How? Historically there was a Venetian glass trade that did not depend on selling to covenants. It seems that that level of Venetian glass trade would still exist even if mages were creating all of the glassware that mages desired.
A mage could perhaps use up all of the raw materials for some items but I doubt that glass is one of those items.
Mostly joking, but the Hermetic Order probably does make up a very significant chunk of the high quality glass market. I am imagining that the Venetian Glass trade is notably larger than it historically was, by virtue of selling to magi. If magi make up 20% of the yearly purchases, the sellers will have a particularly bad couple of years until they reach equilibrium again.
Makes sense. On the other hand I've always implicitly assumed that the Order mostly traded within the order with a very small fringe of people who traded in fancy raw materials. Much less disruption of mundane economies and markets that way. Plus a side benefit of allowing me to think about ME as being basically the same as regular Europe with regards to economics and production.
Indeed! A first magnitute CrHe spell can create a bar of Aleppo soap that lasts until sunrise/sunset: Base 2, +1 Touch, +2 Sun. This is something that even a relatively young magus specializing in Creo or Herbam can create spontaneously without Fatigue, every morning (and let the covenfolk split it into multiple pieces and spread it throughout the covenant).
Hey, don't forget cotton and hemp.
There is, of course, significant regional variation; the Loch Leglean Tribunal is going to have a lot less cotton around than the Levant.
I'm not sure you can disregard the 2-4 season aging time, since that is an important part of the process of making soap (alkaline compounds break down, moisture evaporates, etc.), as surely as aging is a part of making good cheese or wine. Yes, once that ingredients are combined, boiled, and allowed to harden (which, IIRC, takes a few days, but less than a full week; certainly less than a month), what you have can be used as soap, but the aging process improves & refines the product.
So maybe soap made with a +3 time modifier (more than 1 day's work but less than 1 month's work) gets you shoddy quality soap, but one made with a +9 modifier (one year's work) gets you some excellent quality soap?
Or, you just let it age naturally after mixing it all with a spell. That's also an option.
And then one doesn't need too high a Finesse to be able to do it.
I'm of the same opinion. The time needs to take in account the time for which the product is finished. For soap, seems that if you do not tend for it professionally and just let time pass, you're likely going to get a shoddy product.
As soap ages, it can:
But if we add "maturity" time to the total, it means Magi can only make shoddy wine & spirits using craft magic? The table stops at +9 for a year but wines/spirits require multiple years to reach peak potential. if we extrapolate, it could be +12 or even +15 just for the time aspect.
W
Warning! Only to be used outdoors.
Oh, it's definitely important. I'd say it's actually essential.
What I am saying is that when making soap via craft magic you have two options.
Craft Magic isn't for the amateurs. Yes, it requires tremendous levels of skills. Affinity, Puissant, Cautious Finesse are advised. Yes, most mages who have a decent score in Finesse can only make average quality wine with a single spell on a lucky roll, and will most of the time make shoddy wine. Consider that they spent 6s to turn grapes into something a vintner would take months to create with decades of experience under the belt, without a pawn of vis. However, with Finesse, there are work arround:
Generally speaking, though - don't venture into craft magic unless you're serious about doing it. Which is probably smart too - otherwise there would be many covenants without covenfolk out there, if anyone could replace the smith, mason, cook and carpenter with 4 spells easily.
Rego Craft magic is certainly not something to do halfway, but ...
... grogs can learn finesse, and one grog who invests a decade to learn it, can use any of the covenants lesser enchanted devices to craft anything from soap to weapons. Once you have it going, that one grog has time to both train their successor and wield the items often enough.
Creo Craft magic is easier to start overnight, but apart from the lead time, the killer for Rego Craft magic is the logistics needed to get the raw materials
I suppose it'd be possible to delegate that to grogs, but the upfront investment would be colossal. I'm not sure how common are grog characters that have things like Puissant / Affinity / Cautious Finesse, which means the amount of resources you'll need to buy to make the grog good at anything will increase correspondingly. How many covenants are willing to invest in a level 7 finesse summae and a few dozen tractatus on Finesse unless one of their magi plans to use them is a good question, and then you have to convince magi to spend lab seasons enchanting items for the grog to use. I think most covenants would rather spend 5 seasons on enchanting cost saving items than spend 5 seasons enchanting rego craft items and spending 50-100 pawns on Finesse books, but hey... I suppose there are covenants out there who might be willing to do that to have an income source...
In fact, he does not even need lesser enchanted devices: magi can cast the appropriate craft magic spells and pass control of them to him via Muto Vim (see the HP p. 97, Passing the Reins of <Form>).
And the magi!!!
I would not call the investment "colossal". I think it's very doable and it provides very real benefits to the magi (learning Finesse from a dedicated teacher is more efficient than doing the same from a book). At the same time, it's also reasonable to assume that no other covenant has done it, and the PCs are the first to do it.
In one of our sagas, the magi do exactly this, although probably at a somewhat lower finesse requirement. We make a device to extract salt from seawater. Thus wasting raw materials on failed attempts is a non-issue. We had an inactive and literate companion to read finesse from books that we already had, and train other grogs over time.
I agree that crafts that require costly ingredients and high skills are not for starters. Better start with cheap goods, and have grogs with reasonable teaching skills develop finesse through practice and exposure over two decades, and then train the next generation to the same level in less than a quarter of the time.
And once you do that, you may discover the rare individuals with relevant virtues, and you are ready for the posh stuff.
In theory, sure, but Muto Vim is a little extra botch prone, and for an income source, the botch will come up eventually.
Those who speak of difficulties getting the raw ingredients speak true.
I have a craft mage who wants to make soap.
The problem I had starting with the oil and lye is that the covenant ReMe specialist had a much easier time just making servants manufacture the soap, then waiting. Then the well-traveled Terram specialist showed how you could turn gold into soap almost instantly, by going to a market.
Fools. I'll show them! I began working toward using craft magic to make the precious oils out of their basic ingredients: Soil and sunlight.
I'm currently 122 years old and I keep having these turn-into-a-tree twilights for some damn reason, but I'm sure I'm getting close. Less than 100 xps to go raise my Finesse another point!
So, sorry to do this to you months later, but I was poking around with a Moon duration version of this, and so noticed a couple things.
First, there's a simple math error here. Base 2 + 1 Touch + 2 Group gets to 5th level, after which four steps for Size would be 25th level (+1 10, +2 15, +3 20, +4 25), not 20th. The 20th level version is accordingly +3 Size, for "just" 10,000 cubic paces of soap.
Second, is the soap a Base 2 "processed" plant product like a wooden plank, a meal, or cloth, or a Base 3 "treated and processed" plant product like clothing or furniture? This is judgement call territory, but if it's Base 3, then at level 20 you "only" get 1,000 cubic paces of soap.
A covenant moves heaven and earth to take over a Faerie Regio where time moves differently in order to...age their soap.
Also wait a minute. Would it be any easier (and cost less Vis in the long run) instead of using permanent Creo, just do a ~Sun duration and open up a bathhouse? It would presumably have all of its normal cleaning properties, smell nice, and be washed off before it turned back. That way, instead of having to find increasingly distant buyers for a rare commodity, the covenant could simply run a small but lucrative business for bathing, likely frequented by all the local nobles on a regular basis, and having access to the nobility would open up many opportunities over time, if you hire some competent and well-organized gossips to staff the place.
I also couldn't find rules to use Muto instead of Creo to make finery, but surely there must be something for that? I'm envisioning a rod that transforms a lump of whatever into fine Aleppo soap for the day.
Craft magic would be cheaper, but still require a spell. Or a moon duration group spell to make bars of soap that eventually go away, but could be used in a bathhouse.
Sun duration would require constant input (casting) by a mage. Considering how most mages feel about interruptions, probably wouldn't be a great solution.