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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormdale" data-source="post: 309823" data-attributes="member: 3555">I like training fro a number of reasons and have always used it in my games (just coming up to 20 years).1.    It takes away excess money and magic items. “So you want to train, that’s 250 gp per week. Oh you are short of cash, I’ll take your ring of wizardry instead. No? Well feel free to find another mage in this town with the experience and skills to train you.” That happened two weeks ago in my game I couldn’t believe that the PC was that willing to go up, but I accepted the ring. My players are always short of cash because they have to save up for training, it keeps them hungry for adventure. 2.    As already mentioned it slows down the game. You want get to level 8, that’ll be 4 weeks (I use 1 week per two levels) so the campaign stretches out a lot longer. Sometimes my players put off training because they have an urgent adventure, other times they refuse adventures because they need to train, and still at others they don’t train because they can’t afford it. However the DM must be careful and plan ahead. You can’t a have an urgent quest- save the world by Friday one day and halt it for training, and keep internal consistency and logic in your game. So you have to plan ahead or allow for contingencies. If PCs break off an adventure to train then the bad guys use that time to prepare extra traps, get reinforcements, or organise hit squads to take out the PCs, or kill the prisoner- you’ve got to make the world come alive, not stop it because the PCs want to train for a couple of months.3.    It gives the PCs access to higher level mentors for advice, information and potential adventures- not to mention the odd person to be kidnapped by the bad guys and who needs rescuing.4.    It adds lots of role-playing potential (especially if the PCs are in a new town) as they try to track down a trainer.5.    It makes sense to me. Martial artists don’t automatically level up, they train and train, learning for masters and mentors, then have a grading. They practice what they learn and take advice form their superiors, same for musicians or anyone else for that matter. I see adventuring kind of like university. Training is where you learn the theory, get to practice in a safe environment and get tips and advice from masters/experts. Adventuring is like the practical component, you get to go out and put into practice what you’ve learned, experiment and maybe come up with some new ideas to try next time you go are training. 6.    Not training doesn’t make sense to me. “Gee, I’ve got 6,000xp, great I wake up a new level, oh wait no I wake up as a wizard with 2 new spells.” AFAIK there is no internal consistency to this. If you want to gain a level, or learn a new class in my game you can but it is going to require a mentor, a lot of time and money. 7.    However, I also agree with Celebrim, there can be times, and adventures where enforcing training doesn’t make sense. In these cases I either ignore the rules (but make up for it with an enforced rest time later in the game) or modify them. I also allow self-training but it takes twice as long to do as you are learning more from trial and error than from a trained teacher/ tutor.8.    Finally, I like the idea of a campaign stretching over several years or decades, not one or two months/ years, training slows down the calendar and allows this type of progression for me. It slows down the pace of the game and allows for down time. Seasons change and the world becomes more “believable” for my PCs. Rather than having a PC race from level 1-10 in a single year.Stormdale</blockquote>

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