WalterKovacs
First Post
In my own experience, the only rituals I've seen used in play are:
(a) Remove Disease/Affliction, etc ... not entirely sure of the exact name, but basically we needed to get allies back from having been turned to stone by a medusa.
(b) Raise Dead. Similarly, an ally died, and had to be brought back
(c) Enchant/Transfer/Disenchant ... heck, we didn't even bother brewing potions, but the magic item stuff was ok.
Other than that, it was the Invoker's "once per day for free" ritual to help us decide how to navigate the pyramid (basically, which way do we go first), and the bard's "once per day for free" rituals to speed up our movement etc.
Our party did have one instance where we paid for a divination ritual (we were trying to find out who killed an adventuring party, so we brought some heads to get gravesight cast on them). Of course, we didn't even cast the ritual ourselves because we didn't have the ritual, or the components. Luckily we were in a town where we could get both, and thus, just have someone else cast it for us as well.
In general, only a few were worth spending money on, otherwise we only used them because we were able to use them for free.
And, one thing to remember ... it isn't just a matter of cost and time to use them in the first place. There is the initial cost of getting the ritual (which requires that, not only do you pay to add it, but you have the forsight of buying it in town, or taking it when you get free rituals at certain levels).
On top of that, you need to be carrying around a certain ammount of material components. Assuming you don't have access to a town, you need to make sure you've converted some of the money into material components before you left, at least enough to create more via disenchantment.
So you need to be in a situation where:
(a) A ritual will be helpful enough where the resources expended will be worth it
(b) You happen to already know this ritual, or have access to someone that can sell/teach it to you
(c) You happen to have the material components on hand, or at least the means to get some
(d) You happen to have enough time to use the ritual
If the plot has to go out of it's way to make rituals useful (as in the case of the investigation), it seems like they are a bit lacking. Heck, consider most of the rituals involving planar transport. They seem to basically be the equivalent of having to pay to stay at the inn, or paying for a lightning rail ride across Khorvaire, etc.
The Essential classes were given various powers that simulate free rituals. The warlock can locate objects or map out nearby areas. The cleric can cure diseases and resurrect people, etc. From my experience with the invoker and bard ... given a free ritual 1/day, people are more likely to find ways to use it. If you have to pay, they'll only use it if they absolutely have to, at which point they won't realy use it creatively.
EDIT:
One more thing ... consider how many PCs will cling to their daily powers unless they feel at risk of losing the encounter. And those resources renew each day ... a non-renewable resource like money (you get more, but you don't "lose it" if you don't "use it" like action points and dailies) is going to be even harder to get them to part with.
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