A Magus starts to teach an apprentice. After a season spent teaching he should gain some XP. Should it be 2 XP from Exposure or 4 XP from Practice? Exposure seems to be more likely as it is 'additional' to main seasonal activity, however, regarding Teaching, Practice also seems likely - how one can actually "practice teaching" without a student?
To make myself clear - I know that according to RAW teacher only gains exposure, but I consider it a questionable rule and I want to learn community's opinion about this matter
Practice is a full time activity. Teaching is a full time activity. Lab work is a full time activity. If you can gain Practice xp while teaching, you should gain Practice xp while doing lab work. Exposure vanishes.
If you want to stay in RAW, teacher and student could practice together but that is not teaching. At the very most and only if it is agreeable by your troupe, deduct your Practice Source Quality from the student's Teaching Source Quality. If you can find students that'd accept having a bad teacher.
Salvete, Sodales!
Primo: The rules (like all advancement rules in the various RPGs I have ever played) are an abstract representation of a complex matter. Usually in rl nobody just learns one thing at a time (at least not if the time period in question is measured in seasons), and nobody has strictly two seasons for learning and two seasons for work. So, for many characters (especially grogs) you can just assume that the advancement system tries to represent the development in the long run without making it too complicated. So, even if your argument has merit, you just try to go with the rules.
Secundo: There is a huge difference between practicing teaching and teaching. In one case you spend less time in doing real teaching but fret much about different approaches to teaching, try out some ideas, revisit your lessons... Of course you teach, but you do much less time of it than a real teacher. (real life example: A german teacher has to teach 26 lessons a week, a junior teacher ("Referendar") just has to do 12; he probably spends as much time with his job as his senior colleague, but he teaches less and works on himself more)
Having these thoughts in mind I'd do this: The instuctor decides whether he wants to use this season as a 'teaching' season or as a 'practice teaching' season. In the fist case the student gets XP according to the teaching rules and the teacher may take exposure XP in teaching (or the subject taught or any other ability suitable for that season). In the second case the instructor will get 5 XP from practice (direct feedback) and the student has the choice to either consider this season as one of his labour seasons and just get exposure XP or to consider it as practice himself, getting 5 XP in the relevant subject. Under these circumstances I'd probably allow the student to 'practice' arts this way, although this isn't possible by RAW. If you do this to your apprentice - fine, but this might result in a poorly trained wizard at the end of his apprenticeship; if you do this to a student who is paying you as a teacher, he will notice the difference and has every reason to complain.
You might consider to alternate the decision between various 'teaching seasons' to get an overall acceptable outcome for both sides.
Just one afterthought: A generous gamemaster might allow to let the instructor let practice teaching, while the student advances as if he were in training. This is certainly not RAW, but basically it is the same situation: The instructor spends a season doing stuff, the student learns more than by practicing, but less than by being traught. In the standard version the instructor earns a living and gets exposure XP (something happening in his labour-seasons) in the same skill as his apprentice, but as in this case he sacrifices one of his free seasons, I still think that this wouldn't be unbalanced. Of course, there is still the problem that by RAW arts can only be taught.
So, now you have got my two Mythic Pence worth of thought on this. I hope it is useful.
Vale,
Alexios ex Miscellanea
Alexios, I find your suggestions very wise and helpfull. I thank thee!!!! ;:
I was going to make a big comment, but Alexios did so. The only real problem with the mechanic for teaching is the restriction on places where you can spend your experience. Exposure to Teaching make a lot of sense. The language part, however, is fairly silly. I've learned more math and physics stuff while teaching; I don't think my English has improved at all from the classroom. Of course, in the real world there is the whole forgetting thing, too. So while I'm better at the lower ends of physics and math, I've forgotten a lot of the most advanced stuff I used to do. But since the game ignores the forgetting part, I would note that I have learned much more physics and math while teaching than I have learned English. If, however, you are not teaching in your native language, then I can certainly see allowing exposure to the language of instruction.
Chris
Not at all. Talk much in a way that stretches your language, which teaching and learning often does, and you will tend to improve your language as well. Do you think you would be as proficient in "talking" as you are now if you had instead spent years at a storecounter or at a deskjob with little speaking involved?
It IS a bit silly if you take the exposure as nothing but language, but part of it, nah quite realistic really.
First, you seem to forget that reading or writing at a desk job requires language, too. I know you wrote "talking," but the Ability applies to writing ability, too. At a store counter or desk job? Yes, I'd be as good. If I were on an assembly line and not allowed to talk, I would say I would have gotten worse, but the game doesn't account for this. This is really the issue at hand: I'm not getting worse, but I'm not getting better. This is represented in ArM5 as 0 experience being applied to my Living Language Ability.
Why am I not improving? Some of it is surely because I spent a lot more time in humanities classes than did many of my peers. Had I been worse my chances of improving would have increased. Now the problem is that even though I'm talking and writing frequently, I use a fairly limited vocabulary. That is because I'm doing the same group of things over and over.
Maybe a limit to the exposure in Living Language would be better. Perhaps 5 would do.
Yet we still have the problem with the lack of exposure to the thing you are teaching...
Chris
No, most likely you would not. Because the language used there is far more likely to be what is common, normal and already totally wellknown to you. In teaching you will almost inevitably get questions back at you that are strange either in wording or in subject.
The main exception is if you´re already so proficient at the language used that you always know exactly what everything means 100% and understand everything that is said even if poorly formulated.
That would mean a limited amount of languagebased interaction overall, and that is a total killer for language skills.
I dont know you personally, but ill say this, not bloody likely!
Quite possibly. But probably a bit higher. Fluency isnt enough to stop learning certainly.
Completely lacking in any real interaction with the students? If so i will have to say thats very unusual and simply makes you an exception rather than drawing up the rule based on you.