Hi everyone, was just thinking of a potentially interesting build for a genius inventor magus who has an incredibly strong understanding of magical theory but struggles to apply the theory when casting spells themself. Specifically, I would like the character to be capable of casting ritual magic as I think such a character would find it easier to draw upon their gift from the careful and calculated process of casting a ritual spell.
Unless I'm missing something there doesn't seem to be an appropriate combination of flaws in the books that would make this possible:
There is the Difficult Spontaneous Magic (ArM P53)/Weak Spontaneous magic (ArM P61) combination that makes spontaneous magic impossible for a character.
And Rigid Caster (ArM P59) makes Ritual casting impossible.
However, I can't find an equivalent for formulaic magic, Unstructured caster (ArM P60) is the closest, but it includes the limitation that "you may not learn ritual spells at all."
Am I missing something, or would such a character effectively need to be house ruled in order to exist?
In the Errata there is a new Flaw that very much fits your concept:
Ceremonial Spontaneous Magic
Minor, Hermetic
You need time and effort to focus your Spontaneous magic. You can only cast Spontaneous spells using the rules for Ceremonial Casting (page 83). This Flaw is not compatible with Difficult Spontaneous Magic or Weak Spontaneous Magic.
The flaw fits Mercurian Magic (ArM5 p.46, also errataed) very well, too.
No formulaic magic at all, but excelling at ritual magic is in itself highly unlikely: ritual magic is in most chapters of ArM5 a part of formulaic magic.
But there is (p.59) Slow Caster in ArM5, which appears to fit and be still playable.
Look at the many Vim spells typically needed to handle the vis used in rituals and the lab before you cripple the character any further.
Honestly just house rule it. The concept fits into my Rhine game idea, if I ever run it, and I'd just call it a major flaw. The rules were made for man, man was not made for the rules.
Your mage might just need to know, what kind of vis and how many pawns they are handling in a ritual or lab project. They also might have to extract vis from objects or whatever kind of 'monsters' and check it afterwards. They should control vis obtained in bargains. And so on ...
Your mage might just need to know, what kind of vis and how many pawns they are handling in a ritual or lab project
Within a covenant it would be pretty exceptional to be unable to know what type of vis you are handling.
Either because it would have been taken from the covenant stocks of vis where it would be appropriately labelled, or you could even get one of the other Magi to check it for you. All else failed you could invest such an effect into an item to use at will.
There are a number of fairly trivial ways to solve this problem that don't require that the Magi themself be capable of casting the relevant spell.
You need to houserule things. I would do it by changing Unstructured Caster into the following flaw:
Ritualist
(Major, Hermetic)
You cast all formulaic spells as though they were ritual
spells (including the need for vis).
You cast ritual and spontaneous spells normally.
As written I think Unstructured Caster is a bit too harsh, and as noted there is no flaw or combination of flaws that specifically prevent casting of formulaic spells without also affecting other types of spells.
I think the above would fix both these problems.
Best provide not just a suite of InVi effects for the day-to-day business of being a mage, but also a ReCo effect to escape to safety from those situations in which the mage would be pretty helpless otherwise.
Before having covered these bases, the mage will heavily rely on their covenant. But you know this already.
You could probably fake it with Necessary Condition. While a NC should be something simple, it doesn't have to be. Your NC could be "take 15 minutes of ritual per magnitude" to cast the spell. This is easily fulfilled by Ritual magics and Ceremonial Casting, but you can also do Formulaic Spells by spending the time required (just not the vis). The only difference between Formulaic and Ritual spells for this magus is the requirement for Vis.
Alternatively, just have the magus disdain non-Ritual spells and take the combo that blocks Spontaneous magic. He spends all his time making magic items or learning and mastering Ritual spells. If it isn't ritual magic, it's not worth doing. This could be considered a Delusion.
To echo what others have said, note that Ritual spells have four major limitations:
they can only be cast ceremonially.
they cost a lot of vis.
they cannot be improvised (like formulaic spells, unlike spontaneous magic).
they must be Level 20 or higher.
It's not 100% clear from your description whether you want all your magus' spellcasting to suffer from all the four limitations above.
From your description it seems to me that, when you say "I would like the character to be capable of casting ritual magic as I think such a character would find it easier to draw upon their gift from the careful and calculated process of casting a ritual spell", you are thinking of a magus who's only subject to Limitation 1: he can only cast spells through the careful and calculated process of ceremonial magic - including plain formulaic spells (that still do not require vis) and spontaneous spells (that can still be improvised). I'd call that, by itself, a Necessary Condition or a Restriction, so a single Major Flaw (note that if it only applies to Spontaneous spells, it's a Minor Flaw, just like the much more lenient Slow Caster is a Minor Flaw).
If instead you truly want all four limitations to apply to your magus, I'd say such crippling is worth by itself the "standard" 10 points of Flaws. Frankly, I think such a character is better suited as an NPC than as a PC.
Many people proposed various ways to emulate the inability to perform anything else but ritual and/or ceremonial casting.
To balance that, you might want to discuss with your troupe if Major Magical Focus: Ritual would be acceptable. Tremere have minor Magical Focus: certamen - which arguably is powerful, but in very limited circumstances, so worth a minor focus. Rituals are more frequent and more useful than Certamen in day to day activity, so Major Magical Focus could still be considered too generous - up to your Saga to clear that point, after all, virtus availability will be a strong limiting factor.
Considering the high vis consumption this mage will go through, Hermetic and Philosophic alchemy would be a great, natural development - and fits the theme: a slow, well-controlled process to extract vis.
Cautious sorcerer would also be a good virtue to have to reduce the number of botch dices due to the large amount of handled paws.
