Would it be possible to retrain levels from a starting class into a prestige class? I was wondering about the viability of making a pure Shadowdancer in examples where retraining exists.
The entry on retraining class levels specifically mentions retraining prestige class levels, but reducing the character to JUST a prestige class seems really ... awkward to me on some level.
Yeah, it seems off, but if you don't replace anything necessary to take prestige levels, it seems to be plausible.
Yeah, it seems off, but if you don't replace anything necessary to take prestige levels, it seems to be plausible.
Yeah ... which means you could wind up using Arcane Trickster to qualify for itself, if you waited until you had 2d6 of Sneak Attack and Mage Hand ... ? Though you'd have to stop at 1 level of spellcaster, or else that +1 level of existing class thing becomes useless.
Just seems to be a good way to get more prestige fun while staying lower leveled. Seems like a lot of people around here aren't fans of higher level play, so this seemed like the best of both worlds.
well as far as the mystic theurge goes, it would still need a arcane and divine spell list to draw from.
You would still need to meet prereqs. You would need some sort of base class to get those to qualify. You are unable to use the PrC to qualify for itself, you cannot take PrC levels because you don't meet the requirements if all you have are shadowdancer levels.
When you use retraining to replace some aspect of your character, you must meet all prerequisites, requirements, and considerations for whatever you're trying to acquire. For example, a 6th-level rogue can't use retraining to learn the Weapon Specialization feat because only fighters can choose that feat.
Except, if you retrain down, completely out of rogue levels, you can qualify easily. You need 5 ranks of Stealth, two ranks in Perform, and 3 feats. A 5th level Shadowdancer qualifies for these.
So, you could go Rogue5/SD1, then retrain to R4/SD2, R3/SD3, R2,DS4, R1/DS5, then DS6 meeting those requirements all the while.
The ranks from a prestige class doesn't qualify for itself. This is all very silly.
The ranks from a prestige class doesn't qualify for itself. This is all very silly.
Citation?
The ranks from a prestige class doesn't qualify for itself. This is all very silly.Citation?
Read the rules for taking a prestige class and then read the retraining rules?
Prestige classes allow characters to become truly exceptional, gaining powers beyond the ken of their peers. Unlike the core classes, characters must meet specific requirements before they can take their first level of a prestige class. If a character does not meet the requirements for a prestige class before gaining any benefits of that level, that character cannot take that prestige class. Characters that take levels in prestige classes do not gain any favored class bonuses for those levels.
When you use retraining to replace some aspect of your character, you must meet all prerequisites, requirements, and considerations for whatever you're trying to acquire.
If you are retraining all the class levels, you need to start from the "beginning" which means you have nothing in regards to BAB, Skills or feats. If you don't have the prerequisites you cannot take the class.
Basic reading comprehension.
When you retrain a class level, you lose all the benefits of the highest level you have in that class. You immediately select a different class, add a level in that class, and gain all the benefits of that new class level.If you are 3 levels into shadow dancer, and you retrain a level of rogue, what do you lose? a feat and 8 skill ranks? Wouldn't you still qualify for everything?
It depends on if that rogue level was the level that gave you the prereqs to enter shadowdancer. If it was 5 rogue/3 shadow, retraining the last level of rogue removes your 5th rank of stealth, you no longer qualify for shadowdancer as you don't have the required ranks of stealth to take the class.
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It depends on if that rogue level was the level that gave you the prereqs to enter shadowdancer. If it was 5 rogue/3 shadow, retraining the last level of rogue removes your 5th rank of stealth, you no longer qualify for shadowdancer as you don't have the required ranks of stealth to take the class.
If you're a third level shadow dancer, however, that means that you've currently - before any retraining - got (in all likelihood) eight ranks of stealth. If you lose one from losing a level of rogue, you still have seven ranks of stealth. That still covers the prerequisites before you retrain. Thus, before you take a given level of a prestige class, you meet the prerequisites.
Also:
Prestige classes allow characters to become truly exceptional, gaining powers beyond the ken of their peers. Unlike the core classes, characters must meet specific requirements before they can take their first level of a prestige class. If a character does not meet the requirements for a prestige class before gaining any benefits of that level, that character cannot take that prestige class. Characters that take levels in prestige classes do not gain any favored class bonuses for those levels.
Highlighting the sentence before yours means that a person who's already qualified for - and acquired - a prestige class no longer has to worry about qualifying for a prestige class.
Regarding the "before that level" of the following sentence, that refers to the "first level" of the previous sentence. If it did not, than it was a worthless sentence in the Pathfinder game, because there was no rules - prior to retraining - whereby you actually lost anything, with the possible exception of ability drain, which was reversable.
That means that,
When you use retraining to replace some aspect of your character, you must meet all prerequisites, requirements, and considerations for whatever you're trying to acquire.
... is already fully satisfied. You already met the prerequisites for acquiring the class initially, and you currently meet the prerequisites even without the level you are currently retraining.
The thing is, your interpretation isn't wrong... but neither is the other. They are both correct according to the English language.
The difference is whether you put a value on "when" in a character's career they took a specific class (and ranks, and feats, and so on). Which seems like a strange thing to keep track of, to me.
What if, for example, as a rogue 4, while leveling up to my most recent rogue level, I put ranks in acrobatics 1, bluff 1, climb 1, diplomacy 1, disguise 1, perception 1, perform (dance) 2. Upon gaining fifth level, I take one of ranger, putting skill ranks into, say, climb 1, knowledge (dungeoneering) 4, and ride 2. I take another level of ranger to get climb 1, dungeoneering 2, ride 1, and stealth 2. Then I take a level of shadowdancer (having finally met the prerequisites).
Now, fortunately for me, here on the forum, I've written everything out all nice and neat-like. But if I wish to retrain later on, say, after I've achieved a three more levels of Shadowdancer... when the heck did I take those ranks of stealth? Was that the first level of ranger or the second? I can't remember! And, unless you're incredibly anal-retentive, (and no one I know does this), you likely didn't write down which levels you got which skill points. But I really don't need one of those ranger levels, they're hurting my shadow-dancer build, and I would really like to get rid of them.
How would you rule it as GM?
There are skill retraining options, but I have all the skills I need, so I don't need to retrain them. There are class level retraining options, but I'm not looking to get rid of all of my ranger class levels, just one.
And, here's the key, I've no idea if I qualified at first level, but chose Ranger because of story or game-reasons, or I waited until I could qualify later. It's been months. The vast preponderance of players aren't going to remember that stuff.
And that's only one example. Anyone who doesn't play the game exclusively by optimization is going to have a rough time with that ruling.
Does it work for your table? Undoubtedly, which is why it's your ruling. And that's fine! It's great even!
But requiring that level of memory (or record-keeping) is strange, at best, for any of the tables I've had. Doing away with that sort of record keeping is one of the major reasons that Paizo eliminated permanent level loss turning into lost hit dice and shed the XP-cost mechanic.
I could run a similar scenario with a loremaster wizard who acquires his or her seventh divination spell (it was one of her second level ones)... um... well... she got it... uh... well, I think she researched it? Or was that not that one. Wait, does it count if she researched the second level spell when she was eighth level, or not? What if she was a sorcerer? What if she has lots of divination spells, but retrains one of her third level divination spells for another one? Or what if she retrains her third level divination spell for fireball, but has a fourth level divination spell now?
Other examples abound.
There is one point of contention I can see. Regarding the ability increase (and the fact that you get specific ability increases at specific levels):
1) Because there are fewer of them they're far easier to keep track of and remember.
2) They are things that are gained at specific levels, regardless of anything else, so you always know at which level they're acquired. It's always fourth/eighth/twelfth/sixteenth/twentieth. Skill points, spells gained, and so on, are not the same way.
Regarding losing prerequisites later from retraining (and no longer qualifying), that can come only from four sources I can think of:
1) retraining a lower base attack bonus (failing the minimum BAB)
- example: a wizard 1/fighter 6/arcane archer 1 trades their fighter levels for magus levels, losing enough BAB that they can't qualify
2) retraining away skill ranks you need (thus you have fewer than required, thus you no longer meet prerequisites)
- example: a rogue 5/shadowdancer 3 retrains all of his perform (dance) skills into, say, perception
3) retraining away feats you need (thus you don't have the required feat, thus you no longer meet prerequisites)
- example: a rogue 5/shadowdancer 3 retrains mobility for power attack
4) retraining away caster levels (thus you don't have the required CL, thus you no longer meet prerequisites)
- example: a wizard 3/cleric 3/mystic theurge 1 retrains themselves into a wizard 1/cleric 3/mystic theurge 1/[anything else at all] 2
Again, your reading of those sentences isn't "wrong".
But belittling reading comprehension because someone came to a different conclusion, when the words can be used to easily come to that different conclusion is rather poor form.
And the other interpretation is entirely possible.
That's basic reading comprehension, too.
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I was initially against this idea for pretty much the reasons stated-I felt you had to have a "core" of base class that could meet the PrC prerequisites. But then I went and looked at the retraining rules in more detail, and it seems like they are designed so that your feat, skill rank, PrC, whatever has no "memory" of when you selected it. For example, you could start a character with say, Toughness, then once your BAB hits 8, retrain that 1st level feat into Improved Critical. Nothing in retraining seems to limit you to requirements you met when you took the choice in question. If you can do that with feats it makes sense that you could do it with PrCs. Besides, with all the early entry PrC business we have now, this lets a more "traditional" PrC build retroactively become like one from a SLA race.
I think it would be entirely reasonable for a GM to houserule against this, but RAW seems to indicate it's possible. I think trying to retrain too mnay levels in PFS would be very PP expensive, which is its own cost.
I was initially against this idea for pretty much the reasons stated-I felt you had to have a "core" of base class that could meet the PrC prerequisites. But then I went and looked at the retraining rules in more detail, and it seems like they are designed so that your feat, skill rank, PrC, whatever has no "memory" of when you selected it. For example, you could start a character with say, Toughness, then once your BAB hits 8, retrain that 1st level feat into Improved Critical. Nothing in retraining seems to limit you to requirements you met when you took the choice in question. If you can do that with feats it makes sense that you could do it with PrCs. Besides, with all the early entry PrC business we have now, this lets a more "traditional" PrC build retroactively become like one from a SLA race.
I think it would be entirely reasonable for a GM to houserule against this, but RAW seems to indicate it's possible. I think trying to retrain too mnay levels in PFS would be very PP expensive, which is its own cost.
This is actually me. When I first came into the thread, I thought that it looked a little "iffy" as an idea, mechanically. But upon examining it, it seems perfectly viable. The "turn" for me came especially from the rules Skylancer4 quoted (and follow-up looking more into retraining stuff).
It's worth noting as well, I think, that with prestige classes being (or at least strongly tending toward) the sub-optimal character choices they are anyway, it doesn't seem terribly unbalancing or game-breaking to allow it in most circumstances. And ryric covered PFS pretty well, too. For the rest, I'd rely on a reasonable GM.