Ritual path magic group casting

[Servanous]

I've just gotten Ritual path magic and read it. My specific questions are

1: Willing sacrifices. If I understand this section correctly a castor can tap as many willing sacrifices as he has access to in the ritual but only one per turn. Am I getting this correctly or is there some limit?

2: If a castor can tap any number of willing sacrifices would there be a skill penalty after a certain number since long rituals are more difficult?

If you can tap any number of willing sacrifices then that makes an ally group (cultists) much more valuable than a place of power and dwarfs high skill levels in a setting that uses RPM.

[McAllister]

1. Yes.

2. No, that's just for tapping into ambient magic.

Keep in mind that each +1 to skill (whether from high skill or a place of power) adds +1 energy gathered from all rolls as well as another 3 rolls before the penalty gets low enough that you don't want to roll any more, so skill gets better the more of it you have.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Servanous

1: Willing sacrifices. If I understand this section correctly a castor can tap as many willing sacrifices as he has access to in the ritual but only one per turn. Am I getting this correctly or is there some limit?

Correct. There is no limit, just those who are willing to spare energy for you and you can only do this once per person who must ante up all the energy they want to give in that instance (you can't go back and add more later). The caster must make a Concentrate maneuver and spend a minute (or a second if he has Ritual Adept) to do this.

Originally Posted by Servanous

2: If a castor can tap any number of willing sacrifices would there be a skill penalty after a certain number since long rituals are more difficult?

No. But he can only tap one source once per spell.

Originally Posted by Servanous

If you can tap any number of willing sacrifices then that makes an ally group (cultists) much more valuable than a place of power and dwarfs high skill levels in a setting that uses RPM.

Sure. Why not. But you'd probably need the Minion enhancement for them to do it regularly. Sacrificing energy like that is painful. It'd be like asking a ally to constantly cut his wrists for you - they're not going to do that willingly and often without a good reason or the Minion enhancement.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Sure. Why not. But you'd probably need the Minion enhancement for them to do it regularly. Sacrificing energy like that is painful. It'd be like asking a ally to constantly cut his wrists for you - they're not going to do that willingly and often without a good reason or the Minion enhancement.

I can certainly see HP sacrifices being extremely painful (and slow to recover from) but what about FP sacrifices? Is there a "safe limit" that a person could donate without causing excessive discomfort? For example, giving some FP but remaining above the 3 FP level to avoid the associated penalties.

In fact, what exactly does an HP sacrifice look like? Does the mage just "lay on hands" and drain "life essence" from the subject, or do they have to perform a physical action to injure themselves?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

I can certainly see HP sacrifices being extremely painful (and slow to recover from) but what about FP sacrifices? Is there a "safe limit" that a person could donate without causing excessive discomfort? For example, giving some FP but remaining above the 3 FP level to avoid the associated penalties.

I didn't say "extremely painful," I said painful (which is in the text under Voluntary Sacrifice in GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic, p. 21). By strict reading of the text, any sacrifice is uncomfortable. What's more it causes shock penalties (even for FP loss). You're drawing on your life energy or bodily vitality in a minute (or a second). 3 FP is like a extremely brisk work out for a hour or so, but done in 60 or less seconds. That's about a 1/3 of the max FP of a normal subject gone so quick it's leaving the body reeling.

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

In fact, what exactly does an HP sacrifice look like? Does the mage just "lay on hands" and drain "life essence" from the subject, or do they have to perform a physical action to injure themselves?

That'd be up to the GM, but the caster usually has to touch a source to tap it (that's how I understand it anyways). A leveled perk might let you tap a source from 1 yard away per level.

[Servanous]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I was especially thinking about a society where all needs are met magically. You could in theory have a small percentage of people casting say food spells with grimoires and a bunch of willing sacrifices and supply enough food for the whole town in a single casting. You wouldn't need mages for such a society to work although mages and adepts would be more efficient. I won't ramble, thanks again.

[Varyon]

Because of the potential for absolutely massive spells from, say, a military company mage (200 willing participants means some serious damage), as well as because I like the idea of multiple unwilling sacrifices for the bad guys, I prefer a system of diminishing returns. For this, you basically allow the mage to fully benefit from one "unit," then get half as much energy from the next few until they reach the input of the first, then half again that, then half again that, and so forth. What constitutes a "unit" is up the GM - for willing sacrifices, 5 people are a unit, while for unwilling, each person/animal is a unit. So, if the mage convinces all 200 participants to part with 9 FP, the first 5 produce 15 energy, the next 10 produce 15 energy, the next 20 produce 15, the next 40 produce 15, the next 80 produce 15, and the last 45 produce around 4. 79 energy is nothing to scoff at, but it's not the potentially-war-ending 600 energy the normal system would have produced.

And, yes, I do think the fact that a mage in a military company can produce such magic is problematic. Namely, it seems to me that this would mean that outside of No Mana Zones militaries don't really consist of soldiers - they consist of a few mages and a lot of "human batteries" to power their spells. Of course, in a setting where magic isn't generally known to exist, RPM RAW probably works just fine - a mage will be hard pressed to find enough willing participants to make it an issue.

[PK]

I don't see any problem with assembling a circle or coven to help you cast spells, but I do agree that army- and town-sized pools of contributors can be a bit game-breaking. On the one hand, that might just add an interesting dimension to strategic spellcasting; if "the army with more soldiers to support the witches" is the army that wins, is that a bad thing?

But if this is a problem in your games, I'd throw my official support behind this optional rule: A caster cannot tap more energy sources than his effective casting skill.

This rule doesn't change anything on the party level, or really on spellcasting in general, which is intentional. It only kicks in to prevent casters from convincing their entire village to donate some spare FP for a megaspell. And because I don't think that's necessarily a problem in every game, I want to state again that I only officially endorse this rule as optional, not as errata.

("Effective casting skill" means that Ritual Mastery, grimoires, etc., will improve this, but gathering bonuses such as Places of Power will not. Remember that your mana reserve and any energy contributed by sacrificing FP+HP are two different "sources.")

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by PK

On the one hand, that might just add an interesting dimension to strategic spellcasting; if "the army with more soldiers to support the witches" is the army that wins, is that a bad thing?

Oh, I could certainly see a setting where this is the case - those with even a modicum of magical talent are assigned to a large pool of "soldiers" from whom they draw to sling - or repel - massive spells. It's just not a setting I think I would enjoy much.

Originally Posted by PK

But if this is a problem in your games, I'd throw my official support behind this optional rule: A caster cannot tap more energy sources than his effective casting skill.

While I like my diminishing returns idea, this is something that's going to be much easier to work with while accomplishing the same end goal. I like it.

[starslayer]

In my own settings I have established that magic 'ripples' forward and backward in time. For small spells its basically unnoticeable, the target of a spell might 'feel' malevolence targeted at them just before it hits.


However with a massive spell the sensation of the magic reaches far enough backward in time that there is an opportunity to stop that work before all of the players are lined up. Generally I use this as a plot device and justification for why the big bad is in the middle of a massive fortress in the middle of nowhere surrounded by traps, but it had also been used to prevent plot circumvention on the post of the PCs by just getting the Lovell village they are trying to save to sacrifice energy until any problem can be solved.

Specifically for your own stated desires this would mean that the massive spell that creates food for a town will go off with minimal problem but the massive spell that wipes out the neighboring village will encounter resistance from the neighboring village.