This was mostly done on the fly, because I thought I was having an "aha!" moment that would keep the rest of the crew out of danger. Mechanically speaking, how SHOULD this have been done? I'll break down the steps I took, and you can correct me on the bullet points, please?

- Meet target, get material link contact that can be used for ritual sorcery
- Astrally project to meet the ritual requirements of a ritual member seeing the target astrally or have LOS to target
- Conduct the ritual with focus (r3) and spirit (r3) to max successes = force
- Resist drain
- Stop astrally projecting
- Sustain the spell for ~6-7 hours


Recap, for those interested in full details.

We had a location we were supposed to get paydata from. The front company was a jewelry store. As part of recon, I went into the shop, posed as a potential buyer, and made good friends with the owner who gave me his personal contact number and paper business card.

I have the material link, and I have knowledge of who he is. Now, to do the ritual, I have to have LOS to him, a ritual member with LOS to him, or observe him astrally. (This is where I think my first mistake may have been.) I astrally project, and I do the ritual spell in astral space (since I need to see him from astral space, as I'm the only ritual team member for this ritual) with the skill test listed, using focus and a spirit to add some dice to that. Success. I resist drain. Success, no drain.

It was a ritual control thoughts. I puppeted him (he did not notice being the target of a ritual on his contested roll (20-Force, if I remember right) to data dump everything onto a chip that would be put in a jewelry box with the ring I'm coming back to purchase the next morning.

I stay awake all night and all morning sustaining the spell (stims and coffee) suffering the -2 to all pool penalties until I stop sustaining.

The transaction was simple: I walk in, buy the ring with the chip, and walk out. The spell is dropped 90 minutes later, until I'm well clear of the shop.

No B&E, no gunfire, almost no risk. (My face is on security cameras for the purchase, so that's an inherent danger down the road, of course.) But it does reinforce what someone said in one of my other topics about the need to probably restrict the mental manipulation spells, even from the core SR4A book.q

If you have a Material Link, you do not need a Spotter at all...
Casting actually takes HOURS. It is not a Complex Action that must be taken and then sustained. This will likely kill you as you cannot likely spend the required amount of time in the Astral that the Ritual Requires. Also, you must use a Ritual Circle, and it must be of equal Force to the Spell or Higher.
Target gets a chance to notice the spellcasting as the Ritual Builds. He has to hit a threshold to notice before you hit your time rquired to cast. He likely notices once ritual has completed, depending upon the spell.

I set aside about 4 hours that night to do the ritual (1 hour per 1 point of Force), and then sustained it at the end of the ritual. I had the funds and space to do a circle - unless it has to be in a lodge, which I didn't have access to.

Thank you for clearing up the spotter rule. I misread that and thought I needed a link AND a spotter. That I could have done it without projecting astrally, in this instance, will be useful information.

At what points during the ritual does a target make the rolls? I missed that when I was scrambling to learn this on the fly at our last session, and (as you saw) thought it was one roll.

Rituals take 12 Hours - Magic Rating, IIRC.
Target gets an Extended Roll (20-Force IIRC) to spot the Spell as it builds around him, and he gets to roll every hour. He also still gets to resist the spell when it is cast, and gains additional dice if he is behind a Ward and/or has counterspelling on his person.

How a jeweler stays in business without wards and a bound spirit is beyond me... He sure as hell can afford it atleast

Yeah, there is that too...

As Tymeaus Jalynsfein pointed out, a ritual requires a number of hours equal to [12 - team leader's Magic], to a minimum of one hour; and the target gets an Assensing + Intuition ([20 - spell's Force], 1 hour) extended test to notice the spell.

Additionally, a business card IS NOT a material link. In the case of a living being, only a tissue sample counts as a material link. If you know the metamagic Sympathetic Linking, it may qualify as a "Recently Handled Object," imposing a -6 modifier to your Ritual Spellcasting Test (Street Magic, p. 29).

OOOps... Missed that the Material Link was a Business Card. Bad Me.

You get one roll to resist control thoughts per [Force] combat turns (in your example every 4 combat turns, ~12 seconds), that means your target would have had 300 rolls per hour to resist your spell ...

Once the ritual succeeded anyways. There is no resistance roll until the Ritual Succeeds.
Influence would have been the obvious Better choice.

Really, though, your first mistake was using ritual magic without a team. The major advantage of ritual spellcasting is that it lets multiple magicians use the teamwork rules for magic, which isn't normally possible.

I think DnDer should be congratulated on his innovative use of the Ritual Sorcery skill, its utility is so often overlooked (especially by many DSers).

However, in this example, as has been mentioned:
1) The business card would not act as a material link
2) The spell takes longer than the OP thought, and the target had a chance to notice the spell
3) If the target lived behind a warded area, the plan would fail
4) Once cast, the Control Thoughts spell would have soon been resisted, but Influence would probably have worked

However, with a bit of tweaking the plan could be made to work in future:
- Dine with the target, and surreptitiously get hold of cutlery/glassware with his/her DNA
- Arrange a busy afternoon/evening for the target in an unwarded area

If you can get one-on-one with the target a simple Influence spell without the ritual can work fine (why overcomplicate things?), but there are times when solo ritual sorcery can be useful, so don't give up!

Given how limited the number of skill points are and the huge limitations that ritual sorcery has (unless you have an entire shadowrunning team of guys from the same magical school) nobody I've played with has even bothered to take the skill.

If you actually have a team of all mages who all can use ritual magic as a team it's a whole other deal.

Actually, you can do ritual spells with one person to cast the spell at a target from well out of line of sight (from pretty much anywhere), as long as you have the material link, or a spirit to act as a spotter.

It still takes ages, and has it's limitations, but it's not completely useless for a solo mage.

A few stray cells does not a tissue sample make, otherwise the business card would have worked just fine. Cutlery or glassware would fall under the heading of Recently Handled Objects.

Are there any rules how large a tissue sample must be?

The perfect ritual mage would be a MAG 6[5/1] Mystic Adept with Heightened concentration, Sympathetic Linking and a high Artisan skill.

Nonethat I reember, but as far as I know it's soemhting like a a few dozen cc of blood (blood sample test tube), a handful of hairs or two limbs worth of nail clipping sounds about right. You don't need the proverbial pound of flesh but mroe than what can be gathered by casual contact.

nice concept. Further improvement: MAG 6(4/2), Heightened concentration, Enthralling Performance, Improved Ability (Artisan) 2.
An ally spirit can have the Ritual Spellcasting skill, making you a team of two btw. For the above, he would be some kind of muse, I guess.

Which gives you so very little. A Max of +7 (if you have a Spellcasting Skill of 7). Not really worth the effort. *shrug*

I Love Ritual Spellcasting. Almost always take it for a Spellcaster. You do not need a Ritual Team to make it useful.

But it sounds like you really need the full set of details out of "Street Magic" to use to its full benefit?

It becomes more powerful with the material from Street Magic, to be sure. Or at least more detailed.

The examples given are a bloodstain from a combat scene and a severed finger. My rule of thumb would be, big enough that the target cannot fail to notice it being taken/having been taken.