D&D 3E/3.5 Is there a D&D 3.5 mechanic for ritual casting?

[Greenfield]

I saw something in 5e that intrigued me. Ritual casting.

It makes sense that there are magicks that take more than a few moments or minutes to invoke, that aren't "Battle magic".

I mean, Shakespeare's classic "Enter Three Witches" scene from MacBeth doesn't exist under the rules. They either cast their spell or they don't. None of this "...Now round about the cauldron go, in the poisoned entrails throw, thrice to mine and thrice to thine and thrice again to make it nine..."

So, are there any rules for that kind of magic in the game? Ways to enact twisted versions of existing spells, or to combine spell effects, or to combine the efforts of several casters?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Did you ever look into 4e? In 4e, rituals are generally long-lasting spells, often less combat-focused than 4e's spells. A lot of spells, like Drawmij's Instant Summons, are rituals in 4e. They can take minutes or even hours to perform.

Control Weather is a ritual. Brew Potion is a ritual (and works in a similar manner in 3e, since it takes a long time and has a permanent cost). Seeing into the future is a ritual (since it a long-casting time spell in 3e). So witches performing rituals make sense in 4e. 4e rituals that affect multiple creatures often (always?) require the creatures receiving benefits to participate in the ritual. So when the cleric casts Water Walk on the party, the whole party dances (or whatever the steps are).

But 4e rituals don't perfectly match the scene. There are few defined material components in 4e. Rituals generally use the component based on skill (so Religion uses incense, Arcana used residuum, etc). No eye of newt. Unfortunately that was used for item-creation in 2e, and was so unclear and designed to screw the player that I've never seen that used. (The player couldn't know if the item selected was "right", so you could kill a lot of newts and learn nothing of the future.)

In 3e, spells with long casting times, such as Elemental Swarm, are basically rituals. Unfortunately, they compete with short-term combat-focused spells.

I haven't played 5e since the playtesting days. I don't think they even had rituals when I played it. What little I heard was negative, but it's not an informed opinion.

 

[Celebrim]

Not an official one. I've been tossing around rules in my head for ritual magic sense the 1e era but never fully created them.

The closest 3.X ever came was the 'spell seeds' for epic magic in the epic level handbook, but those were poorly done, poorly balanced, and assumed that you couldn't do ritual magic until 20th - which creates a universe with demographics I have no desire to implement.

In my game, a spell is a very particular sort of standardized ritual, the first part of which is enacted during the 'memorization' step of the spell (memorization being a bit a misnomer for what a wizard actually does). Spells are left hanging unfinished, and the rituals are then completed with a short series of steps, sufficiently short to make them useful in a stressful situation.

Although the rules describing creating, learning, and casting rituals that are not spells have never been described, my game universe assumes such magic exists in game and is fairly common and is a large part of magic as it is normally practiced by beings other than adventurers (who are always in tight scraps). In fact, some existing spells with longer casting times might be presumed to be simple rituals of this sort, and all magic item creation is in fact rituals of this sort.

The simpliest way of describing how I plan to implement a ritual system is that rituals let you apply metamagic to spells in ways that does not (necessarily) increase the casting cost even if you don't necessarily know that metamagic feat. This application would create a cost that could be partially mitigated by expending multiple slots, over multiple days, by multiple casters, during certain rare events, at certain locations, sacrificing certain rare materials (including creatures). I'd also implement a number of standard rituals that work something like the epic spell seeds, but in hopefully a much more balanced manner, allowing those seed rituals to then act as spells that can be altered in scope. The result would never be useful in combat, but explains how wide scale long lasting subtle magic effects are created in the same way that item creation explains how items are created.

The scope of that is large and making it balanced and interest difficult, and it generally pertains to things not happening in a campaign, so its never been a high priority.

 

[Celebrim]

I mean, Shakespeare's classic "Enter Three Witches" scene from MacBeth doesn't exist under the rules. They either cast their spell or they don't. None of this "...Now round about the cauldron go, in the poisoned entrails throw, thrice to mine and thrice to thine and thrice again to make it nine..."

As a side note, I'm not sure you are correct. Presumably they are casting a spell like 'Divination'. 'Divination' has a casting time of 10 minutes with verbal, somatic and material components. The material components must be valuable and sacrificed according to the dictates of your religion, which is in this case Hecate worship and presumably involves boiling away those components in a caldron while at a crossroads.

 

[Teemu]

There is, but it's pretty bare-bones. Incantations from Unearthed Arcana (and the SRD). They were a fairly obvious precursor to the 4e rituals, which evolved into the ritual spells of 5e.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Ritual casting is one of my favorite parts of 5e and one of the few things that I really loved about 4e. The 3.5 UA Incantations were a great precursor, but like most 3.whatever features had just too much nitty-gritty for practical use at my table. I will say that I really liked the dangerous aspect of using incantations, though. I would love an easy-to-use version of that for 5e.

Honestly, it's easy enough to add 5e style ritual casting to 3.yada if you want:

1. Decide which spells you feel should be castable as rituals
2. Give those spells a casting time of 10+ minutes if cast as a ritual
3. Add books of rituals to treasure distribution and legend
4. Add the ability to cast spells as rituals to the classes you feel should have it and allow a feat to accomplish the same for characters who don't get it as a class feature.

???

Profit! (Prophet?)

 

[Greenfield]

I see two aspects to rituals that I'd like to explore.

The first is a way to involve multiple casters, possibly of disparate disciplines, in a single magical effort. The "Three witches" part of "Enter three witches."

The second is using rituals as ways to modify spell results.

The Red Wizards of Thay prestige class from the DMG has some rules for sharing power through a ritual. Theirs has a group feeding spell power to the leader, allowing that leader to prepare spells with metamagic feats without having to personally use higher level spells slots. That's as close to group rituals as I've seen in D&D.

In our campaign our group was tasked with sealing some portals to elemental planes (presuming you include the Negative Material Plane as "Elemental Death". )

It was agreed that this took a ritual, since there isn't actually a spell that can do it. We played it through without any actual rules for it. That's at least part of what got me thinking about this.

As we played out these scenes, and as we've discussed things here, I've come up with some rough ideas. Let me give our "Seal the gate" ritual's rationale.

The base spell we're working with is Magic Circle, the area version of Protection from Evil/Low/Good/Chaos. That spell prevents entry by charmed, enchanted, summoned or conjured creatures. The ritual twists the spell slightly, so it prevents entry by all extra-planar creatures, not just those called by way of a Summoning. In trade, it loses the Deflection bonus to AC the spell normally provides, as well as the protection from certain mental influences it gives.

Slight tangent: One standard we've established has to do with casting spells through portals or gates. You pretty much can't unless ste spell says it can affect across planes. It has to do with spell range; How far away is that other plane, in terms of feet or inches? Get the idea. But we've established that area effects can expand through the gate or portal.

Add this concept to the way we're handling that ritual. If the Circle remained only on one side of that gate then things from that side could go through, but nothing could come back the other way. If the area of the Circle expands through the gate, however, then it sets up it's own mirror image on the other side. Nothing can enter either Circle from the other side. The Gate is still technically there, but nothing can access it.

Now applying those concepts on a broader basis, a Ritual allows a spell effect to be modified, and/or to have meta-magic effects added. The leader of the ritual casts the Primary spell to be used as the foundation. Other casters supply related or supplemental spells selected in advance because they carry at least some of the traits desired in the new spell effect. Additional spells can be used to power the addition of meta-magic effects. For example, if you want to empower the effect, you need two spell levels, since that normally uses a spell slot two higher than the base spell. (That's straight from the Red Wizard rules).

Also I'd add a Ritual Caster feat to the game, with the note that Clerics get it automatically, the way Wizards get Summon Familiar.

Casters without the Feat can still participate in ritual casting, can even lead the casting, but they're limited. The highest level spell that can contribute is one of half their top rank (rounded down). Casters with the Feat can contribute up to their top spells. In all cases Contributed spells should be of the same school (Abjuration, Conjuration etc.) as the Primary spell used in the ritual.

And yes, while some rituals can become standard, all rituals need to be cleared with the DM, both in what they can do and in what they cost. Cost is something not mentioned. There should be one, either in terms of Exp or materials or both. Want the spell effect to be permanent, as our Close the Gate ritual had to be? Exp is contributed by all participants. The total should be 500 Exp per spell level, which is the basic framework used by the Permanency spell.

Rituals take at least an hour.

So why do Clerics get Ritual Caster for free? Well, Wizards get several bonus feats, directly or indirectly. Summon Familiar gives the Wiz' the effect of Alertness. Scribe Scroll is specific to the flavor of Wizards. To my way of thinking pretty much every religious ceremony comes steeped in ceremony and ritual. It seemed like a natural.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking and where I'm going. Maybe.

It's also possible that it's 11:00 pm, I'm tired, and my keyboard overfloweth.

Yeah, maybe it's that last one....

 

[Grogg of the North]

Other than the Red Wizard of Thay PrC, there is the Cooperative Spell feat in Complete Arcane but all that does is add to the DC and give bonuses for caster level checks.

Now, it is entirely within your rights as a DM to say "To do this magick you need to do this complex ritual as described in the lost tomes of Greenfield, Wizard of the 4th Circle...."

 

[Gilladian]

I still run 3.5e, epic 6th edition. I think I will steal your ideas, Greenfield, as a way of introducing 4th leve spells (and some non-core spells) as rituals. Thanks!

 

[Greenfield]

Here's what I've proposed to my group.

1) There is a Ritual Caster feat. It allows casters to use their full range of spells in rituals. Without the feat a caster is limited to spell levels of one half their highest (rounded down) or lower.
2) Clerics come with this feat as a class feature.
3) Rituals must be learned or researched, and all rituals require the approval of the DM.
4) Rituals may be done by a single caster or a group. More casters can speed the ritual. See below.

To begin a ritual, a caster provides the base spell being used as a framework, called the Primary spell. Additional spells, referred to as Secondary spells, are then cast to add or alter features of the Primary, or to add metamagic feat effects.

Secondary spells are chosen because of some feature or aspect, such as duration, area, energy type, range, trigger or selectivity that should be added to the Primary effect.

A ritual requires that all components and foci needed for the spells involved be present and consumed, and the spells cast are expended by the casters as if cast normally

A ritual requires a time of at least an hour. During that hour each contributing caster may cast one spell. If more spells are required than available casters, then the ritual requires more time.

For example, a caster wants to close or seal a natural portal to another plane. The Dm determines that to research such a ritual the caster(s) need to make certain skill checks (Spellcraft and probably Knowledge Planes, possibly Knowledge Religion depending on the planes involved). The Dm also determines that the ritual requires a Magic circle as the Primary spell. if the seal is to be permanent then a permanent spell needs to be added as a secondary. Continual flame might work, though there are others. If the seal is to be selective, allowing some to pass but not others, a spell with that quality needs to be added. Many Symbol spells allow specific individuals to be excluded from the effect. Glyph of Warding allows selection based on a pass phrase, as does Forbiddance. If the Circle isn't large enough to cover the portal then a Widen metamagic feat may need to be added, or another spell with a large enough area. Widen Spell normally requires a spell slot three levels higher than the spell's normal slot, so a third level spell needs to be added. Alternately, a spell with a wide area, such as Entangle or Fireball can be used.

The player decides on Magic Circle, Continual Flame, Glyph of Warding and Fireball as the required elements.

If the caster is attempting this alone, he/she has to be able to cast all of those spells. If he/she can then the ritual will take four hours. If there's a second caster who can contribute the Continual Flame and Glyph, then the ritual will require two hours. If four casters participate, one for each spell, then the ritual can be accomplished in one hour.

Any interruption of the ritual can ruin it. The casters can't stop to cast other spells, and must make Concentration checks against any damage taken, just as with any Concentration spell.

To dispel the Ritual's effects the Dispel has to overcome the caster level of the Primary caster, plus one half the caster level of each contributing caster.