A new spin on rituals

[Keenberg]

How about additional costing an action point? That would also mean you have to adventure to do it more than once in a day.

Agreed, this seems to me to be a great idea. It plays counter to the idea of shortening the day, as you are opposed to.

 

[jacktannery]

I've been thinking of bringing in 'cast a ritual for free per milestone reached'.

 

[Kzach]

And I dont want shorter adventuring days as the rule.

Ironically one of the things that really helps counter this is a ritual called "Comrade's Succor". Often it's not the fighter who needs to stop for the day, it's the rogue who keeps getting pounded on, or the wizard who the fighter can't keep mobs off of, 'cause they have less healing surges to throw around. So this ritual can keep everyone going much longer.

How about this as a suggestion? Everyone can cast rituals, with or without the feat or the appropriate skill trained. Doing so requires components OR healing surges. This is the 'sacrifice' required to make the ritual work. Rituals need SOMETHING to convert into the raw energy needed to power them, whether that's components or healing surges, doesn't matter.

But if you have the Ritual Caster feat, you know how to draw on the energies all around you (makes sense given the Arcana training required) to substitute for the component or healing surge requirement. You can do this once per day, per tier.

 

[erf_beto]

How about this as a suggestion? Everyone can cast rituals, with or without the feat or the appropriate skill trained. Doing so requires components OR healing surges. This is the 'sacrifice' required to make the ritual work. Rituals need SOMETHING to convert into the raw energy needed to power them, whether that's components or healing surges, doesn't matter.

I like it. But you'd probably have to double or triple the components cost, because like the OP said, it becomes almost trivial pocket change by epic tier... maybe even more than that, if you are allowing ritual usage with no feat requirement (reasoning is more theme than crunck, IMO).

Another idea would be to give to those with the ritual caster feat a number of free surges that can only be spent on ritual casting (think extra magic points). Or go the "pay for 1, get 2" route: for each healing surge sacrificed, you get 2 "magic" surges.

 

[Doombybbr]

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.

that may work - it may also be a good idea to make certain rituals un-gettable(as some are overpowered) and let the caster use an action point instead also make the cost proportional to level - below lv 5 it costs 1, below lv15 it costs 2 and lv 30 and below costs 3 for the first ritual(to stop the caster from overusing it)

 

[Jack99]

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.

My experience does in no way matches yours, at least not since we switched to Essentials. Controllers get pounded quiet a lot and run out of surges just as fast as the rogue.

I've been thinking of bringing in 'cast a ritual for free per milestone reached'.

Not a bad idea. Maybe it should be milestone or use an action point.

Ironically one of the things that really helps counter this is a ritual called "Comrade's Succor". Often it's not the fighter who needs to stop for the day, it's the rogue who keeps getting pounded on, or the wizard who the fighter can't keep mobs off of, 'cause they have less healing surges to throw around. So this ritual can keep everyone going much longer.

How about this as a suggestion? Everyone can cast rituals, with or without the feat or the appropriate skill trained. Doing so requires components OR healing surges. This is the 'sacrifice' required to make the ritual work. Rituals need SOMETHING to convert into the raw energy needed to power them, whether that's components or healing surges, doesn't matter.

But if you have the Ritual Caster feat, you know how to draw on the energies all around you (makes sense given the Arcana training required) to substitute for the component or healing surge requirement. You can do this once per day, per tier.

We don't use Comrades' Succor. Both my players and I felt it took something away that should be there.

As for your suggestion, it is a good one, but I must admit I don't want everyone to automatically be a ritual caster, nor do I want anyone to use components, aside from a few specific cases.

 

[Storminator]

In my most recent adventure, the PCs included a powerful NPC priest with their group. He was pretty vile, they all hated him before too long, but he had a lot of mojo to help get them thru the dungeon.

I essentially gave him powerful spells, called them rituals, and had a scene of preparing them before hand. Each PC got a special tattoo that linked them to the rituals. When the priest invoked one of his rituals the tattoos burned and everyone took 5 points of damage (this was an extended dungeon crawl @5th level, so those points hurt and no one wanted unnecessary rituals used!). I had originally thought of healing surges, but decided that was too costly.

In general I like the idea of casting rituals ahead of time, then unleashing them with a standard action, as opposed to treating them like any other power.

PS