If you're enjoying the content here, check out our new site, Thoughtcrime Games. Thanks for visiting!
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
It seems to happen to at least one player at the table at every level. She or he chooses a new power or feat and is dissatisfied with its application in play.
According to the rules, that player is stuck with that sense of dissatisfaction until the next level, when the power or feat can be trained out for another. I think the distance between levels is too far to wait and the number of powers and feats you can retrain are too few.
The limitations on retraining prevents players from correcting a bad choice after leveling their character and discourages innovative builds.
Why is a PC going to try something new if they might get stuck with a less than desirable result for several sessions? For most of us, we only get to play so often a week and we only level maybe once or twice a month (if we’re lucky). There’s just not enough opportunity to try new ideas and not enough levels to retrain and modify a character’s build.
Even if you’re not innovating, there’s always the chance that you:
- misread a power
- chose something that fits a specific situation that rarely happens in play
- picked up a cool piece of equipment that doesn’t work well with your build
- just changed your mind
As a DM, should you really make your players wait until the next level to get the character they want? My answer would be no, and these are the house rules I would propose to facilitate character modification.
No limits when you level up
When PCs reach a new level, they can swap out one power for another of the same level as many times as they wish. They can also swap out one feat for another feat of the same tier as many times as they want as well.
Sleep and swap
During an extended rest, players can swap one power for another of the same level.
Develop new skills at down time
When the PCs have an extended period of down time (1-2 weeks) and a place to train safely, they can swap out 1 feat for another.
Similar Posts:
- The Aberrant Rules!
- Penniless But Not Powerless, Part 1
- Multiclass Mondays #13 – Primal Power Part 2
I started Dungeon Mastering with secondhand AD&D materials in 1996 and have run a vast number of D20 campaigns, from cliche' medieval adventures in a kingdom made of Lego bricks to fighting zombies and the mob in the mid 1930s. I try to make the gaming experience as enjoyable, fast-paced, and easy to play as humanly possible. 
Your suggestions are interesting…
I don’t like “Sleep and Swap” all that much – it feels too much like “every one has the same powers”.
What I’ve liked to do so far is to allow players to swap powers between sessions during their first level.
I suspect I would allow to swap newly gained powers after a session, should the players dislike the ones they have chosen… but I wouldn’t bend the original rules more than that. At that point, I’d have the player come up with a narrative explaining the change in his character.
To me, removing that restriction also removes a lot of the creativity in using powers. I find that when a player is stuck with seemingly useless powers, he most often will end up finding a creative use… one he wouldn’t have bothered finding if he could just have swapped it at first sign of dislike.
Why do you need a rule? Why not just tell the players that if they really don’t like a power, you’ll let them swap?
I agree about the “sleep-and-swap”, for the above reasons, plus it affectively removes the wizards spell-book shtick as everyone can do it. Other than that a degree of flexibility is always good; I’d allow players to change a power if it’s a new pick that hasn’t worked out, but ruling it up opens up potential abuse. As always it depends on the players and the group.
The thought behind it I agree with totally though, unless you play fairly long games very regularly, levels can be few and far between.
@Maziade Essentially everyone in a class DOES have the same powers. There’s nothing to keep the two rogues in your party from choosing the exact same powers at every level because they both like to play the same way.
Any differentiation between characters of the same class is purely based on a player’s style of play or desire to be different.
And, while being stuck with a power might force a player to find new ways to use it, I find that those powers are often avoided in interest of the obvious “best” power for each level. If players know they are free to switch around powers, they’re more likely to “test drive” things they may never have tried before.
I surprisingly like the retrain during sleep idea, especially for playing with newbs. If everyone were to print out, or create power cards ahead of time with all their power options it shouldn’t slow the game down if you gave everyone a set time limit to retrain their powers/feats during a snack break or something.
I usually let my players change “one of everything” when they level up when playing 4E: 1 daily power, 1 “other” power (at will, encounter, utility), 1 feat AND 1 skill.
For the first 4-5 levels, i also let them swap some powers if I agree that are not fit for the PC.
It has no sense under narrative and storyline point of view, but it really works for my group.
The whole level mechanism doesn’t make sense anyway, so I just don’t mind.
I pretty much rule that players can swap out/rebuild whenever all the way up to paragon. Especially for people learning the game, this will help them experiment with what they want and learn how powers interact. My PCs are getting pretty awesome with the teamwork and roles now as a result.
I find myself split on this. I would like to encourage experimentation … but I have a hard enough time tracking/remembering the PCs’ capabilities. I actually think one of my players has applied the retraining rules far more liberally than written, and it’s a bit dizzying. It’s also quite a letdown to build an adventure to incorporate elements that you think will let certain characters shine—only to have that player show up having retrained the character out of those elements!
Obviously (to me), each gaming group should do what works best for that particular group. I’m personally happy with the rules as written. At the very least, they offer players a lot more flexibility than 3.x did.
You’re absolutely right. It depends on the group, but everyone seems to house rule retraining, which makes me think the rules are too restrictive as written.
I think loose restrictions are good for a group that doesn’t meet often. For a group that meets quite frequently, the opportunity to retrain will come up more often and may not need to be adjusted.
On a completely unrelated note, how do you guys feel about players having alternate characters rolled and swapping them out occasionally? Is it worthwhile to let players experiment with new classes, or does it destroy the emotional attachment to just one character?
see, that’s the line I would draw. I wouldn’t want the PCs swapping out characters because it would be impossible to get a good story around them. Powers don’t really define *character* –just a character’s capabilities. But swapping characters changes your whole story.
I’m ok with retraining because I am usually more abreast of the rules than my players, but less-obsessed GMs probably do need to limit how much swapping they allow.
The “rule” in my game is a) you can swap a new power or feat at the end of any session. You cannot change the at-will you have been using for the past 5 months because you are tired of it, but you can change out the feat you grabbed when you leveled up recently. b) You can swap out a power and a feat anytime WotC comes out with a new resource, but it must be for something in that resource. Like the new at-will in the Divine Power book, you can swap it at the end of the session. c) You can also just try and convince me that something about a power/feat/skill was taken without complete knowledge. I try to limit this, because I think it is important for players to spend some time learning and making the right choices, but everyone makes mistakes and the rules are pretty complex. We have had this happen a couple of times now.
I’m going to come down on the other side of this argument. I absolutely agree with the RAR. I like the concept of retraining, but I feel that there should be some in-game mechanic for allowing it. If you take a feat or power that you end up not using or not liking then you can swap it out the next time the story deems it appropriate. Just because you level up in the middle of a dungeon doesn’t mean that you can forget everything you know about Nature and suddenly gain an aptitude for Thievery. But if the PCs have a few weeks of down time in the near-by town, then this change makes more sense.
I know people will say that my stern interpretation of this rule takes some of the fun out of D&D, but hear me out. I’ve found that many PCs want to swap out powers that they just took before they can really see how useful they are. If you’ve got a power that is kick-ass vs undead but go two levels without fighting a single skeleton then you’ll think the power is useless. However, the very first time you fight undead you’ll suddenly realize how cool it really is.
I guess the other point I’m trying to make is that training in a skill, feat or class power takes time. You shouldn’t just wake up one morning after leveling and be able to make that kind of change on the fly.
Personally, I don’t like these suggestions at all. The point of having a character is making decisions which shape WHO the character IS as an individual.
If you’re about to enter a quest which deals heavily with monster X, but your player picked a lot of skills that deal with monster Y, you shouldn’t allow them to just change abilities mid-stream. That’s lame.
If you make a mistake that you’re not happy with… deal with it. You should be able to roleplay your choices. In fact, sometimes… being forced to continue a particular direction with a character challenges the player to incorporate that facet of their story and often enlightens the player (read: opens their mind) to defining a new aspect to roleplay that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.
I like things set in stone. I like randomization. Sometimes it’s more fun to be at a disadvantage (skill-selection wise) so that when you’re successful you feel like you’ve made a greater accomplishment.
If you showed me a list of skills and I built a character to level 10 however I wanted… I’d usually pick several archetypes that I’ve already built in the past. It’s boring; a character can’t help but pick the min-max options for any particular character type. In 3rd edition, if you had a choice between Color Spray and Burning Hands, 8/10 times you’d pick the damage-dealer, right? Yet, when you’re granted skills and asked to make a character based around them… that’s when it becomes fun again and a challenge.
Letting a player swap skills like it was a sandbox game turns every class into a mush of predictability; they’ll always take advantage of every situation… ie. little challenge and no definition for their character.