Ritual Magic Defaults

Ritual Magic Defaults is a Classic concept explored in the left box of page 84 of Classic: Spirits. 
The assumption in GURPS Spirits is that ritual magic is something anyone can do, given enough
training in the Ritual Magic skill. Not everyone can do ritual magic well, since most people perform rituals at -5 to skill (see column at right), but everyone has at least a little potential.
It's closest analog in 4e is the Limited Non-Mage Ceremonies with Fractional Magery option for Paths and Books. Note that this option can be applied to all forms of magery rather than being limited to just Magery (Path/Book).
Rituals (which became classified as Path/Book Magery in 4e's Thaumatology somewhat similar to Ritual Magery but still using distinct paths rather than the "paths from colleges" approach in Basic Set) are techniques which default from path skills.
Knowing the path skill wasn't and still isn't necessary to use them, since paths can be used at default to a core skill.
In Classic this was only the Ritual Magic skill, which had no default. So to use rituals required at least a point in the Ritual Magic skill.
*back in Classic you could put half-points in skills, which was possible for Ritual Magic, but this explicitly only allowed it to be used for the recognition of rituals, and perhaps to organize ritual spaces: NOT to conduct rituals themselves, which needed a full point for paths to default to RM for this purpose.
Ritual Magic was (and still is) a "Very Hard" skill, so 1 point in it would start it at IQ-2, so paths defaulting at -6 would be IQ-8. Back in 3e, a half point would raise it to IQ-3 (but you could not default paths at -6 for IQ-9)
What RMD explored is the idea of allowing people without a point in Ritual Magic to conduct rituals too.
The text says:
:High-fantasy or “fairy tale” settings might even allow people to perform ritual magic from a default of -1 to -5 (based on IQ or Will) without knowing the skill.
The phrase "the skill" is not clarified so it might plausibly refer to Ritual Magic, or one of the Path skills that default from it.
For balance and simplicity, it can most probably be assumed to be referring to Ritual Magic. If it meant one of the paths that would be incredibly powerful, since -1 to -5 would be a smaller penalty than the usual -6 that path defaults from those who DO know ritual magic.
Requiring "IQ-1" or "IQ-2" (the lower points of suggestion) would probably be too generous, since that would be BETTER/SAME than someone with 1 or 2 point in it.
GURPS 4e though it does away with "half point" tier of skill investment preceding one point, effectively reintroduced it with the Dabbler perk (1 point = 2 skills known at +3 to default, or 1 less than the value of 1 skill point, whichever is less) except it's even more flexible (could instead do 4 skills at +2 to default, effectively 0.25 points per skill, or 8 skills at +1 to default, effectively 0.125 points per skill)
The dabbler perk as originally constructed is not legal to use for skills which lack defaults (they still must have 1 skill point to be used) so 4E still lacks a "half point" skill in Ritual Magic, which still has no default.
An "implied default for no-default skills" was eventually implied by the Wizardly Dabbler perk in magical styles though. This however only applies to HARD skills (certain 1st-tier spells lacking prerequisites) and is not available for Very Hard spells, so it doesn't necessarily apply to Ritual Magic.
**the implied default for spells is IQ-6, because 1/2 point (4 slots: +3 to default) gives IQ-3 (1 less than IQ-2 provided by full point) and 1/4 point (2 slots: +2 to default) gives IQ-4, while 1/8 point (1 slot, +1 to default) gives IQ-5.
It IS however possible to reduce some Very Hard skills to Hard using the B169 "Optional Specialties" rule. This is however designed for skills which CAN specialize but DON'T HAVE TO. Examples are Literature (B205: drops from Hard to Average) and Physics (B213: drops from Very Hard to Hard).
*the problem however, as B218 indicates, is that Ritual Magic MUST specialize already... so unless the GM wanted to alter that (ie make "Ritual Magic" a "generalist" skill by default... which actually lines up with how it's listed w/o specialty for most NPCs in the Hellboy RPG) it wouldn't be legal unless there was some kind of "specialized specialty".
**IE for example "Voodoo for Healing" might be a specialty where you could learn it as merely a Hard skill, but using it for non-healing purposes would be at -2. "a skill roll to determine the purpose of a ritual conducted in your presence" for example normally gives you equal skill in recognizing rituals of any path, but "Ritual Magic: Healing Voodoo" could only recognize Path of Healing rituals at full skill, and would be at -2 to skill to recognize non-healing voodoo
***(this is still a smaller penalty than the -5 penalty to recognize Witchcraft rituals, for comparison... it would probably make sense to stack these penalties, like -5 to recognize "Healing Witchcraft" and -7 to recognize other forms of witchraft)
Another option is to simply allow VH skills lacking defaults to have "implied defaults" too, but they should obviously be lower: IQ-7 instead of IQ-6. This falls in line with a lot of VH skills which DO have defaults (like Thaumatology, which has an IQ-7 default in fantasy settings... NO default at all in muggle settings though).
Of coure some VH skills have WORSE-than-minus-seven defaults. B301's master list is helpful in finding them. Diagnosis defaults to First Aid at minus-eight, and Lip-reading defalts to Perception at minus-ten. So even though Wizardly Dabbler treats Hard skills to have an IQ-6 default, for balance reasons you might want to go beyond IQ-7.
*the defaulting policy of Thaumatology is important to think about here: see B226's asterisk...
**There is no default in a nonmagical setting, or for those who have never witnessed “real” magic.
*this is effectively a "built in advantage" for characters in those settings.
Keep in mind for example that you can have Thaumatology at IQ-6/IQ-5/IQ-4 using standard Dabbler rules... (it's not possible to get IQ-3, you skip past that when you go from 1/2 point to full-point. It could however be reasonable for a GM to allow someone to spend more than 4/8 slots from dabbler on a single skill: like perhaps using 7/8 slots will give you a +4 bonus to allow bringing it up to IQ-3. This doesn't follow the usual cost-doubling pattern (1/2/4) but is the closest thing to it, while still reflecting that IQ-3 Thaumatology should perhaps be worth less than IQ-2 Thaumatology.
*this might even be legal if you had purchased Dabbler more than once, as there doesn't seem to be any restrictions to having multiple Dabbler instances affecting the same skill. So for example if you had Dabbler (Thaumatology+2/Whip+2/Staff+2/Shield+2) you could actually take "Thaumatology +1" using 1 lots from your 2nd dabbler, which ends up being a better deal because you got a total of +3 from merely THREE slots instead of the usual FOUR it would take from buying it from the slots of a single dabbler
**this isn't an incredibly dangerous exploit as it requires multiple Dabbler investments, and there are many downsides to relying on defaults, such as not being able to default other skills from them
One other thing to keep in mind, rather than a "hard cap no defaults" policy for non-fantasy settings (or for those who never witnessed magic) is that you might actually consider those who have the IQ-7 default in Thaumatology to have a "built-in Dabbler".
*for example, if the "True Default" of Thaumatology was IQ-10 (like Lip-reading is to Per) then +1/+2/+3 would bring it to 9/8/7
Another factor to take into account for "Wizardly Dabbler" is that it does not allow these sub-one skills to be used as well as you normally could use spells with a full point in them. They take TWICE as long to use (this would be in addition to the double casting time required if your final effective skill is 9 or less: 4x as long!) so it would make sense to have that apply to all instances of "using skills at default when they do not actually have defaults".
Category:Classic
Category:Concepts