What do you think is wrong with rituals?

[Zaran]

I keep hearing comments about how people tend to not use rituals. I've always been under the impression that rituals were a tack-on to 4th edition after some playtester mentioned that the game was missing non-combat type magic. If this is true then it explains why the game functions just fine without them.

So here are the reasons that I think rituals aren't used as much:

1. Rituals cost the caster money. I think this was a big mistake. Noone likes to spend gold on something that the group can pretty much accomplish without spending the money. Also, this tends to drain only the caster's funds if they are just casting the ritual to feel magical (IE Tenser's Floating Disk). So rituals are an unneed gold sink. I've taken to allowing ritual casters a free ritual casting a day (with GM's approval that is. I don't allow them to do that with magic item creation). Bards already can do this to a limited effect.

2. GMs (and even printed adventures) overlook putting rituals in treasure. The players won't cast rituals if they don't have them in the ritual book. I think this is because rituals have no combat effect and the GMs are for the most part trying to help the players keep up with level advancement of their monsters. I try to solve this by putting rituals in treasure on top of the recommended treasure value.

3. I've touched on this a bit already. Rituals really don't do much. Ritual type magic had a reputation for short circuiting the game in prior editons. So rituals today tend to not have enough effect for the cost. For this I think making a once a day free casting helps alot. I would like to see future products having rituals that have more effect for their level. For instance, a ritual allowing the group to disguise themselves as hobgoblins so they can infiltrate the legion shouldn't be out of the question.

I think that rituals are a really cool concept. With the advent of every class getting daily powers they help distinguish magic from the mundane. While I am a bit disappointed that rituals as we know them are not in the Essentials product I do understand that they are an extra that is not needed for new players beyond the ones that seem to be built into the Duplo builds.

One of my wishes for a future product is a big book of rituals that puts all printed rituals in one place along with new rituals.

What do you think on the subject?

 

[Kzach]

I'm actually a fan of rituals as a concept, I just find the execution shoots itself in the foot.

I think, by far, the biggest detraction for the use of rituals is the cost. I don't think they should cost anything unless they have a material benefit, such as making potions or magical items. Otherwise, the rest of the mechanics that consume time, even though this time can be a blink of an eye, is enough of a limitation.

It's really up to DM's to maintain that as a limitation, not the system itself. For instance, it could easily be said that a 'knock' ritual could be abused by players if it was free, but when it takes five minutes to cast, most DM's should be having multiple patrols and interruptions.

If a group is in the comfort of their inn room and have dragged back chests, then who cares if they use a knock spell to open it? I don't even require rogues to roll in these situations unless there's a trap and they've detected it.

 

[Ryujin]

Our group got quite a bit of use out of rituals, in no small part because I spent a lot of time acquiring a very extensing ritual list. I viewed them as essentially on-the-fly, one-shot magic items, that could solve difficult problems. The rest of the party agreed and pitched in money to help me keep up a stock of ritual components.

I maximized my ability to cast rituals by multi-classing to Bard. The ability to boost Bluff checks to a ridiculous level without cost, at least once a day, came in very handy during skill challenges. Secret doors and rumours were trivial to find providing I took the time, and spent the components to find them. It wasn't game breaking, but made keeping the flow of the story going easy.

I think that rituals are an under utilized mechanic, for many groups. As you say it tends to differentiate casters from everyone else, but it is in fact a mechanic that is available to ANY character class through taking the feat, or multi-classing.

 

[keterys]

Give out material components in treasure (mystic salves, alchemical reagents, etc) and you'll see a lot more rituals cast - not like they can do anything else with them.

 

[the Jester]

I keep hearing comments about how people tend to not use rituals.

I don't find this to be the case in my games. Once the pcs are about 3rd level and have a little spare cash, certain rituals seem to become almost de rigeur.

 

[Scribble]

Yeah I don't have any real issue with rituals... I think the game succeeded in giving players ways to accomplish things without always resorting to magic, so they tend to gt overlooked.

My real issue with them is that WoTC doesn't do enough with them.

 

[the Jester]

Give out material components in treasure (mystic salves, alchemical reagents, etc) and you'll see a lot more rituals cast - not like they can do anything else with them.

This is a great point. If the DM never puts rituals, components or residuum out as treasure, they will obviously get a lot less use. I've made of point of throwing those out periodically, so maybe that's why- or part of why- my groups have gone in for a lot of ritual use.

Another thing that makes good ritual-incentive treasure: teleport circle coordinates. "Hey guys, look what I found! No, I don't know where these coordinates are, but we're not doing anything right now..."

 

[Shin Okada]

My players tend to use rituals a lot. So as I, as a player. But all of them (including I) are classified as hard-core power gamers, I guess.

The biggest problem I see on current ritual rules is, the lack of well-composed list and guidance.

In PHB and other books, tables only show rituals' level and names. At least, they should have short descriptions like those on feats tables.

And the actual rituals are sorted alphabetically, not by level. Combined, it is somewhat hard for a reader to find useful rituals whose PC can learn.

Seriously, now we need a book of rituals which contains all the rituals ever printed. With guide for choosing and using rituals.

 

[Zaran]

I totally agree. I think the ritual cost was put in as a nerf to make sure skills such as Thievery were the way to go. I guess too many peoplie complained that a wand with the Knock spell made the rogue unneeded in older editions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I don't find rituals to be a problem. Actually the mechanic is QUITE elegant. The costs for the common ones are honestly trivial anyway. Just high enough, along with the time constraint that say Knock is just a little less useful than a rogue with a decent Thievery in most cases. The party can deal with a lock if they NEED to at any point with Knock, but it won't overshadow the rogue's ability to deal with locks. I don't really see another system that will do that. Make them free and they'll just be spammed and replace things like rogue's defining non-combat features.

One thing that I found was that having NPCs both expect the PCs to use rituals in cases where it makes sense "Well, you're a wizard, can't you just..." works. Having a few NPCs use a ritual or two to great effect either for or against the PCs will get them the message as well. Tossing in some components and a scroll or two now and then helps too. I do give away ritual books in treasure now and then as well.

The one place you need to consider is when a ritual is really key to advancing the plot. If the PCs are in a situation where they essentially MUST cast a ritual just to continue the adventure then it should be free. Maybe an NPC bears the cost or something like that. Otherwise the players simply need to realize that the rituals are there and have some real significant advantages.

It WOULD really help if there was something like a 'book of ritual magic' too. Maybe we'll get that since the Essentials line looks like it isn't including rituals as a core thing. A new book that collected all the existing rituals and filled in a few missing ones, plus maybe addressed other interesting ways players can leverage them would put it more in focus.