5
\$\begingroup\$

In the Pathfinder game I run, a player with a level 1 PC wants to change his class from fighter to rogue.

The party made the acquaintance of a mid-level thief and during downtime the character wants to train with the thief. I feel like the training should give him the skills he needs to change classes, but I don't know how to handle the rebuilding.

Initially I thought to have him reroll everything and just keep his current XP, but I didn't like the idea of him suddenly changing his ability scores which I believe, realistically, should take awhile to do. I mean, you can't suddenly become really dexterous and charismatic in a month or two.

My other thought was to have him keep his ability scores and change his 1st level class to rogue so he can get the right skills, but I think that would potentially clip his wings since his base stats are more geared towards being in the front line than being sneaky.

Are there rules that cover this?

\$\endgroup\$
1
  • 3
    \$\begingroup\$ If you want to rebuild him, first you need to have the technology... \$\endgroup\$ Sep 11, 2015 at 20:07

2 Answers 2

8
\$\begingroup\$

I would personally handle this by offering multiclassing at second level; it wouldn't be perfect, but your player's PC wouldn't forget everything that they have learnt up to this point just because they were training with a Thief. Equally, the time it would take to train up to being a Thief would cover the time between level 1 and 2.

It's up to your player whether or not this seems like a good idea, but as far as I'm concerned, this is how it would be handled.

However:

Your players should be able to respec their characters up until level 2 anyway; this is how the Pathfinder Society works also. This way, if your player isn't happy with how their character is playing, or they would rather try something else out, they aren't discouraged from checking out other classes.

In short, if it was anything but level 1, I would offer muilticlassing. As it's 1st level, you could take the PFS route and allow a full respec and essentially new character creation (reroll stats) with the same backstory/name/etc.

If you don't like the idea of rerolling stats, you can look at the point system and find out how many points the character had from their initial stat rolls and provide that as the amount of points available to spend for the respec.

\$\endgroup\$
2
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ Welcome to the site. Take the tour. This is a good answer, but I think the best part of it—the references to how the Pathfinder Society allows changes to level 1 characters—gets lost in an opening using nonstandard jargon (dual-classing is old school, yo). This is good advice, but I think the lede's a little buried. Thank you for participating and for helping strangers. Have fun. \$\endgroup\$ Sep 11, 2015 at 15:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks, the PFS rules will work well in this area since he's still level 1 though I'm going to borrow some ideas from the retraining RAW as well. \$\endgroup\$ Sep 11, 2015 at 16:05
7
\$\begingroup\$

You want the rules for retraining

The situation you describe is, essentially and with a little hand waving, exactly what can be done with retraining. Too long to even summarize here, retraining allows changing (for a fee and often in the presence of a trainer) everything from archetypes to ability score increases to languages to, of course, classes themselves. The character will have to keep his actual ability scores as-is unless the GM intervenes, though.

\$\endgroup\$
3
  • \$\begingroup\$ RAW allows ability score increases to be retrained so I guess the closest-to-RAW house-ruling would be to require that much training for each ability point the PC wants moved. \$\endgroup\$
    – mike32
    Sep 11, 2015 at 15:48
  • \$\begingroup\$ I had no idea about this thanks. I think that this would be more appropriate for a higher level character, but the below answer would work for the PC in question. I think I might do a hybrid of both of them. \$\endgroup\$ Sep 11, 2015 at 16:01
  • \$\begingroup\$ @TarenGarlander You're absolutely right. The PFS rules Mark suggests are a better fit for a low-level character, but are less likely to be available in a home campaign. Either way, I'm glad you found a way to make what you wanted to happen happen. \$\endgroup\$ Sep 11, 2015 at 16:07

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .