Retraining in Pathfinder 2e || Oa6 GM Corner

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[kitsunewarlock]

Thank you for this. I love retraining and 2e retraining is a completely different beast than 1e retraining, largely *because* the game is so much more balanced. 1e "retraining for power" (and the prerequisite shenanigans) gave retraining a bad reputation that needs to be forgotten. Retraining minimizes negative play experience, which should be the goal of every group of friends <3

[squidrecluse]

I'm a firm believer in the idea that if players are able to play the character they want to play (within reason), then they'll be more invested in the game, which in turn will make your job as the GM easier and more enjoyable. It's always worked for me.

[smoik]

Im always a fan of more variation in playstyles and personal stories of my player characters, so if they want to retrain something (ofc I'm not gonna push them to do so) I will always allow it.
Also maybe it's because I'm a people pleaser, but cmon why force them to play something they're not 100% comfortable with atm ^^
I think the most important thing with retraining for me will always be to find a cool possibility to integrate it into the campaigns storyline, then it actually just adds coolness to the campaign overall!
Nice Video, enjoyed it very much! Good thing I recently followed you on Twitter :P

[hawkakux]

Yes! I always give my players a free retraining whenever a new source book comes out for anything that my be in there (and any prereqs if necessary) because it wasn't an option before, so i'm not gonna penalize or make you have to use up downtime to retrain something you couldn't have previously taken.

[rylandrc]

Where retraining can be difficult is in situations where retraining one feat means that another feat/feature needs to be retrained, which can lead to another feat, etc.

For example, learning a feat that gives you auto proficiency increases in a skill, but does that mean you also need to retrain each skill increase you had made to that skill already with your existing skill increases?

Another example is where you want to move a whole chain of archetype feats down by two levels to make room for a higher level feat (ie: from 4, 6, 8 to 2, 4, 6, so you can have an open level 8 feat slot). You still want to keep those archetype feats, but do you really need to retrain to move an archetype feat from a level 4 feat to a level 2 feat? Seems a little silly to forget something just to relearn it at a lower level.

[DJchilcott]

I'm fortunate enough to have at least one other player who also GMs, so I can't call myself a Forever GM, if I was forced to choose between between being a Forever GM and a Permaplayer, I think I'd choose GMing.