A true rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 1 week long, in which your character performs downtime activities and pursues their own interests. This is your life between adventures—a chance to slow down, explore the setting, and mingle with others in relative safety.
Follow these 3 steps for each week of rest:
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Choose lifestyle: Choose your quality of lifestyle for the week—wretched, squalid, poor, modest, comfortable, wealthy, or aristocratic. You’ll usually need to pay for this upfront.
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Choose primary activity: Choose your primary downtime activity and pay any relevant costs.
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Settle up: It’s the end of the week—gain the result of your primary activity (wages, information, etc.) and check to see if your wounds and Afflictions recover. If you have any outstanding debts, settle up.
1. Choose your Lifestyle
Your lifestyle determines the level of comfort you live in during your week and the types of people you’ll be surrounded by—if you aim to meet nobles and other aristocrats, you’ll need to support an expensive lifestyle.
The Lifestyle Conditions table below shows the lifestyle cost for an adventurer in gold pieces per week, and the condition it leaves you in at the end of the week.
Lifestyle Table
| Lifestyle | Cost per Week (GP) | Hit Points | Starting Hit Dice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wretched | 0 | 50% | 0 |
| Squalid | 5 | 50% | 25% |
| Poor | 15 | 75% | 50% |
| Modest | 80 | 100% | 75% |
| Comfortable | 150 | 100% | 100% |
| Wealthy | 300 | 100% + 10% THP | 100% |
| Aristocratic | 700 | 100% + 20% THP | 100% |
Renting vs. Owned Property
The lifestyle costs above assume that you are renting your living quarters—inns and taverns, while convenient for travelers, are not cheap. But sometimes a character comes to own property that offers a particular lifestyle—a poor farmhouse, a modest hut, an aristocratic mansion—either by buying one, building one, inheriting one, or being rewarded with one.
If you own the property you’re staying in, the cost for that lifestyle quality is halved—however, you still pay the full expense for any other lifestyle.
If you own property, you must pay 50% of the lifestyle cost to maintain it each week—whether you use it or not. If you rent it out to other occupants, it generates an income of equivalent value instead.
Starting Hit Points & Hit Dice
Your lifestyle has a major impact on your health. Once you complete a long rest, update your starting hit points and starting hit dice to match your lifestyle.
2. Pick a Primary Activity
During your True Rest, you’ll have time to pursue a primary interest. This is the main focus of your week and something you spend roughly half of each day on, leaving a quarter-day for sleep and a quarter for miscellaneous activity—shopping, eating, basic socializing, etc.
You only have time to perform two primary activities per week—these are your primary focuses for the days ahead. Choose one from the suggestions below, or discuss one with your DM.
- Work for gold
- Work for renown
- Spread rumors
- Study a language
- Sell an exotic item
- Learn a tool
- Research
- Training
- Carouse & socialize
- Rest & relaxation
- Volunteer work
- Criminal activity
- Run a business
- Perform a service
- Find a patron
- Recruit a contact
- Craft a magic item
- Bring in the harvest
- Learn a language
- Brew mead
- Research an original spell
- Decode an ancient language
- Convert the godless
- Compete in a tournament
- Woo the marquess
- Perform a religious ritual
- Create a work of art
Activity Complications
Your activity has a small chance of generating a complication that may make life more difficult—hurting yourself working, offending a lord while carousing, damaging a priceless book while researching.
At the end of each activity, roll a d10—on a 1, something unfortunate happens as a result of your activities.
3. Settle Up
At the end of your week, settle up your debts and reap any rewards from your primary activity. Check to see if any of your long-term wounds or injuries have healed, and start preparing for your next adventure.
Stress
Completing a long rest automatically resets your Stress level to 0.