A Few Formal Magic Questions

[Gandian Ravenscroft]

Let me know and forgive me if I'm just missing something in the packet - it's entirely possible that I am, but consider the following:

Have the Formal Levels above the Ritual Difficulty required for assorted Ritual Manipulations been altered since 1.3? The new packet doesn't say, and I ask because if you must spend High Magic to even cast rituals now, using any manipulations at all is extremely inefficient and not worthwhile.

For example: I want to cast a ritual that is Difficulty 6 and I want to prepare a Terminate Casting manipulation that requires 20 Formal Magic levels above the Difficulty. Doing so would require me to spend 27 High Magic (54 build's worth) in order to do so. With that same High Magic, I could have bought 13 Cloaks, for example. Is a ritual casting with a Terminate Casting worth trading for 13 Cloaks (or any other combination of abilities worth 27 High Magic)?

Related question: What do y'all think of having to purchase Formal Magic from your High Magic pool to cast rituals? What is the justification for this change?

As someone that loves to cast rituals, thinks rituals are a great way to add flavor to a game, and wants to encourage more players to get involved in the ritual system rather than just leaving to a handful of more experienced casters in their chapter, I'll personally say that I'm not a huge fan.

With this in place, more people will actively avoid casting rituals because it directly takes away their ability to use other High Magic, which I think is something that will easily become a detriment to people/plot that need rituals cast. If rituals must be cast for whatever reason, then it becomes the detriment of the caster, and I find it very weird that casters' High Magic should be "mechanically punished" for doing something that is required of them. It especially impacts lower level casters, since if they only have a handful of precious High Magic points, having to spend them on Formal Magic to cast a ritual is even more taxing.

Others' thoughts? Maybe I'm missing the benefit here.

 

[Draven]

I like the change, personally. I do agree that there needs to be an alteration to difficulty to compensate for the changes, but considering the cost changes, I think it works out.

As a former Scholar going to Spellsword, I’m rather happy that I only need to spend 15 XP to get my maximum AA amount, and that it lines up neatly with Earth Channel (the new Earth Spellsword capstone, IMO). I’m on the fence if I want to spend another 24 to have Rebirth. Probably not.

 

[Gandian Ravenscroft]

In general, the majority of the High Magic changes are indeed cool. It's really just the Formal Magic expenditure that I think is a turn in the wrong direction. It changes the dynamic from 1.3's "You can do the effort of casting rituals if you want, and regardless if you do or don't, you still get to spend your high magic on fun abilities" to "You can do the effort of casting rituals if you want, but if you do, you don't get to spend your high magic on fun abilities." It just seems to punish the players that want to engage in a big part of the game while benefiting the players that aren't interested in it (or that simply don't understand it).

People simply won't want to cast rituals anymore. That ain't good.

 

[Draven]

Eh.

I got Formal Magic to cast rituals and it took me actual years to become The Guy, purely because I was always overshadowed by someone with more Formal than me, whether or not they actually wanted to cast them. So I kinda wish I had this system instead, to make better use of HM for all that casting I wasn’t doing. I think people who really enjoy Formal casting and do prepped castings will still be fine, because only one day’s worth of HM will be trashed for it.

I do think casting rituals on the fly is going to rely on whoever happened to prepare a Formal Magic for other castings. If you suddenly need to cast a ritual, it’s entirely possible that nobody in town is going to be able to. That could be rough.

 

[Polare]

The Ritual Manipulation costs have not changed in 2.0 from 1.3. Here's the reasoning behind it:

Back when Ritual Manipulations were introduced, they were intended to be rare and special things to reward those who really wanted to be the "best of the best" at Ritual casting. They were supposed to be interesting and evocative rewards that would cause people to take notice and go, 'wow, that person's really invested in Ritual Casting, look at the cool stuff they can do!'.

In the intervening years, players have started to expect that Ritual Manipulations are the norm, *not* a rare and special thing. There are multiple chapters where Rituals basically -never- get cast without Empowerments, Terminates, and/or Casting Insight. This has taken the Ritual casting game in an unintended direction - namely, where it's always safe to cast and always with bonuses/Empowerments. This was never the intent of Ritual Manipulations, but it's where the game has gone, for two reasons - High Magic on its own has become more and more valuable, and since it was combined with Formal Magic in such a way that you got the casting for 'free', why *not* just Ritual Manipulate every single Ritual that gets cast?

Ritual Casting is intended to be a powerful - and dangerous - tool. That's not what it has evolved to in 1.3. We feel that the High Magic change will make it more likely that players cast Rituals while weighing the danger involved - would you rather cast it with a 1/10 chance of a flaw or backlash but have a few more Cloaks, or would you rather get enough Formal to Terminate your Rituals for the day? Additionally, Rituals themselves have decreased somewhat in in-game value and potency, such that we expect the pang of a lost Ritual here and there to be significantly less than it is in 1.3.

The overall expectation of Rituals being always Manipulatable and "safe" is something that is intentionally being targeted here. 1.3 has become a world where players only care about Ritual danger if they roll double 0's or didn't take enough Terminates. That is not what Ritual Casting was intended to be, and this makes it so that players need to choose a tradeoff if they want that safety.

-Bryan Gregory
ARC

 

[Draven]

The Ritual Manipulation costs have not changed in 2.0 from 1.3. Here's the reasoning behind it:

Back when Ritual Manipulations were introduced, they were intended to be rare and special things to reward those who really wanted to be the "best of the best" at Ritual casting. They were supposed to be interesting and evocative rewards that would cause people to take notice and go, 'wow, that person's really invested in Ritual Casting, look at the cool stuff they can do!'.

In the intervening years, players have started to expect that Ritual Manipulations are the norm, *not* a rare and special thing. There are multiple chapters where Rituals basically -never- get cast without Empowerments, Terminates, and/or Casting Insight. This has taken the Ritual casting game in an unintended direction - namely, where it's always safe to cast and always with bonuses/Empowerments. This was never the intent of Ritual Manipulations, but it's where the game has gone, for two reasons - High Magic on its own has become more and more valuable, and since it was combined with Formal Magic in such a way that you got the casting for 'free', why *not* just Ritual Manipulate every single Ritual that gets cast?

Ritual Casting is intended to be a powerful - and dangerous - tool. That's not what it has evolved to in 1.3. We feel that the High Magic change will make it more likely that players cast Rituals while weighing the danger involved - would you rather cast it with a 1/10 chance of a flaw or backlash but have a few more Cloaks, or would you rather get enough Formal to Terminate your Rituals for the day? Additionally, Rituals themselves have decreased somewhat in in-game value and potency, such that we expect the pang of a lost Ritual here and there to be significantly less than it is in 1.3.

The overall expectation of Rituals being always Manipulatable and "safe" is something that is intentionally being targeted here. 1.3 has become a world where players only care about Ritual danger if they roll double 0's or didn't take enough Terminates. That is not what Ritual Casting was intended to be, and this makes it so that players need to choose a tradeoff if they want that safety.

-Bryan Gregory
ARC

I understand the intent, but I think it’s a bad bet. Players invest a lot of time and resources into the creation of magic items, just by gathering components and ritual scrolls. I think making ritual casting more dangerous is journeying into the realm of a customer service issue, and I don’t think it’s ultimately worth it to make ritual magic the hill to die on.

Just my .02.

 

[Polare]

Separate note about having to 'allocate' High Magic to cast Formals:

Most Rituals are fairly 'easy' to cast. The difficulty of the huge majority of Rituals is 10 or less. With this change, High Magic has also decreased in cost from 3 per level (for the old Formal Magic) to 2. In theory, for the same XP cost, you get the same number of High Magic points (though some items have gone up in cost, many have not, and only Cloak fully doubled in cost) *and* 1/3 extra High Magic that you can use for Formals every day if you want to.

We also expect many players to start keeping some High Magic unallocated throughout the day. This might just be to deal with whatever comes up - find out halfway through the day that you're fighting Flame Elementals? Maybe you want some Cloaks vs Flame in that case, or you want to Spell Augment some Banishes or something like that. That also might make it *more* possible to find alternate casters for Rituals. If you've got 10 points of High Magic and only 3 have been allocated, and someone comes asking around for a Ritual Caster for their difficulty 4 Ritual, maybe you can offer to cast it for a couple of gold, and you only need to allocate 3 out of your remaining 7 levels to get that maximum 90% chance. Instead of just finding the "best" Ritual Caster every time, you can find whoever has unspent High Magic and is willing to allocate just the right amount for your casting.

The cost decrease (1 XP for a repetitively-bought skill) was a big part of this change. You're getting an extra 1/3 High Magic "for free" - if it helps mentally to just always allocate it for Ritual Casting, you can do so and still be fine for casting the majority of Rituals in the game. That's always an option.

-Bryan Gregory
ARC

 

[EC-JP]

People simply won't want to cast rituals anymore. That ain't good.

This opinion is a symptom of exactly why this change was needed. There has become a gamewide sense of entitlement and philosophy that unless a ritual is cast at maximum difficulty with all the bells and whistles, it is not worth casting. While there may be some logic to same (scrolls are a limited commodity), the pendulum has swung to an unintended extreme. This has manifested in many chapters having a limited number of “high ritual” casters used for most rituals, in some cases to the social exclusion of others who may want to participate in that aspect of the game.

This change encourages and enables an actual choice, much like other aspects of 2.0. Opportunity cost is something that must be taken into account. If you want to cast rituals, it comes at an opportunity cost, which means that a player more inclined to pay the cost (or- one who more enjoys that aspect of game play) may have the opportunity more often, when under 1.3 they may not have. This was in part balanced by the now per-day high magic choices and the ability to make same during play instead of at logistics.

If you think you may want to cast rits, keep the points free. If you end up not needing them, spend them when that decision has been made. If players are under social pressure to always be able to cast a ritual, that is a social and cultural factor that should be addressed at a local level, and not something inherent to the rules or the game as a whole.

 

[Muir]

I understand the intent, but I think it’s a bad bet. Players invest a lot of time and resources into the creation of magic items, just by gathering components and ritual scrolls. I think making ritual casting more dangerous is journeying into the realm of a customer service issue, and I don’t think it’s ultimately worth it to make ritual magic the hill to die on.

Just my .02.

I agree with your feelings here. Magic items and their components are effectively the entire in-game economy for a lot of players. Introducing more chance of 'welp, that's a year's worth of your slice of treasure policy gone to a die roll' is not going to be a popular change, especially without a stronger reasoning behind it than 'we did not feel there was enough risk present'.

Clearly the risk was there, hence the overwhelming popularity of the means of mitigating it among ritual casters.

I can definitely see this turning a number of players off ritual casting at all, because they don't want to be held responsible for those failures.

 

[Draven]

that is a social and cultural factor that should be addressed at a local level, and not something inherent to the rules or the game as a whole.

Since we’re tossin’ out some strong wording now...

This opinion is a symptom of why some core broken aspects of the rules will never change in the Alliance, such as our unlimited level system, and the absolute imbalance of the Life spell.

Blaming local culture for rules issues has fixed literally zero things in our game. I politely advise we stop using it as a position when discussing aspects of the rules, because it’s a weak argument and frankly inducing of eyerolls.

 

[Inaryn]

The only thing about this change that disappoints me is that formal magic is still linked to requiring a 9th level spell. That pretty much keeps it out of the hands of Artisans.

 

[Tantarus]

The only thing about this change that disappoints me is that formal magic is still linked to requiring a 9th level spell. That pretty much keeps it out of the hands of Artisans.

Hrm that is hidden in there. Yeah that is lame.

Didnt catch that in the first 2 passes.

 

[EC-JP]

The only thing about this change that disappoints me is that formal magic is still linked to requiring a 9th level spell. That pretty much keeps it out of the hands of Artisans.

That was intentional. Historically, Formal Magic also required specific access to the Circle of Power spell. Thematically, there is a reason being in a COP is necessary to cast rituals, drawing on the power of the circle and such.

 

[Draven]

That was intentional. Historically, Formal Magic also required specific access to the Circle of Power spell. Thematically, there is a reason being in a COP is necessary to cast rituals, drawing on the power of the circle and such.

I’m not sure everyone interprets it that way in their ritual role play. To me, the CoP has always trapped the power of the ritual (akin to a Harry Dresden spell in the Dresden Files), but hasn’t served as a fuel source.

Additionally, even if it does, the mechanics don’t support the theme, because plenty of ritual castings happen in circles that don’t belong to the caster. I guess you could argue that “understanding” a CoP helps you cast a ritual, which is fine, but it doesn’t feel like this theme has ever been really described.

 

[Inaryn]

That was intentional. Historically, Formal Magic also required specific access to the Circle of Power spell. Thematically, there is a reason being in a COP is necessary to cast rituals, drawing on the power of the circle and such.

There's no real reason to force the 9th level spell requirement if you keep the CoP requirement. CoP isn't production-able... you can only get access to one from very limited sources: Either someone casts one (either from memory or item) or you use a ritual circle (lesser or greater.)

All that keeping formal locked behind 9th level spells does is make it so that you'll never have Artisans casting rituals.

 

[Muir]

Bit sad, that. People playing the non-combat oriented class are exactly the ones we should be looking to give a place to shine, and ritual casting would be just that.

 

[Feldor]

So I noticed that High Magic (primary) got much cheaper for Fighters&Rogues -- it went from 12 points per rank. Is the intention that fighters&rogues are buying High Magic now?

 

[Alavatar]

So ... to follow up on Alexander's questions:

If I wanted to perform a Casting Insight on a Permanent Duration at maximum power (Difficulty 31), would I need to allocate 72 High Magic to cast it? 1 for Casting Insight, and 31+40 to meet the Casting Insight requirement?

If I used that 71 High Magic for Permanent Duration, would I need to spend more High Magic for each subsequent ritual? Or is that 71 spent as a "Today, your Ritual Caster Level is 71 until Logistics"?

 

[EC-JP]

Or is that 71 spent as a "Today, your Ritual Caster Level is 71 until Logistics"?

Yes.

 

[Polare]

Note that Spellcrafting *is* available without needing a 9th circle spell. This is intentional; allowing interesting use of Ritual Scrolls and encouraging "short term" Rituals via Spellcrafting for dabblers, but restricting true Formal Casting for those who have the understanding of the fundamentals (9th level spells).