Spell / Skill teaching

[Lerytha]

I whole-heartedly agree, with the idea of making it dependent on skill level. Basically, I would see the ranks corresponding as follows:

Basically, you teach to one level below your own skill level. Now, before we get people saying about having to be "grandmaster" to teach... let's actually look at "grandmaster". In a guild, it would imply you are the highest of the high, but there are still perfectly capable people below you who can teach. The grandmaster is... an incredible level of skill, legendary. To be taught be someone of that level would be a privelige, and so is more rare.

An example from RL: a French teacher, in secondary school, probably in my opinion varies from... Journeyman, to Expert. The masters and grandmasters of our world would be lecturing in universities. So, journeyman/expert teaching leads to apprentice/journeyman French skills, which is almost exactly what happens today.

No, someone who is inept at a skill cannot teach. But as the point has been made before, even a complete amateur at swordcraft can show someone how to hold a sword; even a complete amateur in the casting of a fireball, can show someone how to point, and throw sulphur.

The skill ranks would enable you to set a price to your teaching, as well. If you are a grandmaster, and you could (theoretically) train to master, then you could charge 10-20 platinum. If you are an amateur, you could probably charge 1?

And I'd like to say that before people say, "Oh, but twinks, etc": make this entire system dependent, or working a lot better, upon having a rank in the "teach" feat. Without that, your character doesn't know how to keep attention, how to simplify complex theories, etc. Imagine the "teach" feat as being the training teachers nowadays go through before they are allowed to teach. Requiring a feat point in "teach" would reduce the numbers of twinks teaching people. And also, your character would roleplay the teaching, which would in turn drive away the twinks. But I would also like to say... that we shouldn't limit such a brilliant idea based on a... fear-driven idea of an army of twinks ready to abuse the system.

Anyway... maybe it could work like this:

No rank in Teaching

You can only start teaching at Adept level, and even then you can only teach to three ranks below your skillevel, to reflect the fact that you are groping around to find the right words to explain.

1 rank in Teaching

You can start teaching at Expert level, and to two ranks below your skillevel. You are good at teaching, but even so trying to bring yourself "down" to the level of a person who doesn't know your skill is difficult.

2 ranks in Teaching

The ranks of the apprentices look upon your skills with wonder! When you speak, the complex becomes clear! You can teach even when just qualified, at Journeyman level, and to one rank below your level.

That makes a ranked system, and allows those who want apprentices, to put their RP where their mouth is, by paying the points for teaching. If not, then they can get a reputation as a generous master, or nice, but as one who... even though they try very hard, can never quite explain something right.

A kinda hybrid of most of the ideas. Or maybe it's exactly the same. But yeah. I've written it anyway.

~Ol

[Duranamir]

Lerytha has said exactly what i mean only clearer . This system as far as i am concerned can only be a great improvment on the current system and a real encoragement to RP.

Duranamir

[Scylere]

1) I think no one should be able to teach unless they have the teacher feat. You cannot teach proficiently, unless you have taken time to learn to teach and practiced.

2) I think the teacher feat should depict how high you can train a skill to, as opposed to how low you can start teaching.

3) I think if you have the teacher feat, you should be able to teach a skill once you reach journeymen.

4) I do not see a problem with having a daily limit or a daily failure percentage; that's normal, but it does not make sense to have a permanent failure.

5) I would be tempted to suggest that this be limited to skills and weapons, and not for spells. I would think you would have to be a master or grand master to teach a spell.


In all, allowing more opportunities for PCs to teach, definitely promotes rp. I've never understood why a PC mentor couldn't teach me anything. If there is a fear of abuse (which there is in everything), then limiting it to suggestion #1 will help. Also, maybe logs of PCs using the teacher feat could be kept. I'm not sure if that could work.

In reality, you could be a grandmaster, but never be able to teach anyone anything. In this case, a certain amount of wisdom and intelligence could be needed for the teacher feat.

[Dalvyn]

1) I think no one should be able to teach unless they have the teacher feat. You cannot teach proficiently, unless you have taken time to learn to teach and practiced.

Have you ever learned something from someone who is not a professional teacher? I learned how to walk and talk (well, in French) from my parents, none of which are teachers. I learned several new English words from talking with players and imms on FK, most of them are not teachers. What about haircutters, carpenters, artisans, and all those who learn by actually working with a professional haircutter/carpenter/artisan, who has not be taught to teach?

Sure, learning from a teacher should be more efficient (e.g., you can learn faster, because a teacher knows how to organize the teaching and how to present it, and you learn more, because a teacher knows what to teach you exactly, while others might know something but it might seem so obvious to them that they will not explicitly teach it).

I do not think that "teach" should be restricted to the teacher feat.

- Teach usable by anyone with a skill level of 10 or more, on a skill that the target can learn (i.e., on a skill that the target has in his/her guild), no matter whether this is a class skill for the teacher or not.

- Teach uses up experience [skill points?] from the student, but not from the master (actually, it could give experience to the master).

- Teachers can teach at most three times per real life day; students can be taught only once per real life day

- Each allowed use of the "teach" command would give 1 skill point (as a "mppractice" command) to the student, up to (2 x - 5)/3 (floored), where x is the teacher's skill level.

That would mean that a teacher with a skill level of ... could teach a student up to a skill level of ...
10 -> 5
11 -> 5
12 -> 6
13 -> 7
14 -> 7
15 -> 8
16 -> 9
17 -> 9
18 -> 10
19 -> 11
20 -> 11
21 -> 12
22 -> 13
23 -> 13
24 -> 14
25 -> 15

The idea is that what you can learn from a mob, you should be able to learn from a PC too; and actually to incite people to choose the PC learning option rather than the NPC one, because the PC one is the only one that can lead to roleplaying.

The teacher feat could then be used to increase the number of times you can teach someone or someone can be taught. For example, let's say that every character has a "saturation from learning" value: 0 for "I have not yet learned anything today" and 1 for "I am fed up with learning, I am not able to learn anything else today". Being taught by a character without the teacher feat would add 1 to this value (meaning that you cannot get any other teaching that day). Being taught by a character with the "teacher" feat would add only 0.5 (meaning that you can get another lesson, from that teacher or another one with the "teacher"). Another value could be used for "saturation from teaching".

Actually, it would be nice to also use those "saturation from teaching" values when learning from mobs too perhaps... meaning that you can't train 10 times in a line from a mob, but actually have to come back to him/her several times.

[Scylere]

The things you're listing Dalvyn, like haircutters, carpenters, artisans, are apprenticed, like you said. Apprenticeship takes a lot longer than teaching, like you say "more efficient and faster". You learned french after years of hearing it, and picking up a few words is a little different than learning to use a language proficiently.

You could be a grandmaster in short blades or swimming, but if you don't know how to teach your skill, the one learning from you could only learn by watching, a process that would take years.

I am still not convinced that everyone would be able to teach, just because they are good at something. If that were the case, I'd be out of a job;)

But, if that were the case, then I would suggest making skill progression tied into aging.

[Eltsac]

My think is, you can't teach a lot without being a teacher, but you can teach at least the basics.

On an exemple like training longsword :
you won't make someone good at it, you won't teach your student good complex attacks or anything if you are not good at teaching
But still, even not being a good teacher, you can show your student where to put his hands on the hilt and how to slash... i mean, inept really means the basics, and it's not so difficult to show the basics.

Now if you want we can set an intelligence prerequisite...
If teaching the basics of sword fighting was so hard, then there is no way you could learn sword fighting by yourself by simple try - errors when you only learnt how to hold the weapon.

Well it's my thinking.

Eltsac

[Balek]

I think that how easily you can teach someone should have something to do with charisma as well. I've met plenty of brilliant college professors who can't teach very well at all because they're just not expressive people. The ones who can communicate well are the ones who teach well.