Why all the ritual hate?

[Nebulous]

My unequivocal experience with rituals is that players:

A) forget they have them because they're aren't front and center like powers
B) don't want to take the time to cast them
C) don't want to pay a cost (even if trivial)

Which sucks because many of the rituals in Azagar's Book of Rituals really harken back to older school magic. They evoke some wonder and real utility-like magic that could easily be used outside of combat. Rituals as far as I can tell are just not integrated into the game properly. i've even given them magic items that cast rituals quickly and cheaply (i.e. free) and it still hasn't gotten used yet because it's not as useful or kewl as an encounter or daily power.

I don't know what to do really except keep hinting "Guys, you know you have a ritual that might be very useful here."

 

[LostSoul]

I bet if you didn't allow PCs to purchase magic items rituals would be more attractive.

 

[ferratus]

The best thing that WotC can do to get people to use rituals is to make it easier for them to show up as cards on the character builder. Right now you have to click "show basic item cards" to get them to show up, then hide your mundane equipment.

 

[Windjammer]

The best thing that WotC can do to get people to use rituals is to make it easier for them to show up as cards on the character builder.

That is EXACTLY what I'd like to have in my 4E game too - ritual cards for my players to have. Of course, the card set would cost twice of their standard Powers Card deck these days, owing to what, 268 rituals in the game and counting (link to a PDF I made), and that's leaving DDI-exclusive stuff out of the picture ('xcept that handy article in Dragon 366).

So what WotC would need to do, I think, is to thin out the list and clear out redundancies. Looking at that Peter Schaefer article I just referenced, that's pure gold. It contains all the goodness this game needs - Farsight for reconnaissance, add in some quick overland travel by flight, some alarm whistles aka wards, a free servant you can employ, a sanctuary you can create, other terrain effects etc etc. It's all there, in that article.

And then you look at the later releases. All the ritual sections in the "Powers" splats, and Open Grave, are blatant rip-offs of Schaefer's article, except with the odd "fluff" element added in here and there, pretty randomly. So it's another farsight/scrying... and predictably, another anti-scrying ritual. Another ward/imprisonment ritual, except different. Another sanctuary ... all over... except this time it's sanctuary from creature x; it's a binding ritual (which we already had) except this time, you see, it's binding creatures of type Y; it's overland travel by flight again, except this time, your PCs are picked up by.... primal "spiritual" eagles! (Hello Frodo.) It's a ritual which gets you a servant to carry your stuff ... again, except this time he's... astral, no wait, unseen, no wait.. he's undead! Yes, that's it. That's really cool, ten rituals in the game which create servants with different key words but otherwise are 90% functionally identical.

Please WotC, stop stealing and recycling your own ideas. Make the ritual system neat, make the rituals we DO have even more flexible than they are now, allow for one ritual to deal with a variety of environment types and creature types, and then....


THEN when the 300 rituals are thinned down to the actual 100 or so that are genuinely distinct, then give us a pack of 100 cards which prints them neatly on 1 card each. All for ten dollars. I bet every group is going to buy it.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The character builder does print the rituals poscessed by a character though it would be better if the card also had the casting time and component cost.
I also think that there would be more uptake with rituals if they were incorporated into adventure design and there were more articles on how to use and create unique rituals as part of adventure desgin.

Other than that I an (so far at least) quite satisfied with rituals.

 

[Turtlejay]

That is certainly nice to know. When I was playing as a wizard a few months back, I had to make my own power cards for rituals. I laid them out on the table like the rest of my cards. I can certainly see this getting them used a lot more often.

Jay

 

[Jhaelen]

The character builder does print the rituals poscessed by a character though it would be better if the card also had the casting time and component cost.

They definitely need to improve on this. The free version just prints an empty card with the name of the ritual - not very helpful.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

They definitely need to improve on this. The free version just prints an empty card with the name of the ritual - not very helpful.

The full version prints the ritual text but does not include any info on the casting time or cost unless that has changed in the last update.

 

[Nebulous]

They definitely need to improve on this. The free version just prints an empty card with the name of the ritual - not very helpful.

I didn't even know you could print a blank card. Yeah, they definitely need to get to work on that. Unfortunately, Azagar's Book of Rituals won't ever see light of day in the CB, and i personally like those rituals more than most of the canon ones.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

every time I've played with rituals in a game that dealtn with their cost RAW, they've seen little to no use.

every time I've played in a game in which some mechanic has been houseruled to allow for limited, but free, use of rituals (ritual or action points, sacrificing dailies or surges, whatever), they've been used a TON.

based on this, my gut instinct is that the primary reason Rituals don't get used is that they cost money, and players are greedy bastards who are loathe to spend money ever if they can finagle a way to solve the problem for free (which, using skills, they usually can), and would much rather hoard their resources to buy magic items.

I think it really is that simple. Rituals are never essential, and they cost money, and players generally don't spend money on non-essential things because they want to buy cool stuff that will make them more powerful.

If you want Rituals to be used more, just houserule a ritual point system, and I guarantee they'll be used. Players like using powers. If they have the option to use a ritual once a day for free or something, they'll take it.