Rituals as New Magic Items

[Nebulous]

i've been thinking about incorporating rituals as limited magic items. Has anyone else tinkered with rituals to any success? Our party very rarely uses them, so i think if i hand them over as in-hand unique magic items they will get more use. Also, i'm just not a fan of the generic magic items in 4e, i would rather spinkle it with more flavor.

I'll give an example of what i'm talking about, and this is totally off the top of my head so it might be a little wonky:

Staff of the Dead +2
[Action: Variable; see below]
[Charges: 1d20 +10 (yeah, yeah, i know, no charges in 4e but i'm tinkering; recharging could be a fun quest or story mechanic)]

[Powers]
1) +2d6 necrotic damage on a critical hit (no charges)
2) Gentle Repose (Casting Time: 3 Rounds; 1 charge)
3) Corpse Light (Casting Time: Standard, Move, Minor action; 1 charge)
4) Undead Ward (Casting Time: 3 Rounds; 2 charges)
5) Skull Watch (Casting Time: 1 minute; 2 charges)
6) Undead Servitor (Casting Time: 1 minute; 2 charges)
7) Deathly Shroud (Casting Time: Standard, Move, Minor; 3 charges)


Or something to that effect. Take themed rituals and tie them to a magic item, removing ALL component costs and altering the casting times so they can have combat applications, and replacing it with diminishing charges.

Recharging the Staff of the Dead:
1) Immerse it in the River Styx
2) The tears of a Lich
3) A lengthy ritual itself where souls of the dead violently congregate

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think if the DM is willing to track charges and able to remember to do it then charged items (of whatever type) are OK. I'll just say that my 30 years of DMing experience is that its a lot harder to track charges than it seems. The player has no real incentive to do it (and even if they're basically honest they often forget and then at the end of the night maybe they think hmmmm, how many charges did I use up? They probably will underestimate...). The DM is likely to be too busy with other things and not really able to remember to keep track accurately either.

I don't really see any reason why certain rituals can't be affixed into an item like this. Obviously only certain ones are appropriate, but that still leaves a pretty good range of options. Of course there's no real reason to limit it to existing rituals, you can describe ANY kind of power text you want to for an item.

Another option besides charges might be simply having the item store and use up a certain amount of residuum. So you can "fill it up" easily enough and then its just a matter of filling it again when necessary. Its not REALLY that much easier to track than charges, but for some items it might be another alternative.

 

[Neuroglyph]

The only Ritual i've tried putting in a magic item is Sending - the PCs in my "Ebon Cabal" campaign have rings that let them cast a (daily) Sending Ritual to communicate with their mentor in the Cabal, or to each other. It's really just a plot device to allow missions to trickle down from my secret organization to the Heroes.

Other than that, my Players use a few Rituals now and then - I definitely would be leery about stacking a ton of rituals into a portable item tho. Putting a bunch on a non-portable item wouldn't be bad - like in a cathedral, having side-chapels with a couple rituals on each altar that can be invoked by gathering around it.

 

[Nebulous]

I'm more than willing to track charges for a magic item. It would be infrequently used anyway, so not a problem. I also like the residuum idea, but i want to strike a balance between "should i use this or not?" and "it's so easy to recharge why not ALWAYS use it!"

 

[weem]

I think it's a cool idea

I'm not sure why tracking charges would be hard, but maybe I'm missing something.

I'm trying to present my players with situations where rituals (they have) would come in handy before I do anything like this, but we'll see how that goes. In my previous 4e campaign that ended last month (we played 26 games), I think 1 ritual was used. This campaign I am making an active effort to change that, but we're only two games in so I have yet to see how that plays out.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it's a cool idea

I'm not sure why tracking charges would be hard, but maybe I'm missing something.

I'm trying to present my players with situations where rituals (they have) would come in handy before I do anything like this, but we'll see how that goes. In my previous 4e campaign that ended last month (we played 26 games), I think 1 ritual was used. This campaign I am making an active effort to change that, but we're only two games in so I have yet to see how that plays out.

I'm just saying, after having run games of all types for 30 years, that tracking charges rarely happens accurately is all. Its not HARD to do in theory, but usually in the middle of an engaging RP or combat situation people just often forget to pick up their pencil and mark off a charge. Later on the players don't really have an incentive to remember and the DM likely doesn't always remember every little thing everyone did or doesn't think to check on what got marked off. Its going to depend on the people in your game. Some people are quite good at managing those little details, most are not. Usually what tends to happen is it gets done the first few times and gradually forgotten. Its even more likely to happen if you have variable charge effects because the player isn't quite sure if what they just did took 1 or 2 charges and so they don't mark anything and then forget to figure it out later. I think this is really one of the main reasons 4e doesn't generally encourage tracking a lot of stuff. It just hasn't proven to be a great mechanism. On top of that if you rely on an item and it runs out of charges, what do you do then?

Not that I think charges are a terrible idea, just sort of an annoyance that is best avoided if at all possible.

 

[weem]

I'm just saying, after having run games of all types for 30 years, that tracking charges rarely happens accurately is all. Its not HARD to do in theory, but usually in the middle of an engaging RP or combat situation people just often forget to pick up their pencil and mark off a charge. Later on the players don't really have an incentive to remember and the DM likely doesn't always remember every little thing everyone did or doesn't think to check on what got marked off. Its going to depend on the people in your game. Some people are quite good at managing those little details, most are not. Usually what tends to happen is it gets done the first few times and gradually forgotten. Its even more likely to happen if you have variable charge effects because the player isn't quite sure if what they just did took 1 or 2 charges and so they don't mark anything and then forget to figure it out later. I think this is really one of the main reasons 4e doesn't generally encourage tracking a lot of stuff. It just hasn't proven to be a great mechanism. On top of that if you rely on an item and it runs out of charges, what do you do then?

Not that I think charges are a terrible idea, just sort of an annoyance that is best avoided if at all possible.

Gotcha, I can see where you're coming from. I'm not great at tracking my own stuff as a player.

I would probably handle the charges as we handle Action Points. The player hands them (a token) to the me while stating what the action being used is. I would simply use tokens to represent charges (and I would not have more than 4-5 charges on an item as a max).

 

[the Jester]

Have you considered just throwing lots of ritual scrolls out there as treasure? You don't have to be trained in ritual casting to use them.