Training in your campaign

[Mystery Man]

things occur to their characters that have logical explainations, not just "poof, you can now turn a wight

And therein lies the paradox. Realistically, have you ever been able to turn a wight? Or logically explain the process? What realistic encounter can you use to form a common reference to your game?

It really boils down to style of the game; my group enjoys that "deep immersion" experience.

Deep emersion should be about storytelling and playing a role. Not haggling over 3 skill points and how it should make sense how the character got them.

Now as to rules governing how your players gain their abilities you could look to (if you haven't already) Unearthed Arcana I think, has a workable system.

 

[Arnwyn]

I'm trying to keep this as realistic as possible, and wanted to incorporate the idea of training into the campaign. So, I'd like to find out if anyone has used the concept of training in their campaigns?

Yes, we do use training, but "realism" isn't first and foremost on our minds.

IMC, it works as such:
When characters gain a level, they get all the class abilities of a class they already have with no training required. Further, they can allocate skill points to any skill that they already have, or a skill that can be used "untrained". Finally, they can take any "improved" or "superior" (etc.) feat without training if they already have the previous related feat. Thus, if the PC has Cleave, he/she can take Great Cleave without any training.

They must train, however, for new skills that cannot be used untrained. They must also train for most new feats. And finally, they must train to be able to take a level in a new class.

We don't care if they never used a skill between levels, for example - there is already a huge amount of information to keep track of during a game, so "realism" is right out.

 

[the Jester]

I don't use training imc, but I'd like to. The 3e quick-level paradigm bugs me- I've done a couple things to slow advancement imc, but training isn't one of them (though I keep mulling it over).

The catch is, training interferes with missions that are on a timer. Also, what if one pc levels a session before everyone else, and the party's still in the midst of a dungeon. Does everyone go back for a few days or weeks while Cleric Chad levels? Or does Chad miss out on the end of the adventure? Or does Chad wait to level and play out the rest of the adventure at lower than expected power?

That's the only real problem I have with training- it monkeywrenches a lot of adventures (those on a timer, etc).

 

[Telperion]

My players have employed mercenaries as guards, constables and such. Now they have a bunch of 1st level warriors and a 13th level fighter (venerable age, so he isn't fighting any battles for anyone anymore) to train them.

One year = 1000 xp for NPCs. The campaign will most likely last something like 10 - 25 years (I rolled some dice and found out that the 13th level fighter will die in 9 years) In-Game, so starting to train troops now is a good investment.

As for the players themselves? Well, I allow access to some restricted feats, skills, PrCs and such trough contacts. These contacts "training" the characters and then the they can start taking those feats and so on...
But, I don't really allow training for the specific reason of gaining levels as part of downtime (there's going to be plenty of that in the current campaign I'm running).

 

[iwatt]

About the rapid advancement, I agree that it really suspensd disbelief. But part of the problem is DMs handing out time senistive plot hooks all the time. I call it (an ripped it from somebody that I can't remmeber) the "Jack Bauer" syndrome. Everithing happens at a beakneck speed, every last mission is time sensitiove etc..

IMC this got so out of hand that when I finally gave the players a mission without a set time limit, they were still rushing at top speed across a continent, begrudging every day lost due to having to heal their companions after any particularly hard wilderenss encounter. So it cuts both ways.

Also, the rapid advancement rules have me using random encounters less and less, since if I allow for all of them (according to the rules) the PCs are 1 or 2 levels higher than I expected when they reach my dungeons. This forces me to retool all of the work I previously did, which is something i hate doing.

 

[orchid blossom]

We discovered ourselves leveling far too fast in our current campaign. The solution for us was to agree to half xp. We all enjoy the campaign and don't want it to end early because we get ridiculously powerful too fast. Some of the extra xp goes into a "shunt" which we can then tap for the making of magic items.

As far as training goes, we don't really deal with it. We have enough down time that it's assumed we've worked on our skills inbetween times.