A Few Formal Magic Questions

Interesting that the rules packet tries to sell this as part of decoupling formal magic from battle magic to allow people to specialize in one or the other, but the ARC members in the thread seem to be going with that connection being necessary because it is 'traditional'.

Which is the intent here?

Edit: To follow up, High Magic, the required skill purchase to get Formal, already requires 75/150 Scholarly XP spent. It is gated to be an end-game ability for Scholars. I see no reason for gating Formal Magic behind 9th level spell slots than sheer inertia.

To quote the rules themselves:

All High Magic which required “X 9th level spells” per purchase in 1.3 can now be purchased no matter how many 9th level spell slots a character has purchased, so long as they have the High Magic points required. This artificially linked Battle Magic and Ritual Magic limits together, which disadvantaged both (a) characters who wanted to specialize in one or the other and (b) classes like Adept and Spellsword.
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Formal Magic is now the sole thing in counter to this general rule.
 
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Muir said:
Interesting that the rules packet tries to sell this as part of decoupling formal magic from battle magic to allow people to specialize in one or the other, but the ARC members in the thread seem to be going with that connection being necessary because it is 'traditional'.
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The 1.3 skill formal magic has grown well beyond its origin as ritual casting. As one of the primary authors of the original high magic set, I can say with both confidence and authority that it was intended as an add-on to ritual casting (at one point including effectively self-spellcraft only ritual scrolls, but that was a mode we eventually didn’t adopt ). Over time, it became a focus of characters and feedback pointed to many, many players wanting that aspect of Formal Magic to be more readily accessible.

When reworking Formal Magic into 2.0 High Magic a decision was made to keep one specific aspect (ritual casting) tied to the traditional requirements, while expanding the newer (and in many cases more popular) High Magic options to be easier to access.

Ritual Casting is but one aspect of the new high magic. It is tied to 9th level spells, just as other parts are tied to channeling, scrollmaking, potion making, etc.

“Caster” is a very broad thematic group. By High Magic’s nature as one skill (which realistically could have been many), it contains capstone style abilities for many of the “caster” sunsets, one of which is actuall “I cast a lot of/powerful spells in the traditional manner.” Formal Magic is intended to be that capstone, and has a requirement to match. In a similar vein “I combine spells and sword” has its, “I have mastery over life itself sufficient to bring myself back to like” has its, and the newer niches “I can rewrite scrolls on the fly” “I can suck the raw power out of potions” etc, all have their own.
 
I like the idea that very difficult rituals will require teamwork through the use of Formal Link. I have been playing for almost seven years and the only time I have seen Formal Link used was when some mega crazy LCO plot ritual came out that needed to be cast and it had an absurd difficulty of 120 or 150. Even then, we only needed two ritualists to cast it.

In the pre-prerelease world you just had to convince the biggest caster of a school and have them cast every thing for you. New chapters likely do not have this problem, but those of us with long term player bases definitely do.
 
I don't honestly see that changing, outside of very new chapters. End of the day, Formal's not -that- expensive that there won't be someone with a dozen+ levels of it running around when we have a large population of level 30+ characters in the overall game, and the true limitation on people playing formalists is if they can afford to get the things needed to cast regularly enough to have fun with it.
 
Durnic said:
In the pre-prerelease world you just had to convince the biggest caster of a school and have them cast every thing for you. New chapters likely do not have this problem, but those of us with long term player bases definitely do.
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I don't see that really changing at all under the new High Magic rules. Consider the following:

I have a Difficulty 10 ritual that needs casting, and there are two casters available: One caster has 50 High Magic, one has 10 High Magic. The 50-rank caster would have to spend only 20% of his High Magic on Formal Magic ranks to cast the ritual, whereas the 10-rank caster would have to spend 100% of his High Magic on Formal Magic ranks to cast the ritual. The odds of the 50-rank caster being okay with doing so is probably pretty likely, since it doesn't cut into their High Magic very much. But the 10-rank caster will likely be very reluctant to do so, since it completely eliminates their ability to use their High Magic for anything else. Ergo, rituals will still likely be cast by the same higher-level characters as ever.
 
One thing that I would like to see is for the ritual manipulation to be usable based on the total formal of the group not just the primary caster. To my knowledge and I may have it wrong in 1.3 ritual manipulation only considered the primary casters formal levels into what ritual manipulation was available. I think that would help to make ritual casting more of a group activity than a single person and a ritual Marshall alone somewhere in a corner.
My concern with the new formal casting is that the flaws and backlashes still have life-altering personal effects that can be permanent and can affect multiple items in the circle and not just the one that is being cast at that time.
 
Overall, exceptionally I like this change. However as a long time DM/ST/Larper - its going to have its ebbs/flows that are really only going to be fully realized via the nation wide pre-release that is being done. My hope is that while it will ebb and flow depending largely on average level of characters per chapter to chapter, and not cause a larger divide within any given chapter.

I will say though that it is not at all surprising that ARC has found that rituals are being considered a "waste" unless they can be cast with all the "Bells and whistles" Frequently for a "kewl" magic thing can take 1-2 (or more) years of investment on behlaf of the player, not to mention what the character had to do to achieve it. So long as it takes 1-2 years accomplish something, players are going to use every method available within the rules to protect that investment. Some rituals have been described as only being found one per year, some even less frequently. With that type of "drop percentage", you are forced to use every advantage you can scrape up IC - because its a very rare thing that you may never again encounter it.

Sadly, increasing treasure policy creates a mountain of other issues and doesn't entirely address this problem by itself, so isn't worth fully exploring. But with what has been said thus far, this further solidifies Formal Rituals into "end game content" that is not going to be widely "new Formal ritualist" friendly for some time.

To that divide though, it does answer the call for everyone else who has felt that High Magic abilities shouldn't be locked behind both 9th level spells and a large amount of XP into Formal Magic. So for that entire aspect of the game, and tons of characters/concepts and developments... It is likely going to be quite amazing and positive responses for having answered that call.
 
One thing that I realized while using CMA is that with this version High magic only cost High magic only costs two experience so I do agree that helps.
 
It would be nice if Formal Link and Formal Magic were combined, in addition to Ritual Manipulations using the combined ritual levels instead of just the Primary Caster.

Overall, I think this new method is a positive change. There are some cool things introduced with this new way of doing High Magic, and it makes sense the skill is turned into a "rituals OR cool stuff".
 
Alavatar said:
It would be nice if Formal Link and Formal Magic were combined, in addition to Ritual Manipulations using the combined ritual levels instead of just the Primary Caster.

Overall, I think this new method is a positive change. There are some cool things introduced with this new way of doing High Magic, and it makes sense the skill is turned into a "rituals OR cool stuff".
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IMO a way to balance this, as straight combining caster's anything can get out of hand quickly. A way to balance this is by including options for it to be possible, but cost a fair/reasonable amount of High Magic points. While I don't know what those numbers might be - here are my ideas of example effects which would need associated costs to them.

High Magic - Formal Link: Allows you to cast a ritual with +1 Person, per level of Formal Link. (already exists)
High Magic - Ritual Augmentation Link: Allows a caster bound with Formal link to provide 1 Ritual Augmentation to the Ritual Being jointly cast. This Augmentation can not cost more High Magic points than the Primary caster currently has allocated into Ritual Augmentation.
High Magic - Ritual Augmentation: Combined Ritual Casting: Allows "x" of Ritual Casting to be contributed to the total Ritual Casting Number of all participants whom are bound with Formal Link. This must be allocated as many times as there are Formal Links in a Joint Cast Ritual.
 
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