Rituals are in it would seem

[thomkt]

Animating the dead is something that would be useful during encounter combat. By making it a time-consuming ritual, that can't happen.

I think there's room for both....a quick spell to animate the corpses of the fallen, think something along the lines of a combat summons, and a ritual to creating greater undead or even lesser undead that are permanent until destroyed.

- KT

 

[Keldryn]

I think the general vibe is a love the concept or design space for rituals and distinct Bronx cheer on the implementation. Even better I think the developers are on the same page.

Knock is not a ritual. Raise Dead is. Ritual to seal the portal to the Shadow King's pocket plane or to bring Orcus to the Prime Material for a zombie apocalypse, heck yeah ritual.

A ritual should require more than some spell caster and some gold. The ritual should be an event all to itself. Skills, sacrifice, rare and contradictory components and exciting locales should be a minimum. Animating the Dead is not for the faint of heart and neither is purging lycanthropy from innocents.

This also gives design space for making some magic potentially dangerous to use.

Magic with earth-shattering, long-term effects can be made both difficult to pull off and dangerous if you don't do it right, without penalizing anybody's "regular" class abilities. Maybe the whole party has to take part in the ritual (riffing off of skill challenges a bit). If something goes wrong, it complicates things for the whole party, instead of just the wizard, which can create a new adventure.

 

[Elf Witch]

I have mixed feelings on this. I like the idea of rituals but disliked how they were done in 4E.

I think ritual should be for the big things like someone said raise dead, teleport, polymorph the huge game changing spells.

They should not just cost gold and and any personal resource should not always come from the caster. Say teleport is a ritual then if you need some kind of personal resource like XP or healing surges it should come from everyone who is going to be teleported.

The idea that something like knock is a ritual is a no go in my book.

One of the ideas I have played around with raise dead is that to bring back the dead requires volunteered life essence so you want a party member back are you all willing to give up a level to fuel it.

 

[grimslade]

An in combat Animate Dead would work like a summon. A short duration fixed stat minion. Creating a skeleton guard force or a permanent servant requires a ritual. Why make a spell do all the heavy lifting or the older spell plus Permanancy?

Rituals are spells exploded out. Heal gets the fighter back in the fray. Raise Dead is a bargain with the underworld for the fighters soul. Similar effects with a different scale.

There should be some quick rituals. Magic circles or Circles of Protection are better in a ritual space. Individual Protection from Evil vs. Prot from Evil 10' radius vs Guards and Wards.
Rituals do not only have to be long and expensive.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

...They should not just cost gold and and any personal resource should not always come from the caster. Say teleport is a ritual then if you need some kind of personal resource like XP or healing surges it should come from everyone who is going to be teleported...

I like this idea!

• A ritual should cost a specific something, not a generic portion of gold. The eye of a dragon, the heart of a troll, a relic of the chief saint of a particular deity. Things tied to the campaign world that create a story unto themselves. (They are also things that should innately limit who can perform the ritual).
• A ritual should typically involve more subjects than a single caster (although it does not always have to). You might have a chief performer of the ritual (the one with the lore and arcane/divine/primal power to perform it), but other willing subjects (and with darker rituals not so willing subjects) should be able to contribute to it using a variety of their personal resources.
• A ritual should have a particular flavour, be it arcane, divine or primal. Arcane should be linked to darkness, mystery, places where one should not go. Divine should be celestial/infernal and faith-based, linked to the heavens/hells and gods and be powered by these entities. Primal is of the earth and fey, and of natural influence, guided by the spirits of the First World/Feywild.
• Rituals take a varied amount of time from about a minute to days or perhaps even years in stranger circumstances. The chief thing here is to delineate between magic that can be easily cast in combat and magic that requires greater preparation. This is not to say that the ritual's primary effect cannot be manipulated to induce further secondary effects in a combat situation, but that the genesis of the primary result is typically out of the combat round structure.

The idea that something like knock is a ritual is a no go in my book.

I can see it as a ritual that imbues an enchantment upon a golden key, resulting in an "open locks" check to whoever holds and uses the key. It gives a modifier to the holder (but a modifier less than that of a "rogue") that when used successfully dissipates the enchantment upon the gold key. What should the ritual cost aside from the golden key focus? How should it be limited in terms of duration/time to perform? Should it be a ritual that uses up one (or possibly more) spell slots as part of its performing as a way to limit its repeatability?

One of the ideas I have played around with raise dead is that to bring back the dead requires volunteered life essence so you want a party member back are you all willing to give up a level to fuel it.

Very costly (or not depending) but I think the general concept is excellent in capturing the flavour of rituals, allowing the ritual caster to "shine", but also keeping the party importantly involved and a stakeholder in the situation.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Shemeska]

I have mixed feelings here, bordering on a frown.

The last thing I want is them to relegate utility magic to rituals and make spells all-combat-all-the-time again, having learning nothing from the last go-round.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

The last thing I want is them to relegate utility magic to rituals and make spells all-combat-all-the-time again, having learning nothing from the last go-round.

A good point, so what essentially do you feel needs to be addressed here? And how would you address it while still embracing the "ritual" concept?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Holy Bovine]

Please let me know when the developers are finished taking player and GM suggestions for 5E so that I can spend more of my time playing the existing editions.

You do know you can do that right now right? No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to pay attention to 5E development. Play whatever edition you like - no one will care.

 

[Shemeska]

A good point, so what essentially do you feel needs to be addressed here? And how would you address it while still embracing the "ritual" concept?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

I'd be fine with some sort of segregation of utility spells into ritual/longer casting time versus those usable both in or out of combat. Something like raise dead as a ritual versus say, rock to mud or shrink object as not a ritual and casting them as normal prepared spells.

Possibly have some utility spells for whom the effect is increased in size or of longer duration if it's cast as a ritual versus a standard spell. Something like that. I just don't want only obvious combat spells as non-ritual magic - something was lost in 4e IMO that way, and likewise in late 3.x when a lot of monsters saw their SLAs gutted of any non-combat spells, turning them into one-dimensional things that only existed to fight.

 

[bloodtide]

I really don't like rituals. I like the idea of powerful magic that takes time and effort to cast, but not the way they are done in the rules.

The worst is when they make all the 'utility' magic rituals, but all the attack magic normal spells.

I like quick teleports.....the wounded bad guy quickly teleports away with a normal teleport spell. But 'the wounded bad guy retreats to a room and casts his three hour teleport ritual to escape' just does not work.

I'd like to see the system that has all spells as spells, like in 0E to 3E, but also had advanced rituals that made the spell more powerful/less dangerous/more effective. For teleport, make the spell have a miss chance(like 2E) and a uncontrollable 'random factor' and maybe a stun effect from the stress. But the ritual version would have none of that.