Homebrew Rules & Expansions: Research Points (for Pathfinder's Downtime System)

The Writer

While the Downtime system covers a wide variety of sittuations on Pathfinder, it covers very loosely the aspect of academic research. This is no wonder: TRPGs are not designed with the idea of players wanting to play characters that will spend days, months, or years clustered in labs, libraries, or schools but instead exploring a dangerously fantastic world, thus putting more enphasis on the combat aspect and less on calmer or more modest ways of realization. Nevertheless, nothing says a character that stays home unraveling the mysteries of the universe can't be as epic or glorious as their more actively adventuring counterparts. After all, many great minds would agree that the quest for knowledge on itself is one of the greatest kinds of adventure on it's own.

I present here an optional add-on to the Downtime sub-system that not only addresses this kind of intend from players slightly more bent towards the academic while granting them also a means to demonstrate that there are also ways to progress as a player without the need of combat or other violent sittuations which can bring a non-dissruptive and interesting new flavoring to any campaign.

Research Points (RP).- In this variant of the Downtime sub-system, we add Research Points as an special new type of capital. However, different from GP, Goods, Influence, Labor and Magic, Research Points have some extra limitations as to how you can use them and how much you can have. A character earns Research Points by making use of the Research Facts & Lore downtime activity, which normally grants the character 3 chances at a particular Knowledge skill check, granting instead 1 chance only. Nevertheless, pretty much like in the case of the other types of capital, the result yields an amount of RP based on the table Skilled Capital Earnings from Ultimate Campaign (this means that all results are divided by 10 and rounded down to the nearest whole number or 0 if not possible). The Earned Cost of 1 RP is 20GP and, thus, it's purchase cost it's 40GP, representing all the expenses in loaning books, entire libraries for days, language translation services, and perhaps even paying for research facilities and the proper materials for the experiments or specimens. (Optionally, certain campaigns or sittuations may make the Earned Cost of RP 0, implying sittuations like a deep study of material at an school library open to all students for free, or a research that is sponsored by a wealthy patron unconcerned about money expenditures; in the other hand, small research like the one for which the original Research Facts & Lore was designed is better handled with the original rules).

Being a mental type of capital, however, Research Points cannot be kept indefinetely without a proper storage for long (after all, ideas are quite volatile, specially ingenious ones). As such, after 1 month of research, the characters requires to make an Artistry (Scientific Papers) check in order to make proper notes of all the progress so far or loss it's current RP at a ratio of 8 RP per day. Be it handwritten annotations and diagrams or printed notes, the result in the check determines how much RP is lost (or saved) in the process as follows:

* 0 - 9 (Hasted Writings).- Usually done by someone lacking talent with words, organization, or as a quick desperate remainder of some sort, hasted writings are more hints and clues than an actual means to store information. Unless a DC 20 Linguistics check is made, all RP is lost and the work is unusable. However, upon success, 25% of the original RP might be reconstructed with a minimum of 1.
* 10 - 14 (Rough Draft).- A collection of notes and snippets that serve to stimulate the memory of the original researcher but usually fail to convey a solid idea to others, making it complex for others to work it with. There is a 50% RP loss with a minimum of 1 RP. 
* 15 - 19 (Summary).- While not putting the minute detail of the reseach, the general idea is decently preserved. There is a 25% RP loss with a minimum of 1 RP. 
* 20 (Perfect).- The character has managed to perfectly convey all his ideas with proper wording and diagrams. There is no RP loss and, additionally, for every 5 points by which the DC is exceeded, the work earns an extra 1 RP as either inspiration struck the writer or new developements shown themselves upon putting the research into written form. 

In addition to the time constrain, characters are limited in the amount of RP they can hold at a time since most normal minds lack a perfect memory or an unlimited data capacity. A character can only hold an amount of RP equal to it's INT score, and any additional attempt to gain further RP is wasted until invested or noted down as explained above. To note down the RP with the described Artistry (Scientific Papers) check consumes 1 hour per RP noted down and, thus, only a max of 8 RP can be successfully saved on a single day by a single character.

Making Use Of Research Points, Goals, and Breakthroughs

The purpose of the Research Point Add-On to the Downtime Sub-system is to make a simplified emulation of how actual developement of new ideas and discoveries work and come to be. As such, a character making use of this system is, most likely, aiming to achieve something novel on a particular field of lore or science or, perhaps, become really well documented or sagely on a particular topic. For the sake of simplicity, such ends are grouped in 2 categories: Goals and Breakthroughs. Granted how the earning of RP is not as "readily" as the other types of capital, achieving Goals and Breakthoughs is not an easy task and, thus, they are meant to grant the character who is successfull in achieving them an amount of XP appropiate to the challenge at hand. In the next section, we explain the new terms in detail as well as a simple means to measure how much XP a succesfull character receives upon completion of his academical achievements.

Goals.- A Goal is not a real discovery or something new, but instead a lore related achievement the character is looking to attain. Good examples of Goals would be getting to understand in detail how draconic physiology works, a detailed relation of the stellar pathways in the nightsky, deep understanding of the minute details in the history of a country, all the available escape routes of a castle both known and secret, etc. Each specific Goal has an RP cost that must be paid in order to be achieved. The cost criteria of this RP is left to the GM to decide depending on the specific sittuation (as a comprensive list would be mostly impossible), but most Goals hover over a threshold spanning from 1 RP to 30 RP, though higher requirements are possible. In addition to the XP reward received upon achievement, any Goal which RP cost is 20 or higher bestows a permanent +1 Lore Bonus on 1 Knowledge Skill related to the particular Goal in question and an extra +1 for each 10 RP the cost goes beyond 20.

Breakthroughs.- A Breakthrough is any kind of discovery or unveiling of previously unknown lore that might actually lead to an actual change of some sort in a specific branch of knowledge, the developement of new inventions, or even changes on the way society thinks or does things. While Goals are, generally, detailed recollections of knowledge readily available to any person or group dedicating enough time and effort to achieve, a Breakthrough is the genesis of new things, be them something as humble as practical answers never found before to common problems or something as majestic as discoveries that might shake the foundations of society, history, medicine, filosophy, science, etc. Pretty much like with Goals, Breakthroughs have an RP cost and the criteria, once again, is left to the GM. However, granted the possible magnitude of this discoveries, Breakthroughs tend to have far higher RP costs, spanning from 35 RP to 145 RP. It is possible that Breakthroughs with higher RP requirements exist, but they would be QUITE rare and subject to such mind boggling elucubrations as to make them the stuff of Mythic Campaigns. It must be noted, thought that, while the seed of something new, a Breakthrough is NOT a new invention per sé, but rather the THEORY behind it and, possibly, the plans or needed steps in order to achieve such an invention, achievement, change, technique, technology, etc. As such, the bonuses, powers, abilities, or benefits a particular new invention might bring depend on the finished invention per sé and not in the Breakthrough. However, aside of making the posibility of something new plausible, every achieved Breakthrough grants the character a permanent +5 Insight Bonus on the relevant skill used to bring to reality and/or practice the actual theory developed on the Breakthrough.

Research.- A Research is the process by which a character (or group of characters) adquires and invests RP in order to achieve a number of Goals and/or Breakthroughs as well as all the information and things related to this particular quest. Many high profile Researchs may require the association of several characters given the limitations on RP storage a character has and, while it would be prefered, it is not necesary for only one Research to be conducted at a time but the RP gained should be noted separately for each Breakthrough or Goal pursued. This, however, tends to slow down the progress towards the completion of a Research as the RP capacity limit of a character remains the same, regardless of how many different Researches he might be involved at the same time. For example, if Niireme'a had an INT score of 18 and was involved in 2 different Researches, her total RP pool IS 18: if she decides to have 10 RP of one Research and 8 RP of the other is up to her but she can't exceed her current 18. In addition, some Researchs require SPECIFIC facilities, conditions and/or materials that cannot be satisfied merely with the abstract Research Point system (aimed at investigations where the materials or means aren't too exotic or too difficult to acquire) and such might be the subject of complete side-quests or even "side-campaigns". Finally, as a Research is, in general lines, a quest on itself that might be as demanding (and, sometimes, as dangerous, too) as any other kind of adventure, their completion grants the player characters involved a measure of XP based on the CR of the Research which, on itself, is based on the amount of RP the particular Goals or Breakthroughs demands as follows: 1 RP = CR 1/8, 5 RP = CR 1/6, 10 RP = CR 1/4, 15 RP = CR 1/3, 20 RP = CR 1/2, 25 RP = CR 1, 30 RP = CR 2, 35 RP = CR 3, etc, etc, etc. As such, upon the resolution of a Research, the involved characters are awarded the sum of all the XP of each individual Goal and Breakthrough and an extra amount of XP equal to double the amount earned for a battle against a CR equal to the involved characters' APL.

Wealth.- As an additional bonus, some GMs may allow characters to be able to contemplate the idea of earning a living through researching. While it is said that fantasy endures all, the idea of a "scientist" in the sense we understand in modern times is considerably outlandish in classical medieval fantasy where such a place was held by magic and religion, making it difficult and relatively unappealing the idea of becomming a scientist as a means of living in settings of that kind. As such, on settings like that, is far more logical for a character to represent remunerated academical work through the use of the earning of capital with a Knowledge skill as stated in the regular rules for earning capital. In the other hand, is completely plausible that the characters want to sell the results of their hard work to an appropiate customer (be it a kingdom, organization, academy, wealthy client, etc.), and this works pretty much as if wanting to sell a magic item on the market. However, selling information or intellectual work is not as easy as putting a new stall on the market and selling your wares and getting to find the right customer can be tricky and might require the use of the Contacts sub-system found on Ultimate Campaign. Finally, in order to put a prize to the characters' work, simply add the CR of all the component Goals and Breakthroughs and make an Average Challenge Rating. Compare this number to the APL number in the table Treasure Values Per Encounter and give the Research a prize in GP based on the Slow column. It might be the case that the ACR is a number 1 or more steps away from the actual APL involved in the Research so, in such case, adjust the GP value accordingly up to 1 step below or 4 steps ahead as it would be if rewarding the party for an encounter steps ahead or below their APL. This final GP result should be the Research's base prize on the market and, thus, the starting offer the characters should make to their patrons. Keep in mind, however that, different from a magic item, you CANNOT sell the same Research to the same customer twice and, even if selling it to a new customer, there is a 20% chance that the Research will decrease it's GP base value in a 25% as information spreads quickly and a secret or new discovery sold rarely remains "fresh" and lucrative for long. 

The Writer.