Ritual magic and astral barriers, Do they matter? Options

[Tarantula]

Talia, I completely missed that. I've got some thinking to do now.

[FrankTrollman]

[Ol' Scratch]

Exactly.

Which is why I used a spell like Lightning Bolt in my original example. It demonstrates this perfectly. IF the spell were traveling from the ritual group to the victim, THEN it would be affected by any intervening obstacles. Mana barriers included. Thus IF that were true, a spell like Lightning Bolt would have to follow the same rules, meaning it would manifest at the group and physically travel the world to it's target.

Here's the best way to look at ritual spellcasting in my opinion:

When using a material/sympathetic/symbolic link, the ritual group isn't casting the spell at the target. They're casting the spell at the link and the "magic" of the ritual spellcasting causes the target -- wherever they may be in the world -- to also be affected. That voodoo witchdoctor isn't stabbing his target when he jabs the doll; he's jabbing the doll and the magic imbued within it and the ritual itself stabs the target. It's why ritual spellcasting has its own rules. Why it has its own skill. Why it takes hours upon hours upon hours to perform.

Ritual spellcasting isn't the same as sorcery, though there are a few similarities rules wise to keep things simple. The lack of requiring line of sight -- and thus the reprecussions of having line of sight -- are one of the major perks of the ability. The spell doesn't travel anywhere; it manifests either at the spotter and then is "cast" at the target from him, or manifests directly at the target via the ritual link. There is no "inbetween" distance from the group to the target.

[Eleazar]

I think the spell most certainly does not travel from the ritual caster to the target. This would have been mentioned for certain, and then rules would have been put forth to govern how the spell travels. Such a traveling of the spell also contradicts the real world myths this magical skill is based on. The real question we have to answer before we can make the decision on whether or not mana barriers are involved is to discover how this link to the target is being established. How is the ritual caster able to manipulate mana from a remote location?

The ritual caster is somehow able to get a spell to manifest at a location completely separate from his own astral presence. So, how is he able to do this? As I explained earlier, he is manipulating magic remotely. The link is what allows him to know the location of where to manipulate that mana and focus it. How is he manipulating this mana since his astral presence is not there? Maybe these links allow the magician to some how extend out a "persona" that manipulates the mana locally where the target is. He is literally, by proxy, manipulating the mana from a remote location. This is the only way I can think to explain what is happening. And, on second thought, if it happens this way, I would have to agree with Frank and Dr. F that a mana barrier is not included. Especially after Dr. F's last paragraph in the previous post.

The above still does not fully answer how the ritual caster is able to remotely and by proxy cast a spell on a target. For there is one mystery remaining. What is allowing the ritual caster to "link" to the link. He has to somehow be accessing this link to use it and thus cast this spell and have it manifest at the location of the link. Is this some form of a metaplanar shortcut as Valevictus put it. Or, is this some inherant mystery to astral space not working exactly like the meatworld. Thus, it becomes very difficult to rationalize it through our standard way of thinking.

Is there anything possibly from an SR source that could explain this?

[odinson]

[Dashifen]

I've watched you guys debating and something that I keep coming back to is a comment above about water traveling downhill following the path of least resistance. What about making a ruling thusly: unless the target is enclosed within a mana barrier (e.g., a magical lodge) then regardless of how the spell's effect "arrives" at the target, it can avoid stationary, non-enclosing mana barriers because they are resistive. The enclosing mana barrier, however, offers no path of least resistance and, thus, dice are added to the ritual test.

[FrankTrollman]

[Talia Invierno]

You know, no one has yet shown why links can't act as topologically equivalent to line of sight. We do know they provide the same effect as LOS: a link to a target. What's under debate is whether the effect is of the same quality (affectable by an astral barrier).

As to quantum: well, then links would be spontaneously flickering in and out of existence, which is how electrons can be spotted but never frozen on both sides of a non-permeable barrier -- but we know they don't. Once a link is established, it is absolutely reliable, barring only a single metamagic which requires the target to take action. Quantum links, by definition, aren't.

[Ol' Scratch]

It's closest to the totally-overlooked-and-dismissed-earlier-in-this-thread ability of a spirit to manifest from the metaplanes to anywhere they're summoned without having to worry about wards or other barriers.

Most notably a Free Spirit's ability to instantly be "teleported" to the person who speaks their True Name (not sure if SR4 has such a rule, to be honest). Invoke their name and *POOF!* they're right there before the speaker regardless of where they were prior; even on the Physical Plane.

This is, again, one of the reasons ritual spellcasting takes so damn long. The team is essentially tapping into the same type of phenomenon and applying sorcery to it. It's a difficult, arduous process. They either manifest the effect within their spotter, casting it through them, or effectively manifest themselves directly at the target and cast at point blank range. There is no group-to-target string when using ritual spellcasting other than the astral signatures left behind, which is a result of the magic manifesting rather than magic flowing from the team to the target and everywhere in between.

[Dashifen]

I agree, Frank, but it seems like Talia originally want to explore ways that allowed mana barriers to impact ritual spellcasting. I personally prefer the quantum entanglement sort of approach that you and the good Doctor are advocating, but this interpretation can circumvent mana barriers as was noted in the post prior to this one..

[Talia Invierno]

[Ravor]

Of course, she's trying to save a certain dragon of hers. :cyber:

[Talia Invierno]

Or, possibly, your ritual team. The dragon already survives, even without this. (I did mention in that thread that you guys had overlooked a couple of things.)

[Ravor]

Not my team, I'm still all for simply blowing the entire lair to bits using magically buried explosives, but I must have missed the post where it was explained how the dragon would survive once it was explained how Astral Window actually works.

[FrankTrollman]

[Tarantula]

After some thinking, I've come up with some reasoning to why the mana barriers aren't going to effect the ritual spell. This goes into some of the explanations of how magic works, but here goes... Magic targets entities. You can't powerbolt someones foot, you can only affect them as a whole. In ritual magic, either you have a spotter, who is the one who "casts" the spell at the target. Or you have some sort of link. Material, sympathetic, or symbolic. With a material link, its a part of the target that is still alive (its why material samples have a certain timeperiod of usefullness, afterwhich they don't work for ritual magic). That time period is only while the sample is still alive. Why does that work? Because, much like how you can't only powerbolt someones foot, if you ritually powerbolt their just recently connected foot, it affects not only that foot, but the rest of them as well, even if they might not still be connected. Sympathetic rituals take that one step further, allowing you to affect them through a magical link they've created with an object. This works the same as the material sample, that your spell hits the object, and then also hits the target, because of their magical link. Symbolic magic goes one step again, and allows you to create a symbol of the target, and use that to forge a magical link to the target through their similarites. You hit the symbol with your spell, and through the magical link, the target is affected the same way.

Thusly, the path of a "spell" in a material ritual is from the leader of the ritual, to the material link. The target is then affected by the spell, and gets a chance to try to resist/counterspell it. In a sympathetic ritual (whether sympathetic or symbolic), the path is from the ritual leader, to the object/symbol. The spell hits that, and through magics way of affecting only whole objects (which, since the target is "linked" to the object/symbol in the same way it is to a material link) it also affects the target. Thusly, no matter how many barriers are in the way, there is no penalty to using ritual magic to hit a target. (Now, the only issue is in the case of indirect combat spells, and how they actually get to the target.)