Retraining?

[Minigiant]

Retraining?

I'm against there even being things that need to be retrained!
Dumb feats.

I allow retraining but only if the player could make forgetting one thing and learning something new. Like curses. And old age. And concussions.

 

[BobTheNob]

Absolutely not. Retraining does not make any since. I can’t evade my logic to accept retraining no matter how hard I try. How do you explain retraining? I mean how do you explain if one day I decided that the skills I learned driving a car were no longer needed and that I can just trade my driving skills for piloting a jet skills? This is kind of absurd, especial with my analogy, but my point is solid. Retraining seems to be a cushion for bad mistakes or a tool for min-maxers, not to mention it completely breaks the fourth wall. I someone takes their time to learn something and later decides they wished they would have learned something else…too bad. There are plenty of people with college educations with the same problem. Just because this is a game does not mean we should be shielded and protected from our own bad decisions. More learning is made from the mistakes we make, that’s life. Maybe it’s me, but I enjoy playing my games without the training wheels.

When put like that, I cant explain retraining. Congratulations on a potent argument.

But it doesnt get around the fact that D&D is a hobby which is meant to be enjoyed by its participants. I have seen participants really have their enjoyment shattered because of bad decisions. Frankly, I put my players experience WAY above the need to explain how the retraining occurred.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Absolutely. Make it simple, and put enough limitations on it that it doesn't feel like people are respeccing their characters every level. They've already talked about older abilities being forgotten as one levels, so I think they're on this.

Sure, sometimes there are good metagame reasons to change. A feat isn't doing what you thought it was going to do. A new rules supplement offers an option your character really ought to have.

But there's a very real aspect to retraining as well. Many people do retrain themselves and make minor or major life changes. I just had a lecture this week with a guy who has a Ph.D. in botany but now does Tai Chi research for a living. You think maybe he retrained a few things?

 

[Kynn]

Absolutely not. Retraining does not make any since. I can’t evade my logic to accept retraining no matter how hard I try. How do you explain retraining? I mean how do you explain if one day I decided that the skills I learned driving a car were no longer needed and that I can just trade my driving skills for piloting a jet skills? This is kind of absurd, especial with my analogy, but my point is solid. Retraining seems to be a cushion for bad mistakes or a tool for min-maxers, not to mention it completely breaks the fourth wall. I someone takes their time to learn something and later decides they wished they would have learned something else…too bad. There are plenty of people with college educations with the same problem. Just because this is a game does not mean we should be shielded and protected from our own bad decisions. More learning is made from the mistakes we make, that’s life. Maybe it’s me, but I enjoy playing my games without the training wheels.

I agree! D&D should definitely be all about punishing the players for choices they make. Realism such as this must take precedence over fun, and nobody should allowed any latitude for error. NO TAKEBACKS IN D&D EVER.

D&D is Serious Business and if players just don't realize this, then they deserve to suffer for their folly! We play HARDCORE D&D at this table, no need for training wheels!

...wait, come back everyone, someone tell me why this hobby is dying?

 

[El Mahdi]

I like the Retraining rules, and even ported them into my houseruled 3E games. But I think they're just fine as written in 4E.

Core or module doesn't really matter to me. I think this is one of those things that's easily ignored even if core.

 

[Grydan]

Absolutely not. Retraining does not make any since. I can’t evade my logic to accept retraining no matter how hard I try. How do you explain retraining? I mean how do you explain if one day I decided that the skills I learned driving a car were no longer needed and that I can just trade my driving skills for piloting a jet skills? This is kind of absurd, especial with my analogy, but my point is solid. Retraining seems to be a cushion for bad mistakes or a tool for min-maxers, not to mention it completely breaks the fourth wall. I someone takes their time to learn something and later decides they wished they would have learned something else…too bad. There are plenty of people with college educations with the same problem. Just because this is a game does not mean we should be shielded and protected from our own bad decisions. More learning is made from the mistakes we make, that’s life. Maybe it’s me, but I enjoy playing my games without the training wheels.

No edition of the game has ever truly modelled, or probably even tried to model, how we acquire (and maintain) skills and abilities in the real world.

Given that, why should it follow that retraining should be modelled on the real world?

If the purpose of gaming was to teach me and the people I play with how to better plan their characters, then yes, having to live with our bad decisions would be one reasonable way to encourage that.

That's not why most of us play, though. Most of us play for the enjoyment of playing at the table. Many players don't have the desire to master every aspect of character building. Others might have the desire, but lack the available time to spend on such a leisure activity. Requiring them to have less fun at the table because they didn't have the time or inclination to master the char-gen system seems needlessly petty.

 

[Oni]

I am not personally keen on the idea of unlearning things, which is what retraining feels a bit like to me. I don't think it really addresses the underlying issue, that being sometimes players make choices that they're not happy with and that can have long term effects on the quality of their play time. I am completely sympathetic with someone that is for whatever reason not enjoying their character on a mechanical level, it's not very generous to ask them to keep playing something they're not enjoying. The issue with retraining is that is done piecemeal and still requires time, quite possibly a good deal of time, before the player actually gets to do what they want. Secondly as an established system it becomes a temptation as something to be gamed, to ignore continuity and simply swap in whatever is most advantageous at a given time. I would much prefer a two pronged approach to this problem. 1) that characters can expand laterally and learn new abilities without a hard cap on the number, for small incremental changes to a character, rather than retraining just let them learn new abilities, give it some opportunity cost to prevent abuse. 2) If a player really isn't enjoying the mechanics of their character, advise the DM to simply let them change their character and be done with it rather than dragging it out over X amount of game time.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Retraining has existed since the beginning of the game, and will always exist. You take something, don't like it, it doesn't see a lot of use, at some point you talk to the DM and both of you agree that you should probably change that choice. That's not a rule, that's an appeal to reason, and doesn't need anything but (maybe) a quick sidebar in the DMG.

Cheers,

 

[Elf Witch]

I am going to say no please don't make it part of the official rules. I can see some of of my players abusing it because they are now a higher level and want something stronger, or hey look it is the new shiny thing must have now.

I would rather see a section in the DMG on how to deal with changing a poorly designed character.

Leave it up to the DM on how to deal with this give him the tools he needs to do it but do not put the DM in the situation of having to deal with whiny entitled players crying but its in the official rules.

 

[Grazzt]

Retraining has existed since the beginning of the game, and will always exist. You take something, don't like it, it doesn't see a lot of use, at some point you talk to the DM and both of you agree that you should probably change that choice. That's not a rule, that's an appeal to reason, and doesn't need anything but (maybe) a quick sidebar in the DMG.

Cheers,

I'd be ok with a sidebar. Or not mentioning it all actually. Let the DM and player handwave it if they decide to. But even with a sidebar, make it optional. Definitely not core.