Putting Rituals in Essentials

[Mika]

I'm starting new to 4E with Essentials, but I have read the original 4E rules and thought rituals were one of the best things in there.

Any issues with putting rituals back into Essentials? Any considerations?

One concern I had is that it seems to me anyone can cast rituals. Am I missing something? A fighter could take the Skill Training feat to get Arcana or Religion, and then take the Ritual Caster feat. Seems strange that a Fighter could cast Raise Dead.

Or he could take the Arcane Initiate (Wizard multiclass) or Initiate of the Faith (Cleric multiclass) feat to accomplish the result -- then he would actually be considered a Cleric or a Wizard for many purposes. I would think that any character willing to spend two feats to learn how to cast rituals has proven that he is serious about studying how to do it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I am still hoping that rituals are placed in the DMG, as with the introduction of rare items, rules that create magic iems need to be updated too.

 

[Tony Vargas]

One way to add back rituals would just be to assume that any build that gets ritual-equivalents (like raise dead or whatever) as it levels has ritual caster, and could trade out the 'ritual' he gets as a class feature for a different ritual of equal or lesser cost, or pay to learn new rituals when he has the chance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm starting new to 4E with Essentials, but I have read the original 4E rules and thought rituals were one of the best things in there.

Any issues with putting rituals back into Essentials? Any considerations?

One concern I had is that it seems to me anyone can cast rituals. Am I missing something? A fighter could take the Skill Training feat to get Arcana or Religion, and then take the Ritual Caster feat. Seems strange that a Fighter could cast Raise Dead.

Eh, there are a lot of good character concepts that fit well with such things. The old style ranger that had a bit of druidic and wizard magic, easily reimagined as a 4e ranger with ritual casting and a small book of lower level utility type Nature rituals. Not a LOT of players will go for that, most people want to just be a fighter and swing a sword etc but the possibility exists and makes for some potentially interesting characters.

As others have said, nothing in Essentials is forbidding the use of rituals.

OTOH I think the message from the current 4e design team is clear, rituals are far out of favor. You can say "it is all still part of the game" and that is definitely true, but you'd kind of have to be blind not to see that what are currently rituals in 4e are being replaced with powers and class features in Essentials. The concept might come back into favor some day, but I think our retro-loving friends over on the West Coast have no interest in doing anything more with that subsystem.

Personally I too consider rituals to be one of the best things that 4e ever did. I'm just going to keep saying it until someone over there gets the idea, lol.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yes, Rituals are great!

Ritual caster should also be available for people with nature skill!

 

[Ladislaus]

Personally I too consider rituals to be one of the best things that 4e ever did. I'm just going to keep saying it until someone over there gets the idea, lol.

I'm with you.

Yes, Rituals are great!

I concur.

 

[Vaeron]

I am still hoping that rituals are placed in the DMG, as with the introduction of rare items, rules that create magic iems need to be updated too.

No existing items count as rares, and only rares can't be created by players. So the existing magic item creation system still works pretty much as is, I would think. According to the Rules Compendium, the only restriction on magic item creation rituals is that the created item cannot exceed the player's level. Given their new focus on specialized builds, I think rituals, rules for rituals, etc. are likely to be things that remain only in the original PHBs, books like Manual of the Planes, and the Character Builder.