One of my players – a bard – asked if he could extort shop owners during his downtime. The rogue is already stealing from them, so why not extortion and blackmail?

The “Crime” downtime activity – as given in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything – requires three checks with random DCs. It basically represents a burglary.

For Blackmail, those checks don’t make sense. So, let’s uses the Crime basis, and go with three other checks:

• A Wisdom (Insight) check, so you know how far to push the mark
• An Intelligence (Investigation) or Charisma (Deception) check, representing you gaining the information
• A Charisma (Intimidation) check, to get the mark to pay

Then there are the extorters, who say “you pay us, or something might happen to your shop”. Similar idea:

• A Wisdom (Insight) check, so you know how far to push the mark
• A Strength (Athletics) check, to demonstrate your physical power
• A Charisma (Intimidation) check, to get the mark to pay

I’m very fond of the downtime activities in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. At some point, I’ll work out what my gold economy is doing, so I can redo the Buying and Crafting magic item rules.

To say I’m not happy with how the tables work for buying magic items is somewhat of an understatement, but we’ll leave this for another day.