Did Publish 108 simplify the skill gain curve at very low levels?

Rock

During a session today on Origin, a character chose to raise his STR by 10 and lower INT by 10,   He did this the old-fashioned way of "ping-ponging" two skills up from 0.  For example, raise Swords skill from 0 to 15 at a training dummy, then set Swords to lower, and raise Wrestling to 15, eating up the temporary Swordsmanship skill by replacing it with Wrestling.  (The character is a macer, BTW.)

I noticed though, that early skill gain has been modified over what I am accustomed to.  For decades, early skill gain was guaranteed with each action, up until skill of 10 or so.  At that point, there are occasional swings at the training dummy where no skill gain is achieved. Also, below 10 or so, you would often gain more than 0.1 per event.  Today, though, it was different.  Skill gain was no longer guaranteed at low levels, although still a very high chance.  And all skill gain events were of 0.1 value.

I'm not complaining, just pointing out an observed difference.  For skills that people want to build and keep, they typically buy to at least 30.  This change is likely moot for them.

Since attribute gain can only occurs when a skill gain event has happened, by gaining just 0.1 skill at a time, you get more skill gain events.  For example, instead of 40 skill gain events to get to a skill level of 10, now, including the misses, there will be 100 events, plus 15 swings where no skill gain occurs.  Before, a character would have to raise skill to 15 to 20 to get the same number of skill gain events.

If this is a change in Publish 108 (and not just a statistical fever-dream), then I'm both surprised and not surprised that the Publish Notes don't mention it.  Ping-ponging of skills to raise attributes is not done that often, plus how would they explain this in a bullet point?  I'm not sure people will follow the full four paragraphs I spent trying to explain it.

Rock

  ... apparently not.

I rerolled a character today, and one of the things I did in his early training is accelerate his dexterity from 35 to 40 so I could lock it and then forget about it.  He went to the pickpocket dip house in Old Haven and started to train Stealing.  His gains were like I remember them being for the last many years.  From 0 to 10, gains were guaranteed with each attempt, and each gain was greater than 0.1 until almost 10 skill were reached.  Above 10, some successful "steals"  would not raise stealing skill.  Towards 20 skill, he was missing about 5 times out of 6.

At 20, his DEX had reached 39, but I was stubborn.  He went to my house where there is a training dummy.  He armed himself with his newbie dagger and started raising Fencing.  Again, there was accelerated skill gain from 0 skill.  He stopped though at about 2 Fencing, because his DEX was finally 40.

I can think of two differences from my first post.  Today it was a new character.  He did not need to ping-pong skills because when he started he had over 250 unassigned skill points.  The other difference is that this was a brand new character.  The OP reported on a character who was several years old.  I would not think either of these factors would have such an impact on the skill gain curves, but something did.

Rock

  I may have figured out why sometimes the gain is accelerated and sometimes not.  The difference lies in humanity, or more specifically their racial JoAT trait.  Jack of All Trades gives human 20 shadow points in every skill.  "Shadow" because it doesn't stack.  Real skill levels and skill points from wearables does not start to improve the character until such a level is greater than 20 -- overtaking the shadow.

So when a non-human uses a training dummy or pickpocket dip, his initial skill is actually 0.  Thus he receives accelerated gain up to 15 or so.  But a human in hindered by his very JoAT ability, and only gains 0.1 skill at a time.  However, his actual skill continues to control the frequency of gain.  From 0 to about 10, all races will gain on every successful attempt -- and often unsucceessful ones as well.  Non-humans will just gain more at a time.

Norry

This is seen very well with magery, training a himan with 0 skill, cast heal. No skill gain. Cast bless and boom.

Any other race and your good.