It's noted that you can perform multiple lab activities in a given season of lab work - does this include fixing arcane connections? If not, what's the mechanism that precludes it, as opposed to, say, making a magic item AND inventing a spell in the same season? It does say it takes 'a season of lab work' to fix an arcane connection, but so does every other lab activity, so I don't see that interfering.
From what I understand of fixing an arcane connection, it's basically using a sort of alchemical process to 'pickle' the connection, more or less, which sounds like something you don't need to watch for all hours of the day, so long as you're there and checking on it regularly. I could be dead wrong, of course, but it's not really described that I can see.
Oh, the same goes for Verditius Items of Quality - do they preclude doing other things in a season? Again, it says they take a season, but it doesn't list a specific TeFo combination nor does it require a lab total.
The only rule for Multiple Laboratory Activities is that they take the same TeFo combination - does this mean that the vim vis precludes anything other than TeVi, then? Or are these things TeFo neutral?
That seems to eb the common interpretation. Altough it migth sees excessive for so little a thing, a fixed AC can be quite powerful. Also it makes no other demands than 1 pawn of vis, a lab and a Magus (so all in all Magic Theory of 1+). A perfect job for an apprentice i you don't need the lab yourself.
I think it is a common house rule to allow multiple ACs to be fixed at once, based on Magic Theory divided by some number. We dont use that, it is 1 full season.
Like House rule works, and the "Ideal apprentice work" is true.
But, i think on the fixing with no time or Vis consuming, only on Tremere like a secret of some of them and only for a limited range of objectivs or beings; this makes to me more clear that it's needed the all seson by Conection.
The idea to include ACs as stacking to lab effort is good, wish I'd have thought of that. It feels like a lesser enchanted device in terms of complexity, and as such I'd suggest it as a 10 effect in ReVi if I had to choose how it would stack (being as it costs a pawn).
The choice of Arts might also be altered when an AC is embedded in a device (such as linked bells, etc). In that case the time is loaded into the crafting, and I'd even argue the vis cost is potentially moot too.
However I think a season to create has been ruled as a way to discourage magi having permanent AC to everything, and that is something that will impact totally differently across sagas.
So I'd be in favor of allowing it to stack with other activity.
Well, for starters the rules on Multiple Magical activities state that "all the activities you perform in a season must be of the same type", so you cannot in fact create a magic item AND invent a spell in the same season (but you can create two magic items or invent two spells). That still leaves open the possibility of fixing multiple AC in one season, but there is no actual rule for it since the Lab Total does not apply. Personally I would say this is simply not possible, but of course troupes are free to House Rule it any way they want.
I would say, again, no more than one per season; certainly you cannot forge an Item of Quality and invent a spell in the same season. Besides, Items of Quality are quite powerful, so barring some special cases like enchanting a set of four horseshoes as if they were one item (with the understanding they provide one bonus when used together), I really think they should be limited to one a season.
You know, you are exactly right - this is why I asked, to clear up whether I might have missed some key bit of wording!
I actually disagree, because it does still take 1 pawn of Vis per. You'll fix as many arcane connections as you feel you can spend Vim Vis.
I think I might still house rule it in, because (as these things do require vis) I don't think it's that bad of an idea - I'll talk it over with my group. For things that don't require a lab total, that is, and that fit into your seasonal use of Vis.
In our recently finished campaign we removed the restriction on permanent AC. We reintroduced it after a year of in-game time when we were starting to need a warehouse to store permanent AC to half the places and important people of Europe. It became silly really fast. Limiting AC creation to the amount of vim vis you can use is effectively no limit at all. What we did is allow more leverage on the amount of free time you had. You could still lose a month of lab time (going to tribunal for example) and fix an AC. It was done ad hoc, not as a hard rule, but it worked OK. The current official system is there to limit hundreds of ACs to be stored one after the other, I thiunk, so it is stuff regarding game balance (and above all, suspension of disbelief).
An AC is always an important thing in the stories, not a trinket. Allowing multiple ACs to be fixed per season devalues the ACs as a whole.
The rules, as you say, are not clear for either arcane connections or Items of Quality. I would say, look at a different part of the rules, the part covering incomplete seasons of lab work (interruptions in the lab). Lab Totals are reduced depending on whether you missed one or two months. One month would seem to be the minimum time for a Lab activity. Since you have no lab total for either item, I would say that you can do one a month, if they are the same, for a total of three. If your ST will not allow that, then you can still do it on adventure seasons that didn't take the whole season......