But going back to him to learn greater secrets?
Being sent to find HIS master, and learn even more?
All completely unnecessary. Your teacher is a thing in your past, it has no relevance on the present, just your backstory.
For Asian-storytelling, that's basically impossible. The relationship between student and teacher is sacred, its virtually the core of many of their heroic journey stories, ditto literature.
Heck, think Star Wars. The whole thing is about who, in the end, Luke Skywalker is going to end up learning the Force from!
==Aelryinth
Auditing for WBL is moronic at best. If you're that worried about PCs having gear, then you need to check what you're challenging the PCs with. People make this game way harder then it has to be. Rules are meant as guidelines, not straight jackets.
Training for going up in level takes a bit too much player authority out of the equation. If I wanted to play a game where training makes me better at something, I can go play another system or just work more. The 1st Ed training rules are heavily tilted towards rewarding "proper" use and close play to alignment stereotypes, which is why I never bothered with it in 1st or 2nd Ed.
As for spheres, modify the spell selections that priests get based on their god. Cure disease and those sort of curative spells should be available to any god, but why a god of fire lets his priests cast cold spells is beyond me.
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I find that training up class levels kinda grinds against the idea of self sufficient adventurers. In reality, people often had training and teachers because they couldn't go out and learn by doing.
I don't know about "auditing", but checking every once in a while to see that they're roughly on track with where you expect them to be isn't a bad thing.
Well, you can adjust pretty well if they seem to be behind the curve, even without checking how they actually compare to WBL. I do find making sure that each party member has roughly the same wealth is pretty good, though.
I find that training up class levels kinda grinds against the idea of self sufficient adventurers. In reality, people often had training and teachers because they couldn't go out and learn by doing.
NO. In reality, people had teachers in order to tap the wisdom and experience of the thousands of those who had come before them, so they wouldn't have to keep re-inventing the wheel.
All great fighters have teachers. The teachers show them what to do, and experience lets them put those lessons to use in the right way.
Teachers who teach stupid things wind up with dead students and bad reputations, and don't pass on their lessons. Great teachers become famous for their wisdom, knowledge and experience.
'Learning by doing' is certainly possible, if you consider the accumulation of experience points to be a magical event that bypasses any need to acquire knowledge, i.e. 'magic of learning'.
But it certainly doesn't reflect reality.
==Aelryinth
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This is a heroic fantasy game, about travelling into the unknown and fighting stuff. The hobbits became badass by the time they were in More or because of experience, not training. It's just not always practical to present training in a cooperative game about heroic adventuring.
Sure it's great for a martial arts story, but that's not what this game is. In reality, there are plenty of people who are very dangerous and skilled through self teaching. Training can work, but you can't act like it's the only way.
The epic journey to Mordor took months, with companions there who were doubtlessly helping the hobbits learn how to defend themselves, if nothing else.
But the only thing they were actually good at was spying and sneaking around, which were like racial benefits of being hobbits...natural burglars. They never really got into an open fight with anything.
It boils down to this - you've got an experienced warrior here, and an experienced, trained warrior over there. Warrior A has more combat experience, Warrior B has hundreds of hours of combat training and practice. Who is going to win?
IN combat experience tends to be very short. You train and learn so all those hours are filled up with the conditioning and knowledge of what to do during those seconds your life is on the line.
==Aelryinth
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I find that training up class levels kinda grinds against the idea of self sufficient adventurers. In reality, people often had training and teachers because they couldn't go out and learn by doing.
Exactly this.
Back in the day, I used to require level training for each new level as an AD&D DM (according to the very exacting training rules chbgraphics posted above). At least, I did for a time. I eventually gave up on it because:
a) It was incredibly cumbersome. Basically, it required the PCs to go back home (or wherever) to train after each level. The idea of the adventure being a journey got tossed out the window. And...
b) It destroyed any sense of immersion/story verisimilitude that the PCs had about themselves being the heroes of the tale. I mean, what was the point of them needing to rise up and take on the BBEG ...if there were literally dozens of higher level characters locally available who could do the whole thing much more easily? The whole thing encouraged murder-hoboism/adventuring-for-adventuring sake, rather than playing a principal heroic role in a story arc.
I houseruled a whole lot of things way back in 1st edition. That was one of the first ones, and I never regretted it or looked back.
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As a DM I would have characters sometimes train in a dream. A dead master would teach them spells or feats they never encountered in the adventure path.
Also, every village/town/city has a training field. Sure they have dances and parties there too. The point is, all classes are always training, and epic level characters waiting for a really bad demon thing to break loose gotta keep training too. If you live in Water Deep for a time, you probably sparred with Blackstaff. Blackfire or Silverfire are granted powers, so you probably didn't pick up one of them, but if a player can tell you how you might have encountered a feat or spell, good role playing gets rewarded.
It's adorable that you think that's something inherently good.75(?). No more video game style leveling up (suddenly getting more powerful because you happened to be put over the edge when you kicked a beggar or something). You got the XP or qualifying accomplishments (if not using XP) to level up: You have to take some time out and work on it. In AD&D 1.x this was typically 1 to 4 weeks, depending upon whether you had access to a trainer, and how well you had been doing (including roleplaying) up to that point, and it cost some serious money too (that last part doesn't really fit the flavor of some classes). This time-consuming timeout leveling doesn't suit some Adventure Paths, so as an alternative, allow a method of incrementally leveling up if you don't have access to proper training.
Geddes already said it, but to reiterate—if people really have something to criticize items about on the list, fine, but save the vitriol for another thread.
Sam: "Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields... and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?"
Frodo: "No, Sam. I can't recall the taste of food... nor the sound of water... nor the touch of grass. I'm...oh, hang on, just leveled up."
Sam: "Oh, okay. Back to Wise Master Gaffer to learn the new secrets of the Commoner class!"
Also, I think we're at 79 now.
Hm.
Gaffer?
No...
Oh! Mr. Frodo?
That's it, alright.
80 Let them be called Thieves.
To train or not to train...
My take on it in the current pathfinder system is that you have already been trained. Being proficient in weapons and armor is the minimum required for you to start obtaining experience, and experience isn't some magical thing that allows you to learn new spells or perform new combat techniques, it allows you to apply your training in a given situation.
I've always felt that leveling up is that moment when you can put 2 and 2 together, realize that in addition to that, I can do this! For martials anyway, it's a bit harder to explain for spellcasters since there aren't any real life experiences you can equate with it.
On topic..
81. Bring back Comeliness and the other randomized stats, optional, of course.
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I find the idea that the PCs can't level until they take time to stop adventuring and train to be both cumbersome and immersion breaking. It's cumbersome because it eliminates campaigns where time is a factor; certain stories just don't work as well (or at all) when game considerations dictate that the story be put on hold every so often so the PCs can go and train up their levels.
I also see that it breaks immersion because of the way I conceptualize gaining levels and experience. There are 24 hours in the day. The PCs generally spend 8-10 hours sleeping and some variable number of hours adventuring. Usually there's at least 4-8 hours of downtime per day. It's this downtime that I imagine the PCs using to train. For example, I imagine my two-weapon fighter spending downtime practicing feats he eventually wants to take. He'll practice, practice, practice, gradually incorporating what he's trying to learn into the fights he participates in while he's adventuring. Eventually he gets enough practical experience & practice under his belt that he's mastered the technique and can now use it at his pleasure - represented mechanically by getting enough XP to level and selecting the feat.
The idea that you accumulate the necessary XP to level and then go off to train seems disconnected to me, and subtracts from my immersion.
Raising skills, on the other hand, I think should be divorced from leveling - it just seems weird that the wizard who spent the last month killing monsters in a variety of dungeons is all of the sudden now better at swimming. I wish there was a good system for raising skills outside of leveling.
Training can work well for some types of game. The trouble with making part of the basic game rules is that it rules out certain forms of the game. It's hard to go off on epic quests if you have to keep stopping to go back to a trainer. If there's any sense that your goal is urgent it gets pretty silly to keep going back to town to train. Even on small scale quests - "I know the whole town is dying of the plague, but we've got enough experience to level and I know we'll need to be stronger to face the last monsters and bring back the cure, so you'll just have to wait a couple weeks."
For more episodic games it can work just fine. If you're going out for short missions and coming back to home base, it's great.
On the other hand, no training (or at least practising) requirements mean you can leave home as a just-graduated apprentice and return a few months later as the greatest wizard the world has seen for centuries.
I think the real problem is trying to model the way we learn skills/abilities (very much a gradual process full of three steps forward/two steps back moments) in an easy-to-administer way. Whichever way you jump - it will break immersion in one way or the other. (Even partial levels dont replicate the experience I'm sure we've all had of seeming to go backwards in something you're working hard at).
I like the training rules (even thieves who can rarely afford to train their second level unless they've had a huge haul all in one go) but not due to a 'realism' element. Rather because it provides some in-game reason to not always be tearing around the countryside saving the world. I think the downtime options in UC are a decent replacement.
The idea that you accumulate the necessary XP to level and then go off to train seems disconnected to me, and subtracts from my immersion.Raising skills, on the other hand, I think should be divorced from leveling - it just seems weird that the wizard who spent the last month killing monsters in a variety of dungeons is all of the sudden now better at swimming. I wish there was a good system for raising skills outside of leveling.
And yet, the whole idea that you've mastered basic skills enough that you can finally learn more advanced stuff is part and parcel of the whole heroic journey, student to master paradigm that has been used in stories basically forever.
Finding great masters to teach you, while fighting on the way to them to 'level up' and get the xp to finally learn from them, is a time honored trope in literature and film. Immersion breaking? It's downright NECCESSARY.
Many manga institute 'training breaks' just to reflect this paradigm. The characters have gotten X powerful, now they find teachers to take them to the next stage. In popular manga, both Fairy Tail and One Piece did it. The quality of your teachers is a huge impact on your development.
For the One Piece crew: Luffy trains under Gold Roger's right hand man in Haki:
ZOro trains under the best swordsman on the planet;
Robin trains under the head of the Revolutionary Army;
Franky ends up in the lab of the greatest scientific genius on the planet;
Nami trains under the greatest masters of weather on the world;
Chopper trains in what turns out to be one of the greatest lorehouses of medical and herblore on the planet;
Usopp trains in sniping on an island where EVERYTHING tries to eat you;
Sanji trains under the #2 of the Revolutionary Army, and the Grandmaster of a Fighting Art, learning, among other things, how to run on air.
Brooke becomes a superstar magician who can literally enthrall thousands with his songs, the only one to do it alone...and the fact is, he's probably his own master because he's over a hundred years older then the rest of the crew, he just never had an audience to practice on during his lost century.
==Aelryinth
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Adding This Number To Make Aelryinth Happy: Monks Mystics
So, because I am an idiot I misread the mystic entry in my Rules Cyclopedia, I was thoroughly corrected that mystics also need to, after becoming a Master/Mistress Monk, go find one of the seven tenth level mystics in the game world and go school him (or her, case depending) in the Ancient Oriental Art of Cheatalotto. (Or Open Palm Closed Fist Style, or I Don't Know What It's Like To Hit a Man Twice no Jutsu, or whatever your martial arts style is.)
This bears the same for each level up until you want to get to level sixteen. Yes, monks can only get to level 16 as written in the Rules Cyclopedia. So, in order to be the greatest monk on Golarion/Oerth/Faerun/WHEREVER, MAN, you need to go find Grandmaster Fling Long Chop, the greatest monk who ever lived, and go all kinds of kung-fulery on him. (This may be slightly difficult because your AC is -5 and you're attacking four times for 4d8 damage, while he's at -6 AC and attacking you four times for 3d12 damage, and he also has the choice to touch you once per day and tell you to go see the ancestors in person to apologize for your failures, and unlike modern monks who allow a saving throw against this, Grandmaster Fling Long Chop just needs to touch you in order to outright slay you.)
Alternately, you could just open your own monk abbot at ninth level, and when you hit 13th level, you can declare your independence and become a Greater Master/Greater Mistress.
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Man, I really wish they'd finish that story about 'Not hitting a man twice' from the Looking For Group link. He had only met up with his second master.
Mystics weren't bad because they got all good saves and HD for every level, as I recall.
And per the duel rules, you dueled the grandmaster as an equal, i.e. you were both 16th level. The loser gets demoted back a level.
Same with Druids. So, no penalty in the fight!
==Aelryinth
Never played the older editions. Kinda glad I didn't because most of these rules sound annoying at best, and always have to me.
However, I always thought the idea of the Fireball spell having a VOLUME rather than simply being a fixed radius sphere was interesting. Probably a pain in the ass to calculate sometimes, but opens up some interesting options (and hazards) for use.
The rules were annoying at times. But you don't have the proper references to understand how truly amazing even the "annoying at best" rules were. We didn't have 50 different choices of RPG, MMORPs, etc.
And bouncing fireballs off the back wall to hit the guy twice was an effective strategy. But it really sucked when you bounced that lightning bolt back and hit yourself.
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And yet, the whole idea that you've mastered basic skills enough that you can finally learn more advanced stuff is part and parcel of the whole heroic journey, student to master paradigm that has been used in stories basically forever.
Finding great masters to teach you, while fighting on the way to them to 'level up' and get the xp to finally learn from them, is a time honored trope in literature and film. Immersion breaking? It's downright NECCESSARY.
Many manga institute 'training breaks' just to reflect this paradigm. The characters have gotten X powerful, now they find teachers to take them to the next stage. In popular manga, both Fairy Tail and One Piece did it. The quality of your teachers is a huge impact on your development.
For the One Piece crew: Luffy trains under Gold Roger's right hand man in Haki:
ZOro trains under the best swordsman on the planet;
Robin trains under the head of the Revolutionary Army;
Franky ends up in the lab of the greatest scientific genius on the planet;
Nami trains under the greatest masters of weather on the world;
Chopper trains in what turns out to be one of the greatest lorehouses of medical and herblore on the planet;
Usopp trains in sniping on an island where EVERYTHING tries to eat you;
Sanji trains under the #2 of the Revolutionary Army, and the Grandmaster of a Fighting Art, learning, among other things, how to run on air.
Brooke becomes a superstar magician who can literally enthrall thousands with his songs, the only one to do it alone...and the fact is, he's probably his own master...
So what? Those aren't the only types of stories. All I know is that I can't run the game I want to run if I have to contrive of rationalizations to stop all of the events in the campaign in order to allow the PCs to run off and do extra training in order to level.
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My problem with training mechanics:
Who trained the trainers? How can there be masters of something that requires training unless there were ultra-masters at some point? Even then, there must have been super ultra-masters to train them, and so on. With each generation the world would gradually become worse at these skills.
AD&D 1.x did have an escape clause for training: After you got to a certain level (I think it was "Name Level", which was slightly different depending upon your class), you could train yourself (without a mentor), although it took longer.
<--- has lost track of what number we're up to
Bring back 1e Bard
Anyone remember when it was an accomplishment to be a Bard?
In 1e you had to be human because only humans could switch classes. First you had to go up to at least 5th but before reaching 8th level fighter, you had to switch to thief, and sometime after you get to 5th but not higher than 9th level thief you had to switch to tutelage under druids as a Bard. The 1e version of a prestige class.
What made it hard was that there was no taking a level of fighter then a couple of thief. When you switched you had to stop using any of your old abilities and basically go back to being a 1st level character again, albeit with a lot of hit points. If you used your old abilities to get out of a jam, you didn't earn xp for the whole adventure! You couldn't start mixing your abilities until you surpassed your old class level in your new class. And you could never go up any more levels in an old class once you switched.
It was a commitment to dedicate a character to this path.
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Close.
Half Elves could be Bards as well.
In possibly my 1st ever power gamer move in 1989 I played a Bard in Throne of Bloodstone, where PCs could play up to 100 level PCs.
Using the crazy high character generation rolls from Unearthed Arcana and grimores to add to my stats I created a 7th Level Ranger, 8 Level Thief, 13th Level Bard.
Why a Ranger? Because Rangers got d8's but at level 1 had 2d8's and Constitution bonuses to each die, and there was a rule that if a Ranger did a none good act knowingly he would become a regular Fighter. And Rangers could use weapon specialization back then as well. So know I had 3d8 + 5d10 instead of 7d10 but +5 per hit die because on my Con 19, with Thief and Bard Levels got me 130 Hit Points which was higher than ancient red dragons with 88 HP or Lolth with a mere 66.
Still, my DM classified me as a mere 16 Level PC in power, this was long before the days of the term CR, and most other players in the campaign were level 19 equivalent.
I miss the days when my level 18 Lich could throw down an 18d6 Fireball or 9 Magic Missiles or drop a Wall of Iron on the PCs. And none of this Evasion bullcrap either.
I miss the days when PC were afraid and I do mean AFRAID of the level drains from undead, damn these Restoration spells. The same PCs that would charge the Tarrasque in 1 st Ed would run from a single Wraith.
I miss then PCs had to find Sages to ask questions, none of this newfangled Knowledge roll nonsense.
SCREW YOU Endure Elements spell!
I miss the days when the DM was king of the table, and all he surveyed, and not just the rules arbiter.
I hate this CR and level appropriate encounters.
If your level 3 'Hero' wanted to say Pazuzu 3 times you will get a Demon Prince smiling at you.
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No one said Psionics?
:D
In a lot of ways, I'd rather Psychic Adventures emulate 1st Ed Psionics and have Psychic Powers be the basis instead of "Psychic Magic" and "Psychic Spells" (I kinda detest the idea of "psychic magic" - magic is magic, alchemy is alchemy, and psychic powers are psychic powers... ne'er the two shall meet, although I think the Occultist should be an arcane and/or divine caster due to its theme).
It'd also let the door be open for DMs to allow back in the old "anyone with a high-enough Charisma gets psionic powers" shtick from 1st Ed.
Personally, I wouldn't, but I'd respect the option due to tradition.
{Whatever the last number was + 1.} While we're at it, Wands shouldn't just be spell-storage batteries, but should be more individualized (and potentially customizable) items like Rods and Staves. Potentially more versatile than the Wands of today, but not so easy to get or make.
{Whatever the last number was + 2.} Instead of having {whatever size} versions of all weapons and a penalty for using any weapon made for a creature of the wrong size, weapons are of whatever size they are, and some weapons are usable in slightly different ways by creatures of different (but close) sizes -- for instance, Small characters use a Longsword as a Two-Handed Sword and use a Shortbow like a Longbow (although certain weapons might have a grip that is too thick or too thin for this to work). Creatures that use manufactured weapons that are of size too far off from Medium have their own sets of weapons, which may or may not have direct equivalents among weapons made by Medium creatures (it is pretty hard not to have an equivalent to a Club if you can swing a weapon, but the AD&D 1.x Yagnodaemon had a one-handed polearm called the Tol-Kendar that was unique).
I find the idea that the PCs can't level until they take time to stop adventuring and train to be both cumbersome and immersion breaking. It's cumbersome because it eliminates campaigns where time is a factor; certain stories just don't work as well (or at all) when game considerations dictate that the story be put on hold every so often so the PCs can go and train up their levels.
(trimmed)
The idea that you accumulate the necessary XP to level and then go off to train seems disconnected to me, and subtracts from my immersion.
Raising skills, on the other hand, I think should be divorced from leveling - it just seems weird that the wizard who spent the last month killing monsters in a variety of dungeons is all of the sudden now better at swimming. I wish there was a good system for raising skills outside of leveling.
You can allow rebuilds only during downtime. They can require a teacher if you like.
You used to be able to leave a language or skill slot open and then fill it when needed. Justifying it, is a matter of roleplaying. "We are in an Elvish town. I pick up the language by immersion."
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My problem with training mechanics:
Who trained the trainers? How can there be masters of something that requires training unless there were ultra-masters at some point? Even then, there must have been super ultra-masters to train them, and so on. With each generation the world would gradually become worse at these skills.
"You have learned all that I can teach you. Go, and pass on what you have learned, as I did."
Just like in the real world, you rise to equal your Master, and maybe do years of testing and training to add your own unique insights to the mix and pass them on.
That's how knowledge flows on. WIping out the masters who hold the knowledge before they can share it is a good way to cripple a society and retard evolution, be it by war, disease, or careful culling. Education drives advancement.
==Aelryinth
Close.
Half Elves could be Bards as well.
In possibly my 1st ever power gamer move in 1989 I played a Bard in Throne of Bloodstone, where PCs could play up to 100 level PCs.
Using the crazy high character generation rolls from Unearthed Arcana and grimores to add to my stats I created a 7th Level Ranger, 8 Level Thief, 13th Level Bard.
Why a Ranger? Because Rangers got d8's but at level 1 had 2d8's and Constitution bonuses to each die, and there was a rule that if a Ranger did a none good act knowingly he would become a regular Fighter. And Rangers could use weapon specialization back then as well. So know I had 3d8 + 5d10 instead of 7d10 but +5 per hit die because on my Con 19, with Thief and Bard Levels got me 130 Hit Points which was higher than ancient red dragons with 88 HP or Lolth with a mere 66.
Still, my DM classified me as a mere 16 Level PC in power, this was long before the days of the term CR, and most other players in the campaign were level 19 equivalent.
You must have house ruled, because rangers couldn't become bards.
Bards also ended up with more hit dice then any other class, as I recall. But they only got +2 Con bonus for those non-fighter levels, so you did some house-ruling.:)
Half-elves qualified for bard if they multi-classed, meaning it was smoother for them to slide into the class. Humans had those dual-classing ability score reqs to satisfy...although they might have been reqs for the bard class itself, I don't recall.
It was very, very, very hard to naturally qualify to be a bard. Someone did the math on 3d6 6 times, and the odds were something like .01% chance of qualifying to be a bard.
===Aelryinth
As a player I miss Elves being 90 % immune to Sleep and Charm, and getting a +1 to hit to ALL bows, the longsword and short sword.
I miss the old school Maces of Disruption and Swords of Sharpness.
Don't forget 90% invisible in forests!
And all those languages! Gnome, gnoll, goblin, elven, dwarven, common, Halfling, orc....wootie!
==Aelryinth
So what? Those aren't the only types of stories. All I know is that I can't run the game I want to run if I have to contrive of rationalizations to stop all of the events in the campaign in order to allow the PCs to run off and do extra training in order to level.
But with no training, you can't add that kind of story even if you want to.
Which basically cuts free a whole genre of adventures. Being able to find a master who can teach you in a great secret is at the heart of SO many stories.Irrelevant in PF.
==Aelryinth