Beginner's Luck tests

[csjames75]

Just curious how often should someone get a Beginner's Luck test on a new skill they are working on?

For example, Firebuilding. Suppose a character wants to learn firebuilding and while the party is in the woods, each night that character tries to build a fire. Would that be a test (even with Let it Ride results) each night the character makes the fire? And does each of these tests count toward the aptitude requirement to open the skill?

Thanks!

[Kublai]

The number of Beginner's Luck tests you need before it's a honest-to-goodness Skill depends on his Aptitude. But earning those tests shouldn't be a simple thing. Those tests should be story relevant. Your example seems to me to be practice and would earn tests after the practice test cycle had been completed.

Even if he was in a forest in which only fire kept the spirits at bay (certainly story-effecting), I'd only give him a single test for the whole time he spent in the forest, just as a punch in combat only earns one test.

[csjames75]

That clarifies it for me quite well, Kublai. Thanks.

This is a fairly urban character attempting to build a fire for the first time in the wilderness, so I think one test against Beginner's Luck is applicable. But, like you said, I think that's the only one I will give him until events change and building a fire becomes relevant again to the story. In the meantime, he will earn a practice test every so many days per the rules in Burning Wheel Revised.

This was the first session that we really utilized Beginner's Luck and the active learning process and it felt like I was doling the tests out pretty often. I'll be much more conservative now.