D&D 4E [4e] New Rituals

[Doc Eldritch]

I have been brainstorming various things for 4e, in preparation for a game I would like to run. One thing that was missing, to me, was the summoning and undead creation spells from previous editions. I know that 4e has this obsession with 'economy of action' and not letting a PC have more screen time than another because of pets, but it is something I never really ran into, and never had much of a problem with.
Anyways, I came up with a couple of rituals for Creating Undead and Summoning/Binding things. Now, I admit, the Create Undead was more an exercise and gave me ideas for the Summoning ritual, since not many PCs ever took Animate Dead, that I saw. Still it was useful and fun to work on!
The Summoning/Binding one will likely see more use by my players, but it should be expensive enough to limit abuse. The other thing I realized as I wrote it, was that with some fluff changes, it can easily simulate long term domination type effects as well as a summoning!

Edit: My forum posting skills are weak and noobish, and I could not get the tables and things to line up right...so instead, here is a link to the googledoc for my ideas. Please take a look and let me know what you all think, feedback is definitely wanted!!

Create Undead/Ritual of Binding

 

[Unlogic]

Its hard to tell how balanced this is, given the complete absence of other summoning type rituals to compare it to. But with a level limit of character level -4 monsters, it seems like it is probably not overpowered...

I recommend using a summon XP limit instead of basing directly on level and Cha modifier, to handle minions/elites/solos. So for example, following your level-4, a 5th level ritual might get you 100 XP of undead/monsters, +25 XP per point of Cha mod.

I'd also recommend having a skill challenge (at least for the binding) in order to gain control of your summon. So the ritual summons it, and holds it in place so it doesn't immediately attack you out of annoyance, but doesn't automatically obey your will until make it, either through negotiation or arcana-5 vs its will save a few times or something like that.

Just my 2c.

 

[Doc Eldritch]

The reason I did not deal with binding in the ritual and just 'assumed it', is that it is just one more hurdle to jump through, and no other edition of DnD has forced casters to do such a thing. You summon something and it is yours to play with.
Plus, you are increasing their chances of failure by using a skill challenge (since usually only the summoner is involved, they have to make all the rolls alone, which increases the chances of a failure occurring), or even using a 'binding' period. The skill check exists to incorporate that function. It is not so much that the summoning fails, but that you fail to bind the creature properly.
Now, I do admit, some of the calling type spells in 3.X had a saving throw mechanic in place (though arguably the ritual skill roll can take its place). One thing I did toy with was using the target's Will defense as the threshold, rather than a static DC. So Will defense or lower fails, +5 is one day, +10 is a week, +15 is a year and a day.

Edit: I added an optional table using such rules to the document, let me know what you think.

As far as using XP costs as a basis for how much you can control, I thought of that at first, and might still go with it, but it got a bit cumbersome. The Ritual of Binding does not even bother with that, just setting a hard cap on the number you can control, since you get less of them overall. Create Undead I wanted a cap on, since it is not unusual to have large numbers of undead at a necromancer's command.