What would a lab specialized in cooking look like & would it be allowed to grogs interested in improving their cooking skills? What sort of magic items w/could be used in such a lab?
Silly question I know, it might be interesting from a pcs viewpoint & be useful from a background viewpoint as well!
Labs don't work for Crafts. Only for Magic, and Philosophiae/Artes Liberales/Medicine, from A&A.
What about for magical cooking then?
Not strictly true. The teaching specialisation is not limited to magic by the letter of the RAW.
I play a rusticani, one of whose specialities is charged item cookies. I can fully see him teaching cooking to his apprentice in the lab. He would not teach a grog though. Now, with rusticani powers, he has no need for a bonus to the lab total, but for another magus it would not be far fetched to install an oven as a feature and claim a specialisation for items. There is a Verditius wine maker in the Rhine.
Then there is the witch's kitchen [HMRE].
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Thanks for the vote of confidence & the input!
Define magical cooking. The only rules I know that will allow 'magical cooking' is using Touched by Realm. But that creates a magical item, and doesn't use a lab.
Witchen's Kitchen is their version of a Lab
Making magical food mostly.
Sure, and cooking potions is one of their main modes of magic.
Still ambiguous. Are we talking about magic by means of food (aka. potions or charged items) or food by means of magic (aka. craft magic).
Sorry, I meant making food loaded with magical effects/spells (healing/enchantment spells mostly) for the benefit of the patrons that have payed for there creation. Charged items mostly.
Along these lines:what sort of enchanted cookbooks would work in such a lab anyway?
Cookbooks are tricky. There are a lot of limitations on magic on books, to avoid unbalancing the libraries. I cannot see a valid application to the lab, but then I have not researched it.
Ok, just checking. What sort of equipment could be found in such a lab anyway?
Any kind of kitchen implement, I guess, depending on what you want to cook. I mentioned the oven for cookies. The cauldron does for stew and soup, as for so many other things.
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Ok, how might they be enchanted to help in the lab though?
of course
Potential item for a cooking & other type of labs:timer! It’ll allow you to properly time experiments & not miss meals and such!
Charged Items.
How about investing an item with a few different (low) level Ignem effects to allow cooking foods with regulated heat?
For example, the oven listed above: make one "setting" equivalent to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, a pretty standard baking temperature. But, to really do up a large cut of meat right it should be cooked "low and slow", so you also want another couple of settings in the neighborhoods of 200 and 250 F. You know, for fall off the bone ribs or a nicely tenderized brisket that's been steaming in its own juices for ~four hours.
I mean, if you're going to do magic cookery, you have to be doing some sort of barbecuing. Your enchanted smoker should probably be placed outdoors, or in a dedicated (masonry) and well ventilated room off by itself (and far from the library/sleeping quarters/sancta).
You could make a bunch of tool which are heat resistant. Mittens, Tongs, etc. Pans that heat with magic. measuring bowls which teleport the material up to the line in the bowl and no more. Magical refrigerators. Cupboards which keep herbs fresh.
It would then be up to the SG to say what help this would do. If a magi put enough energy in to it, a SG could reasonably say it would give a bonus to cooking checks, and if the bonus is high enough combined with a decent chef maybe a +1 living condition bonus.
[Magi of House Verditius have entered the Forum.]
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