What do people think about the idea of modifying ritual magic so that you could do it by yourself? At the minute you've got the current system where you can combine with other magicians to spread the load when casting. Magic's also pretty much an all or nothing and instantaneous thing - you try to cast the spell and it either happens or doesn't happen straight away.

My idea was that you could do a kind of ritual magic by yourself where the longer you take you could either lower the target number or drain for the spell. Gives you the chance of possibly casting higher level spells than you normally could but is offset by the fact you've got to use a ritual circle or lodge and ritual sorcery materials over several hours or more.

I love the idea actually.

Time for Zero Drain Ritual Spell (Solitary): 15 minutes for every level of force up to your magic rating, 1 hour for every level above your rating.

Reminds me of epic spellcasting in that other game. As such, I see the potential for abuse.

-Joe

Everything in SR has the possbility to be abused by a "creative" player.

I like the idea.

FlackJack, you already can do ritual magic by yourself. You don't HAVE to be 2+ mages. It's a great way to sustain spells for a long time.

I like lowering the drain idea, but not lowering the target numbers. Lowering target numbers opens up the possibility of casting really potent physical buffing spells and then using quickening or some other device to make it permanent.

I'm thinking something like every hour adding a die up to the circle or lodge rating for either drain or casting?

I'm hoping for something along those lines. Ritualized magic (as opposed to group magic and screw-you-over-from-safety magic, which is what those rules really represent) would be a great addition to the game both as far as storytelling and character creation goes.

Have any of you have read Jim Butcher's Dresden Files? The main character (Harry Dresden, wizard P.I.) does two types of spells.
Invocation is quick and dirty spell casting, fireballs and stuff, very tiring.
The other is like ritual magic. He spends time ahead of whenever he's expecting trouble to prepare spells. One of my favourite (and a typical example) is when he was going to see a vampire lady. He took a clean white hankerchief and charged it with sunlight. Later he flapped it open and burned the vamp. In SR terms he ritually cast a laser spell and bound it to a foci for later use, soaking up the drain during the ritual.

Not saying this is right for SR, just throwing out ideas.

Well that could actually be a good fix for anchoring. I always thought it was kinda dumb that anchoring caused drain right at the moment the spell was "cast"; I mean, what is the focus active for, anyway, if it still has to take the mana out of your hide? It'd be really neat to be able to cast a spell and bind it to a focus for use later, and it would still be balanced because you can't have too many of them active at once anyway (Focus Addiction rules are great for that sort of thing).

Also balanced for the amount of karma paid to bind it and/or you could make the anchoring foci very expensive.

Also great for magic healing potions.

Anyway, on the actual topic of this thread, one thing I don't particularly like about ritual magic right now is how hopelessly easy it is to link to an unwilling target right now. The target also has very little he can do about ritual casting other than cowering in a ward all day, which is kinda dumb.

Severing metamagic? Allows you some breathing room and the ability to stay mobile and to also send a little present back the other way as well.

Now, I could just be suffering delusional nostalgia, but wasn't ritual magic, prior to SR3, something that could be done either as a group or as an individual? I think that SR3 introduced the convention that it had to be more than one individual, and declared that if you wanted to use anything less than a blood or tissue sample, you needed a metamagic solely for such purposes.

i believe wireknight is right

According to MitS pg 36, you can still do Ritual Sorcery solo. But yeah, blood, tissue, or bonded foci for a meterial link barring symbolic linking metamagic.

what i would like to see is ritual magic: alchemy, ala Full Metal Alchemist, but i think that falls under a geas more than anything else

What? drawing a hermetic circle to cast any spell at all (unless you have the 'clap hands to complete circuit' metamagic), being limited to transmutation spells, and having all your spells automatically touch range? Eh, I'd call that a funky aspected Mage rather than ritual magic. Horribly underpowered compared to what a full magician can do.

I'd like an option for lower drain, myself. Casting spells on the fly should be the real draining aspect of spellcasting, but taking your time (and quite a bit of time at that) should allow you to cast a spell with virtually no drain whatsoever. Of course, that doesn't help much in combat scenarios, but it would still be a fine option.

Hm, now there's an odd idea. Maybe you start by having your basic spellcasting be based at the full Force of the spell, rather than half. However, everyone gets a sort of spell-bonding ability that lets you basically prepare spells into fetishes or something that you can cast at half-Drain (max spell-bound fetishes = Int or something?), sorta like the Anchoring metamagic works now only you actually control and cast the spell yourself and the foci would be vastly cheaper. Of course that would significantly change the way casters work nowadays; you'd see a lot fewer high-end spells being thrown around on-the-fly, but with higher power spells still available but not all the time. Casters would have to plan out their spells more often, and wouldn't be able to fire off stunballs like the sam shoots his guns.

Hmm, actually sounds like a good idea when I put it that way.

I've heard the idea for full-force drain resistance bandied about a lot. Personally, I think that would REALLY hurt spellcasters. I've had a spellcasting character with a Will of 3 before (yes, I made him wrong) and even casting low-force spells he ended up all but out of the game three spells in. An oft-recognized reality is that higher target numbers are worse than fewer dice, making the drain equal to the full force of the spell and then adding the drain target modifiers into it would make even the Will 8 munchkin spellslinger a walking migraine just waiting to pass out. As they are they get aimed at first, have to deal with being the group band-aid as well being the only good defense against others of their kind, they're hard enough to work with already, let's not add to the problems, please?

I really like Eyeless Blond's idea for spellcasting drain.

I agree with the picture being wrong, just in the pure amount of damage available to the character. a starting sam has the equivalent of just hypothetically 30 mana-bolts and five mana-balls (thirty three round bursts and five grenades) and more armor from cyber while naked than most mages can carry. "preloading" spells makes a lot of sense even if it is a metamagic, but one that a mage could get first, and not cost karma to load the spells (or make combat monsters pay Karma for shots taken)
Allowing time to spread out drain also makes sense too, perch the mage in ambush getting tuned in and ready... Gives the callsigh "god" a whole new meaning, don't it.

perhaps potion making for shamans and alchemy for mages with similar effects, like conjuring?

The difference being that a starting SR Mage could tear a Level 10 D&D mage to peices without breaking a sweat. A lot of those D&D spells are not nearly as versatile as SR spells, nor anywhere close to as powerful. So your starting D&D mage can throw a magic missile or two, well, hey, that stings. My starting SR mage can kill (not damage, outright kill) whole groups of people in a 12 meter diameter sphere at a time. Hell, if I do it right and have an expendible spell focus for it, I can even do that without more than a minor headache.

Which is kinda my point. Why should such a powerful and experienced magician like an SR mage only know like 4-6 spells at chargen, which is supposed to be a bit higher up than the D&D mage at level 1? The reason at the moment is game balance: most high-Force, powerful spells have a drain code of around (3-4)(M-S), give or take, which means you can reasonably throw around a lot of mojo, essentially with impunity in all but the most stacked-against situations. This in turn forces the opposition into that geek-the-mage mentality that makes playing a mage in combat such an all-or-nothing proposition.

The proposed rule change would have fewer high-Force spells being thrown about on-the-fly, which means you can actually have chargen mages know more spells, even twice as many or more, without it being too unbalancing. Cantrips would still be doable--the illusionist will still be fun at parties --but tossing around a high-Force combat spell without preparation would be a more significant risk than it is now. However, allowing mages at chargen to bind spells into fettishes for lower Drain would still allow the prepared mage to pack away a few good really high-Force spells for when he needs/wants them.

It would also encourage mages to spend at least some cash at chargen for those fettishes, so you won't find as many rat shamans with the -5 build point resources stunt.

I have to say, I wouldn't necessarily mind the introduction of Spell Matrices as long as they were relatively weak.

~J