It makes sense that over time both levels and skills (proficiencies) would degrade, especially from disuse as well as age, yes?
I am curious what you all have done to reflect this in your game for adventurers (NPCs and PCs alike) who have settled down (if only briefly) and retired or taken a hiatus from the active scene.
1) a: How do you apply level and skill atrophy?
b: How quickly are levels and skills diminished (at what rate)?
c: What is the bare minimum they will drop?
2) Should the character decide to hone his/her skills once more, how do you rule recovery (at what rate are they regained?)?
Ex: I have a character (he actually jumps between NPC and PC status) who was initially an 11th lvl fighter. However, he gave up the active adventuring when he settled down with a family and took up a steady job as a blacksmith. As a result he was 'knocked down' to 8th lvl. Recently this poor fellow has had to pick up his blade and become an active, though reluctant, adventurer. How long does it take him to recover his former level and skill ranks?
Ideas, thoughts, and suggestions are greatly welcome.
I never consider that simply because it wouldn't be 'fun' for the player.
If you do consider such loss of skill, I suggest you only do it for the purposes of role-playing. After all, your DM isn't going to send your fighter out on an 11th level adventure, but tell you that he is only an 8th level fighter now because of skill atrophy. He's just going to lower the challenges to a more appropriate level. Why not just leave the fighter at 11th level and say he gets a small initiative penalty for the first few battles to reflect his aging muscles and lack of practice. Once he's back in the swing of things (pun intended ), he's good to go.
For PCs, the only atrophy is due to age-related ability score alterations, as it is assumed that, due to not role-playing every minute of the PCs lives out, they use some of their off-time either making use of their skills, in at least some minor way, or learning more about them. Besides, not physically making use of a physical skill doesn't necessarily make it atrophy. Quite the opposite, if one is paying attention. Inactivity can lead to improvements if the inactivity involved learning something (even without actually doing it). Case in point: I took about two years off from miniature painting in my 20's. I wasn't too bad at the time, but when I took it up again, I painted noticeably better. That had nothing to do with practice (because I wasn't practicing at all during that 2-year period) and everything with increasing my technical knowledge which I properly applied upon taking up the hobby again. You can get that simply by talking to (or reading something written by) people who know more about something than you do. I also haven't ridden a bike in ten years, but I could get right back on one this very moment and be able to do it, and do it well after only a few minutes. Barring mental or physical degradation/alteration of some sort, there shouldn't be any noticeable change in skill usage. Adventurers are exceptional individuals, so they would best be characterized by the exceptional people we see around us everyday.
As to NPCs, if you want them to be lacking in some way related to skills, you just write it that way (see above for causes). For instance, you have a thief who has been "retired" for fifteen years, and is now a relatively lazy and overindulging crime boss. During his retirement, he has packed an extra 200 lbs. onto his once svelt frame. Feel free to tack on some hefty penalties (to the point of a complete lack of success) when butterball tries to use his Tumbling skill to do a triple back hand spring up onto a 10 ft. high roof. If he tries to pick a lock or disarm a trap though, he might be just as good, or even better than, he once was, because even though he hasn't picked a lock or disarmed a trap in over ten years, during that time it just so happens that he read every treatise on mechanical devices he could get his hands on, and now knows more about them than he ever did. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
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