Vancian Casting and Rituals - A Solution

[sheadunne]

So basically you're taking the "empty slot" rules from 3x and removing a line from the text?

When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the preparation process as often as she likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of her spells.

We've always done that. Replacing a memorized spell takes 15 minutes. Don't have knock memorized, wait 15 minutes and lose the previous memorized spell and you're good to go.

 

[Almacov]

It is a valid point. The concept of a character (lets say a warlord) who is an expert in 'battle rituals' is kind of cool too. The flip side was that it always seemed to me that the lumping of all rituals into one massive list was a bit simplistic.

Well they weren't necessary all on one big list, as there were varying key skills, as well as categories (exploration, deception, etc.). The skills just happened to be an almost negligible barrier to entry, and the differing categories weren't used for much at all.

What might be better is if there was no generalist "Ritual Caster" feat, but instead several feats that each granted you the ability to learn and perform rituals of a specific category.

Or, perhaps better (simpler, certainly) yet, a single "gain proficiency with a category of your choosing" feat that can be taken multiple times.

I also think it might be preferable to have each ritual be tagged with several relevant categories or themes, so that people have more options as to how the rituals they're proficient with are themed.
(This sort of metadata would make it easy for someone to, say, make their character specifically proficient with any rituals that fit under their deity's domain or sphere.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well they weren't necessary all on one big list, as there were varying key skills, as well as categories (exploration, deception, etc.). The skills just happened to be an almost negligible barrier to entry, and the differing categories weren't used for much at all.

What might be better is if there was no generalist "Ritual Caster" feat, but instead several feats that each granted you the ability to learn and perform rituals of a specific category.

Or, perhaps better (simpler, certainly) yet, a single "gain proficiency with a category of your choosing" feat that can be taken multiple times.

I also think it might be preferable to have each ritual be tagged with several relevant categories or themes, so that people have more options as to how the rituals they're proficient with are themed.
(This sort of metadata would make it easy for someone to, say, make their character specifically proficient with any rituals that fit under their deity's domain or sphere.)

Yeah, agreed. The key skills were only used weakly and should have been more significant. I'm also not sure why rituals got only a really basic category and not other types of keywords (though in all fairness domains weren't part of 4e right from the start). In any case, it is certainly an easily solvable problem.

Anyway, I do like the basic concept. I don't know that it really requires a Vancian casting system to work, but it would work with one.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Why not just play a sorcerer then?

Sorcerers can cast spells out of a book?

 

[Falling Icicle]

For me, one of the most valuable aspects of the 4E Ritual system is that it let non-wizards have access to magic. Many spells are too generally useful and important to the game(such as teleportation) to only be used by one class. That makes that one class too mandatory.

I respect your opinion, but I do not share it. Non-magic using classes having access to many of the most iconic arcane and divine spells of the first 30 years of the game in the form of rituals is something I hated about 4e.

This is why, even though I intend to keep an open mind, I am pessimistic about 5e. It's impossible to please everyone, especially when the fan base is split and find each other diametrically opposed on fundamental aspects of the game. You can try to have an optional rule to please everyone, but then the game just gets watered down and has no real focus. Even though I'm not a big fan of 4e, I at least respect it for taking a bold new approach.