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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 5462240" data-attributes="member: 6669048">RAW: Use it or lose it.  Just because it's optional to do when you level doesn't mean you can say "Oh, I'm retroactively retraining five powers/feats now because I'm 5th level!"To understand why, you have to look at what this rule is attempting to describe.  You're retraining a power.  This is a new attack, a new feat, a new skill.  It's just like the new power you get at a level.  You've been practicing this killer move for a few weeks/months during downtime trying to figure out the "trick" to it or studying the complex spell formula or building up the muscle memory to pull it off in combat.  When you reach a new level, you've now gained enough practical experience that you can pull it off with confidence.  Same thing with "unlearning" and learning a new ability.  You're neglecting your practice/study with the old power to learn the new one.Real world example:  You probably took a foreign language course in high school.  How much of that language do you remember now?  When I was in high school, I could hold basic conversations in French.  I never used it after class and never practiced it, instead spending a lot of time watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD.  Now I just remember "I don't speak French", the word for croissant ham sammich, and how to proposition a prostitute.  I retrained my ability to speak French for knowledge of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  If you've ever taken martial arts, you'll understand even better and have much better context than my crappy analogy.For the record, as a DM, I would let a player retrain as much as they want solely because I'd rather have a player play the character he/she wants than a character I forced on him/her.</blockquote>

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