Doubt about cooking with Rego Herbam...

Well, a little doubt.
I can imagine than make bread from grain is a ReHe 5 level (Treat and process), and i can imagine than cook on one more regular basis, it could be done with Animal and Aquam requisites. Should it be made with the Theriac guideline for 3 or the 5 guideline too?

The Spell of Wrought Iron and The Phantom Blacksmith (Covenants p.51) do not use up firewood or coal. I don't know, why that is so. But given those spells, baking or cooking with Rego Craft Magic (Covenants p. 49 box) should not use them up either.

Once a magus has written himself or learned the formula for a Theriac (A&A p.70f), he can spont or invent a specific Rego Herbam spell of base level 3 with Animal and Terram requisites to create that Theriac on a successful Finesse roll (A&A p.70 box). I understand your doubt, because by Covenants p.51 base level 3 Rego Herbam is manipulating items made of plant products, while base level 5 Rego Herbam is treating and processing them: certainly the latter looks more like making Theriac. While there is no erratum, it is a SG or troupe decision which base level to apply - and an important one for a magus knowing many Theriac formulas.

Cheers

Thanks for the answers!. The Requisites are from Aquam and Animal components, truely could be cooked without them, but all depends upon the recipe that are you cooking (grain to flour, or flour to bread or loaf are not needed any more; but a hotpot with broth or soup and meat would require them because the components, but that didn't add magnitudes).
I can imagine thatn the level of difference is because posibly, the recipe on one and another and the time required, they are all too far less complex on the 3 base than the 5, with the Precission counting too (i presume thant the difficultuy to cook couldn't be more than 6 to common and normal meals).

Rego magic can do what mundanes can do, but don't necessarily need the catalysts. To make steel, you need to have coal and iron ore, but to make iron you just need the iron ore, for example.

I know that, but i don't think than water is a catalyst on one soup. Depending upon the recipe, different spells should be include other requisite. In fact one only meat spell would require only Animal, for example.

That I would personally find myself in agreement with, I suspect. But I'd also argue the requisites should be free, since the spell doesn't really work without them. So you'd still use the worst of your forms, but no additional magnitudes for them.

Finesse, and with scarce ingredients, these rolls should be stressed.
The EF is probably low, 6, but if it's a complicated menu, goes up from there. A magus preparing the feast for a covenant, which is the work of multiple people probably requires a higher EF. There's some argument that could be made that the magus casts the spell multiple times equal to the number of people who would normally do the work, but I'm more inclined to go with the higher EF. Also feasts tend to be prepared days in advance, I begin planning for Thanksgiving weeks in advance (sourcing ingredients, planning the menu) and begin cooking two or three days before, with a lot of cooking happening on Thanksgiving.

It's rego craft magic, detailed in covenants. It's a stress roll finesse, ease factor is the ease factor of the mundane task +3

I understand that it is Rego craft magic, Houses of Hermes: Societatas takes it a bit further, and is much more authoritative and descriptive than what is detailed in Covenants. Discussion of Rego craft magic begins on page 60, in the Jerbiton chapter.

Mundane tasks that can be completed by a craftsman in a day are EF of the task+3 versus Perception + Finesse. As I said, a feast is not completed in a day, and it is not completed by one craftsman, when taken on the scale of a covenant or other large group. Increases to the ease factors should apply, but I'm not saying by how much, but the next step up is the work of a craftsman for a month. So if you have 10 cooks in a kitchen for 3 days, you have a months worth of work.

Of course! Maybe one enchanted object should use the requisites on the Level -but because on them that is the implied rule.

I am thinking on a regullar meal, a groth to one or three persons, the cauldron or pot content. Of course, the feast is heavier on the Perception + Finesse; but to the "Yo me lo guiso, yo me lo como"/"I cook it, i eat it", a 6 ease factor could be just right.

Yeah, I agree. I just wanted to suggest that the scale of the work necessary to get to the end result matters for determining the EF. Making a soup with all of the ingredients on hand, not hard...

It has bugged me for a while that Ars Magica doesn't let you take extra time with lab-work to get better results.

Gaining an additional 1/2 to your lab total in exchange for taking twice as long (2x the duration of the project for 1.5x the result) or something similar...

I would agree that the task taking longer for a mundane should increase the ease factor.

In our saga we also allow you, when making a dedicated magic item to do a single rego craft magic task (for example to turn grapes into wine) to substitute the finesse roll with +1 magnitude for complexity for each increase in the ease factor. Means you can only make a dedicated tasking item, rather than one that needs the finesse because it's doing multiple things, if you're willing to make it more complex to do.

A thought: Would you allow a magus to create a Rego Craft spell with a duration longer than momentary (and therefore higher magnitude) with a lower ease factor? It can be justified fairly easily in-universe.
For example: ReTe at Momentary to turn a block of stone into a statue would require a high finesse roll: The magus needs to know, in his head, exactly what the finished product is and the stone poofs into the statue. There's no intermediate step, no 'ah, I have a better perspective,' just boom.

How about a ReTe at Diameter with the same effect? It takes about two minutes to do. The magus can walk around the statue as it's being shaped, make sure everything is going properly, see that the design as it's being shaped matches what's in his head, make any corrections, etc. Since the product is being finished more slowly, it might in theory be easier. Perhaps each magnitude (within reason) reducing the ease factor by one?

I wouldn't, because of how craft magic is defined.

Agreed.

I think what might be done to reduce the ease factor is to break things down into tasks. For example with cooking, there's assembling the ingredients in one spot and part of that is preparing them for the recipe, dicing, chopping and mincing: mise en place. That can be done individually for each recipe component, and it is a very simple ease factor. Once all the ingredients are in place, then you can begin cooking, when everything is in place, it's very easy to cook, too.

The only exception are the kind of things like the milking from Covenants. And taht kind of things are more "Labour" Magic.