Retraining skill options that affect rebuild process

[hyphz]

The text of retraining says: "you generally can't make choices you couldn't make when you selected the original option".

Our Fighter player initially chose Stealth, Thievery, Athletics and Acrobatics as his Trained skills. He later took Rogue Dedication. Rogue Dedication makes you trained in Stealth and Thievery, or if you already are trained in both - which he was - it gives you two free trained skills. He chose Deception and Diplomacy.

He now wishes to retrain his Thievery skill to Arcana.

Per RAW, he is not making any choice that he could not have made when he was choosing his initial Fighter skills. Nor is he retraining any choice that he made at the time he took Rogue Dedication.

So, is this legal?

[Themetricsystem]

No, you have to follow the rules for EVERY level, one level at a time. If you do not choose the Thievery at first level, that's fine but when Rogue Dedication applies they will at that point NOT have Thievery and it will be a mandatory choice.

So if they're retraining something at first level you need to undo every choice you make "on the way down" and then build back up and at each step of the process, the Character has to apply the things they get as they would apply when they are added.

[hyphz]

I understand that interpretation, and I would have gone with it myself, but it is not what the book actually says. Is there evidence that it was what was intended?

[Ravingdork]

Seems to me the moment you get rid of Thievery, the feat kicks in and gives you Thievery. However, that frees up your first level skill to get Arcana.

[breithauptclan]

hyphz wrote:

Per RAW, he is not making any choice that he could not have made when he was choosing his initial Fighter skills. Nor is he retraining any choice that he made at the time he took Rogue Dedication.

He is retraining a choice made when taking the Rogue Dedication. He got to choose a free skill to be trained in because he was already trained in Thievery. Retraining Thievery also affects the choice made during Rogue Dedication.

So yes, he can retrain Thievery to Arcana. But then Rogue Dedication's choice selection requires training Thievery instead of either Deception and Diplomacy because one of them is no longer an available choice to make at that level.

[hyphz]

He actually took Thievery as a trained skill at character generation at level 1. Thus, he was retraining that choice, not the one made at Rogue Dedication.

I completely understand the viewpoint of posters here, but it does not seem to have support in the book. It says only that you cannot make a choice you could not have made at the time of the original selection; not that all your future choices are then reconsidered in the light of the new choice. Although that makes sense, it is not what the authors wrote, and that's why I'm asking of clarification of what they meant.

It's also worth noting that this rule potentially allows a very large number of retrainings to be accomplished in a single session by retraining an item that is a key prerequisite and requires many others part of the character to be reselected, thus bypassing the time requirement for retraining each part.

[Aratorin]

hyphz wrote:

He actually took Thievery as a trained skill at character generation at level 1. Thus, he was retraining that choice, not the one made at Rogue Dedication.

I completely understand the viewpoint of posters here, but it does not seem to have support in the book. It says only that you cannot make a choice you could not have made at the time of the original selection; not that all your future choices are then reconsidered in the light of the new choice. Although that makes sense, it is not what the authors wrote, and that's why I'm asking of clarification of what they meant.

It's also worth noting that this rule potentially allows a very large number of retrainings to be accomplished in a single session by retraining an item that is a key prerequisite and requires many others part of the character to be reselected, thus bypassing the time requirement for retraining each part.

The book does in fact deal with this.

CRB 502 wrote:

A character might need to retrain several options at once. For instance, retraining a skill increase might mean they have skill feats they can no longer use, and so they’ll need to retrain those as well. You can add all this retraining time together, then reduce the total a bit to represent the cohesive nature of the retraining.

[hyphz]

This is true for *prerequisites*, as the text states that "if you cease to meet the prerequisites for an ability due to retraining, you can't use that ability."

But that doesn't help with this issue, because the skill bonus choices from a Dedication feat are not described as having prerequisites.

Also, the choice of the word "abilities" is awkward as many choices are not abilities. For example, by RAW a character could take Alchemist Dedication and Basic Concoction, then retrain Alchemist Dedication but keep their Alchemist feat. Although Basic Concoction has a prerequisite, the Alchemist feat they took does not; and Basic Concoction's text "You gain an Alchemist feat" isn't an ability but a one-off event that already happened in the past. That's probably too pedantic, but it reflects a potential problem and implies that Dedication feats might not have been thought through with respect to retraining (and a number of other subsystems too)

This doesn't sound like a reasonable interpretation, but again, what's needed is some official clarification. As written it is possible to use retraining to build characters that could not have been built by the standard process, which does make a certain amount of sense in-character, in that a person who decides to focus their practice on one thing instead of another is not the same person as someone who focused on the second thing to begin with.

[Aratorin]

hyphz wrote:

This is true for *prerequisites*, as the text states that "if you cease to meet the prerequisites for an ability due to retraining, you can't use that ability."

But that doesn't help with this issue, because the skill bonus choices from a Dedication feat are not described as having prerequisites.

Also, the choice of the word "abilities" is awkward as many choices are not abilities. For example, by RAW a character could take Alchemist Dedication and Basic Concoction, then retrain Alchemist Dedication but keep their Alchemist feat. Although Basic Concoction has a prerequisite, the Alchemist feat they took does not; and Basic Concoction's text "You gain an Alchemist feat" isn't an ability but a one-off event that already happened in the past. That's probably too pedantic, but it reflects a potential problem and implies that Dedication feats might not have been thought through with respect to retraining (and a number of other subsystems too)

This doesn't sound like a reasonable interpretation, but again, what's needed is some official clarification. As written it is possible to use retraining to build characters that could not have been built by the standard process, which does make a certain amount of sense in-character, in that a person who decides to focus their practice on one thing instead of another is not the same person as someone who focused on the second thing to begin with.

Already having the skill is a prerequisite for being able to choose a different skill than the one provided.