Ok so this is the most difficult of all of them because I really don’t like the whole Thaumaturgy system as its laid out in the book – so here are my rules!

Thaumaturgy – the discpline

The discpline of Thaumaturgyy that all Tremere learn is the basic “path of blood’ basically.  If you have 1 point in thaumaturgy – you have that – its a given.

Non-Tremere people can learn Thaumaturgy but it is extremely difficult – not only to actually learn it – but to find someone who is willing to teach it.  So if you plan to learn this as an out of clan discipline – you need a REALLY amazing reason or a really dumb Tremere to teach it to you.

So once again – the path of Blood basically is what Thaumaturgy is – all Tremere know that – it is the basic knowledge of how to use and manipulate blood which is central to discipline.

Learning New Paths

Once you have masted Thaumaturgy at its basic level, you can then branch out and learn new paths.  So – once you have Thaumaturgy 2, you can learn one new path.  For each additional point you put into Thaumaturgy, you will be able to learn a new path.  So a Tremere with Thaumaturgy of 4, will be able to learn 3 additional Paths in addition to the one he already has.

1) To Learn a new Path: You do not spend any experience points but you MUST find someone who has that path at the same level or higher to teach it to you.

For Example: James has learned Thaumaturgy 2 and has decided that he wants to learn the new path of Movement of the Mind.  He will need to find someone who has that path at least at a rating of 1 already to teach it to him.  Once he finds a teacher, he can learn that path at level 2.  So with a Thaumaturgy rating of 2, he has Path of Blood 2 and Movement of the Mind 1.  If he wishes to advance to movement of the mind 2, he will need to find a teacher who has Movement of the Mind 2 to teach it to him.

2) To advance existing paths: If you have an existing path you wish to advance you can do so, so  long as you find a teacher and you do not go above your Thaumaturgy rating.

For Example: Building on the example above, if James now wants to learn Movement of the Mind 3, he will need to first raise his Thaumaturgy rating to a 3 and find a teacher with movement of the mind 3 to teach it to him. James cannot learn movement of the mind 3 when his Thaumaturgy rating is at a 2.

Rituals

This is the fun side of the Tremere.  Rituals are all about research and putting your nose in books to find solutions.  You can build your own rituals if you want – rules are below – but also learn rituals from other Tremere and from books.  Rituals will cost you no experience to learn – you are Tremere – this is what YOU DO!

1) Researching a Ritual – if you wish to research a new ritual – that is coming up with your own ritual to do something – you will need access to an occult library and an Occult and Investigation rating of 2 at least.  If you have both of those you can create a new ritual.

For example: James wishes to create a ritual that will help him find his missing favorite black boots.  He needs to have access to an occult library, he needs an occult rating of 2 and an investigation or research rating of 2 to create this new ritual.  Since this is a fairly simply ritual, it shouldn’t take him longer than a couple hours to do.  He will roll his intelligence plus occult or intelligence plus investigation (whichever is higher) to a T5 since its a fairly simple ritual.  A more difficult ritual would have a higher difficulty rating on his target number.

2) Researching an existing Ritual – If you wish to research an existing ritual, you must have access to an occult library of sorts.  You will roll your INT+Occult rating and the target number will be based on how obscure the ritual you are trying to find is.  This is not going to allow you to create your own ritual – you are basically researching an existing ritual.

3) Learning Rituals from mentors: If you have a mentor teaching you a ritual, you do not need access to anything – just the mentor to tell you what to do.  No roll is needed – I am just going to assume that you are smart enough to understand what is being explained to you.

4) Using Rituals  - Rituals are tied to your magick – ie – your thaumaturgy rating.  You cannot use any ritual that is a higher level than your current Thaumaturgy.  So if your Thaumaturgy rating is a 2, you can only cast level 1 and level 2 rituals.

5) You are Camarilla – you do not have access to Sabbat rituals unless you can find someone with a VERY unique library or pin down a Sabbat person to teach it to you!

Group Magick

This is where the Tremere really excel – they get together and do rituals because the power of the coven is greater than the power of the one.

1) Casting the Ritual – the person with the highest Thaumaturgy rating will be the primary caster of the ritual.  All participating in the ritual can add their energy to the ritual and assist.  The target number will be reduced by 1 for every 3 levels of combined Thaumaturgy added to the ritual.

For example: The Chantry up in PA decides to cast a group ritual to find a particular Vampire.  They have 4 Tremere who will participate.  They have Thaumaturgy ratings of 5, 4, 2 and 3 respectively.  The highest rating Tremere, the one with Thaumaturgy 5 will be the primary caster. The other 3 casters have  Thaumaturgy 4,2 and 3 – for a total of 9.  So their ritual will be at a -3 to the target number for success – a -1 for each 3 levels of combined Thaumaturgy.  As you can see – group rituals get VERY powerful VERY fast!

Counter Magick

Counter Magick is the first thing every single Tremere learns.  Any Tremere with at least 1 in Thaumaturgy can cast counter magick. You can counter any rituals that you see casting and you can also attempt to dispell any magick cast in places or objects if you  make a conscious effort.

For Counter Magick, you are putting your skills against the skill of either a Chantry (for group spells) or another Tremere.  You will roll your wits+occult, depending on what you are trying to do, your difficulty will vary – but most will be a difficulty of 6.  You will add a modifier for +1 to the difficulty for each level of thaumaturgy above yours. You must match the success of the caster +1 to successfully remove the effect or counter the spell.

For example: Alanwa notices that a necklace is cursed by Tremere Magick.  She decides to try to remove the curse.  She has Thaumaturgy of 2 and the person that cursed it has a Thaumaturgy of 3. She will roll Wits+occult and her difficulty will be a T7 since the caster has 1 more Thaumaturgy than she does.  When he put the curse on the necklace, he got 2 successes, so Alanwa will need to get at least 3 successes on her roll to successfully remove the curse.

You do not need to know what spell was cast on something in order to remove it – you can remove it by sheer force of will and magickal ability.

For Example: Feeling good about her skills, she decides to try to remove whatever Tremere magick was cast on a church.  This magick however, was cast by the same Tremere coven from PA working together – for a combined Thaumaturgy of 9 (from the example above).  In order to remove the spell, she will need to roll her wits+occult with a T6+7 (for a max of 10) since there are 7 levels of Tremere magick reinforcing that spell.  Once she rolls, since the coven sealed the spell with 4 successes, she will need to get 5 or more successes to lift the magick.

Counter Magick as a Group

Countering magick from one coven to the other is how Tremere work very widespread and large spells.  The counter spell works similarly to group spells in casting.  The person with the highest level of Thaumaturgy will be casting the spells, and others will be helping to reinforce the magick by adding their thaumaturgy rating to the spell.  The target number will be reduced by 1 for every 3 levels of combined Thaumaturgy added to the ritual.

For Example: Alanwa decides that she needs help to remove the magick from the Church so she gets Dimitri and James to help her.  James has a Thaumaturgy rating of 5 and Dimitri has 8 so Dimitri will be casting.  James and Alanwa will add their Thaumaturgy ratings together to reinfoce the spell – so 5+2 for a total of 7.  This will reduce their target number by 2.  So Dimitri will roll his wits+occult against a T6+7-2 (for a total of 10 still).  He will still need 5 successes to lift the spell.  You may be asking now – why is it that the magick there gets a total of +7 (one per level) for modifier and we only get a -2 (one per every three levels) to counter? The answer is simple – it is MUCH more difficult to remove magick once it has already been cast then it is to cast it in the first place!

Ritual Time – what does it matter?

So now you may be thinking – this sucks – this means that lifting a spell is MUCH harder than to put one there and it may seem that there is no way to get around that.  Fear not! What magick casters have known for a long time, is the longer you focus on something the more power you have – so this is where time comes into play.

How does it work? You get to make your same roll every hour that you spend UNINTERRUPTED in the spell and add your successes cumulatively.  You say eh?

For example: in the ritual above, we need Alanwa, Dimitri and James working together to get 5 successes total. Since their target number is so high, they decide to keep working until its down.  So they make their roll after their first hour, the first time they get 2 successes.  They keep working for another hour and roll again – this time they get 1 success for a total of 3.  They keep working for another hour and roll again – one more success – now they have 4.  And they work for yet another hour (with no break!) and finally get one more for a total of 5.  So, after 4 hours, they have managed to bring down that spell – whew!

The same thing works for casting spells. You can spend extra time reinforcing your spell so that it is harder to counter at a later date.

For example: The coven in PA is pissed that their spell on the church was so easily removed.  They decide to cast it again, and this time they spend an extra 5 hours reinforcing their spell.  For every hour they spend casting it, they get add their successes together.  So they get 3 successes the first hour, 2 the second, 0 the third, 2 the fourth and 3 the fifth.  This gives their new spell a total of 10 successes that must be countered if James, Dimitri and Alanwa want to remove the darned thing again! Ugh!

It is important to note that for every hour that the Tremere spends working on a group ritual, it costs them 1 blood point.  This counts for counter spells too! So after 4 hours – each one spent 4 blood to finally get this spell down.  When the coven put it back up – since they spent 5 hours, each Tremere that participated spent 5 points of blood to get it back up there – make sure you are full before you start!

Generation

Magick is after all – fueled by blood.  Tremere were human mages that were converted – their ties with the quintessence in the world was severed through that process and they have found a way to tie their magick to their blood instead – hence the birth of Thaumaturgy.  Therefore the strength of one’s blood is important when you are casting magick against other kindred.

All generation penalties and bonus’ will apply to all Tremere magick as well.  The bonus is -1 for every 2 generations you have over another kindred or +1 for every 2 generations they have over you.

For example: Josh decides to use Blood Rage (Thaumaturgy 2) on another Vampire.  Josh is 10th generation and he has decided to pick a fight with a brujah in Dade who is 8th gen.  He will cast his normal Dex+subterfuge.  The brujah’s willpower is 7, but Josh’s target number is an 8 since the brujah is 2 generations above him.

Another Example: James wishes to use Bloodwalk to find out the lineage of a newly captured Vampire.  James is 8th generation and this new vampire brought to him is 12th generation.  James will roll his normal PER+empathy but since he is 4 generations older than this new vampire, his target number will be a 4 instead of a 6.

A good place to go look at Thaumaturgy Paths, spells and more is here:

Thaumaturgy: http://wodquickstarts.my100megs.com/VtM3bb.html

Thaumatugy Paths: http://wodquickstarts.my100megs.com/VtM3cc.html

Thaumaturgy Rituals: http://wodquickstarts.my100megs.com/VtM3dd.html