Why should the 'leader' of the project benefit from the int+MT of the helpers ? and why is it that the helpers do not learn anything from the experience ???

I find that it should be one of the best way for an apprentice to learn MT and other skills as squires learn from helping the knights.

It seems to me to be the normal way to learn in medieval times yet ARS does not provide support to that instead insisting on the 1 season to teach something to an apprentice. I agree that some things need to be taught this way but as the bases are learned one can understand much by helping one's master do it's work.

As for the leader of the project I find that adding all the int+MT of all helpers limited by the leadership sums up to crunshing number to get to higher levels.

I mean if I get this right, a Aumtum convenent with 4 elder magus which agree to work together for a year's work could acheive a labtotal of 180 easy which means spells of lvl 100 should be flotting around and lvl 150 are not unheard of ...

Tech+form+aura+lab+int+MT+help1+help2+help3=40+30+5+5+3+22+25+25+25= 180 lab total.

Instead I'd allow helpers to speed projects not add to the lab total it self. And in total no more than the Int+MT of the Leader of the project himself Or something else since I'm not satisfied with this but something need to be done.

As for the absurd helping totals go, this is only theoretically true. At least in our sagas few Magi (especially elderly Magi) trust more than a few their friends, and not necessarily all of them have MT 20 as you seem to suggest. Though I admit that using the rules as is most elder Magi should have absurd MT scores - but this will hopefully change with the 5th edition. The learning curve in 4th edition is too steep anyhow (and the worse is that there is no natural cap as there was in the 3rd).

We always - also for the Post Coch covenant of the covenant project - read this 'lab work' to include helping the mistress in the lab, because rarely, if ever, an apprentice would be doing lab work on his own anyway.
From this we concluded then that, if the primary researcher of a lab project does not use an own lab text, not only the primary researcher and her apprentice, but also her other lab helpers gain one experience point in Magic Theory per season.

//I mean if I get this right, a Aumtum convenent with 4 elder magus which agree to work together for a year's work could acheive a labtotal of 180 easy which means spells of lvl 100 should be flotting around and lvl 150 are not unheard of ...//
You get this quite right. Unless you allow elder Magi as PCs - against which I strongly advise, because these are near impossible to role play - such high level spells will not be trouble, because fully controlled by the story guide and not given out to younger Magi for free, if at all. They also make very nice plot devices.

Kind regards,

Berengar