(Hello! New user here, I hope I’ve put this in the right place.)
I’m looking at the laboratory customisation rules in Covenants, and I have a minor query.
The text on page 111 says, “Warping on lab work is not the same as for characters,” and points to the Experimentation: Extraordinary Results chart in the core book. Does that mean that warping from lab work doesn’t apply to teaching (or studying from a book) in that lab, as those aren’t experimental activities and don’t create a separate product? Or would the teacher and/or student count as the ‘product’ of the lab work, and thus risk picking up side effects?
As I have always understood it, what the sentence specifically means is that the Warping score for a laboratory is not the same thing (or even closely related to) the Warping discussed in the core rules (pp.167-168).
(Yes, It would have been much easier on everyone if they had picked, you know, pretty much any other word for the experimentation-like effects caused by a laboratory being weird. Like Weirdness, or Twisting, or . . .)
That said, neither teaching nor study are activities that involve a Lab Total, and therefore IMO do not count as "lab work", and so would not cause a roll on the charts. I am strengthened in this opinion by the fact that there is no straightforward way to apply most of the "side effect" or "modified effect" results to the results of study/teaching.
(To make the argument for the contrary, you can indeed read or teach in the lab, "Arcane Studies" are a heading under "Basic Laboratory Activities" in chapter 8, and some lab specializations give a bonus to teaching.)
Ah, yeah another case of dual-use in the game's language.
When I said "neither teaching nor study are activities that involve a Lab Total," I meant the activities that happen under the rules given under the "Advancement" heading in the Long-Term Events chapter.
For "Learning Spells from a Teacher" from the Laboratory chapter, well, as the text says, "you actually invent the spell yourself, but with constant guidance from the teacher". So it should be treated as any other case of inventing a spell, with laboratory Warping affecting it normally (and IMO, any Teaching specialization of the lab would not apply to the Lab Total).