Best use of rituals you have seen so far?

[Nytmare]

In my campaign, I'm thinking of having a water walking session - but for rituals like that, I'm house ruling it so that the ritual takes # of recipients x 10 minutes and at the end of it, all the recipients can then waterwalk.

So, rather than having to chain it, the effect comes into play for all at the same time.

Hmm, that's really interesting. I wonder if they might end up adding something like that as a feat at some point. Either something like a flat "you can cast a number of rituals, equal to your level, in a row. Their durations begin when the last ritual is finished." or some formula to make normal single person rituals into "mass" effects.

 

[Aprilx3]

I'm currently playing my first campaign with an eldarin wizard.. I've done a couple clever rituals.

The first, the DM probably shouldn't have let me do, lol
Another party member got a limb crushed under a boulder that fell because he carelessly set off a trap. Another party member removed the limb to get him out, and I used Make Whole. I had to do all sorts of extra checks for it, but hey, he still has an arm

The second, we were saving captured slaves from our village and they were all chained to a huge pole stuck in the ground. When their strength check failed, we figured out it was enchanted to not be able to come out of the ground. I took another party member's dagger and did Transfer Enchantment.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Welcome to ENworld, Aprilx3!

 

[Robtheman]

1. The party found themselves on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean, following a Kraken attack. They used a ritual to put the captains bed on a tensers floating disc which kept them from drowning, let them all fit on the bed, and even have space for the captains treasure. I was impressed, as I only gave them a single life boat and too many passengers. They towed the boat behind the disc allowing the NPC sailors to survive as well. Sadly the ritual ran out before they made land, but that is a different story.

2. A player had a constant Unseen Servant carry his chair around, which he sat in at all times. It was like a fantasy world Rascal Scooter. The character was an old gnome shaman/wizard.

 

[LostSoul]

A recent one:

The PCs were heading to a town ruled by Zehir Cultists to fulfil an obligation to some Sehanites. On their way through the Garbury Downs (after getting lost a few times) they came across ancient tombs built into the moor. They decided to leave it for now and head on to their goal.

After leaving the Downs they saw a small village. The terrified villagers were frantically building walls around their farms and the central village square. Turns out the undead in the tombs were coming into town and killing lots of them.

The PCs didn't have the time to deal with the undead problem properly, so they cast Undead Ward around the entire village. (After sacrificing/harvesting a captive kobold for ritual components.)

That was a couple of months ago. I wonder if the Undead Ward has held up?

 

[Christian]

Here's an idea to deal with the ritual casting time issue: suppose that some rituals didn't have to be cast all at once. Sort of like the 'stop here' markers on some of the recipes in The I Hate To Cook Cookbook, if you've ever read that, where you could pause in the middle and then finish the last round or two of the casting later, when you actually needed the ritual. The ritual materials would only be burned when you completed the ritual, so you could hold onto the partially completed ritual indefinitely, or for some specified period of time--say, until you took an extended rest--without using up the materials.

Of course, there would have to be some kind of limits on how many partially completed rituals you had sitting around at once--otherwise, every ritual caster would have multiple copies of all of their rituals brewing all the time. (Limited refrigerator space, in the recipe metaphor.) It could be something simple like 1 per level, maybe with no more than one ritual of your character level; or you could complicate it with a chart of the maximum number of rituals of each level or level range that you could have partially completed at once.

(This reminds me of some mechanic I saw in some other FRPG, but I can't place it right now. If it comes to me, I'll come back and let you all know. )

 

[Evilhalfling]

well not sure about but creative but my party has used the following:
Comrades Succor (at least every third session)
Knock: (with the Goliath with a great axe as a second choice)
Transfer Enchantment
Linked Portal
Travelers Chant
Phantom Steed (to cross a large bay)
Tenser's Disc was used ferry KO'd secret police away from the PCs Tavern. They were dropped in front of a rival tavern, in an attempt to transfer blame. (failed)
Excavation (scroll) to dig up pirate treasure.
Sending - to send ex-party members on quests, and trying to contact an important NPC "Gelvas the Wanderer"
Enlarge Familiar (dragonling) - scouting orc army
Seeming - to get into the middle of an orc army

Rituals used by NPCs to aid or thwart party:
Eagles Flight (summons middle earth taxi service) - to get out of orc army
Raise Dead
Control weather (cast by Kraken or Ixxithlitil)
Sending
Summon big Devil (interrupted) twice.
Sending & Linked portal : the PCs lost their last mission, but have yet to realize it.
"So this means that someone cast a linked portal out of the ratkings guest chambers, in the last day or two. ah well lets go kill something else"

 

[Pbartender]

My Paragon level Wizard is fast discovering that if you don't mind sucking up the fairly useless Vistani Heritage feat, the feats Vistani Pathfinding and Vistani Healer are two of the absolute most useful feats for anyone who wants to regularly use Rituals. They save an awful lot of money on ritual components, which is a much bigger hindrance to us using rituals than the casting time is.

Rituals I've used on a reasonably regular basis...

Comprehend Languages
Comrades' Succor
Explorer's Fire
Make Whole
Floating Disk
Traveler's Camouflage
Seek Rumor
Enchant Magic Item
Knock
Disenchant Magic Item
Sending
Speak With Dead
Raise Dead
Linked Portal
Eagle Flight
Solace Bole

With the "Once per day, you can ignore the component cost of an exploration or travel ritual you have mastered of your level or lower" of Vistani Pathfinding, I'm really looking forward to picking up Create Teleportation Circle. Vistani does the same thing with restoration rituals, so we never have to worry about coming up with the cost to raise a character from the dead, should the worst happen.

 

[Colmarr]

Object Reading on the mist-filled archways in the Tomb of Horrors.

Hand of Fate on the crown and sceptre in the Tomb of Horrors.

Both came in very handy...

Battlefield Elocution when handing over a priceless item to make sure that there were so many witnesses that the recipient could never misappropriate it.

 

[Colmarr]

I think that most of the rituals could probably be reduced to 1 minute casting time quite effectively - they still take a while to cast, but with combats capable of lasting 10-20 rounds, a ritual which takes one minor action per round for 10 rounds to complete could be a useful and interesting factor of any combat

I've harboured similar thoughts, which I addressed while blogging about rituals in general.

I proposed that casting a ritual should require a standard action per round, but following some comments on RPGnet, I'm inclined to drop that to a move action.