The idea of storing or stockpiling spells has to do with one of two approaches:
1) using Suspend Spell (but it's not entirely clear if that extends duration or avoids maintenance cost)
2) the ability of Maintain Spell to remove the need for ongoing maintenance (-1 penalty) FP expenses, or someone being awake
The latter is the more standard approach since it's function is better clarified.
A central problem however is that Maintain Spell automatically cedes ownership to the cosmos.
The solution is that Steal Spell can take ownership not just of spells belonging to mages, but also spells ceded by using Maintain Spell.
This allows a spell to be kept around (for example overnight while a mage is asleep and unable to maintain them) and then regain them.
Steal Spell always requires a spell vs spell contest though, so a problem arises if a mage with a low skill in Steal Spell wants to regain control of spells he has much higher skill in.
M127 "resisted by subject spell" means M14's "A conscious subject who is aware that something is happening may choose not to resist" can't inherently work: although a mage can choose not to resist steal spell (voluntarily give it up, an alternative to using Lend Spell) since the spell is the resister and the spell is NOT conscious, it can't just give it up.
A way around that could be to give the spell a limited consciousness. M128 actually talks about doing this for [[Maintain Spell]:
- Some maintained spells may be “programmed” as per Independence (p. 96) or perhaps even Initiative (p. 97) (GM’s discretion).
The casting time for MS even hints at that:
- Time to cast: 2 seconds, plus “programming time” if necessary.
This implies that the two spells from "Illusion and Create" might possibly be useful for things other than their initial specifications. If MS was merely talking about using Inde/Init for just that college it probably would've said so.
Independence (M96) has a minimum of 5 seconds casting time (and 2 energy) but casting time can be longer:
- As long as it takes the casting player to describe the instructions to the GM, or to read them aloud if they are in writing
That's a very "meta" sort of demand, and penalizes players who have trouble speaking quickly, so it probably is not fair.
Initiative is more straight-forward, it costs a fixed 10 seconds to cast. The minimum cost is 3 so it always costs more, and can be MUCH more if a lot of IQ/DX is given to the magic.
One interesting thing about that, since it can impart skills, is you could actually teach your illusions/creations to cast magic. The only problem is that since they lack magery, they can't cast spells in normal/low mana, only high+
They could still be more helpful (a skilled non-mage) in performing ceremonial magic though, able to lend more energy.
Phantoms are not given HT so they wouldn't have FP, but they are given ST so they could have HP to burn HP for magic.
- for game balance though, the "immediate damage" guideline related to MoS should probably apply to burning HP, even though that is technically "injury" rather than "damage". So for example with MoS 2, the Phantom could probably cast several 1-energy spells, but a 2-energy spell would "kill" it, so it would automatically fail. Obviously a phantom should have actual HP (derived from ST) to avoid "infinite energy" problems here. This should probably allow cumulative damage from attacks inflicting MoS or less to eventually dispel it.
M98 Create Servant variant Create Brute would be ideal since they have ST 16 (more HP for magic). A normal servant would work too though. Keep in mind they have "all attributes equal to 9" so they could lend 9 FP from their 9 HT.