Whoa, step back!
The horse has a better Magic Theory score than Janus, the covenant's resident specialist in this field? I hope this includes a relevant specialty...
Anyway I think Janus needs to hit the books! Granted he has Puissance so his effective Magic Theory is 9+2, but still.
And also better than it's magus, which I find more curious. 
Yeah, I saw that one as well, but a magus typically has a lot more different projects going on than grinding Magic Theory, there are so many point sinks for experience: Arts, other abilities and other things that take time. A Familiar however? Don't they train their innate abilities as well: Awareness, Athletics, Brawl? Or social abilities if they can communicate with humans (or even just among their own kind?). Is it because those normal abilities fairly quickly reach a plateau where further increase is not useful? But Magic Theory is always better at higher levels for labwork?
Maybe Grace should be the recipient of some more Com enhancing Rituals so she can write some MT books to benefit the magi? 
There are probably a few Bonisagi, Bjornaer and Ex Misc magi out there who would be fascinated by her PoV. Maybe the herd mentality offers Insight into improved co-ordination/help in the Lab or something.
To be clear, Grace has trained Awareness, Athletics, and Brawl. They're at 5,7, and 7 respectively. This period alone she has also raised all of her realm lores, concentration, and organization lore; order of hermes. But it is like Christian suggests, there aren't as many other recipients for a familiar's XP for as there are for magi's. Another factor is that the familiars get more time to study than the magi do (albeit I'm giving her less xp for her time), every season that Andreva is doing lab work where she doesn't need Grace's help Grace could, at least in theory, hit the books.
Grace's magic theory specialty is helping in the lab so yes, the number I posted includes a specialty.
I had thought that I gave Grace a personality trait from one of the familiar bond enchantments regarding an interest in magic but upon looking back I see that I haven't yet done that.
There was this thread from a few years ago, from when I deduced that this was going to be the case:
Familiars get the language skills of the magi at the time that they are bound, so Grace understands the same languages (p 105). She has an artes liberales score of 2(specializing in Geometry because she's fond of it). The first power that got enchanted into the familiar bond was Shape of the Riders which allows her to assume human form.
In our fast advancement Grace has gotten no experience for the time that she spends in the lab. When she's not in the lab I've been giving her 25 xp per year rather than the 30 that magi earn.
20 might be reasonable as well, I originally choose 25 because while I wanted to reflect their different priorities I also wanted to show that they had fewer demands on their time. People come to the magi for assistance, for counsel, and to run the covenant. People would not typically seek out a magical horse for these things.
The previous post is all screwed up. I must have hit edit rather than quote on Christian's post.
The quoted text is Christian's and the unquoted is mine.
He had written a few more sentences at the end that I deleted and I have no way of recovering..
sorry 
Erik
Never mind. It can't have been anything important.
The conclusion seems to be that a Familiar advanced by (almost) the same method as the magi: 25 exp per year not spent in the lab, easily matches even Magic Theory oriented magi in this ability. Even if the Familiars also spread their experience on other key abilities there are so many fewer point sinks than compared to magi which have many abilities to spend point on as well as up to 15 arts.
The experiment is interesting, given the opportunity to be able to study Magic Theory a Familiar can be really valuable and useful.
five seasons left
I have another, possibly sketchy, sword based effect, this one for the talisman.
Her rego terram lab total for her talisman is her best lab total
Rego14
terram 29
magical focus14
magic theory 8
intelligence 3
aura 3
grace's int + MT 13
lab general quality 2
lab rego bonus 6
lab terram bonus 4
sword quality 4
talisman bonus 5
Other rego effects in the device 2
terram material bonus 3
harming things shape bonus 4
for a total of 114
That means if she spends 2 seasons she can get an effect of level 76 and in three seasons of level 84
Here's my first go at it
I thought the difference between 42 penetration and 58 penetration captured a large enough proportion of the opponents that Andreva is actually scared of to warrant the extra season.
She'll attune amber's +3 bonus to corpus
Does functioning as a trained group cross the line into the realm of a spell that thinks for itself?
Does this effect violate the limit of arcane connections?
Can it target swords inside the purse of sixty scabbards (described back on page 3)?
I've often wondered about this myself, since Trained Groups are among the most powerful tricks for combat in ArM5.
But then I usually remind myself that the bonus is based on the combat skill(s) of the participants, capped by Leadership. Does the swords have abilities?
I don't see why?
Even if the sword (caster) had senses like a human, how would it percieve blades within the purse of sixty scabbards? No? Then how could it target them?
I have the actual numbers coming from Andreva since she is the Vanguard. I did not however use her leadership for the size of the group because I thought leadership the skill is more about people than about magically animated swords. I could use Andreva's leadership score and say that the group becomes untrained if Eagerly Attentive Talisman is not active.
Obviously the swords don't posses abilities. (wait, is that somehow not obvious? did I miss something?)
The question I'm raising with this effect is -Is there a way to make a trained group with magic-? If I can't do it how I've tried it, is it possible in another way?
My thought was that the talisman (which is unarguably the caster because it is a linked trigger item) might not perceive the targeted swords even if they're not hidden in the pouch of sixty scabbards.
One could argue that the target group- all of the swords and the like carried by Andreva- is perceived even if some of the parts of this group are hidden in a bag. Do you find that convincing, or should I work up a target room version that targets a container that she's carrying?
Then, strictly, the group bonus would be 0 (sum of the combat abilities of the swords), no?
As I (think I've) mentioned, I've looked for a way to get a magical 'trained group' before - usually with animated corpses.
I both want it and don't want it, suspecting it is overpowered.
And so I've found it very soothing to realise that strictly speaking, wouldn't the bonus be 0?
If you can convince me otherwise, that'll be useful too mind you!
Good point - isn't it generally assumed that devices have "human-level pseudo-senses"? Otherwise, devices get really wierd.
Not sure I'd call them part of that group, when packed away like that. On the other hand, that might be because I'd positively love the T: Room version!
Having the swords function has a trained group is a bit of a stretch. I doubt a Mentem spell could make soldiers function as a trained group and the swords lack intellect. And you probably should use Room for the targeting.
Alright, here's a second try
Can I avoid the issue by calling the bonus something else and making it smaller?
Swords to help in the fight by fighting by themselves is cool.
Should the ReTe effect have a Mentem component to simulate some sense and skill to fight?
How does it work with multi-armed creatures fighting with multiple weapons? Isn't this like Untrained Group so no Atk or Dfn bonus but multiple wounds caused?
Maybe this is how animated swords would fight.
I'm also thinking about using Finesse as bonus to represent the magus' skill with the magic.
Would the effect be better served by being linked to an effect using the higher level InMe guideline "Level 25: Learn all the information you wish from a person’s mind."? Rather than just surface thoughts, would this allow the synchronicity effect to access the wielder's Abilities?
The Treacherous Spear from the core book is an example of a spell not needing a mentem component to fight. Previously in this thread we've had 4 other spells that had swords fight without mentem. The core spell that I built the other three around is Insubstantial Duelist back on page 2.
Do you have a good argument as to why it can't be done without mentem? I'm not eager to go back and rework everything but I'm willing to if it isn't right.
The Blessing of Staarkad from Magi of Hermes (p49) is a muto corpus spell that grows an extra pair of arms on its targets. When fighting, the four-armed targets of the spell add an extra person to groups without requiring more leadership. So yes, that's how it has been done.
In this enchantment I added a magnitude to reflect better coordination. Do you believe that an extra magnitude could make the target swords coordinate better with one another? If so, what sort of a bonus should result? (I think these are the key questions for me at the moment).
That's what I did for the earlier spells. For this effect however the sword is the caster (linked trigger). Treacherous Spear uses the combat statistics of the weapon's wielder and that's similar to what I'm doing here. To me this looks like a like a better fit with existing rules than using Andreva's finesse.
If we're agreed that the swords can fight without a mentem component (Herbam spells do that as do spells earlier in this thread, -spells that I'll change if you convince me that they're wrong), then the question is "can she get somewhat better results out of adding an extra magnitude to the effect to increase the coordination of the targeted swords?". If the answer to this is no then I'll explore the use of mentem (and possibly animal).
From A&A, it seems rather clear that Mentem cannot directly generate or (as far as I can tell) simulate skill, so that'd be a no-go.
Which means that emulating the skill of a trained group or even an untrained group isn't plausible either? Interesting. Then the bonus if multiple floating weapons is back to being base on the caster's finesse score?
Or is there an argument to say that an inanimate object can be given the behavioural properties of an animal or man, then it can fight.
We had a thread here before talking about a rock being animated as a bear and then fighting. We can also see from RAW that a zombie can be told to fight or capture an opponent, and is granted a dull form of intellect to do so. Why not a sword, and why not a group of swords acting in unison?