G'day,
I am kinda in a Conundrum as to how one would train out out class feats to a Sorcerer Dedication.
Would I require someone with the same bloodline, would it be a week spent in self-actualization? How would you treat it?
(In this context, It would be retrain out Marshal to Psychopomp Bloodline sorcerer for my Duskwalker fighter.)
A blood line can be an emergent thing. It can be due to something that is farther back in your familiy tree...
Or poentially you can be the source of it yourself if you have an incident with the right type of creature. For example a curse could do it.
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The Retraining Rules say, "Retraining usually requires you to spend time learning from a teacher, whether that entails physical training, studying at a library, or falling into shared magical trances. Your GM determines whether you can get proper training or whether something can be retrained at all. In some cases, you’ll have to pay your instructor."
For an emergent bloodline, the bloodline itself is beyond the control of any instructor. It would just appear. However, the Sorcerer Dedication abilities, such as training in Cast a Spell or the two skills from the bloodline, could be taught by an instructor. The two skills for the Psychopomp bloodline are Intimidation and Religion. I could imagine the character going to a cleric to get an explanation of why he gain the ability to cast the Disrupt Undead cantrip, and receiving a one-week lecture on psychocomps that trains him in Religion. If the character already was trained in Intimidation and wanted Nature as a replacement skill, the temple asks him to tend their garden as both payment and for meditation, and the temple's groundskeeper gives him free instruction, too. The better the roleplaying, the more the retrained abilities will feel natural to the character.
An explanation for the bloodline can be a good story, too. My wife once created a PF1 halfling character named Wealday Addams. Wealday had born a slave of Dr. Addams in Nidal, who treated his halfling slaves as lab subjects. He did not even name them properly, instead sorted them by the day of the week: Moonday, Toilday, Wealday, Oathday, Fireday, Starday, or Sunday. He infused Wealday with essence from the eldritch horrors, she became an abberant bloodline sorcerer, and she used her new abilities to escape and stow away on a ship to start the module Souls for Smuggler's Shiv.
For my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign, my wife introduced Wealday's cousin Toilday Addams, renamed after his escape as Sam. Sam had been another of Dr. Addams experiments, regularly injected with red dragon blood. Nothing happened, so Addams marked him as a failure and assigned him to tend for the animals in his lab collection (Animal Whisperer background). Years after the Bellflower Network had helped Sam escape, Sam developed a draconic bloodline via 2nd-level Sorcerer Dedication. My wife had planned this from the beginning, wanting a Magical Trickster rogue, so she had the explanation waiting in his backstory.
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You cannot retrain something innate such as a bloodline except for extraordinary circumstances, generally involving magic.
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Fully behind Gortle and Mathmuse. The concept of gaining a Sorcerer Dedication would almost always imply a bloodline connection was already present, but not manifested yet, or might be achievable by some lets just say otherworldly event affecting you, or strong ritual, perhaps. Of those, filling out your past (albeit potentially somewhat retroactively) have some connection that begins manifesting, potentially due to a more recent event just happening. (such as exposure to magical items encountered and acquired by adventures completed up to now)
I really liked Mathmuse's explanations of allowing the magic/casting ability to be explained in part by the manifesting of the bloodline, but allowing the Skills acquired to be something that can be folded into some form of training. Said training can also explain their practicing and mastering (from a trained standpoint, not master) their new spellcasting ability.
His examples do a wonderful job of explaining the time use, the external access to a tutor and the mechanical aspects of the game abilities being acquired.
As to training OUT of original class feats, you could find that the manifestation of your bloodline is causing you concentration issues, or pain, memory issues that might cause you to find yourself unable to do some things you used to, especially as you move to change the focus of your practice to embrace your new abilities and away from your former focus.
So, you say training out of a Marshall into Psychopomp Sorcerer multi-class.
Well, if you were a Dread Martial, then your starting dedication feat(s) would both share Intimidate as a trained spell. (although, if you had it Expert via Marshal, that might drop it down to trained) You would gain religion as a skill. You would lose your Aura, but it would be replaced by the ability to cast your cantrips.
Perhaps you could even cast your prior Marshal abilities as a tangential early manifestation of your sorcerer abilities. The emanations came from the same power. However, now that they have manifested properly, you have lost those early abilities after your true nature finally manifested. Instead of the emanations you have proper spellcasting instead.
Or at least that is one way you could flavor it. It might be harder flavor to explain if you'd done the Inspiring Marshal, but you might be able to make it work.
Yeah. Either the bloodline was already present in the character, just not manifested into any abilities, or the 'bloodline' is actually the result of some personally cataclysmic event (think superhero origin story type of events like Peter Parker getting bit by a spider).
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You cannot retrain something innate such as a bloodline except for extraordinary circumstances, generally involving magic.
Yes and it is the right default rule. But exceptions happen. There are story reasons as to why this might occur.
Talk to your GM. Just don't expect to be able to retrain endlessly.
Considering your character is a Duskwalker, which is a heritage with a connection to Psychopomps, and the bloodline you’re looking to take is the Psychopomp bloodline, I’d say on-game you’d spend a week (or however long retraining takes at your table) to meditate on your Duskwalker’s connection to the boneyard as what is going on.