The Idea of training to level

[Artoomis]

Please be consistent. The DM in my campaign (who is running it extremely fast-paced - down time is nonexistant) has wizards train to gain new spell levels, but noone else.

There is a bit of inconsistency there, but for a reason. Wizards have to get theiw new spells from someone and scribe them. It's part of leveling for them.

I'm not really defending your DM, but saying I think I understand why he is doing it this way.

 

[smetzger]

Wizards have to get theiw new spells from someone and scribe them. It's part of leveling for them.

Not by the Rules. By the Rules you have been doing research all along and when you gain a level you have an epiphany and you write the spell in your spell book.

 

[Crothian]

Not by the Rules. By the Rules you have been doing research all along and when you gain a level you have an epiphany and you write the spell in your spell book.

But what if you haven't been doing this reasearch all along? The book assumes to much in that.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I don't like it.

- It delays your leveling up unneccesarily. Sometimes you gain enough experience in a dungeon to level-up, but you can't do the level-up because you have no training hall handy. So you'll face the boss with less power than you could.
Also, that can go to extremes: I once was short 200 points to next level (AD&D2) and couldn't level-up (especially since the whole group refused that I got an advance on my XP. And I was a level below them). After that, we went into a lenghty dungeon. After the first fight (it was something rediculously easy) I had enough XP, but no means of training, so I had to go through the whole dungeon a level below my comrad adventurers. I was really pissed-off at that time!

- It is illogical. The characters' experience and capabilities are represented by their XP and level. You get XP for killing monsters, solving puzzles, overcoming traps, and solve other problems, earning more experience. If you have enough XP, you gain a level. But that is an abstraction, just like your age: you aren't really 21 for a whole year, aging a whole year on your birthday, but it would be to complicated stating you age in months, days, or even seconds. In the same way, you get a little better every time you do something that gives you XP, but it would be silly to have a BAB of 7.5478 for a single stroke and 7.5479 afterwards, so you have a BAB 7 for a long time, and then you havea BAB of 8 (same goes with all the other numbers). But just as the change of 21 to 22 years is really the culmination of a year's worth of aging, gaining a level is really the culmination of a long time's worth of getting better a little bit at a time. So leveling up should happen when you earn enough experience, because you actually leveled up a little bit at a time the whole time since you leveled up last.

- It is illogical. Why should you wade through a horde of enemies (and survive) without becoming a better fighter, but if you fence half an hour with that teacher, you suddenly are a better fighter?

- All the 1st-level characters probably probably trained for months or even years, only reaching 1st level, but after a couple of days out in the wild, they will become 2nd level. And after a year, they could already be 20th level! That's because learning from a teacher in a training hall will only teach you that much. If you want to be really good, you have to earn experience, and that can't be done within a protected hall. No, you must go out and face danger, overcome real foes, and solve problems your fighter's manual didn't tell you about.

- If that weak of training in the hall could accomplish what two months out ther in the wild could not (that is, advancing a level), all those kings and what not could cram their quests where the sun don't shine! I'd stay in that posh training hall, exercising all the time, and some months later, I'd be 20th-level, without a single second of danger of limb or life. And laugh I would at those stinking, tousled jerks who go out into the wild, missing a good bath and pretty lasses for days, only to gain power!

 

[Crothian]

- It delays your leveling up unneccesarily. Sometimes you gain enough experience in a dungeon to level-up, but you can't do the level-up because you have no training hall handy. So you'll face the boss with less power than you could.

Here's how I handle this. I allow training ahead of time, or gain the level and allow the taining to come latter. With my training it's more then just saying you spend a week in the training hall. It's part of the game as much as adventurering.

- It is illogical. The characters' experience and capabilities are represented by their XP and level. You get XP for killing monsters, solving puzzles, overcoming traps, and solve other problems, earning more experience. If you have enough XP, you gain a level.

Training allows you to practice and refine your abilities. I think it's illogical to think that a character learns whirlwind attack in the middle of the dungeon crawl. It's illogical to get better at craft weaponsmithing in the middle of the ocean. Training explains how new things are learned.

- It is illogical. Why should you wade through a horde of enemies (and survive) without becoming a better fighter, but if you fence half an hour with that teacher, you suddenly are a better fighter?

Becasue that's not how training works. You don't gain levels just by training. It's a combination of things. You need the XP (and you can gain XP through training, anything can be assigned a challenge rating).

- All the 1st-level characters probably probably trained for months or even years, only reaching 1st level, but after a couple of days out in the wild, they will become 2nd level.

Again, you need to do more then train. You still need the real world experience of seeing how what you know applies to the real world.

Where did you get the idea that people just train and gain levels? That concept seems completely made up. THe DMG goes into length on optional training rules and no where is it suggested to gain levels just through training.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think one of the best reasons for requiring training is to slow down the calendar rate of advancement of the characters...

With the standard rules, and no training, a party could go from 1st to 12th level in a year, and not be out of their teens(!). Training slows down this process and gives more time for campaign secrets to develop.

I've introduced a halfway house idea on training - before you go up another level you have to have spent (your current level) in weeks at your current level. So an 8th level fighter must have spend at least 8 wks before he can improve to 9th level, and if he gets enough xps quickly... he must still wait that period of time.

- I do allow training as well. Training is a way of purchasing xps Basically every 100gp spent on training is worth 25xps. The downside is that this takes 1 wk per 100gp worth of training... so there is no point in trying to spend millions to get to high level because it would take so, so long.

 

[Chimera]

I go back and forth on it. I had set it in stone for my campaign setting, then backed off when the time came because it was inconvenient to the plot at that moment.

But I still like the idea of only being able to learn certain skills (especially the item creation feats) by spending time and money learning them. I certainly do that with spells and languages!

One of the things I did a bit of IMLC and will do more of in the next is divorcing Level from Position in any heirarchy. After all, the IT Manager isn't the best Programmer in the shop, s/he's just the guy/gal with the bext connections and/or Organizational skills. What that means is that the Prelate of the Temple of Whoever isn't necessarily the highest level cleric in the organization. It is entirely possible to be a 15th level Cleric and still be a simple ordained Priest, not a member of the leading heirarchy. ESPECIALLY when one is an Adventurer. Those types cannot be depended on to put the (demanded) time into their profession!

What this means on a practical (playing) level is that PCs will NOT advance through their organizations simply on the strength of their current level. They have to earn that through hard work and political games, just like management types do in the real world.

Oh sorry, that wasn't quite about training now, was it.

 

[Metalsmith]

The Training Method I Use

You must be at Full HP and No Ability Damage. Must spend 1d4 days meditating/taking it easy no skill use no stressfull activity.

I haven't heard any complaints.

Metalsmith

 

[Celebrim]

I dropped this early in my career as DM, probably by the time of my second campaign. The problem is not so much that I don't like the notion of training, but that I find it very constraining to the sort of stories that I as a DM can tell. To be frank, training tends to force storylines into quite trite RPG type dungeon crawls with interludes of rest in nearby haven. For instance, one early campaign featured the characters stranded on an island for several months. There were no training oppurtunities to be had, though they had sufficient experience to climb 2 or 3 levels. Eventually, the characters were 'rescued' by Pirates, delaying return to civilization by several more weeks of game time. This would be ok if you were a fighter or rouge (there were high level fighters and rogues among the pirates), but the cleric and mage would have had a hard time finding someone to train them. Later campaigns have similarly run far afield, and I can think of other campaigns that I could conceivably run in which the characters spent more than a year game time travelling or were of a social station such that training wasn't forthcoming on a regular basis.

My favorite fantasy stories don't have constraint either. For instance, Bilbo obviously 'leveled up' quite a few times in the course of his journey 'there and back again' - eventually ending up as say a Art2/Rog6. If I was telling a similar story, I wouldn't expect Bilbo to spend 30 weeks training along the way. I'd want to move the story along.

 

[Old One]

IMC...

I handle training the following way:

• Hit points, skill points into skills already known, increased saves, class abilities already known and BAB go up after a full night's rest.
• New skills, new feats, new class skills and new spells requires 1d4+1 days of reflection, practice, prayer, etc. New skills/feats require a teacher. The cost is 100 silver (I use a silver standard IMC) per day.
• Changing classes doubles the training time and cost AND I require players to inform me of their intention to multiclass by the midpoint of the previous level so we can build some rationale and "pre-training" into the campaign.

The system seems to work pretty good (no complaints), doesn't bog the plotlines down too much and allows PCs to delay training a bit if faced with a critical situation (since they get a partial power boost right away).

~ Old One