OK, folks, I'm finding that I have a fair number of questions and I want to cut down on the rate that I generate topics. So, a few notes about myself:
Books I own:
-- Core ArM5
-- RoP: The Divine
-- HoH: Mystery Cults
-- HoH: True Lineages (Tremere and Guernicus chapters embargoed , however, due to the fact that they contain a fair number of the plot hooks that are active in a saga I am playing in)
-- The Mysteries (Revised)
-- Ancient Magic
-- Core ArM4 (pdf)
-- 4 Ed Mysteries (pdf)
Next Purchases:
-- City and Guild
-- HoH: Societates
I have been playing for maybe about a year and a half and I hereby vow to look in these books BEFORE asking.
Having said all that, I would appreciate your collective help. Please feel free to perform threadomancy or just refer me to book and chapter if the answers are there and I just missed them.
First question: Damaged lab texts
There seems to be no rule on this as there might (!) be for "learning" texts. With a summa or tractatus, one can assess a penalty of -1 or -2 for damage due to water, or bookworms, or whatever, but the damage in those cases is probably completely recoverable with the judicious use of Rego Crafting or some slick Intelligo and Creo spells (or just good, old-fashioned, rewriting). With Lab Texts it seems you go from allowing reinvention of a spell or enchantment at a very high rate to completely useless with no middle ground.
The questions are:
-- Is this reasonable?
-- Could one, say, use the lab text but force a roll on the experimental results table ("Oh, uh, master, sir? Is your nose SUPPOSED to be purple?") to represent missing a critical fact?
-- How about allowing the uses of the damaged text for an increased reinvention rate by, say, adding the Magnitude of the spell to your magus' Lab Total?
What motivates the thinking on this was a friend of mine in college had spilled IPA on our lab table in Chem 102 Lab Section and damaged some, but not all, of the lab notes that me and another friend were using (as well as his own). His own notes were completely ruined, but John and I were frustrated and decided to try to figure things out. John "Look at the pretty smoke" F... (withheld) ended with a result that met the class requirements but had a mildly annoying side effect (a slightly colored smoke). I spent longer than expected to get the work done but got it done correctly and still quicker than if I went and copied the notes from an undamaged lab book.
As a side note, the other John ("The Spiller" or as he later came to be known "IPA guy") went on to become a PhD chemist working at Merck. Go figure...
Anyway, please comment/advise.
-K!