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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4518915" data-attributes="member: 710">I like retraining. An interesting aspect is that it fixes two issues in 3E1) New Feats/Powers/Spells come out and fit your character concept or power-gaming needs better then the old ones. Swapping out in 3E is only possible for some spellcasters. A great boon when getting a new source book - a lot of the material can be quickly put to good use.2) Characters created at higher level are better than characters created at lower levels and advanced to the same level. You can easily optimize all your choices when creating a high level character, ignoring weak spots that would have occured at lower levels. With one retrain per level (plus automatic retraining for powers) this is much less likely to happen in 4E.Of course I also like the fact that you're not forced to keep a bad choice you once made. It removes a lot of the "character building homework" I experienced in 3E. Calling it "homework" is a little hyperbole, unless you were one of the kids that liked doing homework <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> . Still, a lot of your characters effectiveness was determined when you're at home creating him - and you're stuck with any bad choice you made. Allowing retraining creates a better "feedback" loop.---For "consistency" issues. Most of the feats have relatively "weak" effects on actual gameplay. A +2 damage bonus from Astral Fire doesn't affect the in-game story much, since no one in the game world can measure your damage with the precision of each hit point. Linguist might be the most obvious feat, since you're "forgetting" 3 languages - but in most scenarios, will this ever happen? If you needed this languages a lot, it's unlikely you want to lose access to them. If you never used them, it's a typical "atrophy" problem.Powers are often replaced with powers that are higher level but are similar in effect. Most D&D spellcasters are used to changing their power suite anyway, so losing an older power is not much more then no longer preparing it. Martial Powers would be hard to identify in the game world - could you really distinguish between a Brute Strike and a Basic Attack, if both result with the death of a the target? And if a character no longer uses the "Knockdown" maneuver he had, how much would anyone in the game world notice?The only "consistency" issue here is: "Why does the character never ever again use a maneuver/power he used a lot earlier". But this can be explained in game - he no longer likes the spell/maneuver/power, or he found a better way to use his skill or arcane power. A "Consistency Bugfix" to the system could be this: You never lose a retrained power. But if you want to use it, you can't use the power you retrained it for. So technically a Fighter still has his Brute Strike Daily Power, but that he's using it instead of his higher level Daily Power he retrained it for is highly unlikely. The game system just takes away the highly unlikely out of the equation since it keeps your character sheet more manageable - do you really want to list all those powers you probably will never use again?</blockquote>

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