Lo-Fi Games

I'd like characters with high skills to be able to teach others to their or to a fraction (two thirds?) of their own skill level. For example the combat skills you could build a gym, tell one guy to teach there and others to train there. Since training combat alone is no fun and you lack a partner on comparable skill level, the training would be quicker if you have two pupils. On the other hand the training would slow down and reach its limit quicker if there were many pupils since the tutor can't concentrate on each as well as if he had few.

2nd and more or less tied to the first would be Talents. I'm not talking about talents like in other RPGs but actual talents. Someone with a talent can raise the skill he is talented at quicker than others who are not.
Those talents would be hidden and random in the characters who start out witch each skill on 1 (your first, the 700c guys) and might have multiple levels (little talented, talented, highly talented, prodigy, genius).
Those talents could be discovered either by raising the corresponding skill high enough or by having a tutor with the same level in that skill that would be required to discover it on one's own teach the student to a fraction of that skill level. (Of course, the talents wouldn't need to be discovered and already active whilst hidden, the discoverage would just tell the player; hey! Your guy is really good at this!)

I like the tutor-idea...
think its simelar to the dojo-idea ( http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... =16&t=3269 ) but both are good and maybe could be combined?

I agree. I think that it would be really nifty to have very strong indepent NPCs like ronin samurai, or blademasters at Kendo schools, that are able to teach you... and for a character of yours to become adept enough to teach others... And of course to challenge them to a fight to the death.

NPC kills your original character, then you train someone else like crazy to avenge his death.