Just last night I begged from the Pet of a group member I was with between
fights for roughly an hour and went up 17, 18, 19, 20 then begged for
another half hour just trying to get to 21 so I could be in the next skill
"category" with no success so I gave up and logged out for dinner.

I was also practicing instill doubt on every blue monster our group fought
for over 2 hours the other day with zero, zip, zilch, nada, NO increases
whatsoever...and after doing this for all this time, early into one fight
the monster turned around and ran off at top speed only to be killed by a
guard. "Oops.." I thought, and scrolled back through the message text to see
that I had kicked the bugger for 3 damage and cast fear on it to cause it to
do this. Fortunately everyone else in my group was not wise to what
happened and after a brief perplexed conversation (to which I remained
strangely silent) they just dropped it. At this point I stopped using the
skill, heh.

-Faras