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In the additional resources thread it has been noted that a feat that helps you retrain has been made legal from the Quests and Campaigns Companion
Dylos wrote:
Additional Resources wrote:
Pathfinder Player Companion: Quests & Campaigns
Equipment all magic items on pages 30–31 are legal except banner of tactical command, lesser banner of tactical command, diadem of inspiring rule, and horn of plenty; Feats: Expert Trainer is legal; Spells: detect relations is legal; Traits: all traits on pages 18–21 are legal.
EXPERT TRAINER wrote:
You have a special knack for a certain profession and take to it with ease.
Benefit: Choose three character classes. For the purposes of retraining, you are always considered to have a retraining synergy with these classes, regardless of your current class. Additionally, retraining any class option takes you half the time it normally would (and thus half the gp cost), though retraining a class still takes the normal amount of time (5 days for a class with which you have synergy, 7 for a class with which you don’t). If you take this feat via retraining or replace it with another feat in the same manner, the retraining time takes twice as long as normal in regards to this feat only.
Does this mean that if you have the Expert Trainer feat that you can retrain, or does the feat do nothing despite being legal?
MIKE BBROCK responded
You can not currently retrain. Check back after Gen Con for a better answer.
(end response)
There has been a little discussion in the Additional Resources thread and Mike Moreland asked we keep that out of said thread so please discuss here
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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That would be a little bit hilarious if they made the feat legal to bait people into taking it, then make it useless by leaving all the retraining rules out.
But honestly, retraining doesn't sound too bad as long as there's a gp cost to it (which I understand there is). It would be along the same lines as changing factions by paying Prestige. There are certainly characters that I'd like to change things on, because better options came out (or came to my attention) too late.
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My experience thus far with how Mike Brock handles this campaign leads me to believe that any retraining rules that do get opened up will be fair and reasonable. I know nothing of Ultimate Campaign, but I'm not worried.
I agree. I am not worried either way.
I had a player about cry this weekend when I pointed out that they took a couple feats that they misread/misunderstood and clearly could not benefit from as they thought they could.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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The thought I've been having for a while on retraining is something more like a boon.
Meddling time-travel
Through some magical flux, your past has been re-written. Replace one of your traits with another trait in the same category.
The problem with GM credit babies. You don't know how well a build will work until you actually play it. If the characters already level 2+ by the time you play it, you don't get any chance to fiddle with it.
I'd love to replace my magical lineage trait with a different magical trait, or even a different spell linked to it.
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Some things that the retraining rule might be good for:
Misunderstood feats/traits
Forced rebuilds above 1st level (without rebuild, you only get one chance at taking a higher-than-first-level PC whose original build choices got hit with the banhammer and making a new, useful PC out of them.)
GM babies never played at first level.
Just a few of the things that rebuilds might fix.
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Ultimate Campaign's ruleset change the very fundamental nature of what the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is. For every rule that fleshes out a player character's backstory it has two rules that turn player characters into video game avatars.
Keep your interchangeable skill pods away from my verisimilitude.
It has no place in the organized play campaign.
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You know, I've read over Ultimate Campaign, and I didn't really see anything at all that struck me as "video-gamey".
Except the retraining rules where suddenly a fighter can spend 5 days to learn a new feat in place of an old one by spending a paltry amount of gold. I ask you, what does gold have to do with a culmination of a lifetime of training and experience?
Then again, every time anything at all is ever changed, someone always has to bring up this very same complaint. I've seen it so many times that as far as I'm concerned, it's approaching Godwin's Law territory; first side to play the "video-gamey" card loses the debate and we all move on to better uses of our time.
Other people are not me. Link me to one comment I've ever made that complains about things being too like a video game. Cliched sayings or expressions have a basis in reality, that's why they are cliches. Its not my fault that OTHERS misuse them.
And it doesn't help that Tim's the one making the complaint; I don't think I've ever seen a comment from him anywhere REMOTELY positive about anything.
That would be your problem, not mine. Yr the blind one not me.
Tim, this is NOT (just) your game. This is OUR game. This is EVERYONE'S game. People need to be willing to make certain concessions about what is and is not allowed, so that we can ALL have fun.
Did I say it was my game? This is a thread the campaign staff asked us to create to share our opinions. You don't like my opinion, state one of your own, don't take it out on me.
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You know, I've read over Ultimate Campaign, and I didn't really see anything at all that struck me as "video-gamey".Except the retraining rules where suddenly a fighter can spend 5 days to learn a new feat in place of an old one by spending a paltry amount of gold. I ask you, what does gold have to do with a culmination of a lifetime of training and experience?
Perhaps not the best example, since a Fighter can already retrain one of their Bonus Feats every two levels (no time or gold required).
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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Perhaps not the best example, since a Fighter can already retrain one of their Bonus Feats every two levels (no time or gold required).You know, I've read over Ultimate Campaign, and I didn't really see anything at all that struck me as "video-gamey".Except the retraining rules where suddenly a fighter can spend 5 days to learn a new feat in place of an old one by spending a paltry amount of gold. I ask you, what does gold have to do with a culmination of a lifetime of training and experience?
Truth. However being able to do that is a fighter-only feature. Monks can't replace older bonus feats, neither can rangers or samurai. By allowing other classes to retrain, it removes some of the starch out of being a fighter.
The idea of having a "respec" is something very attractive to me when it comes to gaming. I'm an alt-aholic, I like making new characters and tweaking current builds. So I like the idea of retraining.
That said, as an organizer in an OP environment, ringing the bell here might give us all some really bad headaches.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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Limited retraining would be useful, IMO, to overcome some of the hidden traps in character progression.
I don't plan out every detail of my characters all the way to 12th (or 15th, or 20th) level before playing them; I just let them develop over time in the course of adventuring. Unfortunately this sometimes leaves me with no good choice for a bonus feat, say: I've already got the only feats on the bonus feat list that interest me (taken, earlier on in my career, as an unrestricted feat choice). What I'd like to do is take a different feat; one that would have been available to me at that earlier time (and which I would have taken, rather than taking one of those feats on the available bonus feat list, if I had foreknowledge of how the character would develop).
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I would love to see retraining.
We love to talk about The Rulezzzzzz like they're gospel, but a lot of people in a situation where someone took a useless feat quietly say something like "just go home and fix it and don't tell anyone!" You don't have to like it, but it's true.
Now, at least, the advice will be "for a modest bit of gold, you are no longer stuck with that feat!" Plus, as an added bonus, people who follow the rules with frenetic devotion will have the same option!
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I'm also very interested in the possibility of retraining in PFS. As long as there's a cost involved, I think it's a good way to help people keep their characters fun. I have at least four characters that could benefit from some reworking. Two of them were the first two Pathfinder characters I ever made, and I didn't really understand all the options or how to build toward a competent character. The other two were GM credit characters that I didn't play until after 1st level. With one of those two, the problem didn't really show up until 5th level, but I realized one session into 5th that I had chosen the wrong feat. I'd have retrained immediately if the option was available. I didn't even use the feat in question (Snake Style) that entire session. It would have been an insignificant blip in the character's history. Now, though, I'm stuck with it. I've played one more session with that character, and I used the feat nominally in that (I actually remembered to declare entering the stance, but never did piercing damage or used the sense motive as AC option because even on a roll of a 20, I can only improve my AC by about 3 points). So, yeah, I'd gratefully spend a couple thousand gold to retrain it, because I should have taken toughness instead, as the character has spent a lot of his favored class bonuses for other things, but he's a front liner, and in that first session at 5th came 1HP from death (taken to -12 with a 13 Con).
Mistakes like that are easy to make. In a home game I would have talked to the GM after that session and worked something out (Rocky training montage?). In PFS, having definite rules to handle retraining would help what I think is the most important thing, keeping the game fun.
To me, this is one if those "What I do with my character doesn't affect your character" issues. If I think I'll have more fun playing a monk with Toughness than a monk with Snake Style, that should be up to me. If maintaining consistency with your own character is more important to you, don't use the retrain rules.
It's been said many times in other threads... PFS is not a competition.
My view on this may also be skewed by playing Champions/HERO System for many years, where the possibility of a "radiation accident" was always there to allow major changes to a character, as long as there was an in game reason.
EDIT - Also, I haven't read all the retraining rules in Ultimate Campaign, but I don't think retraining a trait is an option, is it? There's a character I'd love to give Magical Knack to, instead of the seldom used for him Focused Mind, because Magical Knack was legalized about a week after I played my first game at 2nd level. But I can see how traits might be excluded from the rebuild rules, since presumably they comes from things in your background that are less easily changed by spending time training.
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*stuff*THIS is exactly why retraining is needed.
Personally, I'm a bit leery of allowing unlimited retraining between sessions, but I'm sure they'll restrict it similarly to how they restrict training animals (I'm putting my money on one retrain per session).
I'm glad my ineptitude at getting a character right the first time has provided a good example. :)
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Seriously, why is it that because YOU feel that retraining a character detracts from the character YOU spent years building up, that OTHER people shouldn't be able to correct mistakes THEY'VE made during character building? That seems pretty selfish, to me...
It may *be* selfish, but it will certainly bother me. Probably not as much as Tengu, Aasimar, and Tieflings bother me, but it will be right up there. But if you want real issues:
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I made many mistakes with my first PFS character (in Season 0), so much so that I shelved him for 2 years. Then I took another look at him and realized I had won a boon at PaizoCon that allowed a retraining of a feat. That simple change made him viable again.
Put me down in favor of retraining, however limited it may be.
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I made many mistakes with my first PFS character (in Season 0), so much so that I shelved him for 2 years. Then I took another look at him and realized I had won a boon at PaizoCon that allowed a retraining of a feat. That simple change made him viable again.
Put me down in favor of retraining, however limited it may be.
Waltero, as you well know, I've got a 4th level Cleric I almost never play (that you and most of the people in the local area often forget I even have), because I built him in a hurry before a game (before I knew you could play pregens), and because he got to 2nd level before the current retraining rules were introduced. Similar to your experience, even just being able to swap out one of the two feats I took just because I didn't know what to choose (Dodge or Weapon Focus, his other feat is Selective Channel) would let me at least give him some direction.
More examples for others who see retraining as game breaking...
Right now, two of my Cleric's three feats are melee combat focused, but he's got a 12 strength and is still almost useless in melee. He's +6 to hit at 4th level and does 1d8+1 damage. With his stats, he's much better off buffing and healing than going into melee. He's a subpar healer, though, because he's only got a 14 Charisma and 5 channels a day. Being able to swap Weapon Focus or Dodge for Extra Channel would help make him good at one thing (though still not great), instead of currently being mediocre at everything. And losing either of those feats is not going to drastically change who that character is. His Charisma I can boost with a headband, so that can be fixed without retraining. He's got 9 sessions of XP on him. It would be great not to have to throw those out and start a new Cleric.
Of the other three characters I'd like to make changes on, they are similarly small. My 10th level Sorcerer would probably swap one or two feats (Dodge again, and maybe Expanded Arcana, because I took it before realizing I could just spend 1,000gp to get a Page of Spell Knowledge for a 1st level spell or use a favored class bonus to pick up a new spell). On my Monk and my Fighter/Oracle, I'd probably look to swap a feat on each for Toughness, because both are heavy melee characters with poor hitpoint totals, one of which has died once as a result, the other of which almost died.
Out of all four of those characters, though, the only one that really isn't fun to play is the Cleric. The Sorcerer has become effective just by the nature of being a high level arcane caster. The Monk and the Oracle I just can't always play the way I intended (charge into melee as a front liner), because they're too fragile. So I've had to adjust their tactics, but they are still good at something.
I guess I just don't see how small changes like those change a character to be unrecognizable. Sure, an optimizer might swap something more meaningful, but as long as there's a cost associated with it, it should keep things from getting out of hand. The listed costs from Ultimate Campaign do seem a little low. To retrain a feat on my Sorcerer, for example, would be 10x10(level)x5(days) or 500gp. That's nothing to a 10th level character. But, PFS isn't typically in the business of altering the general rules, so I think it'll either be allowed at the cost in Ultimate Campaign, or not allowed. PFS can set restrictions on when Retraining can be done (once per chronicle, for example, and you must have a GM sign off on it).
Personally, I enjoy the roleplaying side of the game, so I'm less likely to make sweeping changes to any of my characters. But even if a player does completely alter a character, changing class, feats, everything... This is PFS. Every time you sit down at a table, you're potentially playing with new or different characters. Does it really matter that much if it's the same player with a newly retrained character or if it's an entirely new player and and entirely new character?
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I would be very happy for the retraining of feat or class ability options, but in all honesty I think the retraining of an entire class level sounds a bit over the top......but I don't have to use it. It doesn't really affect me if someone else does decide to retrain a class level. When I see people complain about this I can't help but think they are the same people that get mad about what others do in their own bedrooms.
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Link me to one comment I've ever made that complains about things being too like a video game.
Here you are, Tim. It was only made about 2.5 hours before the request, though, so I'll admit it was a pretty easy find. Perhaps next time you could ask for two, since that might require some digging.
Absolutely love the new avatar, by the way. The icon really completes it. I didn't realize it was you at first, but after SCPRedMage pointed that out it all clicked, and I nearly peed myself laughing. Truly, you are a constant delight.
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If, and only if, it is true that there will be retraining I will say this and leave the ensuing discussion. I was happy to hear via the Know Direction podcast that the leadership team has recognized that there is a current problem with the "overpowered" characters. By this I mean those that have found loopholes, build to the edges of power, and play up for more gold than they should have. This problem was acknowledged by a suggested change to the wealth rules. It disappoints me that that acknowledgement was made, but there is evidence that another new method of allowing player power creep to continue (who wouldn't want to retrain out of traits/feats/skills which do not provide me the benefit they did at low level). Out with one problem, in with another, that's what I see.
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If, and only if, it is true that there will be retraining I will say this and leave the ensuing discussion. I was happy to hear via the Know Direction podcast that the leadership team has recognized that there is a current problem with the "overpowered" characters. By this I mean those that have found loopholes, build to the edges of power, and play up for more gold than they should have. This problem was acknowledged by a suggested change to the wealth rules. It disappoints me that that acknowledgement was made, but there is evidence that another new method of allowing player power creep to continue (who wouldn't want to retrain out of traits/feats/skills which do not provide me the benefit they did at low level). Out with one problem, in with another, that's what I see.
Well since this is trading one thing for something you could already have and cash, arguably this could be a way to reduce the amount of money floating around without actually giving any new gear. If someone sits down at my table with ideal feats for his level, he might have planned and perhaps had it rougher early on or he may have retrained and lost some cash; either way I don't think it changes my day.