Finesse, Mundanes and the Superb Scrinium

[NeutronStar]

Hello! I've been reading TME a bit lately and I was thinking about the Superb Scrinium. It requires the user to have a fairly high Finesse score, so I was wondering, is there anything stopping a mundane from learning Finesse for the purposes of operating the Scrinium? Maybe Redcaps could be employed to copy books enmasse?

Also, the section on copying books says to use your Finesse Total (Intelligence + Finesse) instead of an Intelligence + Finesse roll when determining success, but this means that the average 'Finesse Total' is way less than the roll would be, this feels wrong to me.

Finally, would incorporating The Copyist's Critical Eye into the Scrinium (or a similar effect) allow it to low the Ease Factor of the Finesse, possibly by scrapping imperfect pages and rewriting them, making it much easier to copy at the expense of time (though it would still be ridiculously fast!)

Thanks!

[Berengar]

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@NeutronStar

Hello! I've been reading TME a bit lately and I was thinking about the Superb Scrinium. It requires the user to have a fairly high Finesse score, so I was wondering, is there anything stopping a mundane from learning Finesse for the purposes of operating the Scrinium? Maybe Redcaps could be employed to copy books enmasse?

Operating the TME p.101ff Superb Scrinium does not require the Gift, or being a magus. Grogs could be trained in Finesse and put to that job.

@NeutronStar

Also, the section on copying books says to use your Finesse Total (Intelligence + Finesse) instead of an Intelligence + Finesse roll when determining success, but this means that the average 'Finesse Total' is way less than the roll would be, this feels wrong to me.

The reason for using only the Finesse Total is given here:

@"TME p.100f [i

Copying an Entire Book[/i]"]Copying a book page by page using Rego craft magic as detailed in the previous section would therefore seem the best option, but it requires hundreds of castings, each with its accompanying Finesse roll. For simplicity’s sake, compare the Finesse Total (Intelligence + Finesse) of the caster on the nearby table to determine how much Quality is retained from the original book.

@NeutronStar

Finally, would incorporating The Copyist's Critical Eye into the Scrinium (or a similar effect) allow it to low the Ease Factor of the Finesse, possibly by scrapping imperfect pages and rewriting them, making it much easier to copy at the expense of time (though it would still be ridiculously fast!)

TME p.101 box The Copyist's Critical Eye is R: Per T: Vision, and as such would require a magus to use it. But a higher magnitude R: Touch version of it in a magical item with unlimited uses per day - e. g. an early monocle - is possible, and could be operated by a sufficiently trained grog supervising the operation of the Scrinium.

Thus making the Superb Scrinium run by highly trained grogs requires to set up a complex, specialized institution at a covenant. Yes, it can churn out lots of copies per season. You first might have to raise enough sheep for the parchment it devours - and finally you might resort to manufacturing and using sufficiently fine paper instead, produced with another complex process of Craft magic.
But which books will be deemed worthy of copying by the magi of that covenant? And who will buy or read them in 13th century Mythic Europe? Would magically copied bibles, gospel books, evangeliaries and psalters find their way into churches and households? Would students at a university finally benefit from cheaper textbooks than those provided by the copyist scribes of its town? How might society of Mythic Europe - and the role of magi within it - change?
TME p.103ff details some possible answers. So you can run a saga around such a covenant. Also take a look at this: luther2017.de/en/2017/luthe ... opic-2015/ . Yes, readily available bibles and flysheets might even change the Church in Mythic Europe.

Cheers