Shouldn't most Rituals be free?

[Maximillian]

I'm not sure why so many people say that scrying is "game breaking." I've often found it to be a great way to feed exactly the right information to players, so long as you acknowledge its existence before designing your plots...

As for ritual costs, I've been seriously considering a workaround for this system too. I don't think that most rituals should need a component cost either, but my major reason has been that I'd like to do away with tracking individual gold pieces completely.

Has anyone else considered this? I was thinking of working out a "purchase DC" for various items based on GP value, and letting players make checks in their downtime to buy things. I know there are systems like this in other RPGs, but I couldn't name one off the top of my head.

 

[JDillard]

Again though, the vast majority of the rituals are fine just being FREE. You could make those free and keep the cost on the others. That doesn't change the system at all.

Are they really fine though? Your definition and mine are different. You said "Tenser's floating disk" should be free? Why is that? Doesn't that devalue the Strength stat? Why should any wizard take a str above 8 if every wizard can cast tensers for free?

In the vast majority of games I've played, run, or seen, 10 minutes isn't usually a big deal. The players say "Ok, I take 10 minutes to do this ritual, what happens?" As weird as it sounds, the drawback needs to be on the players not on the characters, because you're balancing a metagame issue, not an in-game one. Money is something that is valuable to the player, not just the character, and so that's a fair balance.

I think we all agree that it is ok if class features give you things/abilities that would normally cost money. In any case, IF you have Knock (which is not a guarantee), it is still far from convenient to use, unlike Thievery. If you have both a Wizard and a Thievery-skilled person in the party, then there would still be plenty of reasons to default to the Thievery-skilled person.

I think they just wanted to skew it even more. This way, it's not just "If I have a wizard and a thief in the party, who does the job?" it goes so far as to say "I'm making a character, I want to be able to pick locks. I should make a thief because rituals can do it but not as well."

If you want to try houseruling things and see what it's like with having a lot of rituals have no cost, go for it. I think you will probably discover certain things basically become class features (Tenser's floating disk, for example) rather than powerful magics used only when needed, which is the intent.

 

[JDillard]

Has anyone else considered this? I was thinking of working out a "purchase DC" for various items based on GP value, and letting players make checks in their downtime to buy things. I know there are systems like this in other RPGs, but I couldn't name one off the top of my head.

Honestly, look at D20 modern. Since it's d20 so you won't need to spend much time figuring out the rules. There's basically a "wealth" skill-type-thing and when you want to purchase something you roll against that.

 

[AllisterH]

Don't the ritual cost also insure that the rituals only get used above a certain level?

Based on the wealth chart, PCs will need to be above a certain level before that ritual becomes cheap enough to cast. If rituals are free, any of the ones that don't depend on a skill role become available from first level.

 

[SilverAgent]

I made a few simple tweaks for rituals in my campaign:

1) Rituals are draining. Thus, all Rituals cost at least one healing surge; some cost more than one. This prevents most 'spamming' issues.
2) No ritual except for the item creation rituals and others that create permanent effects cost gold.
3) A very few rituals have limits on how often they can be used, mostly the deus ex machina-esque 'ask fate/gods/etc for help' rituals. They're also very expensive healing-surge wise.

Seems to work for me. I like it better than monitoring lots of little GP reductions for each ritual.

 

[drachasor]

Don't the ritual cost also insure that the rituals only get used above a certain level?

Based on the wealth chart, PCs will need to be above a certain level before that ritual becomes cheap enough to cast. If rituals are free, any of the ones that don't depend on a skill role become available from first level.

The level of a Ritual ensures it can't be used below a certain level. A 4th level ritual can't be learned before 4th level, for instance.

I made a few simple tweaks for rituals in my campaign:

1) Rituals are draining. Thus, all Rituals cost at least one healing surge; some cost more than one. This prevents most 'spamming' issues.
2) No ritual except for the item creation rituals and others that create permanent effects cost gold.
3) A very few rituals have limits on how often they can be used, mostly the deus ex machina-esque 'ask fate/gods/etc for help' rituals. They're also very expensive healing-surge wise.

Seems to work for me. I like it better than monitoring lots of little GP reductions for each ritual.

I like 2&3. #1 looks like overkill for me for most rituals (like Tenser's Floating Disk or Animal Messenger). I'd personally try it without that first and then see if it was necessary to add it in.

 

[JDillard]

<snip>
Seems to work for me. I like it better than monitoring lots of little GP reductions for each ritual.

That looks pretty decent. I personally like the gold cost because it means I can give out ritual components as treasure. "500 gold and 100 gold in arcane components" just seems more interesting to me than "600 gold".

 

[Zebastian]

Perhaps it would make sense for some rituals to have higher level variants that are either less expensive or free. Other such variants could be same or greater cost, but less time to cast. The greater one's skill with the arcane or divine (or whichever power source, not that rituals necessarily have one) the faster or cheaper one can perform such effects.

 

[Ahglock]

Some of the costs and restrictions seem way out of line to me. It is hard to say without really knowing the value of a GP in 4e, but 50,000GP and level 28 to finally get teleport where you want as a ritual. You are two levels form godhood and you finally figure out this amazing mystery? Hey I know if teleport ambushes are a problem put some kind of limitation on people who teleport for X rounds, like being stunned or disoriented.

Scrying 5 rounds, its not worth bothering trying that ritual even if it was free. Yeah I'm going to waste an hour on the off chance Mr. Big is discussing his plans in the 30 second window the ritual goes into effect. Sure gaining information about static locations is occasionally handy. But a high GP cost and 1 hour, seems kind of lame to me.

Heck if they want a materials cost as a thematic thing, give most rituals a token cost of 1-5GP, and ones that are actually problematic a larger cost.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I've been thinking of a feat that is basically "You get to use rituals half your level or lower for free", with exceptions of course (like enchant item).

We run high magic games and that would fit the feel of the world. I dunno if it would be unbalancing or not, but it means higher level wizards have some rituals (say Tenser's Floating Disk) as cantrips, but that actually is the feel we are looking for.