Segev
2022-06-24, 10:44 AM
It is often tricky to balance multiple "tracks" of power, which is one reason why organized play (and Starfinder) often ties gear to level very strictly, and why points-based systems tend to hand-wave wealth as something that can't buy actually-useful gear for anything but narrative purposes. 3.5 and PF1 had rules for "wealth by level" that, in theoretical discussions - at least on these forums and the charop boards for WotC - were treated as gospel, making gp just a feature of level in theory.
5e has decoupled that a lot, though not entirely, and in theory says that wealth and magic items are entirely optional and you can play with a basic set of starting gear and some found loot that needn't be magical all the way to 20. Obviously, this is...impractical to follow as real advice, but theoretically, you could.
But it is true that 5e tried hard to have gp to magic item be loose at best, and not to tie magic items to level beyond some basic guidelines (e.g. "no Very Rare Major Items for Tier 1 play").
That said, something that a number of D&D heartbreakers and also some suggested subsystems in various editions have tried is "training" and "downtime level-up requirements" and the like: that is, when you have enough XP to level, you need to hire a trainer for increasingly-expensive amounts of gp and also spend increasing amounts of downtime training to get to actually get your new class features. This can work, in some games, but I have always found it even worse than the massive downtime requirements for making anything for yourself in my own anecdotal experience, where all but a very few games had next to zero practical downtime.
That said, spending downtime and gp on crafting items has been a way casters could increase their power and help out their party's power since at least 3e. (It was possible earlier, too, but the rules were...more vague.) Non-casters (or non-casters without a particular feat in PF1) lacked this option, and often struggled to come up with what to do during downtime, unless the DM was very good at improvising a social maneuvering game or making other activities worthwhile to gameplay.
5e introduced downtime activities of various providence and utility. Some lose their luster after tier 1, but they at least do something, and the complications they offer can be as beneficial from a "it leads to more cool opportunities" perspective as anything else. One interesting thing was, in fact, training: you can add tool proficiencies and languages by spending money and time and finding a trainer (to spend that money and time with). Leaving aside the RP and plot hook opportunities for a moment, this means everybody can laterally increase their character's power - the raw numbers on their sheet - during downtime. This is fairly easily expanded to adding skill proficiencies, since those are often considered equivalent to languages and tool proficiencies. This isn't something new, but something actually present at least since XGE and maybe since the DMG (I am too lazy to go look).
What if this expanded further? What if you could spend gp and downtime to train more than that? Wizards already can try to acquire more spells (while clerics and druids and paladins don't NEED to). What if sorcerers could, too, for more time and money? But that's still casters. What if Battle Master Fighters could spend downtime and money to learn new Maneuvers? 4E monks could learn additional elemental features? Totem Barbarians could master additional totem techniques? What if there was a way to train in additional subclass features, e.g. a gloomstalker ranger training with his shadow-fey blood brother to learn to command a swarm of insects like a swarmkeeper's level 3 feature?
Heck, what if multiclassing had a variant like this, letting you buy full levels of another class that you don't have for nothing but gp and downtime, up to some maximum level that is at or below your actual level?
Obviously, this could go way too far and let you make The Omnicharacter. And this isn't an all-or-nothing proposition, but rather a smattering of ideas, some of which may be balanceable and others which may not be. And just how much time and money it costs would also be a huge factor in whether it's useful at all vs. being overpowered.
But the idea here is that, while the wizard is busy making his spell-after-spell, day-after-day army or whatever, the fighter might be learning how to make an echo or the like. Or learning battle master maneuvers, either new ones directly or by training to learn that subclass when he's actually a Rune Knight.
What are others' thoughts on this? Could this be a way - using gp and downtime that a "game-breaking wizard" is already spending on casting long-duration spells - to close the gap a little for non-full-casters? What kinds of things should be learnable? How expensive should they be to compare to what we're trying to close the gap on? Is that even a useful concern?
5e has decoupled that a lot, though not entirely, and in theory says that wealth and magic items are entirely optional and you can play with a basic set of starting gear and some found loot that needn't be magical all the way to 20. Obviously, this is...impractical to follow as real advice, but theoretically, you could.
But it is true that 5e tried hard to have gp to magic item be loose at best, and not to tie magic items to level beyond some basic guidelines (e.g. "no Very Rare Major Items for Tier 1 play").
That said, something that a number of D&D heartbreakers and also some suggested subsystems in various editions have tried is "training" and "downtime level-up requirements" and the like: that is, when you have enough XP to level, you need to hire a trainer for increasingly-expensive amounts of gp and also spend increasing amounts of downtime training to get to actually get your new class features. This can work, in some games, but I have always found it even worse than the massive downtime requirements for making anything for yourself in my own anecdotal experience, where all but a very few games had next to zero practical downtime.
That said, spending downtime and gp on crafting items has been a way casters could increase their power and help out their party's power since at least 3e. (It was possible earlier, too, but the rules were...more vague.) Non-casters (or non-casters without a particular feat in PF1) lacked this option, and often struggled to come up with what to do during downtime, unless the DM was very good at improvising a social maneuvering game or making other activities worthwhile to gameplay.
5e introduced downtime activities of various providence and utility. Some lose their luster after tier 1, but they at least do something, and the complications they offer can be as beneficial from a "it leads to more cool opportunities" perspective as anything else. One interesting thing was, in fact, training: you can add tool proficiencies and languages by spending money and time and finding a trainer (to spend that money and time with). Leaving aside the RP and plot hook opportunities for a moment, this means everybody can laterally increase their character's power - the raw numbers on their sheet - during downtime. This is fairly easily expanded to adding skill proficiencies, since those are often considered equivalent to languages and tool proficiencies. This isn't something new, but something actually present at least since XGE and maybe since the DMG (I am too lazy to go look).
What if this expanded further? What if you could spend gp and downtime to train more than that? Wizards already can try to acquire more spells (while clerics and druids and paladins don't NEED to). What if sorcerers could, too, for more time and money? But that's still casters. What if Battle Master Fighters could spend downtime and money to learn new Maneuvers? 4E monks could learn additional elemental features? Totem Barbarians could master additional totem techniques? What if there was a way to train in additional subclass features, e.g. a gloomstalker ranger training with his shadow-fey blood brother to learn to command a swarm of insects like a swarmkeeper's level 3 feature?
Heck, what if multiclassing had a variant like this, letting you buy full levels of another class that you don't have for nothing but gp and downtime, up to some maximum level that is at or below your actual level?
Obviously, this could go way too far and let you make The Omnicharacter. And this isn't an all-or-nothing proposition, but rather a smattering of ideas, some of which may be balanceable and others which may not be. And just how much time and money it costs would also be a huge factor in whether it's useful at all vs. being overpowered.
But the idea here is that, while the wizard is busy making his spell-after-spell, day-after-day army or whatever, the fighter might be learning how to make an echo or the like. Or learning battle master maneuvers, either new ones directly or by training to learn that subclass when he's actually a Rune Knight.
What are others' thoughts on this? Could this be a way - using gp and downtime that a "game-breaking wizard" is already spending on casting long-duration spells - to close the gap a little for non-full-casters? What kinds of things should be learnable? How expensive should they be to compare to what we're trying to close the gap on? Is that even a useful concern?