Ritual's Recognition

Level 2.

Some thaumaturgical rituals don't have an immediately visible effect. A ritual's success or failure may not be immediately apparent; cautious thaumaturges need a way to tell if their rituals work. Even a competent thaumaturge's rituals fail from time to time. Most would consider a few extra minutes of work worth the trouble to make sure that, say, a Deflection of Wooden Doom ritual functions properly, instead of finding out the hard way.

To set up Ritual's Recognition, the caster must sever the last eighth of an inch of his nose or an earlobe and crush the fleshy bit in an ivory mortar and pestle. He then dusts his face with the resulting paste. Immediately afterward, the thaumaturge casts another ritual; upon completion, the thaumaturge can tell whether the ritual succeeded or failed.

System: Casting Ritual's Recognition causes one level of unsoakable bashing damage as the caster removes a gobbet of skin. Once complete, the thaumaturge must immediately begin his next ritual. When that ritual is finished, the caster automatically knows whether or not it succeeded, even if it would normally have no visible effect. By design, the caster can automatically tell if Ritual's Recognition succeeded, and can regrow the lost bit and recast it if it failed. In either case, the caster feels a warm flush upon completion of a successful rite.