Studying (Intelligence Skill Training)

[Keenberg]

Seeing as how feats in 4e aren't nearly as powerful as they were in 3.X, I am dabbling in some ways of granting feats. The particular feat I'm considering is Skill Training, limited to Intelligence skills. Rather than just giving out the feat at a certain time, such as at a certain level, I'd like to provide the characters a choice with the following:

Studying
After much time spent pouring over texts and tomes, you have become learned...
Books in this age are very valuable, and quite a rarity. For this reason, there are no public libraries. Rather, books are usually held in secret under lock and key. Should a character find a book somewhere, be it in a bazaar at great price, a trusting wizard's library, or a dragon's horde, books can be studied extensively. No book alone will grant a character a valuable amount of information, but multiple books can!

Process:

• A PC may devote an extended rest to study a book, although they may not sleep during this extended rest. Four extended rests devoted to the study of one book exhaust the book of information. (book content can simply be assumed and not discussed in any detail, or it could be a fun metaprop, or content could be communicated directly from the DM (a great way to tell your party about how your world works))
• Once a PC has exhausted 3 books of one type, he or she has gathered a vast amount of information on the topic, but has not yet come to a final conclusion about the concept. At this point, they must find an expert of the field in which to take council from or debate with (a chance for RP, or the RP can simply be skipped and the talk is assumed.) This conference takes one last extended rest period.
• The PC is now well-versed in the field of study. He or she may take the Skill Training Feat in the corresponding skill.

• Bibles correspond to Religion
• Historical Texts (on battles, royalty, etc..) correspond to History
• Arcane Tomes* correspond to Arcana

*Please note that Arcane Tomes (in this definition) are not spellbooks or ritual books. They are factual texts about aspects of the arcane such as the spellweave, great historical arcanists, the spellplague and such.

I have mixed feelings about my system at present. An aspect I like is that is lends itself quite well. It provides player choices, roleplaying opportunities, and is an outlet for metaprops. I feel the process of gathering books is easily delegated by the DM, who could simply avoid dropping three books at any one time.
I don't think the bookkeeping entailed is out of hand. It is only a few marks tallied in a notes section to keep track of.
The only real concern I have may or may not pose a problem: once three books are collected, they can easily be passed from party member to party member and result in the quick granting of five Skill Training feats. I'm not really sure whether this would do overwhelming damage to the skill challenge system or not. However, it could also provide for one hell of a skill challenge and RP scenario in itself, when the characters schedule and hold a veritable "council" on the Arcane in a large city.

What are your views on this system? I don't want to scrap this idea, so do not suggest this. Please provide constructive criticism and offer ways to improve it (which can even entail of a large overhaul of mechanics.)

 

[Zinovia]

I like the general concept of allowing learning by studying, but you do have to be careful for the reasons you stated. The group quite likely would share books around, and all gain the requisite skill if they wanted it. I'd also require more time to study any given book. 4 rests is 24-32 hours, and not really enough time to absorb the information in any kind of scholarly tome. You can't grind through that stuff at the rate you would read a novel. Perhaps by increasing the time substantially, you'd only have a few people interested in studying any given skill. Make it a couple weeks worth of general study for each book, with a minimum number of hours (rests) devoted to it.

I don't think letting characters have more trained skills is necessarily going to break anything, although it will make skills challenges easier on them. So long as you make the amount of effort it takes to acquire the skill quite significant or expensive, then you can likely limit it to skills the individual characters really want to dedicate themselves to. For instance, the mentor they need to learn from could charge them a lot of money, make them go on a quest for him, or require some other sort of commitment. That prevents others in the group who care less about that skill from trying to learn it, because it won't be worth it to them. Good luck with your system.

In my own group the entire party speaks Elven with the exception of one character. They have all resolved to teach him the language, and I'm going to allow it. The Linguist feat simply doesn't fit, and I think it has an Int prerequisite that he doesn't meet.

Language lessons could lead to some fun roleplaying. I can picture the rest of the group speaking nothing but Elven, to help the fighter pick it up more quickly, with him responding in broken, ungrammatical sentences. I'm just going to give him proficiency in the language after some amount of game time has elapsed with his 5 fluent companions, but that will be at least a few months.

 

[Keenberg]

Perhaps I need some sort of easy formula to go by to find a reasonable required study time. Perhaps the following: (8*(16-int mod-1/2 char's level) = number of hours needed. This factors in the character's intelligence, which would definetly factor in to how quickly you could read and absorb the information. Here are some examples:

For a very intelligent (20int), low-level (2nd) character, the formula is this:
8*(16-5-1)=80 hours, or 10 extended rests at 8 hours a piece.

For a average-intelligence (10 int) low-level (2nd) character:
8*(16-0-1)=120 hours, 15 extended rests.

For a very intelligent (26 int) high level (22nd) character:
8*(16-8-11)=0
(Is this a problem? Not in my opinion, because a character at 22nd level who REALLY wanted to train a certain skill would have taken the feat by this point.)

The question popping up now is, again, whether or not the book keeping is getting out of hand. I feel the devoted wouldn't mind tallying 10 marks and then erasing them when the book is done. The process of study is a arduous, but being able to write (EXHAUSTED!) next to the book's item would probably provide some accomplishment to the player. And accomplishment is fun!

I really like the idea of the mentor charging the group or sending them on an errand (quest) for him to gain his trust. After all, it wouldn't be too believable for any given expert in the field to drop what they are doing in life, just to talk to some wanderers from out of town.

The idea is only growing on me. It provides characters with a chance for personal quests without demanding too much from the DM or disrupting with the main Party quest. Thank you, Zinovia! Keep the feedback coming guys!

 

[LostSoul]

D&D has a tradition of magic books that increase your abilities. They disappear once you finish reading them. (Manual of Gainful Exercise, etc.) Instead of having the magic be expended, have the book teleport away. Some kind of artefact of Ioun or something. Attracts Vecna worshippers like flies, who seek to burn and destroy the books to keep secret the knowledge they contain.

Oh, that could be a neat twist: you need to read the whole thing in one sitting or else *poof* it's gone.

 

[Keenberg]

True, but I feel its a bit cheap to just dump skill training on a character. It might have a place in a more fast-paced campaign, but ours is more long-term, progress oriented. Maybe some magic books could pop up wih this system. They'd only take one extended rest to read, and then vanish, counting for exhausting one book. It could reward being devoted to gaining the feat by cutting down the study time drastically. Plus it would be a wonderful surprise! Thanks for the idea.

 

[LostSoul]

Hmm... here's another idea: the book is alive. When you read it, it forms a dialogue with you; it writes itself as you progress through it in response to unasked questions and thoughts.

Someone else who picks up the book might find it full of gibberish because they're missing one-half of the conversation.

It could still take a long time to study the book ("Go away and think about this", the book says, not revealing any more information until you've had some time to process the ideas), but you wouldn't be able to pass books around to each other.

You can take the filled-out books to the temple of Ioun to be reset in a special ritual, though the temple has been lost since the Fall and is likely to have been taken over by cultists of Vecna or worse.

 

[Keenberg]

Hmm... here's another idea: the book is alive. When you read it, it forms a dialogue with you; it writes itself as you progress through it in response to unasked questions and thoughts.

Someone else who picks up the book might find it full of gibberish because they're missing one-half of the conversation.

It could still take a long time to study the book ("Go away and think about this", the book says, not revealing any more information until you've had some time to process the ideas), but you wouldn't be able to pass books around to each other.

You can take the filled-out books to the temple of Ioun to be reset in a special ritual, though the temple has been lost since the Fall and is likely to have been taken over by cultists of Vecna or worse.

Wow, man! That is a killer idea! I'm definitely going to use this in the system. Bravo, sir!

 

[eriktheguy]

I'm currently have my players quest to get some books from a library. They are going to take it to their intelligent village elder who is going to read it for them to grant them some special bonuses.
+2 to diplomacy in a certain region
+2 damage against undead
+2 to nature checks in a certain wilderness area

You could make getting the book part of the challenge, or require an NPC to instruct them on the books contents.

'I'm wary of X number hours to read and gain this bonus' ideas because they stink of all the parts of 2e and 3e that I don't miss. I would make these books something that are difficult to obtain, something circumstantial, or something relevant to only one players.

Some examples are: a tome that teaches the players how to kill orcs (+2 damage against orcs), or A study book on the mathematical theories of arcane magic (the wizard reads it and gains a permanent +2 to arcana)

 

[Keenberg]

'I'm wary of X number hours to read and gain this bonus' ideas because they stink of all the parts of 2e and 3e that I don't miss.

Don't get me wrong, I love and prefer 4e, but... maybe I'm also just a little old school...

 

[Starfox]

4E did away with time as a resource for adventurers. Making magic items, for example, now take a single hour. DMs are now free to set the pace of their campaign as they like. In earlier editions, there were mandatory periods of rest for making magic items, spell research etc. However, this created a problem. The non-caster classes suddenly had months to spend and nothing to spend it on. This created a balance problem and a source of friction between players; time became a resource for adventurers.

If you reintroduce time as a resource for adventurers, make sure there is a plethora of different projects for different characters to spend time on.