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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 4714373" data-attributes="member: 12731">Various interesting arguments are a'flyin:* About the cost, and specifically: comparing a magical ritual to its mundane counterpart is misleading. Yes, it's cheaper to hire a servant girl than to cast unseen servant. So what? Don't forget that rituals can be a great way of showing off your wealth - in D&D rich people don't have ordinary curtains, they have magical ones!You should only evaluate the cost compared to your PC's resources, not the game world at large. Simply because: the costs are ONLY balanced on this specific criterion. D&D isn't an economy simulation (or if it is, it's a highly implausible one) and so you should not ask this of its rituals either.* Time cost.What 10 minutes are telling me, and what 1 minute wouldn't have, is that rituals are definitely not meant to be used in combat.One minute, however, is short enough I could easily see my players starting to think in terms of planning how to include rituals in combats. It would encourage round-by-round counting at the very least.Which brings me to my main beef about this 10 minute period: why is it a specified as an exact time measurement??It would have been much better, in my opinion, to say the time required to cast the ritual is equal to a Short Rest.This would partly placate those who feel 10 minutes is an eternity, but more importantly it would wean us players off thinking about D&D in seconds and minutes. Instead thinking about D&D in rounds and encounters (and the space between encounters, i.e. short rests)!By making a ritual casting fit into a short rest, you can have it take only two or three minutes if that's what the story demands. But you're still giving a clear message it isn't for combat use (because short rests does not occur during encounters, it's "the space between time" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )* Finally, Guards and Wards. From the excerpt:"Component Cost: 5,000 gp, plus 5 healing surges"What's up with this? This makes the ritual uncastable by the BBEG! (Monsters normally have only one surge per tier, so no ordinary monster has five)I realize the idea behind the initially high cost is to award thinking ahead (so if you're hastily erecting these guards and wards as a last desperate action, you'll be half-way exhausted when the enemy arrives)But not only will it mean any monsters using this would have to be handwaved (and "monsters don't pay healing surge ritual costs" is probably not a good general ruling to make) it raises the question if there is a way to cast rituals in groups, sharing the costs?(I'm hoping the answer is "yes, it already exists, see page X of book Y")</blockquote>

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