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 :-)