Saeviomagy
Adventurer
At those prices, why would anyone adventure instead of just retiring and raking in the dough?
D&D 5E Training to Level Up
ancient_chimera
First Post
i always thought of leveling up as passing a test..
you have trained the skills in real world.. and have gained the necessary experience
return to your order/tower/keep/guild..
and a group of your peers judge you worthy of the new level(s)
or a higher level agent bestows your adjustments on you.
sort of like a karate dojo.. you train.. you fight.. then show off yours skills and inevitably are granted the next belt
of course it takes a feast to feel your new powers blossom
my 2 coppers
you have trained the skills in real world.. and have gained the necessary experience
return to your order/tower/keep/guild..
and a group of your peers judge you worthy of the new level(s)
or a higher level agent bestows your adjustments on you.
sort of like a karate dojo.. you train.. you fight.. then show off yours skills and inevitably are granted the next belt
of course it takes a feast to feel your new powers blossom
my 2 coppers
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
I absolutely make the characters train to level up. And not with no-risk mamby-pamby trainers. I put them in real (fantasy) life, live or die situations. I track their training with a system called experience points, or XP for short. It's great - for daily tasks they get a little, but when things are really challenging and risk is high that's when I'll reward them with more of them. I've got a chart and everything to know when they've completed this phase of training and are ready to gain the advantages.
LordEntrails
Hero
So the loner who has lived 20 years on the frontier, has killed hundreds of goblins, dozens of ogres, led soldiers in battle, etc is still first level just because he hasn't gone back to the city to have someone bestow upon him a test?
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
I think real-world experience for the characters is a better teacher than ... well, a teacher. So I don't require a teacher to gain levels.
For all of that, a teacher is not a bad thing to improve your skills. But I would see a teacher as a downtime activity that granted XP, since XP is the currency for learning and advancing. Though I'd want to probably limit it so you can't level from doing nothing but training, else we'd have 20th level elven wizard everywhere with their lifespan. Maybe only if within 5% of leveling, or the other way can't bring you past the half-way mark.
For all of that, a teacher is not a bad thing to improve your skills. But I would see a teacher as a downtime activity that granted XP, since XP is the currency for learning and advancing. Though I'd want to probably limit it so you can't level from doing nothing but training, else we'd have 20th level elven wizard everywhere with their lifespan. Maybe only if within 5% of leveling, or the other way can't bring you past the half-way mark.
CydKnight
Explorer
My interpretation is that the game character has no idea what a "level" or "experience points (XP)" are. This is just something outside of game play to keep track of when PCs have gained enough experience doing what they do until that experience translates to making them more efficient and powerful at what they do.
Training to me is something that perhaps could be used in lieu of experience for a character at lower levels to explain how you begin an adventure that maybe requires 5th level or higher. I am not going to force players to have their characters go through some elaborate in-game formal training hoops to level up but I do think a long rest is a good idea before the new stats are enabled.
Training to me is something that perhaps could be used in lieu of experience for a character at lower levels to explain how you begin an adventure that maybe requires 5th level or higher. I am not going to force players to have their characters go through some elaborate in-game formal training hoops to level up but I do think a long rest is a good idea before the new stats are enabled.
Always have used training...at least through lower levels.
It's changed. DM to DM. Edition to edition. Even campaign to campaign.
Generally speaking, they've always fallen into the neighborhood of anywhere from 1 day to 1 week, and 20gp to 100gp, per level.
Nowadays and/or in 5e, just for simplicity's sake, I'd probably go with something like 1 day -of concentrated, restful "downtime"- and 50gp per level [training into! So, to become 2nd level, you need 100gp] must be spent with a mentor at least 2 levels higher than you from 1st-5th, or maybe 7th, level. In 5e, probably 5th.
Post that level, you can basically figure things out yourself. So, no mentor needed. You're "learning on the job" as it were. But you still need the time to focus and "train/practice" your newfound skill. You can do the "leveling up" mid-adventure locale if you can find a secure space and the time to devote.
The purpose/justification here (for the rate increase) is twofold.
1. Gives the players/characters a reason to keep adventuring/seeking out more riches to fund their advancement.
2. From mid-levels onward you are beginning to hit levels where finding people 2 or more levels higher than you in your chosen speciality/profession become fewer and farther between.
It's changed. DM to DM. Edition to edition. Even campaign to campaign.
Generally speaking, they've always fallen into the neighborhood of anywhere from 1 day to 1 week, and 20gp to 100gp, per level.
Nowadays and/or in 5e, just for simplicity's sake, I'd probably go with something like 1 day -of concentrated, restful "downtime"- and 50gp per level [training into! So, to become 2nd level, you need 100gp] must be spent with a mentor at least 2 levels higher than you from 1st-5th, or maybe 7th, level. In 5e, probably 5th.
Post that level, you can basically figure things out yourself. So, no mentor needed. You're "learning on the job" as it were. But you still need the time to focus and "train/practice" your newfound skill. You can do the "leveling up" mid-adventure locale if you can find a secure space and the time to devote.
The purpose/justification here (for the rate increase) is twofold.
1. Gives the players/characters a reason to keep adventuring/seeking out more riches to fund their advancement.
2. From mid-levels onward you are beginning to hit levels where finding people 2 or more levels higher than you in your chosen speciality/profession become fewer and farther between.
LordEntrails
Hero
I believe original Runequest had a training mechanic. Where you could train upto a certain level, but above that it you could only improve through actually using the skill. (Of course, RQ had no level mechanic).
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
In designing RPGs I've often played with the only way to advance a skill was through failure or critical success of a skill in a meaningful way. So "Bluff" with your friends playing cards around the campfire didn't count. Either directly as an XP mechanism or as a gateway mechanism where you couldn't advance it until you had the meaningful failure (or epiphany), but advancement was done with a different currency to control relative level-up speeds between characters.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
A number of things:
1. I use training and always will, for a few reasons: it's a treasure drain; it allows me to add some depth to the game world (each trainer has the potential to become a relevant NPC sometime); it forces downtime; and it forces the party to every now and then look at their treasury and - gawds forbid - divide it!
2. A character can always "self train" (as in the loner example in post #54) but advancement is at half rate. Thus, said loner might have plowed his way up to 8th-level in all the years he's spent out there.
3. If you bump but do not (or cannot) train your xp gain starts to slow down.
4. Another benefit of training that I'll break out from point 1 above: it sometimes forces the party to make more-or-less difficult choices. Do we plow ahead and finish now, or do we go back to town and train? If we finish now the foes won't be able to complete their dastardly plan, but if we train up we'll be better able to deal with them even if their dastardly plan is in motion. And so forth...
5. While the concept of "levels" is unknown to many classes, most caster classes and Monks do know what they are in principle: benchmarks of achievement. Monks, for example, might codify them similar to the modern-day coloured-belt system in karate. I also have it that a character of any class instinctively knows when it has bumped (also a few benefits or partial benefits of bumping occur right then rather than at training); call it a divine blessing or whatever.
6. Characters need a trainer up to about "name" level (8th to 11th range depending on class) after which they can self-train though they still need the right surroundings - a temple for Clerics, a lab and study space for wizards, training dummies and sparring partners for warriors, etc.
7. Cost for all classes is about 1000 g.p. per level being trained into until self-training starts, at which point the costs start to vary quite widely by class.
8. Note that all of this is very problematic if you're running a fast-advancing campaign (e.g. most published APs) where characters tend to bump two or three or four times within a single adventure. I wouldn't recommend training rules be used in this situation. However, if you're running a slower-paced game then by all means put training in.
Lanefan
1. I use training and always will, for a few reasons: it's a treasure drain; it allows me to add some depth to the game world (each trainer has the potential to become a relevant NPC sometime); it forces downtime; and it forces the party to every now and then look at their treasury and - gawds forbid - divide it!
2. A character can always "self train" (as in the loner example in post #54) but advancement is at half rate. Thus, said loner might have plowed his way up to 8th-level in all the years he's spent out there.
3. If you bump but do not (or cannot) train your xp gain starts to slow down.
4. Another benefit of training that I'll break out from point 1 above: it sometimes forces the party to make more-or-less difficult choices. Do we plow ahead and finish now, or do we go back to town and train? If we finish now the foes won't be able to complete their dastardly plan, but if we train up we'll be better able to deal with them even if their dastardly plan is in motion. And so forth...
5. While the concept of "levels" is unknown to many classes, most caster classes and Monks do know what they are in principle: benchmarks of achievement. Monks, for example, might codify them similar to the modern-day coloured-belt system in karate. I also have it that a character of any class instinctively knows when it has bumped (also a few benefits or partial benefits of bumping occur right then rather than at training); call it a divine blessing or whatever.
6. Characters need a trainer up to about "name" level (8th to 11th range depending on class) after which they can self-train though they still need the right surroundings - a temple for Clerics, a lab and study space for wizards, training dummies and sparring partners for warriors, etc.
7. Cost for all classes is about 1000 g.p. per level being trained into until self-training starts, at which point the costs start to vary quite widely by class.
8. Note that all of this is very problematic if you're running a fast-advancing campaign (e.g. most published APs) where characters tend to bump two or three or four times within a single adventure. I wouldn't recommend training rules be used in this situation. However, if you're running a slower-paced game then by all means put training in.
Lanefan
