Hi,
It's there, earlier in the thread: A few grogs, a steward, a scribe and their families. The children work, the wives work, it comes out to quite a few people. A turb captain as one of the grogs? Makes sense. Six grogs total, maybe seven. Wives and children quadruple the total, for 40 people. That's quite a few.
The original request was about having a small footprint rather than a covenant that uses the rules most efficiently.
Anyway,
Ken
I have been reading this thread and I just have to comment. Where are your Magic Items? Most of the people you are worried about can be replaced with them. Keep your essential experts in the closest town, where they can show off their wealth and skills. Two or Three Magi is not a community, why act like it is?
The original one, yes, but Xavi posted another that, apparently, he deleted before I posted a response. He was asking "what is your mix for 2-3 magi..."
I thought that prev was your response to "How would you fit a covenant into a Mystic Tower?", not "an average covenant of 3 magi".
Meh.
Because that's your opinion, not mine, that's why.
And because we're not talking about 3 magi, we were talking about an "average Covenant" of 3 magi.
If you believe 3 magi alone with one faithful dog = a typical covenant of 3 magi, well, that's cool for your saga. But the (now absent!) OP asked what we felt the right mix was for a typical covenant of 3 magi - and that's my answer. I wasn't pretending it was yours.
<Xavi! You ninja deleter! Now I have to go edit in what this tangent was in response to! 
)
Hi,
Oh no. If I were trying to fit a covenant in a Mystic Tower, I would take a route similar to yours, trying to cram as many people in as possible, seeing if I can justify adding floors beyond those of a medieval building of this kind; I'd handwave and say that this magus is using more advanced techniques, perhaps hearkening back to Rome, perhaps because a Mystic Tower is far sturdier than one built from individual stones. Then I'd want to get all the right specialists....
Most of all, I'd reinvent the spell, because for just one more magnitude, I can have a tower or keep that's ten times the volume! (And for two magnitudes....) considers Or maybe quite a bit more, since the spell level is based on the amount of stone I create rather than the volume it encloses.
Anyway,
Ken
Yes, I posted a request for a covenant of 2-3 magi. Somehow it was deleted (I do not remember doing that!!) but CH's answer is 100% kosher here 
A community of 30-50 people is quite large for us. We are settling in Mann, and we need to keep the population quiet. Having 15+ warrirs at hand would unsettle quite a few people, consdiering that the usual guard of the KING of man is 12 dudes, and that the army is around 1.000 dudes. This is why we decided to go for a small footprint. maybe the mystic tower is not the best option. We are still planning this stage of the saga, so might have to look elsewhere.
Extyernalizing most stuff is certainly a necessity to keep a small footprint. No specialists for us: we will pay the local town, even if that means paying more. The plan is to have a vis-rich covenant, so mundane wealth is not veruy important. A few guards, a few trusted specialists (no sensible magus will EVER externalize the keeping of his hermetic library) and a few servants and general stuff workers should do the trick.
The covenant is likely to be as suggested: a mystic tower + outlying buildings. We will see if it does not end being something else instead of a quite blatant tower, though.
The "average" small covenant described would have a really significant impact in its environs,s o settling a covenant might be a far bigger problem for MUNDANE reasons than for anything else. it is quite a community.
Cheers,
Xavi
Okay, then I'm not suffering juvenile senility (good!)
A "tower" of any sort is generally seen as a military installation - defensive if not offensive. It says "ya can't tax me if I don't wanna!" to a noble, even if that's not the intent.
But the same spell (more or less) could create a manor house or other similar effect. Of course, even better is underground - find some bedrock, and a small PeTe (or even ReTe, if you have a use for the roughcut stone) will dig out a magi warren in a few weeks, and without the vis expenditure, and with a formulaic spell that can be used for other things ("dig a pit" with a level of complexity for control and another for volume.)
As for Specialists, nothing says they have to live with - you could hire them, set them up in their own workshop as "patroned" artisans somewhere, and they do all their work for you, even if not living with you. A valid option.
Okay, so a "minimum footprint" covenant.
I'm going to assume the magi don't want to spend any seasons on work a mundane could do - ever. And I'll take some cues from your list.
By the Covenants book, you need 1 servant/magi* just to keep them living as they are accustomed - fed, rooms cleaned, labs swept, etc. Call this...
Cook
Maid
Scullery (misc)
(* This is not how it's phrased - a mage is "5 pts", and you need 2 servants/10 pts.)
I think a Scribe is too important to exclude, so that, and he does double-duty as the librarian. Unless you have a HUGE lib', maybe one season a year (probably less) he does conservation on your library, and it's all good.
Scribe/librarian
(Note that he won't be binding books or making parchement or illuminating, not unless you're very lucky in finding a multi-skilled scribe. Most "craftsmen" saw no need to be multi-skilled - they learned one thing, they did one thing, they did it well, that's what they did, end of discussion.)
1 laborer - a strong back and weak mind. Tote that thing, lift that whatever. (Technically optional, but it feels right.)
a stableboy, only because you implied you needed one.
1 more servant for the above
grogs - as few as you can stomach.
& 1 more servant for those, & maybe 1 more laborer. (You don't "need" laborers, but they save money and just make sense. Someone to cut wood, lift heavy loads, carry stores, dig a ditch, shovel the shit (literally, ahem), that stuff. You're either keeping them on staff or hiring them regularly from nearby - might as well keep them under thumb.)
And that's it.
Total:
1 specialist
6 servants
2 laborers (technically optional)
the grogs
As for any "steward", your total "household" is now only 1 specialist, 8 "service types" and the grogs. Find a cook who can be "large and in charge", trust them with the majority of the provisioning and overseeing the household staff. Pick one grog to be the sergeant, and trust them with the arming/armoring (or splurge and get a turb captain). And trust the librarian to handle the parchments/inks and correspondence. (And by "trust" I mean "liberal use of Pose the Silent Question" & etc.)
So that's now a footprint of 9+ the grogs, or maybe a tight 6+ without the laborers. Not what I'd call an "typical" covenant, but certainly a functional one.
That better?
(For truly minimal, you dump everyone but 1 servant/mage. That's all that's "needed", but then you're spending many, many pounds/year on extra per-job hires who may vary from week to week.)
Technically, the minimum you require is 2 servants/10 inhabitant points and 1 teamster/10 inhabitant points (including servants).
So, with two magi you need two servants; making 12 inhabitant points, so you need two teamsters as well, for a total of 14 inhabitant points.
For three magi you still only need two servants (making 17 inhabitant points), so you still only need two teamsters.
The fourth magus to join needs to bring in another teamster (because there'll be 22 inhabitant points before including them).
This is without grogs or companions, or any cost-saving peoples.
Mark
Starting out with a single tower with a few houses around it.
Then add until one tower per magi. Allowing each plenty of room for a bedroom, lab, personal storage and personal servant(s) and guards.
If well placed, walls can later be added between the towers(or in whatever manner is preferable) giving the site protection as a fairly simple outgrowth.
Totally too small. Add one or two, extra size magnitude shifts to the spell however... :mrgreen:
Or if you have a Terram specialist available, add more magnitudes still.
A kilometer high and 100+m square base tower is by the rules quite realistic if you have a decently good specialist.
The base tower at size +4 ~= 30m high and 10m square base... ~3000cbm
So what does size+8 give(RAW spell level 55)? ~30000000cbm
200m square base would allow a tower with total height below and above ground of around 750m...
So... How many armies did you say you wanted room for?
For a far more "modest" version, size+5 allows you a 20m square base and a 75m total height tower.
Just 5 levels higher than the RAW version. Someone who can cast the level 35 spell can probably do a level 40 as well.
Before we went houserules on the matter, someone went ahead and made themselves a cosy little hollow core(mostly), vertical and shiny flat sided mountain as their home.
I think they used size+10 or +11. Coupled with the total removal for "elaborate design"(much easier adding that afterwards as a separate spell) it was still not a truly troublesome spell (lvl 55-60 or thereabouts) for a barely middleaged and somewhat (Cr) specialised mage with stone as focus.
Id say thats on the low side unless the covenant is more or less cut off from the "normal" world.
3-10, with 3-5 being normal is what we often end up with(allowing for absence and around the clock guarding both at the same time). 1-2 for apprentices(as much watchdog as guardian...). And 2-6 personal servants per magi...(we´re lazy luxurious bums!). :mrgreen:
From what i understand, the base spell uses total volume rather than stone volume.
("Total volume" is closer to how the math works, certainly, but it doesn't fit any math perfectly.)
Actually, teamsters are optional btr - it states in Covenants that "not" having them doesn't save you the support, since you still have to "account for them", but "the teamsters do not belong to (or at) the covenant" (p 64, col iii). Which is exactly what the OP's talking about.
As I mentioned, the math is " a mage is "5 pts", and you need 2 servants/10 pts." - I thought that all numbers had to be rounded up - so that would make 4 servants, but I was letting that slide in this "minimum build" situation, and "2 servants/10 pts" can be simplified to "1 per 5".
Hi,
I'd also thoroughly ignore the rules in Covenants. I find the list of boons and hooks extremely useful and atmospheric, and the list of possible professionals also useful.
But not the rules.
The book is a great tool for thinking about, "What kinds of stuff do I want at my covenant?" Or "Yes, this is cool, but what side effects might be likely?"
At the end, handwave and make the covenant you want.
You want a small footprint? Then an Orthanc of your own is probably a bad idea. Maybe a sturdy manor house might be better. If the local knights notice that your turb leader can school them in war, they might start asking questions. Maybe less effective grogs might be more effective overall, especially if you pay the proper fees and taxes to the local lord so that his warriors protect the covenant from mundane stuff. Peasant yeoman-grogs, rather than elite warriors. Cheaper that way too.
And so, a covenant. It looks like a small manor, architecture in the local style. The locals probably even built it. There are one or two larger buildings, and a few smaller cottages for the less important people. It is served by a few peasant families who live there. The men are clearly veterans of past wars, but have settled on the land with their families; a suitable defense for the eccentric scholars who live there but no threat to the local lords. Indeed, the obligation to protect the scholars becomes trivial. The scholars depend on local farms, villages and craftsmen, and they also pay well. All of that creates goodwill. No one really likes the scholars, but no one in his right mind wants them to go, or anything bad to happen to them.
Who needs a tower?
Anyway,
Ken
When it comes to elite grogs, we just played a session where the beta SG introduced a boon by the faerie godmother (sort of) of severin: a full drakkar of norse warriors (old grogs of his covenant from the war of davnalleus) has been in stasis since the 800's, like Severin, so we have more elite warriors than we can handle. We are setting up a trade fleet to employ them in smaller numbers, and will rotate them at the covernant to keep them fit and trained, buyt having access to good fighters has stopped being a problem. Our problem is where to keep them, in fact! 
Local architecture pretty much sucks. We are talking about the isle of Mann: local architecture is more along viking settlements with long houses than modern English stone manors. The whole island sports three castles and a fort, so any kind of military settlement (even a manor) can be seen as threatening. The king of man has the aproximate power of an earl of England. We do not want them asking questions,specially since we still have to deal with the local magic practitioners, which wer are stating to notice that are quite a legion and not so weak as we thought since they have full access to the mundane resources and infgluence that we currently lack.
I pointed the other players to this thread, and we have decided to go underground. A cliff face is a nice place to put windows, with the entry to the covenant through a normal longhouse in a spread complex. The underground complex will be defensible, but the upper houses not so much. Pay the settlement right with dressed stone for the king, as suggested. Nice one there We might even excavate an artificial cavern harbor for our trade ships.
As mentioned, we are likely to go for a mix of the previous suggestions: not maxed covenant but neither the bare minimum shown by CH. More along a "Vindolanda style" (as per LoFaI) covenant than a manor house.
Cheers,
Xavi