A Guide to Ability Learning

I don't know what you mean by learned on recruitment but the offset you mention would only change who learn spells via a natural magic list. Technically changing the values at C0/A182 and C2/61B9 from 00 to 01 would transfer the ability to Locke. I haven't tested such a thing but I think the tutorial is good.

As for the spells, cure is learn on level 1 and fire on level 3 on Terra's list, so fire should not appear if you start the game at level 1, unless you lower the level via a RAM editor after the game started. Same thing goes for Celes with ice (level 1) and cure (level 4).

I am rewriting the opening sequence with actor 0 at level 1 (-3 level on average), and actor 1 at level 3 (+0 level on average). Actor 0 is supposed to learn swdtech and actor 1 magic. When I start the game actor 0 has dispatch learned as well as fire and cure, then continues to learn swdtechs via level up, no more magic. Actor 1 knows nothing at the start of the game but learns Antidot at the appropriate level...

What I think is happening is that when the game starts, the branching portion is working correctly, looking at actor 0 for swdtech and actor 1 for magic. But when it comes time to write the spell into the learned spell list, the magic still writes to actor 0s spell list, hence why at level 1 he knows the magic for both level 1 and level 3. This aparently only happens with the magic learned when the character is created in-game as regular level up seems to work properly.

One important last thing, though I don't understand why because of a lack of code analysis but I'm not questioning the validity of the statement either:

WARNING: Each PC can only have ONE natural learning ability. So if you give Terra SwdTech, she can't have natural magic (you will have to assign it to someone else).

This is because you only reach the branch code once. The first time you meet a requirement you are sent to the learning code and without changing anything else, you can't get to the other learning codes. I suppose you could hypothetically put the branches in the order they appear in the code and instead of them returning out at the end branching to the next learn code you want the character to use. (Ex. Branch to terras level up magic then the end of that code branching to the swdtech code.)