Ritual Conjuring, A matter of balance.. Options

[Pendaric]

I have play tested the rules as is for balance. You can get high force spirits (12-14) if don't mind lossing people, often a lot of people. You do start to struggle with force 15 to 17 because of the drain and success ratio. But if you dont mind few successes and high body count its doable. Meaning the leader walks way if their lucky from a large group.
Sphynx idea has merit but I now need to sit down and do the math 'groan'.
I orginaly set this as a thing that corp mages with charisma 3 did to get big spirits and great form spirits.

[Pendaric]

Ok I have done the math. There is no way to reduce the drain code without ritual conjuring becoming the sick beast of the mega spirit.
I ran the numbers up to a sixty strong group and didn't include karma. I tried number of members, leaders iniate grade and total intiate grades as limiting factor, all lead to over the top results. Very power gamer heaven.
However I tried this rule which isn't to bad but with reservations.
For every three members of the ritual group increase each members effective magic for this summoning purposes by one.
This led to a 30 strong group reliably summoning a force 12 spirit and a 60 strong group reliably summoning a force 16, with no deaths. (headaches and unconsciousness but no deaths) This was because more dice could be put towards the leader's rolls.

As to my reservations, the power of spirits is a relative scale. Being able to summon a force 8 spirit beats a force 7 spirit, force 9 beats force 8 etc if the maximum you can safely summon is more than your enemy you win. By making higher viable we redifine the limits. Hell once in the six world Any force spirit beat the oppersition.
I can not think of anything more to do with ritual conjuring that does not break it.

[Sphynx]

I got to thinking about this last night and came to a sudden realization. The reason there is no such thing as Ritual Conjuring in the books is because most Conjuring is a ritual already. Watchers are the non-ritual form of Conjuring. If you want to summon a Force 30 Nature Spirit to wreak havoc, you keep everyone distracted from you by having your tribes do some great Ghost Dance while the leading Shamans go into a wigwam and do an Astral Quest to the native realm of that type of spirit, and bind some powerful spirit via name. Not everyone survives the quest, but you bring back the spirit. It's alot more than a single TN to summon, and a drain based on Magic and Charisma.

Now, if someone came up with something interesting that a new Ritual Conjuring can do (such as how Ritual Sorcery can sustain spells on its own, or locate someone, or be cast long-distance), other than making the resisting of drain easier, I could see it being interesting. As-is though, the only advantage currently is if you get a ton of people, and summon a slightly larger than norm spirit. And as a player, I'd rather just summon ten times as many spirits that are half the force.

One interesting idea is the ability to summon something -else-. I mean, when GhostWalker attacked Denver, what exactly were those spirit things he was battling. Not Nature Spirits, Elementals, or Elemental Spirits. They were something else. Maybe that's where the focus should be. Spirits that are a typical force, but near-horror in concept, from a more -strange- plane. Unique powers like Astral Armour, Astral Net, etc. Things that can take days, not hours, to summon, and aren't particularly useful unless you're battling dragons or exploding volcanos. Unable to do any 'basic' spirit services such as concealability, search, spell sustaining, etc. Things that you have to agree with, not that owe you services. Or, more simply, owe you only 1 service regardless of successes, but more likely are interested in working with you out of self-interest (demons?)

Just some random ideas there, nothing I'd actually recommend, but more along the lines of where I think a more ritualistic conjuring should be heading.

[Herald of Verjig...]

Ok, try this.

Ritual conjuring allows the conjurer to conjure Shedim, Nomads, Wraiths, Baba Yagas, Bean Sidhes, Broken Bows, Corpselights, Domovois, Kings Frost, Tungaks, and/or unchained Spectres.

As these spirits have not yet established a standardized conjure-response arrangement with metahumanity, the conjurer needs a ritual, dangerous astral quest, and often some exotic oddities from some part of earth.

Examples: A broken bow would require some dirt from the site of the witchcraft in question. A nomad's ritual requires the brutal, torturous killing of a metahuman before the ritual can be completed. A domovoi only would require a location defined and a miniture room in that house. A tungak would require a culture of a disease, preferably thriving in a living metahuman host.

This could also be used to conjure other spirits of types that you could not normally conjure, but with the same "research, astral quest, ritual" base combination.

[Pendaric]

I feel rather than stat's for these kinda of rituals they should remain more roleplay affairs.
But as I said am out of ideas, i have gone round all the concepts i can think of: multiple summoning, distance summoning, and the above seems the most balanced and valid. The ability to have a force 12 guardian elemental in stead of two force six ones seems enough. I see ritual conjuring as an edge to magical groups.