9
votes
What is the best way to add a growth mechanic to Dungeons and Dragons?
There isn't really a great mechanic for learning skills and languages in dungeons and dragons. This makes it a bit lacking if there is a certain amount of off-time between adventures and missions. It would be cool to think some sort of mundane dnd. Like mini-games in video game RPGs that make your character a little bit more personal. A quirks mechanic, that adds a certain way your character acts in the every day or what your character normally does. The risk is that it could turn into too much of a dice roller and the players might engage less with the story. What do you think?
5e (and D&D in general, forever) has always been a series of systems that are very back-of-the-bus for downtime rules. The entire game is based on 'beat bad guys, gain xp' and has never tried to step beyond that. Other systems, however, have gone into some seriously heavy detail for downtime rules and even require it to learn anything new. Systems like Earthdawn don't allow any advancement until there is downtime to reflect and learn.
I tend to simply ignore the rules (such as they are) and make it up on the fly for my D&D games. If characters want to learn new skills and abilities I'll let them, even up to learning new feats. Players can have a 'day job' such as a Bard performaing at taverns, a thief fencing items, a warrior fighting in an arena, etc. I just give them a weekly flat income and the opportunity to meet new contacts/orgs/quest hooks through the jobs. I'll also let players run on a bit of a 'solo' adventure via emails if they are doing something for character development. It gives them something only they know to talk about/share with other players as well.
Item crafting and economic investments (such as someone becoming a land baron, or starting up a military weapon supply business) can get a lot more thorny, as it's entering empire-building territory, which is fairly common for characters in the L10+ arena. These have to be managed so they don't give the players too much wealth/power too fast, and can be used to give the players 'something to lose' for adventure hooks - such as a competitor burning down one of their warehouses etc.
None of this stuff really lends itself to 'simple' rules.
Honestly this is the best reply here. Really thinks for this comment!
Could be worse, could be classic Traveller - you basically had to acquire all your skills before "retirement" at the end of character generation, and there was no other means of advancement than earning money (later editions IIRC added skill improvement mechanics).
There are downtime rules in DMG and Xanathar's and I'm reasonably certain they cover learning new skills
They do but they aren't very satisfactory to my knowledge.
Are they supposed to be? Downtime is the time between adventures when nothing much is happening. The rules for it need to be robust enough to function, but they aren't meant to replace gameplay.
If downtime itself becomes too elaborate now your playing that game instead of D&D. Which is fine, you do you, but it should be a concious choice.
One thing you could do is write up a quick paragraph before the session of what your character was doing in the interim. Either combined with or separate from the rules that are already there.
I guess they don't have to be too elaborate. But I kinda want to strike a balance that allows players to better picture their characters as people.
Unearthed Arcana has some extended downtime rules you might look at, and there are some homebrew rules out there of various quality
That said, you might have better results finding a downtime system you like from a system that's got a good one and adapting it to your own ends, there's some discussion of these types of games over at rpggeek
Thanks for the links will definitely check them out!
In my experience, how to solve these and other problems are a huge part of what DMing and how you play works. It's all about the tone around the board and how creative/reasonable people are.
Like if someone builds a min/maxing build that makes everyone else obsolete in some regard, the DM adapts enemies so that person becomes less useful. Similarly, if a party lacks progression, there's magic in the D&D world. there are elegant fixes for all sorts of things, like bringing in allies, new party members, curses etc. to add new or change stale dynamics within a team.
If you need strict rules for "downtime" your party likely has some larger meta-issues to talk through before continuing the game.
I got the impression that OP was looking at it from a narrative perspective, rather than being concerned about game balance. 2 months pass in game, the characters likely aren't just sitting around in a tavern waiting for the next plot hook. They're out doing things. Fighting monsters. Freelancing. Hunting down arcane lore. Or just working on their side hustle. Or is adventuring the side hustle? Anyway, the point is they're doing STUFF. And (arguably) that should be reflected in play.
Yeah you actually got at what I was trying to say pretty well.
I played in one campaign where the DM really wanted to have all the PCs have lives outside of adventuring, both for the sake of their backstories and for the sake of what they will do when not actively adventuring. This fit well for the type of game he wanted to run, which boiled down to a dungeon crawl every few (in-game) months separated by mini-adventures and character advancement. XP progression was milestone based, and the actual act of leveling up was one of the things that we tied to the "time off" from adventuring - meeting with trainers / masters / teachers and learning more.
In addition to leveling up, the PCs also took part various activities, some of which eventually contributed to learning new skills. If a PC was a hunter in their off-time, then they'd have the opportunity to learn Perception or Survival, if they were an farmer, then Nature or Animal Handling, etc. It wasn't a mechanically heavy part of the game; it was a narrative part with a mechanical benefit.