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.modify is actually newer than the wiki, and we haven't gotten a chance to update the wiki to describe it yet. The scripting threads don't mention it because they were originally written for Pathfinder, and Pathfinder hasn't been set up to take advantage of it, the way Shadowrun has.
Using .modify, instead of + or -, or whatever, is why you can move your mouse over a value in the Shadowrun files and see what elements went into that calculation. The text in the third part of .modify, along with the value, is put into a record of how that field's value changed, so that it can be looked up later, like when the user moves their mouse over it.
"Special" are skill specialties. In a lot of cases, like the "Health" specialties for the Spellcasting , counterspelling, and alchemy skills, there are lots of different things, like taking a specialty in the skill, or a mentor spirit, that can all add dice to the same dicepool, so in those cases, a copy of the skill specialty is left on all characters, behind the scenes, so that the collected dicepool for using that skill with that specialty can be stored.
Ritual spellcasting's list of allowed specialties, on pg. 142 of the core rulebook, doesn't include "Health Spells" the way those other skills do - instead, ritual spellcasting's specialties are based on the ritual keywords. So that's why there isn't a "Health" option for Ritual spellcasting.
If you wanted to write something that added +2 to all health spell rituals, you'd have to search the rituals directly, instead of searching through the skill specialties.
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