If you use ritual magic to cast a spell on a distant subject, can you sustain it with a sustaining focus by keeping the focus in contact with the material link? If you have an elementasl sustain it, does that elemental have to stay near the target, or the hermetic circle made to cast the spell?

ritual spells have their own nifty little rules for being sustained, and they're acutally pretty good. Don't recall the details off hand. Never seem to have my MiTS on hand.

I do not think it is possible to use ritual magic to cast a spell into a sustaining focus. I wanted to (to increase the number of successes) but I think ritual magic is an exclusive action and so is casting a spell into a sustaining focus.

Never thought about the elemental sustaining it, because they can only sustain for a number of combat turns equal to their force.

Ritual magic has its own sustaining rules by allocating dice from the ritual pool which will sustain the spell for a number of hours equal to the # of dice allocated times the ritual leader's magic rating. MitS, page 38.

Ah yes, thats right. Dice allocation. Been too long since I thumbed through that book.

Since you seem more familiar with that rule than I (who likes shamanism), is it possible to combine ritual magic and elemental spell sustainment? I know it is possible to have an elemental used during ritual magic, but is this a possible use?

On a surface reading, I can't see why not; I don't see anything indicating that it requires an Exclusive action of any stripe. Unless it's explicitly banned somewhere that I'm not looking, I don't see any major objections.