I'm not sure if the following Breakthrough makes sense, or if it is a little too limited, but here it is. A vague potential 'background' has been included for those who would prefer it to occur 'in the background' of an ongoing chronicle.
Genesis Notation : A modest and apparently selfless piece of research, this Minor Breakthrough was actually a product of a House Jerbiton magus who desired to turn his artistic ideas directly into reality through his magic. Frustrated by repeated failures he painstakingly redefined into an improved form the 'imprecise' notation previously used to definite both crafted and conjured objects.
Genesis Notation Original Research - Minor Breakthrough [30 points]
Relevant Spells: Rego craft magic or Creo spells producing arbitrary and complicated objects, Intelligo spells revealing details of crafted items, and Intelligo Vim spells to examine the magical creation process.
Effect: Formulaic Creo and Rego spells no longer suffer the +3 adjustment for magic use on the Ease Factor of their Finesse rolls (HoH:S p60-61).
EDIT: Added bit concerning craft magic in 'Relevant Spells'.
Since my brain has gotten stuck on such things here's another Breakthrough with a potential 'background'. While useful it is doesn't any of the Laws and is technically just another Range, despite its diverse applications, so I left it as a Minor Breakthrough.
Tailored Castings: This Minor, but useful, Breakthrough was never announced, but was quietly included in the Lab Text of a spell called 'A Lovers's Freedom' sold by an obscure House Bjornaer maga. This variation on "Cloak of Black Feathers" (ArsMa p131) changes the target into a blue-banded hawk similar to the maga's own Heartbeast.
Tailored Castings Original Research - Minor Breakthrough [30 points]
Relevant Spells: Powerful effects (Magnitude 6+) which cause Warping on recipients through simple application, versions of the previous spells customised for individuals, Intelligo spells examining differences between individuals, and spells which inflict an identical change on the caster and others simultaneously.
Effect: The following new Range is created:
New Range:Other
Anything that the magus touches, whether object or person, other than him or herself. Spells using this range are always treated as though they were specifically and carefully designed to work on the target, but cannot be applied to the magus casting the spell.
Codified Cantrip Development; Minor Breakthrough (30 points) Relevant Spells: Spells you could cast with Non-Fatiguing Spontaneous Magic. Effect: The following breakthrough Virtue is created:
Some Conjurer of Cheap Tricks Minor, Hermetic
You are able to, with mastery of surprisingly accurate methodologies for turning conjecture and guesswork of simple spellcraft into functioning practice, produce Lab Texts for formulaic spells you do not know. The Lab Text must be for a spell you can cast with Non-Fatiguing Spontaneous Magic without any Aura modifier, and writing it takes only a week of time.
@Xefas, I'm not sure if you intended the Breakthrough to be used this way or not but I saw it as very useful for those specialists who wish to leave a large 'legacy' of spells. Taken another way though... How would it interact with experimentation and research?
In regard to the Breakthroughs below: I'm not sure if there would be wider implications for these two Breakthroughs. The 'saving' for the second may add up over time, but I've given up on trying to work out how the numbers would play out.
Mundane Longevity: Many magi, upon reading the Corpus tractus which explains this Breakthrough, have called themselves fools for having overlooked such an obvious error in how Longevity Rituals were applied to mundanes. The biting tone of the text certainly does not hold back from doing so.
Mundane Longevity Original Research - Minor Breakthrough [30 points]
Relevant Spells: Perdo Corpus spells to cause aging, Intelligo Corpus spells to examine the effects of aging, Longevity rituals for mundanes.
Effect: Longevity rituals created for non-magical people are as effective as those made for characters with a Supernatural Ability.
Youthful Economy: Members of House Bonisagus who have learned of this Minor Breakthrough may acknowledge that the improved Vis efficiency it offers is useful, but its modest scope leaves them rather unimpressed. Certain Redcaps of House Mercer are likewise unimpressed... specifically those whose paid for Longevity rituals were more experimental than they realised.
Youthful Economy Original Research - Minor Breakthrough [30 points]
Relevant Spells: Creo Corpus spells which aid aging crisis, Intelligo spells to determine age of a living being, Creo Corpus spells to temporarily alleviate symptoms of age.
Effect: The Vis cost of Longevity rituals is calculated using their apparent, rather than actual, age for those with an apparent age of at least twenty one years.
I probably wouldn't allow Youthful Economy into my game as a breakthrough, or if I did, not as a minor breakthrough, as the real restriction on age is the limit of vis use in laboratory which depends on magic theory score, where past that point, it becomes impossible to create a better longevity ritual. This breakthrough would have a huge impact on the life expectancy in the order, rather than simply being a vis saver. Because ironically, what currently likely kills a longevity ritual specialist isn't age per se, but his lack of knowledge in magic theory.
Edit: Also this breakthrough would interact very strangely with the Unaging virtue.
I do not see anything in the write-up that would allow it to interact with experimentation or research. It is written to allow you to produce a labtext for an unknown spell that is at or below (Sta + TeFo)/5 in a week. Not a lab activity and could actually be done as a 7 day distraction to an actual lab activity.
While Mundane Longevity is fine and similar to things like LR with fertility, Youthful Economy is near game breaking. I have a Magus pushing 130 years of age that has an apparent age of 28 (Strong Faerie Blood, great location, and high lab bonus). While the potential savings of 20 pawns of vis is nice, the bigger effects would be allowing older Magi to more easily create LR and boosting the effect of LR. Sure I could save the 20 pawns, but since I already gathered them I can roll them in up to a +20 bonus to the LR. That would allow an LR that works 30~40 years longer.
EDIT: For your earlier post, Tailored Casting, I did not comment on it but my saga has a Spell Mastery ability named Soft Magic which is similar. For the "designed for or cast by" benefit, the spell is Forceless Cast (no Penetration), cast at +1 Mag, and cannot benefit from anything that reduces casting time.
Troy has the right of it, I think. My intent was not to speed up experimentation, but rather to create something simple and cute that would also let a wizard produce simple lab texts for their apprentices to get a taste of magic without needing to dedicate time to invent tiny baby spells.
One of the consequence of the breakthrough could be that apprentices are assumed to start with the normal 120 levels of spells, plus a few bonus ones of level 1-5? You'd always have the perfect little tetris piece to fill in the last few points of Lab Total when teaching them spells.
Some Conjurer of Cheap Tricks Minor, Hermetic
You are able to, with mastery of surprisingly accurate methodologies for turning conjecture and guesswork of simple spellcraft into functioning practice, produce Lab Texts for formulaic spells you do not know. The Lab Text must be for a spell you can cast with Non-Fatiguing Spontaneous Magic without any Aura modifier, and writing it takes only a week of time.
House Diedne casters get (Te+Fo+stress die)/2 without spending Fatigue. They will have a lot of lab texts for this, if they so choose.
Before I attempt to write up a suitable Breakthrough, could anyone suggest if overcoming or reducing the issue with Muto Corpus spells having "subtle (or sometimes dramatic) permanent effects" be a Minor or a Major Breakthrough?
(This seems to be something which butts up against the Limit of Essential Nature and would thus see some research being done.)
Thank you for clarifying that. Although if this isn't a Lab Activity then would it not need a lab?
I obviously didn't think that one through properly so thank you both for pointing out the major issue it has. The intention was to make it 'easier' to maintain youth when there was already the façade of of it than to desperately try to hold on when much older, but I obviously went about it badly.
Life Magic
Major, Hermetic
You see Animal, Corpus and Herbam Forms as not separate, but as a connected whole rather than four separate Arts. Whenever you gain experience from a source dedicated to one of these Arts, you gain half the Source Quality in experience points in each of the other two Arts. For example, if you studied Corpus from a book with a Source Quality of 13, you would gain 7 experience points in each of Animal, and Herbam. (This would not change if, for example, you also had Book Learner or Affinity with Animal.) In addition, if a spell with one of these Forms as its primary Form has another element as a requisite, you use the primary Form to calculate totals, even if the requisite is lower.
(A re-skinning of Elemental Magic with different Forms)
I've also considered that a very influential Magic Theory tractatus was written in a Tribunal, having a standard set of notation for lab texts, so that there's no transcription of lab notes necessary for a number of magi.
There was some talk about this earlier in the thread. In general research to make Muto spells have a permanent change is Major and adds a Creo requisite. It can be Minor for limited cases, normally when limiting a Base to an extent that limits its use to specific cases.
I'm a pessimist, and hold that permanent Muto as a general case is Hermetic and adds a Creo requisite, although I agree that specific sorts of permanent changes can be Major and a single or a very limited set could be Minor, yes.
But some permanent change don't go against essential nature : for example using MuCo to change appearance or size, to gain a specific feature (like night vision) or to have a specific quality (raising his soak by 1) seem fine for me
I think that people are misunderstanding what I said: I was asking about a Breakthrough to prevent the potentially permanent physical and mental side effects that leaving someone under a Muto Corpos spell long term can cause:
"Someone turned into a rabbit and back might keep a fondness for carrots or retain unnaturally big ears." (AM5 p132)
Muto Corpus does not affect the mind. Except for the mention of the "unnaturally big ears" the side effects are mental and caused by being in a different form rather than by the spell. So you could perform OR to remove possible physical side effects from Muto transformations but the mental ones are from the subjects weak will and not something that could be easily corrected (if at all).
I do think a hermetic magus could engage in research to develop spells that either have a lower impact on the mind, or that aid in the mind's recovery, or those that fortify the mind from such influences.
Since hermetic magic can already rewrite the human mind, the question is figuring out how to integrate help directly into muto corpus spells.
Seriously, I just want to say to all posting ideas here I love reading potential expansions. I don't have much to add right this second but its brilliant to read all these additions.
Oh. As a note about Creo and Muto, if you add a Muto requisite to a Creo spell you can then link it to another Art to give a permanently created object something like fast healing. Imagine CreoTerram (MutoHerbam) spells to make buildings that natural heal like a plant does over time.
Longevity Binding Major Hermetic
You are able to enchant a longevity ritual into a Familiar bond. As with all effects from the bond, this does not warp you. However, if you bond is severed for any reason the ritual will fail [and you will suffer an immediate aging crisis].
This breakthrough was developed by Marcus of Bonisagus, a magus who up until his announcement of his success was widely considered deranged for his experiments on his own familiar as well as on the longevity rituals of anyone foolish or desperate enough to come to him for one of the cheap rituals he offered. Marcus in turn insisted that, unlike his pater, he was far too careful and clever to be incurring any significant risk from his experiments. His eventual apparent vindication shocked almost everyone who knew him.
Disguised Enchantment Minor Hermetic
An effect modification for enchanted items: Suppress or alter the sigil in an effect enchanted into an item, as per Shroud Magic. If copying a specific sigil, this requires an Int+Finesse roll, which receives a -3 penalty if the enchanter is working from unaided memory, no penalty if using Creo Mentem magic to enhance memory or a +3 bonus if the enchanter has a copy of the sigil to hand during the season. This acts as the Ease Factor for rolls to notice that the sigil has been altered (although the true sigil will never be apparent). Casual observation is unlikely to notice the change; however, use of spells like By His Works, the Quaesitorial Acute Sense Mastery or investigating the item in the lab will allow a Per + Awareness stress roll to detect the forgery.
Use of this effect modification adds 5 levels to the final effect.
Jacquelina of Verditius was already not well liked by the Quaesitors at the time she unveiled this effect at the Verditius contest. Unfortunately for them, however, her Rhine Gild has been actively blocking any attempt to censer her for "expanding the boundaries of Hermetic theory".
Twilight Tools Minor Hermetic
This discovery expands the usage of the Enchant Casting Tools minor Verditius Mystery. For every 5 levels of enchantment you receive a +2 bonus to rolls to avoid going into Twilight and a +1 bonus to rolls to Comprehend Twilight when casting the spell linked to this casting tool.
This discovery is a result of Junius of Verditius' research whilst travelling with the Criamon covenant of Semitae.