Common Rituals

[Taran]

Honestly, though, by that difficulty set literally the entire game is about talking your GM into not shutting down your Declarations. The only thing standing between you and infinite power is your GM saying "don't be a prick".

Given the sketchy definition of prickishness and how unpleasant playing policeman is, that's a bad thing.

By those rules, most declarations, for doing thaumaturgy, are going to be 6. 
"I use Discipline to focus my mind"  (I hate this declaration, btw)

1. unfunny
2. Nothing interesting will come of it
3. boring

So what's your system?

I ask because I have someone in my group who can really push the limits of the written rules.

[Sanctaphrax]

Difficulty 6 is easy, if you can just keep trying.

Generally, I set Thaumaturgy Declaration difficulties at 3 or. Then, for each Declaration you make with a skill, I add 2 to the difficulty of future Declarations with that skill. If you start using every skill on your list, I'll probably raise the base difficulty for the later skills by a bit.

Then I make arbitrary adjustments based on how cool the Declaration sounds.

Basically, my system is just GM discretion with a difficulty increase for repeated Declarations. GM discretion because I can't think of any other method that would work, and scaling difficulty because it limits silliness without making me play policeman and without making Declarations really hard.

[Addicted2aa]

By those rules, most declarations, for doing thaumaturgy, are going to be 6. 
"I use Discipline to focus my mind"  (I hate this declaration, btw)

1. unfunny
2. Nothing interesting will come of it
3. boring

So what's your system?

I ask because I have someone in my group who can really push the limits of the written rules.

That's not a declaration though. A declaration is a fact about the universe. That's not even an assessment, it's just a straight maneuver, which I believe the book suggests as a difficulty 3. They should be able to do that, and do it once. Now that it's done they can't do it again and they need to find something else.

[Sanctaphrax]

By my reading, maneuvers are only possible in certain special situations like conflicts.

Attempts to establish Aspects outside of those situations are Declarations.

The Make Declarations entry on page 269 of YS backs me up on this. But in the interest of fairness, I should point out that this interpretation isn't universal. IIRC UmbraLux disagrees strenuously.

[Mrmdubois]

Yeah, I tend to disagree as well Sancta.

For the example above of a "declaration" of using Discipline to focus your mind, that seems a lot more like pulling a navel-gazing maneuver on yourself than it is that you're declaring a Truth about the world.  I suppose it could be a Truth, but if it is it's a pretty transient one which seems a little weird.

I think it was also mentioned somewhere that to keep the spell caster from hogging the spotlight every time he wants to enact a bit of thaumaturgy that it's not a bad idea to let others join in on the creation of aspects to meet complexity costs.  Which I think is awesome.  Although that might make meeting complexity costs too easy and efficient, but it is true that the point of the game is for everyone to have fun and be involved in telling a story.

Back to the original point of this thread, I was wondering about a passage that's in one of the Dresden books.  He basically says that people like himself are capable of feeling the energy that makes up magic, which makes it a heck of a lot easier to manipulate.  What this seems to mean to me is that regular joe schmoes even if they can't feel that energy are able to manipulate it by following exacting procedures to that end.  So Ritual magic for mortals, either burn Fate points to temporarily pay for the Ritual power, or maybe let them use Thaumaturgy but double all complexity costs.  Let the actual setting up for the ritual draw in power automatically equal to the Conviction score of the person setting it up.  I figure this makes it too dangerous and difficult for Pure Mortals to do most types of thaumaturgy that venture over a certain thresh hold of complexity but it shouldn't be impossible to be able to get a wide range of effects that can be counted as "common" rituals.

[Sanctaphrax]

It's pretty weird, I know, but it's pretty explicitly stated in YS that Thaumaturgy Declarations are often the sort of thing you'd call a Maneuver.

[Tedronai]

It's pretty weird, I know, but it's pretty explicitly stated in YS that Thaumaturgy Declarations are often the sort of thing you'd call a Maneuver.

Which is why I routinely find it necessary to point out that Thaumaturgy Declarations are not what would normally be referred to as Declarations elsewhere in the rules.

[Addicted2aa]

It's pretty weird, I know, but it's pretty explicitly stated in YS that Thaumaturgy Declarations are often the sort of thing you'd call a Maneuver.

Can you point to a specific passage? The one on page 269 says it functions like normal declarations.
It talks about acquiring assets and saying you have circumstances that help, but nothing about navel gazing or other things I would consider purely the place of a Maneuver.

[UmbraLux]

By my reading, maneuvers are only possible in certain special situations like conflicts.

Attempts to establish Aspects outside of those situations are Declarations.

The Make Declarations entry on page 269 of YS backs me up on this. But in the interest of fairness, I should point out that this interpretation isn't universal. IIRC UmbraLux disagrees strenuously.

Here's why I tend to disagree if it matters.  In the end it's just creating or identifying temporary aspects - doesn't really matter what we call it.  However, Fred states it better than I do. 

[Sanctaphrax]

That's a sensible viewpoint, but it directly contradicts what Your Story says.

In Your Story, character actions like buying stuff and browbeating people qualify as Declarations for Thaumaturgy. The same passage also says that Conviction and Discipline are standard skills for Thaumaturgy Declarations. Given what those skills do, it's pretty obvious that your standard power-gathering Declaration is intended to work.

There's no Maneuver option when it comes to gathering power for a ritual. But there is a Declaration one.

You can call those actions Maneuvers if you want, but you can also call them ostriches. It won't change what they are.

[UmbraLux]

There are a lot of things 'not in the book' including most of the content created here. 

[Sanctaphrax]

Well, yes.

But it's important to keep track of what's RAW and what's RATSB (Rules As They Should Be).

[GryMor]

That's a sensible viewpoint, but it directly contradicts what Your Story says.

In Your Story, character actions like buying stuff and browbeating people qualify as Declarations for Thaumaturgy. The same passage also says that Conviction and Discipline are standard skills for Thaumaturgy Declarations. Given what those skills do, it's pretty obvious that your standard power-gathering Declaration is intended to work.

There's no Maneuver option when it comes to gathering power for a ritual. But there is a Declaration one.

You can call those action Maneuvers if you want, but you can also call them ostriches. It won't change what they are.

To remain consistent with the other parts of the rule set, I use Deceleration to indicate something that is already true (but unrelieved) in the now and Maneuver to indicate something that a character makes true by action in the now. A subset of Declarations will consist of actions by the character in the past that are being revealed now.

This could (should?) lead to mechanical differences in how much 'now' time they consume in the current scene, the difficulty to perform them and what sorts of interference are possible in the present. The main place where this matters is in the use of spells to create aspects and tags for use in other spells.

This is actually supported in the rules:

Invoke Aspects
An easy way to ease spellcasting is to invoke
aspects and describe the invocations as being
tied to a part of the preparation process. This
gives you two shifts toward the deficit for every
aspect invoked.

As maneuvers generate aspects (and tags!) and tags are consumed to create invokes that don't eat Fate points.

[Mrmdubois]

You can call those action Maneuvers if you want, but you can also call them ostriches. It won't change what they are.

What do you do?

I ostrich! 

That has me cracking up.

[Taran]

A subset of Declarations will consist of actions by the character in the past that are being revealed now.

The only thing I don't like about this is that a very large thaumaturgical spell can be whipped up in one scene.  Players don't need to aquire pixy dust because they just declared that they already had it.

I always interpreted the declarations as being a summing up of events.  So instead of role-playing out an entire exchange between you and the pixy, you just role the dice and say it happens.  I still like to tell the player it'll take a week to do that, though.  If they role well it'll take less time.  IF they role REALLY well, then maybe they really do already have it.

IT's supposed to take lots of time and prep, but the way declarations work, it takes no time at all.