Thaumaturgy
How Many Rituals?
The rules of Exalted aim to make thaumaturgy as multipurpose as possible, but weaker than Charms, sorcery or necromancy. An experienced magician might know scores of rituals, each designed for a specific limited purpose. Technically, a thaumaturge can use any ritual for which she possesses the proper Degree in the appropriate Art, but things aren't really that simple. Even the greatest thaumaturge cannot automatically produce an alchemical mixture he has never seen simply because he is a Master of Alchemy. Knowing the underlying theories of an Art to a particular Degree does not mean that a character instantly knows every ritual within that Degree.
Players should work with their Storyteller to decide which rituals their characters reasonably know already, and keep track of new ones learned during play. A thaumaturge character from the West would need a good reason to justify knowing the secret ritual that Eastern shamans use to harden ironwood. By the same token, why would an Eastern shaman know rituals to call storms at sea?
Common sense and character concept may be enough for players and Storytellers to decide what rituals a character may know. The need to buy separate Arts and Degrees goes a long way to keeping thaumaturgy broad-based yet limited in scope. If you want a stricter guideline (as an option), you might limit starting characters to a maximum number of rituals per Degree based on Intelligence, Lore or Occult rating. The thaumaturge then can learn more rituals as game events allow.
Through their Charms and spells, the Exalted wield power that mortals can never hope to match. Even so, mortal savants, scientists, holy men and shamans can learn minor miracles that set them above their peers. Collectively, such magic is called thaumaturgy in the texts of the First Age, and it is unique among magical disciplines in that its rituals draw upon arcane truths embedded in the natural laws and principles of Creation. Where Charms impose new states and events through Essence, thaumaturgical rituals coax the existing Essence patterns of the world to do something they are naturally prone to do, obviating the need for personal Essence expenditure. Thaumaturgy fails utterly before the spells of the Exalted, though, so any form of sorcerous or necromantic countermagic completely destroys any form of lingering thaumaturgical effect or enchantment without any backlash of scattered Essence.
The study of thaumaturgy is broken down into Arts, which are Occult specialties that deviate slightly from the usual specialty rules. A character can study as many different Arts as he wants, purchasing the same art up to three times. In order of tiered ascendance, each purchase is called a Degree: Initiate (+1), Adept (+2) and Master (+3). Learning each Degree demands a commensurately higher Occult rating, so Initiate requires Occult 1, Adept requires 3, and Master requires 5. Every ritual possible with an Art has a listed Degree requirement from 0-3. Tasks with a Degree requirement of 0 are called Apprentice-level and require only that a character have at least one dot of Occult to attempt the action. Characters cannot ever apply more than +3 specialty dice to an Occult roll no matter how many Arts they study, nor may they add Degrees to Occult rolls not pertaining to thaumaturgy (such as for a Charm or sorcery spell). Conversely, Occult specialties that are not Degrees do not add dice to Thaumaturgy- based rolls.
As an alternative to learning a full Degree, characters can learn a single Procedure, a ritual that the character has memorized by rote without understanding the underlying theory of its magic. Each Procedure costs one experience point (or three Procedures for a single bonus point during character creation). For example, a character might normally need an Adept Degree in Demon Summoning to call any species of First Circle demon from Malfeas. If the character learned a ritual exclusively for summoning blood apes, it would be a Procedure: Summon Erymanthoi. Characters can learn Procedures for any task possible with any Degree of an Art, but must have Occult 1 to learn Adept-ranked Procedures and Occult 3 to learn Master-rank Procedures. Unlike a full Degree, learning a Procedure awards no bonus dice to perform the magic. When a character wishes to learn a Degree for which he already knows subsidiary Procedures, he loses the Procedures and receives an equal number of experience points. So, a budding infernalist who has been taught to summon erymanthoi and neomah through Procedures would regain two experience points upon learning the Adept degree of Demon Summoning.
Degrees in the Arts of thaumaturgy do not have the same cost or training time as normal Occult specialties. Instead, they cost 10 experience points or 5 bonus points each. (For characters with Occult as a Caste or Favored Ability, the cost is reduced to 8 experience points or 4 bonus points.) An Initiate Degree takes one month to learn, Adept two months and Master three months. (Characters for whom Occult is a Caste or Favored Ability drop the interval to weeks rather than months.) Procedures require one week to learn (or one day if Occult is Caste or Favored.) Characters cannot learn a Degree without a tutor or an instruction manual unless they have Occult 5, in which case the training interval extends to years.
Whenever a character uses an Art, the ritual requires exotic occult ingredients that are consumed, destroyed or otherwise made useless as part of the magic. The Resources cost of such ingredients is typically 0 for Apprentice effects, 0 to 1 for Initiate, 2 to 3 for Adept or 4 to 5 for Master. Reduce these costs by 1 if a character has access to a major metropolis where such goods may be obtained or if the ingredients in question are native to the area. Increase the required Resources cost of a ritual by 1 (to a maximum of 5) if the ingredient can be found only in the opposite direction of Creation (such as when a Southern thaumaturge performs a ritual requiring rare glacier lichens that grow only in the Far North). Using superior or unique ingredients, such as those that would qualify as exotic ingredients for the purposes of artifact creation (see p. 133) add one to three bonus dice to a ritual casting (depending on their appropriateness). Characters must also have a laboratory, workshop or sanctum full of reusable tools in order to practice thaumaturgy reliably, with a Resources cost of 1 for Apprentice rituals, 2 for Initiate, 3 for Adept and 4 for Master.
Exalted and other Essence users have a distinct advantage when wielding thaumaturgy, as they can directly power rituals with their own spirit instead of coaxing motes from bizarre formulae, blood and reagents. For every two motes spent, reduce the total Resources cost of a ritual by one dot. Such expenditure does not obviate the need for ritual behavior, just ritual ingredients and tools. For example, an Adept-level ritual with a disposable Resources cost of 2 and reusable Resources cost of 3 would cost an Exalt 10 motes to eschew those materials entirely. Furthermore, every ritual requires that a thaumaturge spend one Willpower point at the final moment of casting. Exalted cannot substitute Essence for this cost. When multiple thaumaturges trained in a Degree or Procedure work together to cast a ritual, use the limited cooperation rules rather than full cooperation.
Savants classify thaumaturgical rituals into 11 Arts, each of which constitutes its own Occult specialty: Alchemy, Astrology, the Dead, Demon Summoning, Elemental Summoning, Enchantment, Geomancy, Husbandry, Spirit Beckoning, Warding and Exorcism, and Weather Working. Most of the Arts have existed in one form or another since before humanity existed. Three were created after the Primordial War: the Art of the Dead, the Art of Demon Summoning and the Art of Elemental Summoning. Rituals within an Art share common elements. If one knows several rituals within an Art, others become easier to learn. A thaumaturge who learns a single Procedure, and stops there, may never make these connections. Once she learns multiple related Procedures, she can piece together the principles of an Art. The Degrees of the Arts express how well a thaumaturge understands those principles.