Arcane Power Excerpt: Rituals

[Kobold Avenger]

I personally have more creative ways of including ritual components as treasure, which the official material is generally bad at doing.

But yes, I want to see more rituals. Even though some of the rituals here sound like they're more appropriate for Divine or Primal Power, it's good to see them included in Arcane Power. Though I really do wish they reintroduced Prying Eyes already. Despite being an easy to overlook spell back in 3e, it was one of the neatest divination spells, as nothing was cooler than summoning a bunch of flying magic eyes that you could send all over the place to collect intelligence for you.

 

[CubeKnight]

I'd love to see them, it is very possible that I have overlooked them somewhere. Can you provide a feat name or supplement?

Eye of Alarm (PHB 305) can be extended using a particular focus. In the same page there's Forbiddance, which has the expend-healing-surge-to-sustain mechanic. Edit: That is not to say those are the only ones, those just were the first ones I found when looking for examples.

 

[WalterKovacs]

I'd love to see them, it is very possible that I have overlooked them somewhere. Can you provide a feat name or supplement?

It's not a feat. There are just some rituals that can have their duration increased by spending healing surges (and I do recall seeing the "year and a day to make it permanent" clause before as well). They likely would not make a feat that makes that apply to all rituals, as it seems like something they'd want to decide on a ritual by ritual basis whether they want that property.

There are some ways to reduce costs to all rituals, but they are at the epic tier. There is the Epic Destiny from the Epic Faerun article in dragon 367 which allows an epic level eladrin or elf (or half-elf) wizard to 1/2 the costs of their rituals. There is also the ritualist's ring in the adventurers vault (level 24) that as a daily power halves the time, and, if used after a milestone, also halves the component cost, in addition to giving a straight bonus to ritual skill checks.

In terms of the special focus items, the existing ones are at least combining multiple things into a single value, ussualy working as the necessary focus, giving a bonus to the ritual and being able to, once per day, let the ritual be free. Other items have a practical use, but can also use up their daily power to make a ritual free (like dust of disenchantment, lens of reading, etc). A one time investment that allows for using rituals cheaply over time is good. [Again, it's hard to have an item that can make any ritual costless or cheap, as some rituals need to have a high cost, like the creation of magical items or bringing people back from the dead, etc. Halving all costs is fine, since rituals will still scale, while cutting the cost completely benefits the expensive ones too much. Perhaps a "if the value is X or less". Or perhaps items with a short duration (as opposed to "permanent/immediate" rituals like item creation/raise dead).

While it would be nice for some rituals to be cheaper and quicker, not all rituals should be that way, so any "all rituals" feat or item would need to factor not only existing rituals but potential future rituals, in keeping balance.

 

[Plane Sailing]

it seems to me that the game could benefit for some more guidance (or even rules) for how to use rituals during combat. The finale of KotS and a BBEG in Thunderspire both revolve around rituals being done during the final combat. What would be so bad about allowing PCs to do rituals in the middle of combat too?

One way of doing it would be to make completing rituals in combat a skill challenge - say a complexity 4 challenge (10 successes before 5 failures). Each round you can use either a standard action (for an easy check), a move action (for a moderate check) or a minor action (for a hard check). If you complete the challenge you finish the ritual, if you fail the challenge you fail the ritual - either using up the components, or having the ritual backfire or something appropriate.

How does that sound?

 

[Scribble]

But I think you could also give out some magic items that I'll call "Ritual Foci". If you use such a focus it could lower or negate the cost of a ritual. In your example above maybe there is a "Gossamer Shroud" that negates the cost of the Wizard's Curtain Ritual. That might be a cool thing to find in a treasure trove.

I do this idea somewhat in my own games... There are "places of power" in the world, like ley lines and places where they cross, and they can be used to reduce ritual costs, times or enhance the ability of the caster (bonus to checks.)

I haven't really made anything that's "moveable" yet though... I'm not sure how that would effect the game.

I'm woking on a "sacrifice" system for my more evil bent players.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Eye of Alarm (PHB 305) can be extended using a particular focus. In the same page there's Forbiddance, which has the expend-healing-surge-to-sustain mechanic. Edit: That is not to say those are the only ones, those just were the first ones I found when looking for examples.

Ah, I guess I was just limiting myself to looking at feats and not individual rituals. At the moment, there are two feats that mention rituals, Ritual Caster and Alchemist. PHBII will add another one (that I'm aware of) that will provide a bonus to the skill check of the ritual.

For my buck, this is a very under-developed aspect of the game. The lack of ritual importance may also be a product of the individual game.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Aside from a lack of rituals, there are two other major problems with them

1. Lengthy cast times
2. Onerous component cost

Except those two "problems" with rituals really aren't, at least in my book. The reason rituals are designed that way is so that they don't become the automatic solution to every problem. If ritual casting becomes fast and cheap, you're right back to the same problem of spellcasting overshadowing skill use/non-spellcasting classes.

Let's look at Wizard's Curtain

One less than optimal ritual does not a problem make. Besides, there might be situations where you want a ritual like that but don't have the ability to send the fighter down to the market; for example, if we're all camped out in the ruins of an old watchtower in the middle of nowhere, we could use the ritual to hide the firelight from the Nazgul who are hunting us. Sure, it's corner case, and I'd probably not pay money for it...but I wouldn't be upset to find that in a treasure hoard.

What would be so bad about allowing PCs to do rituals in the middle of combat too?

Like I said above to Alaxk, rituals are designed in such a way as to not be the default solution to every problem. They are tools, just like any other character has, but they are not solutions. The moment you make them usable in combat, the moment you're right back to the same issues as before. That's why I think a blanket rule allowing any ritual to be cast in less than its intended time is a bad idea; it undoes the work that's been done to ensure that spellcasting doesn't obviate the usefulness of other characters and their skills.

That said, I love the idea of the "perform a ritual" skill challenge for a specific instance of a specific ritual. I think that's a really neat thing to include in an adventure, and would make a very tense encounter when players have to choose between contributing to the challenge or fighting off the bad guys. However, if you just say, "Any ritual can be performed faster as a skill challenge" then suddenly I think you get players walking around with the mentality that magic can solve all of their problems. We're in a tough fight? No problem, we'll just skill challenge a teleport ritual to get away.

You could probably specifically engineer some rituals to work fine when performed as a skill challenge, but you've got to be careful that the ritual doesn't negate entire encounters or skill sets. It does make a really neat treasure reward, though, to get a scroll with a ritual on it that can be cast as a skill challenge. I can definitely see putting some scrolls in the treasure that allow you to perform a ritual faster, but since it's on a scroll your players won't be able to do it all of the time, just sometimes. It's like the DM handing the players one "get out of jail free" card without handing them the ability to get out of jail every single time. I think that's a nice compromise (and may start putting things like that in the treasure for my own players).

 

[Stalker0]

Except those two "problems" with rituals really aren't, at least in my book. The reason rituals are designed that way is so that they don't become the automatic solution to every problem. If ritual casting becomes fast and cheap, you're right back to the same problem of spellcasting overshadowing skill use/non-spellcasting classes.

I'll disagree on this one, I definitely think rituals are too expensive and take too long to cast.

I'll start with the time length as I think that's an easier argument. 10 minutes is too long for most of the rituals imo. It makes it so that every ritual is a big deal, and for many of the rituals that's not the case.

For example comprehend language. I think the flavor of a wizard closing his eyes quietly for about 1 minute, swallowing some magical components, and then being able to understand a language is neat. Requiring him to take 10 minutes to do a big ritual every time seems out of place to me.

I personally think the default casting time should be 1 minute. That prevents it from being cast in combat, but does allow a group to use it if they are given a little prenotice. And it maintains the "I am having to use some greater magic" flavor without the "Guys everyone sit down, this one is going to be a doozy" flavor that seems embedded in every ritual.

I don't have a problem with long casting times for big rituals. If raise dead had taken a week, I wouldn't have batted an eye. But the more "mundane" rituals don't need to be that long.



Second argument is cost. Perhaps I'm still old school; I am still getting used to 4e's abundance of gold and treasure per level compared to 3e. But still, paying 21,000 gold to observe a creature for 4 rounds (observe creature ritual) seems extremely expensive. Or that tenser's floating disk takes a full 1/5 of my starting wealth to use when I'm 1st level.

I understand the concern that people don't want rituals to replace everything. But on the other hand, unlike spells everyone can acquire rituals if they want to. Second, even the strongest 4e rituals are not in the same power game as 3e magic. And most important, 4e has been designed so that spells and rituals are never necessary to do the job. Invisibility and Fly have been toned down greatly from 3e levels. Walls of Force no longer block access (though a case can be made that the magic circle ritual can do the same thing). Creatures are not immune to weapon damage and the like, and there are no buff feats that need dispel magic.

Personally, I would rather see a healing surge system be used to supplement the cost. Healing surges are renewable, but on any given adventuring day an important resources (especially to wizards). It also gives an advantage to nonspellcasters, as they tend to have more surges (so less arcana skill but can do rituals more frequently).

Or, allow more free castings of rituals per day. In my game I gave the wizard the ability to 1/day cast any arcane based ritual that was 5 or more levels lower than his level. That was worked great in my game, and has not caused any balance concerns.

 

[Night]

I can see an argument for cost being overblown, but not cast time by and large. Rituals like shadow walk or phantom steed would make much more effective escape tools, to be sure, if the former didn't take an hour to cast -- but they're not supposed to be escape tools, and I don't want to trivialize my content by making them the ultimate solution.

Anyway, the list in this excerpt looks pretty interesting; shame the ones they actually gave any information on were pretty boring. I want to hear more about Shrink -- it sounds like a pretty good time.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Aside from a lack of rituals, there are two other major problems with them

1. Lengthy cast times
2. Onerous component cost

Except those two "problems" with rituals really aren't, at least in my book. The reason rituals are designed that way is so that they don't become the automatic solution to every problem. If ritual casting becomes fast and cheap, you're right back to the same problem of spellcasting overshadowing skill use/non-spellcasting classes.

Two things:
1. 100 gold in my DnD game isn't the same as 100 gold in your DnD game.
I may be running a scrappy, every gold is rare type of game where the heroes are always hard up for cash. You may be running a game where the heroes are far wealthier then the suggest DMG wealth for that level. Are either games wrong, no. But in my game, ritual casters are punished where as in your game ritual casters have it easy.

2. The time it takes to cast rituals is way out of whack.
Casting times being a minimum of 10 minutes is crazy, especially for simple things. I'll go back to Wizard's Curtain (this is a good one to flog ). In 3.X, this would have easily been a level 1 spell with a casting time of a standard (or maybe a move) action. This effect probably would have lasted an hour a level. This would be an excellent spell for a wizard to gain a little privacy very fast.

In 4E though, it just becomes silly. Want some fast privacy, you'd probably be better off making stealth checks. They cost less and are effective immediately. Waiting around 10 minutes to get some privacy may not be reasonable in many cases.

----

There is an old maxim: fast, cheap, or high quality - you pick two. Rituals, sadly, end up on the slow and expensive side of this equation with quality determined entirely by the ritual and situation. If either problem existed by itself (rituals were fast to cast but cost a lot of money, or rituals were slow to cast but cheap), rituals would be fine. The double whammy of high cost and slow cast time makes them very unattractive for myself as a player.