Min/Max Boards

Essentially, Collegiate Wizard is about being better at learning stuff. Having decent study habits, and so on.

Arcane Thesis is taking something that has already been invented (The spell.), researching it to understand how it works, and the ability to apply metamagic to it is applying that knowledge. The benefits of the spell are not the research that you made; They're you applying that research in practice.

Shouldn't Arcane Dissertation then require research of a new spell, and then wouldn't it grant benefits when using that researched spell?

A fairly simple explanation to give in situations like that is that magically enchanted golem-bodies are going to be really difficult to work with, and it would require a lot of dispelling magic to get them back to the point where they can be easily recycled. As such, enchanted materials are much cheaper than "raw" stuff.

I replied this to some of my players when asked. Of course, being the adventurous chaotic-neutral bunch of rascals that they are, they obviously didn't oblige to my excuses. Instead, the wizard opened Player's Handbook and pulled out Nystul's Magic Aura: "Nope, the mithril in that golem's body is clearly not enchanted.". Some bluff checks later, and..

Of course, I played it through. I had said that trying to re-enchant enchanted goods without dispelling the magic on them first was dangerous, and damn me if I wasn't going to stick to my word. The merchant they pawned the materials to then sold them forward, causing a few explosions around the town (Which the players naturally investigated, because they failed to put 1+1 together.), and some very pissed wizards at the merchants' doorstep requesting compensation for exploded laboratories.. And then the second wave of thiefs doing the same, because they realized that it would be a great opportunity to drop the blame on the people who originally pulled this off.

Lessons of the story: Enchanting is dangerous business, Nystul's Magic Aura is a tool for terrorism.  Mad wizards are mad.

P.S: If someone wants to run a 1% of Wizards make 99% of the magic items-campaigns based off this, feel free, but send me a message about how it went.