How to get new rituals?

[S'mon]

Examples include:
- Raise dead. In no campaign I ever run will a PC be able to bring people back from the dead at level 8 by spending 500gp.
- Portal spells. If your not familiar with them and don't plan around them, you have to pull out a macguffin to stop PCs from ruining the plot you just made by teleporting from A to B. This rules out most "oh no we are lost in the forest" or "how will we get out of this sieged village" style adventures.
- Social and language rituals. There seems to be little point in buying feats regarding learning languages and comprehending writing when a simple ritual can do so much of it.
- Animal messenger, Sending etc. These just ruled out any "must get this message to the king" style adventure.

Rituals are powerful to the extent of changing the actual plots that the GM can use without hand-waving away their usefulness. Keeping on top of all the options that the players have takes a lot of work to not find a plot made impotent.

I agree that the DM concerned about the integrity of his plot or world design should keep an eye on what rituals are allowed in play. For me the Portal rituals are probably the biggest issue, they assume the existence of a functioning, widely accessible, portal network in a way which doesn't really fit any of my 4e campaign worlds, and would have major effects on the economy of any world - eg high value trade through portals would obviate the need for ocean going treasure galleons, hence a 'Spanish main' pirate setting becomes impossible in a portal-world. I'm looking at limiting the range of portals, and in most cases portals will belong to secret hidden conclaves of wizards, not something accessible to the general public.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree that the DM concerned about the integrity of his plot or world design should keep an eye on what rituals are allowed in play. For me the Portal rituals are probably the biggest issue, they assume the existence of a functioning, widely accessible, portal network in a way which doesn't really fit any of my 4e campaign worlds, and would have major effects on the economy of any world - eg high value trade through portals would obviate the need for ocean going treasure galleons, hence a 'Spanish main' pirate setting becomes impossible in a portal-world. I'm looking at limiting the range of portals, and in most cases portals will belong to secret hidden conclaves of wizards, not something accessible to the general public.

Yeah, but when you go down that road every single little bit of magic in the game has endless ramifications. That way lies madness.

Teleport for instance. Sure, it COULD be that there are permanent known circles you can use. Or there might not be, or they're incredibly rare and hard to find. Teleport is more of an "if you think ahead then maybe you can prepare a retreat" than anything else. A way into someplace only exists if the DM places it there. Even if the party has a circle to retreat to they still have to have time to cast the ritual to teleport. It is a LOT different than the old style 'teleport anywhere' setup, which was in so many ways horrible. It made the DM actively plan against it, and then the success chance roll was basically a "roll some dice not to be dead" which was crap too. I think the 4e version is WAY better thought out, and if you want it to have minimal implications on the setting, then it does.

The worst case rituals are the higher level divinations really. My take on those is that the DM may restrict their utility. Honestly the end result with those is they are pure plot devices. They either work when the DM says they do, or they don't work if he says no. You'll never get around that with ANY implementation of that kind of magic.

You can restrict things, and that's OK, but it seemed to me that the OP's DM's response was a bit knee-jerk. There are plenty of rituals that the DM really should be saying "wow, you want to play with that, GOOD!"