Rituals

[Mort]

I'll echo what people many people above have said re: most rituals having good utility but at the cost of time. I absolutely hated 3e's magic 6 second solution to nearly every problem. That said:

I wish there were more rituals like cure disease - big effect but with a big and potentially dangerous cost to the recipient (I personally love the fact that the ritual is essentially magic chemo: it might cure you, or it might kill you faster than the disease you are trying to cure).

I'm also toying with the idea of speeding up rituals at the cost of healing surges. So for example Knock takes 10 minutes - 2 healing surges let you do it in 1 minute and 4 healing surges let you do it in 1 round -If the ritual takes an hour it would take 6 healing surges to do it in 1 round. This would seem to simulate the fatigue mages feel for power expenditure perfectly.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yes, I understand why WoTC went the way they did. My main problem though, is that the rituals give pretty much nothing to PC mages while the rules encourage the DM to give NPC mages interesting effects. The design is set up so your level 30 archmage, who is supposedly powerful enough to challenge gods, cannot animate a skeleton for more than 5 minutes. Really? And most of the rituals take too long to cast to do things. Wizard's Escape? Sure hope the guard isn't made suspicious by the man dancing around in the bathrobe. Yes, I know this was a deliberate design attempt so that the fighters/skill users would get their day. However, the mage is reduced to nothing more than the Runescape, boring blaster. And that's terrible.

Such a ritual doesn't exist in the rules for a very "gamist" reason - a 30 levels Archmage adventurers (and that's the kind of Archmage the rules are written for) has no need for lowly skeletons. Basically if it is not within 5 levels of yourself, it's only a tracking nightmare.

In a more... "simulation"-oriented game that still cares about game balance he might have the ability to create Skeletons with levels of 10 or lower - practically no effect in combats he participates (well, as hindering terrain maybe), but terrible important in the world politics and to represent his fantastic power compared to mere mortals.

If I felt I needed such stuff, I would probably come up with a lot of rituals like this, including "war" rituals.

For example:
"Kord's Blessing of War" - All creatures 10 or more levels below yours in a 5 square burst gain a +5 bonus to attack and damage rolls.

"Vecna's Undead Army" - You create 24 Undeads of one type. These undead must either be of either level 5 or lower or minions of level 10 or lower.

In a way, the 3E spells seemed already to be this way... A lot of summoning or animating powers seemed pretty much worthless as contribution to your own party. But someone else would have loved if you supported them with this kind of army.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I have to disagree. I think rituals are great.

I could see them seeming blah if you are just starting out, or if you are completely focused on hack and slash, but otherwise they are incredibly useful.

For one thing ten minutes is not that long. If the party has time to take a short rest, they probably can spare the extra five minutes for you to compete a ritual. Also the way the D&D economy works, it ends up being incredibly cheap to cast ritauls a few levels lower than you are. You can cast Tensor's floating disk 100 times for the price of one potion of vitality.

Rituals are also great if your campaign features problems that can't be solved by slaying the nearest enemy. Need to negotiate peace with the disgruntled Lizardfolk but you don't speak draconic? Comprehend Languages. Need to survive a long desert journey? Endure elements.

It might not reach quite the epic heights of 3e, but it does let you create a 20 mile wide flying island, which I think is pretty cool.

 

[Fanaelialae]

4e encourages reskinning. There's no reason why your version of Unseen Servant couldn't be a necromantic ritual that conjures and binds a ghost to serve you for 24 hours, or raises a skeleton to do the same. If you're looking for something more permanent, a familiar could serve as an undead ally.

In theory, the ritual system could even be used to allow a player to raise an entire undead army. However, I can understand why the designers wouldn't want that to be a default option since using armies to conquer regions isn't what 4e was designed for. It was designed for heroic/cinematic adventure, and dragging an entire undead army behind you while plundering the Archlich's Barrow just doesn't fit that concept.

If the DM intends the players to lead an undead army, he can introduce such a ritual with ease. If that doesn't fit the theme of the campaign, not having such an official ritual can save him quite a bit of headache.

 

[Stalker0]

I will say that rituals became a lot stronger to my party when they hit paragon. Paragon level rituals can be pretty strong, but more importantly it let them cast lower level rituals almost at will.

Having an always prepared, always castable spell is a useful thing.

The big change I made was reducing casting times from 10 minutes to 1 minute. It still takes a bit, but the flavor felt better to me.

 

[Quantarum]

I keep the casting times for rituals intentionally vague and allow the player to make associated skill checks to speed the process or make slight alterations to the ritual's effects. It's better overall for dramatic effect imo. -Q.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yes, I know this was a deliberate design attempt so that the fighters/skill users would get their day. However, the mage is reduced to nothing more than the Runescape, boring blaster. And that's terrible.

Rituals are a keen idea that suffer from being kind of an afterthought in 4e, IMO. Really, what I would like to see is a sort of "noncombat roles" thing, perhaps enforced through the skills system, which means that, say, Wizards are good at Divination, while Priests are good at Healing, and Druids tame animals....

....and Fighters break down doors, and Rogues smooth-talk their way into the palace ball, and Warlocks are handy when dealing with Immortals, and....

Sort of have Rituals kill the lackluster Skill Challenge system and take its stuff.

 

[Vicente]

There are very useful rituals for low-level parties, but you need to encourage your party to use them. In my case, I gave everyone for free the Ritual Caster feat and some low-level rituals (one player centered in nature, another in religion and another in arcana), and now they use them from time to time, and they even try to find or research new ones

 

[Daern]

What we need is the ability to print out ritual cards on the CB. Rituals suffer from just being on a list on the second page without any casting times or components costs or anything. Failing that, a ritual list would help, but the enworld one is no longer up to date...
I think rituals have tones of potential. Some of them need their casting times tweaked for my preference, but to me they're great for rp.

 

[LostSoul]

I used to hand out a lot of treasure as ritual components. I think that helped spur ritual use.