[RPM] Critique My Conversion of Ritual Path Magic to Fate Core

[Raekai]

Hey, all!

I haven't been around much since I've been experimenting with Fate Core. Don't worry. I haven't left you guys, but I have been enjoying trying out another system. This is for those of you who have both an understanding of Fate Core and GURPS's own Ritual Path Magic system. I did my best to convert the spirit of RPM into a system of magic for Fate Core since it was the one big thing that I was reeeaaaaally missing from this new system.

Fate Core RPM will use the Lore skill, and the standard Lore skill will be replaced by a better-named Knowledge skill. Lore is rolled against a Fair (+2) opposition, which is modified by +2 for each of the following: if there is no consecrated space, if the subject of the ritual is not immediately present, if the first roll takes a few seconds instead of a few minutes, and if the subsequent rolls take a few seconds instead of a few minutes. On the other end of that, the difficulty of the ritual being cast is also added to the opposition. A ritual's opposition can be anything from Mediocre (+0) for a spell like Light to Divine (+10) for a spell like Resurrection. The final opposition can never exceed Divine (+10) total. The final total of the opposition is also equal to the number of rolls that must succeed in order to overcome the ritual. However, longer rituals are dangerous, and each successive roll after the first garners a -1 to the Lore skill in question. If a roll is failed, the caster must pay the difference between the roll and the opposition as stress.

Furthermore, there are a few other ways to reduce the final opposition. A caster can certainly always chip in a fate point. There may be certain material components for rituals. A caster's Vial of Dragon's Blood might confer a one-time bonus to creating a potion of the Fire Resistance ritual while A Human Sacrifice might be more relevant to performing the Resurrection ritual. There are also stunts akin to those in the Freeport Companion which would allow a caster to know certain rituals well enough to reduce the opposition of those known rituals. Plus, you could easily have stunts reflecting Ritual Adept. Details on that will come later.

Example: Jermaine wants to cast the Heal ritual on his dying buddy Lewis. His skill in Lore is Good (+3) and, while the opposition of the Heal ritual is normally Superb (+5), Jermaine also has Heal as a known ritual, reducing the opposition to Good (+3). Luckily, he still has his consecrated space from earlier. Furthermore, he has a connection with the subject since his buddy Lewis is right there with him. Since he has time to kill, he will go ahead and take a few minutes for each roll. All in all, that whittles down the total Lore opposition to Superb (+5). He'll take six hits of stress to reduce that to Fair (+2), which is a lot more manageable for his Lore skill. Jermaine takes his time and rolls, and he gets a final total of Good (+3), which is a success. He rolls again and gets a final total of Mediocre (+0), which is a failure and also means that he must pay the difference in stress hits. Since Jermaine used up all of his stress earlier, he'll have to take a mild magical consequence. It's not ideal, but it's a small price to pay in order to completely heal his buddy. So he rolls again and gets a total of Fair (+2), which is a tie, meaning that he will succeed the ritual with a cost. Lewis is feeling much better, having all of his stress and consequences removed with the exception of his last mild consequence, which is still recovering as the cost.

Yes, the opposition is steep, but Jermaine managed to heal Lewis of every bit of stress save for a final recovering mild consequence at the cost of 8 stress, most of which will very soon go away except for the lingering mild consequence he took on as well.

Please critique this, ask me to clarify something, or tell if it's rather good. If it's rather good, then I'll run with it. I think one of its biggest problems already is that it's still rather complicated, but I'd like to think that it's still functional. If this is working, I think I'd obviously add some stunts in the way of Ritual Adept that would stand in for the space, connection, and time bonuses (and maybe an extra one for material components).

Thanks!

[GoldenMonkey]

Could you clarify a few things:

For the Using a Known Ritual advantage, how do you know if it's known? Are rituals Stunts or Skills or Aspects or what?

Is the advantage Relevant Material Component created by a Resource roll?

How is Consecrated Space created?

What does the Heal actually heal? How many stress boxes/consequences are removed?

Thanks!

[Raekai]

Originally Posted by GoldenMonkey

Could you clarify a few things:

For the Using a Known Ritual advantage, how do you know if it's known? Are rituals Stunts or Skills or Aspects or what?

Is the advantage Relevant Material Component created by a Resource roll?

How is Consecrated Space created?

What does the Heal actually heal? How many stress boxes/consequences are removed?

Thanks!

Sure! Using a Known Ritual came from the magic system in the Fate Freeport Companion. It would be a stunt which allows access to a certain number of spells based on keywords. Five if loose, three if more restricted. Maybe. Relevant Material Component is probably a Gear thing. You have the Vial of Dragon's Blood which would be perfect for the Fire Resistance spell. Consecrated Space, I would probably leave that up to fluff, most likely. As for the Heal ritual, that's also from the Freeport Companion. It wipes away all stress and consequences, I believe. I'm mobile right now, so it's not too easy for me to check.

Hope that helps!

[panton41]

From what I'm seeing you give the RPM mage an extremely high passive opposition (+10) and allow them to offset it with aspects. The trouble is in order to invoke an aspect (without previously succeeding on a Create Advantage roll) to get a +2 you have to spend a Fate point. So either you're expecting the mage to succeed on a ton of Create an Advantage rolls (statistically unlikely), drain all of their Fate points for a single task (unfair) or meet el Diablo when the spell inevitably fails. You'd need a ton of favorable Aspects you could invoke to even hope to light a match with magic, much less do anything fun.

If this is a game where RPM mages are supposed to shine (or be anything but smears of blood in the middle of a pentagram the rest of the characters are investigating) I'd drop the default +10 difficulty and make it no more difficult than a routine task the other characters are expected to do, except only the RPM mage can do it because they have a character aspect that allows them.

Or, you could modify the Challenge rules and allow the use of a single skill, by a single person and allow them to add rolled successes until they succeed. Of course any negative rolls mean they lose that many accumulated successes and if they go too far negative then, again, they meet el Diablo for afternoon tea.

[dataweaver]

Let me second ciaran_skye's advice, and add a bit of my own: pick up the Fate System Toolkit. That's got a number of magic systems in it, plus advice on how to make more.

I would strongly recommend ditching the hardwired opposition: in general, Fate Core works better when less is hardwired. Likewise with the various advantages you cite: all of them should be suggestions of the types of Aspects that would help with a RPM casting; but none of them should be requirements.

[GoldenMonkey]

Sorry, I did not realize you were using Freeport Companion spells. There are any number of magic systems you could use and, as fateweaver said, the Fate System Toolkit has a bunch of cool prefab ones to pick from.

I have to agree that the +10 is prohibitive, especially with the one point per consequence/stress box failure penalty. Odds are that you'll kill yourself before you even get off a single spell. In your example, the caster takes 8 stress box hits to cast Heal in a non-combat setting. What's the advantage of RPM in this case?