Toward a Ritual Magic System, Part 3.5: Refinements

Right now I’m working on compiling the Ritual Magic System into a single document. One BIG missing part is actual rituals, which will be the next post I’m also working on.

In the meantime, there are a few smaller rules I’m fiddling with, which I will preview here.

Concentration

ritual attribute

Some rituals require the continuous attention of the Ritual Leader (and possibly their Assistants). Disrupting their attention disrupts the spell.

Unless the Ritual says otherwise, the Ritual Leader cannot do any other task while Concentrating, even defend themself against attack.

Corruption

character attribute

Corruption reflects an evil and chaotic taint on the ritualist’s soul. Corruption is measured on a scale from 0 to 10. Ritualists (usually) start at 0. Characters with Corruption greater than 0 suffer from urges to do more dark and depraved things, thus earning more Corruption. At Corruption 10 the character becomes hopelessly depraved (and perhaps mutated). A Player Character with Corruption 10 becomes an NPC.

Certain Rituals, including and especially Rituals that take a human(oid) life, are considered Corrupting and always add a point of Corruption. As compensation(?), rituals marked as “Corrupting” have one more point of Power per point of Corruption possessed by the ritualist and their assistants.

Lawful and “good” supernatural beings can often sense Corruption, and will shun the ritualist. Rituals marked as “Holy” have one less die of Essence per point of Corruption.

“Detoxing” from Corruption is sometimes possible if the ritualist stops using Ritual Magic and other potentially corrupting magic entirely for months if not years. Depending on the setting, the ritualist may need to avoid magic for life.

Fatigue

character condition

Some rituals drain the performer’s physical energy, either due to their length or some metaphysical effect. Whatever other effects this fatigue takes, it will impair the performance of other rituals until the performer can rest for at least 2d6 hours.

The Ritual Magic System posits four levels of fatigue:

Power

performance attribute

When performing a ritual, the Ritual Leader rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to the amount of Essence available, and adds any adjustments to the total on the dice. This adjusted total is called the Power of the performance, and it determines what effect, if any, the ritual will have. Power Thresholds depend on the Ritual performed.

Traditions

character attribute

Most practiced ritual practitioners learn rituals as part of a tradition.

A Tradition encompasses a method and language for describing rituals. Traditions have some basic rituals that all practitioners of the Tradition have memorized, and can use (or improvise upon) without consulting a written reference.

Optional Rules

Recording Rituals

Under the existing rules, once a character learns a ritual, they can use it forever. Here we consider whether and how the ritual is recorded.

• A character may translate a ritual from its original source to their own spellbook, Book of Shadows, etc. Doing so requires only time, ink, and paper.

• A character may cast a ritual from their own notes without making a Lore Check.

  Many ritual magicians keep small chapbook with one ritual each instead of or in addition to large grimoires full of rituals. A chapbook may be written in a private shorthand or code; others must first break the code using mundane skills.

Memorizing Rituals

Under the rules above, once a character learns a ritual, they know it forever. Here we consider whether the ritual is memorized.

A character may memorize a single ritual with no difficulty. To remember additional rituals, the character must make a Lore Check with a difficulty equal to the number of rituals currently memorized (excluding rituals practiced as part of the Ritualist’s Tradition). Failure to remember the ritual means returning to either the original source (requiring a Lore Check to relearn it) or one’s own notes (which requires no check).

Rituals that are ingrained in a Tradition are already memorized.

Fast Casting

Certain practitioners¹ can “fast cast” a Ritual. To Fast Cast a ritual the following conditions must hold:

• The Ritual must be able to be Fast-Cast.
• The practitioner must be able to Fast Cast.
• The practitioner must have the ritual memorized.
• The practitioner must have both hands free, must be able to speak, and must have any required implements and offerings at hand.
• The practitioner can only use their own Essence and the available Essence of one Artifact or Relic in use as an implement of the ritual.

A Fast-Cast ritual requires only a few seconds to execute (i.e. a combat action), rather than the minutes normally required.

Some Fast-Cast rituals also require the user to concentrate on maintaining the effect. This is also noted in the ritual description.