All-Ritual Magic?, Just a possible idea I’m exploring Options

[JanessaVR]

As I continue to (oh so damn slowly, it seems) assemble our new and improved House Rules file, I've gone over old posts here for some good ideas I've come across that I promised myself I'd revisit one day. One of those ideas was in this thread. Namely, the idea to increase the casting time of all spells to one minute.

At the time, I wasn't that enamored of the idea, but I've had over a year now to reconsider, and I think Koekepan might be onto something here. Even I, an admitted magic supremacist, will admit that a properly-built mage can dominate the game. Outside of decking, anything you can do, they can do better. A lot of problems can be solved by saying "talk to the Manaball." This idea would go a long way towards getting mages to stop "thinking with their wands."

Obviously, this won't go over so well in a Pink Mohawk game, but might fit in very well in a Black Trenchcoat / Mirrorshades campaign. The proposed compensating factor for this was to remove the Karma cost for spells, so that mages could more easily expand their versatility to compensate. Provisionally having already ditched Karma as a reward (see here), I'm thinking that cutting the price and learning time in half would be a good equivalent.

Some possible variations
* Have one minute be the minimum casting time. If you do well enough on the Spellcasting (or Summoning) roll, it's only a minute. If you don't roll so well, it takes even longer (another minute or two).
* Some sort of bonus for voluntarily spending more time than normal on the casting ritual?

Some possible issues
* Having both Spellcasting and Summoning take one minute can work, but if Counterspelling or Banishing take a minute or more, they're nearly useless. Using Counterspelling to unravel an existing spell can take some time, but if countering a spell headed for your face takes a full minute, you're screwed. And good luck getting a spirit to stand still for a minute-long Banishing ritual.

Your thoughts? And Koekepan, you still out there? How did this turn out in practice at your gaming table?