So, should the question be that they could add some unknown flaws or since there isn't any mechanism for accounting for the danger just presume that they can't setup/refine a lab.
There is no provision in Ars Magica for a difference between book and practical knowledge.
Indeed, if anything, practical experience is kind of inferior to sitting around with a book (or being taught personally, of course, which one would expect.)
If I took your point to its logical conclusion, I could accept a mage who lost his Gift as my covenant lab-building scholar. He has plenty of practical, depressing experience. Or a scholar who'd had a ReMe infusion.
Very well. You may consider the Gift or some nexus to the Goft to be unimportant in setting up a lab. I think it is very important because it is necessary to work in a lab or assist in a lab. Your point about Ars not accepting the difference between practical and academic knowledge.
If you allow the nonGifted to setup labs, why can't they refine labs (prior to being used)? Why can't they extract Vis? Why can't they fix an AC? Prepare an item for enchantment? These are very useful activities that magi would love to delegate to their lessers. That's the slippery slope.
Actually, that kind of thing is done a lot. The physics department I was in had a whole crew in charge of building things for them. They would design what they wanted and have someone who was actually a specialist as a machinist or welder or electrician or whatever make it. A lot of scientists use computers to run their simulations, computers designed by people who are have relatively little knowledge of their area of science. That doesn't mean these other people could design and run experiments for the scientists, just that they can make and install the equipment that allows those scientists to run their experiments. In the same way, a non-Gifted person could not make use the lab to invent a spell, create a magical item, etc.
If you don't believe me, here's a simple thing to check. Was it physicists who dug the tunnels, constructed the magnets, build the computers, installed the wiring, etc. for the Large Hadron Collider? Yes, physicists and engineers planned together to figure out how it would be built. But who actually built the thing?
Let me go through your argument:
The actual rules statement is that a magus is needed to increase the Refinement. If the Refinement cannot be negative, then setting it at 0 cannot be an increase. That's just where it is being set. Thus the requirement for having a magus does not apply to this circumstance.
Plus there is the whole question of the validity of adding Flaws to increase Refinement in that argument anyway, especially considering a lab can be set up in a space with a Size larger than 0.
So, no, the logic does not at all imply you have to be Gifted to set up a lab.
It specifies the requirements for adding Virtues and removing Flaws, and part of setting up a lab is removing a Flaw so even if the first step of adding a Flaw seems odd the second step is not odd. What does it specify as the requirements? A "person" (not "mage" nor "magus" nor "maga" even though those terms are used for requirements later) must have a Magic Theory score of at least 3 more than the Refinement. That's it. So a person with a Magic Theory of 3+ meets all of the requirements to add Virtues or remove Flaws from a lab with no Refinement.
But someone without IT certification can still hook up the computer on the desk.
The text in covenants says "it takes someone with a magic theory score of three or more..." not "it takes a maga" or "it takes a gifted person" to me "someone" included the non gifted. As opposed to increasing refinement "A maga must be familiar with the lab in question... and have a magic theory score of..." which makes it explicitly mages for refinement, but only someone for setting up.
The answer to who can set up labs, as with so many things in this world, is "YSMV." Not just because troupes have every right to ignore or emphasize rules within the books at their discretion, or on account of specific wording; I try to avoid weighing in on those sorts of things. The real reason is because of something the book doesn't spell out, clearly or otherwise. Namely, is a standard laboratory more magical than the sum of its parts?
UnGifted folk can not, under any circumstances, manipulate Hermetic magic independently, and failed apprentices (who by their very definition once had the Gift and Opened Arts, so they do have metaphysically significant differences from other unGifted folks) are the only known unGifted who can help others with their magic.
Thus, your decision on what a lab is should define the answer to that question in your saga.
If there is any magic at all involved, from any direct enchantment to even the slightest astrological alignment, no. They can't, because no amount of knowledge changes a fundamental inability to work any Hermetic magic in any way, shape, or form.
If there are no magical processes whatsoever and setting the lab up is entirely a matter of organization and gathering materials that are already prepared (and thus require no tampering on the lab-setter-uper's part) then there's no reason an unGifted shouldn't be able to pull it off.
That's my three hand a half silver pennies.
For those who insist that it requires magic, what if someone created a script to give a mundane the Mystery, "Hermetic Architecture"? Such a thing is possible, in canon, and that would seem to be the virtue most applicable. Perhaps a project for an industrious Verditus? Create a team of contractors to built labs to order? You could make a lot of money and power, done right.
My two denarri is that Magic Theory allows someone to know the basics, i.e. if you have a thorough grounding in the basics (MT of 3+), you can set up a basic lab (one with no modifiers). The basics also include x "resonance" produces y "effect", meaning you can install features/focii. You cannot go beyond the basics (i.e. refine a lab), or actually use it for hermetic work (which explicitly requires the Gift). The rules do not explicitly rule for or against ungifted folk from distilling vis (not a lab activity), but I think common sense must intervene and state that distilling vis requires the Gift. You may disagree; this still remains my opinion.
This stands to reason, agree totally. Having used yet IT spaces setup by junior technical staff, it's not even close to the same. Everything might be plugged in and setup roughly, but they need a blueprint to work from if they are going to setup a space that works for a particular practitioner.
A non technical person can do little more than move furniture and empty boxes onto work spaces. Basically removalists.
Extracting vis requires a Creo Vim lab total, which sounds like either a lab activity or at least using numbers (TeFo) that come up as N/A rather than '0'; so there's certainly more teeth to the idea that you need to be a magus for something like extraction.
Extracting Vis is a lab activity:
and as virgileso says
If you are in search of expedited lab construction, you can always use a modified version of the "The Ambulatory Laboratory" Cov p 122 (by using the spell in the printed version not the errated one) , to move around all the stuff in the laboratory to instantly install a virtue or even get a season of refinement. All you need is a very high Finesse but again , there is spells to help in this regard.
Why the printed one when the printed one is known to be mistaken and corrected by the version in the errata?
Edit: Oh, do you mean use a lower base (as incorrectly used in the printed spell but as would be fine here) because you'll be moving things over shorter distances instead of having to send them some unlimited (AC) distance?
Yes, very high Finesse. Consider that that spell is just for moving the whole lab as it is, so the difficulty would have to be much higher than for The Ambulatory Laboratory. Then there comes the question if all the time put into getting Finesse so high plus the time spent developing the spell is worth the several seasons of labor saved. I would think for most magi it would not be. But for some perhaps so.
This is much more similar to a Verditius building items to spec, or a Vim/Terram specialist using the Laboratory of Bonisagus to provide the working equipment, but someone still has to set it up. IF we want to talk about the role of oversight of the project, then someone still's looking over all the construction people and engineers to make sure things are progressing as desired. Probably the people who will be using it initially...
The core rule book does say character (not person), granted. In a chapter on Laboratory, who do you think that character is? It's just as reasonable to interpret that as being a magus with a Magic Theory score of 3 as it is to believe it's any so-and-so with a Magic Theory score of 3. I still maintain that to setup, use, and enjoy the benefits of a Hermetic laboratory you need to be a magus, or at least have a nexus to the Gift, like being able to assist in the lab. So there are two kinds of characters that can set a lab up, magi, and characters that are associated with the Gift in some manner, such as Failed Apprentices and familiars.
the main problem with an IT example is we are comparing untrained to trained, not ungifted to gifted.
To me, basic means basic, or standard. There is nothing in the texts to support the idea that it has to be someone gifted setting it up, it is merely conjecture. The fact that the description in so many places do not mention the need for a magus to set up the lab but chooses more generic terms (person, character) to me implies that there is no need for the gift to set up the lab.
That being said, if your covenant has 6 magi, each of them with apprentices, a person with 3 in magic theory and no gift would be setting up a lab every 2.5 years on average, well short of full time employment for someone who (assuming they can read and a SQ:11 book) spent three seasons studying magic theory and is clearly educated enough they could be doing something else productive like only learning MT:1 and copying magical texts.
And the quote I'm referring to says (underline mine)
And, now that I have my book back:
As compared to the actual rule:
Not only does it not say Refinement cannot be negative, it specifically gives a formula for a negative refinement, in direct disagreement with your statements about Refinement never being negative and having to take Flaws to have it at 0 instead of being negative.
I'll concede the argument.
It is still a Bad Idea[sup]TM[/sup].
I can totally respect that. While the books don't say the Gift is required for those things, I don't think it's unreasonable at all for an SG to rule that it is required. It would be an interpretation or very minor house rule at most. The really important thing would be how it relates to a specific saga's setting.