Breaking (Bad) Scholars

[hcobb]

Speaking of learning, where do you split out the teacher subtalent of Scholar?

[Shostak]

I would not bother.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Speaking of learning, where do you split out the teacher subtalent of Scholar?

I bake that ability into my Tier 3 (i.e. mastery-level) talents. Teaching is something a character can attempt at the expert/journeyman level, but 'master' is where the bonuses to the activity (and the paycheck) tend to kick in.

Of course, not all talents have a 3-tier structure in my ruleset so for the rest (assuming that character-as-instructor is a desired option) I have a talent called MAGISTER that will supplement them and turn the figure into a teacher/trainer/tutor for the selected skill.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Speaking of learning, where do you split out the teacher subtalent of Scholar?

What should scholars be able to teach? I mean, scholarly things, sure, I guess languages, but not how to use a halberd. Are they really teachers in a sense that weapon instructors aren't? If so, in what sense?

[EKB]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

Big call to make a talent have a negative effect.

That's a further argument against the Scholar talent having any reaction modifier that's either common or sanctioned in the official talent description.

I think it can still be split up, for several reasons:

• It's perfectly reasonable to play a character who knows a bit about scholarly stuff but isn't a full expert yet. Some GMs choose to represent this with studies or in some other way but multiple talents is a simple method in the style of TFT.
• It's reasonable to have a character who is fascinated by history, or by traveller's tales, or whatever. Even if a formal degree at a university teaches all these subjects, some people (autodidacts, dropouts, etc.) are going to only learn some of them.
• The character who has had a classical education, taught by a scholar, but isn't a scholar themselves, is a common trope in fiction and certainly existed in reality.

That's a reasonable argument for splitting Scholar into something like "Lesser Scholar" and "(Full) Scholar" with the combination costing 3 points total, the full Scholar talent requiring IQ 13, and if you can come up with a good way to mechanically implement the Lesser Scholar talent.

I'm still opposed to splitting the talent along any sort of "field of study" lines, such as cultures vs history vs languages. IMHO there's too much cross-connection for a clean split there.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by EKB

That's a further argument against the Scholar talent having any reaction modifier that's either common or sanctioned in the official talent description.

It's only an argument against a negative modifier, not a positive one.

That's a reasonable argument for splitting Scholar into something like "Lesser Scholar" and "(Full) Scholar" with the combination costing 3 points total [...] I'm still opposed to splitting the talent along any sort of "field of study" lines, such as cultures vs history vs languages. IMHO there's too much cross-connection for a clean split there.

The second point I list is an argument for allowing characters to learn just one field. I think as a rule of thumb it's good to let players make as many decisions as make sense, for the sake of agency.

I think you might be assuming that the only way to learn Geography or History is to take a formal degree from a university, but in fact I think there are ways parts of Scholar might find their way onto a character.