Pathfinder 1E Downtime for skills/leveling up

[wlmartin]

I have come up with the following rules for my new 4e > Pathfinder group.
This is there first advent into the world of 3.0/3.5/PF and mostly they only know D&D through 4e.

Please let me know your thoughts or suggestions

I am looking to increase immersion, I have come up with a Calendar System for managing time, days, weeks, etc.
I am going to be asking more of them to reduce metagaming.

One thing I want to do is add in a time component to leveling up, here is my plan
>Leveling can only be done in a civilized envrionment with a Trainer (their job/career won't be trainer, it will be more likely a mentor of that class)
>If you have visited a Trainer before, it is assumed you can book time with that Trainer, otherwise you will need to do some investigative work to find the Trainer (gather knowledge etc)

How long does training take?
For any favored class you have at least 1 level in = 1d4 days
For any favored class that you don't have at least 1 level in* = 2d4 days
For any non-favored class that you have at least 1 level in = 1d6 days
For any non-favored class skill that you don't have at least 1 level in = 2d6 days

* It is rare to have a class skill that you don't already know, the rules don't forbid it (ie you can be level 1 rogue with your favored class as wizard, since your plan is to level up wizard from level 2 up)

Next is skills, skills are seen as mostly unrelated to classes in my opinion. Some classes get bonuses to them (see below for the free cost in leveling class skills) but you can easily find a Barbarian in a library learning about Religion and not just a cleric. That being said, training something you haven't yet got a rank in costs a bit more to represent the time and money in having someone show you the ropes or learning it from scratch (rather than just picking up more knowledge on the subject as you go).

A class skill relevant to the class you are leveling in costs nothing extra to level, you are pressumed to do this within your regular leveling activity with your Mentor. If it is a class skill associated with a different class you multiclass in, this is treated as non-class skill for the purpose of costs and time.

For non-class skills
A learned skill costs 1 day to practice a skill, the extra time over normal class leveling represents the need to find another trainer or source of knowledge to learn the skill.
A non-learned skill takes 3 days to learn. This increased extar time represents the difficulty in finding a trainer or source of knowledge and starting from scratch rather than continuing your education.

Unlike class leveling, skills don't require you to find a trainer, you can if you want but it is understood that you can either find someone to help you or learn it yourself, this is upto the player and it would take far too much time to manage otherwise.


Each day training costs 1gp, regardless of it being a class or skill activity.
NOTE : This may change as time goes on, to scale with the mentor wanting a greater level of compensation but for the moment this just represents a token cost to keep it as realistic as possible.

So as an example : Partha the Monk and Davil the Cleric both come to town to put into practice what they have learned as adventurers over the past 2 weeks.

(NOTE: In my example, our calendar has 7 working days in a week with 1 day rest for 8 days total)

Partha has trained with the Orange Lotus before, the Orange Lotus being another Monk of senior rank to him. Since it is his favored class and one he has trained in before, this takes 1d4 days (roll 3).
Partha also decides that he wants to use his 4 skill points, 2 to train in class skills, 1 to train in a skill he knows (not a class skill) and 1 in a skill he doesnt

His first 2 skill points are free, the 3rd is 1 day catching up and practicing a skill he already knows and the 4th is learning a new skill he has never got involved with before for 3 days.

So the time taken to train for Partha is 7 working days and 70 gold (1 week)

Davil is getting a bit sick of it being hard to hit monsters in combat and decides that he wants to learn more about weapon skills and train as a fighter. He takes some time to ask around using his Diplomacy skill and finds out that the best fighter in town is Marlik Utimol and he negotiates with Marlik to spend some time teaching him how to be a fighter. This is not a favored class for him and he has no fighter levels so it is 2d6 (13 days).

Partha only has 2 skill points to use and decides to level in Knowledge : Religion (which he knows well) and Climbing (which he doesn't but is a class skill for fighters).
Climbing is done during his regular level up activity with Marlik, but even though Knowledge : Religion is a class skill for Clerics, he is not at a cleric trainer so must find time outside his class training to improve this (1 day).

This is a total of 14 working days at a cost of 140 gold (2 weeks)


The idea here is to represent the practical difficulty in leveling into a new class or in skills that you don't have knowledge of already. Furthermore, if you are one of those rogues with many many skill points, is it immersive to assume that it takes just as long for you to level as the fighter who doesn't?


Hopefuly with this method, with me providing enough time for it to occur, gives the players some real sense of their activities... I hate the idea which is encouraged in other games of "poof" you traded all your stuff, leveled up and found a new quest.. oh and made that magic item, time to get back to the dungeon!


In addition, if players want to get really immersed, build magic items and even mundane items, this will introduce a method to show the real passage of time.
So what happens when the mage wants to spend 4 weeks making potions? - the rest of the group in one way or another say "Although we have professions and crafts ourselves, killing time for 4 weeks just isnt in character for us"

So what then? - Well how about they go off on the adventure and the mage has to roll up a quick tag-in character who joins them?

Sometimes crafting and out of adventure activities can span months or years, what then? Well perhaps that character needs to be side-lined for that long and a substitute used. So if a mage is gone for 4 weeks and the adventurers take 1 week to level up and 1 week to train up, 2 levels could go by whilst the mage is busy making potions. When he rejoins the group he is at a disadvantage... however, since he won't level as quickly as the rest of the group so what is the solution?

Solo XP quests : (some of this taken from the Ultimate Campaign book) - So whilst the level 8 party are off fighting something suitable for them, the level 6 mage goes off on his own. Using a rules mechanic he basically comes out of it spending a certain amount of time catching up in XP terms doing solo quests, no gold earned, just pure XP fighting something way below his level but doing so Solo to get all the XP just for him.

The example above may be extreme or not relevant to some but my idea overall is to create an immersive world, almost like one would want from an MMO where when your character goes off to craft up for a few IRL days, his friends go off questing and when he meets up with them, his friends are much higher level... this now means that our character has to spend some over-time catching up to be on an even-level to them.

 

[delericho]

You'll probably want to insert some point beyond which trainers are no longer needed (perhaps level 9 and/or 9 skill ranks?). Otherwise, there's an issue finding suitable trainers - the PCs are going to become the most skilled persons in their respective fields for hundreds of miles in any direction!

Otherwise, your system looks fine. It's not something I would use personally - I'm generally more inclined to model the passage of time by the simple expedient of saying "a few weeks pass..."

You're also likely to run into problems if you use published adventures - most of these cover multiple levels, assume that the PCs will level up as soon as they have the XP... and are often on a timetable that won't allow for the PCs to just stop for a couple of weeks. So, you'll either have to adapt the adventure, or you'll have PCs unable to tackle the later sections.

 

[wlmartin]

You'll probably want to insert some point beyond which trainers are no longer needed (perhaps level 9 and/or 9 skill ranks?). Otherwise, there's an issue finding suitable trainers - the PCs are going to become the most skilled persons in their respective fields for hundreds of miles in any direction!

Otherwise, your system looks fine. It's not something I would use personally - I'm generally more inclined to model the passage of time by the simple expedient of saying "a few weeks pass..."

You're also likely to run into problems if you use published adventures - most of these cover multiple levels, assume that the PCs will level up as soon as they have the XP... and are often on a timetable that won't allow for the PCs to just stop for a couple of weeks. So, you'll either have to adapt the adventure, or you'll have PCs unable to tackle the later sections.

Thanks for the feedback
I never use pre-pub adventures but even then, with multiple levels, not sure how I would build that in... possibly by making sure the CR is appropriate for a longer period away from town.

I get what you mean about high level NPCs not being available, and yes perhaps once it reaches this they are self-sufficent - but still need to spend a deal of time leveling

 

[Lanefan]

A few questions and thoughts:

- What happens to a PC when they reach enough xp in mid-adventure to bump? Does their xp gain stop until they train? Do they keep gaining xp but no new abilities until they train? Is xp gain slowed until they train? We have a complicated way of handling this I'll explain below.

- What happens to a PC in a long adventure who gets enough xp to bump twice?

- Your training costs are very low; if you increase them significantly it allows you to be a bit more liberal with the treasure they find, giving you more options. It also forces decisions on the part of the players/characters e.g. whether to forego training in order to keep expensive magic items within the party.

- The only real modification you need to make to most published adventures is to remove most if not all of the time pressures and deadlines, such that a party can stop mid-adventure and spend a few weeks going back to town to train up. Then if you do throw in an adventure with a severe deadline now and then the party again might have to choose between getting it done quickly or training up and risking whatever happens if the deadline is missed.

- What we do when someone bumps in the field is this: hit points for the new level are rolled right away, the PC gets half of them now and half on completing training; if you are using astat increment system or have stats auto-improve with level those improvements or increments take effect immediately on bumping (this to reflect the assumption that whatever ongoing practice is being done in order to improve such stats is happening all the time as opposed to only on training breaks); but all other things gained from the bump (skills, spells, combat abilities, feats, etc.) have to wait until training.

- What we do if someone bumps in the field and keeps adventuring is they can keep on gaining xp but the gain slows down: at 1/3 of the way through the new "untrained" level xp gain is slowed by 1/3, and if you grind your way to 2/3 of the way through the new level you start losing 2/3 of any xp you gain...which means double-bumping is really rare. If you do manage to double-bump you are considered trained for the previous level and advance at half-rate until you can train conventionally (and see below).

- In the rare situations where no trainer exists a character can self-train by cutting their xp gain in half; they are considered trained into a new level at 1/4 of the way through it; this to allow for situations where someone cannot access a higher-level trainer (e.g. a 9th-level Thief in a land where there are no other Thieves higher than 7th), or a pioneer of a new class (e.g. the first Cleric of a new god) or simply cannot get out of the field for a very long time...these situations very rarely if ever apply to PCs. Note this is different than someone self-training due to high level where other resources etc. are available in town.

Lan-"train kept a'rolling"-efan