Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd
When your entire magical school is about "loss", you need to get used to all of its effects being rather temporary.
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Quite a good point.
On the other hand, for the specific situation where twenty five cultists are in the US and have had months to prepare and the support of even more powerful ritual magicians (in potent Places of Power) for all that time, Charms and 'manastones' that only last the night are less important than objects of magical power that could have been made long before, transported to the US legally or illegally, and then used to augment the (rather feeble, because of how Very Low Mana most of the world is) personal casting abilities of the cultists.
Basically, having either a Charm or a power source (or a few dozen) that you can tap is an absolute prerequisite to using magic effectively on a combat time scale in the setting. Humans simply don't have Ritual Mastery (not without giving up most of what makes them human, at least) and casting spells outside a carefully selected Sanctum with higher Mana than typical places is extremely hard.
So, ritual magicians who pose a threat to PCs do so using rare, exotic and expensive objects and ornaments that can be made into Charms, power sources, traditional trappings and focus items that make spellcasting during adventures more practical.