A thread for discussing how to make rituals themselves different.

Key question: why would you? I love how Rituals work. The only thing I have ever tweaked is to make them go faster or slower based on rolls for story reasons.

For some of the reasons mentioned in the other rituals thread. Speed and timing are one factor, but one key one was "balance" for lack of a better word, with other rituals and other options. Some feel that some rituals are too inefficient for their level and cost compared to other rituals, and that other options would always outweigh them.

Not a reason to change the system. Maybe individual rituals could be tweaked, but I always felt that the time to cast was a strength. The WOTC designers for 5e felt so, too, since they kept the mechanic if applying it to memorized spells instead.

Does 5th Edition handle time in any different way? The odd thing for me about rituals is that once things aren't listed in rounds or last longer than a short rest and shorter than a few hours, there's no clear way to make the time matter. One could decide that there are wandering monsters every 10 minutes, or something, but I don't remember seeing any rules guidance on that.

Some people probably track minutes or maybe hours in their games, but I've never seen it, so I don't know how it could all go together. I'll recheck the DMG.

I'm puzzled by this statement. The rules state pretty clearly that the ritual takes "ten minutes longer to cast than normal." So, if you're casting Alarm, it would take 11 minutes and not use up a spell slot. Duration would be the same, everything else would be the same. Elegant and straightforward :-)

The rituals in 4e are interesting for the same reason that they're more complex: they are their own distinct thread, something you keep track of and have to learn distinctly. That's also why I've avoided them in a player--the more things I have to keep track of on a character, the worse things are for me. The slayer fighter is my favorite class for a reason. :-)

Yes, it would be a puzzling thing for me to say, if I played 5th Edition. But I don't and have no plans to.

Ah, well, then I'm not puzzled anymore. :-)

I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea of not trying different D&D systems. I've been dabbling in RPGs for a long time and have a hard time imagining myself stuck with one. I did live very happily within the confines of d20/3.5 for a while, but that was mostly because I did 98% of my gaming in Organized Play contexts in those days (Living Greyhawk, Mark of Heroes, Blackmoor MMRPG etc.)

In reply to cooneydad (msg # 8):

I did try it, and I didn't care for it. I no longer care for past editions either. I'll consider any new ones if and when they arise.

In my last big 4E game I DMd, I made all rituals free and gave all heroic out rituals for free to everyone. No one used them! So I think making them all free and very easily available would be an improvement and not unbalancing.

To make them more likely to be used, why not allow each PC to pick a single ritual or martial practice each time they level up to use for free. That way they actually have to consider which one they want, and are more likely to use it.

That's the only improvement I would make to the 4E system, which I do think is very elegant overall.

Hi, I'm back by the way after a long absence.

See, if I wanted people to use rituals, I'd make skill challenges contingent on them. If I thought that would be fun, mind you, which it might be for the right players.



Welcome back!