D&D 5E Training for Leveling (DMG) too cheap?

[MNblockhead]

Thank you, lots of food for thought, but I'm not sure I think it is pointless.

Honestly? I think there are no issues, but it's pointless.

On a campaign budget, if you require your PCs to spend 100 GP to level up, as a DM you will have to let them earn 100 GP before next level. If you require them to spend 10000 GP, you'll have to let them earn 10000 GP.

That won't be an issue. This is not a typical 5e campaign. It is Rappan Athuk, there is tons of treasure. XP is awarded for gold taken out of the dungeon and treasure taken out of the dungeon and converted to gold. But why all the gold? Well, I want an old-school-inspired sub-game for downtime. I plan on using a mix of rivals, allies, strongholds, etc. Characters seek fortune and fame in the mega-dungeon and use it to fund their interests outside of it.

There is really no difference, even when you consider the price for levelling compared to the magic item prices, because 90% of the players will not want to be prevented from levelling up, which feels more personal than gaining magic items. So theoretically the higher the price of levelling up, the more likely some players will choose buying equipment instead of levelling up, but practically I think they'll maybe lag behind 1 level at most, then they will grumble and just pay to level up as the others (unless they all decide not to).

This is after all probably the reason why the DMG variant rules don't bother setting a particularly high price for levelling up.

Magic items will be hard to come by in the campaign. The main source of magic will be the dungeon. I'll use magic buying and crafting rules for more common magic items, especially for consumables like healing potions. As the campaign proceeds, I'll revisit whether more rare magic items can be bought or made by the players.

That's terrible. It means your levelling up depends on luck, and of the worst kind of luck i.e. dice rolls with not much to do. On the short term it is more likely to frustrate some players than to reward others. On the long term the averages will even out, so it won't actually make a difference.

Yes, having skill checks involved in leveling up means some characters will have to take more time and pay more to level up than others. This is something I'll need to run past the players. If they don't like it, I won't use it. But the system laid out in the EN5ider article I cited also has a "perk" and "mojo" mechanics. I like the idea of potential "perks" for doing well with training, it fits will with renown and the XGE rival mechanics for downtime.

Here is the crux of the matter: you must make sure all your players will enjoy bothering with this activity. Even you are now saying that you don't want to spend time with this... do they want to spend time with this?

Well, it isn't that I don't want to spend time on it. I want to have these downtime activities be part of the game and I would like time and cost for getting levels to be part of that. But I don't want it to be overly complicated. Increasing the cost doesn't make the system more complicated, but it provides an additional financial motivator and gives another thing to spend gold on.

As I've said the players have bought into the concept at the high level. Of course, before session zero even, I will discuss the particulars with the players. But this is a very different style of D&D play than I've seen recently in my area. This will NOT be a game for players who think that downtime activities are just boring bookkeeping or players who hate resource management. Encumbrance will be tracked for example. I'm even thinking of doing away with allowing the use of a focus rather than components. Yes, these are made optional because most players don't want to bother with it. But they are still in the rules because some players still enjoy this style of play.

It sounds to me like you are motivated by some need to strengthen the ties between levelling up and the narrative of the characters in the world, and that's a GOOD motivation.

Partly. But it is also largely to provide another drain on wealth. Another way to give gold mechanical weight.

But as you say, if you need to spend too much time at the table (but keep in mind also that some bookkeping requires time between sessions) then it becomes more annoying than fun. This happens to a lot of gaming groups when the DM thinks it's a good idea to keep more track of something... more realism should be more fun, right? Only, this can become as fun as paying your school tuition fees

For many players, this is the case. Who track encumberance any more? Who tracks components? Who builds strongholds? Well some of us want to. That's why there are still rules for it, why digital character sheets support it, and why Matt Coleville's Kickstarter was such a success.

Finding a trainer or taking a training lesson can be a GREAT story hook...

I don't need a story hook. There is a big-ass dungeon. We are going start on the caravan to the village outside one of the known entrances to it and spending the next year exploring it for wealth and glory.

requiring it for each player and each time they level is not the same. As a hint: how many times in a movies/series the main character has a training session which provides a major step in the character's skill? Typically once. Try to imagine how would the movie feel if every 5 minutes (or once per episode for a series) they would show another training session. It's not impossible, but then the movie/series would become more about training than adventuring. Just make sure your players are on board with this... otherwise the whole "training rules" will just become a tax, a box to tick on your character sheet after paying the GP cost and move along with the game.

It is a tax. I know it sounds strange, but that is part of the fun. This will be a taxing campaign in more ways than one, including dealing with in-game tax collectors.

Because the cost and time for training will be combined with complications and perks, which will have tie-ins with villains and renown mechanics, I think it does give some flavor, immerses them more in the world, and give a reason for the gold. It greats a sub-system and a way to interact with and discuss the game between sessions. We meet once a month for 8 hours. Between those sessions, we can deal with the downtime activities. It makes downtime a kind of play-by-post sub-game.

 

[S'mon]

...I think 5e handles high levels just fine. It doesn't slow to a crawl as other systems do at high levels. But any high-level play with complicated features and spells in play will require more preparation from the DM. I generally would just wrap up the campaign within a session or two of the characters reach level 20, mostly because the extra preparation time needed gets burdensome.

Your advice is good and I agree 5e can work well at very high level. I just have a concern over megadungeon play in particular, where some of your suggestions such as time constraints don't usually apply.

 

[S'mon]

I don't need a story hook. There is a big-ass dungeon.

If this site still had sigs, that would be sigged!

 

[MNblockhead]

Your advice is good and I agree 5e can work well at very high level. I just have a concern over megadungeon play in particular, where some of your suggestions such as time constraints don't usually apply.

Ah sorry. Well, for *this* campaign I'm using material that is notorious for being deadly and it is designed to be difficult for level 20 parties as well. It isn't expected that the party will ever complete the entire thing or even defeat the ultimate, big bad. But if it goes that way Frog God Games did all the heavy lifting.

I'll still need to spend a lot of time understanding and preparing for high-level encounters. If they manage to find their way into the higher difficulty areas while still at low levels (which is possible), I won't have to worry much about preparation. They'll just die.

 

[Hriston]

Has anyone else created Training to Gain Levels Rules? Would you share?

This is adapted from Gygax’s DMG, p 86.

Training to Gain Levels
Once a character has earned enough experience points to attain a new level, s/he must train for a number of days before gaining any class features associated with the new level.

The training time required is 5 days if the character has attained name-level for his/her class or if the character is below name-level and the training is with a higher-level tutor of the same class as the character. Training without a tutor takes 10 days if the character has not yet attained name-level. Different classes attain name-level at different levels as shown in the Name-Level table.

Name-Level

Class	Level
Monk	7th
Barbarian	8th
Cleric, Fighter, Paladin	9th
Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock	10th
Bard, Wizard	11th
Druid	12th

The training cost depends on the class-level to be gained as shown in the Training Cost tables. The training cost is for the total training time.

Training Cost for Levels up to and including Name-Level

Level Attained	With Tutor	Without Tutor
2nd	900 gp	1,800 gp
3rd	1,800 gp	3,600 gp
4th	2,700 gp	5,400 gp
5th	3,600 gp	7,200 gp
6th	4,500 gp	9,000 gp
7th	5,400 gp	10,800 gp
8th	6,300 gp	12,600 gp
9th	7,200 gp	14,400 gp
10th	8,100 gp	16,200 gp
11th	9,000 gp	18,000 gp
12th	9,900 gp	19,800 gp

Training Cost for Levels above Name-Level

Level Attained	Barbarian, Bard, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger	Cleric, Druid, Monk, and Rogue	Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard
8th	---	8,400 gp	---
9th	4,800 gp	9,600 gp	---
10th	5,400 gp	10,800 gp	---
11th	6,000 gp	12,000 gp	24,000 gp
12th	6,600 gp	13,200 gp	26,400 gp
13th	7,200 gp	14,400 gp	28,800 gp
14th	7,800 gp	15,600 gp	31,200 gp
15th	8,400 gp	16,800 gp	33,600 gp
16th	9,000 gp	18,000 gp	36,000 gp
17th	9,600 gp	19,200 gp	38,400 gp
18th	10,200 gp	20,400 gp	40,800 gp
19th	10,800 gp	21,600 gp	43,200 gp
20th	11,400 gp	22,800 gp	45,600 gp

 

[MNblockhead]

Wow, I forgot how expensive it was back in 1e.

 

[Hriston]

Wow, I forgot how expensive it was back in 1e.

It's actually more expensive in a straight gp to gp comparison. In adapting this, I reduced costs to 60% of what they are in AD&D. Also, if I remember correctly, training time could be up to four times as long if the DM judged that you didn't play your character true to his/her class archetype. So potentially costs could be 6 2/3 times what I decided on here, but I think using 60% of the gp values from AD&D 1st Ed. is about right for 5E to get the same effect, which is a pretty hefty drain on the PCs' gold reserves. Notice that training times themselves are mostly lower than the 5E DMG system.

 

[flametitan]

I've considered using training for levelling, but the reasoning was so that the calendar would move and things in the world could change. That's the main reasoning why I didn't adjust the gold costs, as the goal wasn't to drain it. It's a bit too low to be a money drain. If you want it to be a money drain, I guess the question is to start with how much gold you want them to have for spending, versus how much you want to reward them.

If how much you want to reward them versus how much you want them to have for general spending is mostly aligned, it's not going to really make sense to charge for training, whereas if you want them to have little spending money, but give them heaps of gold, then you're going to have to make training expensive. That said, you should probably pay attention to how fun it is for the players to have tons of levelling debt. In my mind, I'm thinking any more than a third or half of their gold being used solely for training costs is going to be annoying, as it becomes more obvious that the amounts of gold being rewarded is inflated compared to how much they actually get to use for other things.

 

[aco175]

When I was using training to advance I always needed to modify a few things. I would have training start at 4th level. The first few levels go quickly and you need to be able to let the players advance their PCs. Nobody likes having their character having enough XP, but need to find a tutor to train before he can get cool stuff. I would have the background training before becoming 1st level count for gaining the skills and maneuvers to get to 4th level.

Have NPCs reward them with training or discount to training. Complete a quest and get training paid since the NPC knows someone or is owed a favor. This brings your world together and gives the players knowledge of how it works.

I allowed pre-training for 1 level. This way the PCs could be in a dungeon and still level up. We had different requirements for different classes so the thief could train for an additional level by the time the mage trained for the one. 5e you could keep it all the same.

At some point the PCs become masters in their class. I would stop making them seek out a master to train under and allow them to train for free on their own. Still cross off money, but the part of needing to find someone and hire them is now over. You can also have other NPCs come looking at the PCs for training and want more of their time and knowledge.

Introduce the players to a few places for training in passing or direct by having someone hire the PCs. They pass the adventure's guild on the way to the dungeon, or the guild master hires the PCs to clear out the dungeon. Patrons may hire through the guild or academy since they know the masters there and reach out rather than just posting something in a tavern.

There is lots of ways to boost the flavor and introduce training.