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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bendris Noulg" data-source="post: 1538545" data-attributes="member: 6398">That I wouldn't know; I don't worry about level "despairity".  My group tends to level up as past experiences influence them; For instance, after crossing a continent-sized jungle, most of the PCs took a level of Ranger because the skills/abilities matched what they had experienced, although one contemplated a Level of Shaman because his personal experience in the wilderness involved time dealing with Spirits and a friendly Shaman native to the region.  And at this time, no one had any Ranger Levels, nor did any of them have Ranger or Shaman as a Favored Class. Now, things I like to keep in mind when characters gain a Level: -What did they do during non-adventuring time.  The "adventures" as I write them often take a good amount of game-time to accomplish.  I don't do dungeon crawls very often, with adventures often involving travel, exploration, intrigue, and various other elements.  This often results in "dead time" that players are encouraged to fill with anything they like.  My players have gotten involved in politics, become military commanders, run schools, gotten married and had children, and so forth.  In this time, things like training beyond actual in-game events (such as the Rogue learning Sorcery) are openly invited by me from the players.-Extra Skill Points by Time.  If a character has trained beyond what would be required (for instance, if we "dead time" a six month period and a character goes to work in his uncle's forge), I'll grant a Skill Point or two into that specific Skill or related Skills (forgework = Crafts & Profession).-Extra Skill Points by XP Cost.  When giving Experience (which I do at the end of an adventure, not between sessions), a player may deduct a number of Experience Points (500) to gain an extra Skill Point.  This Skill Point must be applied with the same consideration as normal Skill Points (i.e., related to actual experience or accounted for via training or study). Typically, I just wing it, using the above as my guideline; I allow what's fair and reasonable and disallow anything that doesn't have some basis in prior in-game events.  My primary concern is that, in trying to balance the game to maintain a degree of control over min-maxing, the designers have forced a choice: If you apply Skill Points to Skills that are mostly for the purpose of adding depth to your character (i.e., Crafts, Knowledges, Professions, and other Skills used in certain ways, like haggling with Diplomacy for those that participate in business and trade), you have to take away from those things that add to your character's potency as an adventurer (Knowledge: Arcana, Spellcraft, Climb, Jump, Concentration, Bluff for feinting, etc.).  Thus, I aimed at removing the "sub-optimal" complaint that some individuals like to voice when they see characters that aren't min/maxed to some degree. That, to me, would be the main concern with Training Rules that permit additional Skill Points or (more drastically) Feats; any system that permits the characters to become more potent than they normally would be will likely have a major impact in the outcome of adventures and encounters and should be scrutinized heavily before using.  On the other hand, any system that adds more depth to the character, more non-combat/adventuring options for the characters, RP-centric hooks for PCs to pursue, and forces some degree of burden on the players to help maintain verisimilitude and plausibility, is a good system.</blockquote>

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