Salandarin wrote:
It's just plain random - there's no bell curve, either, as far as I can tell.
That hasn't been my experience in learning languages. It seemed that the chance for a spontaneous improvment went down as my character's skill went up, i.e. It took a lot more spamming to get spontaneous improvements to get each spontaneous learning event going to 'mastered' from 'supurb' than from 'very good' to 'supurb.'
Of course a 'bell curve' usually has a very specific mathematical meaning, but there does seem to me to be a dependence on one's level in the caluculation of the chance to get a spontaneous improvement.
I did NOT experiment with the lowest levels. I buy all the training I can find, getting my character as close to mastered as possible before I depend on the spontaneous improvements to get her over the top. So while the 'top' end might look something like a 'bell curve,' I claim no experiences or data valid to form an opinion on the bottom half of learning curve.