How to get new rituals?

[was]

find someone to teach you..suggest to the DM it could be part of a quest arc

 

[fba827]

if your DM is uncomfortable with rituals, i'd suggest either putting in the effort to make him/her comfortable (if you can do so in a non-annoying way) OR not take the ritual caster feat at all. Because, even if you did manage to get _rituals_ you're going to have an uphill battle to get your hands on ritual components given that rituals are so scarce to begin with in the campaign.

if it were me, given that it is a self-stated new DM, i'd cut him/her a break for this campaign but maybe try and get them in for the next campaign.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Other than buying/finding them, is there any way to obtain rituals?

I ask because my DM has basically told me flat out that I won't have any opportunity to acquire them any time soon. I found this odd, considering a level 1 ritual costs 50g and (I assume) would be fairly common.

Research. Just tell the DM your character is going to spend a week inventing ritual X for himself. Pay the cost, fluffed as outlay for magic inks and gathering the needed information, and you get the ritual. That would be my answer to all the various "but you can't find it here" kind of arguments. You're actually giving up time as well as the usual cash cost of the ritual, so it isn't like he can argue you're getting something for cheap. Since rituals ARE a standard part of the game your character deserves them. He spent the feat or has the class feature.

 

[the Jester]

Research. Just tell the DM your character is going to spend a week inventing ritual X for himself. Pay the cost, fluffed as outlay for magic inks and gathering the needed information, and you get the ritual. That would be my answer to all the various "but you can't find it here" kind of arguments. You're actually giving up time as well as the usual cash cost of the ritual, so it isn't like he can argue you're getting something for cheap. Since rituals ARE a standard part of the game your character deserves them. He spent the feat or has the class feature.

Many dms would not appreciate this approach. Certainly if the dm has already said he isn't going to use rituals, he should let Herobizkit's pc switch the feat out, but I definitely wouldn't try this- if I had a player try to bully through on something when I'd already said no to it, we'd have a conversation to make sure we were on the same page about who the dm is, and if we weren't, he'd be free to leave.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Well I agree this is something that the player insist that the DM allow him to do, I do think that its an appropriate argument to make on how his/her PC might be able to aquire a ritual even in locations where they aren't appropriate for purchase.

So, not something one could force onto a DM, but certainly a possible compromise which allows a PC to aquire a limited number of rituals even in situations where the story makes it unlikely that they could be purchased.

Incidentally, allowing rituals to be "researched", while using similar mechanics as those in the rules isn't actually supported by the rules (and would thus be a house rule). A reasonable one, IMHO (well, depending on the in game circumstances the "research" is occuring in - for example, I can't see one having time to research while conducting a forced march), but none the less not something a player can simply assume he/she can do without first getting DM approval.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In all fairness I put it rather emphatically. Yeah, nobody can run roughshod over anyone else.

In some sense it might be a 'house rule' but it is really pure refluffing. The rule is you pay your money and you get your ritual. Normally you would find someone that already knows it, but really that's simply a formality. The concept is you can find rituals. Maybe not ANY arbitrary one, but still they're intended to be available and how the 'hoop' you jump through is explained in-game is pretty arbitrary. The DM can decree anything he wants, of course, but putting it down as some period of time you spend coming up with what you want sure seems like the basic idea. You could call it "riding over to the next big town and finding a guy to copy it from" and it is kinda 6 of 1 and half a dozen of the other.

 

[Herobizkit]

Good news is, he's open to learning more about them. As it is, I'm playing an Eberron-based Warforged Starlock (The Man Who Fell From The Sky) and he's allowing me to take the Dragonmark of Making, which will give me the Enchant Magic Item ritual and open the door for a few others.

I've already hinted that I'm looking to build/obtain an airship to "get back to the stars" as one of my campaign goals. I get the impression that, because he's so green, he's not comfortable with off-the-cuff ideas and making up stuff on the spot. So I let him know WAAAAAY in advance.

 

[the Jester]

I'm definitely not on the same page with you. Players IMC have access to rituals when they seek out npcs that have them in game, or find ritual books as treasure, or find them graven on ancient stone tablets. They do not just get to spend the money and learn the ritual; they have to find the ritual first.

Obviously, everyone plays a different game, and play how you like; but I strongly feel that the finding part of acquiring a ritual is something that is in the dm's hands, not the players, and I would feel like the players were trying to usurp my authority if they just declared that they got such-and-such a ritual.

As an example, in the biggest town in the pcs' starting area, IIRC all rituals of up to 8th level that are in the Players Handbook 1 are available, along with a couple specific ones from other sources and a couple of homebrewed ones. Meanwhile, one of the wizard pcs lives in his master's tower (master has been gone on a journey/missing since before the game started), which contains a number of other rituals- but they aren't easily accessed; they are warded, trapped or hidden in shelf after shelf of books.

 

[S'mon]

I'm definitely not on the same page with you. Players IMC have access to rituals when they seek out npcs that have them in game, or find ritual books as treasure, or find them graven on ancient stone tablets. They do not just get to spend the money and learn the ritual; they have to find the ritual first.

Obviously, everyone plays a different game, and play how you like; but I strongly feel that the finding part of acquiring a ritual is something that is in the dm's hands, not the players, and I would feel like the players were trying to usurp my authority if they just declared that they got such-and-such a ritual.

As an example, in the biggest town in the pcs' starting area, IIRC all rituals of up to 8th level that are in the Players Handbook 1 are available, along with a couple specific ones from other sources and a couple of homebrewed ones. Meanwhile, one of the wizard pcs lives in his master's tower (master has been gone on a journey/missing since before the game started), which contains a number of other rituals- but they aren't easily accessed; they are warded, trapped or hidden in shelf after shelf of books.

That's pretty much how I run it, and is my impression from the 4e PHB of how it's supposed to work, though it's not very clear, there is no advice on ritual placement in the DMG.

Typically I have a starter town where PHB Heroic Tier rituals are available, or friendly NPCs with rituals. Eg in my Vault of Larin Karr game Crus the Wizard had level 1-10 PHB Arcane rituals, and a friendly priestess of Freya had level 1-8 PHB Religious rituals. A Bard or Druid type NPC may have relevant PHB2 rituals.

Other rituals are typically rarer but may be located in play: researched in libraries, found in wizards' spellbooks (often following death of said wizard), purchased at mage conclaves, etc.

 

[Unwise]

I can see why a GM would be concerned about rituals. I carefully control which ones come into my game. I find they can really affect game balance more than most combat or utility abilities.

Examples include:
- Raise dead. In no campaign I ever run will a PC be able to bring people back from the dead at level 8 by spending 500gp.
- Portal spells. If your not familiar with them and don't plan around them, you have to pull out a macguffin to stop PCs from ruining the plot you just made by teleporting from A to B. This rules out most "oh no we are lost in the forest" or "how will we get out of this sieged village" style adventures.
- Social and language rituals. There seems to be little point in buying feats regarding learning languages and comprehending writing when a simple ritual can do so much of it.
- Animal messenger, Sending etc. These just ruled out any "must get this message to the king" style adventure.

Rituals are powerful to the extent of changing the actual plots that the GM can use without hand-waving away their usefulness. Keeping on top of all the options that the players have takes a lot of work to not find a plot made impotent.

They are a throwback to when spell casters who survived leveling up were simply better than martial characters, with hundreds more options. The classes are balanced as is without giving some classes a suite of 50 more out-of-combat utility abilities.

This being said, rituals can improve the game in many ways, giving both players and GMs options and making characters more characterful.