Learning and Creating Rituals
A Ritualist gains one ritual for free each time they increase their Ritual Discipline. Additional Rituals must either be learnt or created. Rituals require intense effort to learn, so a character can learn or create no more than one ritual in each downtime period.
Learning a Ritual
Anyone who knows a Ritual can teach it to another character who possesses the same Ritual Discipline. This must occur during downtime and requires an action by both the teacher and student to accomplish. The teacher is also likely to require payment.
Creating a Ritual
A ritualist can attempt to develop a new ritual through the right combination of research, experimentation, and mystical insight. This requires at least one downtime action and an extended Mental + Occult test with a target of the Ritual’s Level; the process might also use up resources. This represents the harder and more expensive way to acquire rituals but is good for characters who don’t want to spend time fixing other people’s problems.
Designing a ritual follows the following process:
State what you want the ritual to do (for example: I want a weapon that throws fireballs, I want to walk as a human for a day). In contrast to the swift and flexible effects possible by using a discipline with keywords, a ritual produces a single, fixed effect that takes too long to cast in session but is likely to be much more powerful. The rule that a ritual takes too long to cast in session does not prevent a ritual from creating something that can be used in session.
Set out which ritual discipline the ritual applies to. Unless it is utterly clear, set out a brief idea of why it is something that ritual discipline can do; while an identical/similar discipline level/path/ritual from WW canon is one factor that suggests the intended goal of a ritual is within that discipline’s area, we have adapted some things from canon to reflect differences in our setting so it does not mean it cannot be challenged. Whether or not a ritual is based on an existing canon power, indicate how it fits the ritual disciplines Qualities or make a note that the costs must connect it to the Qualities (for example: Koldunism is elemental magic so can summon fire and the method of using it will be limited by a Quality, Necromancy controls death energy so can temporarily suppress the unlife in a vampire and doing this evokes Liminal Zone).
Set out mechanical effects and limitations. If you are basing it on a canon power/ritual then these are a starting point but must be adapted to reflect both Tenebrae’s ruleset and the framework in which the ritual will be used. For example, being human for a while is like the Benedictio Vitae ritual, but as uptime will always be “a few hours some time during the night” but the OOC session will not, the start/end point should be changed from midnight to dawn/dusk to avoid issues of precisely when in a session midnight occurs)
This includes:Rituals will be cast during DT periods that will span years or even centuries, so costs must be something that will affect entire actions, sacrifice something that requires effort to achieve, apply a meaningful limit to other options while the effects of the ritual is active, impose a limit on the following session, or similarly meaningfully impact the character. For example: “The ritual requires expensive components so can only be cast by characters with at least Resources 3”.
Costs may be on attempting to cast, on successfully casting, or on failing to cast; the default is that the cost will apply on any attempt to cast.
Where a ritual can have an effect on a character’s abilities, the default result will be creating a single token that can be used to apply a single +1 bonus/penalty to a narrow category of endeavour or type of test. Increasing this to grant multiple uses or cover a broader area will require a combination of increased level and increased costs.
Where a ritual does produce a result that can be used more than once per casting, the default will be one token per success. Changing this to a number of tokens equal to one of the caster’s traits will require a combination of increased level and increased costs.
Where a ritual could affect multiple characters at the same time, the same scale will apply as for a ritual that can affect a single target more than once.
Where a ritual affects items/Assets/places rather than characters, the default target is a distinct space or structure no larger than a medium house.
Rituals that do damage to another character are likely to be at least level two. Rituals that do more than simple damage (e.g. Rending) are likely to be at least one level higher than a ritual that has the same limits and uses the same pool but only causes simple damage.
Rituals that have a permanent or other “until ended” effect are likely to be at least level 3.
While rituals with a permanent effect are possible, it is impossible to create a ritual that cannot be reversed or removed if a character expends sufficient effort in some way; however, that possibility can be something that is almost impossible to achieve and does not have to be something that is known even to experts in the ritual discipline. The harder it is to remove the effects of a ritual that does not have a fixed duration, the higher level it must be and higher cost is must require to attempt to cast. If the player chooses to leave the method of removal as unknown, then the ST team will use the level and costs as a guide to the difficulty of discovering and undertaking that method.
Set out the additional benefits (if any) of having multiple ritualists or a group of acolytes assist with a ritual. While the rules limit each casting of a ritual to no more than 4 additional benefits (for rituals with at least 7 Ritualists and a supporting group of Acolytes), a ritual can have a larger or smaller number of potential additional benefits than this. The number of possible additional benefits does not affect the Level or other costs of the ritual.
Each of these additional benefits expands from the solo ritual in a small but significant way. For example:Expand the suitable targets (e.g. apply the ritual to any disembodied soul rather than one of a recently dead person);
Increase the effect of the existing outcome (for example, expand maximum area from medium house to large walled manor);
Improve chances of success (for example, allow the best combination of Attribute + Skill among all the ritualists rather than use the Lead Ritualists);
Reduce the cost (for example, each ritualist loses access to an Asset until the end of next DT rather than the ritualist permanently loses an Asset).
Review benefits, costs, and mechanisms again as a whole to ensure it “feels” both fair and thematic for the discipline.
Where creating a ritual as part of Character Generation, Indicate whether this ritual is a common ritual that could be know—or at least known of—by most practitioners of the Ritual Discipline, a ritual known only to certain people, or a ritual the character has developed themselves.
Optional: provide a fluff write up of how the ritual is cast so the STs know what people who witness it will see and what people who come across the aftermath of the casting might discover. Where a ritual is not based on an existing power, the costs, limitations, and Qualities are a good inspiration for what it might look like. If not provided, the STs will draft one during the final stage of documenting the agreed ritual.
The various steps set out above are an administrative process to balance the ritual; once the ritual is agreed, the rules and fluff can be condensed into a tidy precis that will allow a player/character to share details with others without revealing exactly how it is constructed (for example, a ritual that has a cost based on the Corrupting Quality could have a publicly shareable precis that does not mention it erodes the beneficiary’s/participant’s Road).
Pro-Forma Ritual Description
Ritual Name
In-character description including the group/individual it is limited to if appropriate
Level: X
Effect: mechanical benefits and systems
Duration: how long the benefits last
Cost/Limits: (optional) any negative effects of casting or attempting to cast the ritual, or limitations on using it.
Test: by default Mental + Occult
Possible Group Benefits:
(optional) ways extra ritualists can expand the advantages or reduce the disadvantages of the ritual