Editing Creating Magical Effects (section)

==Rituals and Extended Magic==

By extending the time it takes to cast a spell and taking extra care, a mage can cause his spell to work far more Effectively. Many rotes have an entry for "Grades of Success". If  the mage wants to not just improve his chances to get a spell right, but to actually facilitate a more potent spell, he does so by performing a ritual.

When you use a ritual, you spend extra time to generate a stronger Effect. You don't get the bonus of taking extra time on the Arete Test unless you actually double your ritual time - therefore, if you spend an hour on a ritual, you must spend an extra hour to garner such a  bonus. You can still claim a focus retest, though.

The more time you spend, the Effect becomes more powerful, but the casting becomes more risky. A "simple Effect" is one listed with the normal Spheres, and which takes only a turn to cast. Rituals, on the other hand, may take an extra minute, an extra hour, or an extra day (the limit of human endurance). When you cast the ritual, you make a succession of Arete Tests, and you must succeed in all of them (win, or tie with more Traits, including retests for focus Abilities).

Each time-part you spend requires one test, so you test after the first turn of casting, then after the first minute, after the first hour, and finally for the end of a full day. If you fail any test, the difficulty goes up by one Trait, and you must recast that time part. So if you fail on the first turn, the difficulty goes up one, and you must take another turn. If you fail after the first minute, the difficulty goes up one and you must take another minute before testing again. The difficulty can continue to increase until it reaches double your Arete Trait total. At that point, the ritual botches utterly, and you not only garner Paradox for a botched Effect, you gain an additional Paradox Trait for each time-part you spend on the ritual (+1 for an extra turn, +1 for an extra minute, etc.).

You can cancel a ritual at any time. The spell fails, but you don't suffer any other penalties. You might cancel a ritual so that you can react to an attacker before the ritual is interrupted, or so that you can avoid a horrible botch as described previously.

If you're interrupted, the ritual typically botches. You can spend a Willpower Trait to keep going, but that time-part is considered a failure. Add one to the difficulty, and start that time part over again.

Each extension adds a grade of success to an Effect. The rotes all list ideas on the changes to the power grade. For instance, the Sense Forces rote normally lasts on yourself for a scene or on another subject for a turn. If cast as a one-minute ritual, it lasts on yourself for a session or on a subject for a scene.