Question re: Ritual Magic

[Faolyn]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

First of all, how common are these focuses? Are we talking "To use spells of the Plant college, you must have a staff blessed by the Plant God personally", or "To use the Plant College, you must have an oak staff"? Because the Gadget limitations are only for the former. Gadgets must be objects that are rare, if not unique, in the campaign world. Basic explicitly states that Gadgets must be "items [that] are not for sale at any price in the game world." (Emphasis in original).
If the focus items are fairly easy to replace, then they warrant, at best, a -10% limitation if they're big, bulky, and hard to carry around. If they're easy to carry, they're -5%.

Not unique items, but they would have to sanctified, which would mean a ritual, probably at least a couple hours long, and should be hand-made. I mist not have read the bit about the Gadgets not being items for sale

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

If you just want to extend the length of time that it takes to cast spells, just arbitrarily extend the casting time. GURPS Thaumatology has lots of suggestions and advice for altering the parameters of spells - if you don't have it, I suggest you pick it up.

Yeah, this is one of those cases where it's hard to decide which to use. I think I'm going to go with a 10x casting time, like (IIRC) in Roma Arcana, rather than the Prep Time limitation (I like this quite a bit, but I don't think that every spell needs to have the same length of prep time), and add the Accessibility: requires Focus to PI. Since the character needs a different focus for each college, but can make new foci as needed, losing one limits what colleges the character can use, but doesn't keep her from casting spells altogether. I'm thinking -10%.