One step in the ritual = 1 active meaningful action with risk of consequnces by the ritualist. Generally that means that they start the ritual in round one phase one, and take their action in phase 3 each round, but can do whatever with thier quick actions (2/round can be taken in any phase, basically combine minor actions and reactions) each round. Thier ritual action moves one step toward completion on a success (and usually has some effect in the moment like creating a shield of wind around them or weakening the enemy or interfering with some other effect in the area.
Failure means a lost action and a round added to the casting time, and the GM gets an Adversity Point to fuel their adverserial moves.
How long is combat meant to take? Because the "standard" at the moment is 2-3 turns. And then having to spent several turns to cast a ritual might be too much.
13th age, which already has some longer than average number of rounds, has several classes which can "concentrate" for 1 round. Which often leads to only a small effect that turn, but a really strong effect next turn. This kinda works, because its only 1 turn, in a 4 turn game.
Also for me a meaningfull action has not necessarily to do with the risk of consequences/failures, but with the fact if there is a meaningfull decision. So the ritual would for me need a decision as well.
Also something I fear is that if only 1 person does the rituals than that person can feel like an NPC (when the ritual feels like skipping actions), but also like harry potter, the only person which actually matters by catching the golden ball thingy.
One thing I could see is to have a "ritual" class, which does rituals and plays thus different in combat, similar to how 13th age has "charge" classes. People who like this gamestyle can choose it, but not someone in a party is forced to do it, because its quite a bit different. OR if you want to have this be a central point of combat, and make it a role, then you need to have either all classes be able to contribute (like in a skill challenge in combat), or have several different (playing and feeling) classes which can do rituals, to make the chances higher someone likes to play this role.
I am just not sure "rituals" per se need to have complexity to be exciting. Skill challenges in D&D 4E could be used in combat, and them being interesting depended a lot more on the narrative and the combat encounter design, than on how exactly you do the skill challenge rules. (There are simpler and more complex homebrews, and the basic version can be quite simple like a clock).
The rules to Monopoly are not that long, but players still ignore some rules.
It's more of an issue of "what are the players willing to use" than "which parts should be complex."
Well monopoly is a game made to be "not fun", so having people try to homebrew the bad game to make it fun does make sense. Also all old games which are mostly taught by oral from people to people have house rules in different circles.
And most games do fine with that, because they are robust, which many good games are.
I personaly like the complexity to be not there when you need to decide fast at the table and more in the "backend" - character creation and building etc.
Well I like decisions to be not simple, but I understand what you mean. The point which for crafting makes it more complex is that you need to use crafting for your items, but when you only have specific components etc. this makes the item parts even more complex, because you cant just choose the best items anymore, but must choose the best ones given the limitations, which as an optimization problem is harder.
