Vancian Casting and Rituals - A Solution

[Crazy Jerome]

But for most spells, it's pretty clear whether you want to cast them while adventuring (where there is plenty of time for a ritual) or in combat or a social conflict (where every round counts). Under your system, Wizards will usually prepare Fireball but ritual-cast Knock. So you might as well split combat spells and rituals, like 4E did.

This proposed solution makes it easier to include options that will tweak these assumptions for both spells and rituals, to suit playstyle. One of those options would be, of course, "Hey, everything is pretty much in the right bucket for action adventure, non-operational resource management play. Leave it there. No switching to complicate matters."

 

[dagger]

We have always allowed Wizards to cast out of their spellbooks since 1e and we did it in 3e and we do it now in PF.

Of course it counts as a scroll if you do it and the spell goes away.

Desperate times and all that.

 

[IronWolf]

I've thought rituals had lots of potential. The would increase casting time more significantly for casting directly from a spellbook though. I see rituals as being more useful for long term protection spells, knocks, travel spells, etc.

Who cares if it takes 15 minutes to cast a knock spell from your spellbook to get past a door that is otherwise not able to be opened? The time factor is the con for not having it prepared or available readily on a scroll. In a lot of cases the con is not significant as the 15 minutes might be inconsequential. Other times 15 minutes might be too long because if you don't get through this door, the chasing enemy will have easily reached you. That will help still encourage smart spell preparation, but not penalize you a days worth of time for not having a necessary scroll or prepped the right spells for the day.

 

[DonTadow]

The problem is two fold, but I have a solution.

One minute is one of those time things that will either be abused or become annoying to the rest of the party. What if instead of basing it on time, we force a skill roll (or series) for anything that wants to be cast from the spellbook or is considered "a ritual" with a failure burning any chance of doing it again for the day.

I believe imposing a risk/reward onto an "overcasting" ability would make a lot of folk happy.

 

[the Jester]

Uh... so your solution is to make casters even more powerful while simultaneously reserving rituals strictly for their use?

This seems to be to be the exact opposite of "solving the problem", to be honest.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Uh... so your solution is to make casters even more powerful while simultaneously reserving rituals strictly for their use?

I've never liked the idea of fighters being able to cast spells like Raise Dead or Guards and Wards just because they're "rituals." This only happened in 4e, and I didn't like it at all. But that's just my personal preference, for whatever that's worth.

 

[Falling Icicle]

What if instead of basing it on time, we force a skill roll (or series) for anything that wants to be cast from the spellbook or is considered "a ritual" with a failure burning any chance of doing it again for the day.

That's a good idea, though I still think it should take a bit longer to cast a spell from a book. After all, you have to pull the book out, flip to the right page, read it, etc. At the very least, I'd make a book-cast spell take 1 full round to cast, like 3e summon monster spells. But yes, requiring a spellcraft check or something similar to do so successfully would be a great way of balancing this option with risk, and it makes complete sense.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I know what some of you are thinking. And what about sorcerers? Wouldn't this leave them in the dust? Well yes, it would, but don't worry, I have an idea for them too!

Sorcerers should have the ability to "spontaneously cast" spells. By this I don't mean just being able to cast their spells known in any combination they can afford, I think wizards should be able to do that with their prepared spells too. Sorcerers have inborn magical talents, power burning just beneath the surface yearning to be released, but difficult for them to learn to control. The spells that a sorcerer knows are those that he has learned to control, so he can cast those spells reliably. But he should have the option of reaching inside himself and drawing power that he hasn't learned to control yet too. This would be "spontaneous casting". A sorcerer could attempt to cast a spell he doesn't know, but doing so would require some kind of roll and carry other risks, like the spell might go wildly out of control if he fails, backfire on him, or do something else terrible.

This would fit the flavor of the sorcerer very well, and would give him the option to expand his versatility with risk, like a wizard with book-casting, but in a way that's different. The advantage would be that sorcerers could pull out just about any spell, not just those he has studied and copied into a book beforehand. The drawback would be that I'd make this riskier and perhaps more costly than book-casting.

 

[Stalker0]

Uh... so your solution is to make casters even more powerful while simultaneously reserving rituals strictly for their use?

This seems to be to be the exact opposite of "solving the problem", to be honest.

While the idea is a very elegant and clever one, Jester does have a point.

You are basically taking a 3e wizard and giving them the full flexibility of a 3e sorceror. Flexibility is power, and so this version would be far more powerful than the 3e wizard....all other things being equal.

So...you would either need to remove other power sources from the wizard to compensate, or penalize this book casting more. Perhaps if there is some kind of physical penalty to casting spells in 5e, that cost would be greater for book casting.

 

[Falling Icicle]

While the idea is a very elegant and clever one, Jester does have a point.

You are basically taking a 3e wizard and giving them the full flexibility of a 3e sorceror. Flexibility is power, and so this version would be far more powerful than the 3e wizard....all other things being equal.

So...you would either need to remove other power sources from the wizard to compensate, or penalize this book casting more. Perhaps if there is some kind of physical penalty to casting spells in 5e, that cost would be greater for book casting.

It's just an idea. It's too early to say "this would make wizards broken" because we don't even know what wizards as a class are going to be like yet. If they have 3/4 of the spells in the entire game available to them and the enormous number of spells per day at higher levels, like in past editions, the book-casting option may be a bit much. If, on the other hand, they have a much smaller niche and many fewer spells per day, as in 4e, I wouldn't be that concerned about this idea unbalancing things. After all, 4e wizards already had ways of accessing spells in their spellbook on the fly, such as the mnemonic staff, and that didn't break the game.