Drow Magic. Sorcery Of Endless Night.pdf - RoseRed

individual spellcasters, they contain no guidelines or
rules for creating magical effects which either require
multiple participants or which are not dependant on the
expenditure of spell slots.
The rules presented here are expressly not needed for
making or conducting those ceremonies which do not
produce any sort of magical effect. Should the Games
Master wish to present a scene which involves the
performance of a ceremony which is important only for
its traditional or symbolic value, such as a tea ceremony
(though there is no reason that cannot be used as the
basis of a magical ceremony, see below), then a series
of checks against the appropriate skill will be more
than sufficient to adjudicate the results.
Creating a Ceremony
While a number of drow specific ceremonies (known
as black ceremonies) are presented here, invariably you
will at some point wish to create your own ceremonies.
With that in mind, we present the following guidelines.
Note that these are not, for the most part, hard and
fast rules – by necessity, ceremonial magic must be
left open ended, as it will be used primarily to create
magical effects which cannot be easily replicated with
normal spells.
The Limits of Knowledge
Always keep in mind that the key conceit behind
the rules for ceremony magic is the idea that it is
neither wholly divine nor wholly arcane in nature,
meaning it can be used by divine spellcasters and
arcane spellcasters alike and, more importantly, by
those who have no ability to use magic at all. To
create a ceremony which specifically requires the use
of arcane or divine magic in its conducting is to do
nothing more than create an unwieldy spell and thus,
to miss the point of ceremonial magic altogether.
Magic ceremonies are typically very complex and
only the most learned and wise ever learn to master
more than a handful of ceremonies. No mortal
character may ever know more than one magical
ceremony per point of his Intelligence and Wisdom
modifiers combined.
With the Games Master’s permission, a character
who has reached his maximum number of
ceremonies known but wishes to learn another can
do so, so long as he is willing to purge his mind of
one of his previous known ceremonies.
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BLACK CEREMONIES
Creating a ceremony is not like crafting a magical item
and the rules presented here are not intended to mimic
exactly the steps the characters in your campaign will
take. At no point, for example, will a wizard use his
abacus to calculate skill check DCs, nor will your
player’s clerics write in their journals ‘Today I presided
over a ritual which required moderate materials,
extensive effort, and included the restriction: season
specific’. These guidelines are nothing more than a
framework which will, hopefully, serve as invisible
support for your adventures.
In order to better facilitate the integration of ceremonial
magic into your campaigns and to make it simpler
for players and Games Masters alike to create new
ceremonies, ceremonies are presented in a format
similar to that used to present spells in Core Rulebook
I.
Effects
The single most important step in creating a new
magical ceremony is creating its effect. Without an
effect, without a goal to work towards, a ceremony
is nothing but a song and dance number. The effects
which can be produced through the use of a magical
ceremony are effectively limitless, but there are certain
things you should always keep in mind when deciding
what your ceremony will do.
First of all, a ceremony should produce an effect which
is not easily replicated through the casting of a spell.
This means that ceremony magic should primarily be
used to create abstract effects, or to bring about effects
which are simply too powerful or specialised for even
the most powerful of spells, miracle and wish. Note
that this is not a hard and fast rule – several of the
sample black ceremonies presented later can at least
in part be replicated through the casting of several
divine or, especially, arcane spells, though in each
case they are altered in one or more fundamental ways.
Rather, this is just a guideline to help you keep those
ceremonies you create more interesting. If you do
intend to create a ceremony which might be replicated
by a spell, however, you should at least make sure it is
made more interesting and abstract by the addition of
unique elements – there should be no such thing as a
magic missile ceremony unless, for example, the bolts
can be fired across the span of the globe and are really
the coagulated essence of the spirits of those murdered
unjustly by the target.
The second thing to keep in mind, and this is perhaps
just as important as the above consideration, you
should never limit yourself to effects which have