Boni-snatching an apprentice: nature vs. nuture

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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I was responding on my phone before, so I left the following for now.

I don't think it's spelled out explicitly, so take it as you like it. On the other hand, it is explicitly stated that the individual Gift is different for each person. People don't become used to the Gift, they become used to the people who have the Gift. People who are around the Gift for a long time learn to recognize it for what it is (think Redcaps, and the covenfolk that have direct interaction with multiple magi on a frequent basis). Stick four young people in a room, with some nitwit in front of them chattering away, they're going to be spending most of their time thinking about the people around them, and the nitwit up front is concerned for his own safety because of the homocidal maniac, the sex fiend, the deviant and the creepy quiet one in the corner who never stops staring at him. If you don't want it to stack, then you don't want it to stack. And in that case, why aren't other covenants doing it? Your stated objective was to be simulationist and "to identify any gaping holes that would blow verisimilitude out of the water." Why is your covenant the first to do this? One thing that supports the idea that penalties from multiple Gifted children stack, is how Gifted children in the Theban Tribunal aren't all placed in one central location, and are instead sent to various magi throughout the Tribunal until the next septennial gathering where the Gifted children select masters. If it wasn't a problem, I'm sure that there would be a boarding school and they would all be sent to that one location. Would make life much easier for everyone, I'm sure.

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...You just described the Breakfast Club.

(Oh, John Huges. Is there nothing that we can not learn from your works?)

More seriously - To me, what you describe is a -3 penalty (or maybe more a -5 borderline "Blatant Gift" scenario.) Which is to say, a scenario in which an average Teacher's assistant (Com 0, Teaching 2, no additional modifiers) will be almost completely lost, and will fail miserably in teaching anything meaningful. (Com 0 + 2 Teaching + 3 Teaching bonus -3 or -5 = 2 or 0 xp/season.) That's a big "F" in terms of instruction.

I say this because I've BEEN that TA, and I've observed that class, in a couple of different scenarios -

  1. a few paranoid schizophrenic children my parents have fostered short term (more common in the foster care system than you'd suspect - the unholy trifecta of drugs, neglect, and inherited insanity make for a nasty, if depressingly common, combo.) I could not get the child to do anything with the rest of the group (my extended family at Thanksgiving), but my parents could.

  2. My mother's an English teacher, and has taught at alternative schools before - and what you describe above is, to a lesser extent, a rough junior high. (-1/-2 reputations, but for the school only, with some learning issues). 30 students in a classroom, with maybe a third of them having different -1 reps, don't make for a -10 learning environment. Managing that sort of thing is what experienced teachers do on a daily basis.

  3. I've observed special needs martial arts classes, put on by my local city government - once a week, a bunch of autistic folks in a halfway house went to the dojo I was training at and learned the basics of Hap Ki Do. Now, obviously autistic people aren't paranoid schizophrenics - but they functionally all have at least a -3 to COM and PRE, and they take a serious penalty to their learning rolls. And the instructors who did that were fine - yeah, they taught at a slower pace, but all of the students picked up on it.

  4. I've been a small-group instructor to children (I just volunteered at my church's Sunday evening childcare, and I've done small-group martial arts instruction for children before) - I would say that 1 out of 5 young children "act out" at any given time - boys moreso than girls, usually, at that age, it seems. Some worse than others. And yes, if you don't control it, it can infect the entire group. But the point is: even with a small (2-4) group of children, all of whom are acting out, you can contain and control it - it takes experience as a teacher, but it can be done, and you can teach such (small groups) basics. I see such activities at the Kickboxing gym I go to, with the children's boxing class.

Hm. Just off the top of my head...

  1. Tradition - it's worked for Bonisagus, so we shouldn't change it! (Which is, IMO, a valid point - traditions often contain wisdom, or at least a working model, that a newer system may not account for. On a more serious note, see "modern education reform for women in Sub-Saharan Africa." Crazy insane cultural inertia, there...)

  2. The University and scholastic tradition is relatively new: It's either Jewish (in which case not widely known) or else it's University, which has just started popping up recently, along with parish and Cathedral schools.

  3. Putting all your children in one place is a recipe for disaster, from a biological and safety perspective - too easy to nuke 'em all. This one, to me, is also a big deal: people get VERY conservative when it comes to their children. I wouldn't be surprised if that's one of the big motivating factors, in addition to #1.

  4. "an idea whose time has come" - built on the above reasons (or lack of reasons: inspired by the new University system, increased population centers, and the revived scholasticism of the era, and an ability to think in new ways - or at least to look at old ideas and re-interpret them).

  5. Other people ARE doing it - such as the development of calculus or the steam engine, it could very well be that multiple people are coming to the same idea, simultaneously.

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And in none of your examples are all of the students convinced all of his other classmates are out to get them. You seem to have convinced yourself the effects of the Gift don't stack. I'm not asking you to explain it to me, it is something that needs to be explained and discussed with the troupe. All of the reasons are reasonable, but I'm just pointing out that my interpretation is reasonable, if conservative, too,

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Put in spoilers if you don't care to continue this part of the discussion.

EDIT - gah! I thought I'd get one of those nice collapsible boxes. Ah, well.

[spoiler]The difference you describe is a matter of degree, not matter of type. If they stack, then a -3 rep 4 times is the same as a -1 rep 12 times. Which doesn't seem plausible to me. And I don't see anything in your argument about everyone in the group needing to have the reputation - rather, your argument seems to be "it stacks" - if a grog was in the group, there would still be a -12 penalty, and thus no one could learn anything. Thus, whether or not everyone has the Gift/the rep isn't relevant - only if it stacks, and if so, if there are enough penalties in the group to make it impossible to do anything social.

Which is another reason why I disagree with the stacking - if that were the case, then convents would have elaborate rituals to prevent the grogs from seeing more than 2 magi at once, as they'd otherwise be unable to open their mouths and would start walking into walls. Grogs would be unable to serve food to magi, as even simply serving food to a group of magi would incur a -12 or worse penalty to "asking them if they want wine with that."

And groups of magi couldn't go into towns, as their combined Gift would constitute as "interfering with the mundane." Which is contradictory to what I read in City&Guild and Art&Acadamy, or really any book that discusses how magi interact with the mundane world. It's all "they're a bit creepy" (or if you have Blantant Gift) "aah! get away, get away!" Not "for the love of God, don't talk to people as a group!" If that were the case, I would imagine it would be called out.

And Historically, bonisagus would have been unable to talk to other Gifted magi more than one at a time, because if there were 3, then everyone but Bonisagus would be hit by a -9 social penalty, and become incomprehensible, gibbering loons.

But getting back to the example - it's a junior high with gangbangers. If even a 1/3 of the students in a classroom of 30 had the Gift (or negative, unchangeable, contradictory reputations about each other that everyone knew), then by that metric it should be impossible to teach those who are affected by it. Those 10 that have minor contradictory reps are operating at a -10 to their learning totals due to the other gangbanger/slut/jock/weirdo/crazy/whatevers being in the room - except they don't. Yeah, it's not as smooth as it could be, but it's not nearly as bad as your model would describe.[/spoiler]

Fair 'nuff. I mentioned it last night on our Google group, and pointed them to this thread. We'll likely have the discussion this weekend. Thanks for the insight!

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Although my first response after reading your post was "Huh - didn't know that. Guess St. Avery needs to develop a lvl 30 Re Im "Presence of the remote apprentice" that allows for tele-commuting into the classroom." (Base Effect 15 "Move one sense image to an arcane connection", +1 additional sense (sight and sound), Duration Ring - The apprentice places his desk in a ring, and looks out and can see the lecture hall. In the lecture hall, the professor can look at the arcane connection (itself a ring), and can see the apprentice inside it.

But one of the players nixed that idea, as it was to sci-fi-esque for him.

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Sorry, only read the last page of the thread, so I may have missed something, but, for what it's worth...

IIRC, it is stated in Rival Magic that, since both the teacher and the student have the gift, qualities suffer a -6. I believe it's in the Amazonian chapter, when they discuss teaching, but I'm really not sure.

Also, in a way, the gift stacks in covenants: add 2 blatant gifted magi to a covenant of 4, and the morale will plummet, way more than if you added one, or even 2, normal gifted magi.

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Rival Magic, p. 27, last column.

... and I was sure that was in Apprentices...

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So was I, but I couldn't find it, easily since it's not in PDF form. So I gave up on hunting for it. Thanks for saving my sanity, a bit. And Apprentices has that bit about apprentices Twilight episodes after a fashion, The Fixer, in the Bibracte saga has suggested that leaving them alone with books would lead to potentially damaged books. It's not an unreasonable premise.

You need to reread the secion on the Gift, and how it differs for every individual. There is, honestly a difference.

There is a reason that a grog is assigned to a magus as a shield grog, and doesn't change. That grogs don't want to go adventuring with a magus, and certainly don't like doing it with more than one. Usually the turb captain or a sergeant handles the interactions when the magus gives an order, too. Consider that he's been most exposed to magi, or might be immune to the effects of the gift.

Remember, the penalty only applies if there is interaction between the magus and the other people, if the magus keeps his mouth shut, and avoids interacting, the penalty is not applied, and this is explicitly mentioned in the discussion of the Gift. Groups of magi traveling together are also supposed to be rare. It happens more often in spring covenants, but my experience is that troupes tend to underemphasize the effects fo the gift.

Where did it say he tried to talk to more than one or maybe two magi at a time. Also, he was protected by the Parma Magica, so their Gift did not affect him. He also could have been an extremely charismatic and capable speaker.

A junior high with gangbangers has a pecking order, schools also tend to segregate gangs where possible, and presumably, some of the people in the class respect the nominal leader in that class. No, it's junior high with gangbangers from four different gangs, who all think they should be in charge, and would like to dispose of the competition (whether any exists or not).

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I accept that penalties stack between teacher and student if they're both Gifted. It's RAW and it make's a certain amount of sense. For standard classrooms I don't see any reason to expect that the penalties would accumulate for all students. The advancement rules IMO are learner focused. The teacher provides a source quality just like texts or practicing. The quality should be modified for each student by whatever factors are relevant to their relationship. Large classes already provide modifiers. (or rather lack bonuses smaller ratios get)

If an ungifted teacher where teaching a class with 20 normal kids and one gifted child would everyone be affected by the one creepy kid in the corner? If the teacher where gifted would it automatically make it twice as bad for everyone.

Or if a gifted teacher teaches two students. One of them totally normal and the other with the Unaffected by Gift virtue. Would unaffected pupil's experience be affected by the other student's feelings about the instructor.

For that matter wouldn't a teacher who had a specialty in teaching girls be able to apply that to the source quality of the one Girl in their class.

That's not to say a gaggle of gifted kids wouldn't have their own problems with each other, and it would probably be quite evident and difficult to deal with. But that's more of an RP story event issue. The drama caused would probably be the least evident when they where focused on class work and lectures.

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The advancement rules in general may be learner focused (that's arguable, at best), but the teaching source quality is derived from the teacher.
Put X Gifted individuals in the room with an unprotected teacher, their Gifts affect him. Granted, my understanding is extremely conservative (punitive) but it needs to be measured about the history of the Order, such as what's been described. Some Houses have a huge vested interest in getting mundane people to teach the Gifted students in any number of skills before opening the Arts and handing off to an apprentice. If it's being now, it begs the question of why it hasn't been done before. House Tremere, would love to have a lot of basic training (soldiering) + Latin and Artes Liberales taught. I'm sure House Verditius would love for their apprentices to have Philosophiae already taught to their apprentices. Bjornaers would handle their system of apprentice handling a bit differently, too, I'm sure.

The Order, as described doesn't seem to indicate that multiple Gifted people can be trained easily. IIRC, the only discussion of large groups of Gifted individuals coming together before the Order would have been the Mercurian priests, which probably had all kinds of rules which proscribed allowable actions when working with their brothers, so as to minimize offense.

Again, it's not unreasonable, but I think you need to look at the broader implications of what's been before, when you start doing something. If it's an RP thing, maybe someone dies, or someone attacks someone else, and removes them from class for a while. And then, you think, maybe this isn't such a great idea. Then again, extending Parma isn't all that hard to do, and I'm not draconian about that. If the person is hanging around nearby, in the same reasonably sized building (not a gigantic castle) I'd let it stay up and be effective.

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I concede the point about the Teacher/Student -6 quality penalty: it's in the RAW, and also makes sense to me (AM5th, pg.75, top right-hand column). But, as a previous poster mentioned, the penalties (or rather, lack of bonus) for teaching large groups is already worked into the Teaching quality roll. There is no game mechanic that I'm aware of that claims that any learning penalty would expand from one student, out to the whole group.

However, there is a description about "what happens when people with penalties to their learning rolls come together and try to learn from each other, when there isn't a clearly-defined teacher in charge" - that's the Study Partner/scholastic method of learning from the same source. (RoP:D, pg 132) And the answer is "the penalties (and any bonuses, if relevant) are averaged out amongst everyone". There is no exception for the Gift, or a description of how reputations stack, or anything like that. If anything, this would be the place to write out such penalties, as that page is also about learning supernatural traits (from books) as a group.

Which, interestingly enough, implies that it's actually more effective for Magi to learn in groups with grogs, with no Gifted teacher (only a -3 penalty, as opposed to a -6), as they act as a sort of social buffer between folks that don't get along. Of course, any study bonuses they have are averaged out, so after a while it's only good for the group, rather than the individual. But it's still an interesting consequence.

Also - the Gift only kicks in if the individual calls attention to themselves (as Jonathan Link mentioned). Therefore, a single student, sitting quietly in the class, only interacting with the teacher when they have to, won't freak out the rest of the group. They still have to interact with the teacher (and sure, there's that -3 penalty right there), but we've already established that it doesn't automatically occur simply because you're in the same room as someone else. So if anything, large classes (Biology 101, 400+ people) with a bunch of mundanes allow a magi to hide themselves, thereby disguising their Gift, and not irritating the people around them.

Also, in re-reading the description of the Gift, it's "a reputation for dishonesty and unreliability, and for undeserved privilege." Your description of a mass murderer and rapists aligns more with Blantant Gift: "a well-established reputation for dishonesty and treachery of a dangerous level...People interacting with (the maga) are extremely wary and rather hostile.") So if I were a student surrounded by a bunch of elitist snobs who might be cheating off my paper, I'm not going to be taking a -12 penalty to my roll. At best I simply would refuse to be in a study group with them, and do my own work. If I thought the teacher was a jerk, then yeah: -3. And if the teacher thought I was blowing off everything he was trying to teach? Sure, another -3. But the bad 80's stereotypes of prep-school snobs surrounding me aren't going to affect me THAT much.

That being said, I do agree that the issue of "why hasn't this been done before?" should be addressed - and as I really need to go to work, I'll try to get back to that later.

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It doesn't have to be cumulative for it to be a bad idea. Multiple students is a huge penalty over one on one instruction. For a gifted student the additional -3 quickly turns most teaching situations into a case of why bother.

If you assume a pretty good teacher with an ability of 5 and a communication of 1. Teaching one pupil he gets a 12 if that pupil is gifted it's a 9 not to shabby. Three students he only has a 6 half as effective. If they're gifted it's a 3 worse then most practice totals.

Good teachers with the virtue of the same name, high com and significant ability scores make it more productive. But do you want to employ 1 really good teacher to teach 4 students in 1 class. Or 4 pretty good teachers to tutor them individually. Never mind that you can probably get away with fewer tutors because the students won't all be on the same schedule. And the fact that keeping gifted children together in groups will surely create story drama.

A setting where most masters teach their apprentices one on one and occasionally employ a professional tutor is what these rules predict. They do allow for characters to innovate and create exceptions without assuming it's all been tried before. Making the magic school is a legitimate story goal.

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Sure, innovate. Research or something. I'm not against innovation, but there should be an impetus for the change. Why are things different here/now than before?
Maybe it is political, a Gild thing. Maybe it's a bunch of different reasons, I don't know. Nothing I'm saying says no stories, in fact, it's quite the opposite. I can think of many story ideas springing from this.

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Ignorning the Gift penalty, if you have an apprentice to train to, say, Latin 4 (50 XP), and have a tutor with a Com + Teach of 5, then one-to-one the student gets (5+3+6 = 14 XP) so it takes 4 seasons to get Latin 4. If he is in a class of many students, then the student will get (5+3 = 8 XP) and it will take 7 seasons to get Latin 4. So, it takes almost twice as long to train one apprentice (in Latin) if in a class.

The class is more efficient in terms of tutor time, but one-to-one is more efficient in terms of apprentice time. The Gift penalty doesn't really change this, it just changes the precise numbers of seasons required.

So, it really depends on whose time is more valuable. In most sagas, Latin tutors are probably much more common than Gifted apprentice candidates. Unless the Latin tutor is himself a magus it thus seems usually better to use one-to-one training. And if the Latin tutor is a magus, he should hire a mundane to do the job. The exception might be, if you are training a lot of mundane children in Latin anway (i.e. there is a school for the children of the covenfolk). In that case, you would probably consider just throwing the Gifted apprentice in with the class of mundanes.

True.

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Yes and in general Magi will be able to afford plenty of good tutors. So there is very little reason to put an apprentice in a class with other students. Heck it's not even hard to make a halfway decent Grog level tutor. For a PC covenant that means there is a nearly infinite supply of them if you play it that way.

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OK, just got Apprentices in the mail (as well as Grogs and Hermetic PRojects - there went $100...). Interestingly enough, this exact issue is described on the last page: how to set up a magical school.

To answer folk's question: it is currently being done in two places in the Order - Thebes (which works only because of the way they treat apprentices), and Transylvania (where out of 10, all but 1 student is a mundane.) The issues described are as follows:

  1. The Gift is not described as stacking, thereby making instruction impossible. However, it does (as has been mentioned on this thread) describe the RP issues of being in a classroom with the unshielded Gift. This does impose the standard penalty on both student and teacher. If the teacher is a mundane, he is forced to deal with students that are perceived as slackers or untrustworthy - and while the students are not specifically penalized (in game mechanics) for their peer's Gifts, it does cause resentments to form, childhood rivalries which never resolve, and in general make the whole thing significantly more stressful than would be in a 1:1 situation.

This can be resolved with Parma - but that takes effort. A paren can extend his parma to both apprentice(s) and mundane teacher, but that requires that all of them be kept in line of sight. Doable, but it may be distracting if the paren wants to do his own work. (But to be honest that can be worked around - just off the top of my head, have two labs together, and spont the ability to look through the wall. But yes, you do need to have a Parma high enough to cover them all.)

  1. Turbulances (low-level spontaneous magic) is much more common - a daily event for Gifted students in stressful situations. Thus, sending your apprentice to a mundane school, where children are quite good at picking out the weirdo, is probably not the best thing to do. However, even a moderate Aegis can effectively cancel out a Turbulance, (you give them casting tokens when you are teaching them Arts, and take it away when done), so that's not a big deal.

  2. Training does count as 1:1 instruction (actually mentioned in an earlier chapter) - but, as folks here have commented, it's usually not as effective as Teaching. Specifically, it also counts as your "season of instruction" - but as you can't teach Arts in Training, that means that the season of instruction doesn't specifically need to teach Arts. (And as we've seen in the Bonisagus Fostering write-up, it actually doesn't even specifically mean 1:1 instruction - you can actually teach two or more at a time, and have it count.) However...

  3. Hermetic Virtues are passed on either via informal Initiation scripts (in a season), or else absorbed (the "House Virtues") as part of the 1:1 training. Or, if your character is part of a mystery cult, an ACTUAL initiation script. This is probably what they're specifically talking about as "required 1:1 training". If your apprentice doesn't have the house virtue by the time you're done, it's a low crime. That being said, Training does count as 1:1 instruction. So as long as you give 10 seasons of Training (in whatever - Magic Theory or Latin, most likely), the paren is covered in terms of the minor house virtue.

On this count, St. Avery is screwed. It's a Comm + Teaching +6 (standard teaching roll), vs. 15 (minor virtue) or 21 (major virtue) - nothing he can get close to, at all. The RAW does allow you to pass on Hermetic Flaws to get a bonus to the total - I would rule (if I were a GM) that parens can also ritually use other elements of the Mysteries (such as Quests), but that's outside the scope of the RAW.

  1. You can train apprentices with books, but the issues here (why are you giving a child access to valuable tomes?) is also raised, and some resolutions given (buy them from bookstores - they do exist in large cities, have them make student copies, etc.)

  2. Arcane and mundane abilities can be trained in groups, yes - that's actually one of the big benefits. However, because the Arts can be trained 1:1 only, that's considered the main limitation. Until that can be overcome, Covenant schools probably aren't going to take off.

  3. Magi's time commitment - teaching multiple students (and that 1:1 commitment) takes up a lot of time. So much so that, even with Training (thus allowing the magi to do their own lab work during that 1:1 time), they may not have enough time to do what they want. (However, as fostering is considered OK, it seems reasonable to pass the Training off to a willing sodales on occasion. Of course, that's an RP issue, which I acknowledge is an issue in and of themselves - but there's no game mechanic penalty to it.)

So, most of the issues can be overcome - Extended Parma, teaching inside the Aegis, having the apprentices scribe their own books, and so on. The main limiting factor is the teaching of the Arts - however, honestly, my answer to that is "Roots and Branches - they're not THAT expensive, and by the time the students are ready for them, they've got a few levels of Scribe, so they know how to handle them and/or have already copied their own." And the book specifically mentions that, after they're 15 or so, they're probably learning from books anyway. So I'm not sure what the issue is.

So what I think they're talking about are spells (yes the apprentice can create them, but it's not nearly as efficient), or else the passing on of virtues via the informal Initiation process. Which I actually agree is an issue that needs to be addressed.

However, for St. AVery at least, the issue is actually simple: rather than spend time on each student, initiating them into Cautious Sorcerer (or whatever), simply spend that time Integrating Cautious Sorcerer into Hermetic Theory - and then teach them all that. Because, let's face it - He's working on that anyway, it would actually take about the same amount of time to do that, and it's of a greater benefit to the Order.

But that's just St. Avery.

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Re: the House virtue is absorbed over 10 seasons of working with the magus, and not trained, per se. I think it is automatic if you have 10 seasons of time spent with the apprentice. 10 out of 60.

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Oh, sure - unfortunately, using the word "training" means something very specific in that context (ie, one student, ability+3 xp/season, no arts), rather than the more general "a style of instruction". I was unfortunately using both in the same paragraph, if not the same sentence.

So it looks as though you can pick up a 'house virtue' simply by being in the same room as a senior magi, and working with them on something, for 10 seasons. That probably covers being a Lab Assistant, Training, Teaching, or even just doing chores in the lab while the Paren works (ie, adding Safety bonuses to the lab as a very young apprentice) Does it cover magic-related, but non-magical activities, such as learning Latin? I honestly have no idea. Actually - if Training counts, then arcane skills probably do count as well. I have no idea about Academic abilities, though.

I would imagine that reading from an Art or Arcane text while in the sanctum while your paren works In the lab might work - it's slightly less related to what the magi is doing as sweeping the floors. but maybe not. I would say that if you're both learning from the same Art book (scholastic-style) then it would count, as the apprentice can still pick up their paren's magical accent, in that case. I'm not sure about the former case, though.

That does beg the question though - can an apprentice pick up ANY minor hermetic virtue from ANY mage they work with for 10 seasons? That would certainly make passing on of Minor Hermetic virtues more possible, IMO - I don't think most magi can get the Teaching quality level of 15 to do it, otherwise. Com 3 + Teaching (apprentice) 5(+1) + 6 = 15 would be the minimum; you could drop Com to 0, or Teaching to 3, if you added in a flaw. But that's only for the first. Anything after that, and it's pretty much impossible for anyone but a specialist. (OK, you could add in a major hermetic flaw - but that sounds like you're getting into "jerkwad paren" territory.) The Apprentices book says that most parens "teach one or two" hermetic virtues this way - I guess that's how Major Flaws get passed on.

Also, does that only work for the first virtue? Do the House virtues represent some sort of strong magical accent that makes them specifically easy to learn, or specifically obvious in a magi's particular style? I'm guessing not, as House Jerbiton can choose from a bunch, and Ex Misc can choose almost anything, and all the Mystery houses are just Initiations. So it's nothing specific to the virtue.

I'm guessing it may have to do with the relatively impressionable nature of children - once they step out of the 3rd phase of life (ie, once they hit age 22 or so), you can't imprint magic on them nearly as well. But during that time, it would actually behove a school to get the children in the room with as many different magi as possible, in order to take advantage of that 10-season imprint. ie, 10 seasons with the Bonisagus to get the Pussiant magic theory, 10 seasons with the Jerbiton to get their specialization (Strong Teacher, probably, in this context), 10 seasons with the wack-job Ex Misc to pick up whatever he has, and so on.

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One of the things I believe and have a tendency to enforce, is the idea that all magi should have a Hermetic Flaw. It's articulated in the following statement.

So, that flaw manifests at the Opening of the Arts, and it can be selected by the player and it can be entirely unrelated to the master's flaws. I then use that flaw as a bonus to any virtue that is subsequently imparted to the apprentice. It is not RAW, but it is thematic. To me, it feels much more tightly conceived than deciding these are the innate virtues and flaws, and that's that, and they figure out when to impart them during the apprenticeship period. From a character perspective, it also gives a poor teacher or communicator a chance at imparting a favored virtue, without imparting a hated flaw.

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The problem is that it's not the first Virtue that is hard to get, but the last one. If you meant every Virtue, then that's ok since it's not really better than applying the bonus to the last one only.