Retraining

The most basic level of character revision is retraining⁠—that is, adjusting a decision you made earlier in your character’s career by selecting a different legal option. This technique represents the character’s practicing new talents in lieu of honing older ones. In a way, the process is similar to attaining a new level. In keeping with that concept, the retraining option can be chosen only during level advancement.

Six different character aspects (see the Retraining Options table) can be changed through retraining. Each time your character attains a new level, you can select one (and only one) of these options. For instance, you can’t change a feat selection and your spells known at the same level. Since these options represent two different sessions of retraining, they must occur at different levels.

The decision to retrain must be implemented before any benefits of the newly attained level are applied. For example, if a 10th-level rogue wants to trade her improved evasion class feature for the opportunist class feature, she can do so immediately upon attaining 11th level, before she gains any of the benefits for that level (such as additional hit points, skill points, and so on).

Class Feature Retraining

Some class features offer two or more different options, such as the choice of combat style a ranger must make at 2nd level. Class feature retraining allows you to swap out one such option for another. Maybe your ranger would prefer to be an archer instead of a melee fighter, or your cleric feels that the War domain would be a better option than the Law domain. The character remains basically the same, since his class levels haven’t changed, but he’s now highlighting a different aspect of his class.

The Process

Change one class feature option to another legal one. The new option must represent a choice that you could have made at the same level as you made the original choice. Also, the new choice can’t make any of your later choices illegal⁠—though it might automatically change class features acquired later if they are based on the initial choice.

Class features from the original 11 character classes in the Player’s Handbook that are subject to change in this manner are given on the Class Feature Retraining Options table. Chapter 2 of this book provides class feature options for a variety of additional classes.

Example: Upon gaining a new level, a ranger could change the combat style class feature he gained at 2nd level from two-weapon fighting to archery. Thereafter, he would be treated as if he had the Rapid Shot feat instead of the Two-Weapon Fighting feat. If he had at least six levels of ranger before making this change, he would exchange both the Two-Weapon Fighting feat (gained at 2nd level) and the Improved Two-Weapon Fighting feat (gained at 6th level) for the appropriate archery feats, since both of these features are derived from the choice made at 2nd level. However, the ranger couldn’t make this change if he had selected the TwoWeapon Defense feat in the interim, since losing Two-Weapon Fighting means he would no longer meet the prerequisites for that feat.

Example: Upon gaining a new level, a necromancer could change her school specialization to evocation, thus becoming an evoker. At the same time, she could also choose to change her prohibited schools from conjuration and illusion to abjuration and transmutation. Doing so would cause her to lose access to all spells from the newly designated prohibited schools. Even if her spellbook contains one or more such spells, she would lose the ability to prepare and cast them.

Example: Upon gaining a new level, a wizard could choose to specialize in the enchantment school, thereby becoming an enchanter. At the same time, she would have to select two prohibited schools, as normal for a specialist wizard. Example: Upon gaining a new level, a conjurer could choose to become a wizard. By doing so, she would lose the benefits of specialization. But since she would also lose her prohibited schools, she could then learn spells from those schools as normal.

Feat Retraining

Sometimes a feat choice looks great on paper, but it just doesn’t work for your character in practice. Maybe an early feat choice reflected the character’s personality and style, but a little experience changed his outlook. For instance, you might have selected Improved Initiative for your 1st-level character because you pictured him as ambitious and a little reckless. But after falling victim to a wight’s touch because he just couldn’t wait until the cleric turned the undead, he decides it’s better to use a little more care in combat, causing you to regret your early feat choice. New supplements, with their wealth of exciting feat options, also provide plenty of reasons to reconsider your earlier feat selections.

The Process

You can exchange one of the feats you previously selected for another feat. If the new feat has prerequisites, not only must your character meet them in his current state, but you must also be able to show that he met them at the time you chose the previous feat.

Example: A 4th-level fighter/1st-level rogue couldn’t trade the Mobility feat he chose at 3rd level for Improved Critical because he doesn’t currently meet a prerequisite for the latter feat (base attack bonus +6). He also couldn’t trade that Mobility feat for Weapon Specialization, even though he currently meets the prerequisite (fighter level 4th), because he could not have done so as a 3rd-level character.

Language Retraining

It made a lot of sense to speak Goblin, Kobold, and Orc at 1st level, but now that you’re mostly fighting giants, demons, and dragons, it would be nice to understand your new enemies.

The Process

Subtract one language from your list of known languages and add a new one to the list. It doesn’t matter how your character earned the original language⁠—it could have been an automatic language for her race, a bonus language gained from a high Intelligence score, or a language purchased with skill points.

Skill Retraining

Some skills that are particularly valuable at lower levels become less useful later on, and vice versa. For example, when everyone in the party is carrying a bag full of antitoxins and potions of cure light wounds, the need for successful Heal checks drops dramatically. Whether your character has skill ranks that aren’t as necessary as they once were, or you just want to adapt her to new challenges, skill retraining provides a simple method of adjusting your character’s capabilities in a small but measurable way.

The Process

Subtract up to 4 skill ranks from one skill and add an equal number of ranks to any one other skill (not including Speak Language). The skill to which you add the ranks must be a class skill for one of your character’s classes, including a class he is about to gain with his current level increase. It doesn’t matter whether the lost ranks were purchased as class skills or as cross-class skills.

Example: You decide to give your 2nd-level ranger a level of the rogue class as his third character level. At this point, he could use the skill retraining option to lose 4 ranks in Handle Animal that he purchased with his ranger skill points and gain 4 ranks in any other ranger or rogue class skill (such as Survival or Disable Device). He couldn’t gain ranks in any skill that isn’t on either the ranger or the rogue class skill list (such as Spellcraft).

Spell or Power Retraining

Much like feats, magic spells and psionic powers sometimes look better when you select them than they do after you’ve used them for a while. And when you’re playing a character with a limited number of options (such as a sorcerer or a psychic warrior), every spell or power you choose represents a significant percentage of your character’s overall options. You can’t afford to have dead weight taking up valuable spell slots, so ditch that sleep spell now that the party isn’t facing foes with low Hit Dice anymore and replace it with the niftier 1st-level spell you just found in a recent supplement.

The Process

Exchange up to two currently known spells or psionic powers for other spells or powers. Each new spell or power must be usable by the same class and of the same spell level or power level as the spell or power it replaces.

Special: Bards and sorcerers (as well as classes introduced later) already have a limited ability to learn new spells in the place of older ones. This method of retraining allows exchanges over and above what their classes already permit.

Example: A sorcerer could change lightning bolt to fly or dispel magic, since all three are 3rd-level sorcerer/wizard spells, but he couldn’t change it to wall of ice (a 4th-level spell) or to cure serious wound (a cleric spell).

Example: A 5th-level sorcerer advancing to 6th level could use spell retraining to exchange up to two of his known spells (of any level he knows) for others of the same levels. Then he could exchange one 0-level or 1st-level spell for another just as any sorcerer could upon attaining 6th level.

Substitution Level Retraining

Substitution levels, as presented in Planar Handbook and the Races series of supplements, offer characters interesting ways to adjust the benefits granted by their classes. A wizard with elf wizard substitution levels, for example, seems a bit different from a traditional wizard, and that difference reinforces her racial identity. Since most substitution level options are offered for relatively low class levels (many at 1st level), you might already have missed one or more chances to add such flavor to your character. Revising a character to incorporate this feature amounts to a combination of retroactive continuity (“Of course I’ve always been a dwarf fighter!”) and getting back to one’s roots (“I can’t believe I forgot/never learned that trick!”).

Retraining Costs (Optional)

In general, retraining is assumed to be a background activity, just like normal level increases are. However, if your DM’s campaign requires the PCs to spend time and/or money to improve their skills, gain feats, learn spells, or acquire class benefits (DMG 197), the DM can apply similar requirements when characters use the retraining rules presented in this chapter. The table below shows some suggested time and gp costs for the various retraining options. These costs are purely optional; the game works perfectly well without them, just as it works without requiring downtime in order to attain higher levels.

Divine Conversion

As noted in Ex-Clerics, a cleric who grossly violates the code of conduct imposed by his deity loses all spells and class features and cannot attain any more levels as a cleric of that deity. All these penalties remain in effect until he atones. But what if he doesn’t want to atone? What if a cleric of Hextor finds new meaning and purpose in serving Heironeous after a dramatic conversion experience? Such a character need not become a multiclass ex-cleric of Hextor/cleric of Heironeous. Instead, Heironeous can simply reinstate the character’s cleric powers once he has proven his loyalty, talent, and ability.

A cleric who changes his patron deity must complete a quest to prove his devotion to his new patron. The nature of the quest depends on the deity, and it always clearly reflects the deity’s alignment as well as his or her goals and beliefs. To start the process, the cleric must voluntarily accept a geas/quest spell cast by a higher-level cleric of his new deity. During the quest, the cleric has no access to spells or cleric class features⁠—except his weapon and armor proficiencies, which he does not forfeit.

Upon completing the quest, the cleric receives the benefit of an atonement spell from a cleric of the new deity. The character then becomes a cleric of the new deity and is inducted into the clergy during an appropriate ceremony of the DM’s choosing. After selecting two of the new deity’s domains in lieu of his old ones, the character has all the powers and abilities of his previous cleric level, plus the granted powers of his new domains.

This method is the only one by which a cleric can change his deity. The retraining rules can’t be used to accomplish this task⁠—it is simply too substantial a change in the character’s identity (not to mention his source of power) to chalk up to a bit of practice in his off hours.

Source: Player’s Handbook II, pages 192 through 195.