Something I first posted in
Irar, the Jewel in the British Crown, which is the thread for the idea that I mentioned above (the specific form that Path/Book Psi takes in the setting starts in
this post, if you'd like to go there directly):
The way I recommend handling Effect Shaping ritual psi on a character sheet is that you decide how your character normally uses it (and thus what level of the advantage makes sense), use that to work out the normal default, and then if you need to use the ability at a higher or lower level, the technique gets a penalty or a bonus.
For example: John has Autohypnosis 15 (he learned it before awakening psi powers, for the mundane benefits) and Power of Telepathy 13. He normally expects to implant simple suggestions in people within a short distance, so level 3 works fine. That's 30 points, so the default is Power of Telepathy-3. He buys it up to his skill level.
John intends to blackmail Congressman Barnes, and since Barnes is always ready to shake hands with a potential donor, John sets the Suggestion ('Seduce <this woman>,' in this case, with <this woman> being an image of John's partner Mary, who is in on the scheme, in the dress that she's going to wear) as a conditional ritual to go off when he touches the Congressman; since he can get skin-to-skin contact with the mark, he prepares the ritual as if it were Suggestion level 1, which has a penalty of -1 - this gives him a +2 bonus to his effective skill with the ritual.
Later, John needs to give a more complex suggestion to a target that he isn't going to be able to get as close to, but he can at least be in the same room. Complex suggestions require Suggestion 5, which defaults to Power of Telepathy-5. So, John prepares the ritual with a penalty of -2 to skill (set to go off when he bites a piece of peppermint candy), and hopes that he can get close enough not to add any more penalties, because an effective skill of 11 worries him. If he were a more skilled ritual psi, he would look for other bonuses, but that won't occur to him until after the ritual goes off.
Thoughts?