Rituals as Rewards

[Xphile]

If one of the handbooks has something about this, please point me in the right direction.

How does one give our rituals or ritual books out as rewards? They seem to have less use than magical items, so probably shouldn't replace a magical item that a caster would get instead, but are more rare and valuable than just simple gold though.

How well has giving out rituals as a reward worked out in your campaign?

 

[Shin Okada]

By default, 4e is assuming that if something has a written cost, a PC can buy it with money. PCs can buy both magic items and rituals if they have enough money.

So, the ritual's cost is it's value.

 

[Klaus]

If one of the handbooks has something about this, please point me in the right direction.

How does one give our rituals or ritual books out as rewards? They seem to have less use than magical items, so probably shouldn't replace a magical item that a caster would get instead, but are more rare and valuable than just simple gold though.

How well has giving out rituals as a reward worked out in your campaign?

Choose the rituals you want to give out and decut their value from the monetary award.

 

[Truename]

How well has giving out rituals as a reward worked out in your campaign?

I used to give them out as an alternative to monetary treasure, but my players didn't have very many as a result and they generally ignored them.

Now I'm giving them out for "free" whenever it's thematically appropriate. Rituals are cool, and I don't see a lot of value in restricting their availability. They already have built-in restrictions by virtue of their casting cost.

 

[Klaus]

If one of the handbooks has something about this, please point me in the right direction.

How does one give our rituals or ritual books out as rewards? They seem to have less use than magical items, so probably shouldn't replace a magical item that a caster would get instead, but are more rare and valuable than just simple gold though.

How well has giving out rituals as a reward worked out in your campaign?

Note that you can also give out Ritual components as treasure.

"You sack the wizard's laboratory and scrounge up 1000 gp worth of Arcana ritual components".

 

[Amaroq]

Note that you can also give out Ritual components as treasure.

Yep. Precisely what I do.

The party killed the Shaman, and on the shaman they find 50gp worth of Ritual components, 40 gp in gold, and a ritual book including a ritual they hadn't yet learned (cost: 250gp) ... net deduction from "gold for this level", 340gp.

My players love it.

 

[Klaus]

Yep. Precisely what I do.

The party killed the Shaman, and on the shaman they find 50gp worth of Ritual components, 40 gp in gold, and a ritual book including a ritual they hadn't yet learned (cost: 250gp) ... net deduction from "gold for this level", 340gp.

My players love it.

Do you differentiate between Arcana, Nature and Religion components, per RAW, or do you roll it all together into a "components" category?

 

[jester_gl]

I actually took a page from older d&d and transformed a monster into it's own reward.

The party had just killed a Gauth (a type of beholder) and after an Arcana check, the wizard realized that those eyes could be used in various arcana rituals. Et voila, instant monetary reward without having to resort to the beholder flying around with a pouch of coin.

Dragon blood (or scale ,or teeth, etc), beholder eye, vampire dust, troll blood. Monster hunter never need be poor again.

 

[Amaroq]

Do you differentiate between Arcana, Nature and Religion components, per RAW, or do you roll it all together into a "components" category?

Thus far I've only got one type of ritual caster in my party, so I'd just left it as a generic "components" category - especially as they're in a fairly low magic world, so they can't exactly go to the local hedge witch and pick up additional - either they find it, hunt it, or whatever.

 

[unan oranis]

How well has giving out rituals as a reward worked out in your campaign?

I play things a little different with rituals and magic items:

Magic item super-stores are fine with me, it even makes sense.

In a high magic style dnd world, why wouldn't there be the equivalent to a WoW AH? It could be regulated by genies, wizards, gawdz or whatever.
Embargoes, sanctions etc can all be good hooks for adventures to boot.

In any case, it is assumed in most games of 4e that characters with money will be able to buy whatever item they can afford. Some people ban specific (broken?) items, but the idea of magic item shops that either have access to all types of items (or are "magic" magic item shops that have just what the character is looking for) seems to be a pretty common ideal.

But the rituals... There are so many of them now, and so many of them radically alter what kinds of stories and world events can happen, I severely restrict their availability.

They can not be traded or taught, only learned through pilgrimage to special areas such as shrines, relics or bearing witness to random cosmic events. Some are common, others rare, some secret, others at the center of famous cities.

I'll sometimes include a chance to learn a ritual in a dungeon or lair, or wherever something exotic might be found. I don't count it against the parties treasure, I just add them in as an alternative reward and to stoke the players interest.

I intend on eventually tacking all of the basic-burger rituals to specific cities and so forth in my campaign - hopefully encouraging/creating a pilgrimage motive for adventure or player generated side quests.

edit: Also, I substitute components for gold all the time.