active casting feat

[elephantgrey]

ive been thinking about ritural casting in combat, and have come up wit hthis feat.

Active Ritual Casting
Tier: Heroic
Prerequisite: Ritural Casting feat

You can cast rituals you know in combat. These rituals have the same requirements as normal, except the componant cost and time it takes to cast them. When casting the a ritual outside of combat, the ritual is preformed as normal.

You gain the Active Ritual power

Active Ritual – Feat Power
In the midst of combat you cool your head, you have have to preform a ritual to change the tide of battle.
Encounter
Standard Action, Personal
Target: Personal
Effect: You start preforming a ritual, the ritual cost increases by half.
Sustain: Standard.
Special: after an amount of rounds equal to the time i takes to normal cast the ritual (in minutes) multiplied by two, you complete the ritual.

im not sure about the extra cost, im thinking of putting it up to double. Is the time frame reasonable? itll basically put a player out of play (as far as attacking goes) for a substantial number of rounds, but casting a ritual in combat could have a big effect on the way a fight goes. to that extent, im not sure if it should be encounter or daily either. i am also thinking of adding a sentence saying that the cost and time of the ritual cannot be reduced in any way (bardic ritualist for example).
any thoughts or camments?

 

[MrBeens]

No one would take this.
Even the quickest rituals are 5 mins, so in your system they would take 10 rounds.
What rituals do you have in mind that people would want to cast in combat that would turn the tide of the battle?

 

[elephantgrey]

What about if the number of rounds equals the riturals level (minimum 2) or somthing like that?

 

[the Jester]

Uhh what?

What is the purpose of this? More specifically, what is the purpose of wasting most of a combat casting a ritual, most of which are non-combat anyhow?

Who would take a feat for this? Why not just wait until the combat is over and cast the ritual normally? It's probably not going to effect the combat in any meaningful way, except that it means you aren't contributing much (if anything) to it while your buddies are getting trounced.

In addition, a lot of groups think rituals cost too much as it is; increasing the cost is only going to exacerbate the problem.

I just don't see anyone ever taking this feat, and I think it belongs solidly in the "stinker" class of feats, although I could be overlooking something.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If you want this feat to be useful, it should probably be 1 full round of combat casting per 5 minutes of normal casting time. Since the bulk of rituals are 5 minutes, this makes most rituals available in combat while keeping the bulk of game breakers (Raise Dead) outside the realm of combat. Realistically, if you make the casting time any longer, I don't see players using this feat. For any ritual with a casting time of 5 rounds or more, there's a realistic chance that the combat might be over before the ritual is cast.

I'd increase the casting cost to at least double (although keep in mind that the way gp costs scale, lower level rituals will nevertheless be practically free once the caster is a higher (ritual level +5) level). You can slow this accessibility using a significantly larger cost multiplier (x5) but that in turn means that this feat will hardly (if ever) be used at lower levels. Which might not necessarily be a bad thing (it might be a better feat for Paragon tier than Heroic).

Also keep in mind that there is an epic destiny (in arcane power I think) which allows the casting of rituals during combat. If that ED is available in your campaign, you should keep it in mind while designing this feat so as not to marginalize those benefits.

Also keep in mind rituals like Magic Circle and Imprison. This feat has the potential to make those rituals very potent combat abilities, under the right circumstances.

If you do choose to go ahead with it, then my offhand recommendation would be the following (albeit, I'm probably being a bit conservative, but better that than a broken feat; players tend to be much more forgiving if you improve a game element than when you nerf it):

Active Ritual – Feat Power
In the midst of combat you cool your head, you have have to preform a ritual to change the tide of battle.
Prerequisite: Paragon tier, Ritual Casting
Encounter
Standard Action, Personal
Target: Personal
Effect: You start preforming a ritual, the ritual cost is multiplied by 5.
Sustain: Standard.
Special: After 1 full round of casting per 5 minutes of casting time (during which time you may take no other actions), you complete the ritual.