Repeat Rituals

[ways and means]

If the player has done the same high powered ritual several times should I just handwave the complexity issue as he obviously knows what he is doing?

[Saedar]

I wouldn't. You never know when something could go wrong, especially if he is channeling only one shift of power at a time. It could take awhile and something might take issue with the gathering power.

Also, what kind of complexity are we talking here?

[ways and means]

Its a 30 shift area of affect fireball stored in a a rose quartz stone which works like a proximity mine so 34 complexity. Because of focus items and lawbreaker stunts he has a control of 11 so can summon 7 shifts safely each turn so we are talking 5 short scenes I think. 

[devonapple]

Not really. One of the balancing factors of large rituals like this is that they cost "plot" to perform. A player is either skipping scenes, making new scenes, or otherwise complicating his life, in order to create these epic game effects.

Skipping scenes is the easiest way to handwave the Complexity, but it is going to cost a lot of game time, potentially sidelining the caster for a scenario or two (weeks or months of gameplay) while the other players go on. As such, it is a boring option.

[MorkaisChosen]

If you need an IC explanation for why he can't keep doing it- it takes a lot of components, and they're used up every time.

[ways and means]

Running it like this dosen't disadvantage the player it just means that it takes 5 minutes out of gameplay each time he decides to do the spell as the complexity for him is a dawdle (the whole party are willing to take minor concequences to help him out, all his apects are fire related, he knows how to do naval gazing manouvres and he has access to a a library full of pyromantic literature and a spirit of flame and air as a familiar).

[bibliophile20]

Especially since it's fire, no, I'd say that he can't ever "take 10" and just do it as a routine job.  You're talking about creating what amounts to an HE-firebomb grenade; that's the sort of ticklish operation where there's always this little voice in the back of your head going, "Okay, did I forget anything?  I don't think so... but am I sure?"  With something that powerful, it should never become rote.

[sinker]

Just to be clear W&M, are you talking about skipping the preparation step or the whole spell?

If you want to skip the prep then just have a proscribed way that it works. The caster tells you he wants to do the ritual and you go "Alright, you, you and you take a consequence, you make a resources roll, you make two discipline rolls and someone pony up the Fate." Bam, you're done.

If there's no failure chance then there's no reason to have him go through the process of casting either. One of the core tenants of any game is if there's no chance of failure, no interesting way that the failure could occur, or no plot importance to failing then there's no reason for a roll. I would however suggest that you find a reason to make it interesting though, because otherwise it's simply going to lose any plot impact whatsoever and the game will start to slow and become boring.

[Haru]

The only limiting condition on thaumaturgy is the preparation part. If you wave that, you can just nuke everyone and everything with that 30 shift fireball, and quite frankly, that would be pretty lame (unless that becomes part of the story, but then the story would be about the wardens trying to stop that madman with the magical grenade).

I thought about it a while ago, and back then I thought, that I might be good with keeping the shifts that would be logical to keep from the preparation, for example Lore rolls to get the specifics of a magical circle, contacts for someone to show you how to get to a specific location, etc.. But there is no preparation roll, you can't justify to do again.

If Lore discovered the specifics of a magic circle, you would still have to draw it again, still using Lore.
With contacts, maybe you need to talk some people into letting you to that location again, or you know the location, but would have to use resources now, because you need to bribe someone to get in.

Any other way, the spell becomes a plot device, and the story should change to how everyone else reacts to it.

[Half-Sylph Grifter]

First, I agree that you shouldn't skip the preparation part. Also, if it's a ritual, he should be performing it where the landmine needs to be set. If it's stored as a crystal that should be treated as a potion (of presumably significantly lesser power). This also provides a good reason to not handwave the prep as the character and team need to keep the area secure while they perform the ritual allowing for more interesting scenes.

[noclue]

And that really is the question. Do you have any interesting ideas to do with the scenes? If he's just going to wait out a few scenes with little consequence, just have him narrate doing stuff to get the ritual off. If you've got schemes that are going to be worse because he's not around, then play through those. Threaten his friends, capture his loved ones, make him wish he was there to stop you. Or, if not, just cut to the spell casting.

[Belial666]

Potions can be augmented by Fate Points and aspect tags during preparation just like rituals can. While they are usually more limited than rituals, 30 shifts is still pretty doable and a master potioner not only can have more than one slot (and thus store more than one nuke) but if he has a Frequency specialization or focus, each of his nukes will be usable multiple times.


Have you considered having him use potion rules instead of ritual rules for it? It resolves both your question about whether the ritual needs to be repeated every time and adresses his need to have multiple nukes at hand.

[crusher_bob]

It would help slightly if you said more explicitly what you want to limit.

Is the problem something like:
Over the past month of down time, I had nothing better to do, so I made a crate full of magical bombs.  Now, whenever we get in a fight, we can just throw (an almost limitless number of) magical bombs at it until it goes away.

Or

Oh noes! we are surrounded by the bad guys again.  Strangely, the place where we are trapped once again has enough parts for us to assemble a fully working armored car (A-Team reference, for you young people).  You guys get started on that while I whip up a few magical bombs.

Or

The state of PCistan must warn you that our words are backed up by magical bombs!  We've also reanimated Gandhi's corpse to make a frowny face at you to help drive the point home.

Or

We've landed in yet another fiendishly complex situation the GM has spend many hours of prep time developing!  Don't worry, I figure a few magical bombs will get us out of it toot suite.

-----------------

Here's the house rules I came up with for thaumaturgy, which make prep times for big thaumaturgy the limiting factor.  This doesn't really solve the "over a month of downtime I made several" problem.  But that sounds either like something you have to accept that the PCs at this power level can do, or a problem that should be discussed above the table.

Ad yes, having a lot of hanging spell effects would seem to be more in the realm of potions, not the realm of 'free' thaumaturgy stuff.

[mithrandirthewhite]

Couldnt you also make a drain effect for speeding up the ritual? As in he gets to shorten the ritual and it becomes routine, however he has to spend more power into the ritual to garuntee success.
@ bibliophile20: THis is compleatly off topic, but where did you find your avatar? Iv looked for that pic and I cannot find it.

[ways and means]

What I was asking was as the rolls have no real meaning (can't be failed due to silly skill levels and stunts) was there any point in rolling them when they take up game time.   

As for the spell is a potion arguement that is purely a matter of interpretation and I ruled that the ritual was not a potion because it had a limited duration unlike potions. The duration also limits the abuse of this ability as given time limitations of the ritual you are dealing with only one mini-nuke in any one day and battle.