But INT 25 is enough for him to go back to his MSOM (Magical Simulation of Magic) crafting attempt.

He's gathered, by now, that Baseline is not the key to wording Wishes, that there is something that takes language and goes from there to a spellpattern and that is why Wish phrasings matter so much.  When he gets to INT 29 he will cast Arcane Sight and watch Carissa getting Wished-up by efreeti, possibly get efreeti to cast some other standard Wishes just to watch those, and maybe at INT 29 he'll be able to make a standing leap to some understanding of how Wishes turn into spellforms.  Hand-building an emulator of magical physics, or even trying and failing to do that, seems like it is plausibly on the critical path towards his being able to do that later, if anything is.

Building his Magical Simulation of Magic would probably be any degree easier if he had Carissa Sevar's kind of Spellcraft.  But not that much easier, to be honest.  He's got his own Armillary Amulet now.  Most of the challenge, fundamentally, is coming up with any system of magical physics with a visible subsystem that emulates an isomorphism of magical physics.  Not making those physics happen, coming up with any physics like that all.  Crafting ad-hoc supports for holding the processes together...

Well, he could, in fact, go a lot faster between trials and errors, if he was better at crafting spellsilver into magical supports and then tweaking the crafts.  But the item-crafter he has on hand, in his base, is somebody to whom it takes longer to explain what he's trying to accomplish, each time and tweak, than it does for him to try the tweaks himself.  At least this way he's learning himself, at INT 25, and speeding up at the exact form of crafting he needs to do.

...he gets another Eagle's Splendour and swaps to his +6 Intelligence headband, and, yeah, with stats of 27/20/23 it feels like he is able to make real progress on a couple of his current challenges, for the few minutes it takes before the Splendour is about to run out, and he has to put his +4/+0/+4 headband back on.

But INT 25 is enough for him to go back to his MSOM (Magical Simulation of Magic) crafting attempt.

He's gathered, by now, that Baseline is not the key to wording Wishes, that there is something that takes language and goes from there to a spellpattern and that is why Wish phrasings matter so much.  When he gets to INT 29 he will cast Arcane Sight and watch Carissa getting Wished-up by efreeti, possibly get efreeti to cast some other standard Wishes just to watch those, and maybe at INT 29 he'll be able to make a standing leap to some understanding of how Wishes turn into spellforms.  Hand-building an emulator of magical physics, or even trying and failing to do that, seems like it is plausibly on the critical path towards his being able to do that later, if anything is.

Building his Magical Simulation of Magic would probably be any degree easier if he had Carissa Sevar's kind of Spellcraft.  But not that much easier, to be honest.  He's got his own Armillary Amulet now.  Most of the challenge, fundamentally, is coming up with any system of magical physics with a visible subsystem that emulates an isomorphism of magical physics.  Not making the process happen, coming up with any process with that property.  Crafting ad-hoc supports for holding the systems together...

Well, he could, in fact, go a lot faster between trials and errors, if he was better at crafting spellsilver into magical supports and then tweaking the crafts.  But the item-crafter he has on hand, in his base, is somebody to whom it takes longer to explain what he's trying to accomplish, each time and tweak, than it does for him to try the tweaks himself.  At least this way he's learning himself, at INT 25, and speeding up at the exact form of crafting he needs to do.

...he gets another Eagle's Splendour and swaps to his +6 Intelligence headband, and, yeah, with stats of 27/20/23 it feels like he is able to make real progress on a couple of his current challenges, for the few minutes it takes before the Splendour is about to run out, and he has to put his +4/+0/+4 headband back on.

But INT 25 is enough for him to go back to his MSOM (Magical Simulation of Magic) crafting attempt.

He's gathered, by now, that Baseline is not the key to wording Wishes, that there is something that takes language and goes from there to a spellpattern and that is why Wish phrasings matter so much.  When he gets to INT 29 he will cast Arcane Sight and Haste and watch his other stats getting Wished-up by efreeti, possibly get efreeti to cast some other standard Wishes just to watch those, and maybe at INT 29 he'll be able to make a standing leap to some understanding of how Wishes turn into spellforms.  Hand-building an emulator of magical physics, or even trying and failing to do that, seems like it is plausibly on the critical path towards his being able to do that later, if anything is.

Building his Magical Simulation of Magic would probably be any degree easier if he had Carissa Sevar's kind of Spellcraft.  But not that much easier, to be honest.  He's got his own Armillary Amulet now.  Most of the challenge, fundamentally, is coming up with any system of magical physics with a visible subsystem that emulates an isomorphism of magical physics.  Not making the process happen, coming up with any process with that property.  Crafting ad-hoc supports for holding the systems together...

Well, he could, in fact, go a lot faster between trials and errors, if he was better at crafting spellsilver into magical supports and then tweaking the crafts.  But the item-crafter he has on hand, in his base, is somebody to whom it takes longer to explain what he's trying to accomplish, each time and tweak, than it does for him to try the tweaks himself.  At least this way he's learning himself, at INT 25, and speeding up at the exact form of crafting he needs to do.

...he gets another Eagle's Splendour and swaps to his +6 Intelligence headband, and, yeah, with stats of 27/20/23 it feels like he is able to make real progress on a couple of his current challenges, for the few minutes it takes before the Splendour is about to run out, and he has to put his +4/+0/+4 headband back on.