Ritual Magic
Hey guys. I'm writing a setting for a game I plan to run sometimes soon, although if I'm honest I started writing it years ago and haven't been very consistent with it so it might not come to fruition as soon as I want it to.
I really love the magic system in Genesys, I love the idea of modular spells and being able to define yourself as a caster through talents that make you more specialised in certain things too. I've also had the idea of having certain pathways to developing new spells/spell effects - would depend heavily on the character the magic skill they're using of course but I just love flexibility in magic, and especially with more Wizardly types that they can research and develop more of it.
But one thing I love in magic system is the ability to do crazier, longer form magic. Rituals, essentially. Whilst I love the spell slinging of Genesys I think I'd sorely miss having more weird and arcane forms of doing magic and being limited to simplistic spells. I love the idea that a Wizard can change the weather or otherwise do something unbelievable given the right conditions, participants, resources, time, effort, and knowhow.
Obviously the main concern I think most people would have is that it's essentially just giving magic users an extra thing and that might seem imbalanced. I'm lucky to have a group of players that are all fine with things not being tightly balanced at all, the same mindset I have, and I don't really plan on fine tuning encounters in the campaign, it'll be a much more sandboxy open world type of game.
But I'd appreciate getting some input and opinions on how you'd achieve this, especially if anyone's already done the same. My two initial thoughts are:
Rituals have a level, and you need to have that corresponding level in both the magic skill, and possibly a supplementary magical lore or knowledge skill. And from there it's just a case of, if you find a written ritual or are taught it you can spend time learning and developing the ability to recreate it. Or create your own, which would presumably take more time and resources. They'd be balanced somewhat by being hard to pull off, time-consuming, and resource demanding.
My other thought was having rituals just be talents - not sure that would really fit the vibe though, seems a bit of a lame solution but I guess it'd be the by the book way to do it.
How would you have rituals work? What kind of system for performing them would you use, how would players access them/characters learn them?