Magic Rituals

by Andrew Macdonald

Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 02:49:30 -0500 From: Andrew Macdonald To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Question: Magic Ritual skill ( _Long_ )
    >Scott Herod wrote:
    >
    >>
    >> (snip)
    >> 
    >> My real question is, how do other GM's out there handle Magic Rituals.
    >> (snip)
    >
    >You will find a section on Ritual Magic in RMCIII, ch4.3. It's about 4 pag
    >that gives details on how it could work. I have never actually used it,
    >though, so I don't know how good it is. Looks ok at first glance though.
    >
    >There is also an errata (or addendum, rather) in a later RMC that says tha
    >the rituals presented in RMCIII4.3 take a minimum time of 1 hour plus the
    >normal spell prep+cast time in hours. So a class I spell would take a 

Hi, I have used magic rituals extensivly for about 2-3 years now as a player in a Rm 2nd edition game. I think we have used the rules in RMCIII as listed, with a few later changes.

The basic method is to cast a spell taking a huge amount of time that otherwise you could not (or did not want to) cast.

The time we use for ritual completion is 1 hour per level the ritual is over your level, with a minimum of (1 + spell class) hours. The bonuses are something like

A ritual empties all your remaining points, and you must have at least one "set" = ritual level worth of points. There are also continuation rolls made after every 8 hours of ritual, roll is base ritual bonus + trance bonus -20*( number of continuation roll -1) so the first is at no penalty, the second at -20 etc

A ritual result of over 100 is total success, below 50 gets ugly.

The way it actually works is that for casters of 10+ level it is fairly easy to ritualise any spell you have ritual skill in of your level or below. The only penalty is the -10 to -20 for not knowing the list, and the bonus for pps usually swamps that. Eg 10th level Illusionist with 40pps and a +90 elemental ritual bonus (50rank+30level+stat) trying to ritualise an 8th level fireball. Gets -20 list +40 extra points + 90 bonus is 110, fails only on open ended low.

Spells above ones level are not too hard as trance and level bonus go up toward 20th level. There 40th level rituals are not really dangerous.

(Skill of 130 + 30 trance + 10 points - 100 level gives about +70)

Having this skill freely available makes mages more powerful, and more inclined to sit inside and do stuff with high level spells. Adding a second spell to a ritual adds half the levels of the lower level spell, so storing a 25th level spell takes a 38th level ritual..this can be a popular option :)

The two modifications (things that were modified in play, I'm not sure how much of the above is standard) were

1) The level penalty was reduced for spell > 20th level to only -3 per level over 20th over casters..so a 25th level spell from an 18th level caster is at -5 * 2 (for levels from casters to 20th) and -3 * 5 from 20th to spell = - 25 instead of -35. This was to balance some other change I cannot recall.

2) Casters were required to study individual lists for knowledge of the ritual "recipe" at one week per spell pick. This was to prevent casters having access to all the low-mid level spells in their realm(s).

I would suggest anyone using rituals use a restriction at least as severe as 2) above, otherwise things just get silly. Possibly just base lists would be a tighter restriction. (And make base lists a bit more significant to pures, who don't really notice which lists are base till 24th).

Sorry for being verbose, but rituals have shaped our campaign for 2 years now. (Oh if you allow these rules, expect a power increase in your game, obviously, and particularly in spells you don't normally look at. Also ban permanency unless you want your players a)hermits b)tanks ) Andrew Macdonald


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