You seem to be talking about two quite separate things here. One is what to send with the filius after gauntlet, and the other is what to plan and prepare for fifteen years prior.
On the first point we agree, and I suggested the same very early in the thread. The forward planning is a different kettle of fish, and most importantly, it leaves so many more ways to slip up on the way.
How is that relevant? Even if you stay at home, you will need the servants to cook, clean, and empty chamberpots. While some magi may leave home with little help, there would be a lot fewer who would have learnt to expect to do all the domestic and menial work themselves.
Many apprentices will have learned to perform just such tasks for their masters.
Whether these expect to be their own servants after passing their gauntlet is a different issue. Not only magi find reality fallling short of their expectations.
But if it becomes an issue of priorities, a lab and a reliable body guard (vulgo shield grog) might in the end be more important than a cook or chamberpot handler for a young mage.
That might be more important, but without servants, the young magus may well find themselves failing to complete the lab work they should, because cooking and cleaning takes too much time.
I agree that some might be looking for an apprentice to do that work instead of a servant, but either way, apprentices are not so stupid that they are advancing to the role of their master for whom they have been toiling for fifteen years.
That is an issue of a specific saga. Most magi I have seen would not allow servants to clean their labs and personal quarters: often for issues of secrecy, ACs and lab security. There never was an argument, that a lab not regularly serviced by the cleaning maid would reduce lab totals.
Cooking is a different issue - but in my experience the typical covenant anyway has a central kitchen serving magi and covenant staff. while on expeditions an assigned cook is generally left alone by magi without the Gentle Gift.
Covenants I have seen also have a pool of grogs to assist magi on adventures. It is not down to individual magi to recruit them.
For the record, I was not talking about cleaning the lab in particular. At the bottom line, I rely on Covenants dictating a servant per magus (plus a certain number for other covenfolk) without detailing exactly what they do. Sure, they do not have to deal with the magi directly, but then you need a more reliable and skilled specialist to liaise, and they have to be recruited and managed. The problem does not go away, it only moves around.
Sure. The point I tried to make, in response to Megan, was only that a magus cannot dodge the problem by staying at home and doing without shield grogs. They will always need someone to do something other than carrying shields.
It would be interesting to explore the tension between magi and staff in stories ...
How is that relevant? Even if you stay at home, you will need the servants to cook, clean, and empty chamberpots. While some magi may leave home with little help, there would be a lot fewer who would have learnt to expect to do all the domestic and menial work themselves.
I'm either confused and misunderstanding your point, or this is another case of differing general understandings of how the setting and culture tend to work. I don't think I've ever played a saga that individuated servants within a covenant; you might (indeed, as a young magus joining an established covenant, probably do) owe the covenant resources in terms of vis and lab work depending on the charter terms, but the whole point of a covenant is that you all share in the living space and mundane resources so you can focus on magic. Even shield grogs are usually just promoted from the regular grogs. Hence why I said that the question is either obviated (the covenant is sufficiently staffed to serve you just as well as the other magi) or changed (the covenant is collectively understaffed and that's everyone's problem, but there's still a structure that's existed up to this point, so it's likely more an issue of finances or recent staff loss that have different root problems to confront). Hence, young magi needing to personally acquire people to fulfill basic needs seems like more of an issue for those forming Spring covenants.
If your saga assumption is that servants and grogs generally work for specific magi rather than the entirety of the covenant, or if I've just misunderstood the point you were trying to make, then that would explain the confusion.
There are going to be a mix of both in your average Covenant. It is the same far all large households in the period. There are going to be servants that cover the whole area, along with ones assigned to each specific HVI. There are going to be cooks who do general cooking for the bulk of people, along with specialty ones for HVI. There are going to be guards that protect the whole, along with ones assigned as security for individual HVI.
Now granted some Covenants might be understaffed, with the resulting lose of Lifestyle and Reputation. This is less than ideal, since once you have to start sharing personal servants they are less effective (both at resisting individual Gifts and knowing the needs of the person they are serving).
The season of the Covenant will play into this a great deal since Spring Covenants are most likely to be under staffed, while Autumn are most likely to be over staffed. People who mostly play/run Spring Saga will find a lack of personal staff the norm, while those who are mostly playing/running old Covenants will generally find the opposite.
Indeed. Is that not just saying that the issue is the same for shield grogs and all other functions.
I did not consider if the recruitment is a personal or a collective matter. Either way, it has to be handled by someone. For the Autumn covenant, the issue may have been resolved once and for all, by establishing a self-recruiting mundane organisation. For the Spring covenant, there are so many different problems to solve, that nobody can expect to leave the problem entirely to someone else, and none of the magi would tend to be particularly apt anyway.