House Rule:Downtime Effects for Lifestyle (D&D 5e)

While you are free to choose any level of lifestyle you wish and can afford to live, there are ups and downs to the various choices. For every week of downtime a character engages in they will roll for a random encounter with a bonus to the roll determined by the lifestyle they maintained for that week. 

Lifestyle	Modifier
Wretched	-9
Squalid	-5
Poor	-2
Modest	--
Comfortable	+2
Wealthy	+4
Aristocratic	+6

Any lifestyle that imposes a penalty suffers a further -1 if the Recuperating downtime action is chosen.

The effects of the d20 roll are determined by the following chart with two exceptions. On the roll of a natural one you also have a "Run in With Thugs" and a natural 20 always produces "Approached with an Adventure Opportunity" in addition to whatever either of these modified rolls produced.

Modified Roll	Result
-3 or less	Insufficient Conditions
-2 to 0	Exposed to poison/disease
1 to 20	No Encounter
21 to 22	Approached with Adventure Opportunity
23 or higher	Approached with Downtime Business Opportunity

• Run in With Thugs- You have a chance encounter with some manner of bandits, ruffians, or possibly angry city guard. The DM can create a custom encounter or roll on each of the tables below for the number of enemies and type of encounter. If your modified roll produces an additional effect, these encounters can be together (you’re cut by infected trash during an encounter or have your shelter or source of food destroyed) or they can be separate events. Regardless of the type of encounter or level, the NPCs encountered are hostile, at least at the outset.

D20	Result
1	4d8 level 1 unclassed characters
2 to 3	3d6 level 1 unclassed characters.
4 to 7	2d4 level 1 classed characters.
8 to 11	D4 level 2 classed characters.
12 to 15	D3 level 3 classed characters.
16 to 18	d2 level 4 classed characters.
19	1 level 5 classed character
20	1 equal CR character

D20 + Lifestyle modifier	Result
-3 or less	City Guards
-2 to 1	Assault to murder or run target out of area
2-10	Drunken brawl
11	Targeted for personal vendetta
10-19	Theft/Mugging
21+	Robbery

• Insufficient Conditions- Your lifestyle exposes you to privation and the effects of the elements. You gain a level of exhaustion and cannot regain hit points. Levels of exhaustion cannot be regained through rest until the character is again able to regain hit points.
• Exposed to Poison/Disease- Through unsanitary living conditions, rampant infection, and sharing living space with various types of vermin you are exposed to some form of disease. You can roll on the chart below to determine the type and severity or the DM may choose one from any source or create one. Roll a d20 and add your lifestyle bonus.

Modified Roll	Result
-5 or less	Reroll on this table with lifestyle modifier. Roll on the table an additional time without lifestyle modifier.
-4 to 0	You are exposed to a poison. Roll 2d8 and compare against the chart of poisons on pg 257 of the DMG. A result of 2 is Assassin’s Blood, while a result of 15 is Wyvern poison. On a 16 roll again on the poisons table and make an additional roll on this table without the lifestyle modifier.
1 to 9	You are effected as if targeted by the 5th level Contagion spell. The DC is 16. If you succumb to the disease you make a new save at the end of each week rather than it ending. If you make three saves in a row you have thrown off the disease
10 to 13	You are exposed to Sight Rot
14 to 16	You are exposed to Sewer Plague
17 to 18	You are exposed to Cackle Fever
19+	False alarm

• No Encounter- Through hard work or the expenditure of savings you successfully provide yourself adequate living accommodations and avoid any extra entanglements. 
• Approached with Adventure Opportunity- At lower lifestyle levels you might stumble into a plot gone awry or perhaps the obvious success of your lifestyle attracts a well-connected but less adventurous individual with a possible lead to untold wealth is interested in sponsoring an expedition. Regardless, whether the hook provided is part of the main plot, a side quest, something you can pass on, or comes with a set of rails that will altering the course of your life, it’s time to gather the party and consider options. If this encounter is the result of a natural 20 roll which produces a modified result in addition to this one these encounters can be separate or together. Perhaps you encounter a merchant under the effects of a curse who, once you save them, is looking for a partner to provide credit with which they can finance a new invention or short term investment (half the rolled wait) arises which brings unfortunate legal, political, or magical side effects.
• Approached with a Downtime Business Opportunity- Your affluence attracts the attention of an individual with a non-adventuring business opportunity. Perhaps they have a merchant ship in port that needs credit to fund its next voyage, a local business is about to go under and can be bought out for cheap, a guild is ready to expand but needs support to make that leap, or a noble is about to make a power play that could bring a windfall to their supporters and you’ve made just enough of a splash to tilt the social scales ever so far in their favor. Record that value you spent on lifestyle expenses for the week, this is the investment you made. After 3d10 days have passed, any time you have downtime you can check on this investment by rolling on the table below. You receive a +1 bonus to the roll for each full 10gp value in the investment.

D100	Result
01-20	You lose your original investment and owe one half that value. For each unpaid debt you take a -10 to any rolls made on this table.
21-30	You lose your original investment.
31-40	You recover half of your original investment.
41-60	You recover your original investment.
61-80	You recover your original investment plus 1d6+5 gp
81-90	You recover your original investment plus 2d8+5 gp
91 or higher	You recover your original investment plus 3d10+5 gp

~~*~~

While the Urban Encounters tables on pg 114 of the DMG does generate a level of "life" for urban environments, I feel like there are some pieces missing from that table which I have specifically included. There is a high likelihood that, even using my larger system, if no events are generated I'll throw a single roll on the Urban Encounter table for the party once per downtime, just to give some life to the city. Even if I don't, some of the discussion on the chart is useful to events I've described or to add even more spice. So, if I like the table well enough to use in some capacity, why the larger and more complex system?
I often think of myself as a "lowest common denominator" GM. Whatever the worst outcome of a system is, that's the outcome I expect one or more of my players to arrive at. The lifestyle system in 5e is a very cool roleplay mechanic, and several of the backgrounds' feature play directly into it. However, it has no teeth. The Lawful Evil (pure mechanical advantage) player gets an easy boost by looking at this system and says "I can freely get an advantage over the intended power curve by just ignoring this." Consequently, I often find myself shoring up such fluffy systems with mechanics. The trick is to find a way to do so that a) doesn't turn the game into Accountants and Actuaries and b) rewards the players that would have done things anyway for roleplaying purposes without making the rewards also clearly abusable. 

I think I've heard these concepts also referred to as "narrative interest" and "mechanical balance." I'll know I've found the right scale when the lawyers dutifully mark off their upkeep and the roleplayers make noises of delight at even the worst possible outcome of their random rolls because it's an encounter they can interact with.

Many of these types of events can bleed into one another. Maybe you planned to have the first Adventure Opportunity be the discovery of a dead body, but none of your players rolled that for their downtime but one did get an encounter with thugs. Suddenly, rather than the aftermath of a murder, the character finds themselves in the midst of an assassination or encountering guards who already found the body and just want someone nearby to blame. While the system is designed to be bare bones mechanics that encourage perfunctory handling to avoid bogging down the "more interesting" story elements, its also full of hooks the use of which will quickly bring the character's home area to life as it forces the characters, and characters, to move at the speed of the world rather than making the world wait for them to be ready to save it.

I do find that, while I hate random generation of characters, I love random event charts. At its core this separation is because random character generation forces you into decisions about who you play that you may not enjoy while the events that go on around you are, as in life, entirely out of your control. All you can do is decide what you (or your character) want to do about them. The ability to offload the "trivial" things that make up the day to day experience of an adventurer while I focus on developing larger sweeping events is priceless. On the other hand, simply waiving away those smaller events which make up the texture of a life dulls the vibrance of the world making it seem less alive and "real." It also shuts out many opportunities for development of small traits, characteristics, and personality quirks in the characters. I've had more than a few random events that have become non-randomly repeating events or central to ongoing plots because the way a player handled the situation was so unexpected (whether good, bad, funny, or an awe-inspiring combination of all of the above) that doing anything else would have been a huge missed opportunity to increase the enjoyment of everyone at the table, including those who were simply observers.



An edited version of this house rule is now available at the DM'S Guild.