A question regarding Rituals. We have some nice concrete rules on how Whispers get them (find a source, start a clock to research it, answer questions as slices get filled in).
My question (more of a “This is how I think it should work, am I on the right track?”) is how they’re used in-game, mechanically speaking. In the QS on page 68 it talks about Magnitude and related factors (range, duration, area), and it seems these are fairly immediate concerns. However, on page 69, it mentions that rituals typically take a downtime action to perform, but it does say that a ritual may be primed during the downtime action and unleashed at a later time.
I’m reminded of the Sorcery power from Amber Diceless, where the character casts a spell (which can take hours, and is best done at their leisure), but leaves out key components (lynchpins), and basically holds the incomplete spell in their mind (or a specially prepared receptacle, like a magic staff or something) until it’s needed, at which time they insert the missing components to suit the particular situation (target, duration, power, etc), thus giving the spell some measure of flexibility.
I just want to be sure I’m reading things right, in that I’ve got the process down properly:
1. A Whisper takes a downtime action to say “I’m casting a ritual”, but doesn’t need to specify the details of it then and there (just as there’s no need to specify exactly what equipment they’re taking with them).
2. The Whisper now has a ritual primed, ready to go off when the time is right.
3. During the job, the Whisper can unleash the effect of the ritual, paying the Stress cost in accordance with the necessary Magnitude and associated factors.
4. Once that’s occurred, the ritual is done (So for example, Shade has cast a ritual in downtime, and during a job he uses it to pull the Ghost Field around him like a cloak of invisibility, and that gets him past the front gate of the manor house and down into the basement. Once that’s done, he can’t then also establish a mental link with the rats around the area to spy on the guards around the corner, as that would be a separate ritual).
It occurs to me that a character can spend multiple downtime actions to have multiple rituals primed and ready to go. In such cases, I would rule that they’re limited as far as how many they can “hold” at one time (maybe their Attune rating?), and the primed rituals are only good for a certain amount of time (like for the next job only). However, I would also allow them to retroactively cast a ritual in a flashback, provided they’re willing to pay the extra Stress.
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All sounds sensible to me. I don’t know whether that’s what John Harper​ had in mind exactly, but that’s how I would have played all of those things.
I’m also reminded a little of the Night Watch series of books where the characters from either watch would collect positive or negative emotions from passers-by in order to use their powers later. It’s been a while since I read them, but I believe they could prep what they might want to do and wait to use them much like you’ve suggested.
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Yeah, that’s feasible, with one caveat:
When you cast a Ritual in downtime, it’s not just a generic “fill in the blanks” ritual that you can customize on the fly during the score. You’ve already specified what it does (by answering the questions when it was created).
John Harper If you know multiple rituals, do you need to say which one you’ve prepped at the time you’re doing downtime? And do you need to specify duration/range/etc or is that done when you actually use it?
You need to say which of your rituals you perform during downtime. If the ritual was created to have variable duration/range, etc. then you can decide those on the fly. Depends on how it was created.
I find it odd/wrong that ritual is the one thing that you need to prepare ahead of time before you even know what heist you are going to do. The entire game centered around the idea that players just jump into action and then use flashbacks to handle actions prepared ahead of time. Personally I find it makes more sense to ignore the downtime action requirement and just make the ritual be a flashback. If the ritual requires special materials (most do) then I guess you could make it a downtime action to acquire the materials as an asset. Then the player can choose to use up the materials as part of a 0 stress flashback or save them for the next heist if they didn’t need to use the ritual.
The way it’s written now, the Whisper would have to guess which ritual they are going to use and then would be encouraged to use it even if they didn’t need to since it was already prepped.
You’re totally free to run it that way, Colin. It’s not much of a hack.
IMO, it’s important to make Rituals a bit troublesome and not super flexible, otherwise they eat the game as the ultimate problem-solving swiss-army-knife. Blades isn’t meant to be a game about ingenious wizards. Magic in the setting is supposed to be limited.
I see the rationale for both so I think I’ll just agree with my players how we’ll play it based on what they want. Thanks for the clarification, John Harper​.
Magic in Blades would be WAY too powerful, IMO, if it were any more flexible than this, and would give Whispers a much more broadly powerful ability than other playbooks.
Rebecca W That would depend on the cost and consequences laid out for each individual ritual though, right? If the negatives were strong enough, you’d end up with more of a glass-cannon style character; powerful when they work right, but very fragile and prone to self-destructing. (I’m aware that this is not exactly what a glass-cannon is in the traditional role play game sense, but it’s close enough I think).
Jason Lee As a general rule, a high cost does not actually make a powerful ability any less powerful, it just makes it more involved to use–which means both the setup and execution require more spotlight time than that required by other players. In most meaningful ways, it really just exacerbates the problem rather than addressing it.
James Etheridge Good point. Hadn’t considered that side of things. Taking too much spotlight for any reason can cause problems between players (rather than characters) so I agree that if it will consistently give that player an excess of spotlight at the expense of other players, that’s an issue.
However, having a few low level rituals that could be used in different situations isn’t necessarily too powerful, especially if you have only prepped one ‘slot’ to be able to use one. Is it that much different to having lots of helpful equipment and being able to choose which to bring out when you need it?
Admittedly, as I often have to say in my posts, I have only read the book and not had a chance to play yet, so I will defer to those with more experience actually playing Blades. Just thought it was an interesting discussion to join in.
As the consequences for casting a ritual are up to the player and GM to sort out, you could easily shift the consequences up more for more powerful rituals. This doesn’t have to mean more spotlight. This could mean that the consequences are more wide spread and effect everyone including the crew. This would make it an interesting quandary for not just the Whisper but the crew. Does the crew allow the Whisper to cast the ritual even though it will taint their liar and draw wraiths to their abode for months?
Also remember that a ritual is in reality little more than a long term project and any player can create game changing things using long term projects. Does the Hound want to bath their pet in demon blood to have it gain demonic powers? They’ll likely need help but sure go ahead make it a long term project. It’ll also likely have some dark drawbacks having a demon pet but that’s half the fun!
Yeah, Colin Fahrion, well said. The whole point is group customization of these things, so as long as everyone enjoys it, go for it. 🙂