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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fewilcox" data-source="post: 6594030" data-attributes="member: 6794151">Both editions of HackMaster require appropriate mentoring in order to actually level up. Their justification is that you need someone who knows more than you do to help you codify the things you've experienced over the past level so you can most effectively use them in the future.I bring it up for two reason. First, I would highlight the phrase "appropriate mentoring". For a fighter that is most likely a combat school or knight. For a wizard it would be a college of magic. For clerics a temple. Et cetera. But for a druid all of those things are inappropriate. Instead a druid would seek out the nearest circle's grove and seek guidance there. A ranger's training would be similar. I haven't played 4e in a while, but I think barbarians and berserkers were the exceptions since they had no formal training of any kind anyway.So as others have suggested, simply being out in the wilderness for months or years on end doesn't mean there aren't teachers to be had. Many's the story of the mad old wizard in a tower in the middle of tower. For fighters there's always the nearest retired knight as an option. For clerics the choices are nearly unlimited given the number of gods in the various pantheons. Clerics of Correllon, for example, might receive divine inspiration in the same kinds of places that a druid or ranger might find a tutor. You get the idea.The second option is that sufficiently well-trained PCs can teach others, but I'm not sure how well it would apply to D&D given the mechanical differences. HackMaster, like GURPS and hordes of other games, allows you to gain multiple levels of each skill. Now I'm going to pull some numbers out of the ether, don't hold me to them. There is a minimum threshold that a character must reach in order to be able to teach the subject, but I don't remember what that number is and our books aren't handy.So let's take the afore-mentioned cleric of Correllon and ranger, and say the ranger's Tracking skill is 65 (on a d100) and the cleric doesn't have the skill at all. If the cleric had been carefully watching the ranger track things, and asked lots of in-character questions (preferably between sessions), as GM I would allow the cleric's player to buy a rank or two of Tracking, either the next time he leveled up or now if he had any unspent Build Points.GURPS' methods are similar, but they offer one more option: every 200 hours you spend training allows you to spend 1 Character Point on that skill. If it's a completely new skill, like that cleric teaching himself to track animals using a handbook, then every two hours of work only counts for 1 hour of training. On the other hand, a well-paid master of subject could teach it to you in half the time.For comparison's sake, in GURPS a Navy Seal is 100-200 points, and most of our games start at around 150. Characters in the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series (aka "GURPS D&D") are 250 points and roughly equal in power to a level 1 D&D 4e character. It generally costs 1-2 CP to buy a skill at its minimum level, and maxes at 4 CP per level at the high end. That mirrors real life in that when you're first starting out in a subject you may learn it very quickly, but there comes a point when there isn't much left to know and you progress more slowly.So it would generally take about 800 hours of practice to gain a level in an established skill, but since GURPS is thankfully level-less, I'm not sure how to adapt that directly to D&D. My initial thought is to look at how much the PC gets with the next level and figure an appropriate amount of time.For instance, at second level fighters only get Action Surge, which allows them to take an extra action in a turn once per encounter. That could be viewed as a simple adrenaline rush and would take relatively little time to learn how to call upon it when needed. Advancing to third level, however, involves learning a whole new set of skills, as determined by your chose archetype. Battle Master and Eldritch Knight would both take tremendous amounts of time to master even the basics, and those may well require a proper teacher. If the party has a wizard then the EK might be able to learn his magicking from him, but having to then he'd still have to learn to adapt it into his fighting style. That would be a case where I'd double the training time required.Even the Champion has to learn some pretty advanced swordplay in order to double his crit chance. You can learn the most effective ways to kill (or avoid killing) armored opponents by trial and error, but it's a lot easier if someone shows you how.Honestly, I don't even use those rules in my current HackMaster 5e campaign because I only want so much realism in my gaming. That's why I always say, "If I wanted real life, I wouldn't be playing a game." In my GURPS campaigns I've even been known to give out skill ranks at the end of the night rather than the customary 1-5 CP. For instance, if the party is traveling by ship and the crew gets sick, forcing the party to take over, then at the end of the journey I would very likely give each character 1 or possibly 2 levels of Boating or Piloting (Spaceship). Or if a party in which few if any of the characters are trained in Stealth still manages to get into or out of a situation without being discovered, I may well reward them with a rank each in Stealth.On the other hand, I don't allow players in either system increase skills their characters don't use. If you never try to pick a lock then you'll never get any better at it. GURPS actually has optional rules for atrophying never-used skills, but we've never used them. See "real life" above.If you can find a copy of the HM4e book The Griftmaster's Guide to Life's Wildest Dreams, the Charlatan class (my favorite of all time in any system) may be of use. In short, the charlatan can trade XP and gold for other classes' features. The result is that the charlatan will always be 1-2 levels behind the party, but the flexibility you gain in exchange more than makes up for it. Once again, I haven't the slightest clue how to adapt that to D&D, but it could well spark inspiration in someone more invested in D&D than I am.Hopefully my ramblings will at least give your GM some ideas of how to go about getting y'all leveled up in the wilderness.Wow, that came out way longer than the three paragraphs I set out to write. I better kill my computer and get to sleep before my wife smacks me for throwing out my back with excessive typing and keeping her awake with the light and keyboard clacking. 8o)</blockquote>

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