T-man World tree question

[Abadon Spectre]

I have a 8th level T-man who managed to get himself nailed to Yggdrasil and survive.
He was being used by our GM as an NPC at the time (I was out of town for a few sessions). It was a little out of character for him, but done is done and I think it will prove usefull down the line.

End result he survived and aside from a supreme dislike of bugs and an irrational fear of psychic healing, he is none the worse for wear.

My question...
This would also apply to casters who become T-men, but he has all of this effectively useless spell knowledge that he can't use (aside from identifying what others are doing).

So the question is: Can he teach the spells he learned knows to others?

[The Beast]

He can teach, but is unable to provide a demonstration.

[Jerell]

Hmmmm... That is a good question. Can you teach something you've never really done, and can not do, but know how to do? Maybe. I could see it go either way. You could at least teach the theory, would that be good enough? I have no idea. But it's Yggdrasil, so why not?

[eliakon]

It would highly depend on how the GM works the issue of how the gift of magic works first.

To be honest the various 'knows all spells' abilities run into problems with stuff like:
"Do I know all variants and versions of this spell?"
"Which books do I get spells from? If not from book X why not?"
"Can I have the conversion of this spell since it could be made, and likely has somewhere its an invocation now right?"
"Can I cast any spell I (or anyone else) can theoretically come up with since if it could be invented it is a spell right?"


If your GM wants to run it that you know the formula for every spell in existence, and wants to define what that means, then:
1) more power to them, they are a far braver soul than I.
2) yeah, you can teach those formula's to others.

The solution that I have run with is that intuitive magic is just that intuitive. You just do magic, none of this rote memorization stuff. Your explanations tend to be full of "So yeah, then you sort of bend the flow brighter until it bursts" and "well you kind of have to feel the other shadow bit right? Not the light one though." Which is one reason why most Arcane wizards tend to treat them like they are not real mages... because no one can fully replicate what they do exactly and they can't ever coherently explain how it is that they do what ever it is they are doing.

[Svartalf]

Hmmmm... That is a good question. Can you teach something you've never really done, and can not do, but know how to do? Maybe. I could see it go either way. You could at least teach the theory, would that be good enough? I have no idea. But it's Yggdrasil, so why not?

Hey, that's a classic, remember the saying 'those who can, do; and those who can't, teach".
Looks to me like a classic case, he knows those spells... can't use them, all he can do is pass them on to mages who don't know them.
AND ONLY to already trained mages, since he doesn't have the grounding to teach an untrained apprentice.

[say652]

K'treva should be able to teach spells to those capable of learning them.

[drewkitty ~..~]

snip...
So the question is: Can he teach the spells he learned knows to others?

No, not directly. Like when a mage teaches another mage a spell.

Sort of…… in that the char can teach the knowledge basics of magic. (i.e.: Teaching the skill "The Principles of Magic".)

Could he write out 'spell formula'…..maybe, but they would only make sense to him. Magic is a subjective/personal thing, and since he was not formally trained as a mage he didn't learn someone else's ways of thinking about magic.

[Abadon Spectre]

Thanks for the thoughts folks.

I'm inclined to go with the "I can't do, but I can teach" approach.

Our GM has basically decided that teaching is feasible, with the addendum that it be used carefully since several members our group are spell slingers.

If nothing else (assuming he lives that long) it should make for a nice retirement down the road.