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p 61 says : "Teachers: The easiest (but often most expensive) way to learn a spell is from a teacher who already knows it. The lesson takes one shift, but you cannot activate the new spell until the end of the game session. You must then use an advancement mark (page 29) for the school to learn the new spell instead of trying to increase your skill level in the school. Make a roll against INT, with a boon. On success you learn the spell, otherwise you do not."

We have an Elementalist PC and a grimoire was found with new spells in it. I'd like to clarify how I think the above text works:

- At some point in-game the PC spends a shift to learn a spell - this could be in down time.
- At the end of session they use an advancement to roll to learn the spell (not sure why it says "instead of trying to increase your skill level in the school")
- They roll with a boon and <= INT means that they learn the spell (i.e. not as per usual skill increases, which are roll over.)
- If they fail then they need to spend another shift next session and try again.
- If they have a grimoire, then as above, but roll LANGUAGES and no boon.

- Can they try this with more than 1 spell per session? I can't see why not unless it's a question of balance.
- Presumably you could use a separate advancement roll to try to increase your school skill level? Again, I can't see why not, but it could be implied by the text.
- If they use a shift to learn a spell and then don't or can't allocate an advancement to it, they have to spend the time again - this would limit the number that could be learned consecutively as you couldn't allocate more than 5 advancement rolls at end of a session.

The key part of this is that Skills cannot have more than one advancement mark at a time. With magic you must choose, learn 1 spell or increase the Skill.

Ok. I didn't read the text as meaning that - if you're using the advance to learn a spell, strictly speaking that means that the skill isn't getting the advancement mark, but I think I see what you mean.

So you can only study one spell at a time and that is in place of increasing the school skill.

Yep, you need an advancement mark in the relevant School to learn a spell and one Shift of time, P61