Retraining

Retraining is a core part of the Tome of Prowess revision, not an optional rule that only some games take advantage of. The concept has been around in house rules for ages, but was officially introduced in the Player's Handbook II. The version in that book does not work well for our purposes and we do not use there here. So if you have read those rules, please forget them now.

There will be situations where you’ll want a skill ready that you haven’t been investing in. You may need to learn how to climb to scale the Frostfell Mountains, or you may decide that you don’t ever use the acrobatics and something else would serve you better. Casters deal with these situations the same way they deal with anything else; they just rememorize or supplement their spell selection with scrolls, and then they go back to ignoring the skill system entirely. Since skilled characters can’t do that, it’s really quite necessary that they get to retrain their skills instead. It’s not a big deal; real people do it all of the time. It just takes some time, dedication, and (because this is a game) a training montage.

To retrain, you simply dedicate some time to the process and, at the end of that time, move a number of skill points from the skills which had them at the beginning to the other skills that you wish to raise. The time required depends on what you wish to train your new skills up to, as indicated in the table below. The days spent must be consecutive, but after you have spent the required time you may raise one skill up to any rank equal to or less than the maximum rank indicated. If you wish to retrain any other skills during the same period, you may do so; simply increase the time spent by 2 days for each additional skill. If you wish to train several skills up to different levels, you must spend the time required for the highest skill rank you wish to achieve, plus 2 additional days for each additional skill.

For example, if you have a level 8 character with 6 skill points per level who wished to consolidate all of their skill points into 6 skills at max rank, you would need to spend a total of 17 days to accomplish this: 7 days for the first skill to achieve maximum rank plus 2 additional days for each of the 5 extra skills. If you wanted to train 4 skills up max rank and 4 others up to a cross-class maximum, you would need to spend a total of 21 days retraining: 7 days for the first and 14 additional days for each additional skill. Seriously, your character is an adventurer and they can prepare for just about anything in less than a month.

Maximum Retrained Skill Rank by Level

Adventurer's Knack

If you had been adventuring for a while, you would pick up and remember all sorts of useful things. Unfortunately, the skill system is really bad about representing this. You can never make checks to see if you recall anything about a creature type you've faced dozens of times before, you can never try your hand at opening a lock like you've seen your companions do, and you never improve even a little bit at the untrained things that you could attempt if you wanted. To rectify this, characters gain the option to spend additional time on an otherwise untrained, or under-trained, skill check in exchange for temporary ranks in the skill.

You may use a skill as if you had a number of ranks in it based on your level, as indicated in the table below, but you must spend 4 times as long as the normal action required for the skill check. If the action would normally be performed as a free action, you must spend a standard action on it instead. If it would be performed as a swift or immediate action, you must spend a full-round action on it instead.

You may not take 10 or 15 on this skill check, even if you would normally be able to if you had invested in the skill. This is because you lack sufficient practice with the skill and are making a best guess based on things you have seen in your journeys or been told by companions. You may take 20 if circumstances would normally permit you to do so, but it takes 80 times as long as the normal action required for the skill check. In this case, you are simply 'winging it' over and over and over again until you get your 20. You otherwise act as if you had the ranks in the skill for the purposes of the check.

Adventurer's Knack Temporary Ranks

The second reason has to do with defaulting. People are simply less likely to use an optional rule they have concerns about than they are to remove a core rule they have concerns about, so setting it as the default rule means that more people will use it. While retraining has historically been frowned upon for various reasons, from narrative to realism concerns, we feel that these are generally overstated. And since the benefits outweigh the minor drawbacks from these concerns, we include it by default to get as much of that benefit as possible.

Still, if you just can't swallow it, you have a few options. You can increase the time it takes to retrain to something you think more realistic. Doing so limits some of the flexibility to greater periods of downtime, but doesn't eliminate it entirely. It's a nerf, but a minor one. Actually removing the ability to retrain is on the table as well, as it's ultimately your game and you will use or exclude rules as you see fit. While there's nothing we can do to stop you from making that decision, we do not believe it to be a good one for the game in general. We hope we've presented reasons here for you to keep it in your games, at least to try it out, and that when you see it in play you find it's not a problem after all. |