in the expanded rules for manufacture of books, a scribe has to copy the rough draft into a text with beautiful calligraphy, which adds +1 to the quality of the text. The question is- how long does this take? The same as copying an equivalent text? Longer? Shorter?
I count it as copying, yes. And since most scribes work two seasons of the year, a scribe can usually copy two tractatus or one high level summa a year.
New question.
Cpoying quickly allows for more tractati to be copied in a season reducing the Quality by one.
Is this cumulative and permenant?
Say a get a quickly scribed tractatus. Base quality is 8 so reduced to 7.
I can now get a scribe to render this into a reading copy taking a season and amking a copy of Quality 8 again right? Possilby quality 11 if binder, scribe and illuminator are highly skilled.
But if I now make another quick copy of the reduced quality version is this new copy now reduced to quality 6? And can it be increased back to the original 8 or only 7 because parts are lost/miscribed in the process?
IMHO the reduction of Quality is cumulative. To me, it represents mistakes being made during the copying process, such as forgetting a word here and there, a diagram being cruder than the original, etc.
It can be corrected, but not easily. It would require having access to the original text so that it can be checked for the correct information. If that original is itself a quick copy, then you would be capped by its Quality (since you cannot know if what's in it a correct or not). And it is time-consuming, requiring pretty much as much time as making a new copy.
Note that if you didn't have a skilled scribe, illuminator and binder in the first place, then it may not be easy to gain those backs back in the new copy. I could accept it in the case of the binder, but for the illuminator... well, if you lost a point of Quality because your illuminator wasn't skillful enough to properly render the images and colors that went with the text, then how can the new illuminator know what was supposed to be there?
IMHO the lower quality of a hasty copy is because of subtle nuances nopt quite caught, diagrams drawn wrong etc.
I could see a magus correcting the mistakes made in a hasty copy, but I also envision this taking a full season, and requiring the original book as reference. I'm not sure if I'd allow for all 3 hasty copies to be corrected in a single season.
If only one can be corrected it would take 1 season for 3 poor copies and another 3 seasons to correct them. This is 1 season slower than just taking the time to make proper copies.
If all 3 can be corrected in a single season you would save one season by doing it this way. And somehow I don't relish this method as being better than doing it right first time.
As for using skilles scribes, illuminators and binder this an acitvity that IMHO happens in the same season the magus writes or copies the book. Binding is the only thing I can see as usable afterwards. Also this bonus is only usable once per book. In the example of the Q8 tractatus copied to a Q7 version, if the original has Q8 due to the scribe, binder and illuminator the copy needs this as well, otherwise the copy would be 3 lower in Quality. Using these rules from Covenants means Base Quality of a book is Com+3, with the additional +3 for those craftsmen.
However say you found a magus' raw manuscript (let's say he was a Com+5, Good Teacher prodigy), made without those craftsmen but still has Q (3+5+3=)11, and you copy it hastily for a Q10 version. Then you go home and have your scribe clean it up, the illuminator embellish it with coloured inks and drawings, plus the binder works his craft. Then you could have a Q13 book.
Damage to books I guess is penalties to Quality. Some things I can see being remedied by a magus spending time, like disordered pages and light spills and stains. But I might require the magus to have read the book to know what it's supposed to look like. Other kinds of damage not so much, like missing pages, stains making the text ilegible etc. And I would require some or all of the 3 types of craftsmen handy to help restoring the book, depending on the type of damage.
5th ed's system I think is supposed to be simpler than 4th ed's system of physical quality from WGRE. It was great fun back then, but I think I'm still quite satisfied with having left it behind.