While I am not The Fixer so I'm not sure of his intent, you absolutely CAN get unique effects via experimentation. Without the needing to integrate. You can get changes in just about everything. You can get all sorts of cool beneficial side effects for free. One of the example side benefits would normally add a magnitude and a requisite.
Via the random effects of the experimentation roll. Sure I said that. But the player has no control over that. Fixer seems to think that when doing Original Research you somehow get the non-hermetic effect your going for when you experiment. During the process not after it's complete. Which admitedly is sorta what happens during Integration Research, but Original Research is totally different.
Sorry if I wasn't clear.
What I meant is, IMO, researchers are supposed to experiment for the sake of experimentation, see what this will give them, yet, the more you can do outside of experimentation, the less useful these special results are, and experimentation is only useful for 2 things: As a boost to the lab total, and when striving for a specific breakthrough.
But the strange experimentation result? No one goes after them, whereas, IMO, researchers should seek these gold nuggets: If, some times, one get a spell that allows him to do something new, he has a bargaining tool, and this gives an avenue of research, by proving that hermetic magic can do something new.
For exemple, imagine that, before 956, Ignem couldn't produce light without fire... Until one reseacher, experimenting on a PoF, created a "torchlight" spell. Proof of concept, CrIg could create fireless light! He had a spell to bargain with, but also knew he could embark on OR, which gave the OoH new Creo Ignem "create light" guidelines.
Say, you're out of law school.
Does this mean you know everything there is to know about law?
To take back architecture, you had skilled, competent architects for centuries. Yet, gothic churches only appear in the... 12th century? Or 13th? Anyway, they were perfectly possible before, the physical laws didn't change one day. But they were just outside the body of knowledge. How could someone study how to make something no one ever did?
=> Being competent in a field, having studied it, doesn't mean you know how to do everything that's possible within this field. You know only what? The state of the art? IMO, it's the same for hermetic magic: You don't learn everything that's possible with it, just everything that's known, and maybe thought, possible.
It doesn't work that way, not because of the Tunnel, but because of the guideline that the teleport is based on.
Say, a magus in a tower, in Florence, Italy, opens a level 15 Intangible Tunnel to a grog in London (i.e. a thousand miles away). The magus then uses the tunnel to cast on the grog a Touch range level 15 ReCo spell called Step Left that is based on the level 10 ReCo guideline (Transport the target instantly up to 5 paces; ArM5 page 134).
So far so good? The Tunnel spell is big enough to fit the Step Left spell. The magus can thus instantly move the grog 5 paces, which means that he can perhaps dunk the grog into the Thames (depending on where in London the grog happens to be). However, the magus cannot move the grog to Florence because Florence is not within 5 paces of the grog's current location (in London). Yes, there is an Intangible Tunnel connecting the two locations, but that does not change the physical distance between the two locations. The ReCo spell moves the target a specified physical distance (from its current location); one thousand miles is too far for the Step Left spell.
Of course, if the ReCo spell was instead based on the level 35 guideline (i.e. similar to Leap of Homecoming), then it should work (as noted elsewhere in this thread) because the level 35 guideline moves the target a distance corresponding to Arcane Connection (which is usually taken to be sufficient to cover the thousand miles between London and Florence). Assuming that a new Tunnel large enough for the more powerful ReCo effect is cast, of course.
That's the best explanation I've seen, and something I've considered. I just wonder why, if the Tunnel isn't Bidirectional it can't vacuum up the person through the tunnel. I suppose the fact is that the tunnel treats the endpoints as if they were at touch range, while not being actually at touch range.
Exactly. The terminals of the Tunnel are at Touch range for spell casting purposes (for those who can sense their local terminal).
However, the terminals are not actually touching so are not treated as such for other purposes, such as grogs swinging swords, and spell effects.
That's how I've always understood the effect of the Tunnel, however that seems to me to be counter to the note in HP, allowing magi to cast R: Voice (or R: Sight or what not) through the Tunnel, and not just R: Touch.
HP exactly follows the spell description in ArM5 (page 162) "...allowing you to cast any spell with a range greater than Personal on that target". (emphasis added)
Absolutely correct (and thanks for making me read the spell description again).
It still doesn't make sense to me, but I recognize that the problem is not with the HP author.