don’t require downtime days, such as buying gear, selling unwanted magic items, and bartering.

Step 2—Continue Ongoing Downtime Activity: Your first priority is continuing a downtime activity that requires more than 1 day. Depending on the specific requirements of that activity, interrupting it might ruin any progress you’ve made. Some activities might require only a small bit of your attention and still allow you to perform other downtime activities in this phase.

Step 3—Begin New Downtime Activity: If you aren’t continuing an earlier downtime activity, or are continuing one that doesn’t restrict you from starting a new activity, you can begin a new downtime activity. The list of downtime activities can be found here.

Example: Patrick’s character has been crafting a wand of fireball, but had to interrupt the process just short of completion to have a short adventure that didn’t give him any time to work on the item. When he returns to town and begins a downtime session, he sells some loot in Step 1 (which doesn’t use any downtime days), then proceeds to Step 2. In Step 2, he decides to spend downtime finishing the work on the wand, which takes him 1 day of downtime. The next day, he has no ongoing downtime activities, so he proceeds to Step 3 and starts spending Influence to recruit an Apprentice wizard.