Ok, so I'm pretty sure I've got an ok handle on how the new uses aspect of improving skills works. As I use a skill in a way that's sufficiently different I learn more about how the skill actually works which makes me better at the skill in general.
I'm not sure I entirely understand how practice works.
From my understanding practice is botch free? The explanation for this that I read was it's because there is no pressure to succeed. One would stop if something felt wrong before a botch could happen.
Under that type of practice would my SAL ever go up?
Is there anything special about practicing for the different skill groups? (magic/psionic/tech/bod)
I think that's all my questions, but I'll post again if I think of more later.
Not no pressure to succeed; no pressure to succeed on any particular given attempt. No one's life hangs on it happening this instant instead of the next. If you fumble the first step such that the second might injure you, you have the luxury of stopping and doing the first step over. In combat (for example), you don't, and maybe you recover from that fumble to succeed at the second step without injury or maybe you hurt yourself, but you're not going to ask the orc with the axe for a do-over.
There is still motivation to succeed and improve, but that's not the kind of pressure we meant when we said "no pressure."
Yes, your SAL would go up. If you're practicing on your own, it goes up at the rate of one skill mark per hundred days of sufficient practice. With an instructor who knows the skill (and is good enough at it), that rate increases to one mark per fifty days. With an instructor who has specific skill at teaching or training others in what he knows who makes a successful skill check at teaching or training, that rate increases to one mark per twenty-five days (the roll is made once per mark).
When you accumulate enough marks, you gain an intensity. At level one, every mark is worth an intensity; at level two, four marks get you an intensity; at level three, it takes twenty-seven. If you are at level two or three, you may accelerate your accumulation of marks by significantly increasing the intensiveness of your training; the ceiling for such acceleration is a program which is doubled in two aspects (which would yield four marks in place of one) for a level two trainee or a program which is tripled in three aspects (yielding twenty-seven marks in place of one) for a level three trainee.
If you have any more questions (or if the above was not sufficiently clear), don't hesitate to ask.
Ok, I think I understand. Thank you. :)