[MH][RPM] Depowering a magic user

[dcarson]

My players have captured a evil magic user. He is wanted by the police and actually was captured thanks to the players earlier. He escaped quickly because holding a ritual magic user in a world that doesn't know magic exists is pretty impossible.

They don't want to kill him in cold blood, which I like but want him to spend a long time in prison because he has killed several people.

Would
Greater Destroy Magic (5) + Subject Weight, 300 lbs. (3) + Duration, 1 years (22). 90 energy (30×3)
be enough to keep him from casting magic for a year and can be renewed for a year by visiting or should it have Altered Traits also to remove Magery?

[lvalero]

You might use this challenge as a hook for a new adventure. For example, searching for this spell in a library they found they can make a pilgrimage to a "place of power" where a powerful "spirit of magic" exists who could cast this power but, in exchange, it asks for a different favour.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Would
Greater Destroy Magic (5) + Subject Weight, 300 lbs. (3) + Duration, 1 years (22). 90 energy (30×3)
be enough to keep him from casting magic for a year and can be renewed for a year by visiting or should it have Altered Traits also to remove Magery?

I would add Altered Traits to remove Magery.

[Varyon]

The Resist Magic ritual (RPM48) could be an option - it gives the subject Magic Resistance (meaning later spells are more difficult to cast on the target), which as a side effect also gives a penalty to use magic equal to twice its level. Arguably, because it makes it impossible to Magery, you should also have to negate all levels of the target's Magery... although personally I would ignore that bit (at the very least, a character with Magery can be affected by the Resist Magic ritual - it does nothing to the character's Magery, but rather just imposes the penalty). If you don't have the RPM book and are instead relying on what's in Monster Hunters, the ritual is typically Greater Destroy Magic (5) + Altered Traits, Magic Resistance 3 (6) + Duration, 10 minutes (1) + Subject Weight, 300 lbs. (3). 45 energy (15×3). You'll want to boost the levels of Altered Traits as well as the Duration.

Next up would be simply stripping the target of Ritual Adept and Magery. That would also be Greater Destroy Magic with Altered Traits. If you allow for Ritual Adept to be broken up into component sections, you'll really just want to remove Ritual Adept (Time) - (Connection) is a non-issue for the would-be jailbreaker (if they need to target the guards or other prisoners, getting something connected to them would be fairly easy, and a lot of rituals can just target themselves, the building they're in, or a target in line of sight), and I think making one's cell a consecrated space would be an option (and even if not, a -1 for a magic circle isn't going to break the character). But even (Time) isn't of great importance here, as the target has plenty of time to attempt their jailbreak so needing minutes for a ritual rather than seconds isn't really a problem. What you really want to do is strip the target of Magery - each level beyond 0 drops the target's skill cap by 1 (down to 12) in addition to reducing their available Magic Reserve by 3, and removing that final Magery 0 imposes a -5 - unless the target can arrange for a grimoire to be delivered to them in their cell, they aren't going to be doing much with effective Path skills of 7.

If you have the energy for it, and want to make certain the foe is basically outright incapable of magic, something like the following ritual would work:

Greater Destroy Magic (5) + Altered Traits, -3 to Magery (6) + Altered Traits, No Magery 0 (1) + Altered Traits, Magic Resistance 3 (6) + Subject Weight, 300 lb (3) + Duration, 1 year (22). 43x3 = 129 energy. Note for a target with Magery 3 or lower, the above reduces their effective Path skills to 1, making them outright unusable without at least a +2 Grimoire. Replace the number of levels of Magery reduced with how many levels the target has, for a base 2 energy per level (Greater Sense Magic on the target would probably let you know how many levels of Magery they have; failing that, you can just pump as much energy into negating Magery as possible). If you can somehow arrange to meet with the target once a month to renew the spell, you could reduce the Duration to 2 months (giving yourself some leeway in case of a missed visit), saving 10 base energy (so -30 energy to the final ritual). Theoretically you could also reduce the Duration and add Range to the spell to be able to maintain it from a distance, but that's not really an option - simply to break even (that is, the same cost as a 1 year Duration), you'd only get a 100 yard Range, and depending on the size of the prison, that may not let you reach your target from outside the prison.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by dcarson

My players have captured a evil magic user. He is wanted by the police and actually was captured thanks to the players earlier. He escaped quickly because holding a ritual magic user in a world that doesn't know magic exists is pretty impossible.

They don't want to kill him in cold blood, which I like but want him to spend a long time in prison because he has killed several people.

Would
Greater Destroy Magic (5) + Subject Weight, 300 lbs. (3) + Duration, 1 years (22). 90 energy (30×3)
be enough to keep him from casting magic for a year and can be renewed for a year by visiting or should it have Altered Traits also to remove Magery?

Originally Posted by Refplace

I would add Altered Traits to remove Magery.

As others have noted: You get what you pay for. You want to remove his ability to cast remove Magery, Ritual Adept, etc.