Skill Challenge to learn a Ritual?

[Wik]

So, one of my players just mentioned to me that he's interested in learning the Transfer Enchantment ritual from the Adventurer's Vault, which is fine by me. But he can't currently learn it, due to in-game situations. But he thought it'd be cool to do a skill challenge to see if he can research the ritual himself, and I'd be inclined to agree with him.

Any ideas on how this would be done? The PCs are 5th level, but I think only two have Ritual Casting (and they'd be the only ones able to participate). What skills would be used?

I think I want the PCs to still have to pay the Ritual Cost to learn, but if they do well, they may be able to get a discount (but if they fail, they lose a hefty chunk of change).

 

[Starglim]

That's a very interesting concept.

6 successes for a heroic tier ritual, 8 for a paragon tier ritual or 10 for an epic ritual seems reasonable.

I think you're right that only characters with the Ritual Caster feat should be able to make any checks towards the challenge.

Obviously Arcana, for this example, or Religion, but I think that's almost too obvious. I'd allow only a total of 2 successes from the key skill of the ritual, and say that either Arcana (for Arcana rituals) or Religion (for all other rituals) must be the last success in the challenge. Making this last check requires a payment of half the market price of the ritual. Whichever of these skills is not the key skill for the ritual can contribute 1 success.

If the ritual has a different key skill than Arcana or Religion, allow up to 2 successes from that skill, but the last success in the challenge must be in Religion.

Streetwise to locate people who might know about the ritual or similar magical effects. A success in Streetwise contributes no successes but allows a character to make a Bluff check for 1 success, Intimidate for 1 success or Diplomacy checks for any number of successes up to 1 less than the total. If a character fails any Bluff or Diplomacy check, an Insight or Thievery check immediately afterwards gains a success but does not negate the failure.

Dungeoneering to find out about strange magical effects and rare components: up to 3 successes. Nature can be used in the same way but only for 2 successes.

History to find out about past uses of the ritual or similar effects. Any number of successes up to 2 less than the total.

Once the characters have gained at least 1 success (or successfully used Streetwise), pay half the market price of the ritual to gain 1 automatic success, or the full market price if that success will end the challenge.

You might want to look at Ars Magica for further ideas about magical research.

 

[Starfox]

For something to be an interesting skill challenge, I think it needs a few things:

* More than one relevant skill
* More than one participant
* Dramatic tension

For me, this means its not really suitable to what he's trying to do here. But maybe I'm just using the word skill challenge in a conservative way.

This is my sketch for ritual research rules, directed more at creating new rituals than ad-libbing known ones, but its the same principles. Its not a skill challenge, instead using repeated rolls of the same skill.


Creating Rituals

Creating a new ritual from scratch is a long, hard, expensive process. It is generally best to see if one can be found somewhere in the world before endeavoring to research it from scratch. Developing high-level rituals is an especially daunting task.

To make a new ritual you need to go trough the following steps.

* Design the ritual rules, making a complete writeup and have the GM agree to it.
* Research the ritual for one day per level of ritual, paying five times the market price.
* Make a roll using the key skill, with a difficulty of 10 + the level of the ritual.
** If this roll fails, it can be attempted again, at the cost of one week and the casting cost of the ritual in components.
* Once created, decide if you want to keep the ritual secret, or spread it and gain profit. If you choose the later, you earn back four times the Market Price of the ritual.

 

[blargney the second]

I'm the player who wants to research this ritual - it looks like it'd be extremely handy to have around. A couple of the other PCs have actually seen Transfer Enchantment being used in a different city, so we know that it exists and roughly how it works.

I quite enjoy skill challenges, and I like the idea of gambling some expensive components in exchange for the possiblity of winning the right to learn a useful ritual.
-blarg