Character building: optimal or RP based


Advice


So I have been rolling a few ideas around in my head about character progression, and I muse that there is probably 2 major types of progression in class levels: Optimal (free form) and Role-play.

Optimal (Free form) allows players to chose any class upon leveling up. This is where crazy and nonsensical power builds are possible and even rampant. This allows someone who knows the system inside and out to be able to make the most powerful or gimmicky character possible, which isn't a bad thing, but it also is problematic with a mixed group of veterans and novices since the power difference will be evident.

Role-Play allows players to take class levels so long as there is some association with a body of said people who can help him hone his skills. A Thieves Guild can help Rogues and other classes improve their skills, Wizards need groups of wizards to learn secrets of the Arcane from, and Clerics require a church of some sort to help them learn new powers that their god might be able to accept. The point here is that the players have to unlock classes or higher levels in classes via role-play. If using an open world--something I usually do--then small towns might be able to take care of level 1-5, larger towns 6-10, Capitols 11-15, the outer planes 16-20. This also assumes the players have to return to town to level up, and to train with said masters to gain class levels.

Leveling up:
Optimal--Upon leveling up the player character gains a level in the level he wishes to apply his level to.

Role-Play--Upon leveling up the player character gains a level in Commoner, Expert, or Warrior based on their BAB. Upon returning to town they can spend a week with a Master appropriate to their level (1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20) to retrain this class level for free into the desired and unlocked class level they want. This training may or may not be particularly active, a Paladin might train and pray in equal parts, a Barbarian might go get into drunken rage filled bar fights, a cleric might pour over tomes and work as a scribe, .etc. There can also be options where someone improves without the aid of a master, however this should probably take longer than a week, perhaps an overlap of the experience progressions.

Fast Progression: You train under a master, spending a week under his direct tutelage. If you have enough XP to reach the next level using the FAST progression you do so. However, this costs you the price of retraining the NPC level you are avoiding. In essence you are losing money to gain class levels. If used early enough this can give you a 2 class level lead at the cost of gold.

Medium Progression: You gained experience in the field, and upon gaining enough XP to level up you returned to your master to hone your skills after gaining a level in commoner, expert or warrior. This costs you a week of time, and between training under him and performing duties for him, perhaps training underlings or cleaning, you retrain the class level without the cost of retraining.

Slow Progression: You have gained a level from experience in either Commoner, Expert or Warrior, but you cannot or will not train under a master for whatever reason. Perhaps you are alone or deep in an unknown land. You gain experience and class levels on the medium progression, but your level automatically retrains when you reach that experience thresh hold on Slow Progression. This means that if you never visit a trainer you will, at level 20, be a level 2 NPC and level 18 in the class of your choosing. Alternatively you could spend half a year (182 days) practicing for 8 hours a day, and at the end, one of your NPC levels changes to a PC level of your choice.

The Role-Play option is important since if a player wants to take a level in Hell Knight Signifier they have to find hellknights and join their order. He could use the SLOW progression option and gain an unofficial level in Hellknight Signifier or spend 1/2 a year doing it. Racial classes and archetypes are still not allowed to be used by those who do not qualify.

What do you guys think about this?


One problem with the trainer approach is that you need to have a trainer to learn things. That is the 10th level highly experienced monk can't develop and refine his martial skills through combat and experimentation. Its a common element in several story's about someone who gets incredibly skilled through regular life or death challenges or trains alone in the mountains developing a new style of fighting they then teach others.

I'm reading a series currently where one of the main characters is constantly getting dragged into situations where he's convinced he's going to die and managing to surivive. In the latest part he went up to a temple to train for more power to help fight alongside his mentor and obliterated the same training they did. Not because he's especially skilled but because the two of them had been constantly improving though their fights against an evil dragon god and the challenge they had to struggle together to overcome near the start is now something he can easily handle with his new skills.

I could see a slower progression training yourself rather than being trained by an expert but I wouldn't have that avoid a NPC class thing. If your say an 18th level wizard studying the arcane arts and pushing your limits in facing off against otherworldly threats it doesn't really mesh that you then gain a 1st level in some NPC class rather than improving to a 19th level wizard.

Optimal's problems also tend to lie with the player rather than the build but we'll leave that aside for now.

If I were to do a roleplay progression and had players happy with that I'd run something like this . . .

Step 1
Adventurer hits enough XP to level up.
Step 2
As a result of their trials and tribulations they gain all the inherit abilities of their class. That is improved saving slows, spell slots, BAB etc.
Step 3
They then need to train or develop the perks e.g new feats, skill expenditures and the like.

To do this they can either seek out a trainer who has what they want and learn it from them at X amount of time or train themselves for double it.

Honestly though I feel your adding more bookkeeping than its worth (tried this kind of thing before) and I think the best thing unless you have players happy to manage the bookkeeping of what trainer know's what skills and how long it takes to train a new skill/feat etc is to just limit them to classes available.

That is run it as follows.

Party has a fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric of level 11 and after they conclude an adventure they gain enough XP to go to level 12. Each of them can progress freely in their own class or can be trained by the new level 12 of the other 3 to gain a level in that class. However if they want to learn another class e.g mystic theurge or monk they have to seek out a trainer to learn that new set of skills.

If you really want to introduce downtime maybe you could run it as . . .

Trained under a master of your class: 1 day per level.
Trained under a master of a new class: 1 week per level (prestige classes count as the level your going to)
Training yourself: 1 month per level of your class.


I honestly do agree that the system is likely to be more bookkeeping than it is going to be worth. Perhaps simplifying it to the PCs, on the open world, can only learn of content (modules, scenarios, mega-adventures) in their Tier, which I will define as the four sets of 5 (1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20). In their starting town they are capable of learning of all of the level 1-5 modules, which, through open world travel, they are able to travel to. I feel this offers them agency, even if it does enable them to enter dungeons that will probably defeat them and require a prison-break bit.
They get information of these content tiers via Taverns. Custom content, of course, will be available when I can make it. They could just walk around the open world looking for modules, but that might not be in their best interests since they might stumble into a level 17 dungeon at level 1.


Taku Ooka Nin wrote:
So I have been rolling a few ideas around in my head about character progression, and I muse that there is probably 2 major types of progression in class levels: Optimal (free form) and Role-play.

That's an interesting dichotomy seeing that I've never seen option 2 in exactly the form of your proposal before. It seems to exclude any other proposal too.

This particular version of RP adds some mostly-minor quests which the GM can use as hooks and stops people levelling 3 levels in a in-game week. That's probably useful. It likely makes obscure classes harder to play, which is less useful.

One thing that needs to be clarified, are those level ranges class or character? I.e. would a ranger 4/rogue 2/horizon walker 9 who wants to take their next level as an oracle 1 be in the 1-5 range or the 16-20? What if they were taking their next level as a horizon walker 10 instead?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I don't like the book-keeping, but I do like the idea that there has to be an RP justification for new skills / levels in a completely unexpected class. I don't want it to be so limiting that its punishing.

I've always liked the idea that if you want to bring in something totally new, you had to:
a) make some sort of stab at it, untrained, in the adventure
-- or --
b) give the GM some cool bit of back story full of plot strings that he could pull to cover "what my character did on their summer adventure (ie downtime between RP sessions).

I had a GM that did this, and it was fun seeing what people came up with, and the plots that sprung out of these backstories.

There are some GMs that try to use these sorts of rules to unfairly punish characters. My friend Bret had a character who was a wizard who could NEVER find the spells that he wanted in magic shops in town. All the spell books available were completely randomlly generated things that had the most bizarre and useless spells ever, or contained 9 spells that he already knew and one that might be useful on Tuesdays. It took him 6 months to find one lousy copy of "dispel."

(That's the reason, actually, that I still only play spontaneous casters rather than spellbook casters... I'm afraid that I will never find the new spells that I need.) That game scarred *me* and it wasn't even my character that was affected!

Hmm


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Actually I think you got it a bit reverse.

The roleplay kind is to allow every character to take what they want, for it allow them to truly roleplay their character as they want them. The other way you describe is more the DM wanting to roleplay their character instead of the players.

example: Hmmm I would like my swashbuckler to suddenly have a great vision and decide to focus on it and take character lvl in oracle.
DM: (no, not an oracle!) Oh sorry, there's really no one that can train you in oracle, in fact the only trainer you find can teach you to be a fighter.


Yeah, agreed with zapbib, this system you're coming up with sounds like it's just punishing people for having their own character vision.

If you're worried about the jarring nature of a level-up partway through an adventure... wait to give the experience until the character's most recent dungeon-crawl is over, and have a month long time-skip of downtime where characters can recover and contemplate, rather than forcing them to find a trainer.

Read the Gamemastery Guide on Frequent vs. Bundled rewards.

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