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does retraining work level by level, or with the big picture?
if i have a barbarian 2/oracle 3 that was going for rage prophet, and i decide to retrain away into shadow dancer instead, does it matter what order i took my classes in?
1. barbarian
2. oracle
3. barbarian
4. oracle
5. oracle
?
or would you just retrain the barbarian levels away, and not care if they were taken at 1st level or 5th level, they're just swapped out? ( not swapped out for shadowdancer, i'm not delving into the retraining regular levels into a prestige class before you could legally qualify for it nonsense , say it swaps out for oracle first and then take shadowdancer at 6th level or something. )
You can retrain any particular class level. You do not have to worry about which level you're retraining. In the above example, you could retrain one level of oracle or barbarian to some other base class. In the latter case, you end up barbarian 1/oracle 3/whatever 1, full stop.
I remember theorizing that, by using retraining, you could have pure prestige class characters. But it has a very limited use.
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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I remember theorizing that, by using retraining, you could have pure prestige class characters. But it has a very limited use.The Devs have ruled on this.
"A Prestige Class can not be used to qualify for itself."
Which seemed reasonable and followed my reading of RAW, but since so many people wouldn't accept that and continued to try to "prove" that a 6th level with all Hellknight levels was still possible they finally ruled that you can't replace a base class with a prestige class.
Really? I was thinking PrCs that just required feats and skill ranks could get away with that.
Nope. The design team ruled that a prestige class cannot qualify for itself. When someone pointed out that you could make prestige class A qualify for prestige class B, which in turn qualifies you for prestige class A, the design team effectively threw their hands up and said "fine, no retraining base class levels into prestige class levels, period, happy now?".
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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Really? I was thinking PrCs that just required feats and skill ranks could get away with that.
Pre-reqs are "things you have before taking something" and the effort to make that clear (by the Devs) was ignored. No, not ignored, more like violently rejected. ;-)
That lead to "no retraining base classes for prestige", which closes the loop hole that people wanted to exploit. But the general rule still exists, if you don't qualify without something you don't qualify for it with itself.
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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James, if you're not going to take a Devs' answer on the question, whose WILL you take?
I'm not following, so I assume you didn't understand where I sit on this subject.
I'm firmly in the camp of losing a pre-req loses you anything that depends on it. So it seemed a no-brainer that you couldn't be a 6th level PC with only 6 levels of Hellknight.
The thread came along, the Devs said basically (funny, um no), and the people pushing the concept started parsing the rules and the FAQ and "found" it was still possible. To which the Dev's said (no really, the answer is no) and again the meaning of the words were picked over in an effort to keep 6th level Hellknight PC's "legal". This resulted in all of us taking it on the nose when the Devs said (fine no base to prestige retraining, happy now?)
I always take the Devs answer.
I take their FAQ's, their Errata, their forum posts, even their hints.
In nearly every case, you can see the rules saying what they confirm.