Rituals

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Rituals
Rules Ritual
Section:	Gameplay
Summary:	Rituals are reusable written items that perform effects like spells, but more powerful or specialized.
Primary Topics:	How to use rituals
Secondary Topics:	Ritual components

Rituals are like spells, with a wide variety of possible effects.

Rituals aren't very beginner friendly because they can be expensive to use and hard to acquire, both in gaining the skill points necessary and items needed to use them. New players can safely skip these rules until they are interested in learning more.

Rituals

Rituals allow the game to have many different magic effects, while keeping the list of spells at a fixed size. There is no limit to the number of rituals that could exist, and most magical effects that don't fit into the template of a spell will be a ritual. Most of the time rituals are paper items with instructions on them. Some creatures are capable of performing acts that function like rituals without having a paper to read off of, those creatures will describe how that works in their encounter codex entry. The following text exclusively refers to the paper variety of ritual.

Rituals are typically reusable items. Some specific rituals are one-use consumable items, these rituals will indicate if this is the case. Each ritual is a printed piece of paper that will contain all the information needed to perform it. Rituals may not be duplicated. Players can transcribe rituals into a cooler looking prop, which must be lootable, if they destroy the original copy.

When a character first learns a ritual skill they receive the basic rituals for that school of magic for free. These may be reacquired each event at check-in should the player lose them. Other rituals must be acquired as loot during play.

Preparing to Cast a Ritual

To cast a ritual a character must have: the skills required for that ritual, the components needed to perform the ritual (which are consumed), any foci required to perform the ritual (which are not consumed), and a copy of the ritual itself. Some rituals may also require additional participants.

Skills

You will need the skills listed on the ritual to perform it. The caster of a ritual must have all appropriate ritual skills and any other required skills. Typically this is one skill for each school in the ritual. Some rituals may even require other more unusual skills as well. When multiple skills are required multiple participants may work together to enact the ritual so long as each one provides at least one of the necessary skills.

When a ritual requires additional participants the ritual will state if those participants also need to know the relevant skills.

Ritual Components and Foci

Most rituals will require specific components that are consumed or foci, items that must be present to perform the ritual, that are not consumed. When the ritual itself is consumed on use, it will be listed as a component.

There are a wide variety of ritual components. Basic ritual components are any component from the seven schools of magic. These are the most commonly used ones for rituals. There is no fixed shape for basic ritual components, but there are often themes among the different schools. These ritual components are found as loot during the game.

Other components can be absolutely anything. These are known as special ritual components to distinguish them from basic ones. These scarce ritual components (such as Dragon's Blood or Ghost Stones), cannot ever be substituted with other items or powers, you must use the exact item called for. Generally scarce ritual components are required for plots or the rarest of rituals.

Recognizing ritual components requires the Identify Magic skill.

This is a non-exhaustive listing of defined special ritual components.

GM Controlled Components

Gamemaster controlled ritual components are designed to be used by GM's to tell stories with. They have no fixed purpose. These items could be used as part of the Remedy ritual to cure a plague or remove a hexed item. They could be part of a plot from a GM, or even simply a red herring. All of these items are quest items and must be returned to logistics by the end of the event. The story reason for this is because none of them are stable, each one loses its potency in some way or another by the end of an event.

Ritual Created Components

Ritual created components are special ritual components which are all specially created by one-use scarce rituals. A character who performs the appropriate ritual will be rewarded with the created component to hold onto until they decide to use it for some further purpose.

Plot Marshal Controlled Components

Plot marshal controlled ritual components are exclusively the domain of the Plot Marshal and Second to decide when to send out. These items are as common or rare as the they deem appropriate. Players may attempt to submit PIPs to try to obtain these items, but it is solely up to the Plot Marshal and Second to decide if such PIPs have any chance of succeeding.

Casting the Ritual

Each ritual has on it a set of instructions for what must be done to perform that specific ritual. Follow the instructions exactly. If the ritual requires an incantation, the instructions will tell you when to read the incantation. You must use the incantation listed on the ritual and you must read it off the piece of paper, it cannot be read from memory. Otherwise this functions exactly like spell incantations.

Once you have completed the instructions on the ritual, it has been successfully performed. Now follow the information listed in the "Effect" portion of the ritual.

Rituals do not generally require power points to cast, however as each ritual is different it is possible one might need them. The ritual will say if it does.

Bound Rituals

Some rituals are so powerful they are bound to the person who assembled it. The harder a ritual is to assemble the more likely it is to be bound. Only the person the ritual is bound to may perform it.

GM Required Rituals

Some rituals have long reaching effects that players can't enact themselves. Others have very precise instructions on how to cast them that need a neutral adjudicator present. These rituals require a GM to be present when they are performed. Let the shift GM know that you are going to perform the ritual, and they will arrange for someone to be present. This could be the wind, an NPC or even a GM who is PCing and is expected to be present.

Dispelling Rituals

Rituals are far more powerful than normal spells. Most rituals require the Cleansing ritual (which is a scarce ritual) to dispel them and cannot be removed by the Dispel Magic spell. Each ritual will indicate how (or if) it can be ended prior to the duration expiring.

Loot Rituals

Some rituals are only available as loot during play. Loot rituals can either be one-use or they can be multiple use. One-use rituals are generally found as is and can be performed immediately. Multiple-use loot rituals generally must be assembled before they can be performed.

To assemble a loot ritual, a character must acquire a variety of elements, often scarce items. Those elements are:

• Essence of the Ritual: A scarce alchemical that contains the raw magical concept of the desired ritual. This will be in a vial, and will always list exactly what the final ritual actually does on it. You won't know what the ritual costs to perform, but you'll at least know what the ritual actually DOES so you know if it's a ritual you want to take the time to work on assembling.

• Intent of the Ritual: This is a scarce scroll that will have the incantation of the ritual you're assembling written on it. Most rituals have multiple common intents circulating, each designed by someone who had a certain idea in mind for usage of that ritual. If you don't like the text you have on an intent, you may want to wait to get another more to your liking, you're going to have that incantation on the finished product forever.

• Ritual Paper: A scarce part used by all assembled rituals. This paper is potent enough to hold the arcane energy together to make the final ritual.

• Ritual Binding Elixir: A scarce alchemical used by all assembled rituals that helps merge all the parts together into one cohesive whole.
• Ritual Ink (5 doses): A standard alchemical item used to scribe the finished product
• Ritual Quill: A specially prepared quill (made with Tinkering) that is needed to scribe the finished product. It is consumed by the process of making the ritual.
• Additional Items: Some rituals will require other additional unusual items to assemble them. If a ritual requires other things, they will always be listed in the Essence of that ritual.

When all of these things have been gathered a player may turn them in using the pre-production system between games to get a finished copy of the ritual. This does not require any skills to do.

Sigils

Some certain rituals that are nearly exclusively performed by NPCs require a non-lootable quest item known as a sigil. These rituals are tricky to execute and easy to disrupt. To represent this they will always be performed over the course of a long period of time. During this time the rituals leave behind sigils where the ritual is intended to be completed. If those sigils are disrupted by the Sigil Erasure ritual the original ritual will not work as intended. The original ritual will have instructions on it for what happens when the sigils are disrupted.

Ritual Listing

Basic Rituals

Ritual Name	School(s)	Required Skill(s)	Consumed Components	Reusable Components	Duration	Target	Description
Alchemical Ascension	Hybrid	Any Ritual Skill	100 to 2000 coin	None	Extra Long (Event)	Self	Gain any combination of +1 Body, +1-5 Power, or +1 Might & Accuracy all breaking cap.
Breath of Fire	Nature	Rituals of Nature	1 Nature Component	1 Ritual Candle	Extra Long (Event)	Character	Can exhale fire for '4 Primal!' twice per game day.
Craftman's Raiment	Enchantment	Rituals of Enchantment	3 Enchantment Components, 10 coin worth of gems	1 Ritual Candle	Long (Game Day)	Character	Enhances one character's equipment with Enhance Armor, Ablative Armor, Enchant Shield, and up to three Wraithbanes
Consecrate	Necromancy or Any	Rituals of Necromancy or Special	2 Necromancy Components	1 Ritual Candle, Shrine (Optional)	Long (Game Day) or Permanent	Building, Shrine, or Ghost	Create a Sanctified field on a building or consecrate a shrine.
Desecrate	Necromancy	Rituals of Necromancy	2 Necromancy Components	1 Ritual Candle, Shrine (Optional)	Long (Game Day) or Permanent	Building or Shrine	Either create an Unhallowed field on a building OR de-consecrate a shrine.
Disenchant	Enchantment	Rituals of Enchantment	None	1 Ritual Candle	Instant	A Craftable & Lootable Item	Destroy a craftable item to fuel another ritual with phantom ritual components.
Final Rest	Necromancy	Rituals of Necromancy	None	1 Ritual Candle, Final Rest Bell	Instant	Corpse, Undead, or Ghost	Permanently send a spark to the well, killing it's owner.
Harmony	Aegis	Rituals of Aegis	2 Aegis Components	1 Ritual Candle	Extra Long (Event)	Self	Gain the effects of the Synchronize spell now and at every convergence for the rest of the event.
Ironbark	Nature	Rituals of Nature	1 Nature Component, 10 coin value of gems	1 Ritual Candle	Long (Game Day)	Character	Grant the target floating natural armor equal to their current of body points.
Mirrorball	Aegis	Rituals of Aegis	2 Aegis Components	1 Ritual Candle	Long (Game Day)	Self	Prevent the next two tag bags that hit you. For each tag bag prevented throw another tag bag with the same call.
Perfect Deceit	Compulsion	Rituals of Compulsion	1 Compulsion component	1 Ritual Candle	Long (Game Day)	Character	When affected by the Truthful condition the subject is forced to lie instead of tell the truth.
Polyglot	Compulsion	Rituals of Compulsion	2 Compulsion Ritual Components	1 Ritual Candle, a Book	Long (Game Day)	Self	Character can speak all common and uncommon languages.
Regeneration	Restoration	Rituals of Restoration	2 Restoration Components	1 Ritual Candle	Long (Game Day)	Character	Heals the character every 10 minutes for the duration.
Remedy	Restoration	Rituals of Restoration	3 Restoration Components, Other Optional Components	1 Ritual Candle	Instant	Character(s)	Cures various ailments and conditions
Sigil Erasure	Hybrid	Any Ritual Skill	A (10c value) silver coin	A ritual candle, a gem worth at least 50 coin	Instant	Sigil	Destroys one sigil.
Soldier's Luck	Battle	Rituals of Battle	1 Battle Component	1 Ritual Candle	Long (Game Day)	Character	Ignore the effect of the next 'Slay!' or 'Pierce!' call that hits you (but still take any damage).
Valor	Battle	Rituals of Battle	1 Battle Component	1 Ritual Candle	Long (Game Day)	Character	Grants +1 Might and Accuracy, stacks with itself.

Categories: Gameplay Rules | Item Types | Rituals | Ritual Components

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