Training to Level

[Kae'Yoss]

I'm sure you can have downtime in other ways.

I award experience, that experience piles up. The players end up making choices to push onward or step back and practice so they really are better. The players seem to like those agonizing choices.

I wouldn't. Not because of the agonizing part, but because that it's a situation brought on by the ruleset. It's not a real situation, if the abstraction level wasn't there, you'd never see that.

 

[howandwhy99]

As the DM in question let me just say I include training rules for some very positive reasons. To downplay the traditional negatives our training requirements are not very stringent. Basically, 1 week of training is required per level left (i.e. 1 week to leave 1st level and attain 2nd). Self-training is also possible in twice the time. Sufficient training is required to level, but training can be accumulated up to 2 levels beyond the current. Effectively, a 1st level PC could hire a trainer for 3 weeks and be square through 3rd level.

Yes, the system requires downtime at least every two levels, but the group also receives XP at only 1/2 the prescribed rate. A standard Dungeon Magazine adventure normally advances the party about 1 level.

The positive reasons I meantioned above:
- Finding trainers means learning about the world. Some of my players have unusual classes, so I've mushed traditional classes together for each case on who can train whom.
- Paying trainers is another use for Gold (and gets players thinking about hiring others instead of always looking to be hired)
- Befriending trainers get the players on the road to making Contacts and Followers. (We HR Followers for all based on a behind-the-scenes Reputation score; like Alignment after a PC is introduced).
- Searching for / having mentors can lead to new adventures and adds another option for hooking PCs.
- Plausibly, training makes sense instead of having all skills spontaneously manifest from use. Olympic atheletes improve from practice, not just competition. A high-level Fighter is considered constantly practicing during down-time even if he is not training with a trainer.
- And my favorite reason: The rule I use above advances the timeline of a 1-20 level campaign 4-8 years through training alone.

The difficulty is we've had our first 4 sessions without much of a chance for downtime. I didn't really foresee the initial challenge lasting as long as it has, but potential training opportunities are right around the corner in the game. The one player who has achieved 2nd level would like to have pre-training in the PCs background. However, if I make an exception now for single cases, it sets a poor precedent and good time management in the future could be ignored by the players.

 

[loki44]

It's not a real situation, if the abstraction level wasn't there, you'd never see that.

I disagree, I think it can be a real situation if you conceptualize it that way in-game. It doesn't have to detract from actual playing time because it's very easy to gloss over and flip the campaign calendar page ahead. It's even relatively simple to resolve training and "downtime" activities between sessions via email or whatever forum your group gathers on. Both of our games have their own Yahoo sites and we do a fair amount of "between adventure" stuff online before we even sit down together.

 

[painandgreed]

I require training for new feats, including class features, skill points, and spells (but not slots). Training is normally a week per feat or skill point spent (as per 3.5 DMG), but instead of the normal 50 Gp per week as listed, it requires hireing somebody that already has that feat or skill level. This can be done through role playing or by simply hiring their services. Typically, hirelings with class levels run about 1 GP per level per day. Notable NPCs with special feats or skills may require aditional pay or conditions for training. PCs can develop these feats or skills on their own but it will take longer as they attempt to create them from scratch. Self training may also cost more depending on the feat or skill. A fighter might be able to develop a new move out in the woods hacking on straw dummies he made, but a rogue working on high levels of Disable Device will require devices to attempt to disable. I haven't quite decided on rules for learning spells yet or developing them on your own, but they are probably more costly and time consuming.

Unless I'm running a hack and slash game, then people just level up whenever I hand out XP.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I only require training if they level in a new class, you can progress in one you already have without training, that's just improvement through practice.

Sounds good to me, with the exception of learning new languages or new prepared spells.

I like the idea of training, but it seems needlessly punitive to force someone to continue through a dungeon at a weakened level because they didn't want to, essentially, stop the game cold by turning around and going back to town.

I prefer to think of player characters as training during downtime between adventures and it just pays off in the field when they have a eureka moment and say "ah, THAT's how I get around that sort of parry!" and get the BAB increase, or whatever.

But I also have a lot of downtime built into my campaign, since all of the characters have non-adventuring lives that require their time and attention as well, whether it's helping to reopen a chapel or serving as deputy to the local constable or helping their father the woodcutter. (Granted, this is the lower levels of the campaign. I don't know that the ranger will be helping her dad cut wood when she's level 12.)

 

[Victim]

On the flip side teaching yourself is the only way that you CAN learn something?

... probably at great personal cost and or bodily harm depending on what youre talking about.

That sounds like adventuring to me.

 

[Warbringer]

I played in a 2e campaign where not only did we have to train to level up, we had to pay for training!

One of the best campaigns I ever played in! Still in debt at 8th level!

I let the players choose:

If you have the xp you can level up in adventure; roll hps, add skill points to existing skills, step through feat chains, learn new spells already in spellbook, acquire new sorcerer spell, and usually no new classes.

If you wait for training, flat 1 week, cost 100gp per level, then you may; roll hps twice and take highest; learn new skills, learn new fets (not part of existing chain), learn new spells not in spellbook (new spells at new level are not automatic), sorcerer may switch a spell known, acquire new class (though I play prestige classes belong to Organizations and generally require "missions' to gain access)

Now, players may learn new feats,skills ect from pther players, if they tell me at the start of the new level that they are spending time together teaching/learning through the adventure.

 

[BSF]

I wouldn't. Not because of the agonizing part, but because that it's a situation brought on by the ruleset. It's not a real situation, if the abstraction level wasn't there, you'd never see that.

True, but I also have never seen anybody improve in the same scope and scale with their skillset in a matter of a few months in the real world. (Always a dangerous comparison, I know.)

To take a midline example, how many baseball players improve from being a guy that can hit the ball sometimes to the best batter in history over the course of 2-3 months? They practice, between games, quite a bit actually. It is the same with all sports. The games are important because you are dealing with a wider range of variables. But the practice is important to analyze what went right, and what went wrong, and build new skills to be better.

If we assume that in a given baseball game, each batter will reach the plate at least 3 times, we could equate that to 3 encounters/day. Every 4-5 games a batter would 'level'. So after 90 games, any given batter should be the equivelant of 20th level right? No need to practice between games even. So by now, all major league players should be up in epic levels for this season right?

Sure it is an abstraction layer. It's a game. It is no less and no more arbitrary than any other game mechanic. I have thrown encounters at parties where they would have leveled 3 times in as many game days. The spellcasters would have been doing a lot of research during that time to get their 6 spells for levelling. Melee types would have been picking up feat chains. An item creation feat suddenly manifested itself. New languages were picked up, depths of knowledge were suddenly born. You get the idea. No reason for it to seem realistic right? No reason you need to do research to get spells. After all, you barely slept during that time and you couldn't recover spells, but in the back of your mind you were thinking of new spells to cast. And learning a new language might come naturally and easy to you. Learning how to use a new exotic weapon you just looted off your enemy shouldn't be too hard. Yesterday he hit you with that weapon for a good 18 seconds. You felt that pain and watched him right? No problem.

There is no reason why you can't play it that way, if that is what you enjoy. Of course, there is no reason why you can't require downtime and training as well, if that is what you enjoy. Easier to make it a table rule at the outset so new players have a solid expectation of what will occur during the game.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Adventureing is not training. When one trains they do the same moves over and over for possible hours or days. Adventuring is not.

Clearly you've never played EverQuest I.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Maybe not initial hp, but I think you can rationalize an increase in hp as being attributable to training, apart from the CON bonus.

That's not what he said, or at least not what it sounded like to me. It sounded like he wanted all HP to be to be training related. Of course, I might be wrong for a change.

The whole month of grueling fights does make you better. It gives you xp which allows you to level (an abstraction).

XP don't make you better. You don't make an XP roll against your enemy. You don't get an XP bonus. The better attack bonus, more HP, and all that stuff, they make you better. And with training, you don't get those without training.

In starting the thread I was simply curious about how various DMs handle the concept of leveling within their own games.

I use it as an abstraction: Actually, you get better with each attack you make. It's just an iota, but it's there. Just like you get older each day. But since that would be way too complex to track, you only get better rules once in a while, just like your "legal age" increases once a year. And just like that age, you get the mechanical bonus the moment you qualify for it. Just like you don't have to make some kind of test to see whether you're more mature now, you don't have to do anything to get the mechanical, abstract benefit of all the small improvements you accumulated over the past level.

Your actual age has increased by another 365.x days and you get a birth day. Suddenly, you're allowed to drink, drive and vote (just not in that order). And now you're suddenly able to make two attacks per round, with your BAB that's now +6. Your ability didn't actually improve from +5 to +6 all of a sudden. It increased from something like 5.99 to 6, but that would be too abstract.


So I use instant level-up. Without training, even within sessions - though I usually fix it so they level up between sessions.

It has the added benefit that I can set the pace of the adventure. If I want them to do nothing for 6 months in-game time, I can do that. If I want them to hustle for the next 8 sessions, with hardly a break in the action, I can do that, too, without forcing players to stop chasing the foes to spend a couple of days training so they're better prepared to beat that foe and whatever he wants to sic on them.

In our games the amount of training required increases with each level. This makes sense to me since the skills/spells/etc. become exponentially difficult.

Plus it keeps getting more and more difficult to find someone who knows something you don't (i.e. someone who's at least on the same level as you want to go to) and both can and will teach you (not everyone's fit to be an instructor, and of course not everyone wants to, even if they could). It can easily become the main adventure, more time-consuming than what they would do if they weren't trying to get better.

And one day, they won't find anyone to train them, and then they're screwed.