Ritual Casting: thinking of giving for free

[Squire James]

I'd consider offering Ritual Casting to all characters for free, but requiring training in the key skill to actually master a particular ritual. For instance, only characters with trained Heal can learn the Raise Dead ritual. More rituals will be available to classes with knowledge-heavy class skills, while virtually any ritual can be available if someone wants to spend a feat to gain skill training (either directly or through a multi-class feat).

I also favor changing the cost structure somewhat. Perhaps a component system that specifies a key skill and a tier value, with each casting of a ritual costing a single component of the ritual's or the target's tier (perhaps more for certain expensive rituals, but nothing costing more than 10 of them). Then you can determine the gold value of each component, or even assign different names and/or costs for components for different skills. This is not exactly simpler, but it is a bit more flavorful.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

The solution in our group to encourage their use was not so much giving away the feat for free, but tinkering with the cost of using them. If you only have so much gold in a given level, players are reluctant to spend it on a one-shot ritual that may or may not even work the way you hoped in your situation, and the ones that are almost pure RP and fluff will simply never see use. I understand why the rules have to be written that way, but most of my group didn't like it.

Here's what we did:

Learning a ritual, as in buying the formula, costs book price. Additionally, you need a "ritual kit," which costs the same amount of gold as your highest-cost ritual (you need to keep this up-to-date when you learn new rituals).

When you cast a ritual, you spend healing surges. A ritual of your level costs two healing surges, plus any foci or additional surges specified. Rituals have their surge costs reduced if you are sufficiently higher in level than the ritual. Heroic Tier rituals of your level -3 cost one surge less, and Heroic Tier rituals of your level -6 cost two surges less. At Paragon, the level threshold becomes Level -4 and -8, and Level -5 and -10 at Epic Tier.

So far we have only played in Heroic Tier with this houserule, but it works fantastically well. Rituals get used often, but not abused because nobody wants to get caught with not enough surges left for combats and failed skill challenges.

I think the key with this one is the fact that instead of using gold, a finite resource (by the book), this rule instead makes use of an infinitely replenishing one, and thus characters are less "stingy" with their use. Granted, we have many other uses for Healing Surges in this campaign (such as recharging powers, recovering HPs even during extended rests, and adding bonuses to dice rolls), so burning all your surges on powerful rituals is far from being a "given."

 

[Saeviomagy]

Don't give out expertise - it will effectively unbalance martial characters vs everyone else. +1/2/3 to hit is a pretty big bonus, while ritual casting could potentially never ever be useful (and likely will only ever be used by a single party member).

Don't give out practised study. In fact I'd heartily recommend you avoid having martial practises in your game at all. Whoever wrote them seemed to start from the assumption that skills couldn't do anything useful by default and then wrote a bunch of ways to use skills in useful ways that you had to pay to learn etc etc.

Might I suggest handing out a choice of alchemy, ritual casting, skill training, skill focus or linguist?

 

[BobTheNob]

Might I suggest handing out a choice of alchemy, ritual casting, skill training, skill focus or linguist?

This is a nice round solution.

• They are all "non-combat" options (i.e. adds flavor without resulting in some characters getting more powerful, where others become more flavorful),
• It allow for the Wizard to not be "outed". One of his key advantages is ritual magic, and at least whilst others can take it on, he could also take on, say, alchemy, round him out a little
• People not interested in there options could otherwise expand skill sets (which are generally feats no-one takes by option anyway)

Neat, very neat

 

[Aulirophile]

The main reason is that some classes are balanced in part on the idea that they do get ritual casting for free (such as the Bard or Invoker). Now, if none of your players are playing a class that gets ritual casting for free, then there's really not an issue. But those who are will in essence be getting short-changed when you hand it out to other classes. In other words, Bards no doubt did not get some other ability, feature, etc. because they DID get ritual casting.

Bards would still have Bard only rituals and free one/day casting of same. Classes that get RC for free also get some benefit from it (free rituals, special rituals, etc.,)

 

[WizarDru]

Might I suggest handing out a choice of alchemy, ritual casting, skill training, skill focus or linguist?

In my games, residium has been found and collected several times, cost has never been a factor with regards to obtaining or casting rituals (especially as the players are members of a well-funded order). And they have seen use, but I'd like to encourage it more.

What I probably will do is is a combination of solutions.

1) Give all magical characters Ritual Casting for free, as members of the order.
2) Anyone who already had Ritual Casting can choose from either Arcane Ritualist or Expert Ritualist as a bonus feat.
3) Optionally, I may allow them to choose alchemy, linguist or skill training if they are a non-magical class.