Limiting Ritual Adept [RPM]

[AlexanderHowl]

Within the RPM system, Ritual Adept is an important advantage because it allows you to ignore the elements of ritual connection, ritual space, and ritual time. It is, however, 40 CP, so it is an expensive advantage, making it difficult for many beginning characters to afford outside of high-pitched settings like Monster Hunter. Since many settings have Ritual Adept being an inborn advantage, it behooves beginning characters to purchase it in order to be effective mages. Limiting Ritual Adept allows beginning characters to purchase a cheaper form of Ritual Adept that they can improve over time while still keeping Ritual Adept an inborn advantage.

In my mind, the majority of the limitations for Ritual Adept will be forms of Accessibility, Backlash, Costs FP/HP, and Focus. In the case of Accessibility, it would limit when Ritual Adept functions, where it functions, and whom it functions against. In the case of Backlash, it would inflict an affliction on the caster for every time they use it to for working rituals. In the case of Costs FP/HP, it would require a sacrifice to activate before a working. In the case of Focus, it would only work for a specific Path (-40%) or a specific Ritual (-80%).

For example, Janice Wight is a kitchen witch who is descended from a long line of kitchen witches. Like every woman of her maternal line, she was born with Magery 0 [5] and Ritual Adept (Accessibility, Kitchen/Hearth Only, -20%; Backlash, Euphoria, Resisted by HT, -15%; Costs FP, 1 FP/minute, -5%; Focus, Path of Body Only, -40%) [8]. If she is working a ritual from the Path of Body within a kichen, she may benefit from Ritual Adept, though she must pay 1 FP/minute and must resist euphoria every minute.

So, do you allow limitations on Ritual Adept? If so, how has it worked for you? Is it bothersome or is it fun?

[ericthered]

Its not quite a limitation, but I'm found of only buying ritual adept for space and time, rather than connection. Connection doesn't come up too often, and when it does it makes the game more interesting rather than just being a headache.

Do you have pyramid 66? page 17 has "The Limits of Magic", which give the limitation for a single path as -30%, not -40%. There are some other goodies in there too along these lines.

[AlexanderHowl]

One Path Only (-40%) for Ritual Adept is borrowed from One Path Only (-40%) for Path/Book Adept (Thaumotology, p. 125), so it probably more representative than the Pyramid article. After all, the book was vetted and physical published.

[Anders]

The Pyramid article was also vetted, and it was written by the guy who designed the system. I'd go with that.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

One Path Only (-40%) for Ritual Adept is borrowed from One Path Only (-40%) for Path/Book Adept (Thaumotology, p. 125), so it probably more representative than the Pyramid article. After all, the book was vetted and physical published.

On the other hand, the article is from PK, who wrote RPM.

The whole article is about limitation and specialist in RPM, well worth it !

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Anders

The Pyramid article was also vetted, and it was written by the guy who designed the system. I'd go with that.

Yup. When I was looking it over for PK we both agreed that RPM was broad enough that a single Path was worth -30%, not -40%.

[dataweaver]

Let me second ericthered's suggestion to drop the Connection exemption. It's not just because these penalties are interesting, but also because removing them is dangerous: with Ritual Adept (Connection), you can perform a ritual on someone who isn't present and whose location you don't know, without needing something intimately tied to the target or a piece of the target. You can just say “I want to turn the President of the United States into a toad” and, without penalty, perform a ritual that would do exactly that (in under a minute, if you have two levels of Ritual Adept: Time). No. Just, no.

On the Time exemption, I'd be okay with attaching Costs FP to it: if you want to perform a casting in seconds rather than minutes, spend a FP for every energy gathering roll you make.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Let me second ericthered's suggestion to drop the Connection exemption. It's not just because these penalties are interesting, but also because removing them is dangerous: with Ritual Adept (Connection), you can perform a ritual on someone who isn't present and whose location you don't know, without needing something intimately tied to the target or a piece of the target. You can just say “I want to turn the President of the United States into a toad” and, without penalty, perform a ritual that would do exactly that (in under a minute, if you have two levels of Ritual Adept: Time). No. Just, no.

Just so.

It does violence to setting design, especially if you want anything that even vaguely resembles historical or modern Earth (but where some superstitions are true), and it does away with many interesting adventure hooks and scenarios.

With Ritual Adept (Connection) allowed, it seems that cultists and rogue witches have no reason for ever leaving their secure Places of Power or even encountering the PCs. All their nefarious schemes would succeed or fail based on opposed ritual rolls without them having the opportunity to speak with their targets, needing to obtain anything of theirs or learn anything about them. Having a sorcerous Enemy is a matter of making regular Contests of skill and/or Will in order to avoid losing or to defeat them, no personal interaction with them is necessary or even likely.

Essentially, witch vs. witch rivalries become games of Battleship, except with less interesting dialogue.

[AlexanderHowl]

A photograph is enough for a connection, so forcing connection will not prevent attacks against high profile targets.