If you’re about to enter a quest which deals heavily with monster X, but your player picked a lot of skills that deal with monster Y, you shouldn’t allow them to just change abilities mid-stream. That’s lame.

If you make a mistake that you’re not happy with… deal with it. You should be able to roleplay your choices. In fact, sometimes… being forced to continue a particular direction with a character challenges the player to incorporate that facet of their story and often enlightens the player (read: opens their mind) to defining a new aspect to roleplay that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

I like things set in stone. I like randomization. Sometimes it’s more fun to be at a disadvantage (skill-selection wise) so that when you’re successful you feel like you’ve made a greater accomplishment.

If you showed me a list of skills and I built a character to level 10 however I wanted… I’d usually pick several archetypes that I’ve already built in the past. It’s boring; a character can’t help but pick the min-max options for any particular character type. In 3rd edition, if you had a choice between Color Spray and Burning Hands, 8/10 times you’d pick the damage-dealer, right? Yet, when you’re granted skills and asked to make a character based around them… that’s when it becomes fun again and a challenge.

Letting a player swap skills like it was a sandbox game turns every class into a mush of predictability; they’ll always take advantage of every situation… ie. little challenge and no definition for their character.

I know people will say that my stern interpretation of this rule takes some of the fun out of D&D, but hear me out. I’ve found that many PCs want to swap out powers that they just took before they can really see how useful they are. If you’ve got a power that is kick-ass vs undead but go two levels without fighting a single skeleton then you’ll think the power is useless. However, the very first time you fight undead you’ll suddenly realize how cool it really is.

I guess the other point I’m trying to make is that training in a skill, feat or class power takes time. You shouldn’t just wake up one morning after leveling and be able to make that kind of change on the fly.

I’m ok with retraining because I am usually more abreast of the rules than my players, but less-obsessed GMs probably do need to limit how much swapping they allow.

I think loose restrictions are good for a group that doesn’t meet often. For a group that meets quite frequently, the opportunity to retrain will come up more often and may not need to be adjusted.

On a completely unrelated note, how do you guys feel about players having alternate characters rolled and swapping them out occasionally? Is it worthwhile to let players experiment with new classes, or does it destroy the emotional attachment to just one character?

Obviously (to me), each gaming group should do what works best for that particular group. I’m personally happy with the rules as written. At the very least, they offer players a lot more flexibility than 3.x did.

It has no sense under narrative and storyline point of view, but it really works for my group.
The whole level mechanism doesn’t make sense anyway, so I just don’t mind.

Any differentiation between characters of the same class is purely based on a player’s style of play or desire to be different.

And, while being stuck with a power might force a player to find new ways to use it, I find that those powers are often avoided in interest of the obvious “best” power for each level. If players know they are free to switch around powers, they’re more likely to “test drive” things they may never have tried before.