I voted yes, but I know for sure this won't be at launch.

It's a good idea for a chaos expansion. I think it would work better if a Sorcerer turned into a daemon instead of summoning it (no NPC AI programming needed). After the Sorcerer gets X kills without dying (or meets other conditions, we can argue) he can summon a warp daemon to posses his body.

In game, the player would turn into a daemon, a powerful hero-like class with new abilities.

That'd be great. [POST LAUNCH IDEAS]

EDIT: Daemons depending on the Sorcerer's alignement would be even more awesome. All hail the great unclean one!

I was thinking of this earlier and started giggling uncontrollably at the thought of a Nurgle Sorc summoning a swarm of nurglings that didn't actually do anything but sort of roam the battlefield and be a general nuisance. A slight accuracy debuff, a small DoT AoE, and maybe a movement slow. But like, a LOT of them roaming in wide, rambling patterns. I would cast that shit every chance I got.

That would be useful as fuck though, and something id really like as well.
Reminds me of Snarks from Half Life, not a life threatening thing by any means on their lonesome, but can get to be annoying and nasty really fast if you just ignore them.

Rituals are so much more than summonign daemons, but we should start small for now.


How about using the summoning of a Greater Daemon similar to the CSM Codex of 4th Edition?

You need:
- someone who is a favorite of a God of Chaos (the more, the better)
- a sorcerer of the same patron-god (the higher his ritual-skill, the better)
- aiding participants with affiliation to the same patron-god (the more, the better)

* You gather them up in one place and press the "start"-button.
* A roll is made. If he was a success, the Champion gets replaced with a Greater Daemon of his patron-god. If he fails, he simply dies.
* Whether the summoning is successful or not, the costs for the Champion are grave. He loses a lot of ressource and can't respawn for at least 24 hours. (-> That's the sacrifize, because death doesn't count.) All other participants lose a little bit of ressource.

Chance to lose the ability to play his/her character for 24 hours? Losing the ability to play your character for any amount of time would be bad, especially for players who only have 1 Chaos character.

"Hey you tried a thing! Too bad that thing failed though. So we're going to take a lot of your resources and lock you out of playing with this character. While everyone else just loses a little resources. In fact they didn't even explode from a failed ritual! Sucks to be you."

So no to that as it discourages people from even trying. Unless they can throw multiple characters at an attempt but that's a bad way to do it as well.

It will be good if you can only activate some altar in Outpost or Fortress and must hold it for some time. You must also spend some resources in order to do so.

So, what should be the sacrifize?
What should be the deterrent from conducting rituals everywhere and all the time at any chance?
What would be the downside to giving yourself a massive advantage?
Death by sacrifize doesn't workt in EC, because there is no threat of permanent death. That's why I propose to use time as a sacrifize: You are effectively forced to stay dead for a while. And that's the downside to trying to "cheat" your way to victory.

The ritual works, you become a nearly undefeatable monster.
The ritual fails, you get a punishment fitting for the attempt to turn your mediocre character into a nearly undefeatable monster.

Which is a nice idea when you're not considering that being unable to play a character for 24 hours might leave quite a few people rather disgruntled should they be on the receiving end. As much as this game is a vessel for a Warhammer 40K experience, it's still a game. That means it's got to be fun for everyone involved, even the guy that's losing should be able to enjoy himself. Locking a player out of your game for 24 hours, or even an hour, is no way to design a game. At that point you're paying to occasionally be denied an experience, especially since it's a toss up on whether or not it works and not a skill based issue. Either way, if the player isn't satisfied at the outcome because of the toss up of a coin it's a bad idea and being locked out will always, ALWAYS be dissatisfying.

Also, there's no way a greater demon could be considered nigh-unstoppable because of balance. There has to be a way to stop it. Sure, if you take time to deploy it tactically and protect it, it can be an engine of destruction that can definitely push a battle in your favor. But if you think we're going full, lore-wise Greater Daemon, nah. Those things corrupt entire planets with a thought. Think more Ulkair in the Dawn of War series or, if you've played it, actual table-top. Biiiiiig, angry unit. Pretty expensive. Turns the tide of a battle reaaaaalll quick. But if the enemy is ready for it they can take him right the fuck out.

As far as that goes, as far as summoning an Ulkair unit goes, fine. Let's consider that ritual. It should cost an immense amount of req points on the part of the individual looking to become the greater daemon and be an order/sanction directly from the War Council. In my opinion something like this should have a few requirements:
A. It should be close to an ongoing engagement. This can be explained lore-wise that the ritual requires the pain and struggle of war in the immediate area to work so quickly and so well. It also serves to make sure you don't conduct the ritual 30km back in the corner of the part of the map you own where you can't and won't be disturbed.

B. It should be interruptible. If you manage to kill either the champion being turned or any of the sorcerers assisting in the ritual it should blow up in their face. Everyone involved takes a good chunk of damage and gets stunned. Suddenly this is an objective for all forces involved in that nearby engagement. If the enemy can interrupt it it's quite a few free kills and you're denying them a super unit. If you can protect it you not only gain a super unit, you also get all of the characters that were involved in the ritual.

C. Number of participants should equate to speed of the ritual. The more sorcerers/general participants of the ritual should incrementally reduce the amount of time the ritual takes. This is dangerous, a smaller group might go unnoticed but take much more time and the engagement could finish before you're done. If you take too many people from the fight you'll lose it anyways.

D. Something should be used during this time period to entertain the participants, because sitting there for 10 minutes watching a ritual might be involving the first time but in your 3rd-4th ritual it will be old and you will probably be alt-tabbed out watching a youtube video. No one needs that. That's not a good part of the game. So maybe a mini-game, a quick time event, something, anything that makes you pay attention and still gives you a half-decent experience. Perhaps the better you perform the faster the ritual goes and vice versa.

If you are not willing to pay the price, then don't attempt to summon a Greater Daemon!!!

That's what Is was thinking. Able to take on multiple tanks and dreadnoughts at a time, but not invincible.

I disagree. Daemons shouldn't be something like a strategic weapon: He who gets it first automatically wins. Daemons should be powerful but also unreliable. Even if you have everything you would need for a ritual, you should think twice before going "What a lovely day! Time to summon a daemon for my entertainment!"

How about this: If the ritual goes wrong, the ressources get spent anyway, but a hostile NPC-Greater Daemon gets summoned instead of a player-Greater Daemon.

Violence weakens the veil... The closer to a battle, the easier the ritual...

I also propose a daemonology-skill for sorcerers: The higher, the easier the ritual.
There was a Word Bearers warband in the Siege of Vraks that had specialized in summoning daemons.

Agreed. Unless...

I remember a ritual from the novels where the death of the participants at the hands of attackers was actually the last step in conducting it.

Agreed. Inversely proportional, of course.

Quick-time events to simulate complicated chanting. (Guitar Hero ) The faster the desired number of quick-time events has been successfully completed, the faster the ritual proceeds.
That's either 10 people chanting for 20 minutes or 100 people chanting for 2 minutes.

I'd like to see this happening post launch ( same with civilians npc and such) but only if the other faction have something similar to balance it out. I'd like to see CSM: capture civilians mission clashing with SM: protect civilians mission or Eldar or Orc or even prevent the nids from omnomnomnom the civilians.