I’m running a game now, and loving it – but there is one thing I’ve run into that I don’t get. The Whisper’s Ritual ability just doesn’t make sense to me – what does it do? It says that the Whisper can Study an occult ritual to summon an effect of being, Stress cost dependent of the magnitude of the results – which sounds good, but I can’t follow what it does.
Does it mean that the Whisper can Study a source to learn a ritual? Does the Whisper start out with a ritual? And what is the stress cost based on, in either case? I’ve looked at page 62 for the ritual rules, and they don’t seem to help so I think I’m missing something here. Can anyone help?
So, a catch-all ability for knowing rituals in general? Bypassing the need for a Source to learn rituals from? That makes some sense, but it would make me a little sad if the playbook with the most connection to rituals doesn’t really need to interact with the system for learning them.
Our Whisper has researched a couple of rituals. One allows him to wrap the fabric of the Ghost Field around him like a cloak, which makes him invisible, but also inflicts frostbite damage if he stays that way too long. He’s got another that lets him see through the eyes of an animal and control its movement, and jump from one to another (such as with a swarm of rats), but the longer he stays there the more he starts taking on features or mannerisms of the animal in question.
I’ve always interpreted it as needing the Ritual ability to learn rituals at all, including needing the source — but I’m not at all sure I’m right on that. The way it’s written it may indicate that you can bypass the source if you Study it(replace the source with a LTP involving Study?), or it might just mean that you bypass sources entirely and roll Study for the LTP to learn the ritual as normal.
I’d say for now that it falls under GM fiat — maybe certain rituals can be learned without a source if you have the Ritual ability. Probably wouldn’t let ANY effect be learned without a source, though — players will find ways to mess things up if you give them that kind of freedom. 😛
You must have the Ritual special ability to learn and use rituals.
You start with one known ritual when you take the special ability (answer the ritual questions for it as normal).
Thanks for clarifying – I didn’t get that impression from page 62, so that’s where I’ve been going wrong. Okay, that makes sense now!
Yeah, I accidentally omitted a line from page 62 which explains this.
I’ll add it to the ability description on the Whisper sheet, too.