Because I like writing and debating I thought it would be fun to go into a discussion about each of 4th edition’s new subsystems and hashing out the good and the bad. So we will start with a small one to jump things off.
Retraining
While the concept of retraining isn’t a new one, it’s the first time (I believe) that this has become a core part of Dungeons and Dragons. At its heart the retraining rule says the following: “The character you started with doesn’t have to be the character you end up with.”
The mechanic is a simple one, and from a flavor point of view has several consequences. At its best, the mechanic allows a player to model the changes in his character as he advances in levels, learning new lessons while discarding old ones. A fighter can learn to focus on a new weapon while losing ability in the old one due to lack of practice. At its worst, the mechanic can provide changes that chaff against the flavor of the game. An example would be an elven ranger known for his key eyesight that suddenly trains away perception and for no good reason stops having good eyesight.
As with many things in 4th edition, flavor seems to be the realm of the DM and players more than the rules. The retraining rules offer an opportunity, but its up to the DM or the player to fill in the blanks about how it happened in game. In the example above, the DM and the player could say that the ranger takes a powerful eye injury during a fight, and so loses a bit of his eyesight. Should the player ever decide to retake perception, his eyes eventually heal.
To my mind, one of the great flavor things about retraining is that it provides a mechanic to deal with a temporary change to a character. We have all seen stories when a character got a temporary power or suffered a temporary pain that enhanced or limited his stable abilities. The retraining rules permit this flavor while providing the DM a balanced way to go about it.
From a mechanics standpoint, I think the retraining rules offer several advantages.
1) Reducing the penalty for limited use feats and powers. No system is perfect and there will always be feats and powers that do not scale appropriately, and so are useful to a character for a while but then eventually become useless. Retraining helps this issue, by ensuring a feat or a power that becomes useless can be retrained out of.
2) Decreasing the gap between organic and inorganic characters. If you have ever played a one shot high level game versus starting at low levels and making it to high ones, you have likely seen the difference in previous editions between characters made for both. Inorganic characters are optimized for high levels, while organic ones suffer the baggage of surviving lower levels. Retraining allows the organic character to keep up, which I think is a good thing.
3) Provides the DM a pace to allow character change. The idea of a player changing his character is certainly not a new concept, but always the question of “how much” comes into play. Some DMs don’t like players making radical changes to their characters, as they feel it hurts the continuity of their games. Retraining provides a “system pace” for character change, giving the DM a guideline as to how fast to allow change. For more experimental DMs, it provides a baseline that they can change to create their own pace.
Conclusion: Overall, I think the retraining rules are a solid addition to 4th edition that provides plenty of benefit, assuming the DM takes a bit of care to ensure that players don’t retrain ad hoc.
Retraining
While the concept of retraining isn’t a new one, it’s the first time (I believe) that this has become a core part of Dungeons and Dragons. At its heart the retraining rule says the following: “The character you started with doesn’t have to be the character you end up with.”
The mechanic is a simple one, and from a flavor point of view has several consequences. At its best, the mechanic allows a player to model the changes in his character as he advances in levels, learning new lessons while discarding old ones. A fighter can learn to focus on a new weapon while losing ability in the old one due to lack of practice. At its worst, the mechanic can provide changes that chaff against the flavor of the game. An example would be an elven ranger known for his key eyesight that suddenly trains away perception and for no good reason stops having good eyesight.
As with many things in 4th edition, flavor seems to be the realm of the DM and players more than the rules. The retraining rules offer an opportunity, but its up to the DM or the player to fill in the blanks about how it happened in game. In the example above, the DM and the player could say that the ranger takes a powerful eye injury during a fight, and so loses a bit of his eyesight. Should the player ever decide to retake perception, his eyes eventually heal.
To my mind, one of the great flavor things about retraining is that it provides a mechanic to deal with a temporary change to a character. We have all seen stories when a character got a temporary power or suffered a temporary pain that enhanced or limited his stable abilities. The retraining rules permit this flavor while providing the DM a balanced way to go about it.
From a mechanics standpoint, I think the retraining rules offer several advantages.
1) Reducing the penalty for limited use feats and powers. No system is perfect and there will always be feats and powers that do not scale appropriately, and so are useful to a character for a while but then eventually become useless. Retraining helps this issue, by ensuring a feat or a power that becomes useless can be retrained out of.
2) Decreasing the gap between organic and inorganic characters. If you have ever played a one shot high level game versus starting at low levels and making it to high ones, you have likely seen the difference in previous editions between characters made for both. Inorganic characters are optimized for high levels, while organic ones suffer the baggage of surviving lower levels. Retraining allows the organic character to keep up, which I think is a good thing.
3) Provides the DM a pace to allow character change. The idea of a player changing his character is certainly not a new concept, but always the question of “how much” comes into play. Some DMs don’t like players making radical changes to their characters, as they feel it hurts the continuity of their games. Retraining provides a “system pace” for character change, giving the DM a guideline as to how fast to allow change. For more experimental DMs, it provides a baseline that they can change to create their own pace.
Conclusion: Overall, I think the retraining rules are a solid addition to 4th edition that provides plenty of benefit, assuming the DM takes a bit of care to ensure that players don’t retrain ad hoc.