A new spin on rituals

[Jack99]

I have always (well, since 2008) had an ambivalent relationship with rituals in 4e D&D. On one hand, I thought it was fairly smart way to handle some of the non-combat spells that filled up spellbooks in the old editions. On the other hand, I have never been completely happy with how rituals turned out. First and foremost, there is the whole money-drain effect. It works decently at heroic tier, but by paragon the expenditures become insignificant, and by epic, the players can barely notice they are spending money.

Lately I have run a campaign with no rituals at all (except as needed plot-wise), and while that worked fairly okay, I felt something was missing.

Anyway, I sat down and thought about it, and came up with the following.
1) I want rituals in my campaigns
2) I don't want them to cost money to cast
3) I want players to be limited both in the amount of rituals, but also in how many they cast each day
4) I don't want to overpower the classes that get ritual casting for free, nor do I want to make it a must-have feat.

The solution to the above?

Ritual Caster
Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Trained in Arcana or Religion
Benefit: You can master and perform rituals of your level or lower. Even though some rituals use the Heal skill or the Nature skill, the Arcana skill or the Religion skill is required to understand how to perform rituals.
You may cast one ritual per tier per day (1 at heroic, 2 at paragon, 3 at paragon) at no cost. You may learn a number of rituals equal to 1+intelligence or wisdom modifier (whichever is higher) per tier.

Casting more than the allowed number of rituals comes at a cost. For every ritual cast beyond the allowed number (1/2/3), roll on the table below. All results stack. All penalties last until after your next extended rest.

d20
1. Unconscious
2. Dazed
3. Vulnerability 5/tier
4. Weakened
5. 1 surge value damage
6. -2 to hit
7. Slowed
8. -2 initiative
9. -2 initiative
10. -2 to all skill checks
11. -2 to all skill checks
12. -1 to all defenses
13. -1 to all defenses
14. -1 to all defenses
15. -1 to all defenses
16. -1 to hit
17. -1 to hit
18. -1 to hit
19. -1 to hit
20. No side effect


Now, I am still struggling with casting time. Considering the limited amount of rituals available in a given day to a character, would it unbalance things to reduce the casting time to a standard action? I could also use some more entries for the table, so that not everything is to hit and defense penalties.

What do you guys think? Is it a ridiculous idea?

 

[john112364]

Here's what we came up with once before:

			This is an add-on to the standard ritual casting rules. No additional feat is required. Combat Ritual Casting: You can cast rituals in combat. You may use Combat Ritual Casting two times per day at 1st level, three times at 11th, and 4 times at 21st. Combat Ritual Casting is refreshed after an extended rest. Cast a ritual in combat: You can begin casting ritual as a standard action. Casting time is an additional standard action per ten full minutes of non-combat casting time (i.e a ten minute ritual takes two rounds to cast, a 1 hour ritual takes 7 rounds to cast) . You may sustain a ritual you are casting as a minor action so that you may take other actions. If you sustain you do not loose the ritual, it is merely suspended in mid-casting. If you are stunned, or unconscious, or you do not sustain a ritual on a given turn, you must begin again. Rituals which require special preparation (eg. a circle of silver dust on the ground, special symbols drawn on a subject) are still subject to those requirements. The dungeon master has the final word on which rituals may be used in combat.

It would need a little tweaking to mesh with your house rules, but it's a start.
Here's the link to the original thread here . (I'm partial to post #42 myself , but there's more before and after that you may find interesting).

 

[john112364]

Casting more than the allowed number of rituals comes at a cost. For every ritual cast beyond the allowed number (1/2/3), roll on the table below. All results stack. All penalties last until after your next extended rest.

d20
1. Unconscious
2. Dazed
3. Vulnerability 5/tier
4. Weakened
5. 1 surge value damage
6. -2 to hit
7. Slowed
8. -2 initiative
9. -2 initiative
10. -2 to all skill checks
11. -2 to all skill checks
12. -1 to all defenses
13. -1 to all defenses
14. -1 to all defenses
15. -1 to all defenses
16. -1 to hit
17. -1 to hit
18. -1 to hit
19. -1 to hit
20. No side effect

You say that penalties last til after your next extended rest. What about conditions? That would be extremely harsh and would grind the adventuring day to a standstill if you got, say, a 1. Personally I would change it to "Save Ends" on those conditions.

BTW, I like rituals too, but have run across the same problems you have, so I'm very interested in coming up with a solution as well. Definitely not ridiculous.

 

[Kzach]

4e is a system that applies logical mechanical limitations to the game despite being illogical in a 'real world'. Therefore, why have this system at all? Why not just say, "You can cast one ritual per day, per tier."?

 

[Jack99]

[MENTION=86837]john112364[/MENTION] thanks for the link to that other link. I have been away from the boards for a while, and totally forgot to run a search before posting my idea. I do notice that the thread is more than 18 months old, so would be kinda awesome if [MENTION=2804]Dragonblade[/MENTION] [MENTION=9470]weem[/MENTION] [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] could swing by a share their experiences with allowing rituals to be cast as standard actions.

As for penalties, I meant both penalties and conditions. And indeed, some of the results on that table would slow,down things for a party. I guess I want them to stick to the soft limit mostly, but in special cases be able to break that limit, although not without paying a "price".

[MENTION=56189]Kzach[/MENTION] I guess I wanted some sort of mechanism that supports the whole magic is dangerous meme, and to "explain" why NPCs dont go around casting rituals constantly with the proposed removal of ritual casting costs.

 

[Neubert]

Why not simply use Healing Surges to cast additional rituals? Also meshes well with the fiction if you see Wizards as being frail casters that are fatigued from casting too much.

 

[Essenti]

Why not simply use Healing Surges to cast additional rituals? Also meshes well with the fiction if you see Wizards as being frail casters that are fatigued from casting too much.

I like this idea!

You could also make the surge drain successive: 1st ritual beyond costs 1 surge, 2nd ritual beyond costs 2 surges (3 total), 3rd ritual beyond costs another 3 surges (6 total), etc.

Some rituals should still require gathering components, materials, etc. Like Enchant Magic Item.

 

[Jack99]

Healing surges was the first thing I considered... and rejected. In my experience of DM'ing 4e, healing surges is the one factor that determines the length of the adventuring day. My players rutinely take on a handful of encounters with nothing but at-wills and encounter-powers, but when the healing surges equal or approach zero, they will almost stop, unless forced to continue by circumstances. Mostly because if they dont stop, it ends with a (near-)TPK. And I dont want shorter adventuring days as the rule.

 

[Neubert]

Healing surges was the first thing I considered... and rejected. In my experience of DM'ing 4e, healing surges is the one factor that determines the length of the adventuring day. My players rutinely take on a handful of encounters with nothing but at-wills and encounter-powers, but when the healing surges equal or approach zero, they will almost stop, unless forced to continue by circumstances. Mostly because if they dont stop, it ends with a (near-)TPK. And I dont want shorter adventuring days as the rule.

That was why I was coming back to this thread as well. It does shorten the adventuring day.
The problem is coming up with a penalty that isn't harsh enough for the party to stop adventuring (like becoming dazed until an extended rest is taken), but a big enough deal for them to stop and consider it first.
How about additional costing an action point? That would also mean you have to adventure to do it more than once in a day.

 

[Essenti]

I mostly play controllers when I do play. I rarely use more than 3 or 4 surges before an extended rest. The defenders and strikers burn through surges much faster than I do. I did get beat up on once, mainly because I was trying something new that kept me way too close to the fight and I used maybe 5 surges that day.

Although the surge cost might make rituals more prohibative for characters that burn through surges quickly, it still feels like an elegant way of balancing the potential power of otherwise costless rituals. Over time, the players will realize that they shouldn't go crazy with the rituals, and help keep those characters that are basically dabblers in the art, as merely dabblers in the art. If they wanna go maximum Gish, they will be much squishier.