Rules Musings - Training and Skill Tiers

Introduction

I’ve been wanting to give the fighter a weapon drilling class feature, something focused on downtime so as to break with the class’s combat-centric focus. A few blocks promptly presented themselves, ripe for the stumbling.

Trusty as ever, the official book’s version of training associates the learning of languages or “tools” to a fixed number of days and a trivial amount of gold, coming across like your typical online ad-scam, with the rest of the downtime activities equally reeking of perfunctionism (apparently not even a word, but if anything all the more fitting on account of it).

Even disregarding the above, the main curtain wall of the edition’s all too inclusive list of weapon proficiencies granted each class stymies if not defeats the whole purpose right from the start and then, finally, the strong dish is presented as one realizes that, with proficiency being a binary element matched directly to level, learning a skill or weapon proficiency later in a character’s career will result in a sudden performance jump from no bonus (or a penalty) to a healthy +3, +4 or +5. Talk about late blooming.

The proverbial drop thus spilling the cup, here follows a short revision that’s been long overdue.

All Trades Jacked

The game currently tracks between three levels of training: “Inexperienced, Proficient, Master” corresponding to “No modifier, proficiency modifier, double proficiency modifier”, the ubiquity of this same modifier returning characters that are too uniformized, too well-rounded and too simplistic.

I need a stopgap where I can find balance between taoist realism and coastal wizard enablism. Something that'll conform to a workable gradient of complexity while ensuring the “chump-to-champ” syndrome of late skill acquisition is avoided.

Last I was here, I bemoaned the thought of turning to skill ranks. Since no other solution presents itself and this can be implemented without compromising the game’s bounded accuracy, let these moans be; trying it can’t hurt more than countenancing the official book-bound scam of a system.

This’ll represent, by necessity, a huge curbing in terms of power for each character, albeit a uniform one. No snowflakes were harmed.

The Level Structure

Levels, much like Hp, are a conventioned abstraction that is largely left to what the beholder makes of it and that stand up poorly to close scrutiny. Yet, no matter how eloquent the argument that their strictures are inane, unrealistic, artificial and unnecessary, they are ingrained as one of the main tenets of the game. The designer is free to either question the substructural premises altogether or work within them. I choose the latter.

Character advancement conforming to a level structure is a design choice, one to which all kinds of consolidated internal character growth should adhere to. This means things such as skill learning aren’t something that happens in parallel or wholly outside this structure, as the book’s take on this would have us believe. Money and time by themselves are not sufficient to unlock a character’s potential: he must make level.

The Crunch

Skill Tiers

- The general proficiency modifier represents the upper limit of a character’s capabilities, rather than the rating applied to each of them.

- Skills and weapon proficiencies receive a notation after their name so as to indicate their level of training: 1, d4, d6, d8, d10 or d12, corresponding to the proficiency modifiers 0, +2, +3, etc.

- A rank of “1” won’t give any bonus by itself, but it does mean the character possesses the basic notions and can make use of the skill, tool or weapon without penalties.

- New proficiencies of any sort are first gained at rank “1”, unless determined otherwise.

- A starting character’s list of skills, saves and weapon proficiencies come with an implied a rank of “1” in each, customizable through five tier increases at chargen.

- A character’s skill proficiencies are presumed to be continually trained during downtime: with every level gained, a character increases tier on the player’s choice of three skills, saves or weapons.

- Additional skill tier increases past the levelling minimum can be gained through the sucessful accomplishment of certain specialized downtime actions.

Instruction

The capacity to instruct others in a skill or weapon proficiency is accessed through class feature. It  also requires that the teacher be proficient with the skill being taught, that the student have some degree of innate potential for the subject matter (skills already latent can be improved but new skills cannot be granted wholecloth) and a period of time must be spent on intensive training.

- The instruction effort must be made through a series of nigh-consecutive days totalling up to a number of months equal to the new proficiency die’s size (minimum of three).

- Each individual skill or proficiency can only be the object of successful training a single time per level.

- The students in a group can number up to the teacher’s proficiency die, modified by his Wisdom.

- As the training’s duration is fulfilled, each student rolls an Intelligence check [Intelligence, (DC 10 plus the new proficiency die total, further modified by the instructor’s Wisdom)]; Failure means further training is required and that the character will need to reenact the training period.

- Once success is attained, the character is assumed to continue training on his own, slowly consolidating what he learned during the high-intensity period of instruction into true internalized knowledge that he may call upon. Upon making level, the character increases the trained proficiency by one step.

- Hirelings, Retainers and other NPCs not generally possessed of levels instead receive basic training in a six month time frame and can progress no further.