Sorcery (Promptover 2025 #18)

Thrice Spoken, Once Fulfilled

Back in my youth, I read Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy as part of my quest to read every fantasy book I could. The world involves plenty of handwaving, but most of the worldbuilding went into the 5 systems of magic. Perhaps I'll explore more forms of magic in future posts, since each set of rules provides some great flavor and interesting drawbacks.

Since today's prompt is Sorcery, let's take a look at that particular flavor of magic and see if we can adapt it in a useful manner.

Sorcery in Hardy's book focuses on manipulating other minds by making eye contact with your target and reciting a charm three times. Sorcery is governed by the Rule of Three: Thrice spoken, once fulfilled. Reciting a charm in the exact same way three times seems a little cumbersome in a game with fast combat rounds, but maybe we can think about using the Rule of Three for slower magic and ritual use.

What if we allow any spell to be cast as a ritual, as long as the caster recites the verbal components three times and the spell takes ten minutes to cast? In some cases, this would make no sense, especially in combat conditions. A ten-minute fireball has limited utility in everyday adventuring, except maybe to unlock an ice-covered area or something similar.

But being able to cast non-ritual spells ritually? That could be a game changer. I mean just at 3rd level you have magic circle, nondetection, protection from energy, remove curse, and the summon (whatever) spells. Getting a solid tangible benefit with only 10 minutes of work and retaining spell slots for emergency spell casting would tip the balance mightily toward the arcane classes. Not to mention sending, as being able to send a message across the world for free every 10 minutes would revolutionize the running of a far-flung empire. Making magical types harness infinite castings for spells would transform the game.

So if you want your game to emphasize magical power and the primacy of sorcery's rules, use the Rule of Three to allow ritual casting of any spell. If you want to strictly apply this idea, you could restrict its use to just sorcerers, which would limit the power creep a little bit (no sending for one). I might enforce the need to take the Ritual Caster feat to unlock this ability, but other than that, go nuts with it and see how it transforms your game world.

Part of the Promtober project for 2025.