I am thinking of new ways to make the Hermetic theory more powerful, and I found myself with this idea.
Why not a hermetic research where the magus learns to open items over several seasons?
The question now is how to put rules on it.
1º: It would be a minor, major or hermetic breakthrough?
2º: I believe that a pre-existing skill can drive results. But, is correct?
Ex.: Philosophie, like a verditius elder runes, is max number of seansos opening item.
3º: If the research is posteriorly integrated, how to make? Just ignoring the maximum number of seasons (which is still just an idea)?
I look forward to seeing how far this discussion goes.
TMRE, p. 98 gives your this nice combined bullet of the varies ways.
The Mysteries of Verditius reduce the vis requirement by the magus’s Craft Score; Celestial Magic also reduces vis requirement (by the Laboratory Horoscope score); and Philosophic Alchemy may be used to pre-fill an object with opened spaces, again reducing the spaces a magus need open.
Pre-fill by Philosophic Alchemy already lets you effectively spend several seasons opening an item for enchantment.
Let's start from Philosophic Alchemy Major.
I like this idea of being able to keep injecting vis, the same amount that can be extracted automatically, each season.
But... what kind of research this would be. Even because the part "Ready-Opened Devices" says:
"An item opened by Philosophic Alchemy is ready for enchantment, or may be opened normally in the season immediately following the alchemical process. The magus opening the device normally need not be an alchemist."
A common practice is to have someone with Philosophic Alchemy pre-fill an object for massive enchantments. This is often used for things like Hermetic Architecture, where the person pre-filling the object passes it to someone with the Verditius mysteries or Celestial Magic to open, and they in turn pass it to the actual Hermetic Architect to enchant.
Through a chain of people working together like this, they end up with items that can hold much larger enchantments then any single one of them could open an item for alone.
I may be reading something wrong, but it appears to me that your desire is to open items for enchantment over several seasons, presumably so that they can have more capacity for enchantment?
And my question is why? Why would you want to do that?'
Invested Items tend to be somewhat wasteful as it is (you gain nothing but capacity for the first season, and it costs you a lot of Vim vis), compared to Lesser Enchanted Items.
But even if you like Invested Items - perhaps you're more ambitious than you lab total supports for a Lesser Enchanted Items, something I totally support - you can bring multiple invested devices!
This isn't that other game where you can only wear two rings for some reason.
So, my question is: Why? Would you want to waste even more time and Vim Vis, just to put even more eggs in the same basket?
I can see the motivation to invest objects that are otherwise too large. A pumpkin sized carriage made from ruby, or a Orrery made of gold. These are cool magical objects but noone can actually make them.
IMC I have aBonisagus that is trying to up the multiplier on Vis use per season, which could have the same effect.
Verditius Elder Runes won't help. They can give you great Lab Totals and allow you to make powerful items, but they won't reduce the amount of vis needed to open an invested item, and neither will they reduce the Magic Theory score needed to be able use that much vis in a single season - and that last is often the largest problem for item creators.
The normal Verditius Magic virtue does help, and is one of the main reasons to play a Verditius mage.
Directly from the text of the Elder Runes description, bottom of middle column - top of last column.
Your Philosophiae score should be significantly larger than 2 by the time you even consider looking into initiations, IMO.
It's the last sentence in the description and is sometimes missed. But it is ... rather significant.
Possibly more so than the actual bonus to the lab total.
Come on people! The idea here is to modify things to deal with other issues.
There have been comments with combos of virtues, which you can do even after the start of the game (Major Research, Cult, etc). Okay.
I also saw something about being expensive, and ... Okay.
Now, let's go to a hypothetical situation, the exact type that makes a magus, or any normal human, innovate: necessity, the first sister of the invention.
Example: a magus is challenged.
He has no skill, virtue, etc., that improves his enchantment capacities (without verditius, planet, alchemy, etc.), but ... for some reason he got a contract in which the 5 pawns will be paid, in addition to the refund, for each pawn opened on an item, I don't know, "a diamond staff" (4 * 20 = 80p.v. ).
And to continue a background, since it seems really necessary here, he has two flaws that make him not refuse the contract (Overconfident, duh, and Ambitious). He felt compelled to take the contract and now he wants to find a way to open the practically impossible object.
I believe that this should help to give some breath to those who need specific motivations.
Anyway. I saw a good question and ... Yes, the idea is to increase the number of open pawns without the lock "open all spaces, or not open" for all items.
Seeing here I even found something of the hyperborean magic: the magus opens the item with distortion, but it is still in a single season.
The closest to what I commented at first are the Amazons: they "open" an item over the course of seasons. They don't even spend pawns for this, but it's not exactly the notion of what I said.
That magus has the following options as I see it.
a) Admit defeat.
b) Ask some skilled Verditius magus for help
c) Spend a couple of years on getting all the mystery initiations needed for the existing virtues that help with reducing vis for items.
d) Get started on some original research to get some breakthrough allowing him to get a new virtue or ability that helps him do what he wants to do.
Your original post seems to be about option d)
It would seem like a major breakthrough to me. Letting you open an item over several seasons doesn't break any of the known limits of magic, so no hermetic breakthrough needed, but it is a bit too powerful to let a minor breakthrough be enough.
You could of course have some existing skill (probably Philosophiae or Magic Theory) play a part, but that all depends on how you want the end result to work.
The obvious way to do it would be to come up with a new virtue that allows you to do something like:
You can spread out the openeing of an invested device over several consecutive seasons. Divide the total amount of vis needed with the number of seasons taken. Round this number to the nearest whole number - that is how much vis you need to spend per season.
This is just an example of how it can be done. This has obviously not been playtested at all, so it may need to be adjusted.
If such research is succesful, expect a bunch of Verditius magi (and others) to have Opinions about it.
Some will want to learn it.
Many of them will not want it to be taught to anyone outside House Verditius - they like their status as the pre-eminent item makers in the Order thankyouverymuch.