Shadowrun Play > Rules and such

Rituals are confusing: Drain, summoning and you

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Mollari:
Hi guys

So unfortunately a player is now getting into rituals... I have some questions

Example

Sally the street mage knows Frances the face is cheating on her. She wants to slam him with a stunbolt the moment he 'begins' with his mistress. She's got a prodigious magic level of 6 and decides she wants him to cough up blood on his new woman. She sets up a lodge that can accommodate a force 12 stunbolt (she's got some spellcasting foci that help with getting massive hits). She blows her savings on the reagents, makes the sacrifice, has her new boyfriend act as spotter, and then casts the spell. Once the spell is cast she and her new boy toy suffer the stunbolt's drain, and then they seal the ritual suffering magic*2 hits*2. Frances the Face coughs up blood all over his new mistress and her Egyptian sheets.

Drain

Now is this correct?
1) does the caster suffer the drain of the spell when cast, or when the ritual is sealed?
2) does the caster suffer both the spell drain and the sealing drain, or just one?

Limits with rituals
It's been brought to my attention that rituals don't have a force limit in the same way that other magic does (being magic*2). Now does this extend to normal spellcasting done through rituals? In the example above would Sally have cast a spell higher than 12 by just spending more reagents, or does the fact that she's using a traditional spellcasting ability thus limit her to the normal mag*2?

Thanks guys. This is relevant for my current group as it can result in awesomely high powered things so I need to nail down if it is indeed possible to break the magic*2 limit and if they should have been drained out of their brains.

Marcus:
A couple things to keep in mind. Ritual casting covered starting on page 295 of the core.

This example is real bad. Ok. So Let cover basic things, the limit of the force of the ritual is equal to rating of the lodge you casting or, you can use a number of drams equal to the force of the ritual you want to make a temporary lodge. Next for combat spells your using prodigal spell ritual which btw takes you force in hours to complete. Timing that exactly would be a very impressive feat, but let assume they figured that out. Next. You do the ritual casting (see 295+), dropping at 12 drams of reagents probubly a decent amount more to lower the drain. Then the Seal check or completion check of the ritual is Ritual Magic+Magic[force] vs Force x2, now you do get a teamwork test for each additional participant.  But if you do the math on this very quickly. Our chick has magic 6 and we assume ritual magic 6 plus a power magical focus lets say 4, so that's 16[12] vs 24 dice, now lets say her new boy friend is also a professional ritual spellcaster and they are actually using a spirit as a spotter. So he's got all same stuff she has, and we will assume they share the same tradition. So he has the same 16 dice which of which average  gets you 5 successes which passes 5 dice on too his GF. (See page 49 of the core for team work tests). Ok So that puts us at 21 vs 24 dice. So if we play strict averages 21 dice is 7 and 24 dice is 8 thus ritual fails, and all the drams of reagent spent and 12 hours of her and new bf lives are wasted but the even worse news is they now roll 24 dice and suffer drain equal to hitsx2 x-reagents spent on drain Minimum 2 which in this case is stun b/c he passed her 5 dice and that is lower then her magic of 6.

So a couple common sense points about this.

Given the constructions of rituals unless you and your crew are the grandmaster of rituals lets keep it simple. Use spells where min effect will handle the problem. In this case indirect is probably better. Given ritual casting works spell drain is fairly irrelevant and you can spend whatever money you need to drop it to 2. So lets keep the same scenario lets serously mess up one single guy. So lets say 9 health boxes, and will use Flame Thrower in place of stunbolt and lets also say we know he will be in bed with his new girl, so we know he won't be rolling around in lot of armor, he won't see it coming, and there will be a window open. So now try it again. So magic lodge rating needs to be force 9 which will also be the force of our ritual.  9 hours later 9+drams of reagent spent, assuming everything goes the same, we are now looking 21 vs 18, so averages say 7 vs 6. This launches our force 9 flame thrower spell at our target. Damage is 10 assume he's got a body of 3, he suffers 9 damage and may or may not be is dead before doc wagon can get there. Regardless he had a really, really bad night, not mention those poor, poor Egyptian cotton sheets.

This example is also far from perfect, we made a decent list of assumptions the biggest being an open window, but if we skip getting to specific on the time, and just settle for when the target is asleep, and we take some steps to ensure a window will be open. It's probably a workable scenario. 

To answer specific questions:
Everyone in the ritual suffers drain, which is the hits from force of ritual x2, hits x2 less reagents spent on drain, If the number of hits the leader got on her
Teamwork Test was higher than her Magic rating, this drain is Physical; otherwise it’s Stun. In this case its stun.  In this case that's 12S drain - reagents spent on drain min 2.
That includes the spotter who doesn't act in the teamwork test.

The question that comes to mind, is what happens when you edge the sealing test. Theoretically cast something like stunbolt with a force of 1, edge the roll, and then pummel the other side with successes. Say an edge of 4, 25 vs 2 using stun bolt, something like 12 successes. Drain basically min and you did 12 vs will stun to guy, and it only cost you 1 reagent a ritual area force 1 and an hour to do it. There in lies the danger imo. Now hopefully I'm missing something and someone can explain why that won't actually work.
 

Mollari:
Sorry for the example, it's just made up.

You mention the following:
you do the ritual casting (see 295+), dropping at 12 drams of reagents probubly a decent amount more to lower the drain.

Then the Seal check or completion check of the ritual is Ritual Magic+Magic[force] vs Force x2

Question 1: Drain
So from your response, the ritual participants do suffer drain on both counts. Once on the spellcasting (which can be lowered with reagents) and then again on the sealing test.

Question 2: Limits
You mention edging to get high hits, but what about force? The lodge and ritual can be high force, but does that mean you can ignore the magic*2 force limit that inhibits all spellcasting and summoning?

Marcus:

--- Quote from: Mollari on ---Sorry for the example, it's just made up.

You mention the following:
you do the ritual casting (see 295+), dropping at 12 drams of reagents probubly a decent amount more to lower the drain.

Then the Seal check or completion check of the ritual is Ritual Magic+Magic[force] vs Force x2

Question 1: Drain
So from your response, the ritual participants do suffer drain on both counts. Once on the spellcasting (which can be lowered with reagents) and then again on the sealing test.

Question 2: Limits
You mention edging to get high hits, but what about force? The lodge and ritual can be high force, but does that mean you can ignore the magic*2 force limit that inhibits all spellcasting and summoning?

--- End quote ---

1 They Suffer drain once at resolution of the seal check. The drain is equal to the number of hits the force*2 gets *2, and its stun or physical based upon the contribution of the teamwork casters. So for force 12 that 24 avg 8 hits*2 = 16 stun- reagents spent. Does that make sense?

2 So remember the biggest actual advantage  of edge is that ignores limits of any test you pre-spend it on. The increase hits are actually purely secondary. So Ritual Spell Casting +Magic [Force] vs Force*2. [Force] is the identified limit so if you ignore force you can apply as many hits as can get to whatever effect that has.
So unless there is something that makes that invalid what i'm saying about edging should work.

Mollari:
To Question 1: Drain and summoning

So you say they experience drain only once at the sealing of the ritual. What about summoning and and drain the summoned spirit inflicts as hits*2? When using a ritual for summoning do they then experience drain?

To Question 2: Force Limit
So whilst breaking the limit is awesome, with things like indirect spells or summons force is a important element of it. So can you use a ritual to bypass the magic*2 limit?

So to these questions. At what points does a caster experience drain when using a ritual summoning and can they summon a spirit greater than magic*2?

The ritual itself may not have a limit other than the lodge, but is the caster still bound to their magic*2 when using spells or summons?

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