I would love it if the skills of characters in combat oriented classes would actually advance more rapidly by doing their job (fighting in battles). Many other classes, as I understand it, do this.
Skill advancement is related to two things:
1) the number of times that you perform the skill
2) the amount of time you spend doing it when you perform it
This should quickly make obvious the reason that many skill advance more quickly than swordfighting and leadership. Courtiers, priests, and diplomats can perform their skill continuously, with nearly all their hours, at no cost. This makes oratory and bureaucracy skill increase quick, easy, and free. Warriors need battles to work on their leadership, swordfighting, and jousting skills. Since you don't get battles twice a day, for days on end, and battles aren't free either, these skills are both expensive and time consuming to train. You either fight a lot of battles, or spend lots of time at the academy.
The combat oriented classes (Warrior, Cavalier, Hero) seem to be at a disadvantage here - as it stands real skill development for these classes require academy time!
Academy or tournaments. Constant battles helps, though.
I am not just referring to the percentage chance of such a skill rising from a battle compared to the percentage chance of the same skill rising from time at the academy. Unless these values are significantly different of course. Simply put a character can engage in a whole lot more academy training sessions that they can engage in battles over the course of a month or what not.
You sure can. There are two benefits to doing it on the battlefield, though:
1) In battle you can train both swordfighting/jousting and leadership at the same time.
2) Battle also earns you honor and prestige.
I do not really have a good suggestion regarding how this could happen. Anything that would allow the soldiering classes improve their class specific skills at a reasonable rate by just doing their job would be great. Something comparable to the rate at which other classes cat increase their class specific skills would be ideal!
Unlike the other skills, swordfighting doesn't really have that much of a direct impact on your character. Off-hand I'm not really sure how much effect raising your swordsmanship has on battle performance. After all, you're just one person in a unit of ~50 soldiers, in a battle that has potentially thousands of soldiers. The effectiveness of courtiers and diplomats is directly related to their skill level every time they use it.
Swordsmanship, though, is mostly used in tournaments and duels.
