Request for Trait Retraining

[David knott 242]

One thing we need to keep in mind about Pathfinder is that it is an ever-growing game system -- new options come out on an almost monthly basis, and we do not expect that to change any time soon. New traits are among the most common of these additions. Home games usually have house rules or DM judgment for retconning new material to existing characters -- PFS only has retraining.

Now I could easily see some variations on the original proposal -- petition for trait retraining in the official rules, or add PFS unique rules that give players a window to retrain to newly released material, or whatever. But some provision should be made to avoid disadvantaging players for creating their characters before some new book became an official part of the game.

[Akerlof]

Jiggy wrote:

Akerlof wrote:

It's not a clarification of an ambiguous rule, definition of what "with your GM's permission" means within the campaign, or a ruling to facilitate the logistics of organized play.

Neither are Day Job checks, 1st-level rebuilds, shirt/folio rerolls, or the ability to spend Prestige on things.

Quote:

What is important enough about trait retraining that warrants a departure from one of the most basic tenets of the campaign?

The same as the justification for 1st-level rebuilds: room for people to say "oops" after they've done some learning, and be able to do something about it. Yes, some people would use it for other purposes, just like 1st-level rebuilds. But also just like 1st-level rebuilds, I think it'll do far more good than harm for the campaign.

Quote:

Why should Paizo's official campaign second guess Paizo's written rules?

Do you ask this question whenever some of Paizo's written rules aren't allowed in Paizo's official campaign? Rules are published for the broader gaming audience, not just for PFS.

I always thought Day Job checks were an adjustment of the normal rules for gaining an income from professions, crafts and performing to take into account the fact that time between scenarios is undefined. It's a logistics type ruling.

Prestige and fame are a part of the metagame of the campaign. It (and as far as I know, day jobs) was built into the fabric of the campaign from the get go and I can also see it as a logistical simplification for organized play: How do we ensure characters don't get equipment beyond what they should have if they can purchase equipment rather than have to find it from drops a GM determines?

Rerolls are made up from whole cloth, but again, as far as I know they've been there from the beginning. Also two things: They serve the purpose of marketing Paizo products and, more importantly, there aren't any rules defining general conditions for getting rerolls already published, as far as I know.

Disallowing certain rules is a logistical and GM permission thing. It's also been part of the design of the campaign from the beginning. I'm also pretty sure that all new rule books are created with the caveat "talk to your GM to see if he allows these new rules in his campaign."

All of the above are meta rules of the campaign, they're far more similar to the "you can only get credit for playing a scenario once" than they are to creating a rule to retrain traits. They're all within the purview of what the written rules assume the GM of a campaign will make rulings on.

First level rebuilds are the only house rule example I've seen that wasn't part of the original design of the campaign. It's also a new rule, not a clarification or GM permission rule. I'm not privy to the reasoning behind adding it, but my guess is that it was meant to help new players who made grievous errors (8 cha clerics, 7 str rangers with TWF, etc,) or just don't know what to play. Before Ultimate Campaign, the rulebooks were silent on rebuilding, which is both good and bad from my perspective: Bad because it's creating a new rule. Good because it's not overruling RAW in the PFS campaign. Now that retraining is available, maybe we should re-assess whether or not to allow first level rebuilds?

So, accepting arguendo that allowing first level rebuilds means that the campaign staff isn't limited to following RAW with their rulings, what is the threshold for breaking RAW? How much value to players need to gain in order to break RAW with a ruling. On the one hand, obviously unplayable characters can be rebuilt per the first level rebuild rules. On the other hand, improperly costed items will _not_ be changed (see Amulet of Mighty Fists.) That's actually a pretty high baseline, the Amulet of Mighty Fists issue was a significant disadvantage to monks. Further example, the Flurry of Blows rules clarification: PFS management did not step in with a clarification when the developers' rulings made it almost unworkable, they left it to the developers to make a final ruling.

So, a class feature that was so screwed up as to make a class almost unplayable due to table variation in interpreting an official ruling wasn't changed. Compare that to retraining traits: I know of no build that requires a certain trait in order to function. Some builds work better with certain traits, but none are impacted as much as a monk who can't flurry with just 1 weapon. And there certainly aren't any builds that used to work but now require newly printed trait in order to continue functioning.

So, even if you accept that the allowing first level rebuilds means PFS rulings don't have to follow official Pathfinder rules (I don't, I think it was a logistical ruling in an area undefined by the rules, rather than taking a published rule and adding something new purely because it's convenient,) how does allowing retraining of traits meet the bar to break RAW? It would be convenient, sure. But bad trait choices don't make characters unplayable.

[Tamago]

@Akerlof, for what it's worth, I agree with you that this is something that should be fixed in the actual core rules, rather than as a PFS-specific change. However, just to play devil's advocate here...

I haven't heard anything to specifically confirm this, but I suspect that one of the reasons why Trait Retraining was not included in Ultimate Campaign was because traits are not actually part of the Core Rules. Rather, they are an optional system introduced in the APG. They've gotten a lot of support since then, but it's certainly possible that some GMs may not use them at all. That being the case, it makes sense that they might not be included in the retraining rules, since the developers would have wanted to spend as much word count as possible on the things that would be applicable in *every* campaign, rather than just PFS.

That said, the trait system is very important to the PFS campaign. The campaign not only requires players to choose two traits for their characters, it also provides new, PFS-specific faction traits!

In a normal home game, all of the retraining rules are at the discretion of the GM, and if a particular GM were using the traits system and wanted to allow retraining of traits, it would be very easy to do so. However, in an organized play campaign such as PFS, the individual GMs do not have the kind of freedom necessary to make these sorts of ad-hoc rules. That's why it's important that the PFS leadership make the appropriate "house rules" to keep the game running smoothly for everyone.

Therefore, in order to better support PFS specifically, it makes sense for traits to be retrainable along with everything else.

[Jiggy]

^ That.

[Bbauzh ap Aghauzh]

I might agree with you, but Archetypes are listed as something that can be retrained, and they are not part of the Core Rule Book rules. They didn't come about until Advanced Players Guide.

[Akerlof]

Tamago wrote:

@Akerlof, for what it's worth, I agree with you that this is something that should be fixed in the actual core rules, rather than as a PFS-specific change. However, just to play devil's advocate here...

I haven't heard anything to specifically confirm this, but I suspect that one of the reasons why Trait Retraining was not included in Ultimate Campaign was because traits are not actually part of the Core Rules. Rather, they are an optional system introduced in the APG. They've gotten a lot of support since then, but it's certainly possible that some GMs may not use them at all. That being the case, it makes sense that they might not be included in the retraining rules, since the developers would have wanted to spend as much word count as possible on the things that would be applicable in *every* campaign, rather than just PFS.

The entire first chapter of Ultimate Campaign is on building character backgrounds and traits are integral to that. They're even included in the tables for random background generation. All the APG traits were reprinted and even more were added. I don't have the book in front of me, but iirc, there is more space dedicated to traits in Ultimate Campaign than there is devoted to retraining.

So I'm not swayed by that argument. Traits were very much at the forefront of the development of Ultimate Campaign, I find it difficult to believe that the UC developers thought they were too fringe or obscure to add to the retraining rules.

[thistledown]

While debating this in PFS discussion is good, it is not the only battlefield we have, Jiggy. I put a post in the Errata thread for Ultimate Campaign as well, lobbying for them to errata the book and put retraining rules in it. Could use your help arguing for it on another front.

[Tamago]

Akerlof wrote:

Tamago wrote:

@Akerlof, for what it's worth, I agree with you that this is something that should be fixed in the actual core rules, rather than as a PFS-specific change. However, just to play devil's advocate here...

I haven't heard anything to specifically confirm this, but I suspect that one of the reasons why Trait Retraining was not included in Ultimate Campaign was because traits are not actually part of the Core Rules. Rather, they are an optional system introduced in the APG. They've gotten a lot of support since then, but it's certainly possible that some GMs may not use them at all. That being the case, it makes sense that they might not be included in the retraining rules, since the developers would have wanted to spend as much word count as possible on the things that would be applicable in *every* campaign, rather than just PFS.

The entire first chapter of Ultimate Campaign is on building character backgrounds and traits are integral to that. They're even included in the tables for random background generation. All the APG traits were reprinted and even more were added. I don't have the book in front of me, but iirc, there is more space dedicated to traits in Ultimate Campaign than there is devoted to retraining.

So I'm not swayed by that argument. Traits were very much at the forefront of the development of Ultimate Campaign, I find it difficult to believe that the UC developers thought they were too fringe or obscure to add to the retraining rules.

OK, fair point. I can't really argue with that :-)

It does make me wonder, though, why they weren't included in the first place. As you say, they did devote a lot of space to Traits in the Background chapter; it seems unlikely that they would have just forgotten about them in the retraining chapter. That implies there was an active decision to *not* include trait retraining in Ultimate Campaign, and I'd love to know the reasoning behind that! Knowing the intent of why they were left out might well be an important factor in this discussion.

[Jiggy]

Indeed, and I've now asked about it over in Products.

If it's because they didn't think traits should be retrained, then we can all drop the topic. :)

If it's because it's one of those "GM discretion, PFS can do as it pleases" areas (sort of like certain FAQ references to "it would be a reasonable houserule to..."), then I think it would still be appropriate to discuss here.

If it's because of word count or some similar issue, then maybe we can get a FAQ. :)

[Bbauzh ap Aghauzh]

Tamago wrote:

It does make me wonder, though, why they weren't included in the first place.

I'm guessing because they felt that a character's background shouldn't be able to be retrained. (although why they'd allow something like a bloodline or mystery to be retrained is beyond me--but I suppose it wouldn't be fair to those two classes if every other class could retrain and they couldn't.)

[Jiggy]

Andrew Christian wrote:

Tamago wrote:

It does make me wonder, though, why they weren't included in the first place.

I'm guessing because they felt that a character's background shouldn't be able to be retrained.

I think the ability to retrain racial traits is pretty hard on that theory.

We may have hit all the significant points in this discussion already, so I say we turn this thread into a betting pool on this question of why trait retraining rules weren't printed. Losers buy junk food for winners at next gaming opportunity. ;)

My bet's on "GM discretion area, let's not codify it".

[Auke Teeninga]

Tamago wrote:

It does make me wonder, though, why they weren't included in the first place. As you say, they did devote a lot of space to Traits in the Background chapter; it seems unlikely that they would have just forgotten about them in the retraining chapter.

I'm guessing that the traits part and the retraining part were written by a different developer.

[WalterGM]

Only a matter of time before this discussion began, I suppose.
Let me start with this anecdote.
Yes it is long, because that is the point of it.

Here is a very condensed version of how the first day post-guide 5.0 went at my FLGS.

"Alright team, some things have changed with Season 5 starting."
"Like what?"
"Well, first of all, two factions no longer exist. The Shadow Lodge and the Lantern Lodge."
"Wait, what?!"
"Yeah, they're totally gone now. If you were a member of those factions, pick a new one. Also, speaking of factions: faction missions are also gone."
"Wait, what?! We just get 1 prestige now each game?"
"No, you should have all gotten emails that detail what your 'overall faction goals' are this Season."
"What emails?"
"Well, check your email when you get home. There should be one from Paizo in there. But basically, instead of having one nit-picky thing to do each game, you'll just have one overall goal to keep in mind this year when playing that character. So keep an eye out for ways you can help accomplish that overall goal in any given game."
"Hmm, OK. But what about old games and faction missions?"
"Old games will still give 2 prestige, and there will be a list of secondary mission goals coming out to accompany those older games."
"What are the secondary faction missions going to be like?"
"Nothing major, but things like: instead of rescuing some bros, rescue all the bros. Just try and do your best and you'll do fine."
"Cool, is that document out yet?"
"Nope, in the meantime, you just get 2 prestige if you finish the scenario."
"Oh, ok."
"Oh, also, you can retrain now."
"Retraining? Please explain, that sounds neat!"
"So if you own a copy of Ultimate Campaign, you can use the retraining rules in it to rebuilt parts of your character. Like feats and whatnot."
"Boy, that is neat!"
"I know, right! There's also a new manditory piece of paperwork called the Inventory Tracking Sheet. Essentially, print one out per character and jot down all the big purchases you've made on it."
"Where is this sheet?"
"Well, it's in the back of the 5.0 guide. You can also just get a piece of scrap paper per character and keep track there. It's just to make audits easier."
"Oh, OK, that's not to bad. Anything else?"
"Yeah. Remember how you used to play up to get more gold?"
"Do we ever!"
"Well, you can't do that anymore."
"Uh...."
"Yeah, they got rid of that to balance out some WBL curves. So now you get some in between tier level of gold. So more than playing down, but not as much for playing up."
"Oh, that makes sense. We have no issues with this change at all."
"Glad to hear that guys, you are super understanding about all this."
"Not a problem! Thanks for all this information, we definitely won't have any questions in the future about any of it."
"Awesome! Thanks for your time everyone, you're the best people ever."

*disclaimer: that is definitely exactly how it went down (massive sarcasm here)*

Adding a line to that about an exception to the retraining rules that exists only in PFS that works like X because of Y is just another thing I'll have to remind my players of. There's already so much for organizers to inform their players of this Season, I'd just as soon not allow trait rebuilding for simplicity's sake.

My two cents.

[Mahtobedis]

Jiggy I'm putting my bet in with you. We can split the cost if we lose.

[Jiggy]

@Walter - Those are some remarkably attentive, polite, and understanding players. ;)

Honestly, I was expecting a different ending. Starting here:

Quote:

"Oh, also, you can retrain now."

"Retraining? Please explain, that sounds neat!"
"So if you own a copy of Ultimate Campaign, you can use the retraining rules in it to rebuilt parts of your character. Like feats and whatnot."
"Boy, that is neat!"

I was expecting your story to stretch into the following week, with people bringing back some retrains where they didn't read carefully and assumed that traits were retrained exactly like half-feats (since, you know, that's what folks are always told they are) and then you were going to have to explain that "No, you can actually retrain pretty much everything about your character EXCEPT traits."

There's a reason that I'm not concerned with the "extra rules" argument in this case: I think I'll be spending more time correcting/explaining things if we leave it as-is than if we enable trait retraining to work exactly like everyone would expect.

Frankly, that's actually a large part of my interest in this subject: making my life easier as a GM when people ask about/try to retrain traits. :/

[Bbauzh ap Aghauzh]

The easiest way to explain it, Jiggy, is:

"You can't do it."

"Why?"

"Because it isn't in the book."

"Why?"

"Because the Developers said so."

[WalterGM]

Jiggy wrote:

@Walter - Those are some remarkably attentive, polite, and understanding players. ;)

Truth. :P

[Jiggy]

Andrew Christian wrote:

The easiest way to explain it, Jiggy, is:

"You can't do it."

"Why?"

"Because it isn't in the book."

"Why?"

"Because the Developers said so."

Compare to:

"Yep, looks good."

When repeated a bazillion times, the difference will add up. ;)

[Bbauzh ap Aghauzh]

Jiggy wrote:

Andrew Christian wrote:

The easiest way to explain it, Jiggy, is:

"You can't do it."

"Why?"

"Because it isn't in the book."

"Why?"

"Because the Developers said so."

Compare to:

"Yep, looks good."

When repeated a bazillion times, the difference will add up. ;)

Which is still longer than,

"NO!"

[Leg o' Lamb]

Guys, you've made yer points both pro and con. Let the folks in charge make a decision and then we can revisit the issue.

[Jiggy]

Andrew Christian wrote:

Jiggy wrote:

Andrew Christian wrote:

The easiest way to explain it, Jiggy, is:

"You can't do it."

"Why?"

"Because it isn't in the book."

"Why?"

"Because the Developers said so."

Compare to:

"Yep, looks good."

When repeated a bazillion times, the difference will add up. ;)

Which is still longer than,

"NO!"

Which is shorter than "No trait for you! Come back, one year!", but the latter might still be worth saying...

[Jiggy]

jon dehning wrote:

Guys, you've made yer points both pro and con. Let the folks in charge make a decision and then we can revisit the issue.

*coughcough*

;)

[pH unbalanced]

Akerlof wrote:

The entire first chapter of Ultimate Campaign is on building character backgrounds and traits are integral to that. They're even included in the tables for random background generation. All the APG traits were reprinted and even more were added. I don't have the book in front of me, but iirc, there is more space dedicated to traits in Ultimate Campaign than there is devoted to retraining.

My suspicion is that this is *exactly* why traits were not included in the retraining section of Ultimate Campaign -- because if you use the trait system as listed in the first Chapter, you are actually very limited in what traits you get to choose from. Your progress through the character background process specifies the traits you are allowed to take. The intention seemed to be that they wanted to emphasize the 'background' part of traits in this. Allowing you to retrain traits from an open list would completely undermine this process.

But PFS doesn't use that method of assigning traits. (And won't because it involves too much random rolling on tables.) So since you aren't dealing with a restricted list in the first place, retraining traits doesn't seem to me like that big a deal.

The thing is...I don't even like the concept of retraining characters. I understand the arguments against, and emotionally I'm right there with you. But I also understand why retraining is allowed and think that it is an overall good thing, especially with the (relatively expensive) PP costs they've set. And once you've opened the door to retraining, trying to draw the line at traits seems pretty silly.

[Jiggy]

pH unbalanced wrote:

The thing is...I don't even like the concept of retraining characters.

There seems to be a remarkably strong correlation between this sentiment and arguments against opening up trait retraining.

[Saren Valasorn]

If we are going to allow retraining in general, which I personally am completely indifferent too (but can absolutely see why some folks would love a minor tweak here and there vs. getting it right on a whole new character), I personally cannot see a compelling reason not to allow traits to be retrained as well.

My 2 cents.

[Serum]

The fact that you can currently retrain your racial traits makes any fluff argument against retraining traits irrelevant. Who cares about background when your elf can change from being racially adapted to surviving in the desert to being racially adapted to living in the water, or your gnome can replace his low-light vision with darkvision.

[KenderKin]

I actually play in a game where additional traits are awarded at certain character levels.

I think it is third and every three levels.

[kinevon]

MisterSlanky wrote:

Jiggy wrote:

Quote:

What is important enough about trait retraining that warrants a departure from one of the most basic tenets of the campaign?

The same as the justification for 1st-level rebuilds: room for people to say "oops" after they've done some learning, and be able to do something about it. Yes, some people would use it for other purposes, just like 1st-level rebuilds. But also just like 1st-level rebuilds, I think it'll do far more good than harm for the campaign.

And there is no change to the first level rebuild rules. If you want to retrain your traits because of lessons learned, you may still do so, at level 1.

Ryan,

Bogus.

What about my PC who was "rebuilt" when he had 2 XP, and only got played once at first level as the new PC?

And that rebuild was because of changing the campaign from 3.5 to PFRPG. No further options to rebuild him existed, whether 1st level or otherwise, once he was built as PFRPG and played.

So, at the time, I took a couple of the extremely limited number of legal traits, since the web document and the PFS Guide were the ONLY source for them, and never got a chance to see that the Hunter's Eye trait was worse than useless for my Fighter. Do you know that the ojnly time any of it came into play was during a single 7-11 scenario?

Once, in all the time from 1.2 to 12.0. And being allowed to retrain that into something better suited for him would be "changing his background?" Not.

Heck, that 12th level PC has a lot of other things that are sub-optimal, but both of his traits are pretty much both useless and invisible. Hunter's Eye for a fighter? And how about Armor Expert for a Fighter who wears a mithril breastplate?

As I say, other than at very low levels, Armor Expert has done nothing for him, and he only got to use Hunter's Eye, in any way, once in 31 XP.

Spoiler:

And that was for the final encounter during Sarkorian Prophecy, when the Sorcerer was 180' away from us. Oooo. And, to be honest, I don't think the -2 to hit would have made much difference...

Heck. I have PCs whose traits I don't recall. -2 has Reactionary and... something else, don't remember what offhand. I suspect that there are GMs who would love to have me retrain that Reactionary off of him, to be honest. +15 Initiative? Even on a 1, he tends to go early in combat. If he rolls well, nasty things can happen to the BBEG before he even gets to go.

[Caderyn]

From what I see both the traits Jiggy mentioned provide significant mechanical advantages (both actually in excess of what I would expect from a feat let alone a trait), which does kind of undermine your position of it being a purely flavor thing and not a power gaming request.

I mean I am sure you like the flavor of both of those traits, however the mechanics are what is drawing you to take them, and I cannot get behind changing the retraining rules simply because people want more power.

You have to remember PFS is played by people of all experience levels, increasing the expected knowledge to be able to effectively participate is more likely to alienate players than actually help newer players.

In the end making it easier for people to gain power will actually cost us players as people will take it too far.

[Jiggy]

Jiggy wrote:

Wife was looking through traits in Ultimate Campaign ... when she excitedly called me over to show me Kin Bond

Caderyn wrote:

the mechanics are what is drawing you to take them... people want more power.

Wow.

Takes a special kind of person.

[Caderyn]

So you are saying a reroll to a failed save at your "twins" save +2 is not a significant mechanical advantage?

Or that the increasing all luck bonuses by 1 is not a significant mechanical advantage (I cant decide if that would actually double the bonus of a half orcs sacred tattoo)

Both of these things are big significant effects, if they did not have such large effects would you have even thought about taking them? or just said "hmm a nice sounding feat I might take that on a later character?".

Like I said I do not disagree that from a flavor point of view both those feats sound interesting, but from a purely flavor point of view assuming they had a minor effect (such as +1 to 2 skills and making one a class skill) would you have be interested in taking them? or does the mechanical boost provide extra incentive behind it?

If it was a purely flavor point of view you were coming from (such as a really nice sounding trait that mechanically had a negligible effect), I personally would not have been as against the idea, but the fact that the only examples of "traits I would love to have" just happened to be mechanically strong, recently released traits or recently opened traits (like magical knack which someone said they would have taken on something else that they had), Does not encourage me to support the idea of changing the rules written in Ultimate Campaign to allow these sorts of changes.

As simply you got by with being able to express the flavor earlier for that character without these traits so why is it such a big thing for you to want them now?

[kinevon]

Caderyn wrote:

As simply you got by with being able to express the flavor earlier for that character without these traits so why is it such a big thing for you to want them now?

Because the trait didn't exist before, because there was no retraining beyond the 1st level retraining.

As for my archer PC, I have wanted to change both those traits out for most of his career.

[trollbill]

Caderyn wrote:

From what I see both the traits Jiggy mentioned provide significant mechanical advantages (both actually in excess of what I would expect from a feat let alone a trait), which does kind of undermine your position of it being a purely flavor thing and not a power gaming request.

I mean I am sure you like the flavor of both of those traits, however the mechanics are what is drawing you to take them, and I cannot get behind changing the retraining rules simply because people want more power.

You have to remember PFS is played by people of all experience levels, increasing the expected knowledge to be able to effectively participate is more likely to alienate players than actually help newer players.

In the end making it easier for people to gain power will actually cost us players as people will take it too far.

This is a moot argument. PFS now allows us to retrain pretty much everything but traits, including feats and class features that are much more powerful than traits. The ship has already sailed regarding retraining. Trait retraining got left the docks. Arguing that it should stay there because the ship should have never sailed in the first place is an irrelevant argument.

Personally, I don't see the PFS staff over-riding the designers' decision not to include Traits in the retraining rules unless this was really just an oversight. But anything is possible.

[Caderyn]

There was obviously a reason (even if it was never disclosed) as to why trait retraining was not included in the list of things available.

Also if a trait is not valuable why do you want to retrain it anyway? I find it odd that people are simultaneously saying

1. "traits are negligible hence there is no harm in retraining them" and 2. "traits are important parts of our characters hence we must be able to retrain them"

Only one of these two statements can be true if the first is true then if they are negligible there is no point overruling the Developers about not being able to retrain them as it is not really an issue in the first place as you can live without them. If the second is true then obviously the Developers have decided its a bad idea to allow trait retraining and thus it should not be allowed because of the limits in place regardless neither of the above two statements are a convincing reason to allow trait retraining.

If there is a 3rd argument for trait retraining I have not seen it yet in this thread.

[Akerlof]

Auke Teeninga wrote:

Tamago wrote:

It does make me wonder, though, why they weren't included in the first place. As you say, they did devote a lot of space to Traits in the Background chapter; it seems unlikely that they would have just forgotten about them in the retraining chapter.

I'm guessing that the traits part and the retraining part were written by a different developer.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the chapters were written by different people.

But I would be surprised if there wasn't one editor or editorial group that decided what to include in the various chapters. I can't imagine that the people who decided what specific things you would be able to retrain weren't aware that the first chapter had such a heavy focus on traits. Because it would be hard to make a coherent book if there weren't come central editorial influence, from my perspective it had to be an intentional decision not to add trait retraining.

I'd really be interested to find out why traits weren't included in retraining. The verisimilitude and character history arguments seem weak to me since you can retrain racial traits. Those strike me as far more immutable, not something that would change as the character grows. I don't see a logical reason to say a gnome can spend 3 weeks hanging out with another gnome and suddenly figure out that he has darkvision, but he can't spend some time emphasizing one aspect of his past over another.

My guess is that it was some combination of word count, traits being too minor to warrant the time and space, and logistics. Logistics meaning that it's going to be a hassle for a GM to come up with an NPC who the PCs can track down, was a twin and has the Kin Bond trait, more so than it is for a GM to come up with a gnome with darkvision or a fighter with Step Up. My money is on word count being at least part of the culprit, though.

[trollbill]

Caderyn wrote:

There was obviously a reason (even if it was never disclosed) as to why trait retraining was not included in the list of things available.

Also if a trait is not valuable why do you want to retrain it anyway? I find it odd that people are simultaneously saying

1. "traits are negligible hence there is no harm in retraining them" and 2. "traits are important parts of our characters hence we must be able to retrain them"

Only one of these two statements can be true if the first is true then if they are negligible there is no point overruling the Developers about not being able to retrain them as it is not really an issue in the first place as you can live without them. If the second is true then obviously the Developers have decided its a bad idea to allow trait retraining and thus it should not be allowed because of the limits in place regardless neither of the above two statements are a convincing reason to allow trait retraining.

If there is a 3rd argument for trait retraining I have not seen it yet in this thread.

Well, yes, there is a third possible reason, and IMHO the only reason to add a rule, i.e. the non-inclusion of retraing rules for traits in the Ultimate Campaign was an unintentional omission. While I have no proof of this, the fact that Racial Traits, which are nearly identicle to Background Traits in both crunch and fluff, were included in the retraining rules suggests that background traits should have been, as well. Which, in turn, suggest this was an unintentional omission rather than a deliberate one. If this is the case, then asking for this ommision to be corrected in some way is not unreasonable. Of course, Paizo's normal solution to this is to wait for the next print run to do an errata, which could be over a year from now. That's a ways off, but fixing it before that sets a precedent that could open a floodgate of similar requests.

[Chris Mortika]

I am, in general, infavor of retraining traits, but I have a question, directed mainly at those folks who also think it's a good idea.

What about pre-requisites? And do we now need to keep tighter track of the order in which our characters took levels in classes?

Some traits have a pre-requisite of, say "fighter only". (Defender of the Society) Let's say I start my PC as a ranger. He can't take that feat. At 5th level, he takes a level in Fighter. Do you think that I should be abllowed to retrain his "Bullied" trait to "Defender of the Society"?

Argument in favor: He has a level in fighter. One of the design goals of PFRPG is that people don't need to keep track of which class levels come in first, second, etc. Since he could have taken Fighter at 1st-level, he could have been eligible.

Argument against: he still was a ranger at 1st level. I can't retrain my PC to have chosen a trait at 1st level which would be illegal.

[WalterGM]

What if your PC started as a ranger. At level 5, he takes a level of Cleric. Now he wants to take Exalted of the Society.

Argument against: He could have taken the cleric first, sure, but he didn't. He has a mechanical benefit (more HP) from being a ranger at level 1. He can't have the best of both worlds.

[Jiggy]

It would work the same way as Feats, at least if we went with the wording I suggested in the OP. (I don't actually recall how Feats work in that regard, but the point is this isn't something we'd have to figure out from scratch. Just "like feats, but 3 days instead of 5".)

[Iammars]

Walter Sheppard wrote:

What if your PC started as a ranger. At level 5, he takes a level of Cleric. Now he wants to take Exalted of the Society.

Argument against: He could have taken the cleric first, sure, but he didn't. He has a mechanical benefit (more HP) from being a ranger at level 1. He can't have the best of both worlds.

Argument for: Mike Brock has said that we can't retrain into feats that we have to take at 1st level since we aren't currently 1st level. When retraining, we clearly have to look at what our character is currently as opposed to what they were when we took the original feat. If we allowed retraining of traits (retraiting, maybe?) I would assume that it would follow the same rules as retraining feats.

He would be spending prestige to get that mechanical benefit. I see no problem with this.

[VanceMadrox]

Chris:

I actually started a thread in the rules forum for this issue.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2q1do?Can-retraining-be-used-to-make-a-characte r

Please read and FAQ if you are able.

[Bbauzh ap Aghauzh]

You also cannot retrain into something you couldn't be without the retraining.

In other words a level 5 Sorcerer / Dragon Disciple 7, could not retrain any of the levels of Sorcerer into Dragon Disciple.

Why? Because Dragon Disciple requires 5 ranks of Knowledge (arcana) and even if somewhere as he progressed as a Dragon Disciple, they took a rank... they could not have taken Dragon Disciple with only 4 levels of Sorcerer. So they cannot train away any of those 5 levels of Sorcerer for levels of Dragon Disciple.

[WalterGM]

Iammars wrote:

Walter Sheppard wrote:

What if your PC started as a ranger. At level 5, he takes a level of Cleric. Now he wants to take Exalted of the Society.

Argument against: He could have taken the cleric first, sure, but he didn't. He has a mechanical benefit (more HP) from being a ranger at level 1. He can't have the best of both worlds.

Argument for: Mike Brock has said that we can't retrain into feats that we have to take at 1st level since we aren't currently 1st level. When retraining, we clearly have to look at what our character is currently as opposed to what they were when we took the original feat. If we allowed retraining of traits (retraiting, maybe?) I would assume that it would follow the same rules as retraining feats.

That's terrible, Iammars. I love it.

[Jiggy]

Resolved!
No "retraiting" is forthcoming in PFS. Now when players say "Huh? That's got to be a mistake" we can say we checked with campaign management to make sure. Thanks for the response, Mike!

[sieylianna]

It is possible to retrain traits in PFS, although it is cumbersome. My rogue/sorcerer arcane trickster wanted to pick up Arcane Knack (?) - the trait that allows you to regain 2 caster levels, which was not allowed originally, but was later added to the detriment of the existing players (Seems to be a lot of that in PFS). I took the extra traits feat, picked up Arcane knack and something else, then retrained the Extra Traits feat for 5 PA and kept the two traits I wanted.

I didn't actually plan to resurrect this thread, but I ran across it while searching for an answer to the question "Can you retrain feats which you are awarded when PFS rules take away the normal feats you would receive (Leadership, item creation)". I didn't find that question or a response.

[kinevon]

sieylianna wrote:

It is possible to retrain traits in PFS, although it is cumbersome. My rogue/sorcerer arcane trickster wanted to pick up Arcane Knack (?) - the trait that allows you to regain 2 caster levels, which was not allowed originally, but was later added to the detriment of the existing players (Seems to be a lot of that in PFS). I took the extra traits feat, picked up Arcane knack and something else, then retrained the Extra Traits feat for 5 PA and kept the two traits I wanted.

I didn't actually plan to resurrect this thread, but I ran across it while searching for an answer to the question "Can you retrain feats which you are awarded when PFS rules take away the normal feats you would receive (Leadership, item creation)". I didn't find that question or a response.

The trait is Magical Knack.

No, it was not to the detriment of existing PCs, as all adding it back did was add options, not hurt existing PCs at all. And, indeed, it didn't hurt existing players, either, as they could always make a new PC who has that trait.

That trait is of benefit in a very limited set of circumstances, and mostly for someone multi-classing a spellcaster. And, even with the trait, and even if the old 3.5 feat similar to it were legal, multi-classing a full caster is not the best of ideas. The trait helps overcome some caster level issues, but not spell level issues.

As to your later question, on retraining replacement feats for class-provided feats, the answer, plain and simple, is no. You might want to search for the thread and/or FAQ about retraining the Fighter armor proficiencies, since this falls into the same area. They are not feats you have taken, they are feats granted by being a member of X class of Y level.

[UndeadMitch]

Also, I don't believe you can legally do what you did. I'm pretty sure that when you retrain Extra Traits you lose the two traits you picked up with the feat.

[kinevon]

UndeadMitch wrote:

Also, I don't believe you can legally do what you did. I'm pretty sure that when you retrain Extra Traits you lose the two traits you picked up with the feat.

It isn't best practices, but, because it can be ... difficult, later, to remember what traits you took one way, and which traits you took another, it isn't, illegal, just a little... frowned upon.

I think it was actually discussed in a couple of other threads, maybe even in the rules forum, and that is what some fairly well-known and respected posters suggested doing, IIRC.

Honestly, it isn't much more abusive than the built-in "Retrain feat gotten at 1st level for a feat I now qualify for at 11th level." retrain rules.

[UndeadMitch]

Except one is specifically allowed by the rules and one isn't. The fact is if someone's doing that it is pretty much dishonest and shouldn't be allowed. And just because someone that's known on the boards does it doesn't make it right. People should be keeping track of what traits they get with extra traits.

[Avatar-1]

I think it's generally accepted because it's a pretty costly procedure to get around the fact that trait retraining isn't (directly) available in Ultimate Campaign.