It is absolutely farcical. To borrow your example, if you can gain XP from learning just the hand motions from a teacher, why could you not gain the same XP from learning the hand motions from a (presumably illustrated) book? If the syncing of the tongue and hand motions is the important bit, why does learning only the hand motions in increasing detail increase your understanding of the Ability at all?* And if it does, why would the books bother mentioning the tongue motions at all, since clearly you don't need them to improve in the Ability!
*Note that according to Apprentice you explicitly can gain experience in the ability exceeding level 1 (with no upper limit expressed or implied) without ever receiving the key.
Often when learning a complex physical activity you break it into parts, concentrating on footwork in dancing then moving smoothly with your partner is one glaring example.
I'm not arguing that. The idea that it can be broken into parts by an instructor but not by a book is farcical. If anything, you'd expect the book would be easier to redact!
And Iâm saying that beyond the most basic level of instruction (emulated in this system by going from 0 (4) to 1 (0)) the book needs to talk about the whole mess and how it works together.
And an instructor doesn't? But can still carry on conveying valuable lessons that increase your skill in the ability far beyond the 0(4)-->1(0) transition? The reasonable position is that for any advanced instruction, you need to "talk about the whole mess and how it works together"! The idea that books have some special extra requirement to convey the same level of expertise in a subject, or alternatively that it's easier to avoid giving clues with verbal in-person instruction than a book revised at your leisure is absolutely nonsensical.
No, we are specifically only talking about at the stage where one is first learning it for that just-after-the-oath score of 1. For higher levels an instructor would have to discuss those things but there are other checks an instructor can do like have the person reswear the oath or only teach known Hermetic magi.
Okay, if you believe this, I can see the rest of your position making sense. Sorry, I think we were talking around each other there for a few exchanges. Sadly, this statement is very clearly contradicted by Apprentices p61:
additional experience points will accumulate to a score higher than 1, but the final instructions are still withheld. Regardless of a characterâs score in Parma Magica, she will not be able to invoke her own Parma Magica until after she receives the final key
It is explicitly possible to receive, from instruction, an arbitrarily high score in the Parma Magica Arcane Ability. There is no lesson too advanced to deliver without the key, verbally, according to Apprentices. And yet every written lesson, even the most basic conceivable Level 1 Quality 1 Summa, must include the key, according to Rival Magic. Hence my mocking of the idea that they don't conflict as farcical.
You can have a score higher than 1 before learning the key. In fact there is no discussed upper limit on how high your score can be before learning the key.
I would like to suggest as errata the self healing walls in Hermetic projects- I believe there should be a note of some sort that overcoming the duration limit of muto by combining it with a creo ritual does not work by core rules and is being presented as a variation for campaigns which wish to adopt such a change.
The self healing walls in Transforming Mythic Europe (I do not believe there is one in Hermetic Projects) are possible by RAW from the core book. They are CrTe Base 3, +1 for Unnatural Properties (Self-heal as a *), along with a Muto and Form requisite. The exact Form depends on the *, which can be human, animal, or plant (making the requisite Corpus, Animal, or Herbam).
EDIT: I actually originally thought it was in Hermetic Projects myself and only caught it when I was doing a review to add page numbers before submitting the post in the thread it originally came up in.
Ritual Creo spells with Momentary duration create things that last as any other thing of that type.
Why the Muto requisite? P.78 tells us:
By using Muto magic a magus can grant or remove properties something cannot naturally have.
So, yes, you can certainly make them. However, a self-healing wall made from such a Momentary Creo Ritual will only last as long as self-healing walls naturally last. Ever seen one? I don't recall any mention of one by Pliny nor anyone else. That's why Muto is used, adding what cannot naturally be there; and that's why a longer Duration is needed, because this thing that does not exist naturally will stop existing the moment the magic ends.
Edit: There are other self-healing objects via Hermetic magic in ArM5. They all use extended Duration to manage it.
Edit 2: The paragraph about these walls even refers to them as "unnatural stones."
There are two fundamental problems with those walls.
The first is the bizarre idea that to give something an unnatural property you need a Muto requisite. That's not true at all by the corebook: you just need a higher base, if you are creating that thing from scratch (of course, if you are changing something already there, you need Muto - but for the change, not for the unnatural property per se).
The second is that something unnatural can be made permanent via a Ritual. Again, that's explicitly against the corebook.
Note the logical fallacy. The corebook says:
Natural stuff can be created "permanently" with D:Mom Rituals
Unnatural results cannot be made "permanent" in any way.
All results obtained with Muto are unnatural (and thus, they can't be made "permanent").
TME ... implicitly transforms that in:
All unnatural results must be obtained with Muto (at least as a requisite) [WRONG]
All stuff created with D:Mom Creo Rituals is permament [WRONG]
Therefore, if I want to create unnatural stuff I need a Muto requisite, and I can create it permanently with a D:Mom Cr(Mu) Ritual. [Correct reasonning from the wrong premises]
I think that they should just be errataed away, but I like the diplomatic approach of silveroak: just politely point out that Hermetic Theory does not work that way, and it would take a Hermetic Breakthrough bypassing the Limit of Essential Nature to have it work. (Even then the Muto requisite is just wrong. Repeat with me: Muto implies Unnatural, Unnatural DOES NOT implies Muto).
If cast at D:Mom, that would "permanently" create a natural stone, and give it momentarily an unnatural property - so that it would immediately return to being a natural stone.
This ... may be useful if you want to create a stone block that "melds perfectly" and right from the start with an existing stone block. But it does not do what TME seems to suggest it does.
Let me also say that I dislike this aesthetically, because it combines in the same D:Mom spell two D:Mom effects where D:Mom in practice "means" two subtly different things.
Not sure if this was brought up here or the other errata/hard to find threads. I did not find anything using the forum search. Whether casting a mastered ritual is stressful or not is not clear.
In the Ritual section we see "The magnitude of Ritual spells, and the need to incorporate many elements, mean that they are always cast using a stress die." In the Spell Mastery section we see "Mastered spells are always cast with a stress die, but if the maga is relaxed there are no botch dice," Assuming one can indeed master a ritual, does casting a mastered ritual require a stress die or not?
My reading, which I believe is the RAW or RAI idea, is that you are never relaxed when casting a ritual. Depending on virtues, mastery botch die reduction, and things such as the Familiar cords you can reduce the number of botch dice to zero but it is not automatically zero like it will be for a mastered non-ritual spell âwhen relaxed.â This could possibly be worded more clearly but I am not sure what those words are.