Adventurers and Nonadventurers, Wandering and Downtime

[Lanefan]

Sounds like a throwback to 1E training rules to me. You may have earned the XP, but needed to spend some time and gold with a mentor or studying/training in order to gain a level.

Is isn't, as far as I can tell.

What it is is an attempt to answer the questions of
a) how one can gain levels without ever adventuring at all; and
b) what abilities such a character might have that are different than an adventuring character in the same class.

That said, 1e training rules still have a place (though the hard stop in XP advancement until you train needs to be relaxed to simply a fractional penalty on further XP gain) - the problem is the newer editions have characters bumping every time they sneeze; and training doesn't work so well in such a system.

Lanefan

 

[Minigiant]

This is one of the ways I put prestige classes to use. Prestige classes offer a real either/or choice.

For example, theΝοσοκομείο Guard is a martial organisation dedicated to the defence of the first public hospital and site of piligrimage for those seeking the God of Healing's favour.

It is modeled as a prestige class open to pious martial characters that grants curative spellcasting with severe restrictions on action (can't travel more than a day's ride from the hospital) and initial time requirement (6-month initiation into the group's mysteries).

I could see some sort of NPC/prestige/gestalt class thing as a possibility for this.

Ars Magica had some cool mechanics to that effect. You had two PCs, and you picked one of them to go out on an adventure. The other stayed at home and trained--and usually learned more than the adventuring one.

That is pretty much what I am suggesting, expect te stay at home isn't better... they are just different.

Generally, character growth is always upwards through play.

This raises an interesting concept in that we allow player to have character advance, not though adventuring, but through "off game" study. If this was relegated to forms of character growth that wasn't available through adventuring, we suddenly have a very interesting scenario, as players are encouraged to put vertical growth (i.e. level gain) on hold for lateral growth.

This can also be in the form of RP gains (building spy networks, ataining lands and retainers).

Players can then have multiple characters on the go and (with DM veto) cycle them. You wont end up with the highest level character this way, but you will end up with a series of toons with a bit more depth. Hopefully with flatter math the lessened level gain wont be that much of a hit.

Its interesting. Whilst I have traditionally discouraged this sort of behaviour (as it reeks more of unjustified power grab) with proper controls and mechanics it might just have some merit. Maybe...

That you are practically calling for training rules.

1st - Earn your XP by adventuring (which includes any kind of quest or challenge, not just killing stuff... social interaction and exploration grant XP too when you successfully overcome a challenge or complete a quest)

2nd - Spend your XP i.e. turn them into character abilities and numbers increases by training in your downtime

I don't know if D&D had training rules in some supplements, but they are used in other RPG. The most basic implementation of training rules is just to define times associated to each thing to learn (e.g. a spell, a feat etc.) and then just handle the XP->levels normally.

Well, in some editions, there have been. In 4e, NPCs are statted out using the 'monster' blocks instead of built as PCs, 3e had NPC-specific classes for non-adventuring archetypes, the pages of early Dragon magazines were often graced with "NPC Classes," as well, including the 'Cloistered Cleric,' a non-adventuring version of that class, IIRC.

If those abilities seem appropriate to the non-adventuring life, sure. HD or combat skills/spells don't seem like good candidates, but handy rituals, sagacious research, politicking, and the like might be reasonable things for an adventurer to have to slow down to deal with as well as a non-adventurer.

I like the way Dragon Quest handles this, though the exact mechanics wouldn't translate to D&D. In more generic terms, it boils down to this choice:

• Staying at home - slow XP gain, money being spent like water, learn whatever you can find a teacher for, with practically no risk.
• Adventuring - fast XP gain, money coming in pretty decent (as well as the DM provides and the players take advantage of), minimal need for teachers, lots of risk.

In DQ, it's not quite that cut and dried, because characters don't actually improve during adventuring. It's merely that if they have a ton of XP and money gained during an adventure, they can use time very efficiently to gain abilities as long as the XP and money holds out (and they are improving things they used on the adventure).

It's that last bit that ties in most clearly to the OP. Because DQ skills can be risky to learn, you can most take advantage of staying at home when learning something new--especially if you happened to succeed in an adventure that paid better in silver than XP. So the mechanics have a mild encouragement to use adventuring to improve what you know, but staying at home to spread out.

To make something similar work out in Next along the lines of the OP, you'd like for your either/or abilities to be extensions or variations on the main abilities. For example, consider fireball. The adventuring guy might get the option to enlarge the blast or change the range--extend the power of the spell. The stay at home guy might get the option to change the shape.

That might be too fine-grained, but it does suggest the possibility of unlocking such abilities over time, with each successive unlocking widening the differences, while still allowing a balanced character to do some of each. Alternately, you can also cap it by level--i.e. every level, you get to do one or two of these unlockings, with the mix allowed being somewhat of a DM judgment. If you home for a couple of years (off screen), then you can only pick those options.

I see several options for doing this:

As NPC classes:
There is a Wizard "adventurer" class and a Mage "non-adventurer/NPC" class.

The wizard gets a d4 HD, full arcane casting, a spellbook with Int mod 1st level spells, and proficiency with daggers, slings, and quarterstaffs.

The mage gets a d4 HD, 1/3 arcane casting, a spellbook with Int+2 mod 1st level spells, 1 additional spell known per level, scribe scroll, and no proficiencies.

As class features that are only effective during downtime due to money and time restraints.

Craft wand
You can create a wand of any 4th-level or lower spell that you know. Crafting a wand takes one day for each 1,000 gp in its base price. The base price of a wand is its the spell level × number of charges × 1,000 gp. A newly created wand can hold up to 50 charges.

Because 50 charge wands will take a month and a half and a whole chunk of money, most adventurers wont be sitting around crafting wands and will instead buy them from or a do favors for nonadventuring casters who sit home all day crafting.

As alternate class features.

At level X, a rogue can either get Evasion or Information Network

 

[ComradeGnull]

Ars Magica had some cool mechanics to that effect. You had two PCs, and you picked one of them to go out on an adventure. The other stayed at home and trained--and usually learned more than the adventuring one.

Came here to say this- Ars was neat in that it gave both wizards and non-magical characters a way to progress without going out and killing things. You could focus on improving a Grog's combat skills, let a Companion get better at their particular specialty, or even have the combat characters train together in order to get better at fighting in a group.

I do think if you make the system close to a 'training' one where characters can't do anything but study for a while in order to make certain types of progress or gain certain features/abilities, you need to structure the game around running multiple characters, or else it all becomes a bit pointless. If all the PC's are not adventuring at the same time, it gets handwaved as 'time passes'; if one PC has to stay in the tower doing his homework while his companions slay dragons and loot things, that player is going to be bored.

Note that Ars also had an aging and old age system that came into play a lot in the off-season. It served as a way to limit how much downtime research a character could do- you couldn't just say 'I'm going to study until I reach level 18, and then start adventuring' or level a skill up to the moon between adventures. How much training, and of what type, you could fit into a single season together with aging rules helped keep things sane.

I was thinking about that to. I think a this OR that choice for character creation. Fore example a stay-at-home wizard gets average HP and 1 new spell known per level of their choice.. An adventuring wizard gets rolled HP, 1 new spell per 2 levels, and magic items per level stated by your campaign's magic item level.

The though came from my thoughts on the stereotypical wizard master and the stereotypical BBEG wizard in a tower. That and a comic strip.

Perhaps the stay-at home spellcasters could be the ultra-versatile casters while adventurers are the big prowess powerhouses. Then the opposite for noncasters, the stay-at-home warriors are big simple specialist brutes while the field adventurers are versatile adapters with magic items.

The 3e non-adventuring classes (Adept, Warrior, Specialist) fit this model very well in terms of an at-creation choice. They generally had inferior abilities to their adventuring counterparts. I don't think WotC gave advancement rules for these classes; they just said 'if you're thinking about running one of these classes as a PC, pick something else'.

I think it would be reasonable to establish a slow rate of XP growth for characters that are practicing their trade but not adventuring.

I also like the idea of letting non-adventurers grow in breadth rather than getting more powerful. A Wizard who doesn't adventure might never go above 5th level, but they would have the opportunity to learn nearly every spell of level 0-3 that they could get their hands on. Likewise, a Fighter who didn't adventure might learn a base level of competence with a lot of weapons by drilling, but wouldn't get much more effective as a fighter because of the lack of real-world practice- so he can take Weapon Focus with several different weapons, but his BAB and attack bonuses never rise above a level-based ceiling.

Honestly, non-adventuring characters are one spot where the D&D class/level system shows its seams a bit. A character like a sage or master craftsman should be much better at Knowledge and Craft checks than a level 1 Fighter, but shouldn't be harder to kill than a level 1 Fighter. Unfortunately, given the skill cap limits being the best cobbler in Faerun means that you can also be stabbed five or six times more than the average cobbler in Faerun.

Maybe taking a non-adventuring class should remove skill/level caps altogether, and instead of gaining XP and levels, you gain skill points and feats. So a master craftsman is still mechanically a level 1 Specialist, but he has way more skill ranks in Craft: Birdhouse than a level 1 Rogue can have.