I'm looking at building a Pralician NPC. He has both Second Sight and Comprehend Magic. Second Sight doesn't require penetration, Magic Sensitivity (included with Comprehend Magic) doesn't require penetration, but the remaining portions of Comprehend Magic do require penetration.
Our magus wishes to remove that limitation.
HMRE has rules for integrating Second Sight with Intellego magics that grant senses so that they don't need penetration, but that does nothing for Comprehend Magic. The NPC is researching two personally known abilities, so he can do integration instead of original research, and can be his own source of Insight (a number of Insights equal to his Magic Theory).
But what kind of research and Insights would the character need to integrate the two abilities? Obviously he would ultimately need a Virtue that improves and complements Comprehend Magic, but how would that be created? What would the lab work even look like? (I currently picture ending up with a major virtue--Comprehend the Mystic?--that drops the requirement for penetration and adds the capabilities of Second Sight to Comprehend Magic. That gives the virtue similar potency of one of the Criamon path virtues that allows one's Enigmatic Wisdom score to be used for some other abilities, occasionally with some other feature.)
I could hand-wave the whole thing and say that the research happened in the past so it doesn't matter, but I would much prefer to have a rational, repeatable, system to handle similar issues in the future. Hand waving is for royals on procession in carriages, it's not a substitute for well-written rules.
If magi can remove the penetration requirement for the entire Intellego technique when granting senses, it should be possible to remove the much narrower penetration requirement from the remaining portion of Comprehend Magic. Again, it also includes Magic Sensitivity, which already doesn't require penetration, so the desired change isn't even for the entire ability, just an (admittedly important) fraction.
These aspects are no longer a magical sense, they are a spell-like effect that targets the subject of analysis, not the pralixian.
That may be correct, but it is clearly possible to remove the requirement for a spell-like effect that grants a magical sense, such as detecting details of a spell or an individual using vision, by integrating Second Sight into Hermetic magic. And a Folk Witch with Folk Witch Theory could integrate Comprehend Magic into their magic, so it should definitely be possible for the Pralicians, experts with non-Hermetic magics, to integrate two related supernatural abilities that the magus already possesses.
I just don't know how to describe the process or devise an underlying mechanical basis.
My point is, that it might be (I reread it and it isn't as clear as I remembered), that Comprehend Magic isn't a magical sense at all (at least aspects of it), but a targeted intellego effect along the lines of the InTe "Eyes of the Eons".
Comprehend Magic lets you, among others, learn the strongest arts of magi you use it on. It is unclear to me, if that is truly possible by observation alone, albeit magical, or if there is more involved.
As the Virtue Comprehend Magic is Non-Hermetic, researching to expand it is Non-Hermetic research like that of TCI p.44f Ádhamh Brathair. As Pralixians use Hermetic Magic Theory, there is no need to first invent a Hedge Magic Theory.
The rest of your NPC's research and its success appears to be the purview of your troupe. The NPC might start with analyzing illusions with Comprehend Magic which his Second Sight can look through as well - and then find and formally decribe the differences in both powers.
OneShot beat me to the line.
Both ability are Supernatural and not hermetic. So Magic theory will be of little help until they are both integrated into Hermetic magic theory - this is where my view differs from OneShot.
For me, before Second Sight can be used to improve Comprehed magic and remove the need for Penetration, a preliminary step would be needed: develop a way to understand them both with the same magical principles. So I would see first an integration of both into Hermetic magic - and considering that there are hermetic spells achieving similar effects, the level of integration might not be as high for Comprehend magic. Second Sight that bypass magic might more be into the territory of Major Breakthrough.
After that, well there are really no rules to improve an ability, so maybe looking towards Quests and Mysteries initiation - based on cult or secret society of seers ?
You can't integrate the abilities together - not unless you have or invent some system that includes both of the abilities and some kind of magic theory.
What you can do however is integrate them both, one at a time, into hermetic theory.
First integrate Second Sight, so you can use many Intellego effects without having to penetrate.
Then integrate Comprehend Magic, so you can do all the things the ability provides with Intellego magic, and thereby benefit from the earlier integration of Second Sight.