Training

The Dungeon Master's Guide gives training (to gain experience levels) as an option for DMs. There is much to recommend training as a necessity for level gains. Having a PC train with a master, mentor, or tutor—probably with others of his profession around—allows many, many things to happen naturally without their obviously being spoonfed by the DM. Rumors and news can be caught up on. Hints and tips (e.g., concerning the usefulness of some of the new equipment items reviewed elsewhere) can be exchanged. New friends and contacts can be made. Intrigues and scams can be plotted, gossiped about, and initiated; employment can be offered; schisms and factions within the guild can become a focus for adventuring. All this is just for starters. Training is a natural way for the DM to enrich the game in all sorts of ways.

Second, while certain skill gains can be seen as the result of practice, this does not apply to all the advances experience brings. New weapon and nonweapon proficiencies are the most obvious example. How can a thief who has never used a short sword, for example (because he has not previously been proficient with it), suddenly develop a proficiency in its use without training? This is obviously wholly unrealistic. How can a thief learn an Etiquette proficiency, enabling him to pull scams on the rich and haughty more easily, without a tutor to coach him in upper-crust, high society ways? He sure can't learn Etiquette from a dungeon crawl or wilderness hike! Likewise, if the player chooses to pile most of the 30 ``skill points'' gained for a level into one or two skills only, the PC could well need a specialist tutor to coach him in these skills—a good way to bring in one or two of the specialist thief kits as NPCs, too.

So, training is an important element of the game, and the thieves' guild is the place where the PC thief will have the best chance of finding a tutor to train him. He may have to wait a week or two, or maybe a little longer if the DM wishes this, but by and large the guild will go to some lengths to make tutors available.

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