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.