Religious Ritual (Magic Vegas)

:Excerpted from Ritual Modifiers (Magic Vegas) v60c
====Religious Ritual====
While Ritual Magic influences the world without, Religious Ritual influences the world within, which is to say that its main function is psychological. It can be used instead of Ritual Magic to consecrate a workspace for rituals, but obviously anyone capable of rituals will be able to use Ritual Magic. The reason a non-magician would want to do this, when he can’t make use of consecrated space for magic himself, is to deny magicians of other traditions the ability to do so as well, at least in his church. As mentioned above, it’s the skill used to bestow a True Name, although Ritual Magic yields a poor default, so a magician can get by without Religious Ritual skill at all, but there are a couple of reasons he might want to learn it.
The first is disguise. Skepticism is an instinct, but a Believer trains himself to suppress that instinct in response to certain cues, and Religious Ritual provides those cues. Belief accepts a certain tradition, that is, a Ritual Magic specialty, and specialties for Religious Ritual correspond to those of Ritual Magic. To fool a Believer in tradition X to accept Y, use the lower of Religious Ritual X in conjunction with Ritual Magic Y (and a penalty per GM fiat if he thinks the traditions are widely disparate in their ritual practice).
Generally, the advantage of Believers is that they don’t interfere with magic, not that they actually help, but they can serve as acolytes. A trio of acolytes give a +1 bonus to rituals, +1 for each doubling of their number, subject to the usual maximum of +15 for all bonuses to a ritual but also subject to a maximum equal to the margin of success on a Religious Ritual roll. The coordinator of the acolytes need not be a magician. Of course, any Skeptics among the acolytes can wipe out the benefit, so Aura Reading the participants in advance is a good idea. Because of the general maximum, acolytes aren’t much use with a strong connection to the target (name, sympathy, and contagion), but they can make up the difference in a ritual affecting a class of targets like all occupants of a certain hotel.