Commoner Advancement Question

[kalos72]

So one question I had, reading through the Commoner's Handbook, how does that strategy get applied?

I have a city of 5000 people, do I just "transform" them to experts by adding a template and now I have 5000 experts?

Do I just train 5000 people to be rangers and just stop at 1st level?

OR

I am recruiting new citizens to repopulate my city, is THAT the time I upgrade their templates and go through the "advancement" process?

Do they need to agree? Is there a RP piece to this process? When is it ok to do this advancement?

[kalos72]

Anyone help out with this?

If I am missing something please, let me know. :(

[Cerefel]

When does the commoner handbook ever mention being a class other than commoner? :smallconfused:

[kalos72]

True, but why cant they get trained to "class up"? Is there something that says they cant take classes other then commoner?

But even if you stick with the Commoner class, for that one NPC I understand the idea but can you apply to an entire city? How do you justify that? How do you start your game with normal citizens and end it with expert templated psions?

Do GM's use this process on cities or do most people limit it to one off's?

[ExLibrisMortis]

Use the retraining rules in PHB II, or homebrew it.

[kalos72]

So if I went by the PHB II rules, I can just have each citizen go through some quest/trial and have them retrained however I want after.

Any RP suggestions on how to get them to accept/agree?

[Bucky]

You could embed the trial in the culture as a rite of passage; every boy, when he comes of age, goes through the trial. Everyone immigrating goes through the trial to become a citizen. Those who fail form your lower class, by virtue of their inferior class features.

[ExLibrisMortis]

So if I went by the PHB II rules, I can just have each citizen go through some quest/trial and have them retrained however I want after.

Any RP suggestions on how to get them to accept/agree?
You can just teach them a six-week course on Expertise?

[KillianHawkeye]

True, but why cant they get trained to "class up"? Is there something that says they cant take classes other then commoner?

NPCs can multiclass just like any character, but it probably takes average townsfolk a long time to gain the necessary XP.


But even if you stick with the Commoner class, for that one NPC I understand the idea but can you apply to an entire city? How do you justify that? How do you start your game with normal citizens and end it with expert templated psions?

Do GM's use this process on cities or do most people limit it to one off's?

I don't quite understand what you're asking here or what you're planning on doing.

Are you trying to stat out everyone in a town? Are you leveling them up like normal characters? That seems pretty unnecessary to me.

Is there some reason that you or another player is trying to train an entire town full of commoners into better classes? Why? Normally there just aren't towns where everyone is high level or exceptional in some way. Towns need ordinary people to do the ordinary things that people need. And if you're the DM and you really need a town that is truly bizarre, like absolutely everyone is a spellcaster for some reason, you don't need to follow a bunch of rules to train or level up a bunch of NPCs! Just write it that way! :smallconfused::smallsigh:

[kalos72]

There are a few reasons for us to look into this scenario really.

1. Recruitment - "If you come to Neverwinter, we will retrain you into the Wizard you always wanted to become and give you free gear and membership into the Neverwinter Wizards Guild."

2. Ways to take the average citizen/commoner and retrain them to fill needed roles, craftsmen and the like. Getting Waterdeeps top smith would be nice but if not, at least training one up would be ok to start.

Our long term goal is to compete with the likes of Waterdeep/Baldur's Gate economically/socially/politically. The thought was advancing our citizens would be a good recruitment tool and help develop local resources to aid in this goal long term.

[KillianHawkeye]

There are a few reasons for us to look into this scenario really.

1. Recruitment - "If you come to Neverwinter, we will retrain you into the Wizard you always wanted to become and give you free gear and membership into the Neverwinter Wizards Guild."

2. Ways to take the average citizen/commoner and retrain them to fill needed roles, craftsmen and the like. Getting Waterdeeps top smith would be nice but if not, at least training one up would be ok to start.

Our long term goal is to compete with the likes of Waterdeep/Baldur's Gate economically/socially/politically. The thought was advancing our citizens would be a good recruitment tool and help develop local resources to aid in this goal long term.

Okay, that information was actually quite helpful!

So... normally this is the kind of thing that takes a long time to come into fruition. Like if you institute magical aptitude testing and start training all the potential candidates in wizardry, you might have a big batch of first level Wizards in ten or fifteen years. Same goes for fighting or smithing or whatever, but those wouldn't take as long.

My guess is that you want a faster way to do this. Retraining can speed things up, but overall the main issue is the rate of experience gain. People living peaceful lives in town don't normally gain a lot of XP; retraining and multi-classing are both dependent on gaining levels. However, with a party of PCs running the show, it's possible that you could introduce some more extreme training methods (for example, capturing a monster for the townspeople to spar with). It's hard to imagine what kind of training would increase a person's smithing skills, but luckily in D&D there is no relationship between the source of one's experiences and the skills and abilities one develops.

[kalos72]

But would I need to level him much for him to be useful?

A normal commoner, focusing all his skill points in a Craft would be a decent start no?

Advance that commoner, doesnt he improve?

Throw the guy some magical skill check assistance and he reasonably competant I think...

There is still the "what not just use Fabricate and be done with it until you recruit better craftsmen..." question.

[Vaz]

The most important thing to remember about a commoner is that they are common. There is nothing elite about them, so roll 3d6 (average 10-11), and roll for HP. If we keep it simple, and call the "Average", and that the average array is worked out as per the monster manual, with 10-11 to spread among the stats, and that they have average HP, which is 2. Obviously races can change that, as can "CharOp" when you can build a character with a point buy.

If we have a look at the rules presented within the PHB2, it states that there are two methods of character revision; retraining and rebuilding.

Retraining allows for Single Class Features, Feats, Languages, Skill Ranks, Spells, and Substitutions to be switched, on a 1:1 ratio.

As a Commoner, there are now Class Features, no Spells, and no Substitutions to be worried about. There are feats, languages, and skill ranks to worry about. With Intelligence bonus of 0, though, there are no bonus languages, so the only real option is to give up one of your racial languages. A human has only Common as its base language, so giving that up could be an issue, unless they are all able to learn that same language. Take for example real world history, where there were Navajo Code Talkers. While they were Bilingual, it didn't matter to the Americans if the Japanese were able to intercept the messages if the Navajo were talking in a language which the Japanese were unable to neither understand nor learn. As said, if this is coming the use of the military, they could serve as runners. Outside of that, unless they have a secondary language as standard, then they're kind of stuck and unable to translate.

So, that leaves feats and skills. If you think back to when you were a child, some of the things you used to be able to do. Climb trees, swim, etc, all of those things, while not lost to us, quickly became less useful, and we had to turn our attention elsewhere. Whether it was the working knowledge of a car engine, or being able to work spreadsheets, or recall pub quiz facts of variable worth, combined with lack of time spent to continue to develop our ability to swim, or climb trees, or jump about doing whatever we wanted, and so our skills were retrained without us even realising it - a lot of that time in school. However, not everything is as cut and dry as in Character Optimization, and that Commoners might not have 4 ranks in Handle Animal. Those that do are quite possibly are among the best individuals in the world at it, outside of adventurer class. While Charisma on average scores doesn't provide a positive or negative, a feat on top of that for "Skill Focus: handle animal) makes them very good, the equivalent of someone 3 levels higher, usually.

Now, a commoner has 2+Int skills x4 at first level, giving them the ability to cap out at 4 ranks within their limited class list. Whether they actually hit that cap is questionable. In the list, there are a couple of trained only skills; Handle Animal, Profession. If in an urban environment, they may swap Handle Animal for Gather Information (can be learned untrained, it's not a class skill without it), and can pick up Tumble in place of Ride (Tumble cannot be a class skill without replacing Ride, but it is an untrained skill).

Outside of that, they have Climb, Jump, and Swim, which are Strength based, Ride and Use Rope for Dexterity, Craft, which is Intelligence, Listen, Profession, and Spot for Wisdom, and Handle Animal for Charisma.

They have a clear bias towards to Strength and Wisdom based skills, but that doesn't mean that a commoner doesn't have ranks in any thing else. Think of all of the people who are running Etsy shops, or participating in a Facebook Pyramid Ponzi Schemes. These are forms of craftsmanship or profession.

Take me for example. I used to swim for my county when I was growing up. I'd have put myself at maybe 3-4 ranks in swimming. I couldn't run very well, but I soon picked up that ability to do so, when I stopped swimming, and became better at swimming, and due to my size, got put into other sports teams, including Long Jump and from there, joined in with a climbing group. However, I was also quite good at painting in art classes, and managed to get some work shown at a local town fair which was sold and the profits went to a charity.

Since those days, when my skills were probably split along the lines of Swim, Climb, Craft, Profession (Art), Jump, that quickly went out of the window when I joined the forces while I was in Uni. I learned to spot things out of place, listen on guard duty, and how to use rope (as a boat handler), as well as increasing my knowledge. Along with Profession (Sailor) to make the checks for boat handling, as opposed to how I made money. I still had those skills I had earlier in life, but they weren't as pronounced or as well practised in my time in the forces compared to as a child. My more physical skills came back as well, although you could say that the challenges that I overcame in my 32 weeks of training increased my level, so that I got a new set of skills.

That was my form of retraining. As I grew older, and my environment shaped me, and my skills became appropriate to what I needed to do. My feat? Well all I can imagine I have as a feat is Procrastination, because I seem to excel at that, and that's not changed since I was old enough to realise that that was what it is.

So, most commoners have a veritable mish-mash of non-appropriate skills, non-appropriate feats, and non-appropriate ability scores. It is notable that of the retraining notes within the PHB2 you cannot change your ability score. You can't hit the gym/library for a few weeks, and reallocate your ability scores. A commoner is a commoner, and a commoner can only do what a commoner can physically or mentally do, there is no other retraining.

The only other way to do that is by Rebuilding. This becomes quite troublesome though, as you're stuck with a commoners abilities. Say you want them to become a capable wizard. With the assumption that they all rolled perfectly average, and you don't have any random outliers who are pushing anything larger than an 11 in any ability score (pre-race stat increase), you have two types of potential wizard. Those who can cast level 1 spells, and those who can only cast cantrips. Now, those who can only cast cantrips are useful. But perhaps we want to increase them some more. As a low level commoner, they're not really going to be casting more than level 1 spells, so the only things that increasing their stats will do will give them a single additional level 1 spell, and increase the DC.

On a 1st level Commoner (not yet retrained their class) with 11 Intelligence, they can already cast level 1 spells. They have 3 10's, and 2 more 11's. If we reduce these to 8's, the lowest, that gives us 12 points to put into our Commoner. Although they are now physically extremely frail (1HP), slow, weak, un wise, and un charismatic, they can now reach the heady heights of 17 Intelligence, with a further 2 points to put into any other ability score (or one point in any 2 abilities). The same could be done for a Sorcerer, depending on how it's fluffed that the magic is awoken within the blood.

Now, as 17 Intelligence doesn't get us anywhere, really, unless it's progressing to level 4, we can afford to drop it to 16 Intelligence (for +3 DC's). This makes it a perfect candidate for becoming an "artillerist" in the army, especially as a Sorcerer due to their higher spell slots. That would also allow you to spend a total of 5 points on different skills when increasing them. However, you may not need the ability score increases. You might be doing non-combat stuff, and as they cannot hit 20+ Casting stat for double 1st level spell, you can organize them to have no greater than 12 Int for +1 level 1 spell slots. Note again, you can't just hit the gym and get extra strength without taking from other stats. If you low, you stay low, but at least it's only a 1 for 1 swap until you hit higher than 13.

Now, the rebuilding of class levels works as follows; Divide your total character level by 5, and round up. You may now exchange this many class levels from one single class into another. As a "Commoner 1", you may exchange a single (1/5=0.2, r.u = 1) level for another class.

The rebuilding of a class is clearly intended to turn a player characters class to another, rather than an NPC's, but as NPC's can have character levels, I don't see why not. It does state that to do so, as you're "erasing history", and that in order "to accomplish a character rebuild, your PC must complete a significant and challenging quest". Now, a significant and challenging quest is of several varieties, but at low level, this can't be very much, or else they'd all die.

Let's take my experiences here again.

Rebuiding a character. My ability scores when I left school were probably average. That said, I wanted to join the military while I was there. While not a direct analogue (there's no way to simply "increase" your scores without a DM fiating it), you could say I went through a character rebuild. While I didn't go kill any dragons in a dungeon, or loot from a lich, what I did do was invest myself in 32 weeks of training. Having gone from a Commoner 1 to lets say a Warrior 1. I learned to shoot and some CQC, hence the increase in BAB as well as proficiency in simple weapons like daggers, but to make myself more capable at those, my stats were increased; maybe taking some from Charisma, because it was less useful to be friendly and cheery when you're kicking down doors shooting bad guys in the face. Learning how to read a map, and hunt for myself as I set traps, and how to safely prepare food and look after myself became a thing. Again, there are no direct allegories, but as you can see there becomes a distinct differentiation from book learning and being able to happily make friends wherever I go with ease, compared to needing to be good at shooting, be fit, be able to look after yourself if you get injured or lost. I'm not saying I became any thicker, but that they were less relevant for me.

Maybe the first few weeks were reorganising parts of my skills, before beginning to rearrange my ability scores, before teaching me more appropriate battle drills, representing my skills/feat changes, my physicality, and my "class features".

[Yahzi]

Advance that commoner, doesnt he improve?
Commoners don't advance. That's why they are commoners.

In the original D&D, only a few people were capable of gaining levels. You could actually hire a mercenary captain who was described as 2nd or 3rd level and incapable of further advancement.

Commoners were that class because that's all they could ever be; the ones who gained ranks were lucky and rare, but only Adventurers were blessed by the Gods with the ability to become heroes.

In our new, modern era, such blatant elitism has quietly been swept under the rug; but it's still there, underlying all of the structure of D&D.

My World of Prime setting challenges this concept at its root, by making XP a tangible object like currency*. This allows anyone to gain levels, but within limits. No one would advance a whole city; no one could afford it. In the end it has the same effect; only the lucky few gain levels; but at least it's not psuedo-racist.


* This sounds really weird but actually works out really well; D&D always treated XP like a fungible resource, starting with magic items and establishing the value of 1 XP at 5 gp.

[Mordaedil]

Okay, so you put out that notice, and you get maybe 500 applicants, you have to reject half of them because there's too many to deal with to bring through higher education and the remainder of the applicants have no talent for learning the arcane and you have at best some 100 commoners who all know one or two cantrips, 50 who have changed classes to adept, and you have maybe 30 successful 1st-level wizards, depending on leadership of the owner of the academy.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Okay, so you put out that notice, and you get maybe 500 applicants, you have to reject half of them because there's too many to deal with to bring through higher education and the remainder of the applicants have no talent for learning the arcane and you have at best some 100 commoners who all know one or two cantrips, 50 who have changed classes to adept, and you have maybe 30 successful 1st-level wizards, depending on leadership of the owner of the academy.
I would be slightly more optimistic, but you are right, especially if we're looking at the span of a single generation.

27/512th of the population ((3/8)3) cannot cast any spells at all, due to ability score restrictions; they have all their mental scores at 9 or less.
98/512th of the population ((5/8)3 - (3/8)3) can cast only cantrips; they have no mental scores over 10, but they do not have all their scores at 9 or less.
The remaining population, that is 387/512th, can cast first-level spells in at least one class. You need to figure out which class, which can probably be done fluff-wise.

Organized application of higher-end magical propoganda - in other words, a bard - can probably get nearly all commoners to attend school over a period of ten or so years (you need to keep some workforce active, so they can't all go at once), but it's really the children, especially future mothers, that you want to educate. If you start with the current four-year-olds, you can have an educated base in about twenty years, who will then proceed to raise the children that you need to form a viable substrate for an all-spellcaster society. Should be doable in a century, if you sit on top of things. Good luck :smallsmile:.

[kalos72]

By advance I mean things like change his age, give him a template, select particular feats, ways he is different then before he came to "Advanced Training Class", like from the Handbook.

3/8 of 150,000,000 people is significant no? Plus, if there is a waiting list, the people would still be citizens until then.

Remember, I am not looking for 100000 mages, just 100000 people who want to come live in my city. The potential to be taught to cast spells versus use a shovel might appeal to some people right?

The idea is two fold, general recruitment of people and possibly retraining some of them for specific tasks.

[Jay R]

This won't work for most people. If he's spent his life shoveling sh--, um, cleaning out the stables, you probably can't train him to be a great craftsman.

You cannot make the average person above average.


So if I went by the PHB II rules, I can just have each citizen go through some quest/trial and have them retrained however I want after.

Sure. Send 1,000 out on a quest with sufficient risk to earn experience points, and you can make second levels out of the six who don't die.

Adventurers are elite.


There are a few reasons for us to look into this scenario really.

1. Recruitment - "If you come to Neverwinter, we will retrain you into the Wizard you always wanted to become and give you free gear and membership into the Neverwinter Wizards Guild."

If you tried this in my game, you'd get a thousand volunteers, most of them farmer's sons and daughters with no magical ability at all, maybe 50 thieves there to steal your equipment under the guise of learning, and maybe three potential wizards.

Put it in mundane terms. Advertise that if people come to your hometown, you will teach the to be neurosurgeons. You'll get a huge number of people who are not capable of that level of study.

It's worth trying, but don't expect to get lots of wizards that way.


2. Ways to take the average citizen/commoner and retrain them to fill needed roles, craftsmen and the like. Getting Waterdeeps top smith would be nice but if not, at least training one up would be ok to start.

Much more likely. But you'll still have lots more people who can't get that good.

But that's OK. If you train 100 craftsmen and craftswomen, and 900 potential apprentices, that's a great advantage for the town.


Our long term goal is to compete with the likes of Waterdeep/Baldur's Gate economically/socially/politically. The thought was advancing our citizens would be a good recruitment tool and help develop local resources to aid in this goal long term.

Excellent. But don't expect to train up the majority of your city. Most people will still be average or below.

[kalos72]

Why not? If you average the abilities, go through the retrain quest idea and then realigned those skills to crafting. Granted it isn't epic level crafting skills there but enough to supply the basics no?

Or I could always just go ice assassin nd be done with this whole idea. :)

Seriously though, maybe just sticking with the other benefits the rebuilt city has to offer, and pay for moving expenses or a "signing bonus" perhaps?

[ExLibrisMortis]

You cannot make the average person above average.
In D&D, the average person can learn to cast first-level spells in at least one class, purely ability score-wise. They won't be great wizards, but they'll be average people who are more powerful than other average people (who are commoners).

In addition to that, you can make average people above average with magic, but that's a given.

[Jay R]

In D&D, the average person can learn to cast first-level spells in at least one class, purely ability score-wise.

"Purely ability-wise" means treating an uncommon person with average ability scores as average. This is simply untrue.

The average person is a Commoner. Once you talk another class, it's an elite person.

[Cerefel]

It's still possible to get the average person casting spells with feats like Magical Training, especially combined with Apprentice

[Bucky]

Q) For a peacetime settlement, what benefits of having most of the population be Wizard 1s over Commoner 1s or Expert 1s justify buying a bunch of expensive spellbooks?

Cast-for-hire is an option, but how much demand is there for it?
A scroll industry would be great, if there were a steady stream of cheap XP to cast from. Unfortunately, XP is scarcer than cash in your settlement.
Perhaps there's a good reason to have familiars everywhere?

[kalos72]

Technically, unless I am reading it wrong, couldn't ANYONE say they are a lv 1 wizard? Albeit, severely handicapped with a low INT, still is eligible for the class.

With the retraining/rebuilding options, if they gave up a few points in another ability score you can get your, INT let's say, pretty respectable.

How good could a commoner crafter get with any one skill?

[Jay R]

Technically, unless I am reading it wrong, couldn't ANYONE say they are a lv 1 wizard? Albeit, severely handicapped with a low INT, still is eligible for the class.

You are reading rules for the extremely unusual person who becomes an adventurer. Most people don't.


With the retraining/rebuilding options, if they gave up a few points in another ability score you can get your, INT let's say, pretty respectable.

How good could a commoner crafter get with any one skill?

An elite, above average commoner crafter could get really good. The average commoner crafter is, at best, serving as that one's apprentice.


It's still possible to get the average person casting spells with feats like Magical Training, especially combined with Apprentice

The average person wouldn't have such a thought. The average person is plowing land, or rowing in the hold of a large ship, or digging privies, or fetching and carrying, or shoveling sh... um, working in the stables.

[Cerefel]

And so their class is Commoner. However, it's not unreasonable that one might go take magic lessons in their spare time as a hobby (and a useful one at that!).

[kalos72]

Jay - Your responses are more from a RP perspective then a RAW perspective I think. While I appreciate your feedback, I want to make sure I am not misunderstanding the rules side first.

RAW - doesnt say a regular commoner can't try to be a wizard, just he might be very limited by his ability scores and the like.

[Mordaedil]

The rules for generating a commoner is to roll 3d6 in order and scrap the entire result if you get a total modifier above +1 (because then he's heroic). So it's not that commoners all have 10 or 11 in all their stats, but that they even out to roughly the same. You could have a commoner with 14 intelligence, but his other starts would have to be low to make up for it.

In AD&D, this was the case if you did not qualify for any base class and thus was even easier to determine; your scores would be 9 or less in strength, dexterity, wisdom and intelligence.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Q) For a peacetime settlement, what benefits of having most of the population be Wizard 1s over Commoner 1s or Expert 1s justify buying a bunch of expensive spellbooks?
I think there's two points here:
1) Not everybody needs to be a wizard with a spellbook. Eidetic wizard is a useful ACF (and easy to justify if most people only ever prepare 4-5 spells), and other people can become clerics, sorcerers, psions, and so on. Mechanically speaking, the cost of the spellbooks is included in the wizard class, so you get that for free.
2) Wizards are darn practical, especially if you include reserve feats and such. I don't necessarily mean the CMage ones, but custom "doing stuff 'round the house" reserve feats, of the kind that's equivalent to carrying a multitool and smartphone.


"Purely ability-wise" means treating an uncommon person with average ability scores as average. This is simply untrue.

The average person is a Commoner. Once you talk another class, it's an elite person.
I think that's turning matters around. Looking at the world that the DMG presents as the default setting, you can observe that most people are described to be commoners. However, they are not required to be commoners, in any sense - the DMG describes what they are now, but does not say they are locked out of changing. The players can easily turn that 'commoner is average'-state around - the abilities exist, retraining rules are right there (we are assuming here, as per the OP's question, that they are in use).

If the player characters decide that they must provide the impulse to educate an entire city in magic, they can do so. The average population has enough people with the aptitude (10+ in a casting stat), and the rules allow them to undergo such retraining.

[KillianHawkeye]

The rules for generating a commoner is to roll 3d6 in order and scrap the entire result if you get a total modifier above +1 (because then he's heroic). So it's not that commoners all have 10 or 11 in all their stats, but that they even out to roughly the same. You could have a commoner with 14 intelligence, but his other starts would have to be low to make up for it.

I don't know which game you're playing, but there is no such rule in 3.5/3rd Edition D&D.

A score of 10 or 11 is the mathematical average of rolling 3d6, and so on average any NPC made using the basic method will have pretty average stats. However, there is nothing stopping them from getting lucky and rolling great stats! You might think having lucky stat rolls automatically makes them something better than a commoner, but that simply isn't true. An adventurer isn't only a good set of ability scores, they're also a personality who seeks excitement or craves exploration or needs danger. A normal person probably wouldn't become an adventurer even if they were above average across the board.

[Vaz]

RAW - doesnt say a regular commoner can't try to be a wizard, just he might be very limited by his ability scores and the like.

"RAW" (that thing that allows you to heal people by Drowning them, by the way), the only way a Commoner can become a Wizard is that they grow a level. To grow a level, a Commoner (as an average character, they can have any abilities from 3-18, pre ability scores, with rolled HP at first level), must complete a number of encounters which grant an experience reward enough together to reach 2nd level, and it levels up, taking a level of wizard, becoming a Commoner 1/Wizard 1. Unlike a prestige class, you can have any ranks, but unless that Wizard has at least 10 Intelligence, then it's not casting anything.

The rules presented in PHB2 are presented to allow someone to revise an existing character.

Not to retrain an NPC into becoming more powerful.

[Cerefel]

A commoner doesn't necessarily need to retrain in order to get good feats. It's entirely possible that they decided to learn something strong/interesting on their own.

[kalos72]

I dont think the retrain/rebuild process is limited to players anywhere.

But wizard is the hardest class to aim for, imagine how easy it is for a fighter? Again, I am not seeing much of a reason why a commoner can't be retrained to become something else, albeit with poor ability scores.

I think my biggest question is from a crafting perspective.

[KillianHawkeye]

I think my biggest question is from a crafting perspective.

We're talking about mundane item crafting, right?

Okay, well let's take an easy example: A 1st-level Commoner with maybe a +2 Intelligence bonus if we assume that it's the smarter ones who become crafters rather than farmers or laborers. He takes the maximum 4 ranks in his Craft skill of choice as well as the Skill Focus feat, bringing his skill bonus to +9. If we're already going to a lot of trouble to set all this up, we can also assume we're getting the +2 bonus from masterwork tools. We can probably also say that this NPC has at least one assistant, protege, or apprentice who can use the Aid Another action for another +2.

So, taking a look at the table for the Craft skill, we can see that most of the DCs are between 10 and 20. With a +13 on his check, our dedicated crafter setup can make most things with ease, even masterwork weapons and armor and +4 Strength composite bows. They can also reliably make non-masterwork shields, most light armors, simple weapons, and regular bows at an increased speed by using the option to add +10 to the DC.

Of course, all this is assuming that the NPC always "takes 10" on his Craft checks. For any item with a Craft DC higher than 23, he will have to roll and take the risk of ruining half the raw materials unless he can get more people to Aid him.

The rules for combining skill checks state that the number of characters who can help is usually limited, but lacks any guideline for what the limit should be. It's entirely reasonable, depending on the skill being used, that our crafter could have a small team of helpers aiding him. And the great thing about helpers is they don't need to be anywhere near as good as the main guy since they only need to hit a DC 10 with their skill check (and they can "take 10", so as long as they don't have a penalty...)!

[Coidzor]

About the only thing I'm aware of for turning an NPC into another class is the Downtime System from Pathfinder (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCampaign/downtime/roomsAndTeams.html). Porting that directly would let one make up to 3rd level arcane and divine spellcasters, up to 4th level Experts, up to 3rd level Commoners and Warriors, and up to 3rd level Rogues. All in a matter of days.

I suppose you could also look at the Retraining rules from both Pathfinder (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/more-character-options/retraining)and 3.5 and the Rebuilding rules from 3.5. I believe those are contained in PHB2. I'd heavily advise modification of the costs, both in terms of money and time, especially if setting up a dedicated institution.

[Vaz]

I dont think the retrain/rebuild process is limited to players anywhere.

But wizard is the hardest class to aim for, imagine how easy it is for a fighter? Again, I am not seeing much of a reason why a commoner can't be retrained to become something else, albeit with poor ability scores.

I think my biggest question is from a crafting perspective.

It is only in reference to how a player can rebuild their character. Anything else is DM's purview.

[Coidzor]

It is only in reference to how a player can rebuild their character. Anything else is DM's purview.

We can only hope that the DM is involved at some point before presenting a long convoluted plan that falls apart from one or two rulings.

[Mordaedil]

I don't know which game you're playing, but there is no such rule in 3.5/3rd Edition D&D.

A score of 10 or 11 is the mathematical average of rolling 3d6, and so on average any NPC made using the basic method will have pretty average stats. However, there is nothing stopping them from getting lucky and rolling great stats! You might think having lucky stat rolls automatically makes them something better than a commoner, but that simply isn't true. An adventurer isn't only a good set of ability scores, they're also a personality who seeks excitement or craves exploration or needs danger. A normal person probably wouldn't become an adventurer even if they were above average across the board.

It's an extrapolation of the rules were it basically says you get to re-roll your stat block if it doesn't have a positive modifier on average, in the old days that was the innkeeper rule and generally I took that to assume NPC's that aren't a core class to be roughly assumed to "not qualify" per se.

That said, there's nothing in such a rule stopping a commoner from rolling an 18 strength, 14 dexterity and 3 charisma and 6 wisdom to "balance" it out.

Mind, yes, there is no RAW for this. Doesn't have to be.