I really liked how 4th Edition separated out many of the traditional D&D spells into rituals, and made ritual casting (and alchemy) something anyone could do, simply by acquiring a feat. Scrolls, of course, became not just something for characters who could already cast the spell, or roll Use Magical Device, but for anyone with the gold, the components, and the time.

But I have to admit that I've struggled with making rituals (and alchemical formulas, and martial practices) useful in my games, or seen them made useful in games I've played in. I'd like to fix that.

So:

Why aren't rituals (etc.) used? Is it the time involved, because they don't slot easily into the round/short rest/long rest timing of the rest of the game? Is it the expense or difficulty of finding components? Are the effects of the rituals not considered useful? If not, were the spells they were meant to emulate ever considered useful, or just kept handy in case of need?

What can GMs and groups do? I think they mainly have to create or collaborate on games that make rituals, etc., very nice to have, and worth spending money on, outside of Raise Dead and Enchant Magic Item. I'll offer some ideas below.

Here's a handy link to the list of existing rituals, to help the discussion.
http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Rituals

When I find a list of alchemical formulas and martial practices, I'll post those too.

I'm working up a spreadsheet of rituals to help me understand casting times and costs. If I ever make significant progress on it, I may share it.

I think Rituals are a great idea and are sort of underused in 5th edition.

The problem with Rituals, I think, boils down to adventure design and time.  4e's emphasis and greatest strength is its tactical combat.  It really emphasized intricate combat encounters and a sort of core dungeon crawling experience.  Any environmental puzzles that could have a Ritual thrown at them were mechanically underwhelming by comparison.

They're also pretty carefully engineered to be low-impact quality of life features rather than the sort of world-cracking magic that fantasy fiction dramatizes.  This is especially apparent in 5e, where the selection of rituals is so sparse that only a handful of them ever really see use.

I didn't realize they had continued in 5th Edition. I thought the spells they had replaced had just been turned back into spells.

I can't think of a single published adventure in which rituals were planned for. I ran "Trolls of the Shadowhaunt Warrens" which had an overland skill challenge (which are their own topic) and the wizard cast phantom steed, which could handily deal with bogs and difficult terrain. A brilliant application of it, I thought, but the adventure didn't offer me any idea how to alter the skill challenge to account for that. Thinking about it these days, I would have just lowered the complexity of the skill challenge.

I don't know why adventures never really worked in rituals. Part of what I want to talk about here is how we, in our own adventures, can make them more worth using.

At least for Heroic tier, I'd generally agree that rituals are seemingly low impact, but they're fairly evocative. I think of arcane lock as what Gandalf cast to try to keep the orcs and the balrog at bay in Moria. One can speak with the dead or, heck, even raise the dead, and travel to other planes.

The ones I think would be easiest to make useful in Heroic tier are the warding rituals. Make taking an extended rest in the dungeon risky and heading back to town somehow costly. The risk of staying in the dungeon could be that some event might occur, such as a wandering monster, or some kind of annoying pest that disrupts the rest. Eye of alarm, arcane lock and silence would plausibly make the rest less likely to be disrupted.

My problem is figuring out how to make that work. What possible, plausible cost could their be for going back to town? How risky should the extended rest be? How much should the rituals offset that? What if they take the full risk, or the rituals aren't enough? Do I want to play the next game day with the character having not rested?

I do a lot of collaboration, where I try to find out from the players what kinds of risks and costs they want in their game, so ideally I'd work with them on this kind of thing, but I think it shows the challenge of accounting for the existence of rituals, and making them worth having and using.

Holy smokes, I talk a lot. Bear with me on this, though, and hopefully the journey will be worth it.

Rituals in 4E seem to take the role of most of the utility spells in 3E: long-ranged teleportation, comprehend language, speak with dead, things like that which lack an immediate battlefield impact, but can have tremendous use or even break an adventure used correctly. Can't have a mystery when one can just ask the dead man, "Who killed you?" Unless he was killed from behind, anyways...

A Ritual would likely be used during a rest of one kind or another, unless the situation demanded otherwise. And the problem with that is most such ideas would be handled as a Skill Challenge, to try and stay focused on the Ritual, and it does tend to remove the ritualist from the battle, As Written, anyhow.

A lot of players seem to forget a cure-all ritual component: residuum, a frequent by-product of magical production and destruction. It is actually useful enough that players will often be torn between saving it for trade to an enchanter to create a new magic item and using it for the ritual they need right now.

Some rituals are highly specialized, with a specific "just in case" viewpoint. Wizard's Escape requires 150gp in components, something you are not likely to have on you while you are imprisoned...unless you can get someone to smuggle it to you. Still handy to know, however, just in case.

Mostly rituals seem to be designed to have adventures made around them. Linked Portal means a lot more when the ritualists know of cities which have a teleportation circle they can access. The GM would need to make sure the party can get the rituals they need as part of treasure drops (and hope they don't sell them or something absurd like that), and the GM would also need to pay attention to the rituals his players are wanting to buy. A PC with Speak With Dead or Hand of Fate is someone who shouldn't be getting flak: build the adventure around them having these things, if they have used them to sequence break past adventures.

On an aside, I rather like the idea of a player using a ritual to bypass a skill challenge. After all, that ritual just cost them resources, and they had to prepare in advance for it. Perhaps a bit of old-school nostalgia coming in, but I can respect that forethought and willingness to sacrifice resources for expediency and safety immensely.

The best way to provide a cost for returning to town is a time limit. Sure, you can leave and go back: but in three days, if the Draconian bandit king Reswob's demands for the hand of the princess are not met, his warlock will finish a ritual and turn the region into solid stone, and go to work on everyone thus afflicted with sledgehammers. Travel time is tight, and retreat is not an option once the journey begins. In addition, if you leave, he might simply send reinforcements to the area the party just fought at, making their work for naught.

Insight checks at a low value are every GM's friend. Roll it for them, behind a screen, and fudge the results if needed.

Alchemical formulas are less effective, as they use flat attack values for most of the interesting things they can do. My experience with those has been players aiming to produce those things in bulk, to create colossal explosions that could not care less about a roll, whether RAW supports it or not. And this is extremely hilarious, more often than not. Utility alchemy is stuff like the Smokestick, Sovereign Glue, Universal Solvent, and Alchemical Silver, mostly used for either mischief or specialized foes.

Martial Practices didn't get a whole lot of time before 5E rolled in, and weren't really popular, unless my notes are seriously out of date on that. Many of them did things that players were already used to doing with skill checks, and the few that didn't were not seen as worth a feat to get. On the other hand, that does mean they were a field with a lot of room to grow in, with some creativity.

Most Rituals average around 10 minutes or an hour of casting time. Component costs vary, between 10 gp to as much as 50000 for an Epic Raise.

Rituals do indeed live on in 5e, albeit in a different form.  Certain Spells have the Ritual tag, allowing them to be cast as rituals if they are in your Spells Known, Memorized Spells, or Spellbook.  These are typically flavoriffic spells like Find Familiar.

Certain spells are excluded to keep spell slots as a commodity and to enable some degree of niche protection.  Knock for,  instance, seems like a good Ritual candidate, until you realize how much infinte Knocks affect the usefulness of a Rogue, and how Knock's positioning at 2nd level does make it a potential resource drain even for lower-mid level characters.  Got to have some incentive to brave those traps.

But when I am talking about low-impact, I am deliberatgely neglecting the Whammy effects of Resurection and Enchanting items, but I think they are actually useful benchmarks.

Take a look at the Wizard's Sight ritual for an example.  At 8th(!!) level, you can place your scrying sensor a whipping 100 feet away.  Scrying has been a 4th level spell effect since the days of yore, allowing you to see miles upon miles away.  With an attached monetary cost, why is the Wizard's Sight ritual such a garbage pile?  As an Arcana ritualist, you don't get View Location until level 14.

It's this inefficiency, both in levels, time, and cost, that make Enchant Item good.  If you're into scrying, look how much scratch you'll save just by buying, finding, or making a crystal ball.

Not every ritual has to have the impact of Resurrection, but they should definitely use it as a benchmark.  If it's not as good, as exciting, or as interesting, it should be cheaper, faster, or lower level.  Most rituals just don't meet that bar.

It was!

Right. That seems like a problem that's been around long enough to have been solved, though. But that's for another thread.

Yes, and that also quashes interesting uses of rituals by enemies. The "stop the ritual" type of encounter can't generally involve an actual ritual very easily, though 10 minutes casting time is enough for about two fights and two short rests.

Yes, that would seem to require a combination of a couple of rituals, one to give you access to the components and then the ritual itself.

Exactly. I want to get to where rituals aren't strictly necessary but would make things much easier for the characters. To where one or more of them is thinking seriously about investing a feat in ritual casting. I think the trouble there is figuring out how to balance things so that the game is still fun without the rituals, but that more options get opened up.

One option that springs to mind is that the PCs learn about an item or a piece of information that would make a certain type of enemy easier to fight. Well, their local town doesn't have it, but there's one X days travel away that probably does. Here's the sigil sequence for it, if they want to just jump over there....

I think I lack that same sort of nostalgia. I tended to prefer a challenge, not something that was just an oddly shaped lock with an expensive key. As a GM, my issue with this is that I don't want to spend time creating something that's likely to be either ignored or short circuited, even if it does cost the players resources. If I had a better grasp of available rituals, I'd want to put something in that gives certain rituals a specific mechanical benefit for a particular challenge, such as several free successes, or a lasting bonus. Failing that, I'd want the ritual to be a way for the players to change the basis of the challenge from something that's not in their wheelhouse to something that is. They're not good at or interesting in rolling checks related to a mystery, so they ritual the mystery away and the real challenge is running through the city to stop the next murder, or something.

I about smacked my head when I read that. Of course. I've recommended that a number of times in other situations (mostly as a way to deal with the 5 minute workday), but it completely slipped my mind.

Yes, the trick is being willing to set up consequences and follow through with them, which I suppose isn't 4th Edition specific.

A classic response, the main downside being repetitious combat encounters.

Oh, I'll just tell them. Assuming they didn't help me create the consequences themselves.

I'm okay with that, and while it's a bit odd it seems like a great way to make such items accessible to everyone, rather than only those with good throwing arms and aim.

Apart from the items with combat application, it seems like there's another opportunity for helping out with skill challenges. Like "If players make use of heartflow, they DC for all Bluff checks in this skill challenge are decreased by 5." Administering the item itself might be a skill challenge.

Thanks for the insights!

I've never been much into scrying in D&D, and somehow never had anyone in my groups be much into it, so I can't speak much about it's use and effectiveness in past editions. Did such spells get used for seeing all those miles, or was it more about seeing stuff elsewhere in the same dungeon?

I'm not sure what you mean by a crystal ball. There's the crystal ball of spying which is a 10th or 20th level rare wondrous item, that if used as a focus for scrying rituals grants a bonus to the arcana check.

But you probably mean the crystal ball in the Magnificent Emporium, an 8th level rare (which means it can't be enchanted, I believe) magic item. My read of it is that it lets one effectively use wizard's sight once per day, though the higher level versions are much better. I took the Magnificent Emporium as an effort to win people over to 4th Edition, even if it meant stepping on earlier design choices. Take its healing potions, for example. So, if it undoes the usefulness of a Player's Handbook ritual, I don't take that as an indictment of the ritual. For someone like me who probably wouldn't scry much even if he could, I agree that the item looks like a good deal compared to the ritual. It pays for itself after four scries.

On the other hand, it's a once per day power, which might not be enough for a more serious scrier.

I have to say that I don't agree that Raise Dead or even Enchant Magical Item are fair benchmarks. I think of both of those as "patches" that the game itself needs to offer as options at fairly low levels. Not that I think a lot of science went into balancing out rituals. I do agree that rituals need to be exciting and players need to feel good about using them. That's what I think adventure design can help bring about.

I have to say that Scrying and Divination are some of the most underused spells in D&D.  In high level d20 games, the Scryaport party is a nightmare to deal with, which is part of the reason that Teleportation and Scrying work the way they do in 4e.

Look at the cost/benefit of Wizard's Sight.  It costs 270 gold and 10 minutes, which is a fair chunk of change to make an immobile visual sensor that lasts for probably 2-3 rounds.  Unless you're probing blindly (which is an expensive proposition), A reasonably statted, well-kitted (level 8!!) rogue could probably handle whatever it is you're trying to spy on, get back, and write a detailed report by the time you're finished casting, and spending 1000 gold guessing which floor of the tower the BBEG's meeting is being held in.

Unless the adventure is designed explicitly for it to be useful, which doesn't indicate bad adventure design, but bad ritual design.  If you have to contrive a scenario for your tool to be useful, you don't have a bad scenario, you have a bad tool.

If Wizard's Sight were cheaper, faster, or better, it would be a great tool.  Imagine if the scrying sensor lasted minutes instead of rounds, and could move 5' per round, passing through certain barriers.  The high cost and long casting time could be easily justified just by the vast increase in the amount of information you could gain.

Would that be a good change for the game overall?  Maybe not, given other design considerations.

A lot of changes were made to the game specifically to encourage PCs to get closer to the ground and expose themselves to adventure rather than nuke dungeons from orbit.  The game is intentionally designed to favor the 8th level rogue spying on the BBEG.  Those overall design decisions affect the usefulness and efficiency of rituals like, for instance, Wizard's Sight, and other rituals that typically have taken the place of spellcasters' utility toolkits.  As a result, utility rituals are unappealing because, unfortunately, they've been partially intentionally designed to be in some cases.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:31, Wed 24 May 2017.

I would actually say if one wanted to improve that spell, I would make it so that an Arcana check was required to detect the ward, not Perception, or raise the difficulty of the check to something that an enemy trained in Perception (which is a lot of them) would not notice on a 10. As it stands, while the spell has a decent chance of being detected, the worst it might do is warn the enemy of an existing presence, but not where (such as a fleeing rogue might give).

But I do agree, Wizard's Sight is a niche spell for the most part. It's equal level counterpart from Open Grave, Gravesight, not only requires that book be allowed, but would also require an allied undead in order to work, ideally of Tiny size, like an undead bat. But it is, while more niche, a potential superior scrying spell and actually quite powerful. But it is also very conditional, a running theme throughout most of the rituals, especially around Heroic Tier.

Most other heroic tier divination rituals are either fairly specific (Detect Secret Doors, Detect Treasure, etc.) or best suited to acquiring information to yes/no questions (Hand of Fate, Consult Mystic Sages, etc.). Pinpointing the villain's location from a long range is generally Paragon tier stuff or higher, when Scry-and-Die tactics actually start becoming a potential M.O., if the villain has not taken some kind of precaution against that sort of thing (Passwall is also available on Paragon tier, meaning walls won't do much if they know where to go and have the gold to burn).

Case in point: almost all teleportation effects in 4E are relatively short range, require line of sight, and can't go through barriers. To my recollection, there is only one teleportation power that breaks the latter two -- a paragon-level warlock power that is specifically written as a way to pass through walls. I think it even has a range of only 1 or 2 squares.

Right. I'm okay with Scrying and Divination being underused, I'm just looking for ways for them to be used in 4th Edition.

Then what this is about, at least for me, is having situations where that isn't the case, where the rogue can't take the place of the ritual, or where there's enough of a tradeoff that the ritual becomes a viable option.

I'll concede the point that the rituals are "bad." But I'm not interested in changing the rituals, I'm interested in changing how I create scenarios. All scenarios in D&D are "contrived." I just want to figure out how to contrive them differently.

A good point, and I'm generally happy with the game and its approach. But I think it's an interesting challenge to figure out how to make rituals work.

They don't only have to work for PCs either. While I'm happy to give monsters resources beyond what's available for sale to PCs, it would be interesting to have an enemy who could make use of wizard's sight or some other ritual to, say, scout out the PCs.

So, if you're not willing to change rituals, either individually or systemically, but rituals are only useful in niche scenarios, as compared to other (generally) less costly methods, how do you avoid the Magic Button Railroad scenario, where rituals are involved?  It's a bit of a catch 22, and a design problem I'm sure plenty of the 4e staff had fistfights over.

In my experience, two things hindered the proliferation of rituals:

• DMs either refused, or forgot, to include ritual books and scrolls as treasure
• The materials required for rituals (arcane reagents, mystic salves, sanctified incense, or just pure residuum) weren't added to treasure either

So players were given the burden of acquiring everything needed for them. I think players might have been more inclined to give them a try if the physical requirements turned up once in a while as part of 'random' loot.

'Course, I didn't care for 4E's method of determining treasure, but that's unrelated to this topic.

Anyway, there were also cost considerations: it cost someone the same amount of money to buy a ritual book as to buy a scroll of the same ritual. Using the ritual also required material components, regardless of the source. So that Comprehend Language ritual was an outlay of 50 gp no matter what, plus another 10 gp in 'ammo' just to use it.

I think people also forgot the logistical differences between a mastered ritual and one from a scroll:

• A mastered ritual required the user to have the Ritual Caster feat, but using the ritual didn't expend anything more than components
• A ritual scroll can be used by, literally, anyone. It costs components just the same, but its casting time is halved

There was also audience participation. A ritual caster could have friends get involved and either contribute to the costs (especially if healing surges were required), or assist in the skill check. I never saw anyone put this option to use.

In my opinion, one of the best ways to get rituals more spotlight time is to have a character in a game that is devoted to them. This likely means a wizard, because they get more of them for free than anyone else. Unfortunately there weren't many feats to improve it -- mainly Expert Ritualist (+2 to skill checks) and Arcane Ritualist (change one ritual to Arcane).

As for allowing a well-timed ritual to bypass a skill challenge? I'd say if someone finds a novel use for a ritual's effects, and it would basically let them 'win' a skill challenge, then let them. They expended resources to make it happen, probably used a bit of creativity, and maybe even took longer than a normal challenge would have required. If it makes sense that it would achieve the goal, then let it happen, and give out full XP.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 18:14, Thu 25 May 2017.

I'm still not convinced they're, generally speaking, only useful in "niche scenarios," but yes, that's basically what I'm talking about here.

I don't want rituals ever to be the only option for something that I want the PCs to be able to do, I just want them to be a competitive option in at least some situations. I also want there to be optional accomplishments or courses of action that could not be efficiently reached via skills and powers and items.

I don't tend to write adventures, and certainly not for publication. I prefer to improvise and collaborate, plugging in pieces that I've been thinking about or that occur to me in the moment. So, I want to start thinking about the kinds of situations that call or for or make people think of using rituals. The main issue there is that I don't tend to want to spend a lot of time thinking about or posting about stuff that might not be bothered with.

One thing I thought about was what if the party received a request from someone to be on the lookout for examples of some heavy, awkward artifact or objet d'art. Maybe he even gives them a scroll of tenser's floating disk (with or without the components), or fronts them the cost of one. The PCs are on the lookout for the item and then they find two of them. Maybe they get clever and find a way to stack them, and assist with the Arcana check to support the weight, but hopefully it gets them thinking, hey, if we'd picked up another scroll, or had someone who could perform that ritual, we'd be doubling our reward.

Tenser's floating disk is fairly non-niche and pretty generally useful, even without getting into questions (long since answered, across multiple editions) about cheap flight and free movement. But that's the kind of think I'm wondering about, and looking for more suggestions on. I can always ask my players in a given game what would be good incentive for them to use rituals, but I'd like input here on what sort of things I can and should keep in mind.

The usefulness of a ritual depends on how often the situation comes up. Fey Passage, for example, is a great ritual to have if one often goes to the Feywild, but not so much if no adventures occur there. Linked Portal will almost always be helpful...unless the party can take their time heading back with little repercussion, or they simply have no towns with a portal that they know of.

Items and skills can achieve many of the same goals, but it helps to think of a ritual as renting power, as opposed to buying it outright. Sure, one can buy a Ring of Aquatic Ability for 25000 gp...or you can spend 2000 gp for the Waterborn ritual and 850 gp to actually use it, and send everyone underwater in the short term, often just long enough to complete one mission, and save yourself over 20k that can be spent on other things.

Let's take Wizard's Sight again: a good option to use a ritual like that would be in a place like Tomb of Horrors or something like it, where the dungeon is generally a static thing. Most of the defenders are either constructs, undead, or summoned creatures; the dungeon is not designed to support life for the most part, save for very specific areas.
    Under these conditions, the dungeon defenders will not even blink at a Scrying portal, even if they notice it. They aren't programmed to care, or it is outside of their concern or activation. For all the intelligent ones know, it could be the old lich himself looking at them. This would justify, I might think, the cost of its activation, and time is certainly an acceptable expense when going through a place like that.

I would keep the player's options and their knowledge of these options in mind. If the ritual is actually adventure needed, I would consider it "on the house," even if they record the ritual in a book.

The fact that anyone can perform any ritual from a scroll is great, in my view. Come to think of it, one could center an adventure around a rather high-level scroll, with the main quest being gathering enough components to use it. Money itself won't solve the problem, because each town can only supply so much.

I had a friend and his wife who played a wizard and a cleric (also husband and wife) and who both seemed to want to make use of rituals. This was the most success I had with getting rituals used, and it was mostly them driving it. I let them come into a chunk of reagents at one point (thereby making rituals less "expensive," I suppose), and there were three or four noteworthy usages of rituals in our campaign, including a use of remove affliction to cancel out some brainwashing - which was a bit dicey and exciting because it could have killed the subjects (we forgot at the time about the option for assisting).

By the way, have the rules for assisting in rituals the same as those for Aid Another? That is, did the rules for it get updated?

I hear that, it's just that there's enough effort that goes into making a skill challenge that if they intend to bypass it with a ritual I'd generally prefer not to have bothered. Which, given my preference for doing things on the fly, is a somewhat workable option.

Actually, it stated at the onset that it used the regular Aid Another rules. So, yes, it would have gotten updated.

The Eberron setting is actually a good place to run games in which rituals have a higher visibility. All of the dragonmarks grant their owner the ability to master and use specific rituals (or, if you have the Mark of Scribing, all of them). Each one has a certain category or two that they cover, plus a short list of specific rituals.

Also, because NPCs don't have to be as rigidly defined as PCs, it's easy to say that a certain NPC has mastered the rituals needed to do his job.

Keith Baker (the creator) said in his blog that 4E's handling of dragonmarks actually came closer to his ideas than 3E's version (granting spell-like abilities). He also said that the way they handled rituals removed the need for an NPC caster class (the magewright), because anyone could handle scrolls with utility rituals, and dedicated ritualists were possible regardless of class.

He also said that the changes in how dragonmarks are handled better reflected his ideas. The houses weren't meant to be exclusive to their favored races -- more like a vast majority, with a few members of other races.

Okay, cool, I like that.

This was something else I wanted to discuss in this forum, perhaps deserving of its own thread. I realized recently that the Eberron Player's Guide only mentions by name rituals that appear in that book or in the PHB, I guess so players don't have to feel like they need more than the main books in order to get full use out of them. But this means that houses that aren't keyed to a specific ritual type, the way Cannith is to creation or Deneith is to warding, don't have access to rituals they obviously should have, such as control weather for Lyrandar. Unless this was rectified someplace.

True, I had just been thinking that, more than that, an NPC would have and use rituals that PCs wouldn't, like something to cure feather-fade in chickens, or to handle accounting. Or unleash the Ogdru Jahad.

Good to know. The only thing I knew he'd said about 4th Edition rituals was that the portal rituals sort of bolluxed up his intention that players be riding airships, elemental galleons, lighting rails, and magebred destriers from place to place, since they could just port there. Then again, the Campaign Guide mentions that teleportation is a "new science" and that risk of mishaps might make "conventional" travel more likely.

This is my experience also, especially the first point GreyGriffin makes. Cinematic scene-based play does not provide the time for a ten minute ritual.

In the last number of years I reduced the cost (in gp and residuum) of all rituals to zero. This has absolutely no impact on any of my games and very few rituals were ever used, with the exception of Tenser’s Floating Disk which one of my players enjoyed using, and the odd use of ‘summon mounts’ or whatever that one is.

If I were remaking 4E from scratch I would rethink utility powers. These were intended to be used outside combat, and were silo’d from at will/encounter/daily so as to give players meaningful choices, which was a good idea. However most players select utility powers for a combat advantage, as many of these are super-useful in combat.

So, rituals and martial practices could take the place of utility powers, and could become usable as an action and (mostly) at will. Hmm. I might try this in my next game.

So, basically, make ritual mastery automatic. You could make up lists of rituals sorted by level and type (Arcana, Religion, etc.), then simply give characters with the Ritual Caster feat the level-appropriate rituals automatically.

This would negate the freebies that certain classes get (like the wizard and psion). Maybe instead, classes like that could get a daily allotment of 'free' rituals, ignoring the material cost. Enough to do one equal-level ritual for free each day, or a handful of lower-level ones. (Wizards might get a bit more, to reflect the extra free rituals they gain at certain levels.)

You could do the same with alchemy, though I wouldn't include the free materials bit; alchemy actually creates tangible items with a market value, so handing out freebies could be exploited.

If this sounds like it's worth exploring, I can put together sorted ritual lists and even see if I can find a workable materials-per-level amount.

Yeah I guess, but you also need to reduce the time it takes to 1 standard action to make them actually used (in my experience). However this just leads to too many options for players, which is why I propose that they replace utility powers: maybe 'whenever you pick a utility power, you can instead pick a ritual that you can cast at will (subject to GM consent) in one standard action'.

I did a bit of stuff with a 4E player username Myrrhdraak a while back, who compiled all the 4E rituals into sortable lists (by level and by type, if I recall). I have his pdf somewhere.

I wouldn't change the time required to run a ritual. They're meant to be used outside of combat and time-pressure skill challenges (like chases), and reducing the time to a single action makes them stop being rituals per se.

There's a paragon-level artificer feat that lets them use the Enchant Magic Item and Transfer Enchantment rituals in one minute, which basically means they can make magic items on the fly during an adventure. That's VERY powerful. If you make all rituals take only a single action, this would allow an artificer to make a new magic item during combat, or brew healing potions (or things like tanglefoot bags) between attacks.

Dragon 405 introduced a set of Ritual feats that gave a variety of bonuses to ritual use. Things like halving the time to use a Creation ritual, or a free Deception ritual once a day, or mastering Divination rituals 4 levels higher. Those feats would actually pair really well with the various Dragonmark feats.

If we're going to get into modifications of rituals, I'll make a new thread for that.

I was also disappointed at the options for utility powers, with so few of them having much non-combat use. It wouldn't surprise me if they'd tried to make them more useful, but then found that the Fighter and other "mundane" didn't lend themselves to such things. Martial practices didn't spark much interest, as far as I'm aware. Druids and Rangers in Essentials got those Wilderness Knacks, and those had some potential. Oh, well.

But would this be so bad? Imagine you gave a player infinite healing potions at level 10 (or whatever). I bet they would never use a single one, as by then leader healing powers have way more riders and are better. And tanglefoot bags? If I gave an unlimited supply of those to a level 10 player I would guess I'd see them used once or twice max - they can't complete with an encounter power.

But yes, some rituals (possibly the make a new magic item one; and certainly the resuscitate and cure disease ones) are probably too powerful to be given out for free at-will use in one action. But mostly I don't think it would be a problem.


I get that, but the way I play, there are NO out of combat relaxing ten-minute scenes where rituals can be used. All my non-combat scenes are time-pressure skill challenges like chases. This is where 4E shines, I think. So rituals never get a look in.

Yes, I though those were really great. Fare better than original 4E utility powers. I think those essential knacks (and the bard ones too - were they in Heroes of the Feywild? - they were probably my favourite) should be the model for new utility power/ritual stuff. I believe 5E took a step in this direction.

There have not been any scenes of that nature, no, but there have been several occasions during which a PC could have used a ritual in that game, especially given the narrative control the players are granted. Silence, lower water, make whole, water walk and a few others could have found at least a narrative purpose, if not provided a specific solution or reduction in complexity. At the moment, there is a key plot element that could revolve around acquiring, fueling and applying a remove affliction ritual.

Thinking in terms of cinematic scenes where you, say, have the hacker pounding out the security override code while the crew is in the middle of a heist-gone-bad, I think one can have a very intense situation that still lasts "10 minutes." To keep everyone involved could mainly require "zooming out" from combat, and looking at, say, the skill aspects of getting into position, or setting up an obstacle, or protecting the ritualists. That could still be narrated as non-stop action, when it really takes 10 minutes or even an hour. Those not involved in the ritual could even bang out a skill challenge, which would work out to 1-3 rolls apiece, with the result being a bonus or penalty to the ritualist's roll, or anything else.

That is an excellent way to bring some action in while a ritual is being handled. Give the party the challenge of fending off one or two combats without a key member, while also making sure that collateral damage doesn't catch them. Give the guy doing the ritual a brief skill challenge during the fight; success might give a bonus to the ritual's skill check, or even shave off some of its casting time. It gives everyone something to do, and puts a spotlight on the time-consuming aspect of rituals.

They're not supposed to be fast, not without some very specific optimizations (like the artificer build I mentioned). They're also not supposed to be cheap, because time and money is the price paid for their utility.

Even very short combats are long enough that I'd feel like the ritualist player was left out of a huge chunk of gameplay, even if they'd been given a skill challenge to do. The only way I see to do it (unless the player is up for being left out in that way) is to have the combats themselves be more like skill challenges.

Or require a move and minor actions to continue the ritual, and allow standard actions. That would make it clear that the ritual was taking up a lot of attention, but allow battle participation, which is the real objection to mid-combat rituals.

I hadn't read Demonomicon, but I was paging through it recently and I found that the skill challenges in there, although pretty standard in other ways, included sections for handling rituals used as part of the challenges. They typically led to a bonus or to enough automatic successes to succeed in the challenge. That was good to see.

Good discussion!

I routinely adjust published works to incorporate challenges to meet use of rituals. If players are creative enough to use rituals, I reserve the right to be creative in reacting. :-)

Interesting. What's an example?

Since starting this thread, I've joined a game in which I'm really looking forward to being able to access rituals. Create Campsite, Tenser's Floating Disk and Knock are ones that would have seen use so far. I think it's somewhat intentional on the DM's part; they've made the game very hard and aren't hesitant about having enemies use every possible advantage and dirty trick, all in an effort to promote creativity and a sense of accomplishment. Frankly, we're lucky that the monsters haven't resorted to much ritual use, but I expect they will.

Let's use a module that had a skill challenge for traveling across terrain. Create Campsite warranted an automatic success, because they were clever--but then I increased the complexity of the skill challenge from eight successes to ten successes. They had to decide how much money they wanted to burn to get those auto-successes. It made things more expensive--15 gp is not a big deal, 75 feels like a lot more to a bunch of lower-level PCs.

At higher levels, if they want to use low-level rituals, I'd just lower the DC of the check they're trying instead of giving free successes (Paragon) or might even require it (Epic).

In reply to cooneydad (msg # 33):

Interesting.

I've been leery about granting automatic successes, but I suppose sometimes that makes the most sense. The wording of Create Campsite in particular seems to assume that the DM is handling things by having monsters looking for the PCs and rolling Perception checks. I think the DM I'm referring to does exactly that, so Create Campsite wouldn't be automatic, but would increase the party's chances.

I suppose one could see it that way. The skill challenge presumably has a DC for a skill check like Stealth or Nature to avoid trouble at night. Create Campsite makes it "more likely" they'll succeed in avoiding trouble, so one could calculate a bonus to a particular roll.

Frankly, my plan is to leverage the quick set-up aspect of the ritual. I'd buy enough extra tents to effectively fill the area of the ritual, to camouflage the ones actually being slept in. Or, I might perform the ritual several times in separate locations to throw of searchers.

Then again, that all assumes the party hasn't been followed and isn't being watched. But I guess there are other rituals to handle that part of the problem.

Exactly.

The key here is to make for a more interesting scene/story/encounter with the DM's response to the use of the ritual. Reward the players' ingenuity, but don't give them the farm.

The instincts you have to fight as a DM is to avoid either a. rewarding them too much for being ingenious or b. not rewarding the ingenuity at all.  You WANT your players to make clever use of their resources. Just don't give them the farm for one use :-)