Danger has not, agreed. Predictability has. If the vis is unpredictable, new situations may arise that are not covered by the routine, and the caster has to improvise.
Where are the rules for ceremonial casting of formulaic spells? It is not in core.
First, IMO, one very important point was covered by @ezzelino above:
How many published magi have even a single level of Mastery in Aegis? Or, actually, any ritual?
Because, if it is as rare as it seems, we should have 2 situations:
So, the situation that people with the "1 point eliminates botch" point of view want to avoid.
Meaning either:
While I'm sensible to the "Aegis shouldn't botch" arguments, I'm not keen on the "Mastery 1 avoids them", if only because it strengthens (again) Flawless Magic.
Conversely, the "risky" rituals make Mercurian Magic more useful. That, IMO, is a good thing.
Also, I would like to have more ritual-specific masteries.
So, IMO, @Red-Shadow-Claws idea of a Mastery that further reduces the number of botch dices for Rituals is a good idea.
But this is not enough.
And I'm late and gotta go!
I think you miss the possibility that
Are there enough canon magi with ritual mastery to account for these few? I have not counted myself. Maybe the canon magi are not representative of the population? Either way, if (3) is true, we are covered by the law of small numbers, and any inference based on canon representation is going to be error-prone.
Do note that even if my suggested Mastery is approved, Mercurian Magic is off the gate better than Flawless Magic for Rituals above level 20, since it reduces the botch dice by 3+. I like my suggestion because it makes both valid for ritual casters, each for various reasons.
Flawless is better, since you can always petition one of the Mercurian cults to initiate Mercurian later.
</tongue in cheek>
Flawless still takes away seasons of practice on a specific ritual.
Sure, but if you want to be a munchkin ritualist, you need to stack all you can get.
The problem with your suggestion is that we do have full stats of magi, like Falke from GotF or Nikola from TtA, who canonically cast high-level Rituals every year (with dire repercussions should they fail). And they sport no Mastery, no Gold Cord, no botch-reducing Virtues.
I agree that that is suspicious.
Now I do not think that magi are able to gauge the botch risk accurately. Falke, casting a 12th magnitude ritual once per year, may make a botch every 20 years and a double botch every 40 years on average, but she probably does not know. When the first double botch comes up, it is just bad luck. When the second double botch comes up, it was probably time to pass he mantle on anyway.
Ritual healers is a different kettle of fish. They may well cast rituals a dozen times within a year. and within a decade, they would have botched a dozen times on average, including several double botches. If these magi do not have any botch reducing traits I would be really suspicious,
Someone gently reminded me it doesn't apply for rituals done through a wizard's vigil because of penetration, which is typically the case for an Aegis - you would need several Mercurians to reduce the vis cost.
I do think that sources of frequent botches would be widely known in the Order. Most magi would have a sense that no matter how cautiously you cast fatiguing spontaneous magic, you'll lose control (i.e. botch) once every several dozen castings. Similarly, if Rituals always involved a ton of botch dice except for those magi who are exceptionally careful, diligent in mastering them etc. it should be widely known that you can't expect to cast a high-level ritual a score times without losing control. Remember that we see the abstraction of the die roll, but a magus has a much better sense of what the risks are, when he almost botched etc. (incidentally, Falke would botch every 13-14 castings, not every 20).
Well, in AtT there's Monica Ierne of Tremere, a "combat maga" who specializes in Cr,Re,Co,Te (and thus knows multiple healing rituals). I think she's a good case because as a Tremere Archmage and Legata vis certainly isn't her limiting factor, and at her age (90) and warping score (6(10)) she has a bunch of Mastered spells and a fair incentive to try to avoid Twilight. But she has no Mastery score in Rituals (or botch-reducing Virtues).
To some extent, yes, but the, they are clumsy and I can do better attitude is not to be neglected.
To begin with I don't think the mathematics of the time would support the kind of statistical analysis that we are applying, but I do think magi would have the general sense of how likely botches were, and most especially how dangerous, and that both of these would scale with the power of the ritual involved.
I think we also need to step back here a moment and acknowledge that the game designers and authors are also fallible, and that people wo are thinking about ways to tell an interesting story for a game may not always catch the long term statistical implications of their mechanisms. Personally until something else comes forth I plan to use my house rule above, where being involved in the exact same ritual repeatedly (same target for the same basic effect every time) will make botches less likely- it does not change the storytelling dynamics but patches the long term implications. I do think I will allow the same special circumstances expertise to apply to essentially the same spell at differing magnitudes as well.
This just sounds like spell mastery with extra steps..
In short, /agree with Ezzelino.
So, I see the base being "ritual casting is stressfull, with lots of botch dices, and this occurs frequently enough".
I believe this has a nice side effect, in that it makes ritual a bigger deal, something you don't do lightly, and thus, decrease the likelihood of stat-boosting rituals being widely used.
Now, because I don't think it is fun to play, I also believe there should be a way for dedicated players to massively decrease, if not cancel, the botch dices.
As noted, the primary way, IMO, should be Mercurian Magic, who (still IMO) would welcome the added utility. It just needs to be changed so that only the lead caster needs the virtue.
As a test, if we have a lvl 50 Aegis. That's 10 botch dices. Cut to 5 by MM. A gold cord + mastery of 3 is enough to put them down to 2. I'd say mission accomplished.
Now, looking at Mastery.
I'd say we would need something like
Ritual Caster: When casting a ritual, decrease the botch dices due to the Vis used by your Mastery level.
So, someone with FFM and gold cord 2 could start all rituals with -2 -1 (mastery) - 1 (ritual mastery) = -4 botch dices. Enough for most starting magi with their Aegis.
If investing 1 season on Mastery (same as our Mercurian above), these go to -2 -2 (mastery level) -2 (ritual caster) = -6. Not as good as MM for casting the Aegis, but this is a feature, not a bug.
Note that changing Ritual Caster to, say "*Decrease botch dices from Vis by 2 each time this virtue is taken" is also quite efficient. decrease by 3 if you want.
In short: The above may be messy, but the idea is to make MM better for rituals (ideally, better than FFM), give mastery options for rituals AND allow players to not worry (much) about botching
It relates, but its hyper-focused, doesn't generate the 'special effects' of mastery, does not aid the casting itself, and very significantly does not require seasons of study to achieve, and with very simple planning can make passing the torch for such spells quite safe while at the same time allowing aegis botches to be a potential source of storytelling for a young covenant.
Basically every time you cast a ritual spell on a specific target you get one level of ritual experience (spell) (target) such that each successive time you cast that spell on that target you would reduce the botch dice you roll in the case you roll a zero by 1. This experience is also gained by anyone supporting the casting with a wizards vigil or related spell.
Pointing out things like "None of the Magi in the books have Spell Mastery in Rituals" is more an example of things that the game designers did not think about/calculate out. There are lots of things in RAW, some going all the way back to the 1st edition, which when actually calculated out do not make sense or line up with the actual mechanics.
The actual lifespan of Magi should be on average 20~30 years longer than by RAW by the mechanics, with the accepted average having been in place mostly since the first edition. Also the most common form of death would switch from Final Twilight to Failed Longevity Ritual side effects.
The ratio of Gifted to non-Gifted should be better than the 1:10k that it has been since at least 2nd edition. At that ratio there is not enough Gifted to support the current population of the Order and other groups which require Gifted individuals without some drastic changes (the Order setting up a specific task force focused on mass testing and collecting of Gifted children across all of ME). A 1:5k ratio would be enough to allow the current "culture as written" for the gaining of Gifted children to use as an apprentice.
The vast number of "Special Snowflake" groups in the Order is such that most of them could only support a hand full of members, if half of the total Order was a member of a "Special Snowflake" group. So in most games 90% of them do not exist.
Yes many of these things date back to older editions, but they are things in which the mathematics was never worked out. The fact that Order wide there are many Rituals cast on a regular basis which would result in a whole mess of botches under the current rules was never worked out before published Magi were created and so none of them are designed to avoid the botches in the least.
Ars Magica is not alone in games in which the "Crunch" does not match the "Fluff" when played out, resulting in pre-made characters/NPCs which are not very good. Many game designers know this is common and do not provide stats for NPCs other than cannon fodder.
That's 10 botch dice for the vis, plus whatever your storyteller deems to be the regular number of botch dice that the situation calls for. As the ritual is outdoors and cast on the winter solstice, the weather could play a factor and increase that with snow / wind, for example. Also the Aegis is typically only good as it's penetration, and casters rarely can pull off a level 50 aegis with 50 penetration on their own, even with magical focus. Which means they need to turn to Wizard's Vigil, which will increase the number of botch dice by the number of participants, and will make the Mercurian magic virtue impotent since most covenants will rarely have 3-5 Mercurian on hand for the virtue to apply - it explicitly fails to reduce vis requirements for rituals cast with a vigil unless everyone has the virtue. Of course, the virtue is very helpful on level 20 aegis rituals.
I think that the most parsimonious change that makes everything work is to remove the text on p.81:
The magnitude of Ritual spells, and the need to incorporate many elements, mean that they are always cast using a stress die.
possibly adding for clarity, immediately after the Ritual Casting Total formula above, the note:
The type of die rolled depends on the situation, as with Formulaic spells.
Then:
Yes it is changing 2 lines, it is also a massive change to the rules.