Downtime Actions
Not all of your character’s actions take place on missions or in scenarios. In between moments of investigation, tensions, and violence, you may seek to improve yourself, work on projects, or build your social life. This section covers a range of possible downtime actions you can pursue, though you should work with your GM to discuss other options.
Downtime is normally counted in weeks. Each week, choose one downtime action. This assumes your character is also busy with other activities: socializing, housework, nightlife, relaxing, playing games, and otherwise pursuing life’s mundane activities. If you are singularly focused to the exclusion of all else and/or are using an accelerated-time simulspace, the GM may cut this duration down, to a minimum of 1 day per downtime action.
Healing/Repair: Recovering mental and physical health is an important part of downtime, but it does not consume all of your time off. Consider healing/repair to happen in conjunction with the following downtime actions.
Acquire/Make Things
You may wish to stock up on gear for the next mission, or simply prepare equipment caches, go-bags, and emergency provisions. If you have the Resources trait, use your weekly allotment of Gear Points. If not, you get 2 GP to spend. Restricted and Rare items are only available at the GM’s discretion. If establishing caches (“scratch spaces” to Firewall), be sure to note with your GM where and how these are hidden away.
While being prepared is a smart move, GMs should rein in players that seek to hoard everything they can acquire. Such behavior is not realistic and would certainly lead to the character alienating their friends or burning rep or Resources.
Change Your Motivation
As you meet your goals, have new experiences, and develop new agendas, your motivations may change. Wrapping things up and redirecting your focus allows you to change one of your motivations.
Fulfill Responsibilities
You can’t spend all of your time saving the Solar System. You may have debts to pay off, contacts to maintain, and obligations to attend to. Perhaps you have family and friends to catch up with, a boss to answer to, or freelance gigs that are piling up. Though there is no direct game effect for this type of activity, it does help to wrap up loose ends from previous scenarios and hold on to relationships with NPCs. At the GM’s discretion, this may lay the ground work for acquiring a Contact trait.
Manage Your Rep
The best way to cultivate your rep scores is to positively contribute to others’ lives. This can take the form of things like volunteering your time for collective endeavors (@-rep), helping out your friends (c-rep), creating new art (f-rep), working the streets (g-rep), tracking down leads (i-rep), conducting useful research (r-rep), or training new gatecrashers (x-rep). Work with the GM to choose an appropriate skill test: success earns you 1 point of rep in that network, +1 for each superior success.
Alternatively, you can bypass the test and simply spend Rez Points. Each RP gains you 5 rep points.
Mod Yourself
You have the option of upgrading an existing morph with ware. You can use ware previously acquired but not installed, or choose 1 Moderate or 2 Minor complexity new wares. Modification includes the necessary time in a healing vat with medical professional oversight or with a mod-shop’s nanofabber and technicians.
Keep in mind that one of your upcoming scenarios may require resleeving — check with your GM before choosing this option.
Train and Improve
As you complete scenarios and gather experience during gameplay, you accumulate Rez Points. You can spend your downtime training and use these Rez Points to improve your character’s stats. You cannot spend more than 1 RP on improvement per downtime week.
Spending Rez Points
Improvement RP Cost 5 Rep points 1 RP 5 Skill points 1 RP 1 Specialization 1 RP 1 Psi sleight 1 RP 1 Language 1 RP 1 Aptitude point 1 RP 1 Flex point 2 RP Ego Traits RP = CP Cost/Bonus
Gain a Positive Ego Trait
You may spend RP to purchase a positive ego trait of an equivalent CP Cost. You can also upgrade existing traits to higher levels. The GM must approve this transaction. New traits should only be acquired as a consequence of the storyline and unfolding events in the game. For example, a character that discovered a cache of wealth might be allowed to buy the Resources trait. Note that you must pay RP for any positive ego traits you gain, whether or not you wanted them. If you have no unspent RP available, you must pay out immediately from any future RP you earn until the debt is paid off.
Note that you do not gain RP from any positive ego traits you lose as a consequence of your actions, nor any negative ego traits you acquire during gameplay — you are simply saddled with the new flaw.
Improve and Learn Skills
To improve an existing skill or learn a new one, you must actively practice it, study, and/or seek instruction. Each RP spent gives you 5 skill points to allocate. New skills are raised up from the linked aptitude rating.
Once you have achieved a level of expertise in a skill (60+), you reach a plateau where improvement progresses more slowly and even consistent practice and study have diminished returns. You cannot spend more than 1 skill point on skills that are 60 or over per downtime week. No skill may be raised over 100 (and even then, 99 is still a critical failure).
Improve Aptitudes
Raise aptitudes at the cost of 1 RP per aptitude point. Aptitudes cannot be raised above 30.
Raising the value of an aptitude also raises the value of all linked skills by an equivalent amount (double in the case of Fray/Perceive).
Increase Flex
Increase your ego Flex pool by 1 point per 2 RP. Your ego Flex pool cannot be raised above 3.
Learn a Language
You can learn a new language through study and practice. Each language costs 1 RP. Note that learning a new language usually takes months, so GMs should only allow this for characters that have spent the time learning or immersed themselves in the relevant culture.
Learn a New Psi Sleight
If you possess the Psi trait, you can learn new psi sleights through experimentation and practice. Each sleight costs 1 RP.
Lose a Negative Ego Trait
You can eliminate the handicap of a negative ego trait through hard work and diligence. Such endeavors should require weeks if not months of effort, with appropriate roleplaying and possibly some difficult tests. In fact, overcoming such traits can be the source of an adventure. Once a GM feels that you have made a strong-enough effort, you can pay a number of Rez Points equal to the trait’s original CP bonus to negate it. You can also downgrade traits to a lower level by paying the difference. Note, however, that some negative traits simply cannot be discarded, no matter what you do.
Specialize
You can specialize in an existing skill, as long as that skill is at least rating 30. The cost to learn a specialization is 1RP. Only 1 specialization can be purchased per skill.
Pivo has 4 weeks of downtime. That’s good, because a neo-octopus needs their decompression and alone time.
Pivo still has some damage and wounds from his recent mission, but the GM tells him he’ll be able to easily recover from that in the time he has. So for the first few days at least, Pivo gets in some VR games and rest while floating in a healing vat.
On the first week, Pivo remembers that he left an NPC, a fellow scavenger, in a lurch during the last mission: they had been killed and eaten by an exsurgent. Pivo had recovered their stack (don't ask), though, so he arranges to have it returned to their backup insurance provider so they can be restored. He also makes sure to visit the scavenger when they get resleeved, so he can fill them in on what happened and overcome the lack they experience. The GM decides this leaves the NPC a bit traumatized (they remember being killed after all), but that they are grateful for Pivo explaining what happened (and that the exsurgent is no longer a problem). The scavenger goes back to their daily life, if a bit more ragged around the edges. Knowing what they have encountered, however, the NPC could be useful to Pivo and Firewall in the future. The GM tells Pivo that he can spend a Rez Point and take the scavenger as a contact, per the Contact trait. Pivo has 5 Rez Points, so he spends 1 to get the trait.
Pivo has 4 more Rez Points to spend, so he decides to spend the second week increasing his Guns skill. 1 RP allows him to raise it from 55 to 60. If he instead wanted to raise his Hardware: Aerospace, he would only be able to raise it from 65 to 66 this week, since it is over the threshold of 60 (he would have to spend 4 additional downtime weeks to spend the other 4 skill points and get the skill to 70). So Pivo spends some time practicing at a range and gets a few more bullseyes this time around.
For week three, Pivo wants to boost his Vigor pool. He decides to mod his morph, which let’s him pick 2 Minor complexity ware or 1 Moderate. He chooses novacardium bioware, which raises his Vigor pool from 1 to 2. So Pivo spends more time in a healing vat, playing some more VR games, and one of his hearts gets an upgrade (the one that pumps blood around the body, since octopi have three hearts). When he comes out of the vat, he feels invigorated and ready to jump into action.
During week four, Pivo catches up with friends and contacts to strengthen his rep game. He wants to save his Rez Points, so he opts to make a skill test. He decides to put his techie skills to use, and pulls some favors for scavenger friends who need repairs on their ships. He makes a Hardware: Aerospace Test with his skill of 65, rolling a 38. That’s a superior success, so he gets 2 rep points out of it. He raises his c-rep from 25 to 27. So after a week of patching up hulls and fine-tuning fusion engines, Pivo gets some pings and his rep gets boosted.
The GM also takes a look at Pivo’s character sheet and is reminded that Pivo has the Enemy (Night Cartel) trait. So near the end of this month of downtime, the GM informs Pivo that he hears word that the Night Cartel has sent agents to the habitat to have a word with him. Pivo decides that’s a good sign to move on, setting the stage for the next adventure.