Downtime Actions are for Actions that take longer periods of time, beyond the "moments and minutes" that Combat and Exploration Actions take.
Generally speaking, Downtime Actions relate and interact very closely with the Daytime Spans, always consuming at least one. As part of these Actions, you will generally make some sort of Skill Check, and upon success, you progress that Downtime Action’s own Clock. Upon completing the Clock, you finish the activity and gain the reward from the activity. Many Downtime Activities possess special Clocks that persist from day to day, so you can progress a Clock and continue work on the Activity at another time.
Downtime Actions consist of activities that may take an hour to do, or could possibly take multiple days or even weeks to resolve. Activities involved with Camping and Resting form a crucial slice of Downtime Actions, but others, such as Travelling, Crafting, and Projects are also Downtime Actions. Some Exploration Actions may be used instead as Downtime Actions, with varying effects: either the roll gains an increased bonus, can be done extra times, or has a completely unique effect when used as downtime.
Downtime in general comes in two chief flavours. There is structured downtime, which is primarily constructed around the Camping subsystem, and flexible downtime, which typically takes the format of timeskips via the Interludes optional toolset until gameplay proper resumes again.
Structured downtime relates to the Day Clock's Spans as discussed above. Downtime Activities pass the Day clock, and the camping subsystem requires the commitment of at least two spans of time from the Day clock, in which one is committed to Rest and the other is dedicated to a Camp Activity.
Flexible downtime is mostly useful as a vehicle to pass a nebulous amount of time - or a fixed one where tracking the individual days would be cumbersome and take away from the gameplay experience. With flexible downtime, it is encouraged to discuss between players and GMs what could reasonably be achieved during the time skip and jump ahead.
Note to GMs: the nature of many of the assorted Downtime Actions are designed with the purpose of being meaningful, tactical uses of Player resources. Not just materials for crafting, but also time.
We advise that, unless purposefully engaging in flexible downtime, GMs should keep a strict watch on how many Downtime/Camps Players take, and how often. Players purposefully restricting their adventuring day to ensure they meet every encounter and scene fully healed on HP and PP should be discouraged.
Similarly, Players purposefully derailing the game, and sitting down to Tutor and Craft to their heart's content before moving forward, bringing the game to a complete narrative halt to do so, should also be discouraged (unless the GM agrees to it, as per the justifications above with flexible downtime).
Camping is a downtime subsystem that takes up at least two sections of the standard Day Clock. Of these two spans of time, one must be used for the 'Rest' Camp Action. The other may be used to perform another Camp Action from those that are available to you.
Below we will detail the Camp Actions and how you can use them to interact with the game world.
The Rest and Restore action fully restores PP spent from the previous day, less any amounts pre-allocated as a result of Camp Actions taken before resting. As part of the Rest action, the effects of any Curry that has been made during this Camp are resolved (such as HP recovery). Rest also normally removes 1 stack of Weary but this can be blocked by the Exposure affliction.
Using the services of a Pokemon Center or similar institution, such as a healer, functions like a normal rest, with the exception of fully recovering HP, PP, Weary and Exposure without the use of a meal.
When a character opts to Cook, this allows them to spend time making a meal for the entire encampment. Individual meal recipes have specific effects that are either resolved during the Rest action, or carry over into the next day's play. For the purpose of the latter type of 'food buff', these typically last until the next Camp unless stated otherwise.
This particular Camp Action is considered a 'free' one. It enables you to alter your six active move slots by removing moves from the slot they currently occupy, and by adding moves from your repertoire into unoccupied move slots.
You can take this Camp Action to re-spec yourself or your owned Pokemon. This can be used for as little as amending your EV sliders, to refunding your Perks in order to reallocate those points, but do be mindful to discuss any radical changes with your GM to ensure that you preserve the integrity of the narrative.
As an optional rule, to be used at GM discretion, is the Super Training mechanic, which can boost the levels of Pokemon that have lagged behind.
Creatures can learn new attacks over the course of a Journey. This can be from Leveling Up (adding the Move directly to their Known Attacks List) or from Tutoring. Below are the rules for each way a creature to add to their stable of Known Attacks. A creature can learn new attacks from a few methods, but the following basic rules apply regardless of the method:
Creatures, mainly [Pokemon], may have Attacks they learn upon Leveling Up to a specific level. These attacks are learned as soon as the creature meets the level requirement, added to the Known Attacks List.
Tutoring is a Camp Action that can be done by any creature using the Teaching skill, and is a simple but time consuming process. There are two types of Tutoring available, Regular and Indirect Tutoring.
In order for a creature to learn a new attack through (Regular) Tutoring, the following conditions must be met:
Please Note:
The 'Student' can never fulfill the 'Source' or 'Instructor' role during Regular Tutoring.The 'Source' and 'Instructor' roles do not need to be filled by the same creature, but they may be.
When these conditions are met, a 6 Span Clock is created and the Instructor rolls an Ordinary Teaching Skill Check.
This roll is further modified by -20 for every Grade higher the attack is than the Student's Grade, and conversely gets modified by +10 for every Grade lower the attack is than the Student's Grade. For every DoS, 1 Span is filled. Every 2 DoF increases the Clock by 1 Span, to a maximum of 12 Spans large.
Once the Tutor Project Clock is filled, the Student learns the new attack and adds it to their Known Attacks List.
A creature attempting to learn an attack that matches one of their <Type> Traits has their Clock start with 4 Spans instead of the usual 6 Spans.
TMs are valuable tutoring items that can assist with teaching a creature a new Move. TMs are written as “TM - <Attack Name>”, and generally are exclusively given out as rewards. Once possessed, TMs act as a 'Source' for Regular Tutoring, and provide a +20 Teaching Checks to Tutor Moves from the TM. However, a TM can only assist one Pokemon per Camp/Downtime.
New moves learned from TMs are added to the creature's Known Attacks List.
TRs are TMs, except for two functions - they are instantaneous but are not reusable! Like TMs they are written as "TR - <Attack Name>", and can be acquired from shops, loot, given as prizes or even Crafted![1] Instead of requiring Teaching Rolls, TRs just require the Camp Action itself to elapse to teach the Move on the TR to one creature, and the TR itself is consumed.
Sometimes, an NPC will offer their expertise or services to help Tutor a creature within the Party. Sometimes as a reward for a Quest, or perhaps gained through bargaining or roleplay on the Players' end, this NPC would then act as an involved creature taking either the 'Source' or 'Instructor' role, or both, in the standard operations for a Tutoring Activity.
You might not always have access to a teacher, or are perhaps running off of a simple observation. You could be reviewing the records of a fierce battle between a Frontier Brain and a highly skilled challenger, reviewing a training manual, or trying to remember back to how getting hit by such an attack felt, or remembering how it looked in person.
In these situtations where no one involved knows the Attack, you may engage in Indirect Tutoring. So to compensate with the situations where you don't have a proper teacher, Players still have the capability to learn attacks, although doing so is much harder than with a proper teacher, possessing a -60 Penalty to the normal Tutor Roll.
If you possess any of the following types of information, you can reduce the penalty slightly, stacking if you have multiple forms:
This means that, with both a recording and a comprehensive manual, Indirect Tutoring of an attack would reduce the penalty to the Tutor Roll to -20, as opposed to the standard -60.
During Indirect Tutoring, the 'Student' and 'Instructor' role may be filled by the same creature, but do not have to be.
Research normally requires you to have access to proper materials, such as a library, and would need to be performed in a town or city. The Scholar perk gives you the means to utilise this action whilst camping out in the wilderness.
When undertaking research, you must first identify the subject matter that you wish to study. The level of obscurity of the information determines the difficulty modifier of the Research skill check, while the level of detail required will determine the size of any Clocks required to complete the task.
¶ Example Subject Matters and Difficulties
(+20) Easy - Finding out who the region's Gym Leaders are and what Pokemon are their Aces.
(+0) Challenging - Finding out the egg group of an uncommon Pokemon that you are not already familiar with.
(-10) Difficult - Finding out a list of subsidiary businesses owned by Devon Corp that they choose not to advertise publicly.
(-40) Near Impossible - Finding out further information about Paradox Pokemon, Ultra Beasts or similar creatures.
If appropriate, GMs may wish to split up the information to be uncovered using the Research action and distribute it piecemeal as spans of the relevant Clock are completed.
You may make a Stealth or Survival skill check to hide the location of your camp. If successful, this activity will prevent increases to Danger Clocks that represent wandering hazards while camped. GMs will want to modify the difficulty of this check accordingly to represent the environment and the risk of wandering hazards.
Be aware! If you were hoping to attract a pokemon with the delicious smell of curry, they may not be able to find a hidden camp!
In the event that you lack the necessary skills to conceal your encampment, there is the alternative of Keeping Watch. This action won't prevent your camp being found by enemies, but it will allow you to spot them coming (with a skill check if necessary) to give you time to prepare your allies for danger.
GMs, avoid making a habit of interrupting Rests with frequent ambushes if you can help it. It can add to the story at times, but don't be surprised if players don't appreciate being hit with challenges while HP and PP deprived and thinking that they're safe to sleep.
Fishing is a specialised variant of the Search For Pokemon exploration action that can be used whilst Camping. You search for Pokemon like you normally would, but this requires you to be camped within convenient distance of a body of water such as a river, a lake or the ocean. Naturally, this can only be used to find aquatic pokemon in these bodies of water.
If your world has access to Remote Boxes or other appropriate means, players can change their roster of Pokemon during Camp. If using "Stable Play" in a Mystery Dungeon or similar scenario, this is an appropriate time for players to change out which character from their Stable they are using.
Stable Play
Stable Play is a type of play often seen in PMD campaigns where players swap out their PC, for example one player may have a Bulbasaur and a Charmander as PCs, but can only bring one as the PC into the dungeon. This way players still get to enjoy playing a variety of different Pokemon, while keeping the PMD nature & balancing of the party in-check.
Once the Crafting system is in place ↩︎