Casting

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How to Extend Rituals in WR&M

December 6, 2010 in Immortals' Wake, Rules, Seeking Feedback, WR&M by Fitz | 1 comment

Welcome back!

With a Divine spellcaster, the magical energy used to achieve an effect is channeled through the caster’s faith in a supernatural force. This force can be as straightforward as believing in a deity or more open-ended or philosophical such as the belief in a cosmic consciousness, the spirits of nature, or the ghosts of ancestors past. And though the end result of casting may be the same as a wizard, many Divine casters use personal rituals.

When we were working on Moebius Adventures we always loved the concepts behind ritual magic. These are the bigger spells that could only be done with larger amounts of casters, magical energy, components, or skill to gain bigger effects. For instance, a one-person Teleport spell could be transformed into a much larger Gateway to move additional people or equipment.

Rituals are broadly defined in WR&M as a way for participants to “pool their mana” to meet the DL requirements for higher circle spells that might be otherwise out of reach. Partcipants are still beholden to the mana cost for the spell and any spell enhancements, but the difficulty level is reduced by 1 if it’s done in the minimum time (1 minute for 1st circle, 5 minutes for 2nd circle, etc.).

Ultimately my question is this… Though this application of ritual magic is good – shouldn’t it be able to do more than that? Or am I looking at this the wrong way? Should it work more like there’s a 4th Circle spell – Mass Last Rites – with bigger bang that should only be performed by mighty powerful priests or a group of priests on the same mission?

For Divine magic, I’m thinking about rituals like:

  • Last Rites
  • Focus (Worry Beads, etc.)
  • Lay on Hands
  • Blessing
  • Inoculate (Cure Disease)
  • Detox (Cure Poison)
  • Protection
  • And so on

It gets more interesting when you look at how the effects are applied and how they stack if they’re done with friends.

For instance, let’s say a priest is delivering Last Rites to a dead or dying person. Perhaps this ritual helps their soul get to the afterlife. Perhaps it blocks them from rising as the walking dead. Perhaps it is nothing more than a way to make their family and friends left behind feel better.

If you take Last Rites into the wild where it’s simply a priest and the deceased, that’s one context. If you have a priest performing the ritual in a temple, church, or other holy place, that’s a different context that perhaps lends more weight or strength to the ritual. And if you add in more priests all performing the ritual at the same time, that’s yet a different context that lends additional strength to the ritual.

Let’s look at it from a different angle. What happens if Last Rites is a way to settle the restless dead – your textbook zombie? It may take a minute for a priest to do the ritual on a zombie – and it may require touching the zombie on the forehead with holy oil. Not necessarily a great position to be in obviously.

Perhaps if you and your priest friend both are doing the ritual, you can knock off the requirement to touch the body and affect a zombie at a distance. Add another priest and maybe you can affect a group of zombies. Add more priests and maybe you can affect a much larger group of zombies… Can you imagine a group of priests all performing a ritual while wandering through a town infested with zombies – and watching zombies fall around them like driftwood?

So maybe in the Last Rites example, there would be three spells – Last Rites (1st or 2nd circle), Last Rites in a Holy Place (2nd or 3rd circle), and Mass Last Rites (4th circle). And it would be up to the priest (or priests) to decide when to go it solo vs. with a group.

As you can see, I’m still trying to figure out how to best integrate some of these ideas with WR&M and am getting there slowly.

What do you think?

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The Art of Lesser Wizardry, or How to Dabble in Magic Without Singing Your Eyebrows…

October 5, 2009 in Design, Magic, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | No comments

What is Lesser Wizardry? Does it mean you’re less of a wizard than someone who practices something greater? Not at all.

Old BookThink of Lesser Wizardry as the training wheels for a beginning wizard. Lesser Wizardry provides an opportunity for apprentices and students to learn the basics of wizardry without setting their hair on fire attempting to cast a ball of fire at an opponent.

So what is Lesser Wizardry good for? All those little tasks that might not seem like much, but can do many things for a budding wizard:

  • Add a bit of flair to your appearance when you’re out in public, such as providing a well-timed breeze to ruffle your robes to get the attention of those around you or to make sure your clothes are clean, hair combed, and hair shaved so you always look your best
  • Handle those little onerous tasks such as cleaning the dishes or wrapping a gift perfectly every time
  • Make sure you always have a pen handy, never lose your place in a book, or get up on time for an appointment after a long night researching in the lab

Beyond that, there are those little tricks that might make your enemy’s day a little worse with just a little thought from you:

  • Distract an opponent just long enough to slip by unnoticed
  • Ensure that a rival mumbles at just the right time to not speak a spell correctly or when addressing a crowd of her peers
  • Turn a clean, tidy room into a disorganized mess to drive even the most well-adjusted neat freak over the edge

Lesser Wizardry is one of the oldest forms of magic known to the humanoid races. When the first wizards were trying to harness the magical energy of the universe, they were very cautious in their approach and used as little magic as possible. They didn’t want to do any damage for fear of destroying themselves in the process or incurring the wrath of the gods. After a while, it became a game for some wizards to see just how little magic they would need to create a particular effect.

These are the spells that wizards create to simplify things in their lab, ensuring that equipment stays clean and spell components are where they can be easily found. But don’t let that fool you. The most powerful wizards skilled in Lesser Wizardry can drive wizards skilled in other areas quite insane.

One of the best parts of casting Lesser Wizardry spells? No components to mess with! Each and every Lesser Wizardry spell relies exclusively on the focus and energy of the caster. No muss, no fuss.

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