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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hadrian the Builder" data-source="post: 5654693" data-attributes="member: 73776">I don't see that rituals get used much in my group either, even with encouragement and components thrown at them. Even the travel rituals get forgotten unless I remind them. When we played 3.5, the players used magic all the time to shorten the road or overcome obstacles.   I’m still not clear on what the designers intended to accomplish with their changes to the spell system.. Clearly, they’ve made a distinction between combat spells and non-combat spell, but what’s the point?Look at the difference between knock in 4e vs. knock in 3.5: in 4e, Knock costs 35gp and 1 healing surge to cast, plus 10 minutes, and you cant; use it in combat. Your fighter could BEAT the door down faster.  In 3.5, it cost nothing to cast (except maybe a spell slot, or 25 gp for a scroll) and a standard action.Knock is obviously not a combat spell (unless you’re a door, I suppose), but why shouldn’t it be cast in combat? The problem with rituals isn’t JUST their cost, it’s that their utility is hampered. Rituals feel like a sidebar to the game.Here’s my idea of a grand revamping: Return to Vancian magic…sort of. Combat powers seem to work fine, or at least, I don’t see my wizard players complaining a lot. Give ritual casters more for their feat. For example, if you take the feat, you can cast rituals AND you get a spell progression (err ritual progression). Everyday you prepare rituals, just as you used to prepare spells in a previous edition. And you get to cast them for free. Eg. At 3rd level you get 1 2nd level spell, 2 1st level spells and 4 cantrips. Reduce the casting times to combat scale (1 standard action typically). And then LET THE PLAYERS CHOOSE what the most effective action will be. If you want to take it a step further, problem rituals could have both a combat definition and a non-combat definition (see Snare for an example), if there are concerns about balance. And classes that get the ritual feat could be initially limited to their theme-appropriate rituals, so that druids and rangers get access to nature rituals, wizards to arcane and divine casters to religion.</blockquote>

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