Teachers and Mentors

[windmark728]

My Players and I have just recently been enjoying the RQ Legend game. The group just made it through a 2nd game session and after awarding Improvement Rolls, I am wondering about the following:

There appears to be no minimum time constraint on skill improvement when using Improvement Rolls. In other words, should skill self-improvement take a certain amount of time, compared to being trained by a Mentor, for a week? And futher more, should Common skills be more quickly advanced than Advanced skills? I guess the same goes for learning new self-taught Advanced skills.

Speaking of Mentors:
When advancing a already known skill, does using a Mentor negate the Improvement Roll cost?

Also, it appears to me, if a character improves a skill by themselves, he/she has a chance to advance the skill by 1d4+1 points (minimum of +2 points). If the character is using the services of a mentor (without the Teaching skill), he/she may get a skill advance of Int/5. This seems to be only a good thing if a character has at least a 10 Intelligence (10/5=2; +2 points).

Just wondering if I am interpreting the rules correctly.

 

[AnaliseLameth]

Improvement rolls are only used for self training, you don't need to use an improvement roll for formal training, as stated on page 71.

When you are improving skills using improvement rolls, you are actually spending the time "learning by doing" as you adventure, which is why there is no minimum time. You will notice that learning some new advanced skills can only be done by formal training.

If you are taught by a mentor who doesn't have the teaching skill, then you are correct in your assumption that you need to have an INT of 10 to get the minimum +2% you can score for self training. However, I don't feel this is off base, because the environment in which you are learning is quite different and don't forget you aren't using up a valuable improvement roll. A mentor who has no teaching experience, may in fact may have difficulty in putting their ideas across in a way that's easy to digest. You need to have enough intelligence of your own to make sense of the "lesson". If you have a lower INT you might assume that you are a "learn by doing" rather than a "learn by rote" person, and you learn more by making mistakes and experiencing first hand what works and what doesn't work.

 

[windmark728]

Thanks for the quick reply!