Hello everyone, it's 'let's be a scholar' time again. Todays topic:

Ritual Spellcasting: How can I make it useful or less of a hassle?

Now, I think Ritual Spellcasting is dandy, the only problem (which most note outright) is it's kinda awkward to use since it's group friendly but, alas, it rarely gets used group-wise by the shadowrunners in a team.

In this topic, I'd like to read some house rulings, tweaks, or ways of making it useful despite the limitations, or a nice defense on it as is without tweaking (which can come in the form of making it useful despite limitations, etc, etc).

Now, you all got your books at the start of the semester: your work is due at the end of the day!

board translation: take your time, and thanks for posting.

really, IMO, riutal spell casting got gimped. There's really no reason besides game mechanics that it should be limited by the skill in ritual spell casting that the participants have. Everything in canon suggests otherwise. It's also bad enough with some of the other changes to how things work in the new rules (like mneumonic enhacers) without a group of mages saying "ok, I now two years ago, all fourteen of us participated in an awesome ritual, but now we can only handle five. Why? ... uhhh... here, read this book, it'll explain everything" *hands over copy of SR4*

The only thing I can think of within the rules, make a new foci, like a ritual foci that allows more participants. But as it is, a group of 7 spellcasters still have a ton of dice to throw. If you're using the skill caps, then spell defense won't be any higher than that, annd 7 should be enough to take out any one target, not behind some serious wards at least. it still makes no sense to me though.

Ritual Spellcasting is the thing the gamemaster uses to screw players if they get tracked back to their hideout, or to have NPCs use off camera to heal big wounds in a short timeframe. There's no reason for PCs to even have it.

Maybe Street Magic is going to come in and "fix" it until the PCs give a rat's ass, but I'm not holding my breath. As is, even if they bring back Material Links and Ritual Tracking, there'd still be no reason to bother. The fact is that Conjuring spirits and sending them on Remote Services is better than anythign Ritual Spellcasting could possibly do. It takes less time, works better, is safer to employ, and even has a longer range. If for some reason you had a group of magicians who could all use Ritual Spellcasting, you wouldn't bother.

The restrictions on Ritual Magic are draconian and unnecessary. The fact that all participants have to be of the same tradition (which will almost never happen inside a Shadowrunner team), and the fact that the maximum number of participants is equal to the lowest skill of the participating magicians would both individually invalidate characters bothering with the skill. Both limitations together is just absurd.

But it doesn't matter. Even if you got rid of both of the punitive restrictions and allowed characters to actually use Ritual Spellcasting - it still wouldn't matter because Summoning still does that better. The Search power is already better than anything that is likely to be written for ritual tracking. Remote Services are already better than distance casting could ever hope to be. It's just not something that PCs are ever going to be enticed to care about.

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Maybe Ritual Spellcasting will end up being the skill that powers the ritualistic metamagics like Divination or Geomancy. Then someone would care...

-Frank

ewww, those are some good, bad points.....

well, that just means I'll have to devise something, or find something, until street magic comes out.

So far, the rules need lightening, or else made more appealing despite the issues. Then I got to somehow outsmart spirits. >.<

*gets out a notepad and starts contracting the devil* I wonder if he takes pets....

*puts away the blood and the cat and shows the notepad around* Okay, here are some thoughts thus far I've been figuring on....

1)ritual spellcasting skill no longer limits the participants, but limits the number of successes they contribute to the focus caster. (for the moment, I think that only the focus mage may use edge during any ritual checks involved. But that's just theory for now)
2) Traditions don't have to be the same, but they must at least use the same mental attribute (charisma, intelligence, Intuition, etc). This is just a thought for some control. I don't want to make ritual too easy.
3) The Magical Lodge still limits as normal(with exception of group limit), and must belong to the focus mage. Naturally, everyone must fit in the lodge (not sure what to do with this yet. leaving it in for sake of it's presence).
4)although the spotter should probably be someone else, the focus mage may use a spirit bound to him/her to play spotter. (last I checked, I don't think the focus mage could do that). Normal rules for the spotter otherwise apply. This is to allow someone to solo the ritual process.
5) a Spirit used to play spotter is considered to be using a remote service, and uses up any remaining services as consequence once the ritual is complete. (that means the spirit is a one timer)

Now to figure out how to make this more appealing than sending a spiritual delivery boy...

Well, spirits have to be pretty high force to blow up volcanos on a remote service so there are obvious uses for ritual spellcasting.

1 and 2 are great ideas, although I wouldn't use a drain attribute limit, either.

3 is a problem. The fact that a lodge is necessary severly limits ritual spellcasting on the fly, so to speak. My idea is to bring back the hermetic cricle. This time, in the form of a tradition agnostic ritual circle.

Creating a ritual circle requires an extended magic+ritual spellcasting test with an interval of 10 minutes and a threshold of 1/2 force rounded up (alternatly, a threshold of force and an interval of 5 minutes).
A ritual circle can be made out of any material, mutable or immutable. Chalk is the most common material used, followed by spraypaint. Some magicians use their own blood while others arrange stones in a correct pattern. It is even possible to create a ritual circle by arranging the ritual participants in the proper formation.

Ritual circles are made for a particular spell and cannot be use for any other. A circle can be made to burn out after a single use or it can be made to be permenant untill its physical components are broken.

You could limit the size of the group by lowest magic instead of lowest skill. It's an easy fix, and it allows for bigger groups if everyone is an initiate. It's not too likely to find 8 mages, all with 8+ Magic, but at least the possible is there.

I like the limit by magic thing.

Hmm... Better yet, lets fix the magic lodge thing at the same time.

"The number of people who can participate in the ritual is limited by the rating of the lodge, or the lowest ritual spellcasting skill rating of the participants, whichever is GREATER"

That way, you can either have a lodge and as many helpers as it's rating, or NOT have one and instead be limited by the skill of the people involved.

Instead of making it impossible for inter-tradition ritual, and instead of making it just as easy, why not slap a penalty on it? in SR3 there was an "Unfamiliar tradition" penalty for certain things, so we could pull that sucker up and say that a helper of an unfamiliar tradition suffers a -2 die penalty to their ritual sorcery roll to help out.

What's missing from the rules, I think, to make ritual spellcasting more appealing, is a reduced Drain code. I don't have My SR3 books, but didn't it use to be that the focus caster rolled to resist drain, but then the drain was split equally among the participants? Or maybe it was that the drain was split equally, then each person resisted it on their own. Hmm. No, It wasn't as simple as that, but really, I think ritual spellcasting should be used to reduce drain some.

The point where ritual spellcasting (as written) comes into it's own is with high level initiates casting high force spells. Magic increases both the potential force of a spell, and the number of dice you throw, but not at quite an equal rate. Each extra point of force allows for one more success, but each extra die only adds .33 of a success on average. So when casting a force 9 spell, with a magic of 9 and a sorcery of 6, you will on average only get 5 successes and "Waste" 4 of your force in the spell. You will rarely, if ever, get to cast that spell at force 9 to full effect. (Don't mention edge. Edge removes the limit on spellcasting successes when used, so you should always cast at force 1 if you are going to use edge.)
However, a ritual team of 6 grade 3 initiates with a magic of 9, and a ritual sorcery of 6, all contributing, results in a force 9 spell with 40 dice behind it (13 average successes), more than enough to get the full effect of the spell even with bad rolls.

So that's why to use ritual sorcery.

yeah, something to contribute to that drain resistance test would be nice....maybe, rather than simply having everyone contribute to the casting, some can contribute to the drain?

You perform as you would, or however, but those that are dealing with drain instead make the drain resistance test. whatever they roll they suffer (won't resist) however, they are exempt from remaining drain. THAT drain is then resisted by the others as normal? THey essentially take some of the drain ahead of time through themselves for the others. That would encourage larger groups, but otherwise not put out smaller ones either. Those lowering the drain could certainly limit how much they willingly take for the others.
That, or having so many mages lowers the drain code a small amount? Perhaps base it off the force rating and other things.

Or something like that...