PHB II - Rebuilding and Retraining

[Liriel]

This topic of rebuilding and retraining recently came up in our game. I've never seen it before and I'm not quite sure what I think of it or how it really works out. Is it too min-maxing? Does it work out balanced enough to go ahead with? Does anyone have any experience with it that would help shine some light on it for me?

[Kurald Galain]

It's not really about min-maxing, since you can't get any powers (etc) with it that you couldn't do without it. It just means you don't have to plan your prestige classes five or ten levels in advance, which is a good thing.

[Matthew]

I agree with Kurald. I think in a game that has such extensive character resource management hard coded into it, and options with variable degrees of independent and combined effectiveness, the retraining and rebuilding rules are probably one of the best things the designers subsequently came up with to correct party balance problems (so long as they are used responsibly).

[Tsotha-lanti]

It's not really about min-maxing, since you can't get any powers (etc) with it that you couldn't do without it. It just means you don't have to plan your prestige classes five or ten levels in advance, which is a good thing.

Yeah. If you want to do an "organic character development" style game, you need the rebuilding and retraining to avoid the PCs screwing themselves over. This is especially important if many prestige classes tied to in-character accomplishments.

[kamikasei]

To be honest it's the sort of thing I think a DM should be allowing, at his discretion, anyway. The rules just serve to, firstly, give you an authoritative set of guidelines to point to if players seek to abuse it (which is a mixed blessing at best), and a way to justify in-game the handwaving away of changed abilities.

[CharPixie]

I'm currently running a 4e game with its "1 item a level retraining" and I find it helps avoid min/maxing -- the players are learning that they don't have to take feats and powers that are scalable and useful, but rather they can take what they think is appropriate, and go from there, even changing it later if it doesn't fit their character anymore.

[Keld Denar]

Its really useful in a setting like Living Greyhawk (RIP), where character developement is rather organic. Since not all items/feats/spells/PrCs are considered "open" access, in other words, your character can't obtain them without campaign certification, its hard to plan a character that is interested in taking certain limited material. For example, you want to play an Alienist, which is a limited PrC, you could build your PC to meet the prereqs at the minimum level, but you have to hope that one of the modules you play gives access to it. If you never play in such an adventure, then your character hasn't fulfilled the RP requirement to take the class and can't take it. After failing to find access, you might be interested in retraining the prereqs into something more useful or into prereqs for a different PrC you may have gotten access to. If you were just building a wizard and weren't planning on taking levels of Alienist, but all of a sudden you got access to it and were intrigued, but needed to wait 3 levels to meet the prereqs, retraining would allow you to get in much sooner, which is more fun for the player.

But then again, due to the nature of the campaign, retraining rules are more important for Living Greyhawk players than standard players with a fixed GM, since a single GM has the power to handwave character modifications as desired, while in a multinational campaign like LG, this type of character modification is considered cheating (and can get you kicked out of the RPGA).

[Captain Six]

For example, you want to play an Alienist, which is a limited PrC, you could build your PC to meet the prereqs at the minimum level, but you have to hope that one of the modules you play gives access to it. If you never play in such an adventure, then your character hasn't fulfilled the RP requirement to take the class and can't take it. After failing to find access, you might be interested in retraining the prereqs into something more useful or into prereqs for a different PrC you may have gotten access to.

I did it the other way around with my Acolyte of the Skin. I got into it later than I hoped because I hadn't found the information regarding the ritual of binding. After getting the class the DM let me retrain all but five of my Warlock levels (the one's I needed for the caster level and skill prerequisites) into levels in Acolyte.

(Although after my fourth level an Acolyte of the Skin I said, "This class sucks! Can I just get rid of these four levels and take the half-fiend template?")

[Keld Denar]

What you did was rebuilding, not retraining, which per PHBII is only allowed by DM fiat. Basically the same thing as killing your character off making a new one almost exactly the same, but with slightly different classes, and keeping the same name.

Retraining only allows feats, skill ranks, and class features. There is a gold and time expenditure. Retraining is something you can actually RP, since your character is paying someone to train him to learn something minor, and as such, the character "forgets" his old skill, feat, or feature and learns the new one. He still has the same class levels.

Then again, I guess its all allowable with the grace of DM fiat, long before PHBII was ever written.

[Zeta Kai]

The retraining concept is great, but the RAW are ridiculously & needlessly detailed. The entire 6 pages of rules could be summed as "You can switch things out of your character sheet for things of equal value". There, I just saved everyone 20 minutes.