Are players allowed to hold off on taking feats?

[Matt31597]

I have a player who just leveled up, and is going to take a new archetype feat. The thing is, they want to train out of their archetype dedication. Obviously that means that they don't want to take this new feat right now because they're about to lose the prerequisite. Is there any rules reference for holding off on taking a feat when you level up?

[breithauptclan]

I'm not entirely sure that I am following the build plan here...

If they have an Archetype dedication at level 2 and have just leveled up to level 4 - and are planning on retraining out of the Archetype - why not just pick the class feat that they ultimately want for their level 4 slot?

The only two things that I can think of that would spark this question is:

1) They want to use the Archetype feat for a while between when they level up and gain the feat and when they finally have some downtime to retrain the entire Archetype.

2) The campaign is using Free Archetype rules and they have to put in an archetype feat and they only qualify for the feats of the Archetype that they want to train out of eventually.

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In case #1 there is definitely some benefit to be had from having the Archetype feat. So I would just let them take the feat and they can retrain out of it when they finally get around to retraining.

In case #2 - or even case #1 if they are willing to forego using the feat during the time between leveling up and retraining - then I don't see any reason why they couldn't hold off on filling the feat slot for a while. It will mean that their character is a little underpowered for a bit of time, but if that is something that the player is good with, I wouldn't stop them. It seems a fair tradeoff for avoiding extra time and other costs of retraining out of a feat that they didn't want in the first place.

[MaxAstro]

I think what's going on is:

Player currently has Archetype A Dedication as their level 2 feat, and just levelled up to 4.

They want to retrain out of Archetype A and into Archetype B, changing their level 2 feat to Archetype B Dedication.

And for their level 4 feat, they want to take an Archetype B feat. However, they don't qualify for that feat until they complete retraining, so they want to hold off on taking a feat until then, so that they don't have to retrain twice.

I'm honestly not sure what RAW says about that. I'd think most GMs would allow it, though.

[YuriP]

RAWs says nothing about this so it's up to GM decide.

IMO the player just don't want to retrain 2 feats in a line (to prevent to use 14 days retraining) so he/she choose not train the second feat to diminish the retraining time and probably because he/she don't find a temporary feat that liked.

If this is the case as GM I don't care, I allow it to play with a blank feat space (I already allowed some players to play like this because they took so long to choose a new feat).

[HumbleGamer]

I say yes.

It's not that when you hit lvl you instantly "DING!" like in a video game.

"The boss is down. We restored the peace in these very lands... And suddenly, I can cast spells, feel comfortable talking about arcane stuff I didn't know a few seconds ago, and here's a familiar coming out from my hat! "

Asking not to choose in order to wait for retraining is perfectly legit.

[The Raven Black]

RAW says you need time to retrain.

Thankfully it also says that the GM can adapt any RAW that gives bad results for their gaming group.

If you need in-character justification, just say that their character wanted to retrain for some time already and did the required steps off-screen (during daily preparations, whatever).

[Guntermench]

RAW you can do all the individual parts of leveling in any order so that you can meet prerequisites, but they all happen when you level. Probably because generally you're going to want all your new power right away.

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As GM you're free to let them pick later though.

[Claxon]

Assuming the character's ultimate goal is to switch archetypes I would simply go ahead and let them retrain their level 2 feat as part of the level up. Mostly because the character is very low level and the player decided to change direction, and that's okay. I don't see this as particularly egregious, so better to just pretend like the character had made the selection they wanted in place of the original archetype.

[Blake's Tiger]

Assuming the scenario is as MaxAstro suspects, as long as you give them a week's Downtime after they do what they need to do to level up, then as HumbleGamer says, you don't "Ding." They can retrain and then do their level up choices.

If they leveled up in the middle of a situation where they won't have Downtime until after additional encounter elements are overcome but they are expected to be leveled up, then you'll need to work something out between you and them.

I wouldn't let this become the normal else your whole party will be rebuilding in preparation for each new encounter, but if there's no Downtime baked into the game you're playing, nothing says you can't just let them instantly rebuild whenever you allow them to to make the experience enjoyable for everyone.