1 week and 1,000 gold pieces

ARISE! [thread necromancy of a sort; I'm raising a topic I first raised on my blog in 2013]
 
“1 week and 1,000 gold pieces” is a phrase any player of an ACKS arcane spellcaster is familiar with. Similarly to my ACKS Consolidated Spell Progression, I thought it might be helpful to consolidate common related arcane (and divine) spellcaster tasks into one table.
 
Spellcaster task
1 week
1 week and
		<div>2,000gp</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>1 week per spell level and</div>

		<div>500gp per spell level</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>1 week per spell level and</div>

		<div>1,000gp per spell level</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>2 weeks per spell level and</div>

		<div>1,000gp per spell level</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<div>Write spell into spellbook</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>x</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<div>Add spell to repertoire</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>x</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<div>Lose spell level from repertoire</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>x</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<div>Replace spell in repertoire</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>x</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<div>Rewrite lost spell into spellbook</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>x</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<div>Research new spell</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>x</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<div>Learn ritual spell</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>x</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<div>Cast ritual spell</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>x</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<div>Identify magic item</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>x</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
		<td>
		<div>&nbsp;</div>
		</td>
	</tr>
</tbody>
 
Of the above tasks, only the last four require a Magic Research throw for success. What if all of these tasks benefited from a Magic Research throw in some way? For example, a mage might make a successful Magic Research throw to prevent loss of one spell level from his repertoire for one week, as he desperately attempts to recover his spellbook. An 11th level mage might quickly note a newly acquired 1st level spell in his spellbook in a day, rather than a week. In this and similar cases, a Magic Research throw would indicate a degree of success that might reduce the time and gold required to accomplish a task.
 
I suspect some easily adapted d20 degree of success mechanics are out there. What do you recommend?
 

did you not include scribing scrolls and brewing potions because of the nature of formulas throwing that math off?

No, the main reason I didn’t include magic item creation is there’s a nice table for that in ACKS core, p. 118, and I was trying to make visible all the other costs in the text. Also, given ACKS/Auran Empire Campaign Setting assumptions, I’m generally happy with magic item pricing. (My only wish list item is very low powered, e.g. cantrip magic items.)

That said, I think a more complete table that adds magic item creation, and perhaps constructs/crossbreeds/necromancy would be a good player’s aid. I’m just not interested in changing the costs of these other functions. At least for deafult ACKS; a future toolbox to adapt these to more (or less) magical settings would be great.

I've always taken that week to include, deciphering the newances (mostly for spells new to the caster), writing it down in your own terms and learning how to cast the spell as well.  Mostly due to presuming that writing down a spell for an entire week is way more than a single page of work.  Typically working with 1-2 days to do the writing part.  Thus leaving the caster to note it down rather quickly, but still not understand the spell enough to cast it.

Work adding to a value:
I used a growing value factor for crafting in other games where pending on how well a character did added to the value of the item untill a threshold was reached, indicating the item/batch was completed.  So the better a character rolled the more value that unit of time (typically one day) added to the overall task, the worse they rolled meant less value added for that unit of time and thus took longer to achive the result (the roll couldnt really ever fail, only given up on if it became longer or more costly to finish than starting over).  

You could do something similar by assigning a value for the task, that on average would take about a week to accomplish, and increase that based on how well a magic research throw is lower or higher than the base difficulity.  
Say something like 50 points per spell level, with an average 10 points added per day (presuming around a day of preperation at the start and a days rest).  Thus each day a magic research throw is done adding 10 + ( throw result - throw value), to the tally.  So a mage that has 8+ magical research, works for a day and rolls a magic research throw resulting in a 12, thus they mage adds 14 ( so 10 + (12 - 8)  = 14) to the tally for the task for that day.  Day two they roll a 6, thus only add 8 (so 10 + (6 - 8) = 8), and now have a tally of 22 for the 2 days of work.

Though that may be overly complex for what you want.