Reintroducing vancian magic for rituals

[Halivar]

Would you do it?
How would you do it?

The goal is to make rituals more appealing, with more pizazz, and overall make out-of-combat casters feel more like they did in 3E, but without breaking the combat balance of 4E caster classes. This is in response to complaints regarding the utility of 4E wizards compared to their 3E counterparts, and the general non-usage of rituals in the campaigns I run.

I was thinking of having there be a rituals known/per day chart, with reduced (or eliminated) gp cost for most rituals, and possibly reduced cast time.

Anyone have any ideas?

EDIT: I also toyed around with the idea of importing all non-combat spells straight out of the 3.5 PHB into 4E as rituals.

 

[Garthanos]

Would you do it?
How would you do it?

The goal is to make rituals more appealing, with more pizazz, and overall make out-of-combat casters feel more like they did in 3E, but without breaking the combat balance of 4E caster classes. This is in response to complaints regarding the utility of 4E wizards compared to their 3E counterparts, and the general non-usage of rituals in the campaigns I run.

I was thinking of having there be a rituals known/per day chart, with reduced (or eliminated) gp cost for most rituals, and possibly reduced cast time.

Anyone have any ideas?

EDIT: I also toyed around with the idea of importing all non-combat spells straight out of the 3.5 PHB into 4E as rituals.

My first response to building rituals from previous editions non-combat magics... hoot go for it. I am seriously considering associating with each class a set of 1, 2 or 3 rituals ... these non-creation rituals are free of cost its a ritual mastery thing. Certain backgrounds determine the nature of the rituals or over-ride the class rituals. The modern human background rituals are of religious bend unless you specifically know arcana.

Rituals which are free of cost (will get used)... and that casting time will limit over-use I think.(I could be wrong I haven't over analyzed it or tested it yet, or even decided what rituals go with what backgrounds.)

I might have an accellerated mastery feat which halves casting time for rituals you master.

Its much easier than setting daily limits... if the ritual takes an hour and some take 4 hours.. and some take 8 hours and some take 10 minutes... or should I say it feels more natural.

I dont care much how often somebody uses the fastidious ritual.(they can cast it on all there chums)

 

[Saeviomagy]

Aren't daily spells effectively vancian magic?

But regardless: you say you're trying to not impact in-combat balance. Frankly, that was never really the problem with pre 4e casters. It was the fact that out of combat, the wizard did just about everything, and everyone else sat on their skills and got bored.

If your players aren't using rituals, then they're obviously only solving problems that can be solved through other means (planning, roleplay or skill use).

Do you really want to replace planning, roleplay and skill use with "we get the wizard to cast solve problem x"?

That said, if you wish to encourage ritual use, hand out ritual components as treasure instead of, say, gold, so players don't feel like they're wasting combat resources on non-combat rituals.

 

[LostSoul]

The first thing you want to do to make magic more Vancian is give everything a strange name. Hand of Fate becomes "Eloumbiul's Magnificent Guiding Hand". That sort of thing. Bigby's Icy Grasp could be "The Ineffable Icy Grasp of Bigby."

Make magic complex mathematic formulas. That's another Vancian thing.

Um... as far as game stuff goes, have it cost the regular ritual components, then be stored for instant casting when the time is right. I would have a set number of levels per day (or something), and call for an Arcana check for each one. Failure on that check means that the spell is not memorized.

As an interesting factor, don't let Healing Surges be replenished if the ritual caster is memorizing spells. It's just way too much work. That shouldn't be a big deal some of the time, but other times it will be crazy.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

When considering the Dragonmarks in Eberron, I wondered if there shouldn't be more than just access to rituals, possibly with later feats. My idea was more along the lines of "once per day, use ritual at half cost or in half time" or having a "ritual reserve" that resets every level and would allow casting some rituals for free each level. (The value of the reserve would be around a magic item of the characters current level or 1/5th of that.)
But that's not very "Vancian".

Ritual Casting Time stays, but afterwards, the ritual is stored can be stored in your memory. You can complete it by spending a standard action at any time. Make any skill checks required for casting the spell now. You might also decide that this is a very strenuous activity and deals damage to the caster equal to the rituals level.
The spell stays in a characters memory as long as he wants to, but after each extended rest, the character has to spend the ritual casting time again (but no component cost) and spend his daily item use to keep the spell in memory. (This is just to avoid people wasting too much resources and never using the option except for "safe" options).

Storing a ritual in your mind might cost some limited resource, maybe a daily magic item power, and you can't store more than one per tier at the same time. When you recover daily magic item uses, you can also prepare a new ritual.

A feat might increase the number of stored spells at the same time by 1. (If I recall correctly from the talks about Vances work, even the most powerful spellcasters might not be able to store more than 4 or 5 spells.)

You have to take care though - some spells have limited offensive value (even if as a side effect, for example the Cure Disease ritual). Ensure that they can only be used on willing targets or targets reduced to 0 hit points or less when using them memorized.
Even with this warning, you might still find some rituals too strong to be used during a combat encounter (or any type of situation?).

If you want to be on the safer side, you could restrict the number of rituals the spellcaster can prepare this way (maybe INT + 1/2 level?) and audit every ritual learned, and denying certain rituals for it if you determine them unbalanced if used "pre-emtpively".

If you were a WotC designer, you would probably have to make a definite list of what's allowed and what not.

 

[erf_beto]

You know, I thought about that before too. This would work in addition to the current ritual casting rules.

I thought about giving the wizard a couple of vancian slots based on his level, something like 1 every 3 levels, so at 30th level he has 10 spell slots. Like older editions, each slot would have a level, and into each slot the wizard could prepare a single ritual of up to [slot level]x3. So Linked Teleport (level 8 ritual) would be held at the 3rd level slot, acquired when the wizard reached level 9.

The preparation process would be like in older editions, it occurs in the morning and takes one hour or more, but you spend only half the ritual components required and store a semi prepared ritual in your mind and implement for every spell slot. Later in the day you can cast a ritual spell you prepared in half the casting time.

That would be the basic framework, now we get to play with the variables: for instance, by preparing a lower level ritual in a higher level slot, you could cast it faster or spending even less components, after all, if a 30th level wizard wants to use his epic 10th level slot to cast a 1st level ritual, why not do it instantly and effortlessly?

Anyway, just a random thought...

 

[Garthanos]

<Instant enemy Nerf.>can I instant cast dispel magic please pretty please? </Instant enemy nerf.>
There are real reasons a lot of these have time restrictions and it isnt just a delay of game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Aren't daily spells effectively vancian magic?

But regardless: you say you're trying to not impact in-combat balance. Frankly, that was never really the problem with pre 4e casters. It was the fact that out of combat, the wizard did just about everything, and everyone else sat on their skills and got bored.

If your players aren't using rituals, then they're obviously only solving problems that can be solved through other means (planning, roleplay or skill use).

Do you really want to replace planning, roleplay and skill use with "we get the wizard to cast solve problem x"?

That said, if you wish to encourage ritual use, hand out ritual components as treasure instead of, say, gold, so players don't feel like they're wasting combat resources on non-combat rituals.

Yup. This is exactly why rituals need to cost something. Players are never forced to use them. Instead it gives them a chance to convert some cash into a greater chance of success or to open up a different way of reaching their goals.

To go a bit further, if there is a situation where you as a DM want to create a plot where the solution demands the casting of a ritual, then the players shouldn't have to pay for it out of their normal treasure. Instead it should either be cast and paid for by an NPC or the cost recovered in some fashion. Using an NPC is probably usually the best bet because most rituals can fail and this is not one of those cases where you want a chance of failure since it would block the plot.

As an aside that is not really too relevant to the actual arguments made here, people probably should actually read the Dying Earth series of stories and then make statements about what "Vancian" magic is. 4e's magic system is at least as close, if not closer, to Vancian than earlier editions of D&D. Not that it particularly matters, Vance and D&D need not agree on how they treat magic, but there are a lot of misunderstandings about how his magic worked that float around.

 

[Garthanos]

As an aside that is not really too relevant to the actual arguments made here, people probably should actually read the Dying Earth series of stories and then make statements about what "Vancian" magic is. 4e's magic system is at least as close, if not closer, to Vancian than earlier editions of D&D. Not that it particularly matters, Vance and D&D need not agree on how they treat magic, but there are a lot of misunderstandings about how his magic worked that float around.

Yup... and LostSouls initial comments were probably intended to bring a little of that out. Vancian does not mean daily slot magic.