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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zustiur" data-source="post: 5963396" data-attributes="member: 1544">Like many, I was pleased with the idea of Rituals, but not pleased with the implementation that 4E chose.Separating spells from rituals in the manner that 4E chose requires a lot of hard decisions. "Should this ability be a spell or a ritual?" This comes from being a binary choice. What would happen if we blurred the lines?What if spells and rituals were all part of the same system? What if rituals are merely a way of casing a spell that you haven't mastered yet?I'd expect a significant reshuffling of spells across spell levels to achieve this, but I'm thinking along the lines of:A 4th level Wizard can memorize/prepare 0th, 1st and 2nd level spells for near-immediate use during the day. He can also cast 3rd and maybe even 4th level spells, but doing so requires much more effort and time. He hasn't become that proficient, so he must 'follow the documentation' line by line and double check his work every step of the way. To cast a 3rd level spell takes him 30 minutes. To cast a 4th level spell takes him an hour or more. Additionally, he can cast 2nd level spells beyond his daily limit by taking 10 minutes to cast from the book. 3-5 minutes for a 1st level spell.This removes 'rituals' as a concept, but keeps 'ritual casting' instead. Casting from your daily allotment allows you to demonstrate your mastery over magic. It shows that the wizard has learned to understand the workings behind the magic, without having to follow someone else's instructions by rote.Other considerations:* A wizard must possess his spell book to memorize a spell or to cast a spell via ritual casting.* Spells cast via ritual need more components than those cast by memorization.* I expect there to be some sort of sliding scale regarding ritual casting time. e.g. a 9th level wizard takes less than an hour to ritually cast a 4th level spell.* If a cap is required, you could institute a number of minutes or hours per day that the wizard can spend casting rituals. Say after 6 hours he's mentally worn out and simply cannot cast any more.* I personally would also go back to an AD&D memorization time, not the  3E '15' minutes of memorization.* This style of Ritual casting could allow for rogues (and other classes) to pick up a spell book and attempt a spell. Probably with a failure chance. Without being forced to take a level of wizard. Consider the 'Ritual Casting' feat from 4E. A fighter takes that feat, and is able to ritually cast a 1st level spell in about half an hour. Or a 3rd level spell, but it takes him most of the day to cast?* I'm also assuming that intelligence score still affects maximum spell level. Got less than 14 Int? Can't cast 4th level spells.Naturally, the numbers presented above have been made up purely for the explanation. Any such system would need a great deal of playtesting to get right.The obvious benefit of the system is that it enables low level wizards to participate magically in an adventure for more than just the first spell or two.The obvious flaw is that it means wizards literally never run out of spells unless he also runs out of a) time or b) components (about as likely as running out of arrows).I think that flaw is counterbalanced by the fact you could now significantly reduce his spell-slots per day total at high levels. At a guess, 15-20 is the most spells you could memorize at any class level.Finally; There are some things which I feel should be rituals all of the time. Raise Dead comes to mind. Why not restrict the few, most world-affecting, spells to always be a ritual that takes significant time to cast, whilst keeping the majority of spells in the system presented above? I don't see any reason why Wish or Miracle shouldn't take a long time to cast at any level, whilst other spells that occupied the same spell level in previous games should remain as spells.This neatly fits into my other idea that most of the 'big bad wizard/cleric' NPCs who want to cast their world-destroying spells can do so, but it would take them weeks or a month to cast, hence the PCs have a chance to stop them.I really like this idea, but I'm not sure about the implementation. What are your thoughts?</blockquote>

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