Sorcery, whether through the miracles of the Lance or the blood magic of the Circle, is a powerful force in Kindred society, but it must also be used carefully, as it often engenders suspicion and paranoia.
This blog post will most likely be of interest to those players whose characters have or are planning on developing sorcery in game.
We are going to be playtesting a slightly modified version of the rules from the book Blood Sorcery, specifically the system for themes and improvised casting. For a more detailed explanation of these mechanics, please read the first chapter in Blood Sorcery or speak to the Dark Metropolis STs. For now, this is a provisional system, as the Blood Sorcery rules require some adaptation for live play, so we’re interested in any feedback you might have.
Please send any feedback or queries to our Dark Metropolis e-mail address:
shadesofnorwichdarkmetropolis@gmail.com
Sorcery, Themes and Rituals
Your Crúac or Theban Sorcery dots now give you access to dots of ‘themes’, different areas of magical influence that can be combined to create a wide range of effects. There are some limits to what they can do, which we’ll go into later.
There are five themes, four of which are considered ‘favoured’ themes by practitioners of Theban Sorcery and Crúac. You might notice these are different to the favoured themes in the Blood Sorcery book. They are rated 1-5, but you can’t have any theme at a higher rating than your dots of Theban Sorcery or Crúac.
The themes are:
Creation (favoured by the Circle of the Crone)
Destruction
Divination (favoured by the Circle of the Crone)
Protection (favoured by the Lancea et Sanctum)
Transmutation (favoured by the Lancea et Sanctum)
Themes can be used to improvise effects or rituals can be learned that codify them. Themes can be combined to create more complex effects, but this increases the number of successes required to successfully cast them.
Buying Sorcery
Your first dot of Crúac or Theban Sorcery gives you 3 dots of themes, 2 of which must be taken in your favoured themes and 1 of which may be taken from any theme. You also get a ritual for free with your first dot of a sorcery style.
After the first dot, each dot you buy in Crúac or Theban Sorcery gives you one free dot of themes as well as increasing the ‘cap’ on your highest theme. Your free theme dot still has to be in a favoured theme.
Every time you gain a dot of themes (including when you get a free dot from buying your sorcery up) you get a free ritual of that theme and level as well.
You can also buy dots of themes and individual rituals separately for the following costs:
Crúac/Theban Sorcery – 4xp per dot (as in the current system – this gives you a free dot of a theme and a free ritual)
Themes – 2xp per dot (this gives you a free ritual)
Rituals – 1xp per ritual
Destruction has to be purchased independently of developing the sorcery discipline as it is favoured by neither sorcery type.
If you are a member of the Circle of the Crone or the Lancea Sanctum with a dot of status, you are able to learn that covenant’s sorcery without a teacher. However, it still requires an action to learn. If you have a mentor who can teach Crúac or Theban Sorcery, you may use their action instead of one of yours as they teach you.
If you wish to learn a ritual without a teacher, you will need to improvise the ritual first, as you experiment and work out how to do it.
If you wish to codify an improvised effect into a learned ritual that does not already exist, please e-mail the ST team before you attempt to do so and we can discuss what the mechanics would involve.
Improvised magic is entirely possible in uptime, and we encourage players to be creative, but please bear in mind that the ST team may need some time to briefly discuss the mechanics and that an improvised ritual may not have the same effect twice: since your character is going directly to the source and cobbling something together, the mechanics may change across different games (if the STs decide they should work differently).
We will be providing a ‘spellbook’ of sorts for Theban Sorcery and Crúac, with conversions of rituals that have been established in
Vampire: the Requiem and
Blood and Smoke, and we’ll try to keep adding to it as new rituals are established by PCs.
We currently have no plans to introduce variants of Crúac and Theban Sorcery for PCs or other kinds of sorcery (such as Sethite Crúac, Spirit Crúac or the Requiem for Rome variants) but if you are interested in pursuing any of these or see an interesting effect that can be reflavoured for these rules, please e-mail us about it.
Performing Rituals and Improvised Effects
Roleplaying Rituals
Roleplaying rituals is something that we encourage – in fact, we will be awarding bonus dice for rituals that are dramatic, cool and well phys-repped. If it adds to the game, we’d love to see it. That said, please bear in mind that some aspects of ritual casting may be inappropriate for hired rooms (no fake blood on the floor, please) and that there may be things that upset other player characters. We are playing a horror game with ritual sorcery, so there are certain things that will be present, but please be understanding of other players’ comfort levels. If there is anything you are concerned might upset other players, please talk to an ST, who can make an OoC announcement to make sure people are given fair warning.
Please bear the motifs for the sorcery styles in mind when deciding on how to roleplay a ritual (see below).
Casting
Before casting, you’ll need to make sure you’ve assembled the sacrifice (Vitae for Crúac, Willpower and a physical object as a focus for Theban Sorcery) and have your intended roleplay ready. If you’re improvising a ritual, you must talk to the STs about the effect you’re trying to cast before you start roleplaying it.
Sacrifice
Sorcery requires sacrifice.
Crúac always requires the amount of Vitae for the ritual equal to the highest theme involved. The first point of Vitae is absorbed into the ritualist’s body to power the ritual, the rest must be spilled or shed. Bonus dice can be gained by spilling extra blood in addition to the ritual’s requirements.
Theban Sorcery requires only one point of willpower but also an appropriate focus for the ritual, which crumbles to ashes when the ritual is finished. The more powerful the ritual, the more difficult to obtain the focus will be. Extra dice can be gained by meditating before the ritual starts.
Casting Known Rituals
Known rituals will be cast with a pool dependent on the sorcery type:
Manipulation + Occult + Crúac
OR
Intelligence + Academics + Theban Sorcery
(This is a change from the
Blood Sorcery book)
We will not be implementing the additional time for bonus dice rule from
Blood Sorcery, as we do not see this as adding to the game.
Casting is always considered an extended action but each roll for a known ritual only takes one turn.
Casting Improvised Effects
Improvised rituals have a pool based on the theme and kind of sorcery being used. Please check with an ST about the pool for a theme, but as a rule of thumb, the pool will be attribute + skill + the highest theme. Improvised Crúac rituals will use a social attribute (Presence, Manipulation or Composure) and Theban Sorcery will use a mental attribute (Intelligence,Wits or Resolve). However, the skill used will vary depending on the theme.
Casting is always considered an extended action but each roll for an improvised effect takes one minute.
Improvised effects may change from game to game as the STs will not be able to discuss the pros and cons of any effect fully during uptime, and may rule that it will not work the same way a second time.
Target Successes
Bonuses for good roleplay and ritual, penalties for distractions such as combat and potential blood ties are as outlined in the
Blood and Smoke sorcery section.
The number of successes required is equal to the total dots of themes involved in the ritual (so a ritual that involves 5 dots of Creation has the same difficulty as a ritual that involves 3 dots of Creation and 2 dots of Divination).
There are ritual factors that can influence the target number for range, number of targets, potency, size. Any caster can increase the number of successes required by adding these factors. The rolls end as soon as the target successes have been reached – with improvised casting, any additional successes gained are lost but with known rituals, additional successes can be used on ritual factors so they are not lost.
Resistance
If the number of successes achieved on a ritual matters e.g. inflicting wounds or penalties, the roll for the casting is reduced by Composure against Crúac and Resolve against Theban Sorcery. Someone affected by a ritual knows that something weird is going on. If they are aware that the ritual is targeting them, they can spend Willpower to add to this resistance trait.
If the effect of a ritual is a question of success or failure, e.g. divining a lie, the target rolls with Resistance Attribute + Blood Potency. Dramatic failure means the target cannot make any more resistance rolls from rituals from the caster within the same scene.
Factors
The tables for these are in the Blood Sorcery rules. It is assumed that all rituals by default affect only a 1 yard radius/5 cubic yards volume, last 1 turn, affect 1 target, act at Potency 1, are used at touch range, and affect something that is size 20 or smaller.
Going above these adds successes to the difficulty you are trying to achieve. For instance, trying to affect 2 targets at line of sight for the caster’s Crúac or Theban Sorcery rating in turns would add 3 successes to the number of successes you need to achieve.
Radius – how many yards radius or cubic the effect covers
Duration – how long the effect lasts
Number of Targets – how many targets the effect targets
Potency – how strong the ritual is. This is usually the major factor in a spell but the default is 1 potency.
Size – used to affect very large targets
Range – the range the effect can be used at.
We have changed the Range factors to the following:
Touch +0 successes
Line of sight +1 success
Same District + 2 successes
Same Regency + 3 successes
Same City + 4 successes
In addition to this, anything cast at longer than Line of sight range requires a sympathetic channel of some kind, here defined as a part of the person (e.g. hair, skin, blood, fingernails), a valued possession of the person or a blood connection via blood sympathy.
Motifs
Motifs are flavour aspects of sorcery that rituals of the two types should follow. They are not mechanical, but a ritual’s performance must have at least some reference to these motifs to be appropriate. If your ritual casting actively includes motifs that are antithetical to these, you may have penalties or even not be able to attempt the ritual.
Crúac’s motifs are
corrupting, wild and
pagan.
Theban Sorcery’s motifs are
judgemental,
holy and
deliberate.
If you’re unsure about how you can use these motifs, or any other aspect of ritual casting, come and talk to the STs.
Limitations
Blood Sorcery cannot:
- Create Vitae or nourishing food (though it can rip Vitae out of other people)
- Completely remove the effects of banes, only mitigate or provide defence against them
- Counter other magic (though can provide bonuses to resist it)
- Create permanent effects
- Reach between ephemeral realms – while an effect might be able to target a spirit or a ghost that is materialised or in the same realm as the caster, they cannot reach across the realms
Please note: we are aware that there is the potential for sorcery to replicate effects of the Coils of the Dragon. The Coils of the Dragon represent a fairly extreme modification of the Kindred nature and as such cannot be replicated exactly by sorcery – any sorcery that attempts to do so will likely end up with a less powerful effect in the same vein. In addition to this, sorcery is always going to be a less efficient way of producing these effects as the Coils of the Dragon do not require activation in the same way.
The same is true for areas of overlap with other disciplines (particularly Animalism and Auspex) – we have compared the similar effects and sorcery might end up with a similar result but is much more costly and less powerful at the same level. If you do have any concerns about this, however, please let us know.
Example
Perry buys his first dot of Theban Sorcery for 4 Experiences. He has to take a dot each of Protection and Transmutation, and chooses to put his final dot into Divination.
He chooses his free ritual as Vitae Reliquary (Transmutation 1).
So, Perry has Protection 1, Transmutation 1 and Divination 1 and the Vitae Reliquary ritual. He decides to buy up to Theban Sorcery 2 for 4 Experiences, and puts the free dot he gets into Transmutation. He takes Curse of Babel (Transmutation 2) as his free ritual.
He also wants Blood Scourge, however, which is Transmutation 1, Destruction 1, so he spends 2 Experiences on Destruction 1 and uses the free ritual he gets from that to gain the 1-dot version of Blandishment of Sin (Destruction 1). He now has the themes to use the Blood Scourge ritual, so he could if he wished improvise it, but his pool is potentially going to be better (and the ritual will take less time, so it will be usable in combat) if he buys it as a ritual. He spends 1 Experience to buy the Blood Scourge ritual and can perform it with 1 turn per roll rather than 1 minute per roll.
After spending 10 Experiences, he has the following:
Theban Sorcery 2
Themes:
Creation 0
Destruction 1
Divination 1
Protection 1
Transmutation 2
Rituals:
Vitae Reliquary (Transmutation 1)
Curse of Babel (Transmutation 2)
Blandishment of Sin (Destruction 1)
Blood Scourge (Transmutation 1, Destruction 1)
If he casts Blood Scourge, it will take him 1 turn per roll, cost him a Willpower and an appropriate focus and he will be aiming to get 2 successes. A Crúac spell of the same level would cost 1 point of Vitae (because it is equal to the highest theme used). He can add factors to the spell (such as keeping it going for more than one turn or making it do more damage when he strikes with it) by adding extra successes to the target number, or by hoping he rolls over the target number on his final roll, so he can allocate any extra successes to factors.
If he casts an improvised ritual, it will take him 1 minute per roll, and any extra successes he rolls on the final roll go to waste.
Development Notes
Sorcery is something that isn’t being used much in the game right now. We wanted to change that, and we have been considering implementing the
Blood Sorcery rules for some time, as we love the idea of improvisational magic in uptime. We’ve made a few changes, such as the change to the range factors, to emphasise the territorial theme of our game, and to make it easier for STs to calculate in a hurry. We also felt that it was important to add the sympathetic channel aspect outside line of sight range, as it gives a reason for ritualists to interact with their targets and emphasises preparation and OoC co-operation in CvC play.
We also felt it was important, since
Blood Sorcery was designed for
Vampire: the Requiem, to examine the relative power levels of the themes with disciplines that did similar things, and we’re confident that with some careful handling, any overlap will be minimal and more costly to the sorcerers than using a discipline. Because, after all, the scope of sorcery is now pretty huge, so we’re hoping players will engage with it creatively, bring some dramatic ritual casting into uptime and generally run with the system. We’re also confident that because of the fairly hefty costs of these mechanics, both in resources and xp terms, sorcery isn’t going to become overpowered compared to the rest of the game. Sure, you can get up to Destruction 5 and some pretty terrifying effects, but that’s a good couple of years of dedicated xp spending. So, we’re really looking forward to the fun, flavourful low-level effects.
