No, you don't need the lab total. It's more like casting a Ritual from a Casting Tablet. You just need to have Arts high enough to handle the vis used, which was also set just like with a Casting Tablet.
Yes, you do need the lab text. If I were doing a longevity specialist, I'd have someone on staff to whom I'd taught my shorthand.
The general rule for lab texts says that if your Lab Total is below the level of the effect, you can't use the Lab Text. The only benefit of the Lab Text for LRs is that you don't need to take a season to reproduce the effect, but that doesn't waive the first requirement.
There might be a waiver somewhere in the rules, and I'd be happy if you could point it out.
It is explicitly stated that the general rules for Lab Texts do not apply to Lab Texts for Longevity Rituals. Serf's Parma for the moment; I'll look up the exact wording after work, unless somebody else chimes in before then.
"You can invent a new ritual ..., or perform the ritual from the old ritual again. This involves simply making a new investment of vis ... but no significant investment in time. You must have the Laboratory Text ... from the original ritual to do this, and this is the only benefit from a Longevity Ritual's Laboratory Text."
Ellipses are for excluded parenthetical asides.
Again. As in, you did it before. This paragraph assumes the person performed their own LR already.
The rules for Lab Texts say that if you lab total is below the level of the lab text, you can't use it. Generally someone who made their own LR can reproduce it, unless they had a lot of lab assistance at the time to boost their lab total.
I believe the laboratory activity is "designing" a longevity ritual, whereas the Lab Text allows you to "perform" it. Performing it just requires the vis, and is of negligible difficulty; you may not be able to design a powerful LR, but if someone else does and gives you the lab text you can still perform it.
Let's be a little more careful: "perform again," which may well not be the majority of what was just done...
We know you are not repeating everything you did before:
The Longevity Ritual takes one season to develop and perform
As in, performing it doesn't necessarily take the whole season, as developing it may well (and as we'll see later does) take most of the time.
the ritual loses its effectiveness and the focus must be repeated
Here it is saying the end part must be repeated, not the entire thing.
This involves simply making a new investment of vis (of an amount based on your current age) but no significant investment in time.
That's all you have to do: invest the vis, which does not take a significant investment of time. So we're definitely not looking at repeating the whole season's lab work to develop it.
When a Longevity Ritual is designed in the laboratory, the enchantment requires one pawn of vis for every five years of age (rounded up). The magus designing the Longevity Ritual can han- dle twice his Magic Theory in vis in a season-long laboratory activity.
So originally it's a season-long laboratory activity.
When rebrewing the Longevity Ritual after an Aging Crisis..., using the Lab Text for the ritual, the process takes no significant investment of time — in practice, it takes about 15 minutes per magnitude of the Lab Text of the Longevity Ritual, as if casting a ritual spell. The limits on the vis handling for this process are those of a magus casting a ritual: Art specific vis is used, limited for each Art by the magus’s Art score.
So, even though the original development was a lab activity including its vis limits, the focus part that must be redone uses a Ritual spell's casting time and a Ritual spell's vis limits.
So, in total we know that the rebrewing requires nothing more than an investment of vis which is limited by your Arts instead of Magic Theory and takes 15 minutes per magnitude to invest.
Using Laboratory Texts (p102):
"...If his lab total is less than the level of the effect, he may not use the Laboratory Text until his Lab Total increases to be at least equal to the level."
"The Laboratory Text for a Longevity Ritual only allows a magus to reproduce the final ritual without needing a season on the process."
The second statement does not waive the first. You need to be able to use the Lab Text to gain its benefits. The requirement to use the lab text is the lab total of the lab text. The benefits of the Lab Text for a Longevity Ritual are simply allowing you reproduce the final ritual without the season of work.
In truth this is almost always a moot point as magi are generally assumed to be making their own LR (in Core), or going to a specialist who can make the Lab Total.
And realistically if you're a LR specialist, you don't hand over your lab texts, at all. After all, I'd want to be able to charge for my services again if/when the LR fails, and if magi could simply waive the Lab Total requirements completely if they had the Lab Text, I'll never see those repeat fees. If the Lab Total requirements are NOT waived, then the Lab Text is useless to a non specialist entirely, except possibly to take to your competition!
That is very much a saga specific thing. While in "your game" a LR specialist might not give a copy of the labtext for a LR, in other games it might be expected. I have never seen or played in a game in which a copy is not included, since what I am paying you for is to invent a ritual that I can cast myself. Personally if you did not give me a copy of the text, I would not pay you.
As for taking it to your competition, that is a nonsense charge. The only thing you can do with the text is cast the ritual again. It does not help in creating a new one. Unless you are creating a new LR, there is not point in going to a different specialist to cast it.
The second statement doesn't have to waive the first, because it doesn't apply in the first place. No Laboratory Total is ever generated to re-perform the focus ritual from a preexisting Longevity Ritual's Lab Text, because doing so isn't a Laboratory Activity.
As supporting evidence, I will point you to TMRE p.42
Thus, if the magus obtained a Longevity Ritual formula from a specialist potion brewer, with a bonus set to last him several centuries (in principle), he can rebrew replacement doses for himself
...which clearly indicates both that non-Creo-Corpus-specialized magi can re-brew the powerful Longevity Rituals of a dedicated specialist without having to return to them, and that magi purchasing such rituals are assumed to have the Lab Texts for them.
I will additionally make the more definite argument that, since according to ArM5 p.103,
If you miss more than twenty days, you cannot perform a laboratory activity at all
activities which do not require a season are not, and cannot ever be, laboratory activities.
slight tangent here: What about an ungifted recipient? A redcap gets their LR made for them. Can they replicate it if necessary, or do they have to go back to a gifted person to recast it?
Bob
It is a Hermetic Ritual, so it requires someone able to cast Hermetic Magic to recast it. Someone with the Gift who was not opened to the Hermetic Arts could not cast it, even with the lab text. The lab text would actually make no sense to them without Magic Theory and very little sense to them if they had that skill (along the lines of someone who could read sheet music, but had no knowledge or ability to play a musical instrument).
that's what I thought, but I wanted to check in a neutral way (It could have been a mindless "follow these steps exactly" sort of like a super casting tablet. but the limits on Vis use from the arts preclude it as well.
Gives another reason for House Mercere to care about the other houses!
bob
Really? Just (ArM5 p.101) "repeating the focus" is not described as an Hermetic ritual there. It rather "involves simply making a new investment of vis (an amount based on your current age) but no significant investment in time. You must have the Laboratory text <...> to do this, and this is the only benefit from a Longevity Ritual's Laboratory Text."
Did you just take that one little bit from the page and ignore the dozen times it is stated to be a ritual? Or that when it is recast it is done as a ritual?
There are many types of rituals. Most of them aren't ritual spells, and I see little reason to think the Longevity Ritual is a ritual spell.
It is mentioned that mages who have a potion as their focus often talks about their Longevity Potion, while magi with other types of foci use other terms. "Longevity Ritual" is just the generic term.
I was referring to all the times it was called a ritual, ignoring the times that it was called a longevity ritual.
EDIT: Prove that within RAW someone who is not a Magus can perform hermetic magic. Because that is the point you are indirectly arguing in favor of.
Yes, it is called a ritual many times. Parma Magica is also called a ritual, but that doesn't make it a ritual spell.
I never called it a Ritual Spell. I called it a Hermetic Ritual, which it is. It is a Ritual which falls under Hermetic Magic Theory. The same as a Folk Witch LR is a Folk Witch Ritual which falls under Folk Witch Magic Theory.
You are throwing out worthless straw man arguments and attributing things to me that I did not say. What you have to prove is that a non-Magi can cast it, not make nit picky points.
The box in TMRE page 42 means that if you can't use Vis (capped by arts which for non-gifted is capped at zero) then you can't rebrew.
bob