What exactly is the can of worms in what I proposed?
I was under the impression that MuVi effects that are part of rituals are, themselves, rituals. (and as such have to be lvl 20, regardless of their actual effect). As such, you're blowing through another 4 points of corpus vis just to avoid 1 point of warp. That seems like a reasonable tradeoff to me.
For rituals at least, this seems like an easy explanation as to why it isn't used more often, or why it hasn't changed the Order: it's usually not worth it.
(Or alternately, use the "must have a different version for each Form" rule, which I think is kinda sucky, but is RAW if you want to use it.)
And I'm actually fine with the "must have a different spell for each target" restriction - with the understanding that you can use a "+1 magnitude = x10 the targets" variation; as such, if you really wanted to, you could have a spell that tailored any effect for anyone in your Covenant, at a +2. Which seems like something a MuVi person would very well have.
Or alternately, it allows the MuVi expert to non-fatiguging Spont a lvl 15 version of it for anyone they want, assuming it's "just" a lvl 30 non-ritual effect they're targeting. (assuming Ceremonial casting, a +10 prop room, and +10 with AL and Ph.)
No, this was clarified by David Chart, that MuVi spells must last as long as the casting of the ritual, which is accomplished with making them be D:Sun. So, good catch, the MuVi spell for Incantation of the Body Made Whole would be a 30th level MuVi spell, to account for the longer duration necessary, while the one that would allow casting non ritual corpus spells would be D:Momentary.
More reminding than proposing...
I hadn't realized it did not stop at Gift of Vigor and other high Vis rituals. Any random spell can abuse this.
Uhm. In which way do you suggest it would so significantly impact the Order?
To me it does not seem to have such a big impact. It certainly did not seem to have much impact in any of our sagas. Just to make it perfectly clear, we allow a "superficial" MuVi formulaic or enchanted effect to "tailor" any other effect to one specific target, like Kid Gloves' troupe -- unlike in their case, in ours it has occasionaly been used.
This is why I say whether or not the unique-per-tailored-target MuVi spell vs. generic MuVi spell approach is far more important that superficial vs. significant, because level isn't the barrier people think it is.
Lets look at three scenarios. Superficial/generic isn't worth covering, it's the same as significant/generic only exacerbated.
significant effect, generic MuVi spell
If you go with the generic, significant approach, then the requirements for the MuVi spell to affect Leap of Homecoming cast by the same caster is a MuVi 40 spell. While inventing such a spell is tricky (80 lab total for one season), the utility of such a spell would make it a staple lab text - either already, or relatively quickly once someone spots its utility. It also makes it worth someone spending multiple seasons developing it, which significantly reduces the lab total requirement.
With lab text in hand, the lab total requirement to learn the spell is 40. Casting totals can also be manipulated so that someone with Mu 10 and Vi 10 can probably pull it off relatively reliably with an extra season or two of investment: auras, mastery, casting circles, etc. End result: almost every mature magus is going to be able to cast the spell. Maybe not super reliably, but reliably enough. Enough that 'transforming Mythic Europe' scenarios get triggered, since one can reliably expect warping-free instant travel from most summer+ covenants.
superficial effect, unique MuVi spell
The requirements for a MuVi spell to affect Leap of Homecoming cast by the same caster is a MuVi 20 spell. Inventing such a spell now requires a unique spell per tailored target.
This means lab texts are, for the most part, irrelevant. Thus, the lab total required to learn the spell in a season is 40. Same as above. Only the difference here is that the spell only tailors to a single individual. This means that almost every mature magus isn't going to bother because that kind of lab investment for the benefit of a single person seems like a pretty big trade-off.
This means the only person who is likely to invest significant amounts of time in such spells are the MuVi specialists. And even then, the lab texts that magus produces are only useful to a very small group of magi; naturally blocking the spread of such practices and also giving them a shelf life. Thus, a covenant who has a MuVi specialist who is sufficiently cooperative gets to reap some rather nice benefits from it - but those benefits are almost entirely at the whim of the specialist; exactly as it should be.
It becomes an interesting MuVi trick, but one that most magi won't have access to. Even the 'don't warp me' spell requires a significant investment from a non-specialist; inventing a level 25 spell without a lab text outside of your area of focus is a big undertaking.
significant effect, unique MuVi spell
The one-season lab total required to develop a spell is now 80, because lab texts are, once again, relatively useless. This puts such spells outside the reach of even most specialists, unless the specialist is mature and in essence designed specifically for the task. Even for the hyper-specialist, the time investment is huge - one season per person. Given the degree of specialisation required, chances are that while the specialist can indeed deflect warping, he probably can't cast any spells that warrant it! Note that the specialist could try for voice-range spells to manipulate others' spells, but now the one-season lab requirement goes up to 90. This puts this exclusively into the hyper-specialist, focused magus only. And even then the investment in time is immense; one season per target.
Honestly, if you're going with this approach you may as well just say it's impossible. Because no-one will do it except that one crazy Bonisagus magus, who will do it but won't use it for anything.
As mentioned before, I've been running/playing sagas using the superficial/unique rule, and even with the relatively low targets involved no-one has ever done it; the time investment is the killer if you have to invent a spell per tailored target.
At the end of the day, whether superficial or significant works for your saga is going to depend largely on the typical power level of your saga and how easy you want people to access this. If magi with lab modifiers of +40 or higher is the norm even before factoring in arts, significant is probably what you want. If not, superficial works fine as well.
Salt to taste.
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I don't see that a tailored spell requires inventing the spell from scratch, without the benefit of a lab text. If it is indeed a superficial change, one should be able to invent it from a text adjusting as necessary per recipient of the spell.
All spells are invented unique to the caster, whether they are taught by another practitioner or learned from text, or invented from first principles.
The suggestion I am posting isn't that the MuVi spell is tailored, but instead that the MuVi spell must be invented specifically for a person. Mea Culpa, I should have used better language above.
The proposal I am putting forward here is that the spell 'Re-tailor the Spell for John' and 'Re-tailor the Spell for David' are as dissimilar to one another as 'Wizard's Reach (Mentem)' and 'Wizard's Reach (Ignem)' - they are two distinct spells, not a tweak on a single spell.
This isn't a tailored spell in itself, in fact tailoring it is irrelevant because it targets spells, not people, and spells don't get warping points.
This is not RAW. But RAW has no examples of spells that re-tailor so we're left to draw our own conclusions.
My argument is also that these kinds of limiting factors are more important than level, because as you can see from the significant/generic scenario, level alone won't prevent a transforming-mythic-europe scenario.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say you probably want to include some kind of limitation like I outlined above or simply flat-out deny the effect. Because, IMO, the significant/generic scenario I listed above sounds to me exactly like the kind of scenario you'd like to avoid. And I agree with that.
EDIT: in fact, I'm going to adjust the post above to say 'unique' rather than 'tailored' where appropriate. That should make it clearer.
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I think it's fairly reasonable that the spell is tailored as it is invented, no matter how it is invented. Certain it gets tailored to the caster, each and every time for spells that affect him, such as Leap of Homecoming.
It's probably enough of a constraint to require for whom the spell is tailored to be present. To require inventing it from scratch, without benefit of a lab text is probably too much. After all, the people who have already talked about doing this have expressed that there are very few actual examples of doing this in play.
Although, your method does benefit the Muto Vim/Vim specialist, I think it's just too much to require...
There's a few distinct scenarios here.
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tailoring a spell to an indivirual.
No arguments from me here. Tailor the spell in the lab as it is invented, including invention from lab text. -
using MuVi to change the tailoring of a spell as the spell is being cast.
Here's the scenario:
You know leap of homecoming at touch range. you have tailored it to your favourite grog. I am not your favourite grog, and you are casting leap of homecoming on me. Normally I would get a warping point.
However, because I am clever, I am casting (in cooperation with you) a Muto Vim spell on your Rego Corpus spell. My Muto Vim spell is going to change your spell so the tailored target isn't your favourite grog, but me. So I won't get a warping point, even though the original spell wasn't tailored to me. Because Muto Vim.
Everything I outlined above is in regard to the development of that Muto Vim spell: for changing who the tailored target is on the fly. Regular spell tailoring remains unchanged.
I should probably also point out that the people with in-play experience in this thread is me (posting above), and will add that while the number of times it has come up is zero, people have contemplated it. And come very close to inventing such spells.
At the time other pressures resulted in different actions, but the in-play experience of using this is that it is tempting enough to be a valid action but not so tempting as to be a best-in-season action.
This, from my game balance perspective, seems like it fits in exactly the right place.
Also, we've never had a dedicated MuVi specialist. Because MuVi specialists require players with an exceptionally good understanding of the hermetic magic rules and exactly how they can be twisted.
Indeed.
What is there as "tha RAW" about this topic is all under ArM5 p.168 Powerful Mystical Effect. And this chapter requires to specifically and carefully design the effect proper, that the target shall be exposed to. One can then discuss in each troupe, whether such an effect, once designed, can be achieved with a MuVI spell cast on another spell, and the specs of that MuVi spell according to ArM5 p.159 box Muto Vim Guidelines.
Replacing the design of the effect proper by the design of a MuVi spell is not covered by ArM5 p.168, and enters the domain of explicitly campaign specific troupe decisions - which are of course most legitimate. Moving such 'design replacement' MuVi spells between campaigns will likely cause trouble, though.
Cheers
It's not really part of the spell design to designate the tailored recipient. The spell still works on anyone else, just that it causes warping. I feel that the person must be present during the design, but that is all that is necessary. So, my general conclusion is that a MuVi spell that changes the tailored recipient of another spell to another person is superficial, as in the guideline, but must be tailored to a specific individual.
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If a powerful spell shall not warp a target, by ArM5 p.168 Powerful Mystical Effect both the general spell effect and that target are part of the spell design. You do not need to follow this IYC, though.
Cheers
For the words on page 168, yes.
For the design of a Hermetic spell, no. Spells designed for a specific recipient aren't part of actual spell design, in the mechanical sense of Hermetic Spells. That's where I'm coming from, and probably why ezzelino mentioned that they just note it on the spell.
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Indeed!
Disregarding for a moment what the rules do or do not say (it seems to me that at this point people are just restating over and over what they have already said), I'd really like to discuss why allowing "MuVi tailoring" would drastically alter the setting.
As I said, with my troupe I've always allowed MuVi tailoring, as a superficial change specific to the target (we assume this is consistent with the RAW), and I have not noticed any significant impact on the setting. Sure, some magi have "saved" a few warping points (I guess half a dozen at the very most) or a few seasons compared to not allowing it at all. But nothing big, and in particularly nothing setting-defining. Deciding the average time between redcap visits to covenants seemed to have a much greater impact, for example. I suspect that even if we allowed flexible tailoring, i.e. a single MuVi effect that can tailor anuthing to any target, things would not change much.
How is your experience different?
I've noticed four things mentioned specifically.
The first is the availability of instantaneous ReCo travel. In my sagas, except for the very, very occasional "Ouch, let's get out of here as quickly as possible!" effect, flight by magic-carpet/broom/Auram etc. that does not directly affect the "passengers" seems to be much more common: it takes at most a day or two to get to any place within your tribunal and perhaps a week within most of Mythic Europe, you don't have to jump "blind", and carrying stuff is much easier. It's really rare the character who has to use ReCo instantaneous travel regularly, and could not get a magic item/spell tailored to his needs anyway.
The second is Ritual healing. Let's discuss separately magi and "fighting" grogs. From my experience, any individual grog gets Ritually healed relatively few times in his lifetime because a) he is more replaceable than vis, except for the occasional emergency 
and b) if he gets wounded a lot he also tends to get fatally wounded sooner rather than later. Most magi also get healed relatively few times in their lifetime: because most try to avoid getting wounded (that's what grogs are for), and because, like for grogs, those who get seriously wounded often do not tend to live long anyways. There are a few exceptions, but providing "tailored" healing for those really seems a minor thing. So, overall, reducing warping from healing seems no big deal, because most characters would get little anyways.
The third is use of the Gift of Vigor. I'm not really sure why this was brought up. Even at R:Voice it's only 5th magnitude. Beyond that, it's probably just easier to Wizard Tunnel it...
The fourth are "stat-boosting" Rituals. Now, these do happen to be in my sagas serious "markets" for Muto Vim tailoring, when a specialist develops one and uses it on other characters (strangely enough, in a few of our sagas they have seen heavy use, in all others no use at all..). However, given their high vis costs and their somewhat limited utility for most stats, it seems reasonable most magi would not take more than half-a-dozen, maybe a dozen castings over their entire lifetime even with the most flexible MuVi tailoring. In the absence of MuVi tailoring,, that would be a relatively limited number of warping points over the magus' lifetime total. Push come to shove, a few seasons of service to repay the extra seasons spent by the specialist to re-invent a tailored version in the absence of MuVi tailoring would again fail to have a serious impact on the setting.
Thanks for being clear about this. This will save us further 'roundabouts'. 
I assume that you mean here, that Hermetic spell guidelines - like those in the boxes on ArM5 p.116ff - do not refer to specific recipients. And in this you are obviously correct.
Powerful spells designed just according to these Hermetic spell guidelines warp their human targets (and others not belonging to a Realm, yadda yadda, which I will skip from hereon). The exceptions are (ArM5 p.168):
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either that caster=target,
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or that the spell is specifically and carefully designed for the target to be spared - in Hermetic terms, that a special version of a Formulaic spell is invented to spare one target.
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The Hermetic spell guidelines alone do not provide means to prevent powerful spells from warping human targets other than the caster.
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And the means from ArM5 p.168 are general ones, applying to all kind and Realm of mystical effects.
Putting these two things together, we see, that the method of ArM5 p.168 lies beyond what is listed in the Hermetic spell guidelines.
So it made sense, to write ArM5 p.168 in a way to explicitly exclude sophistries involving Hermetic spell guidelines.
Cheers
@ezzelino, given your list, it's more probably that a magus gets as much warping from a twilight episode. Assuming a double botch, the average is going to be 8 points of warping (2 from the botch and 6 from the simple die). 8 is at least 2/3 of the way there...
With regards to grogs, one reason to avoid warping would be for a favored shield grog who often gets buffed with powerful spells, such as a touch version of Gift of the Bear's Fortitude... But even then, as you point out, grogs are expendable, do I care if a grog develops a Flaw due to having this spell cast on him more than 5 times?
Given the requirements of being tailored to an individual and being formulaic, I think the best I would allow is a MuVi spell that would allow you to change the effects of any spell to be as though they were designed for the individual the MuVi spell is tailored for.
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