I've heard somewhere that you can absorb actual picture variables from the calc for use on buffers (only needed for compilation). Is this true, and if so, how do I do so?

Thanks; that's just what I needed.

If you do it as an app and you want to change the Pic1 var while runtime, you'll need to store to some other variable, like, e.g. A instead.

Pic1 is not a var, it's a pointer. Which is why you "can't" change what it points to when you compile as an app, it points to a byte in ROM. So you'll have to copy what it points to to some place in RAM then you'll be able to modify the content of the copy, but still not what Pic1 points to. And doing Pic1→A is not copying what Pic1 points to "in" A (I don't even know what that would mean), it just gets A to point to the same place as Pic1 points to (so if you compiled as an app, A points to ROM too).