How PCs Improve

The rules in the Player’s Handbook assume that characters have access to everything they need to advance in level—libraries where they can research new spells, trainers to guide their efforts, and places to practice new skills and abilities. Research and training aren’t a part of the standard rules. They’re assumed to be going on in the background. However, you control the background and can decide how you want to handle things such as this. Keep in mind, however, that leaving them in the background is a fine choice.

LEARNING SKILLS AND FEATS

According to the rules in the Player’s Handbook, characters pick up new skills and feats as they go up in levels. In your campaign, however, you can require that a character can’t learn a new skill or feat that he hasn’t been exposed to. For example, a character in the desert can’t learn swimming unless he spends time at an oasis. You might decide that a character can’t even improve existing skills without the ability and opportunity to practice.

One step further would be to require that a character have an instructor to teach him new skills and feats. Under this approach, a character can’t learn to swim unless he has access to a body of water and someone who can swim willing to train him. Likewise, a character can’t learn the Cleave feat unless he’s got a trainer who knows how to do it and the time and a place to practice by sparring with that trainer. A trainer can be another PC (which encourages interaction and cooperation among the players) or an NPC. Non-player character trainers who are friends of the PCs might train them for nothing; otherwise, professional trainers, who are usually found only in large cities, charge money.

Training Cost: 50 gp per week for a professional trainer (plus related expenses).

Training Time: One week per rank gained in a skill, or two weeks for a feat. A character may work on two skills or feats at once, paying separately for each.

If a single trainer is providing instruction in more than one discipline, then the skills or feats in question should have some sort of connection. For example, a certain trainer might be capable of teaching both Mounted Archery and Ride-By Attack, since the feats are closely related (they even have the same prerequisites). Likewise, a single trainer might be found for Diplomacy and Intimidate, since those skills are both tied to Charisma and involve the same type of activity (getting someone else to do what you want). It would be less likely to find one trainer for both Open Lock and Ride; even though both skills are Dexterity-based, they cover different kinds of activity (fine manipulation of a mechanism versus keeping a mount under control in combat). Scarcer yet would be a trainer who could impart knowledge of Great Cleave and Forge Ring—those feats are so far apart in concept and application that the chance of one character having both of them is close to nil.

If you allow it, at the expense of a certain degree of realism, a character can obtain training ahead of time. A player whose character is at 2nd level, knowing that the character will get a new feat at 3rd level, might choose to have his character train for the feat now either because the opportunity is available or to just get it out of the way.

Distinguishing Skills and Feats: You don’t have to treat skills and feats the same in this context. For example, you can require training or exposure for skills but not feats, ruling that feats are something that develop on their own as a character adventures. Or you can set such requirements for feats but not skills, justifying this by the fact that feats are so much more potent than skills and thus require more investment on the PC’s part to acquire.