Tell me about retraining

[Irda Ranger]

I've actually thought about this problem and found a solution within the D&D rules. My solution is to modify the Creeping Shadow rules from tome of magic. The rule was designed for wizards who wanted to become shadowcasters, basically it allowed a wizard x/shadowcaster y upon gaining a new level to lose an level of wizard for an additional level of shadowcaster, becoming a wizard x-1/shadowcaster y+2.

My solution was to remove the NPC's classes from the game. If you want to say your character is an expert Blacksmith (and you went to the trouble to actually write a character history to back that up), just write "Expert Blacksmith" on the character history / non-adventuring skills portion of your character sheet.

"Classes" are for adventuring skills. Everything else can be handled with roleplaying and narrative.

 

[MerricB]

It should be noted that the Retraining rules (swap out a feat, etc) are really, really good and useful, and are probably the level that will be supported in 4e, rather than the wacky rebuilding "I'm changing my race".

Cheers!

 

[Gort]

To be honest, these are just rules for stuff we've been doing ad-hoc for years. Sometimes the way a character has been designed leaves him lagging far behind the rest of the party in power (for instance, players who multiclass too much because they like low-level powers, and end up without any really powerful abilities, while the single-class characters can teleport or whirlwind attack) through no real fault of the players except for bad knowledge of the rules.

Swapping a few feats out, or consolidating your four-class multiclassed character down to a fighter-rogue is sometimes just necessary for balance. I wouldn't want to be punishing someone for campaigns that could last years just because they chose a rubbish feat at level 3. That'd just encourage people to plan their entire character out before they play, and I'm not a massive fan of that.

 

[Bagpuss]

It comes across (IMO) as lame, reaching and sad. It mostly seems to involve stepping to a magic box/location/site and undergoing a Magical Alteration Process to correct bad character planning.

Very meta and gamist in the worst sense of the terms.

And yes, just begging the DM to let you change your character is functionally the same thing.

You are either poorly informed or deliberately misleading or just confused.

Retraining involves no magical process it just allows you to change minor things about your character, say a feat selection or where you spent skill points, when you level up. But the choice needs to still be legal. So no changing a 1st level feat choice for one that needs BAB +5.

Rebuilding on the other hand lets you change everything about the character from their races, attributes, classes, etc. And does involve a magical alteration process, and most often some sort of quest to find the means for it to occur.

Retraining is a nice idea since it allows characters to integrate stuff from rulebooks that come out after the character was levelled. Unfortunately the rules for it came out in one of the last rulebooks for 3rd Ed, and it requires that you know what you did with choices through every level of your character advancement. Was Combat Expertise your 1st level feat choice or your 3rd? Because depending on that you may or may not be able to swap it for Improved Toughness (for example).

Rebuilding is (imho) a bit on the silly side, but I can see uses for the rules say is some character has a religious experience and wants to start playing a cleric or some such.

 

[DM_Blake]

Retraining, for me, is an issue that is badly dealt with by many RPGs. D&D is particularly bad at it.

Here, for me, is the issue in a nutshell.

In a 'low-mid' level game, you want to bring in a new character - a blacksmith who picks up the sword to defend his village.

Either, you can play him as an Expert 5/Fighter 1 or you can bring him in as a pure fighter.

As a pure fighter, you simply don't have the skills required to have ever been a good Blacksmith and the meta-game elements don't work (where you always secretly a fighter?)

As a Expert/Figher multiclass - especially with adventure useless skills - you are always going to be a lot worse than anyone else of your level.

Retraining should deal with this.

Oh, no no no.

The initial game mechanics are the real problem here.

You've just describe a core flaw with the skill sytem in 3.x:
Player: I intimidate the orc.
DM: OK, what's your skill roll.
Player: Oh, yeah, I can't intimidate because I spent my 2 skill points on Craft(Blacksmith) and Profession(Blacksmith) so I must be very non-intimidating.

What's really wrong here is that adventurers must sacrifice valuable adventuring skills in order to have a background or a profession.

Some quick fixes would be to take those 4x skill points at first level and turn them into 1x for adventuring skills and 3x for craft, profession, etc. Or have two separate skill progressions. Allow the normal progression in the PHB and also give 1+INT Mod separate skill points for using on professions at each level.

As far as retraining to compensate for this fragile skill system, why does it make more sense to retrain 5 levels of expert into 5 levels of fighter, than it does to retrain 5 levels of wizard into 5 l evels of fighter for a character who has been in the group as a wizard since the beginning? Or more snese than changing a Dwarf into an Elf with retraining?

Magically poofing a major change to a character, such as class levels or race, isn't retraining. It's waving a magic wand and transforming a frog into a prince (or vice versa).

What we really need is a game system where it's not really necessary in the first place.

 

[DM_Blake]

You are either poorly informed or deliberately misleading or just confused.

Retraining involves no magical process it just allows you to change minor things about your character, say a feat selection or where you spent skill points, when you level up. But the choice needs to still be legal. So no changing a 1st level feat choice for one that needs BAB +5.

Rebuilding on the other hand lets you change everything about the character from their races, attributes, classes, etc. And does involve a magical alteration process, and most often some sort of quest to find the means for it to occur.

Retraining is a nice idea since it allows characters to integrate stuff from rulebooks that come out after the character was levelled. Unfortunately the rules for it came out in one of the last rulebooks for 3rd Ed, and it requires that you know what you did with choices through every level of your character advancement. Was Combat Expertise your 1st level feat choice or your 3rd? Because depending on that you may or may not be able to swap it for Improved Toughness (for example).

Rebuilding is (imho) a bit on the silly side, but I can see uses for the rules say is some character has a religious experience and wants to start playing a cleric or some such.

Now, this is how it's presented in the PHB 2.

I can understand retraining. I personally know a doctor who went to law school, passed the bar, practiced law for a couple years, then decided he wanted to become a doctor: back to school (med school this time), internship, and now he's a doctor.

That's retraining. But it surely didn't happen over night.

Now D&D is a game and games should be fun, so telling a player "Nope, you're stuck with that feat forever, even though you hate it, because you took it 3 levels ago and now it's a part of you forever" isn't very fun. Well, saying that may be fun for certain DMs who like tormenting their players, but it's no fun for the players.

So let them change basic elements of their character. No big deal. So the fighter specialized in longsword, and now he's just found a super killer battle axe and wants to change his specializiation. Let him.

But, it is a game, and games hould be balanced. We don't want to just let everyone change anything they want, at any time. What about letting the wizard change which spells he prepared right after you tell him what monster they encountered "Oh, it's a red dragon? In that case, I didn't prepare any fireballs this morning, I prepared cold spells instead."

We shouldn't allow players free range to rewrite their characters on the fly, whenever they want to. Their choices should have meaning, and they should feel proud of making the right ones, and they should have to struggle with the challenge of making the wrong ones - at least for a little while.

Which is why the PHB2 allows these changes only when leveling up. And there should be restrictions on how much retraining is allowed, such as only retraining one feat per level-uprather than all of them.

And anything more severe than choosing a feat or spell that you don't like, then it makes sense that you should have to work for the change, i.e. quest for it.

But none of this really needs rules. Put in a paragraph or two about retraining and rebuilding, teach DMS to be fun and fair, to reward good choices but not to overly punish poor choices, and leave it at that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You might want to consider some Warlordism to reflect the leadership/group buffing nature of the Bardish aspects of your character.

Nah, Baeril as he stands currently is just a mechanical expression of being the Ultimate Gnome. What that means in 4E will be different in 3.5, so his ultimate nature will be expressed in different ways (racial feats or whatever).

Truthfully, other than having lots of skill points/bardic lore and wield better weapons, his bardic nature has played a big second fiddle to his illusionist nature.