Improving through study question

[AlexanderHowl]

Which is more than a little terrifying. Then again, a plane does not have a mind of its own, so it is not like it will decide to toss you out of its cockpit and then land on you. Horse will, rarely, do that if they object strongly enough to your presence (toss you off their back and then trample you).

Of course, anyone with property can get a horse and try to learn to ride without an instructor. If they find a patient horse, and they treat them well, they might not end up with too many broken bones before they decide to get lessons. Once in a blue moon, you also run into a natural who loves horse and whom horses love back, and it is like the horses teach them how to ride (Animal Empathy plus Animal Friend 4 would probably qualify).

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Which is more than a little terrifying. Then again, a plane does not have a mind of its own, so it is not like it will decide to toss you out of its cockpit and then land on you. Horse will, rarely, do that if they object strongly enough to your presence (toss you off their back and then trample you).

In my experience they're more likely to simply walk under the tree branch that is only about 1" higher off the ground that their shoulder (or the saddle), and scrape you off, then stop and look round at you as if to say "What on Earth are you doing down there?"

The bigger issue is them shying at anything and everything, and if you're not a competent rider or maybe you just got caught completely by surprise, down you go.

[Black Leviathan]

There's a learning curve that's difficult to represent in the GURPS mechanics. The amount of time versus the improvement in skill or just about every discipline is a vast curve. The first point in a skill would generally be knowledge attained in just a few hours of study or instruction. The hours you learn in a trial by fire would be disproportionately educational.

My general rule is skills can be purchased after CP cost squared times full days of practice. So if you want to buy your first point in a skill you'll get there after about a day of practice. If you want to put 4 points into buying up your skill this is over two weeks of practice and probably requires some help from an expert.

[safisher]

I've been a professional educator for over 20 years. I've taught everything from academic subjects at a 4-year university to First Aid, Guns, and Brawling. The fact is, people do not learn at the same rate even when learning the same subject. This besides the point that comparing learning speed between subjects is hard.

GURPS generally does not require a skill roll to learn each point's worth of improvement. It simplifies things to just an accounting measure. This learning differential is instead represented in GURPS by adding points to the skill based on the difficulty level of the skill relative to the stat. So, yes, it's silly that First Aid and Surgery both gain 1 point from 200 hours of study. But that 1 point will move you much more quickly move with First Aid than it will Surgery. The points don't exist in a vacuum. Instead, they are used as an accounting metric to determine what your study gets you. In other words, it's not ultimately the points you earn that matter, so much as the points compared skill difficulty and relative to the stat.

And yes, there are a few places where a roll can be used to impact learning.
Quick Learning Under Pressure requires a roll in order to "leap ahead" by acquiring a skill used by default during an adventure. The Monthly Study Roll, in GURPS Social Engineering, Back to School, allows a roll to impact how many hours the student acquires toward a skill each month. Low rolls get few hours, higher rolls get more hours. It's a good supplement for those interested in adding detail to GURPS character development and it supplies a useful mechanic to further describe students learning at different rates.

[Anthony]

BRP had (maybe still does, haven't looked at it in ages) had an interesting mechanic where improving skill required rolling against the skill and failing, thus causing skill improvement to slow down radically at high skill.

[Plane]

One thing I was wondering about this was its application to buying 1-time energy for spellcasting in GURPS Fantasy.

F161 "Meditative Magic" explains:

equivalent to gaining one character point through 200 hours of study
and spending it on 25 points of magical Signature Gear,
as discussed on p. 131.

I'm trying to understand the math. B293 lists 3 rates:
*4hrs on the Job = 1 hr
*2hrs self-teaching 1 hr
*1 = 1 with teacher (skill 12+)

If 1 day produces 1 energy point, then how many hours are you spending?

F162 gives variable rates too, like 2=1 for less-intense meditation (equal to self teaching) which implies that solo meditation works like 1=1 like if you had a teacher, even though you don't?

All I can figure, is that when talking about 25 points of magical signature gear, it's like buying a Manastone except there is no object and the spellcaster himself IS the magic stone?

Except... if it takes 200 hours of study to get 25 points of enchantment, then the ratio is basically 8 hours of study to get 1 point of enchantment...

Which sounds like an 8 hour day... but you can't actually build a 1-energy Manastone using 1 energy worth of enchantment, that would cost you (M70) 5 energy... plus it would come with the drawbacks of an object that people could take from you since there are no protective enchantments.

Isn't Meditative Magic actually WAY better than spending 200 hours in self-study to buy 35 energy worth enchantment (7 energy manastone) because 7 days x 24 hours = at most 168 hours you could spend studying.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Plane

If 1 day produces 1 energy point, then how many hours are you spending?

F162 gives variable rates too, like 2=1 for less-intense meditation (equal to self teaching) which implies that solo meditation works like 1=1 like if you had a teacher, even though you don't?

All I can figure, is that when talking about 25 points of magical signature gear, it's like buying a Manastone except there is no object and the spellcaster himself IS the magic stone?

Except... if it takes 200 hours of study to get 25 points of enchantment, then the ratio is basically 8 hours of study to get 1 point of enchantment...

Yes, that's exactly it. GURPS tends to assume an 8-hour work day; see the rules for long tasks. One character point equals 200 hours, and 200/8 = 25, so one character point equals 25 energy points from long-term enchantment.

The successive ratios are not a literal equivalent of the study rules, but an analog. Concentrated prayer and meditation get you the full rate; studying the precepts of your faith get you half; living a virtuous life gets you a quarter.

The energy is not actually stored in the spellcaster; it's more like having a bank account with a deity or a supernatural realm. See for example the Hindu concept of "acquiring merit."

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Anthony

BRP had (maybe still does, haven't looked at it in ages) had an interesting mechanic where improving skill required rolling against the skill and failing, thus causing skill improvement to slow down radically at high skill.

The basic rule is always the same. X hours of training allow to make an experience roll: a roll which has to be above your skill to gain 1dY % in that skill. Depending on the game (Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Basic...) and its edition, X and Y do vary.

Thus, higher is the skill, slower is the improvement, and thanks to dice rolls, it does vary from one character to the other.

But GURPS improvement do vary too. Because if the learning through study rules are the same for every character, the basic attributes and the advantages (talents, for instance) aren't. So the final skill level won't either.

Likewise, the GM can also pay attention to detail: how many hours with a teacher? How many without (homework and so on) ...

And, at last, there are earned character points too. People do live outstide of their training. And their life sometimes make them understand something important enough to improve.

Indeed, learning is never linear. You sometimes improve and other times you don't, despite off your effort... and then you jump at the next level without really understanding why (except the fact that you did work).

[Plane]

Another way to look at this is if you could spend 200 hours per character point to learn FP, then you could gain 1 FP per 600 hours...

B112 "Limited Use" would make FP you could only use once per day -40%. "One use EVER" being -80% doesn't seem that far off... in which case you're looking at taking 120 hours to learn 1 FP...

but 120/8hours = 15 days, so I guess I'm not any better off in making it cheaper.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Yes, that's exactly it. GURPS tends to assume an 8-hour work day; see the rules for long tasks. One character point equals 200 hours, and 200/8 = 25, so one character point equals 25 energy points from long-term enchantment.

But you see what I mean about Manastones right? 1 energy into an enchantment can't actually create 1 energy of indefinite storage for casting. It takes 5 energy to enchant a 1-energy manastone.

To buy a 1-energy manastone with 8 hours of study would require a ratio of 1 character point = 125 energy worth of enchantment.

That has the benefit of being something you can give to others, so would that mean something like 1/5 cost to enchant manastones that only the creator can use? I can see that being super-popular for enchanters!

On the other hand, it also has the benefit of not being stealable/destroyable, unlike a manastone, so that benefit seems like it should cost something too.

Another benefit is, as far as I know, you can combine the energy accumulated via Meditative Magic with either a Manastone/Powerstone, whereas you couldn't do that if you have multiple manastones/powerstones. You're limited to using 1 per spell...

It'd be a lot simpler if instead of buying 25 points of enchantment for 200 hours (ie 1 point of enchant for 8 hours) we were using the 1000 energy per character point ratio also mentioned on F131 instead.

1000 energy divided by 25 (the number of 8-hour days it takes to get to 200 hours) is 40 energy.

If we think about some of the differences...
+400% cumulative (borrowed from affliction, to cover being stackable with a powestone/amanstone)
+40% Can't Be Stolen (B117 inverting the cost of a limitation, since this is sort of built into manastone)
+60% Not Breakable (20 durability, 15 repairability, 25 SM)

+500% is 6x the cost, which would increase a 5-energy enchantment to 30 energy. I guess that might cover unpriceable aspects like it not having a "Power" which makes it fail to function in Low Mana?

Originally Posted by whswhs

The energy is not actually stored in the spellcaster; it's more like having a bank account with a deity or a supernatural realm. See for example the Hindu concept of "acquiring merit."

That just seems like a plus though, since it means nobody can steal it from you or detect it on you. Unless there was some process you had to go to for accessing it for spellcasting that made it less convenient to use than normal FP/ER.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

As someone who grew up with horses, a tight turn is not a routine action. It requires a decent amount of skill to convince a horse to do so (and to not cause the horse to fall and roll on you). The other actions are really only routine within a riding ring, competitive riding and/or long distance riding is different story entirely. And no riding instructor worth their salt would let an individual with only 200 hours of instruction go off without supervision.

Really? (not being snarky just genuinely surprised). 200 hours that would be 25x 8 hour days or 5 working weeks of full and full time instruction.


Don't get me wrong I'm not saying riding is easy (and riding a large animal is inherently dangerous so the risk of failing can be high, especially when you multiply it by certain contexts like riding by yourself in varied environments) and I take the point not all riding activities/contexts are equal in difficulty.

However that said:

Originally Posted by safisher

... So, yes, it's silly that First Aid and Surgery both gain 1 point from 200 hours of study. But that 1 point will move you much more quickly move with First Aid than it will Surgery. The points don't exist in a vacuum. Instead, they are used as an accounting metric to determine what your study gets you. In other words, it's not ultimately the points you earn that matter, so much as the points compared skill difficulty and relative to the stat.....

This I think is absolutely a key point in all this.

Do you want a Stat 10 Skill+1 first aider cleaning up and bandaging our 2pt cutting wound on your leg, yep no worries. They might not get it right first time but they've probably got enough chances to get it right before the situation gets critical and unless they do something really outlandish the fail states of a failed roll aren't that rough or immediate.

But fancy having a Stat 10 Skill +1 Surgeon cracking your chest?