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*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Shouldn't most Rituals be free?
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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5449192" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>Well, here's the notes I've got:</p><p></p><p>[sblock=Ritual Rules]</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> <strong>Cost</strong>: Rituals do not usually have a GP cost. They may have a price in healing surges (for things that we want to happen several times a day) or action points (for things that we want to happen roughly once a day). Other party members may help pay the cost for the ritual. Rituals with a GP cost will give permanent bonuses, such as when enchanting a magic suit of armor. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> <strong>Casting Time</strong>: Rituals do not take "hours" or "minutes." They have a casting time of a Short Rest (for simple rituals) or an Extended Rest (for complex rituals). Time spent casting the ritual does not allow the character to regain hit points or recharge powers. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> <strong>Skills</strong>: Rituals are broadened to include any skill, sometimes several skills. Use some logic when determining which ritual uses which skills. For instance, <em>Arcane Lock</em> might use Arcana, Thievery, and Dungeoneering</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> <strong>Using a Ritual</strong>: Performing a ritual is a short Complexity 1 Skill Challenge with the relevant skills. Other party members (aside from the caster) can help in this. Each party member that helps supplies some of the ritual's cost, in healing surges or action points. Each success brings the ritual closer to completion, each failure weakens the ritual a bit. If the party fails outright, the ritual is ruined, and some catastrophic effect happens relevant to the ritual (for instance, <em>Arcane Lock</em> might destroy the item you were trying to seal). You can acquire and use a ritual above your level, if you think your party can pull it off, and risk the failure...</li> </ul><p></p><p>It should be noted that I use Stalker 0's Obsidian skill challenge system. Here's my specific fix for <em>View Location</em>:</p><p>[sblock]</p><p><u><strong>View Location [Scrying]</strong></u></p><p><strong>Level</strong>: 14 (DC 27)</p><p><strong>Skills</strong>: Perception, Arcana, Stealth</p><p><strong>Casting Time</strong>: Extended Rest</p><p><strong>Duration</strong>: 5 minutes per success [see below]</p><p><strong>Cost</strong>: 1 Action Point per success [see below]</p><p><strong>About</strong>: </p><p>When you perform this ritual, choose a location you have previously visited. The location must be fixed in place (for example, you can’t use this to scry into the cabin of an oceangoing vessel), and it must still be at the same place (and in more or less the same shape) as when you visited. Redecorating a room won’t fool View Location scrying, but destroying a tower and rebuilding it with a different layout would cause the ritual to fail (until you visit the new location). You know if the ritual has failed before you expend any components. This ritual can show you a location anywhere in the world, but it can’t show you a location on another plane. </p><p></p><p>This ritual creates a scrying sensor—a shimmer in the air -- through which those casting the ritual view the location as if they were there, including any special senses (such as darkvision). The casters view the location through some reflective surface, such as a mirror, a pool of water, or a crystal ball. Each successful skill check sustains the sensor for 5 minutes, assuming a caster pays the cost (1 action point). During the 5 minute duration, the sensor moves freely to any location it can see once per round. </p><p></p><p>If you fail a skill check, the sensor goes dark and immobile for 5 minutes (and no one needs to spend an action point), and the one who failed cannot make any further skill checks to continue the ritual. If no one spends an action point, the ritual ends quietly.</p><p></p><p>If all casters fail a skill check, no casters remain, and the ritual fails. The ritual's energy surges, and sensor flashes and emits a low magical hum just before it winks out of existence, causing it to be detected by creatures that can see or hear it, and causing the ritual to end. </p><p></p><p>Sufficiently powerful warding magic, such as the Forbiddance ritual, can block View Location. If the location is warded in such a manner, you learn that as soon as you begin the ritual, so you can interrupt the ritual and not expend any components.</p><p>[/sblock]</p><p></p><p>So, in that version, any party of characters can see a location. If the party is the "D&D Typical" of 5, this means that they'll spend at most about half an hour (25 minutes) viewing the location, assuming that they're all willing to cast, and that they're all willing to spend their action points. A conservative party after a milestone might be able to pump it a little longer. It'll probably usually go for a shorter term (about 10-15 minutes), depending on how lucky the party is, since if they roll badly, the ritual will end early, AND they'll be given away. A party needs to decide if it's worth spending those AP's on for the info they might get, but a solo wizard could do it all by himself if he wanted to.</p><p></p><p>A quirk of the system that I like is that a non-magical character could easily use the ritual. Say you have a thief trained in Stealth, they could pick up <em>View Location</em> in a scroll and use it just as easily as a wizard. Magic-casting classes have the ability to *store* rituals for use later. A thief using this ritual is essentially using a magic item in the form of a scroll. A wizard using this ritual might use it from a scroll, or they might be using it from a book, so that they can reliably use the ritual over and over again if they need to. I like this because it makes the ritual versatile -- a party entirely made of meathead martial characters has no problem using most of these rituals. I also like it because it makes sense for the ritual. If I'm a high-Cha character with Diplomacy and Bluff and Insight out my wazoo, I should be able to help in the case of a <em>Charm Person</em> ritual, maybe even outperform our bookish wizard. </p><p>[/sblock]</p><p></p><p>Any others? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 5449192, member: 2067"] Well, here's the notes I've got: [sblock=Ritual Rules] [LIST] [*] [B]Cost[/B]: Rituals do not usually have a GP cost. They may have a price in healing surges (for things that we want to happen several times a day) or action points (for things that we want to happen roughly once a day). Other party members may help pay the cost for the ritual. Rituals with a GP cost will give permanent bonuses, such as when enchanting a magic suit of armor. [*] [B]Casting Time[/B]: Rituals do not take "hours" or "minutes." They have a casting time of a Short Rest (for simple rituals) or an Extended Rest (for complex rituals). Time spent casting the ritual does not allow the character to regain hit points or recharge powers. [*] [B]Skills[/B]: Rituals are broadened to include any skill, sometimes several skills. Use some logic when determining which ritual uses which skills. For instance, [I]Arcane Lock[/I] might use Arcana, Thievery, and Dungeoneering [*] [B]Using a Ritual[/B]: Performing a ritual is a short Complexity 1 Skill Challenge with the relevant skills. Other party members (aside from the caster) can help in this. Each party member that helps supplies some of the ritual's cost, in healing surges or action points. Each success brings the ritual closer to completion, each failure weakens the ritual a bit. If the party fails outright, the ritual is ruined, and some catastrophic effect happens relevant to the ritual (for instance, [I]Arcane Lock[/I] might destroy the item you were trying to seal). You can acquire and use a ritual above your level, if you think your party can pull it off, and risk the failure... [/LIST] It should be noted that I use Stalker 0's Obsidian skill challenge system. Here's my specific fix for [I]View Location[/I]: [sblock] [U][B]View Location [Scrying][/B][/U] [B]Level[/B]: 14 (DC 27) [B]Skills[/B]: Perception, Arcana, Stealth [B]Casting Time[/B]: Extended Rest [B]Duration[/B]: 5 minutes per success [see below] [B]Cost[/B]: 1 Action Point per success [see below] [B]About[/B]: When you perform this ritual, choose a location you have previously visited. The location must be fixed in place (for example, you can’t use this to scry into the cabin of an oceangoing vessel), and it must still be at the same place (and in more or less the same shape) as when you visited. Redecorating a room won’t fool View Location scrying, but destroying a tower and rebuilding it with a different layout would cause the ritual to fail (until you visit the new location). You know if the ritual has failed before you expend any components. This ritual can show you a location anywhere in the world, but it can’t show you a location on another plane. This ritual creates a scrying sensor—a shimmer in the air -- through which those casting the ritual view the location as if they were there, including any special senses (such as darkvision). The casters view the location through some reflective surface, such as a mirror, a pool of water, or a crystal ball. Each successful skill check sustains the sensor for 5 minutes, assuming a caster pays the cost (1 action point). During the 5 minute duration, the sensor moves freely to any location it can see once per round. If you fail a skill check, the sensor goes dark and immobile for 5 minutes (and no one needs to spend an action point), and the one who failed cannot make any further skill checks to continue the ritual. If no one spends an action point, the ritual ends quietly. If all casters fail a skill check, no casters remain, and the ritual fails. The ritual's energy surges, and sensor flashes and emits a low magical hum just before it winks out of existence, causing it to be detected by creatures that can see or hear it, and causing the ritual to end. Sufficiently powerful warding magic, such as the Forbiddance ritual, can block View Location. If the location is warded in such a manner, you learn that as soon as you begin the ritual, so you can interrupt the ritual and not expend any components. [/sblock] So, in that version, any party of characters can see a location. If the party is the "D&D Typical" of 5, this means that they'll spend at most about half an hour (25 minutes) viewing the location, assuming that they're all willing to cast, and that they're all willing to spend their action points. A conservative party after a milestone might be able to pump it a little longer. It'll probably usually go for a shorter term (about 10-15 minutes), depending on how lucky the party is, since if they roll badly, the ritual will end early, AND they'll be given away. A party needs to decide if it's worth spending those AP's on for the info they might get, but a solo wizard could do it all by himself if he wanted to. A quirk of the system that I like is that a non-magical character could easily use the ritual. Say you have a thief trained in Stealth, they could pick up [I]View Location[/I] in a scroll and use it just as easily as a wizard. Magic-casting classes have the ability to *store* rituals for use later. A thief using this ritual is essentially using a magic item in the form of a scroll. A wizard using this ritual might use it from a scroll, or they might be using it from a book, so that they can reliably use the ritual over and over again if they need to. I like this because it makes the ritual versatile -- a party entirely made of meathead martial characters has no problem using most of these rituals. I also like it because it makes sense for the ritual. If I'm a high-Cha character with Diplomacy and Bluff and Insight out my wazoo, I should be able to help in the case of a [I]Charm Person[/I] ritual, maybe even outperform our bookish wizard. [/sblock] Any others? ;) [/QUOTE]
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Shouldn't most Rituals be free?
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