I can in fact do this under Sanctaphrax's interpretations (at least as I understand them), I'm immediately burning the tags at the end of the ritual, specifically for the purpose of paying for the 'first scene in which this powers are relevant'. The tags aren't hanging around, though the aspects may be. That is part of why the downtime preparatory thaumaturgy doesn't really work, as you will have had to spend the tags on something specific (or have lost them) by the time downtime ends.
And if you can do "first scene in which these powers are relevant" you can also do "first scene in which ritual XYZ is cast" or the like. Exact same end effect.
Also, with regards to chaining rituals, the sequence:
Xn+1 = S+floor[(Xn-1)*2/3]
is convergent, limited to Xinf < S*3, and generally rather close to S*2 for the values of S in the range of normal practitioners effective lore (even at effective lore of 8, you hit a cap of 22 complexity after 5 iterations, having has to channel and control 96 power).
Except that you don't. Nothing is stopping you from casting twenty rituals that will each hang around for a month and then using them to cast a 40 complexity ritual at the end of the month.
Yes, you end up casting 20+ complexity rituals to provide +2 complexity to a future ritual. You spend a lot of time and in real terms end up wasting a ton of power but you can do it with no real cap.
It rarely makes sense, effectiveness wise, to do more than a single preparatory ritual per practitioner.
No, it rarely makes sense to do more than three or four. Because that's about the most that you can get with a duration long enough to cover the final ritual, But that lets you spend a day to cast a ritual that will hang around for a few weeks with an aspect to be tagged. Do that every day for two weeks and you have +28 complexity to use, giving you a ritual that is good enough to provide 2-3 such aspects and will last a mortal lifetime. Make it last a year and it's good for 4-5 such aspects.
Now do that twenty six times and at the end of the year you can tag all of that for +206 complexity. That is 38 or so such aspects hanging around for a decade, or +76 complexity.
Now do that for ten years and at the end you can tag it all for a ritual that will last a mortal lifetime and provide 408 such aspects, or +816 complexity.
The only limit is the time that you have to invest. If you are willing to blow a decades worth of investment on something then that is more than fine. That's how you get things like the Merlin throwing out a ward during battle that can stalemate the
entire Red Court, Lords of the Outer Night and the Red King included; he burned a decades (or more) worth or stored power to do it. Now what happens if he has to fight Kemmler Reborn three days later?
Nope, it isn't. Killing someone to fuel your magic is a hell of a story to tell.
Not really, at least not if you are actually playing someone with the mind set to really be a good warlock or necromancer. Do you think that Kemmler angst over the fact that he is sacrificing a few hundred people for whatever ritual he wants to do? For him it's "ok, go on to town, grab the first dozen people I see, sacrifice them to put the whole town to sleep, stack them up like cordwood to power uber ritual number 1. now what should I have for dinner?"
Besides, not all people are created equal in this context, either. Getting any regular Joe from the street will not help the necromancer nearly as much as getting someone close to a named character, or even a friend of the PCs.
The rules don't say that. It's just as hard to kill a PC (assuming that the PC is outside of wards and lacking relevant powers) as it is to kill any random vanilla mortal. The reason that most rank and file NPC's don't get consequence tracks is that they are rarely willing to fight to the bitter end and concede early.
I'm not saying you can't, you misunderstand me. I'm saying it's boring. From a mechanical standpoint, you are absolutely right, you could clearly stack yourself up to the rafters with whatever aspects you like. But Fate isn't all about mechanics, it is about narration as well. That's why I try to look at the aspects not as +2 mechanical things, but as objects I use in the ritual. The whole drawing of power comes entirely during the casting of the spell itself.
And from a narrative perspective this works just fine. "I've spent weeks building up this power to cast this major ritual but I really have to get through these wards if I want to prevent the Red Court from doing Y and the only way I can bring those wards down in time is to spend up all my stored up power. But that will delay my ritual and tell everyone within fifty miles that I have this kind of power to throw around. should I do it?" That's just one example. There are tons of ways to have it work in a story.
Time should always be an issue. If not, then there isn't really any tension in the story.
Dresden averages one to two major cases per year. There is tons of down time in there where he could be stacking up useful things for later cases. It's the same kind of thing.
And Killing someone to fuel a spell should have an even bigger impact on the story. It shouldn't just be a convenient way to get the spell done quicker.
That should depend entirely on the story.
That would be where specializations come into play. You do something for a long time, you get good at it.
Your specialization would be "hiking in mountains" the ritual would be "preparing myself to hike at these altitude for a long duration in these temperatures, learning the routes, studying previous peoples hikes, etc."
Not at all. Shoving more power into your spell will require more control of you, or you will go boom. Or maybe look at it this way: You may be able to use your aspects on the casting part of the spell, but you would not be able to use them to increase the complexity of your spell.
Except all complexity is is short hand for the power, control, etc. of the spell. You can slit a guys throat (which fluff wise does nothing but provide power) to reduce complexity. You can slit another guys throat to power the actual casting the the spell and you can dump the backlash on a third guy to control the casting of that spell.
If you have a sufficient power source that reduces complexity.
We also see Dresden in changes; all that is required for any ritual is will, power, and control and all of the external factors just stand in for one of those three things. Everything from the circle to the symbolic link is technically optional (even if practically required) in the fluff of the setting.
And if you have enough time to gather that many aspects to cast the spell, I wouldn't make you roll on casting it anyway. The complexity of a thaumaturgy spell is what I called a lever in my simile before. No matter how you do it, you have to have an understanding of what you are doing. A plan, a shape that you can pour your magic into. That's the interesting part of the spell, and to me it is the important one. If you are then casting the spell under pressure of time, because a horde of bad guys is coming your way, then it is getting interesting, and we will start rolling.
And then I tag "ritual X part 1" through "ritual X part 20" aspects that I have precast along with "power storage X part 1" through "power storage X part 20" to provide the power in one round and "power control X part 1" through "power control X part 20" to provide the control.
Entire massive ritual done at the drop of a hat and in one exchange (or one minute). Why was that doable? Because I spent a decent amount of time previously making it possible.
And that I would simply not allow. Creating aspects or magical equipment in your downtime is covered far and good by enchanted items. If you want more, get more enchanted item slots. If you need something on the fly, leave some potion slots open and declare a night vision potion.
Leaving aside the fact that the enchanted item rules (and potion rules) suck, that makes no sense. If you can put some aspect on one character to trigger later then you can put some aspect on yourself to trigger later. Whether that aspect is good or bad for that character is irrelevant.
Again, this is already covered with focus items.
Which doesn't really matter.
Anything like you described above is downright cheating.
Which is what magic is all about. Tracking someone after an hour through an entire major metropolis with nothing more than a single hair is "cheating" as well.
Besides, where do you want to store all that power? Harry got a headache from the power he was able to draw in within one minute. His head would explode from a weeks worth, let alone a year
Because Harry was storing that power in his head and wasn't drawing it through ritual, making a battery, or anything else. Where you store it and how you store it depends entirely upon the table and the wizard.
Items? Let's say every aspect is equal to an enchanted item slot, that means those are 100 item slots. There is box on page 281 that suggests sizes for enchanted items. If we scale this up to 100 item slots (roughly doubling in size every 4 slots), we are at about the size of a mid sized town. Or he could carry 100 rings, which doesn't make it any more plausible.
Again, the rules should treat identical situations identically. If you can dump a curse on someone to give them a hundred +2 "Bad Luck" aspects that will last ten years (and you explicitly can do this) then you can do the exact same thing with "good luck" aspects or any other aspect.
I know what you mean, but to me, that is a big deal.
And like I said above, while I would allow "Empowered Ruby" to power the spell, I would not necessarily allow it to add to the complexity.
And that shows a distinct misunderstanding of what complexity represents. That the rules let you slit a persons throat to reduce complexity; or tap a thunderstorm; or tap a leyline (all of which are called out as examples of ways to reduce complexity) means that "Empowered Ruby" is just as viable a choice.
+2 Complexity comes just as easily from "rare cross that was blessed by a saint and is touched with true faith" as from "unplugged the telephone to remove distractions". Both can be provided by making declarations with skill rolls (say Resources and Discipline) and both reduce complexity by +2 but they they provide totally different things story wise. One is maybe the critical component of the ritual so that you attack ritual can get through the Outsiders toughness while the other is just removing one potential distraction when you get around to casting the ritual.
