On the effects of arcane experimentation

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

In our sagas magi rarely use arcane experimentation, because in our experience the benefit is almost never worth the risks. So, despite a long play history, the following questions have never come up so far.

  1. If the effect you are experimenting on comes out modified, do the modifications count against its level/Arts? An example given in the book (side effect/major side benefit) is a spell to transforms you into a wolf that, as a result of experimentation, also allows you to speak to all beasts while a wolf. Does this add an Intellego requisite? Another example given in the book (modified effect) is a spell that comes out with an increased range, or duration (say, a D:Sun becomes D:Moon). Does this add a magnitude to the final spell?

  2. If you work from the lab text of someone who had experimented and obtained a side effect or modified effect, is that your starting point (i.e. even without experimenting yourself, in the example above you get the wolf-that-speaks-with-all-beasts effect)? Or is your starting point the baseline from which the experimenter worked (i.e. if you do not experiment yourself, in the example above you only gain the wolf transformation without beast speech)?

  3. If the answer to 2 is that you start from the already modified effect, what if you experiment yourself and gain a side/modified effect? Do results stack?

2

I'm not sure how clearly these are defined in RAW but for my own purposes...

  1. No, added and altered effects don't usually effect the requisites or the final magnitude. I view them as free extras.

2.Yes if you work from a lab text with altered effects you will get those effects good or bad when you recreate the spell for yourself. This is even insinuated in HoH:TL when they talk about Boni's submitting lab texts for publication in the Colens Arcanorum.

  1. No I wouldn't allow continued experimentation to have effects stack up. Only if you work exactly from their lab texts do you get the benefit of their experimentation. Once you experiment yourself all unique effects get washed away.
3

If the spell is pushed up in r/d/t, it's enough of a freebie to allow them to have the spell, but I would push the magnitude up, as appropriate. It is more than likely that their lab total wouldn't support the level of spell invented in the time spent experimenting. That's not insignificant.