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

[Raekai]

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 in ideal circumstances: a caster in a consecrated space with the subject present, and a caster can take their time.*Great (+4) opposition if any one of the above qualifications isn't met.*Fantastic (+6) opposition if only one of the above qualifications is met.*Legendary (+8) opposition if none of the above qualifications is met. 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 Legendary (+8) for a spell like Resurrection. 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 number needed for success with stress boxes or equivalent consequences.

Furthermore, there are several other ways to reduce the final opposition. A caster can certainly always chip in a fate point. They can also take 2 boxes of stress to reduce the opposition by 1 step. Appropriate aspects can be invoked for bonuses, of course. 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 like those in the Freeport Companion which allow a caster to know certain rituals well enough to reduce the opposition of those known rituals by 2 steps. Plus, you could easily have stunts reflecting parts of Ritual Adept. Details on that will come later.

Sympathetic Adept: You don't suffer a higher opposition if the subject isn't present.
Fast Adept: Crafting a spell in the middle of a scene is no harder than crafting a spell during downtime.
Improv Adept: you don't increase the opposition if you're not in a consecrated space.

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 Fantastic (+6), Jermaine also has Heal as a known ritual, reducing the opposition to Great (+4). 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 Great (+4). He'll check off four stress boxes to reduce that to Fair (+2), which is a lot more manageable for his Lore skill. Jermaine 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 boxes of stress or consequences. Jermaine sacrifices another stress box, and also takes a mild magical consequence to absorb the last 2 hits. 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 5 stress boxes and his own mild consequence as well.

Let's try this again. Changed some descriptions to make some things seem more flexible. Changed some numbers to alter scopes, make some things a bit easier, and to make some other things a little harder. I tried to underline most (if not all) of the important changes.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

If the subject isn't present, you need to have established a sympathetic link to him or the ritual automatically fails.

Instead of measuring the potency of a ritual in terms of how much it increases the Opposition, measure it in terms of how many successful actions need to be completed.

I'm also not too worried about having a sympathetic link, but I think that's just personal taste. I like the idea, but it's not necessary for my setting. As for measuring it in actions, the problem is that a ritual will then always take a specific amount of "time" as actions. You wouldn't ever get "faster" with rituals.