Converting RPM to Sorcery

[Coinage]

I was reading Pyramid 3/97, and the idea of converting Ritual Path Magic rituals into Advantages. I was wondering if there was a way of converting Ritual Path Magic rituals into Sorcery spells? In my idea, it really involves merely just adding a "Cost Fatigue [-5%] (B111)" to the spells. Is that true? Or, am I doing something wrong?

NOTE: I meant Pyramid 3/66

[Refplace]

Not sure what in that issue inspired that thread but most Rituals would require considerably more work to convert.

[Coinage]

Sorry, I meant Pyramid 3/66. The article is "Alternative Ritual Path Magic", by Christopher R Rice. I was referring to specifically the section called "Ritual Powers".

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Coinage

Sorry, I meant Pyramid 3/66. The article is "Alternative Ritual Path Magic", by Christopher R Rice. I was referring to specifically the section called "Ritual Powers".

Ok, thats possible though not sure its worth the effort. Seems like your just adding an extra step there. You already have the framework with Sorcery and you already need to figure out how to build the ritual as a power.
That section is more about how to create alternative ability powers for an RPM mage. I see that most useful as a small set of signature powers.

[Coinage]

Right, I just wanted to see if it could be done. The idea that casting magic "on the fly" is exhausting just seems appealing. Thx.

[dataweaver]

As Refplace mentioned, Sorcery already has a mechanism in it for improvising Rituals. It also operates off of the principle that energy costs for spells are uniform (everything costs 1 FP per use), and spells are balanced against each other by their point costs. By contrast, RPM doesn't assign point costs to its Rituals, and it balances them based on how much energy you need to collect.

These are two very different paradigms, and they don't mesh well. You can't just equate them, because the means of calculating a Ritual's energy cost is very different from the means of calculating an Ability's point cost.

[Coinage]

Right, I see your point. I guess the closest I could be is to use the "Ritual Powers" section in Rice's article, and then just modify it so that any attempt to convert RPM spells into straight up advantages requires a "Costs Fatigue" modifier.

The option I wanted to present was that a RPM mage has the option to quickly cast rituals he knows REALLY well off the top of his head (provided he spent the CP to buy it as an advantage as "Ritual Powers" suggests), but that he exchanges speed for sheer mental exhaustion. Would that work?

[dataweaver]

Note that “Ritual Powers” is out of date, as it came out before Power-ups 8 set the values for Supernaturally Appropriate Accessibility Limitations. Note also that Ritual Powers doesn't assume that you have to gather energy to perform the ritual: the whole point of it is that by investing character points into the ritual, you get to perform it without gathering energy. Instead, it replaces the energy accumulation process with a requirement that you perform some sort of ritual (the aforementioned Accessibility Limitations) and expend some personal energy.

What I think would be more interesting would be to determine what sort of Limitation would reskin the mechanics of an Ability from “concentrate for a second” to “use something resembling the Energy Accumulation rules from Thaumatology's Path/Book Magic chapter”. It should be a sizeable Limitation, perhaps a variant of Preparation Required; and the special rules for Spirit-sourced Powers from GURPS Powers should probably be in effect: they're really more about Path/Book-style magic than spirits, per se.

I'll think about this some more and get back to you.

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Note that “Ritual Powers” is out of date, as it came out before Power-ups 8 set the values for Supernaturally Appropriate Accessibility Limitations. Note also that Ritual Powers doesn't assume that you have to gather energy to perform the ritual: the whole point of it is that by investing character points into the ritual, you get to perform it without gathering energy. Instead, it replaces the energy accumulation process with a requirement that you perform some sort of ritual (the aforementioned Accessibility Limitations) and expend some personal energy.

To quote Power-ups 8:

“Suprnaturally Appropriate

When modifying advantages to represent spells, the following limitations are useful.” (Power-Ups 8, p. 5)

That doesn’t necessarily exclude a “Costs Fatigue” modifier, nor does it demand that a “requires ritual” limitation be in place. It merely presents it as an option. However, I do think that the “Requires gestures [-10%] (Power-Ups 8, p. 5)” is useful.

[dataweaver]

My point was that the “Ritual Powers” section in Pyramid 3/66 applies a -5% Limitation for having to engage in ritual activities including hand motions and chanting. It's out of date because Power-Ups 8 sets the value of each (gestures and chants) at -10%, resulting in a net -20% where the original article only called it at -5%.