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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Obryn" data-source="post: 6271311" data-attributes="member: 11821">The "instant knowledge" bit was in response to Derren's claims of verisimilitude, which I think are rather facile when we're dealing with level and skill advancement in D&D 3.0 or later. But - to your point - instantly gaining knowledge in modern D&D isn't some kind of alien concept that only pops up when you allow rebuilding from scratch. It's everywhere; it can happen on every single level up in 3.x.As for telling you how to play your character? No, you're telling you how to play your character. Rebuilding gives you total freedom on how you want to handle the change.Let's take a step back, though, because I think you're so set on exactly how 3.x does this that you're missing the forest for the trees.Situation: An assassin changes their ways and finds religion.Now, how do we model this? From lowest impact to highest...(1) A change in roleplaying. The assassin still has the same skills, but makes different decisions and refers to their god, etc. Benefit: Super easy, clear, "realistic." Problem: You're still an assassin, and if you go adventuring you'll be doing assassin stuff.(2) Skills/feats. You spend whatever character stuff you need to, in order to pick up some capability in religious lore. If it's available to you, you can use something like 4e feat-based multiclassing to do that, plus pick up something like a healing spell. Benefit: Still pretty simple, some mechanical weight behind your roleplaying decisions. Problem: You're still an assassin, but at least you have some mechanical bits to leverage if you need to know about religion or whatever.(3) Buffet-style multiclassing. You snag a level of Cleric. You have some rudimentary spellcasting, pick up some armor proficiencies and maybe weapon proficiencies. Benefit: Somewhat easy, and you retain your previous abilities even if you're not using them. Problem: You're still an assassin, but also now you're a bad cleric.(4) Rebuilding. After your conversion, either all at once or in a series of stages, you start replacing your Assassin levels with Cleric levels to represent your conversion and throwing off your ties to the past. If need be, you can also move your stats around so you're no longer an awful cleric. Benefit: You're fully invested in this conversion and you become a capable member of your new class. Problem: It's more complicated to manage, and you necessarily have to "forget" how to do some stuff you used to know how to do - or decide that it's stuff your character will no longer do, even under threat of death. Ideally, you retain some Knowledge or Lore-style skills (Streetwise, etc.) to mechanically represent your history.Out of these four options, I don't know why you're so wedded to the third. Writing "cleric" on your sheet isn't roleplaying, and sacrificing your character's mechanical effectiveness doesn't make you a better roleplayer. And if it's simplicity you want, the first or second are superior choices on that metric.</blockquote>

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