Rituals are in it would seem

[SkidAce]

Guh! No. I'm the opposite. Rituals, by their very nature, should be open to anyone REGARDLESS of having a feat or not. Rituals are the laymans magic. Only with training comes greater success and more powerful rituals. Closing rituals off ruins the flavour and potential of rituals, especially as story elements. If they're only accessible to the chosen few, then they may as well just be long-casting time spells.

I don't like anyone walking off the street and reading a ritual. Too commonplace. But I agree everyone should have the capacity.

So on occasion, you find rituals written in a prevalent language, like a ritual that is given to a village to bring rain.

Other rituals are written in less common languages, say "Ancient Empire". so both the wizard/cleric or the fighter can read it and cause its effects if they know the language.

Of course, the ages old, buried in the lost city for millennia, dark book containing the summoning ritual for Orcus just happens to be written in a magical script that allows anybody who might care to read it just perfectly.

 

[Kzach]

"Oops... err... guys... I think we just summoned Orcus... umm... my bad?"

 

[erleni]

I hope they are not accessible to any class simply by taking a feat.

I would like them to require no feat at all. A ritual should be learned from a source with a skill check (a book, a witch teaching it to you, a demon, ....) or researched using one or more skills, time and money. And everybody should be able to try (and eventually succeed).

So I'd like a devout warrior who has put a lot of skill points into religion to be able to learn a "cleanse" ritual, or an assassin who focuses on Arcana to be able to learn a "teleport" ritual.

 

[Storminator]

I completely disagree with this from the point of view that something that takes a wizard many years of focused training, a priest years and years of ecclesiastic commitment, or a shaman years and years of primal devotion can be reproduced by a layman in the form of a ritual with no more devotion than that required to spend a single feat on. That completely takes away from what it really means to be a wizard, priest or shaman in my opinion. {Niche protection needs to go both ways}.

However, you raise a very good point in regards to "folk magic", or stuff that is as much weaved in superstition and folklore as anything else. Such cantrip level "rituals" should be included as a form of magic accessible to those who take an interest but without the demands of full on arcane or ecclesiastical study or primal devotion.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

I see rituals as "cookbook magic". If you have the recipe, and you follow it properly, you get the desired result. Wizards are the master chefs. They make their own recipes. They improvise without a recipe. They fix botched jobs on the fly.

So in that perspective, anyone can do a ritual. That's how I'd like it.

PS

 

[Elf Witch]

Hence most rituals requiring an arcana check.

I think if rituals require an intelligence/wisdom check then this would accomplish what you're looking for, in a permissive way. Very few non-int primary characters will do as well as non-int primary characters in casting rituals, in much the same way wizards will never be as good as fighters with swords (lousy strength scores).

More basic rituals wouldn't require one, obv.

They should also include charisma so those casters also have an advantage.

The thing about casters not being as good as a fighter with a weapon is not just based on a stat but also their lower BAB.

I just want to make sure the casters get the same niche protection as the mundanes.

 

[Kzach]

I just want to make sure the casters get the same niche protection as the mundanes.

That's just your witch bias talking

 

[Serendipity]

Hopefully rituals will be included in the playtest further down the line. Do we know yet if they will be core or optional? If the latter they may well not be in the playtest.
Personally, I'm hoping for rituals to be extended casting magic available to anyone (subject to GM or campaign specific notions), thus allowing for things like an entire village of 0 level commoners working their fell folk magic at night to raise the beast that protects the town....and eats PCs. In my ideal, rituals would also be used for deep magics - the sort of things that work best as plot devices and less as easily reproducible magic abilities, ala fireball or whatnot.

 

[hbarsquared]

This thread has grown to encompass many concepts, all of which I find interesting!

First, I do not think Mike's throwaway comment means that rituals are core, or even in the game at all, at this point. Not only are they working on ideas for future modules to be released after Core, but many of these ideas can be scrapped.

I would, however, like to see Rituals in the game in some form: I'd be happy with either Core or Module.

The secondary conversation going on here seems to be combat spells vs. utility spells vs. rituals vs. spellcasting times. I cannot even begin to visualize a final solution, but I think some of the concepts the majority of us may have can be listed as such:

• Wizards should have viable combat spells.
• Wizards should also have "utility spells" or "easy rituals" that can also be cast in the combat arena.
• Wizards should also have "utility spells" or "hard rituals" that have longer caster times/rarer components that have more prominent effects outside the combat arena.
• There should be some aspect of strategizing: there is an opportunity cost associated with choosing either knock or magic missile.
• But, the wizard should never feel like they are making a poor decision by replacing a combat related spell with a utility one.

Here's an idea, redefining some of our terminology.

Rituals is the catch-all for all non attack or damage related spells. These would lump the 4e utility spells along with 4e rituals and the rituals from the recent Dragon article. Perhaps they increase with power depending on casting time or components, I don't know. But the heart of it would be to have some available at a shorter, combat-friendly, caster time. Others could have a 10min, 3hr, or 7day casting time. But everything would be under the umbrella called "rituals."

Wizards can add as many of these rituals as they want into their spellbook (scrolls can be found as treasure, there's a cost to inscribing them, minimum level, etc...)

Wizards then have Vancian limitations on the spells they memorize, as Mike mentioned in this article, but perhaps something like this:

• Cap on the total number of spells you can prepare. (per the article.
• Cap on the maximum number of attack spells you can prepare of each level.

This way, designers can balance classes and power level with this number of combat related attack spells in mind. But the wizard can memorize all "rituals," if they want. At the same time, a wizard has "ritual slots" for spells and so can memorize these utility related spells without feeling they have to sacrifice an attack power.

I think 4e made progress toward this: separate pools for combat spells and utility spells. Combining them into a single pool makes it difficult for a wizard to feel like they're contributing if they just memorize the utility spells. But possibly combining them back into one pool, but setting a maximum number of attack spells, can make rituals/utility spells a viable choice and still create a knock vs. magic missile choice, if the wizard wants.