Ritual path magic group casting
 

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.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

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.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

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.

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

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.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

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?

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

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.

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.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

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.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

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.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

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.")

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

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.

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.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

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.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

This is absolutely fantastic. It might be the perfect setting-preserving rule to some of the questions raised by RPM. Now I'm wondering how I'd quantify it a little bit... Anyone who would be directly affected by a ritual using over 50 energy can roll against Per (add Magery, subtract 5 for no Magery) +1 per 10 energy over 50 used in the ritual, and use the margin of success times the Greater effects multiplier to somehow figure out how soon the subject detects the ritual? I might also exempt spells cast off Energy Reserve... and I'm not sure how it would interact with conditional spells.... but it's really cool.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

Honestly I kept the quantification on the high end, basically anything with a casting cost of less then 200 only provided about as much notice as any other attack would, and I kept the big notifiers for spells that started exceeding that threshold.

Example from play:
A group of insane cultists plan on opening a portal to allow the manna-eater Abandon to traverse from his prison back into this realm. When he was sealed away the wizards who put the spell together with enough time to last until the heat-death of the universe also put in about a huge extra energy reserve, just to make sure it was very secure (overall about a 3000 energy spell).

The cultists starting to hatch a plan that could actually put together 3000+ energy send ripples through time, providing those who are looking 6 weeks advance notice that someone is putting together a spell to release Abandon. No one nessasscarily knows if the spell will work, and only the cultists know where it will be cast. In order to make the lives of those who would undo there work more difficult they cast a lot of scrywalls over there work, so no one can just home in on the details with magic- this scrywall (which no one would have questioned overly when it went up and sent ripples) gave about a days notice and has about 600 energy behind it.

The cultists are further launching a series of 250-300ish energy scrys to look for anyone trying to foul there plan- these scrys provide scant moments of notice of there coming, but tell anyone attmepting to work a way around this that the cultists are keeping an active search going on.

The powers of good, or at least 'want this world to still have functional magic' put together a series of small scouting parties (which they can scrywall themeselves for 250-300 energy without sending too much of a ripple) to try to work around the scrywalls, while the cultists play counter-intelligence, killing scouts or otherwise fouling large castings to penetrate there scrywalls (of which the cultists will get about a day's notice). The party is one of those scouts, and being PCs actually succeeds against the opposition sent to stop them.

The party eventually determines that the cultists plan on pouring antimagic laced and partially alive essential acid into a dwarven city from the top and extracting all the manna from that involuntary sacrifice (The essential acid is alive enough to be 'one of the casters' and therefore in contact with everyone who is sacrificing involuntarily), and at some point in time there should be a climactic battle atop the dwarven city, or a daring raid to the place where the acid-entity is being kept.

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

Hmm, 200 energy means Elli herself can break that barrier, which is confusing, how does it work in game? I mean, Elli decides she is going to cast the spell, and the reality rearranges to counter that, but if the reality is not conducive to casting a spell would she want to cast it to begin with?

Re: Ritual path magic group casting
 

The 'ripple' effect is not wrong or breaking anything- its not that your magic is somehow disturbing the world. Just that it has some backward awareness when the spell was cast.

Just some further details from my talking with Kal about how this is inteded to work out:

The ripple happens at time of casting, not at time of activation (IE for delayed rituals or charms), and conveys some knowledge about the spell in question. It does not invalidate using a 'doom bullet' charm from a hidden position by giving the target a heads up. Though through the vulgarities of magic the target would have felt 'bad ju-ju' when the spell was cast and loaded into a charm, they just would not know when and where that was actually going to take place (and neither would the caster).

I kind of described this as 'map space-time into a still but weather effected pond', a 200 point spell is like a 6mm bb being dropped into the water, it creates ripples, but they are barely perceptable and not perceptable very far away in either space or time. However the 3000+ point 'end the world' spell is like a multi-tonne boulder being dropped in, everyone on the planet could feel it and they can feel it weeks in advance.

Next- just because they CAN feel it does not mean they DO feel it. The pond is effected by weather (IE casual fluxuations in magic that are wholly natural), and except for the more massive spells the ripples are dwarfed by those natural effects. Someone would have to have been actively 'looking' at the pond (via magic, or some other ability) to see a 200 point ability being put together. Someone still has to look at the 3000+ ability to 'see' it, but they can do so at any time from that 6 week advance notice point to the point at which it gets cast (If it gets cast).

Further- Ammount of informaiton: a 200 point spell is going to convey 'good' and 'bad' and that's about it. At around the 500 point range you might start getting more details 'good for a large group of people', however even the 3000 point monstrosity is going to be a vague 'world ending magic', 'reshape the landscape significantly', 'restore something huge' etc; and even then its only with studdy of the 'ripple'; of course once you know the spell is coming, you can scry for it with magic of your own.

So if you have an epic level caster who casually tosses around 200 energy spells then a lot of shudders in there enemies or warm feelings in there friends are likely the doing of those castings; however if the enemies were getting twitchy for every shudder, or friends were assuming that every warm feeling was the casters doing they'd be all over the place. Those who watch ripples might 'notice' the spells being cast, but quite frankly they will be one 6mm BB dropping into the pond amongs dozens to thousands depending on the size of the world. Once your castings are getting more to the 600 range then people might get interested enough to scry further- but if your a casual 600 range caster then you could also easily set up a scrywall that prevents casual inquiry into your spellcasting, or you could let those interested see your everyday masterworks.

Keep in mind this is my first attempt to try to make a concrete analysis of how this would work, I might chew on this some more and come back.

My thoughts are: I don't want to nerf attack magic by making powerful spells tell the target what's going on, but I do want to limit the ammount of world destroying magic that a crazed cult (or evil wizard through involuntary sacrifice) can accomplish.