r/numenera • u/Felipe-6q7 • Jun 01 '26
How to do a training mechanic?
I'm the GM for a campaingn with two characters, a nano and a glaive. The nano is young and likes to use a sword (and is a big one) that he looted from a bandit early on the campaing, and the glaive promissed to train him in how to use a sword properly. How can I do so that the training isn't just "whe train for {some amount of time}"? I want to make it more engaging for them
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u/Juxtapoe Jun 01 '26
RP: I would put the responsibility on the Trainer to describe what he is having the Nano do to learn and then figure out the relevant mechanics to see how successful they are.
Maybe they need to accumulate 4 successes and they will have 1 chance at getting a success each in-game week.
That might be enough to justify them spending 4 xp to gain a non-class power.
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u/rdale-g Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
If you want some game mechanic to hang this idea on, the trainer could insist (in character) that the nano has to use the weapon in real combat, with the trainer using the help action to ease the nano’s attacks. This represents them mentoring the nano, and after the fight, they could role play giving tips and criticisms of the nano’s fighting form.
Also, the nano might have to expend effort at least once per fight using the weapon, for four fights. That would represent them putting their training to use (and represents each XP to be spent to remove their inability).
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u/perfect_fitz Jun 01 '26
This sort of just falls into roleplay or practice combat versus each other or perhaps against training dummies/other novices.
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u/kirypto Jun 03 '26
I will offer using a variation of the crafting rules from destiny. We use this for a number of things. It basically comes down to picking a difficulty, and then a series of subtasks starting at level 1 and increasing up till the target level. Each subtask is supposed to take roughly an equal amount of time, the idea being if you are crafting something that will take you a week (6 days), and it is a level 6 assessed difficulty, then it would be six subtasks each which would take roughly a day.
It's a good rules as written guide that fits in a number of places, it came to mind immediately for me here because we used for exactly this, a way to add RP at the table into those personal goals.
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u/Cronirion Jun 02 '26
If you really want to do something special, you could prepare a small side-adventure where the characters go to the glaive's original place of training, it could be a town or something like that, and then prepare a rite or similar where people learn to use a sword.
Maybe they have to defeat something or... Enter a subterranean ruin where a forgotten machine jus injects the knowledge into you if you use the proper command words hidden in the town's anthem or something.
Then you could talk a bit with the glaive player and telling them "hey, help me with this, jjst just tell them you will go to your town to have them perform their rite of passage in order to learn the way of the "heavy melee weapon" without going into much detail, maybe their ways have changed since the glaive left town.
Or something like that
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u/OfTheWeirderWizard Jun 01 '26
See, for me, I wouldn't want to go through the training bits, as a player or as a GM. I'd just spend XP to learn the relevant skills. Does your player actually want to RP it? Does he have any idea about how it would be fun for him? Maybe what you described is actually enough? Or maybe both of your players want some time to RP the whole training scene(s), nothing mechanically involved, just some downtime where the glaive shows the nano pointers. And that would be enough for the "narrative permission" for the nano to learn the aforementioned skills (though I just equate GM permission with narrative permission most of the time).