People seem to believe that a large, temporary lab to enchant, say, a boat, is too dangerous. Ok. Now, I think we all agree, if you used magic to shrink the boat until it fit in your lab, you could then enchant it, safely.
But some things don't move or shrink easily. Say, a building. It seems to me that you could use a version of "Opening the Intangible Tunnel" to virtually bring something into your lab. It says in canon, Rego Vim can be used to move Vis without a lab. Moving Vis seems almost the definition of what Enchantment is doing in a magic sense. Why couldn't you enchant your lab to create and maintain a Intangible Tunnel to something you had an arcane connection to, and then enchant it from the safety of your own, personal lab?
That's entirely up to your storyteller, but I would not allow it in my campaign for two reasons. First, it opens the door to abuse by allowing both cherrypicking of lab site, and the site of your enchantment. Second, I see labwork as a hands on experience, not just casting a collection on spells on an object. It needs to be manipulated, changed, with actions of mystical significance performed in addition to just straight up spell casting.
This is not supported by RAW to the best of my knowledge, it's just my interpretation.
Back you your original thought - why CAN'T you miniaturize it and bring it inside a normal lab? The only reasons I can think of (foundation, damage to the building from movement stress etc) are all strongly reduced by reducing size, or can be taken care of by additional spells. I could see a Verditius spending a few seasons making items specifically to allow miniaturization and movement of buildings to support this idea. Once done with the enchanting, put it back into place, bring it back up to size, and MuTe (rock of viscid clay) it back into place.
Opening the Intangible Tunnel is not a "tunnel" per se. It is a magical link to a AC which allows someone to cast touch spells on the target. you do not actually touch the target ( which is said in the spell description).
Moving vis and enchanting an item aren't the same thing at all. Moving vis is just that: taking vis in one object/place/etc., and putting it in another. Enchanting is manipulating, molding, "spinning" the vis until it produces the magical effects you desire and interacting intimately with the magical nature of the object you're enchanting. I'm not even sure you can transfer vis remotely anyway, but even if you can, it's an entirely different process. (Besides, Opening the Intangible Tunnel will only let your spells and, apparently, vis through; there's a lot more to enchanting, and labwork in general, than that. You use silver and alchemical liquids and bat wings and make mixtures and powders and engrave runes and a bunch of other stuff. Why do you think labs are so expensive to maintain?)
Maybe with the right requisites you could though. If the caster is magically linked on a Vi level to, say, a rock, adding Co and Te might let you manipulate said rock.
Right, Jabir. Hermetic magic has lots of ways to open tangible tunnels. You can move yourself, you can move your thoughts, you can move your image. Sorry I didn't bring that up, I thought it was obvious. The tricky part in the equation is "how much can you manipulate magic through the tunnel".
The Intangible Tunnel allows you to cast spells on the target as if it were touch range. Period. It does not place it in the lab, it does not exist within the lib. And creating a temporary lab around a ship is altogether different than creating one around an entire covenant. Having created a Hermetic Shipwright, she was more than able to construct a large lab and needed it.
Ah, no. "You can open a magical channel from yourself to some target, allowing you to cast any spell with a range greater then Personal.". Also, you might say if the lab created the tunnel, the Mage couldn't use it, but that also is mentioned in the spell "A Magus who magically recognizes the tunnel (Through The Invisible Eye Revealed or a similar spell) may cast spells through the tunnel back at you, and he need not concentrate on keeping the tunnel open.". It exists, it can be perceived, and it's enough of a tunnel to be used two way.
And, "Period"? No. Aegis of the Hearth is "Period". That spell involves Pre-Hermetic Magic, and the parameters cannot be changed without a Breakthrough. Opening the Intangible Tunnel is completely Hermetic, and the parameters and requisites can be changed to taste.
The guideline that Intangible Tunnel is based on creates "a conduit or container for spells" (ArM5, page 161). Lab work is not spells, so no sort of Intangible Tunnel could be used to conduct lab work at a distance. Some sort of Hermetic Breakthrough might allow you to do this; but the existing guideline doesn't allow it.
However, it is entirely possible to make pretty much any space into a lab. The core rulebook states that it has to be an indoor space of certain minimum dimensions, however Covenants provides rules for labs of different sizes and exotic settings. You just need to spend your season(s) preparing the space. In practice, this is going to be a lot cheaper and quicker than fluffing around with Hermetic Breakthroughs, even if there is a risk of the lab sinking or something weird happening.
Hermetic Breakthroughs are required to violate the Hermetic Limits. That doesn't seem applicable here, so Hermetic level breakthrough certainly isn't required. One could argue that a Major or Minor breakthrough is needed, but I would disagree. A higher level spell, probably involving form requisites, should do the trick.
Part of the fun of Ars Magica is inventing weird new spell effects like this, not just selecting from a list of effects. If you require Breakthroughs for everything off the guidelines list, the feel of the game becomes very different.
Although, actually this sort of conduit sounds remarkably like the effect described for Hermes Portals, so there may even be a precedent.
ReTe lets you physically move, ReVi lets you cast spells over distance, and MuIm will let you make something appear smaller or larger- so some kind of spell or enchantment might let you create an effigy in your lab that you could enchant the object through, but it is likely to be a bit more complex that simply the intangible tunnel...
Sure, sloppy use of "Hermetic" by me. The point is that some sort of breakthrough is an option.
Of course, you can make up a new guideline for anything. Whether that requires an in-character breakthrough or mere out-of-character storyguide/player fiat is up to the troupe. Everything and anything that the troupe agrees to is explicitly possible.
However, there's very little point asking what the RAW says if that is your answer. The desired effect is certainly not covered with the existing RAW guideline for Intangible Tunnel.
Despite it's name Hermes Portal is explicitly not a well-understood Hermetic effect. So anything based (in-character) on that would be a Breakthrough of one sort or another.
imho - For boat sized objects I think you're better off getting a larger lab space, and for buildings it is better to enchant them in place by constructing your lab around them. Yes it costs seasons to do it, but it will cost a few seasons to do the other options too (a MuHe effect to change a big boat will be moderate level).
Getting a boat to be very small for one to two seasons is a non-trivial spell, which is unlikely to be known in advance, and conversely there are no rules to say that you can't keep spont casting the shrink spell, but it might go wrong, and cause all manner of trouble. Otherwise you need a moderate sized lab with a very big door, or a temporary way to get the boat into it (ReHe teleportation effect). Having a spont effect in-play during the enchantment has no negative effect in RAW that I can recall, but I hope you're not experimenting or taking risk modifiers.
And like a few above I don't think OtIT can be used in that manner.
Ok, sure, ranges greater thaersonal, except you get much better penetration for Tocuh range spells. Fine, Period was not applicable to the range. Howeve, OtIT isn't suitable for putting a large item in the lab, because it doesn't actually put the item in the lab. You can only enchant something of is inside your lab, not if you have an AC to it. So, Period, in the instance is still apt, if a bit misapplied.
Sure, Mr. Love. The guideline I was looking at was the Level 10 ReVi, moving Vis from one thing to another, without a lab. Since that guideline has no range restrictions, we have proof that more then spells can be done at distance, Abstract magic can be manipulated. So, how abstract the magic? Enchantment perhaps? Craft can be done at a distance, but could I use the Verditius Outer Mystery to craft an item outside the lab, and still get the bonus? Many questions.........
I know it would be easier to just make a new lab, Mr. Love, but role play does come into it. Perhaps I am playing a Verditius who has Agroraphbia. He has spent DECADES building up his lab, and isn't going to leave it. Alas that he is the only one available to open this structure........ (Also, I have been wondering since Covenants came out, how the Heck do you get a "Portal" as a lab feature? This is the closest I've come......)
"ReTe lets you physically move, ReVi lets you cast spells over distance, and MuIm will let you make something appear smaller or larger- so some kind of spell or enchantment might let you create an effigy in your lab that you could enchant the object through, but it is likely to be a bit more complex that simply the intangible tunnel..." Yes Silveroak, that's the direction I was going. I agree it's going to be more complex then just using "OTIT". But the concept is so dang cool, I want to see it "ruled up". It would make a neat Masterpiece for an Archmage Verditius.
And, I would point out, manipulating a small part of a thing to affect the whole of the thing, no matter where it is, is the whole point of Arcane Connections. And Arcane Connections can be enchanted, that's how they're "Fixed". So using magic to say that if you have an arcane connection, the "whole thing" is in the lab, as far as Magic is concerned, seems pretty logical. Did I miss something in the rules for Arcane Connections?
That's not the guideline for Intangible Tunnel though. As I said, if you want to make up a guideline then you are only limited by what your troupe permits.
Absolutely, there are always in-character reasons for not doing the "sensible" thing. On the other hand, personally I wouldn't find "making up a new guideline" to be the most interesting solution as a player/troupe. I would find it a more interesting story to role-play your agoraphobic, resource committed Verditius nonetheless having to leave his lab, or finding a way to do what needs to be done from his lab without the players just making up by fiat a new guideline that does exactly what is required. Of course, maybe you are interested in a story that follows from access to a new guideline.
What magical effect is it to put Vis into an item? It isn't an effect, it is a lab activity.
A small, former part of a thing, is they key. It is a sympathetic connection, and once the AC is separate from its original whole piece it is it's own thing, with a relationship to the target. And yes, when you are Fixing an AC, you are enchanting at as a fashion, but the AC is never the original.
I am not making a new guideline. It is the ReVi Level 10 guideline, "Move raw vis from one physical object to another, without needing a laboratory." P. 161, Ars Magica. I need "Opening the Intangible Tunnel" (The lab would be enchanted to cast an maintain it in practice, because there's no Verditius out there that needs another Exp sink.....) to cast the spell to move the Vis. But moving Vis around, putting it into things without a lab, is canon.
I would point out a possible issue with shrinking an item to bring into a lab: opening for enchantement (in case of greater item) is done according to the item size. If the item is shrunk, the magus can only invest so much vis. When the item goes back to its normal shape, it might not have be infused with enough vis for its actual size.
Rules do not cover this very border cases, but for me, the enchantment unravel: as long as the item opening virtus was matching its size, every enchantment is working normally, but when the item expands back to its normal size, hte opening virtus does not match its size. It is lacking several pawns. It creates a situation of impossible magic as theoretically, you cannot open a objet over several seasons (you can do partial opening by preparing distinct part of an item like a gem from a ring and so on). So since it is incomplete, the magic is not stable and will quickly fade away - let's say a pawn per day, until becoming completely mundane.
And if the item is resuming shape during the enchantment season (because the shrinking spell as a duration of Moon for example), I would require at least an roll on the experimentation table - without additional benefit - just for the unstable situation of the item.
It would be a different matter if the item shrinks, but remain in the same size category, with the same size multiplier.