Decrease Ritual Casting Times

[Herald of I]

My players never use rituals unless they're in extended downtime mode, or about to rest.

While objectively, they all know the ten minute casting time doesn't really matter if combat isn't imminent, they can't bring themselves to spend that long in a dungeon or other such area not doing anything, probably as a side effect of our old DM's 3rd edition game, where standing still that long was asking for trouble.

So I'm considering dropping all 10 minute ritual casting times down to a minute. This still more or less prohibits their use in combat and frankly, if a player wants to waste ten rounds chanting, I see no reason to stop them.

I plan to leave all rituals with a casting time different from the standard 10 minutes alone.

Are there any glaring problems with this I'm not seeing? It's mostly a roleplaying change as far as I can tell, and it gives magic a much more ritual impressive and useful feel to me.

 

[Noir le Lotus]

Watch out with casting rituals faster !!!


If you compare mundane use of a skill and a ritual doing the same job, you can see that often the ritual has more chances to succeed because you make a skill check with a bonus : Knock is an arcana check with a +5 bonus, Detect Secret Doors uses your arcana check as a bonus for your perception check.


The only thing that make players prefer the mundane use is that a 10-minute casting is rahter long and has a good chance to be interrupt, or may slow too much their progression.

With a 1-minute casting, you may end up with ritual casters doing all the job to maximize he chances of success, keeping skills specialists only for emergency cases ...

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

My players never use rituals unless they're in extended downtime mode, or about to rest.

While objectively, they all know the ten minute casting time doesn't really matter if combat isn't imminent, they can't bring themselves to spend that long in a dungeon or other such area not doing anything, probably as a side affect of our old DM's 3rd edition game, where standing still that long was asking for trouble.

So I'm considering dropping all 10 minute ritual casting times down to a minute. This still more or less prohibits their use in combat and frankly, if a player wants to waste ten rounds chanting, I see no reason to stop them.

I plan to leave all rituals with a casting time different from the standard 10 minutes alone.

Are there any glaring problems with this I'm not seeing? It's mostly a roleplaying change as far as I can tell, and it gives magic a much more ritual impressive and useful feel to me.

The only problem that leaps out at me is that if players get the money to perform rituals repeatedly, this is going to make a big difference. For example, I think there was a ritual that allowed you to move earth around - changing the casting time on that leads to players building forts in half an hour, and begs the question why other people aren't doing the same?

Think about the potential differences between casting the same ritual ten times in 100 minutes, and ten times in ten minutes, before you make the change.

 

[satin]

Would it work to have a house rule that says you can only cast one ritual every ten minutes? (even though the ritual itself may only take a minute to cast)

 

[VenezuelanWiz]

I've noticed also that a lot of the casting times feel a tad long. I've told my players that if they want to speed it up I'd allow them to shorten it via a skill challenge. Using Arcana as the primary stat, and for every extra person participating / spending resources they can get the ritual done faster [2 people half the time, 3 people 1/3 etc]. In terms of the challenge I'd likely do hard or moderate checks for the 'leader' of the ritual and moderate or easy checks for those aiding depending on extraneous conditions on the ritual.
They haven't taken me up on it yet, but I haven't yet forced them to need a ritual in a tight spot.

 

[Atlatl Jones]

I've noticed also that a lot of the casting times feel a tad long. I've told my players that if they want to speed it up I'd allow them to shorten it via a skill challenge. Using Arcana as the primary stat, and for every extra person participating / spending resources they can get the ritual done faster [2 people half the time, 3 people 1/3 etc]. In terms of the challenge I'd likely do hard or moderate checks for the 'leader' of the ritual and moderate or easy checks for those aiding depending on extraneous conditions on the ritual.
They haven't taken me up on it yet, but I haven't yet forced them to need a ritual in a tight spot.

That's a great idea! Make it a skill challenge, involving most or all of the PCs in some way. It makes sense that a ritual involving many participants could work faster than one person doing a ritual on his own.

In addition to Arcana, you should include Endurance (to channel the magical power more quickly without burning out), Perception (to make sure every component is placed properly and watch for distractions), etc.

 

[Mallus]

In addition to Arcana, you should include Endurance (to channel the magical power more quickly without burning out), Perception (to make sure every component is placed properly and watch for distractions), etc.

In honor of Meiji from the CITY game, you should include Bluff -- to bulls*** the Spiritus Mundi into doing what you want.

Also, using Skill Challenges to reduce Ritual casting times is great. It completely negates the fact that the Ritual might render another character's skills obsolete.

 

[VenezuelanWiz]

Now if only my players would try it I could report on its success. If you get a chance to use this do post so I can see how it went.

Yeah when I said arcana I meant that at least x number of successes would have to be from the primary skill of the ritual with the others being able to add.

I'm also the kind of DM that would make something semi wacky happen to the party for not succeeding, like the ritual doesn't complete and something annoying happens, rather than just failure of the ritual. That would show that hurrying magic can be dangerous. I wouldn't make it do something really painful cause then they'll never do it unless pushed into a corner.

But yea perception to copy the design of the pentagram symmetrically on the other side, endurance to help contain the raw energy, acrobatics to jump and catch that page of the ritual as it flies away in the wind, insight to realize someone else made a minor mistake in their wording.

Cheers

 

[Saeviomagy]

Point out that your players are likely to spend 10 minutes of their life doing absolutely nothing on a regular basis.

Also point out that they could get a scroll of the ritual and cast that in 5 minutes.

 

[Sphyre]

If you compare mundane use of a skill and a ritual doing the same job, you can see that often the ritual has more chances to succeed because you make a skill check with a bonus : Knock is an arcana check with a +5 bonus, Detect Secret Doors uses your arcana check as a bonus for your perception check.

This is the intention of speeding up casting times. The only incentive to ritual casting now is if you've exhausted every other option. If you want to spend the money on the reagents to ritual cast instead of doing a skill check, add a bit of flavor to the game for doing that via magic as opposed to doing a skill check, then I'm all for it.

As such, I've implemented the following houserule:

• All rituals with a time expressed in minutes is reduced to 1/10th the time, with a minimum casting time of 1 minute. (This means a 5 minute ritual, as well 10 minute ritual both take one minute. A 50 minute ritual takes 5 minutes)
• (Note that this does not affect rituals that have hours for cast times, as I'm sure that if they put at least an hour cast time on there, it has a reason for it.)

It's done nothing but make the magical characters feel more magical. You know, how the higher level wizard was in 3e where he could use some of his spells for utility. No problems in my game, Herald of I, my houserule has created the effect I want. If you're trying to do the same, then I hope you get the same results.