Teaching /AP Bleedover

[Angelalex242]

Ever wondered 'how is the new guy with worse common skills supposed to learn anything if he never gets to roll?'

By being taught, of course. Through this idea, if a character does something AP worthy, even if it's not enough to get him an AP (Or he's maxed out that category) he can pass the AP on to his Fellowship Focus. It stays in the same group, of course.

Thus when Aragorn and his awe score of 6 puts someone in his place, he can give the personality AP to Frodo, who's learning from him.

[robert_pat]

It's an interesting idea, but I think that there would have to be tight limits on it, for two reasons.

Mechanically, it would be unfair that, theoretically, a character could do nothing at all (or nothing right at all) with their common skills, but still advance at a reasonable rate. AP is a reward for success, and sharing or gifting AP dilutes that.

Thematically, I'd cite the rules for generational experience. No matter how much experience an adventurer has, they can only pass on at most a handful of experience points, even if they're a legendary hero who retires to teach their successor. Besides a handful of them (Vocational skills come to mind), common skills are best learned through practice. It doesn't matter how often you've seen someone swim across the Anduin, if you never so much as jog, you're not going to get any more Athletic.

[Deadmanwalking]

The other issue, aside from those already mentioned, is the consequences.

See, right now the rules strongly encourage having a wide diversity of skills for each individual, at least one per AP category, which is neat mechanically and a very solid bit of genre emulation thematically. But with that rule, there suddenly stops being a lot of incentive to do that. Your one guy with Persuade 6 can just provide all the Personality AP for an entire group.

Which actually brings up another problem: APs aren't typed when you spend them. So the APs someone gets for watching someone succeed at Persuade might get spent on Travel. This isn't a big deal when it's one person's Persuade contributing to his own advancement (after all, he'll likely enhance his Persuade eventually), but when watching gets you AP, you rapidly get people watching Persuade and never getting any better at it but winding up with much better Travel really rapidly...or vice versa. Actually, most likely and vice versa as one person devotes points to Travel exclusively while the other does Persuade.

Not everyone would do this, obviously, but it's counter-genre enough that the system sure as heck shouldn't encourage it.

[Angelalex242]

Well, note my draft of the idea says 'pass on to fellowship focus.' Aragorn can't pass the free AP onto Legolas, he has to give it to Frodo. In turn, Legolas can't give anything to Frodo, he passes it on to Gimli. Etc.

So Aragorn can only ever pass 3 personality points on, because he can't give 'em to anyone else.

As for athletics, presumably, you teach the other guy how to swim, just like an RL swim instructor would. Kids learn to swim that way regularly.

[Deadmanwalking]

Okay, but that doesn't really solve the problem, just narrow its scope. You still wind up with one of a pair having maxed Persuade and no incentive for the other to gain any of it despite the constant 'teaching' from the guy with lots. Or a chain of people each making several skills completely unnecessary for others.

And the issue isn't that you shouldn't be able to teach Athletics, it's that you shouldn't be able to do so by using Craft and having Athletics 0.

[Angelalex242]

Hmmm.

Okay. New addition.

"You cannot raise a skill with bonus AP higher then the mentor has. Bonus AP must therefore be recorded separately."

[robert_pat]

"You cannot raise a skill with bonus AP higher then the mentor has. Bonus AP must therefore be recorded separately."

Just to be sure I have this straight, an example. PC 1 has Athletics 6 / Travel 1. PC 2 has Athletics 0 / Travel 3. PCs 1 and 2 are each other's fellowship focus. PC 2 cannot use gifted AP to increase their Travel skill, because PC 2's Travel is higher than PC 1's Travel. Likewise with PC 1 using gifted AP on Athletics.

I think that if you put a cap on the total amount of AP that can be gifted in a given Adventuring phase, that'd be enough restrictions to make sure this rule is used reasonably and fairly, while still making sense from a narrative perspective.

The only problem would be that it'd be a helluva pain to keep track of this for everyone.

[Angelalex242]

That's the general idea.

If A is Travel 3 Persuade 0, and B is Travel 1 Persuade 3, then A can raise persuade, but not travel. And B can raise travel, but not persuade. This makes sure you're actually teaching things you're qualified to teach. If the dwarf is teaching craft to someone else (aye lad, this is how ye hold the hammer. And pump those bellows!) , that makes sense. If he's somehow 'teaching' courtesy, not so much.

[poosticks7]

In my opinion teaching someone would be a Fellowship phase undertaking not something done in the adventure phase.

[Angelalex242]

Which denies the possibility of 'field training.' Or 'on the job training' if you like. With something like travel, the number one way you get better at is by actually going places. Even somebody with higher travel can only teach you by correcting mistakes you make on the road.

"No, no, wearing your pack like that distributes the weight wrong, wear it like this..."