Characteristics training

[Brootse]

Who can train Characteristics?

How many people they can train at once?

And why does it cost 500L? Game balance?

 

[Blindhamster]

Makes sense for game balance. Characteristic training is a pretty big thing I would think. Has an impact on lots of stuff

[HreshtIronBorne]

Does someone need better characteristics than the PC to train them in that stat? 

If Characteristic Training is 500 L then why do none of the professions have incomes that come anywhere near that? It looks like people that teach skills, magic, or other stuff should be making WAY more than the Standard of Living Tables and stuff show. 

[g33k]

2 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Does someone need better characteristics than the PC to train them in that stat? ... 

IMHO -- it depends.

Someone can understand the what-and-how, and coach/train STR, for example, without being as strong... Correcting posture, grip, and other techniques, recognizing when to ease back, when to add weight, and when the suffering is juuuuust right...

OTOH, it's hard to spot errors of reason, logic, induction & deduction, etc, if you aren't (at least) as smart as the person making those errors...

Edited May 7, 2020 by g33k
Typo

[allenowen]

There's no reason someone who has a lower STR can't train someone of higher STR: Mickey training Rocky, for example. Works for DEX too; chasing chickens around for example.

[g33k]

36 minutes ago, allenowen said:

There's no reason someone who has a lower STR can't train someone of higher STR: Mickey training Rocky, for example. Works for DEX too; chasing chickens around for example.

I've been known to "duel" with my kitty cats, fingerboop vs claws.

[HreshtIronBorne]

Then, what is the Secret of Training a Stat. Mechanically, why can't the PCs all just sign up to be the local stat trainer? It seems like a great way to make more money than landed nobility. 5 seasons of workable time, dunno if Sacred time counts as a season for training, would still be some 1250 Lunars a year in RQ:G money. Which is bonkers. 

[GAZZA]

3 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Then, what is the Secret of Training a Stat. Mechanically, why can't the PCs all just sign up to be the local stat trainer? It seems like a great way to make more money than landed nobility. 5 seasons of workable time, dunno if Sacred time counts as a season for training, would still be some 1250 Lunars a year in RQ:G money. Which is bonkers. 

Perhaps what's needed is some Knowledge skills: Train (Characteristic), which has a default of 0 and cannot be raised by experience. If a PC wants to try training someone's STR, they need to make a successful skill roll or else the effort is wasted; for that reason, to actually make a living at it needs 90% skill (for example), but PCs can try training each other if they like.

Remember also that that training cost is revenue, not necessarily profit. Perhaps it requires significant investment in special diet, drugs, and equipment in order to perform the training, which consumes 50% or more of that fee.

[Shiningbrow]

4 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Then, what is the Secret of Training a Stat. Mechanically, why can't the PCs all just sign up to be the local stat trainer? It seems like a great way to make more money than landed nobility. 5 seasons of workable time, dunno if Sacred time counts as a season for training, would still be some 1250 Lunars a year in RQ:G money. Which is bonkers. 

That's only if you gather enough people who.are willing and able to shell out that sort of money... And obviously, there aren't too many who can.

[HreshtIronBorne]

It is 2 seasons and 500 Lunars for training. Finding just a single person that even has that much cash is gonna be hard, except PC adventurers. I don't know if the economics really jive. I mostly don't deal with that level of bookkeeping anyways. 

[Brootse]

I divided the price by 10 to make it less absurd.

[David Scott]

14 hours ago, Brootse said:

And why does it cost 500L?

One of my players pointed out that this was clearly the cost of a single person attending the class. Two people would pay 250 each, etc.

14 hours ago, Brootse said:

How many people they can train at once?

Would depend on the class. For the physical stats, likely 5-10, may be more depending on the instructor - think gym instructors - so ex-soldiers, mercenaries, etc.

For Charisma, probably 5-10. In modern terms I see this in terms of a finishing school (ignoring gender bias). Public speaking, presentation skills, personal grooming, etc. I'd say temples would be the main source of teachers - Rune Lords, priests, etc.

POW is already covered and I think the cost is 500 per person. No limit on numbers, except temple size, but even then there's always outside. This 500 would count as tithing should your character need to do it.

[Brootse]

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

One of my players pointed out that this was clearly the cost of a single person attending the class. Two people would pay 250 each, etc.

Would depend on the class. For the physical stats, likely 5-10, may be more depending on the instructor - think gym instructors - so ex-soldiers, mercenaries, etc.

For Charisma, probably 5-10. In modern terms I see this in terms of a finishing school (ignoring gender bias). Public speaking, presentation skills, personal grooming, etc. I'd say temples would be the main source of teachers - Rune Lords, priests, etc.

Yeh, that's kinda how it worked in RQ3. But the cost is still a tad high. The 500L cost is for two seasons, so a trainer would earn 1250L a year, which is over twice the amount needed for petty king standard of living.

[David Scott]

26 minutes ago, Brootse said:

two seasons

Where does it say 2 seasons?

[Sumath]

One way you could rationalize the cost is that trainers (like most people) belong to a temple (and are probably Rune level) and much of the money is a donation to the temple rather than an individual trainer, since the temple must release the trainer from other duties for two seasons.

[Sumath]

15 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Where does it say 2 seasons?

p 418 RQG 'each attempt takes two full seasons'.

[Lordabdul]

On 5/7/2020 at 10:51 AM, Brootse said:

Who can train Characteristics?

It might depend on the characteristic but usually everything starts with temples. Raw DEX or STR might be trainable at Babeester Gor or Humakt temples as part of athletic or martial training, while CHA might be trainable at Ernalda temples. I personally make INT trainable, obviously at Lhankor Mhy temples.

Some characteristics might also be trainable by lone teachers, like the usual western trope of the isolated mysterious martial arts teacher living at the top of the mountain or something. Chasing down such a teacher is probably more a matter of roleplaying than anything... but it might be cheaper than a temple.

Quote

How many people they can train at once?

If the stat increase is done by research, not many people might be able to huddle around the research material. If it's done by actual training, it would depend on the situation but unless you've got a party of 12+ PCs, I wouldn't worry about whether a teacher can train 2 people vs 4 people.

Quote

And why does it cost 500L? Game balance?

I agree with the many people who say it's ridiculously overpriced. But the rules only say "usually" -- so the price is not fixed. Besides, I think this is the price a temple charges, and a lot of that money might be split between multiple teachers, along with a heavy tax going to the temple organization (so nope, the teachers wouldn't live like kings, but they're probably fairly wealthy priests or other ranking people in the temple). Like I said, a harder to find lone teacher might be much cheaper, but require a whole adventure to find.

It seems to me game balance would have been better achieved by re-using the almost-universal BRP mechanic of somehow rolling over your current score to see if you can increase it (which is a mechanic that is used for "research-based" stat improvement). At least it would have made things more consistent. That's maybe a question for Jeff's RQ Q&A thread.

Edited May 9, 2020 by lordabdul

[Joerg]

Characteristics are tied to elemental runes, so possibly the trainer needs to be strong enough in the elemental rune in question. That makes the trainers likely to be rune levels, which in turn explains the high training cost for training characteristics. 

[Akhôrahil]

All training prices in RQG are ridiculous, it's just that characteristics training is even more ridiculous.

I assume these are old RQ2 "balanced" money sinks? Because they make absolutely no sense within the RQG framework.

[Akhôrahil]

5 hours ago, lordabdul said:

If the stat increase is done by research, not many people might be able to huddle around the research material. If it's done by actual training, it would depend on the situation but unless you've got a party of 12+ PCs, I wouldn't worry about whether a teacher can train 2 people vs 4 people.

This means that you have the "party training trick" available - each season, one PC trains the others, taking turns. This is (usually) more efficient than everyone practicing, and avoids the absurd costs for training.

Edited May 9, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Lordabdul]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

This means that you have the "party training trick" available - each season, one PC trains the others, taking turns. This is (usually) more efficient than everyone practicing, and avoids the absurd costs for training.

1. Is it a problem? Study groups are a thing, and they often indeed help. Well, except in the TV show "Community" where they're obviously totally useless.
2. There's a difference between being good at something and being able to teach. Sadly, RQG doesn't have rules for this (there's no Teaching skill) so one would have to use house rules (I have a few ideas there).
3. We're talking about characteristics, here, but remember that for any other ability, training is capped at 75%.

Edited May 9, 2020 by lordabdul

[Brootse]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

This means that you have the "party training trick" available - each season, one PC trains the others, taking turns. This is (usually) more efficient than everyone practicing, and avoids the absurd costs for training.

There are no rules saying that the trainer can't get trained by someone else during the same season.

 

6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

1. Is it a problem? Study groups are a thing, and they often indeed help. Well, except in the TV show "Community" where they're obviously totally useless.

Such a great show!

[jajagappa]

6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

There's a difference between being good at something and being able to teach. Sadly, RQG doesn't have rules for this (there's no Teaching skill) so one would have to use house rules (I have a few ideas there).

This came up back in RQ2 days as well.  There was a whole article written on it in one of the old Different World issues, including a skill for it IIRC, but overall it just added complexity.

[Shiningbrow]

8 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Well, except in the TV show "Community" where they're obviously totally useless.

Hey! They passed, didn't they? So they weren't that useless!

9 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Sadly, RQG doesn't have rules for this (there's no Teaching skill) so one would have to use house rules (I have a few ideas there)

Would those ideas include introducing a a Teaching skill???

[Shiningbrow]

7 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

This came up back in RQ2 days as well.  There was a whole article written on it in one of the old Different World issues, including a skill for it IIRC, but overall it just added complexity.

Pushing my memory, but I've seen it somewhere (MRQII??) where quite simply the student adds the Teacher's critical % to the student's increase... Or something like that. E.g.  Teacher has Teach at 60%, so Crit of 3%. Student and teacher roll for success. If both succeed, student rolls 1D6(?) % + 3% for this training increase.... Or something similar....