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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Composer99" data-source="post: 9150669" data-attributes="member: 7030042">Work perodically progresses! I have finished somewhat over half of the rituals I intend to include. Here are a couple of sample pages.[ATTACH=full]299770[/ATTACH]Notes About RitualsAs with monsters, I want the rituals to be similar enough at first blush to 4e rituals, without necessarily being identical.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The ritual categories ("divination", "abjuration", etc.) are not unlike the categories used in 4e ("exploration", etc.) only they tend to use names closer to classic schools of magic. I don't copy over all the schools of magic, though - anything that affects an existing creature or object is probably going to be an "enchantment"-category ritual, unless I have cause to categorise it otherwise, for instance, so "transmutation" probably won't exist as a distinct category. At the moment "summoning", which calls forth otherworldly creatures, is a distinct category from "conjuration", which manifests magical effects out of nothing.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The four kinds of ritual that players can access are arcane, divine, occult, and primal rituals, roughly corresponding with "power sources". The kind of ritual tells you what skill you need to use - Arcana for arcane or occult rituals, for instance, or Nature for primal ones.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The spell keyword and the "component" keywords tell you what you need to provide in order to cast the ritual. The spell keyword also interacts with rules and effects that affect spells - such as a counterspell effect, a dispel effect, antimagic zones, and the like.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Each ritual specifies its material components, although it usually doesn't explicitly spell out "consumable" materials. Instead, the general rules for casting rituals and reading their descriptions offers some examples of consumable materials for different types of ritual. For instance, holy water or sanctified incense are common consumable materials for divine rituals. Usually, you don't have to keep track of exact materials, just an amount of Treasure worth of materials of a given kind.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I didn't want to exactly copy the way rituals interact with skills, so they do usually require a pass/fail check. Failing a check to cast a ritual means it doesn't go off, but you don't spend any consumable materials in that case.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The difficulty of casting a ritual uses a keyword - Moderate, Hard, or Vey Hard - and the ritual's level, which you then compare to a table of DCs like the table of DCs by level in 4e to determine a specific DC.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Any other keywords that might apply to the ritual's effects are listed after its duration. For instance, animal messenger has the charm keyword. It would fail to affect a creature that's immune to charm but is otherwise a valid target for the spell.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">To avoid duplication, I've tried to combine rituals with the same basic effect together. For instance, the tongues ritual in the samples includes effects comparable to classical comprehend languages and tongues as they appear in various editions of D&D (including 4e). You can "upcast" a ritual at a higher level by recording it in a spellbook at a higher level and then casting it at that higher level; this can cause it to have more potent effects (as is the case with tongues).</li> </ol>Next time I update, I think I'll either provide some sample magic items or some sample character options.(Edit: I used to have consumable materials specifically spelled out for each spell, but decided to remove that; it does mean some language using that old concept hasn't been removed from spell descriptions.)</blockquote>

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