Downtime
Seasonal Downtime
Downtime is your daily life. While you may seek to cultivate, you still need to tend to your home, clan duties, legal red tape, and other such distractions from the pure bliss of cultivation.
During Downtime, you do not need to track Aura, Charge, or other short-term resources. Instead, Downtime is part of the Overworld.
You get 1 Downtime per season.
Downtime Activities
Convalesce
To increase your regeneration, take Convalesce.
- You automatically reduce the Severity of every Condition by 1 each season. This is your natural regeneration.
- This Activity doubles your natural regeneration for the season (to 2).
Additionally, if you have access to medical care or facilities, choose one Condition to actively treat. The exact benefit of the treatment will be outlined there.
Tend Garden
Tending your Hearth Garden is a controlled form of cultivation.
- You automatically Harvest one reagent of your choice growing in your Hearth Garden
- No Challenge is required, and this Downtime does not consume Power
- The drawback, obviously, is that you are limited to what grows in your Hearth Garden
Harvest abroad
This Downtime covers gathering of reagents from places you have explored but do not control. Think of these as small foraging trips.
You will still need to Challenge Earth
- You may Challenge using either your own Earth or your Hearth’s Earth, whichever is higher
- On a success, gain C reagents within your Result from that region
- Challenging with your Hearth’s Earth consumes Power; this is covered in the Hearth structure
Craft
This Downtime covers any kind of crafting or building. When you take this Downtime, you may craft up to C times. Each is a separate activity or Challenge.
- For example, you may Synthesize three different Weapon Cores from your stockpile of Crystal Cores
- Use this Downtime for Refining Crystal Cores
Build
The Build Downtime is used to devote time to your Hearth and region; Build represents activities with no special cultivated requirements and thus no Challenges.
- For example, building a dock requires a great deal of time and mundane materials but does not require a Challenge
Study
Study covers activities such as learning a new language, decoding a cypher, or figuring out a puzzle. These may require Challenges, depending on their nature.
Cultivate
Spend Essence to learn Arts and grow in power
- You may spend as many Essence as you have accrued at once
- Remember the Essence maximum is 10
Train
You may spend your free time cultivating Essence. When you take this Downtime, gain 1 Essence
Help the community
This is a general Downtime, representing small time heroics and general helpfulness. It does not require any Challenge nor accrue any system benefit.
Naturally, the storyteller should take this Downtime into consideration when evaluation the response of people in the region to your cultivators.
Generational Downtime
Then there was peace in the Kingdom for many years. Until…
A generational downtime is a long period of peace. This is usually decades or even centuries. Your characters may grow up, quest, and retire in this period. Play your own grandson when it finishes!
- If you have a Hearth, you may choose to retire your Active character and gain those benefits
- if your Active character remains in play, automatically advance 2 Steps of Cultivation
Consider using storytelling aids such as story cards or random prompts to flesh out what happened over the years