I read that recreating a Longevity Rituall from lab text is not a full season.
So how long to recreate a spell from lab text?
How long to recreate a enchanted item from lab text?
What else can you do from lab texts?
Other question:
What are the ways to learn a spell?
Lab text, teacher anything else?
Are there books for a single spell? Like a tractatus?
These are all answered in the core book, p. 102.
The answers boil down to:
1 Season, if you lab total is high enough to do so at all.
1 Season per effect, if you lab total is high enough to do so at all.
Make piles of charged devices.
Lab text, teacher, invent it from first principles, all covered in the core book, p. 95 (with notes on p. 102 if using a labtext)
For learning them, this would be a labtext.
A tractatus (or summa) about a spell, would be about spell mastery, which works like a rather specialised ability, and is covered in the core book, p. 87.
What Tellus said.
Expanding on Tellus's comments, regarding lab total and level, if your lab total is 61, and you have lab texts for 2 30th level spells, you could invent both of them in one season...
Hmm but it still need a full season right?
And how much more can you make?
Enchanting charged items is still a seasonal activity.
Without a lab text, you basically create 1 charge for each 5 points (round up all fractions) by which you exceed the level of the effect (minimum 1 charge if you match it exactly). So a lab total of 34 when enchanting a level 20 effect means 3 charges.
With a lab text, you create 1 charge for each 5 points (round up all fractions), without substracting the level of the enchanted effect. So a lab total of 34 means 7 charges.
Thx, and how does work Craft magic virtue when you use hermetic arts not craft skill?
How long to make a item?
And how big spell can you make into a craft magic item?
I suspect some of the confusion may be stemming from the comparison. Think of redoing the Longevity Ritual as casting it again, not as doing a lab activity. It would take you a season or more to invent a new ritual spell, whether from a lab text or not, but it would only take you hours to cast it. Same with the Longevity Ritual, except that you follow the lab text instead of memorizing it like a formulaic spell. The same is true with formulaic spells and enchanted items: season(s) to (re)invent, moments to cast/use after they are known/created.
Bump, can some pls answer this question?
Thx, and how does work Craft magic virtue when you use hermetic arts not craft skill?
How long to make a item?
And how big spell can you make into a craft magic item?
Craft Magic Virtue from HoH:Soc allows you to make Charged Devices in anoter whay that by usual Hermetic means. So it is not a season-long activity, it takes same time as to Craft Spells (anotehr application of this Vittue. This takes the time the mundane item takes to make, or as long as it takes to to cast a Ritual spell of the level of you effect - 15 minutes per magnitude.
Use the Casting Total for the effect as if it was the Lab Total for a Charged Device to calculate the number of charges. So one extra charge per 5 points you exceed the Level of Effect. Remember to multiply the time to make one item by #of charges.
How big a spell? This is limited by your Casting Total for that tech+Form combo. To make just a single charge you ned a Lab Total (which with this virtue means Casting Total) at least equal to the Level of Effect you are aiming for.
Technically spells can also be learned from Twilight if you comprehend the Twilight and get this Good Effect.
Note that in one sense, spells can't actually be "learned" - rather, you end up re-creating them from the general process that someone else goes through, based off of their lab notes. So when you have a "book of spells" - you actually have a "book of lab notes". So yes, you can learn spells from books - but it's more like "loose-leaf three-ring binder stuffed with random papers", unless someone else has gone through and organized them.
I imagine these notes are fairly metaphorical, personal, and obscure - so you end up with a lot of "Ah-ha! The butterfly is actually a bee! I understand now! The fifth seal is an illusion!" kind of comments in them. But if a magi can follow the personal metaphors, (and they're trained to do so, because that's what Magic Theory trains them to do), then they can re-create the spell considerably faster.
That being said, it's entirely possible to formally organize and put together a grimoire of lab notes. In fact, the Bonisagus publish a book every seven years with the lab notes of "interesting stuff" that has been submitted to them, and includes spells, Insights, and Experimental lab results. It's how they transmit new and interesting ideas throughout the Order.
One might say you Learn spells when another magus spends a season Teaching them to you.
Here is a question from an old-timer. How do Lab Texts work in conjunction with Effect Expiry? Say I am crafting a simple Level 10 lesser enchanted item. My Arts are low in this area so my LT is only 11. I choose a seven year expiry, multiplying my one point excess by 10 and compleating the item in one year.
Now I have a Lab Text. The first ten points completes it in a season, but does my one point excess get multiplied still? That would equal 10, and in my opinion that should allow you to use the text again in that season. If my LT was 12, then three times.
But others disagree, and I see their logic. It just doesn't seem right that it shouldn't work this way.
I can't really contribute to the rules angle here, because my base assumption is that all lab activities take a season, but you can do multiple low-level activities because they're just so basic that you're able to keep track of them all simultaneously, rather than individual activities taking less than a season. But I will point out that, as per errata, Lesser Enchanted Devices can't utilize Effect Expiry. Of course, that barely matters since you can just change the example to refer to a low-level invested effect. So there's that.
I was not aware of that. This changes many things and frags my one idea outright. But let us say it is a greater device or a talisman, or maybe a familiar bond.
It's a greater device. There are some fairly draconian restrictions on using lab texts with Talismans and familiars as I recall.
Re-readng ArM5, p. 102 (for lab texts in general) is very much worth the time. As for familiars...
Now, as for
As far as I can tell, you have to use the same effect expiry as was used in the creation of the original text.
"No features of a spell or enchanted item effect may be changed" (ArM5, p. 102), so I'd say no - Effect Expiry seems like a feature* of the item effect, no?
You can't create a lesser enchanted item unless your lab total doubles the level of the effect. Lesser enchanted items never take more than one season.
My previously stated opinion is that effect expiry is unbalancingly good as written and would be better if either provided no benefit to the enchanter at all or was simply removed as an option.
I always figured that "teaching" someone a spell was like teaching someone the answer to a zen koan. Yeah, it's useful to have a master there when you're doing it, but it tends to be a lot of "no, no! The bees, man, the bees! The bees are the key! Left-right-clockwise, and damn the torpedoes!"
Stuff like that. But yes, technically I suppose that would count as "being taught a spell".
I'm pretty sure even in that case it's that the teacher is helping the student recreate the spells according to ArM5. I can't double check just now, though.
Indeed.
ArM5, page 95, fourth paragraph: "... you actually invent the spell yourself, but with constant guidance from the teacher."
Right, but a lab text allows one to create an effect in one season if they exceed the level by at least one. To create a Lesser Item from scratch, without the benefit of a lab text, you have to be able to instill the power in one season, which requires lab total being twice the level, at least. To rule that one must always have at least double the lab total, makes lab texts worthless for lesser enchanted items, which I don't think the rules do.