What happened with Retraining


Rules Questions

Scarab Sages

I saw that there was a ruling that a base class cannot be retrained into a prestige class. I guess a lot of people wanted to retrain all their base classes into prestige classes.

But the ruling didn't mention retraining a prestige class into another. Is that still possible?


Bling wrote:

I saw that there was a ruling that a base class cannot be retrained into a prestige class. I guess a lot of people wanted to retrain all their base classes into prestige classes.

But the ruling didn't mention retraining a prestige class into another. Is that still possible?

Not a problem.

The retraining issue had to do with people retraining their prerequisite classes. Like a wizard 5/ fighter 1/eld. knight 4 retraining to be a eldritch knight 10.

Shadow Lodge

I believe it was people entering Mystic Theurge, then retraining all levels to Mystic Theurge, to make a level 10 character a Mystic Theurge 10, and that sort of thing. They were using a prestige class to qualify for itself.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

It's simple.

You can't use a class to qualify for itself.

Scarab Sages

LazarX wrote:

It's simple.

You can't use a class to qualify for itself.

So a base class into a prestige class is still out? Even if you would still qualify for the prestige class?

Example a level 9 Cleric takes a level of wizard a level 10 and says, "Wouldn't it be awesome if I could give up another two cleric caster levels for 6 more wizard caster levels?" If you retrain 6 levels you could have a level 3 Wiz, level 3 Cleric and 4 levels in Mystic Theurge.

Is that out still by that ruling?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Bling wrote:
LazarX wrote:

It's simple.

You can't use a class to qualify for itself.

So a base class into a prestige class is still out? Even if you would still qualify for the prestige class?

Example a level 9 Cleric takes a level of wizard a level 10 and says, "Wouldn't it be awesome if I could give up another two cleric caster levels for 6 more wizard caster levels?" If you retrain 6 levels you could have a level 3 Wiz, level 3 Cleric and 4 levels in Mystic Theurge.

Is that out still by that ruling?

What's out by the ruling is someone retraining all their prior levels to Mystic Theurge, or Hellknight, or whatever. Retraining to level 3 wizard and level 3 cleric is legal.

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

Bling wrote:

I saw that there was a ruling that a base class cannot be retrained into a prestige class. I guess a lot of people wanted to retrain all their base classes into prestige classes.

But the ruling didn't mention retraining a prestige class into another. Is that still possible?

The FAQ got fixed because some people asserted you could make a 6th level character with only Hell Knight levels by retaining all the base classes to Hell Knight and using Hell Knight to qualify for itself.

So yes you can retrain one PrC to another. You just can't retrain something and use itself to qualify for itself.

Bling wrote:
So a base class into a prestige class is still out? Even if you would still qualify for the prestige class?

Yes, blame the Hell Knight jerks.

The Exchange

Not a very consistent application. We all understand the intent ("you must be at least this tall to ride the PrC") and refusing to let otherwise-qualified applicants in doesn't make much sense. Maybe the ruling needs a clarification.


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People kept trying to find loopholes in the rulings, and there's no real way to clarify that "everything works so long as there are no cycles in the dependency graph" concisely in layman's terms, so the design team took the nuclear option. I can't really blame the design team for this one.

The Exchange

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I thought the layman's terms were, "Don't abuse the rules and then claim stupidity as a defense."


The rules as is may not actually allow for you to retrain class levels into prestige class levels, even if you still qualify with remaining levels, but I would definitely allow it in a home game... If I allowed retraining a class level at all.


Lincoln Hills wrote:
I thought the layman's terms were, "Don't abuse the rules and then claim stupidity as a defense."

Never assume malice when ignorance suffices.

Besides, that really doesn't work as rules text.


James Risner wrote:


Bling wrote:
So a base class into a prestige class is still out? Even if you would still qualify for the prestige class?
Yes, blame the Hell Knight jerks.

The "no base class into a prestige class" came from people trying to use one prestige class to qualify for a different one and using that to retrain out of all their base classes for prestige classes.

The Exchange

blahpers wrote:
Lincoln Hills wrote:
I thought the layman's terms were, "Don't abuse the rules and then claim stupidity as a defense."
[...]that really doesn't work as rules text.

I suppose you're right. It's too informal. It really ought to be spoken aloud. With a blunt instrument clutched in your hand.

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

Durngrun Stonebreaker wrote:
The "no base class into a prestige class" came from people trying to use one prestige class to qualify for a different one and using that to retrain out of all their base classes for prestige classes.

No it came from the Hellknight as a 6th level character thread where they took 5 levels of Fighter, then one level of hellknight, then retrained the 5 fighter levels one at a time into hellknight to be a 6th level character with only 6 levels of hellknight.

With that thread raging, the design team post the first FAQ. It continued to rage. The first update, yet it continued to rage. The finally over multiple updates they "no base to prc" rule was used to shut it down.

Blame this guy

The Exchange

This is the kind of story that make me yearn for a nuclear war.


Yes, the intent was to say that you couldn't use a prestiege class to qualify for itself...but people kept being douchebags and so the PDT went with a very hard ruling so people would stop trying to circumvent it.


Yeah. I think it is very good to know exactly what RAW says because it creates uniformity in expectations, but when RAW becomes a hindrance to what CLEAR RAI is, that is where I get off the RAW train.


It got to the breaking point when people tried to get around the first FAQ by having one prestige class qualify for a second prestige class, then having the second qualify for the first. This adhered to the letter of the original ruling but not the spirit. Clarification would have been ugly. Easier to just write off the whole mechanism of retraining base classes into prestige classes.


Yeah, there really isn't anything wrong with allowing say...Wizard 5/Rogue 1/Darkfire Adept 1 to retrain into Wizard 5/Darkfire Adept 2.
Rogue wasn't contributing to you qualifying to the prestige class in any way. But the FAQ ruled against it (cause people don't let us have nice things)

Dark Archive

Is that really that broken? I mean Hellknight 6 vs. Fighter 6?

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

Ace of the Flesh Puppets wrote:
Is that really that broken? I mean Hellknight 6 vs. Fighter 6?

Whether or not it is broken doesn't matter, you couldn't do it and since people tried and wouldn't listen to reason we are now saddled with protection against something that might be broken.


Ace of the Flesh Puppets wrote:
Is that really that broken? I mean Hellknight 6 vs. Fighter 6?

Not sure about Hellknight, but with Mystic Theurge or E. Knight you would basically become gestalt.


The_Lake wrote:
Ace of the Flesh Puppets wrote:
Is that really that broken? I mean Hellknight 6 vs. Fighter 6?
Not sure about Hellknight, but with Mystic Theurge or E. Knight you would basically become gestalt.

Mystic Theurge and Eldritch knight still need base classes to improve the casting of.

It's also amusing that you use those as examples since that's the two classes that get early entry with SLAs at lvl 3-ish.

I honestly see no problem with martial classes getting a backdoor like the SLA ruling, but I guess the devs don't agree.

Shadow Lodge

Where's the FAQ for this? I can't find it.

The only one I knew about was that you can't abuse the fighter/hellknight type of quandry, which was a bit of a no-brainer.

Found it:

Quote:

Update 10/16/13: In any case, you cannot use rule elements from a prestige class to meet the requirements of that prestige class.

Update 10/16/13: New ruling: You cannot use retraining to replace a base class level with a prestige class level.

That is pretty unusually harsh for people trying to do it right.


LoneKnave wrote:
I honestly see no problem with martial classes getting a back door like the SLA but I guess the devs don't agree.

you do know the devs hate non ranged martials right? One thing I've learned from my years of pf, I believe this to be a fact, and I can find 100s of rulings that support this premise.

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

Avatar-1 wrote:
That is pretty unusually harsh for people trying to do it right.

Harsh or not, the culture of RAW is at fault. Some people think of a creative and very clearly not intended interpretation of the rules and assert it as RAW and reject any discussion otherwise. Their behavior is directly responsible for us using the ability to "do it right".


Avatar-1 wrote:

Where's the FAQ for this? I can't find it.

The only one I knew about was that you can't abuse the fighter/hellknight type of quandry, which was a bit of a no-brainer.

Found it:

Quote:

Update 10/16/13: In any case, you cannot use rule elements from a prestige class to meet the requirements of that prestige class.

Update 10/16/13: New ruling: You cannot use retraining to replace a base class level with a prestige class level.

That is pretty unusually harsh for people trying to do it right.

You must have missed that thread. It was pretty nuts. I'm not surprised that the team did what they did.

The Exchange

blahpers wrote:
You must have missed that thread. It was pretty nuts. I'm not surprised that the team did what they did.

What they had to do. It was this, or legislate against deliberate stupidity. We all know how well that tends to work. GMs can always grant exemptions. (Well, except PFS GMs.)


Yeah...it was nasty.

It basically boiled down to: "We know your're playing dumb to exploit this and keep being douches about this despite you understanding how it was intended to funciton...therefore screw you all for being jerks."


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All they had to do was "you can't retrain into a class combination that you could have not achieved without retraining" and be done with it.

"Screw you all for being jerks" was the petty thing to do.

Thank god I don't have to deal with this in home games.


Under A Bleeding Sun wrote:
LoneKnave wrote:
I honestly see no problem with martial classes getting a back door like the SLA but I guess the devs don't agree.
you do know the devs hate non ranged martials right? One thing I've learned from my years of pf, I believe this to be a fact, and I can find 100s of rulings that support this premise.

yup, liking characters that hit people is badwrongfun and the devs will nerf it as many times as it takes for people to stop playing them.


LoneKnave wrote:
"Screw you all for being jerks" was the petty thing to do.

You didn't see everything that had to deal with. They tried to be sensible at first, eventually they were forced to take the nuclear option by people forcing the issue. Re-read the thread, the PDT didn't want to be unkind to the players, but the people in thread were asking for it.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I read the thread, I was there.

I don't see them being forced.

Replace the last line of the FAQ with "retraining can only result in class combinations that you can achieve through normal leveling", and explain to me how that's abusable.

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

LoneKnave wrote:
Replace the last line of the FAQ with "retraining can only result in class combinations that you can achieve through normal leveling", and explain to me how that's abusable.

The entire intent of the rules is to be able to make characters that couldn't be built without retraining.

The problem is that people wouldn't respect the concept of you need the pre-reqs for a PrC to be provided before you count the features of the PrC. So the final option is the only way to get it done.


That's a pretty big assumption to make.


I'm not sure that's the "entire intent", but they've certainly confirmed that, except for PrCs, it's intended to work.

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