Jewish Mystical Rituals

Mike (and Christian) - I'm thinking about how the system should work when Eleazar wants to invoke a Jewish ritual of some kind (like an exorcism) and wanted your input.

A couple of ideas I was thinking:
1. Easiest way: Just make it an instant or extended Intelligence + Occult roll on the spot, adding penalties based on how 'powerful' you want the effect to be (possibly mitigated by spending vitae in a sacrificial manner). I'd probably make botches possible by using the 1's subtract successes rule just for balance.
2. Make a new discipline for your character akin to Cruac and Theban Sorcery (totally doable, the book has a system for creating new disciplines), call it "Sanguinary Kabbalah" maybe. --> A little bit less authentic given that it's a vampiric power as opposed to something else.
3. Make a new merit for your character akin to those found in Second Sight, make what you're doing a form of 'hedge magic' which theoretically anyone with high enough faith in esoteric Judaism could learn. In this case, no vitae would be spent (it'd be either nothing at all or Willpower points). --> Probably the most authentic way to go, could be interesting if other mortals know or learn the rituals too.

In all but the first case there'd be XP costs for buying the discipline/merit dots and subsequent rituals so your character doesn't earn anything for free. Alternatively, your character could do extended research rolls and acquire the rituals upon achieving a certain number of successes.

What do you think? I'll probably go with what you decide and what makes sense. Feel free to weigh in, Christian.

The discipline way wouldn't make much sense, as the rituals are human in nature, and come from the mortal religious and mystic practice. The int+occult role seems easy enough, though it sort of lacks in crunchiness mechanically. The merit is the best way to do it, I'd imagine, but, at the moment, I am out of XP (spent all the bonus stuff on Merges and knife fighting although that could be rolled back). The only issue with that is that Eleazar is a trained priest, who worked his craft for what I assume was a long time (he was an old man when embraced--maybe 30-50 years of practice). I assume he knows what there is to know about the Judaic priesthood and the associated rituals.

I think the best way to handle it might be to leave it up to me as a roleplayer to describe the ritual, and have it function as an extended action. It might require vitae or willpower depending on the potence of the ritual, and the number of successes in a certain time would determine how good the ritual is. An associated merit might also work, and it would be cool if I could enlist others as participants.

Cool, I really like that third approach a lot, makes it nice and roleplaying-juicy.

How about this then:
1. You specify (a) the goal of the ritual and (b) how you'll go about it (i.e., whether it will involve a sacrifice, be based on prayer or invocation, creating something like a mystical diagram or picture or other object like a clay pot, whatever).
2. I'll set the number of successes required in an extended action and how long each roll will take (which will depend on the goal of the ritual). I'll also set a time or roll limit by which it has to be done.
3. You optionally specify: (a) equipment to be used, (b) sacrifices (if any), (c) other participants and what they will be doing (ala "teamwork"), and (d) any mystical powers brought to bear (including using vitae). For each I'll add either straight dice bonuses or in the case of participants have them make separate rolls, successes on which will contribute to your dice pools.

Then we'll roll it out, let the dice fall where they will. How's that sound? The better the description, the easier it will be

In the future, when/if you want to spend XP, buying levels of the merit will give you the ritual on 'easier' terms (possibly making it automatic or instant as appropriate).

Remember guys - as well as magical rituals and whatnot, there are also Abjurations and Exorcisms that may deal well with ghosts and spirits, depending. Information on Abjurations and Exorcisms are in the World of Darkness core book on pages 213-214 respectively.


However, since those are pretty much designed for mortals, and Eleazar's decidedly not, I'm sure we could figure out a way to house-rule some of the things, as well as do something like the hedge magic system.

In the end, its up to you guys. Whatever you feel most comfortable with.

There is also a whole book that deals with spirits and ghost (Book of Spirits WW55202) in it that has variation on abjuration and exorcism, and also have other merits like spirit tongue (allow communication with spirits) or saintly (which makes task like intimidate ghost or exorcism easier), and if I remember correctly, there is also a clan / discipline within ordo dracule that entirely deal with spirits.