Mr_Rieper wrote:The trouble is, if you specialize in a particular weapon early on (which you should, since it makes leveling easier), then you can't change what your character's preferred weapon is.
Honestly, I think this is the single largest problem facing any situation that touches on "build". The current situation leaves players in a bind, if we want our characters to be mechanically strong, they have to be planned from the start. If we want to play a dynamic character that is mechanically influenced by their time in the world, they will always be mechanically inferior to a decent planned build.
That dilemma is also compounded any time an update is applied that changes some part of our build. I personally played a feylock back in the days of the warlock staff. When the warlock update that introduced set spells at levelup came into being, my lvl 1 feat of conjuration focus and level 3 feat of greater conjuration focus instantly felt like a weight around the character's neck. The devs made a change, that I happen to agree with, that invalidated my previous choices with no means to correct it. Even if I had been granted a rebuild as the most recent feylock update provided, one of those feats was at level one and could never be changed by me. As a separate example, take the appraise skill change that happened early this year. The devs again made a change that is intended to improve the server in the long run, but they also left players in a position of their characters being built in a certain way based on the world that character lives in. The world changed and as a result the players would have made different choices if they had it to do over again, but were stuck with choices that reflected a different environment.
The quick and obvious suggestion to correct this is a change in server rules about granting rebuilds, and I think that could have some merit depending on how it was implemented. If I was going to change that policy/script a utility, my plan would be to grant x rebuilds per character and allow players to "spend" epic sacrifice awards to gain more. A rebuild console command would allow the player to select what level they wanted to drop back to and all the missing xp between their current total and that level would be added to their adventuring pool before deleveling them, to aid in the speed of their relevel without allowing overnight rebuilds.
As much as an improvement as that would be, it still would not address choices made at level 1. The actual solution I would like to see is something akin to the retraining rules from pathfinder. For a cost of time and gold, a character with access to a relevant trainer, can replace portions of their build. I think that a system that allowed us to pay gold to change feats and skills IC would be FAR better then an automated rebuild system as outlined above. The specifics of this could be tricky, but for a start lets say that any feat that has you make a selection (weapon focus, spell focus, skill focus, ect) would let you pay to change the choice you made (replacing weapon focus rapier with weapon focus spear in Mr_Rieper's example or spell focus conjuration with spell focus enchantment in my feylock example). Additionally, let players spend time and gold in the same way to move skillpoints from one skill to another at an appropriate trainer.
After making the selection, the feat(s) or skillpoints would be removed from the character and the information of which new ones they wish saved behind the scene to the character. They would then have train in the new selections to have them slowly added to the character. If you changed your weapon focus for example, you need to spend time in combat with that weapon in hand, possibly even restricted to an arena. Changing a spell focus would require you to spend time casting spells from that school, again possibly in an appropriate place (arcane tower/sorcere for arcane, temples for divine casters, wild magic areas for wild mages) that applies to some part of your character's classes.
Skills would be a bit more tricky, but could be broadly split based on their relevant ability modifier.
- Str and Dex based skills (with exceptions) require time in a training facility (arena).
- Int based skills require time in a library.
- Wis based skills require time in a place of contemplation and learning (druid groves/monistaries).
- Cha based skills require time in places of performance or social interaction (fastest in theaters, slower in taverns or council meeting chambers).
To this broad list, specific exceptions would be applied. Skills that enable an action, could instead require that action (disable trap, open lock, pick pocket, set trap, UMD, ect) to progress your training.
This would certainly require some careful coding to handle the various situations. You would need to account for class skills vs non class skills, make sure only those with ranks already in certain skills can apply them to trained only skills such as UMD and Animal Handling. On the feat side of things, you would have to handle the choices made in feats that have prerequisites together (changing weapon focus, weapon spec, epic focus, epic spec and weapon of choice together for example) to prevent invalid builds. In the case of multiple dependent feats being changed, the character would have to train them back, one at a time, in order. A level 30 fighter that completely changed their weapon (Weapon Focus, Weapon Spec, Epic Weapon Focus, Epic Weapon Spec) would lose all of the selected feats at once, and then slowly earn back the new choices without the benefit of the old ones.
I realize that this suggestion is VASTLY more complicated then either doing nothing or even something like the rebuild solution I mentioned, but it provides the player with tools to bring more of their character's development from OOC to IC. Your character got their butt handed to them by someone using parry? They can spend money on lessons and time in the arena studying the art of sword play, but as a result they don't spent as much time focusing on how to scare people with their raw presence (trade intimidate ranks for parry ranks). Merchants are not as easily persuaded by your haggling as they used to be? Maybe its time for your rogue to buy some training manuals and learn to pick pockets to make ends meet (retrain from appraise to pickpocket).
Wow, I think that is the longest post I have ever made.
TL:DR I suggest introducing IC retraining of feats and skills, to requiring your character spending time and money actually learning the new skills and feats to replace the old.