Increasing Ritual Use... - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

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#1 Tzepish May 14, 2009 13:43:12	I love 4e, and I have only one large-ish gripe when it comes to the new system (and a few, less important, small gripes) - something I realized during a session... A bar fight erupted, and I was unable to quickly use a spell like Calm Emotions or anything like that to stop it. There's no Attack or Utility power (that I know of) that accomplishes anything similar, and Rituals take too long and are too expensive to use. Reading through a whole bunch of the rituals, it struck me how greater access to them would help restore some of the "magical" feel to DnD that I had in the previous edition. I think WotC has sort of noticed the same thing, giving the PHB2 classes limited ability to bypass Ritual components on a daily basis. Are you guys using any house rules to increase the amount of Rituals used in your campaigns? Or, do you have any suggestions? I'm concerned about imbalancing the game, so I want to be careful - obviously some rituals would be exempt from any house rule that allows limited, free access. The first house rule that comes to mind is to give Wizards and other classes that get the ability to cast rituals right out of the box the ability to cast a total number of ritual levels = their level per day. For example, in a day, a 3rd level wizard could cast a 3rd level ritual, or a 1st level and a 2nd level ritual, or three 1st level rituals. Anything beyond this would incur component costs, as normal.
#2 bartleby42 May 14, 2009 14:23:26	A bar fight erupted, and I was unable to quickly use a spell like Calm Emotions or anything like that to stop it. There's no Attack or Utility power (that I know of) that accomplishes anything similar, and Rituals take too long and are too expensive to use. This has two sides to it. The first is that you wanted to come up with a clever way to avoid combat. The other side is that in all likely hood the DM wanted this to be a plot point. If it is a plot point then avoid combat entirely could cause issue with your DM's plan. If the DM had the brawl break out do to advanced douche-baggery by a PC then the brawl was meant to be a consequence to the PC's actions. Try Diplomacy, see if you can think of a creative way to use one of your powers as an impressive show to get peoples attention. Or you could always just walk away. But onto the possible rules: Free rituals are a very sticky point. Mostly because Tenser's floating disk is still horrifically powerful. Then when you get higher in levels you run into the 3.X problem of Scry being used continuously. If you wanted to have higher ritual use the quickest way to do so is an in game fix, give residium or material components as treasure. If you keep giving it to the PCs they will be more likely to use it. This can be applied even to trying to get PCs to take feats you want them too (see how long it takes the fighter to pick up plate proficiency when he has a sexy suit of plate armor waiting for him). If the PCs still don't use rituals, then they don't want to. Leave it at that. If you are a PC talk with your DM about possibly getting some components as treasure so you can do some of the neat things, most of the time they are more than willing to help. If you must have a rule (and I'd suggest against it), you need to break the rituals into class categories, make all the Arcana checks "wizard rituals" and the divine checks "cleric rituals". Once you do that take all of the ones that could easily be abused (tenser's, scry, any others I missed here) and make them untyped again. Then let anyone with ritual casting as a class feature be able to cast one ritual of the correct type (i.e. wizards cast wizard rituals) of the class level or lower for free once a day. The real trick is finding the unbalancing rituals, a good rule of thumb is if it has a focus it should be untyped, if it has a cost higher than all the other rituals of that level, it should be untyped. That being said, it's easy to work in the framework given that trying to make a rule for something that can shift the balance of power drastically.
#3 AbdulAlhazred May 14, 2009 22:02:56	I haven't found that making rituals cheaper really makes a difference. Most players will happily spend money, at least within reason. They most likely aren't using rituals because they just have not paid much attention to them. The rituals are stuck back in the back of the PHB and what I've found is that most players treat them as somewhat of an afterthought. They probably haven't read through most of them carefully and since they aren't usually spelled out on the character sheet exactly what they do the player just isn't bothering to open the book and find out. There are a few things you can do. The suggestion to give out more money as treasure, or even give out a bunch of ritual components as treasure, is a good one. Another good one is to educate the players on the handiness of rituals. Have them witness some really nice ritual use by an NPC. Once they see that they'll start to think more about how THEY can benefit.
#4 kryx May 28, 2009 15:41:49	I haven't found that making rituals cheaper really makes a difference. Most players will happily spend money, at least within reason. They most likely aren't using rituals because they just have not paid much attention to them. I disagree. Rituals are cost prohibitive. Why should I have to shell out a good amount of money to do something that I could easily do on a per day basis in 3.5? Not to start the edition wars, but rituals costing money is just dumb. I agree that some things like cure disease and raise dead should obviously cost money, but 10 gp to comprehend languages? 25gp to create a ward (Eye of Alarm)? It just isn't reasonable if you expect your characters to use rituals on any sort of regular basis. Now if you make the argument that rituals should be used sparingly then I would say they fail in that sense. Rituals used sparingly just = low magic world. There is a reason they ditched spell components for Wizards and other casters, because it was cost prohibitive. By the time I cast several rituals I've already reduced my gold supply and can then buy fewer items. If they helped in combat like potions I would understand that - the choice of spending gold on temporary +3 boosts or permanent +1 boosts, but that is not the case. I honestly ignore all rituals that I do not get for free on my Bard. There have been many posts on these forums about how poor rituals are. I'm surprised there is no good homebrew remedy. If the DM gave out ritual components on top of normal treasure it would be a fix, but simply giving ritual components in place of normal treasure just forces your players to use rituals and have less money for buying items. If you increased the cost of the initial purchase and removed the per use cost it would be more interesting to me as a player.
#5 zackal May 28, 2009 17:52:33	My take on rituals is as such: They are not supposed to exactly mirror the utility spells of yore. Since they have a component cost and casting time, they're not used so much as a crutch to solve a problem (I remember the Fly spell from last edition... that could be fun to deal with at times). They're also not supposed to make certain skills obsolete. Still, I also feel like there are times where these rituals are almost useless because of their casting time. Like in your example, how would one use Calm Emotions fast enough to ever quell a fight? Granted, Diplomacy could be used, but still there are times when you want to use magic to solve problems. And then there's the whole component cost... sometimes it almost feels like a waste. "Well, I could have just used Diplomacy to save some money." Basically, I'd like to still keep rituals as they were intended, but I also want to give flexibility for ritual casters when they really, really wanted to use them. So here are some suggestions: Have them spend resources to accomplish what they want. Spend a couple extra healing surges or an action point to get that ritual off quickly, just in the nick of time. Have there be a way to use the relevant skill to speed up the casting. This would also place more on an emphasis on having a good skill for "No Check" rituals. You'd try to get a separate, high enough roll to ensure a faster casting time (although something instant would most likely impose a very high penalty). I'm unsure if this option should always be available. It'd also encourage everyone to cooperate, whereas the rest of the party would try to assist the ritual caster's skill check. Have ritual casters, perhaps specific ones (like wizards), be able to cast low-level rituals (compared to their current level) at a reduced cost and/or perhaps casting time. After all, if they are level 30, they might be able to have more of a mastery over that level 1 ritual, perhaps to the point where they don't even need components. You could also allow a small number of free castings of rituals per a day (somewhat like what a bard does, although if you choose to do this, make sure you compensate them in some way). Introduce special items or places that'd help take the cost off of certain rituals. (A holy river, for instance, might allow Healing rituals to cost less and cast quicker on those submerged within it). If it feels like it costs way too much to cast rituals in general, then just including ritual components in treasure (in addition to, rather than in place of) could help. And if all else fails, find a way to acheive the ritual just in time to help, perhaps by relying on other allies to delay the situation (in that brawl, a successfull Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, or basically something to serve as a distraction, may have given the ritual caster enough time to get the ritual to complete). Just make sure it's fun!
#6 Tzepish May 28, 2009 19:15:24	Another idea that comes to mind is to allow a ritual caster to burn Daily and Utility powers in order to cast rituals without component costs. So, a wizard could burn his Level 5 Daily to cast a Level 5 or lower Ritual without expending components. If he spends an Encounter or At-Will Utility power in this manner, it is gone until he takes an extended rest.
#7 half_dragon_infernal May 28, 2009 20:42:56	The trick is to watch item creation, raise dead, and future-seeing rituals. Also, things like Calm Emotions replaced Diplomacy. WotC has put more emphasis on skills than magic now.
#8 gregt_314 May 28, 2009 21:24:17	Almost everything included in the "rituals" mechanic is stuff that has the potential to break the game or at least undermine drama; I tend towards making it harder for players to use them, not easier. If you're keen on players being able to stop bar fights, just encourage them to use more diplomacy and make it more effective when they do. (DC 15+half-level Diplomacy check to call out, "Cease this foolishness!" in a commanding battlefield voice, if you need mechanics for it.) The ability to calm emotions, for example, as (say) a standard action, is great for a bar fight. But then your PC starts using it (as they will) on the grief-stricken mother after her children have been killed by gnolls, on the black dragon that goes into a rage when it sees the party wearing dragonskin armour, and on the wrathful king who's about to declare the war that the whole plot is contingent on. Emotion is the core of drama and you're not well served by giving players an at-will version of Evard's Sphere of Plotline Negation. However, if you're really keen on more rituals, just slash costs and casting times in half across the board and give ritual casters a free ritual every time they level up. It'll certainly make the game feel a lot more like 3.5 - I don't consider that a good thing, but I realise that's a subjective opinion. (Also be aware that buffing rituals means you're buffing every class that gets Ritual Caster for free, without giving non-ritualists anything to compensate.)
#9 AbdulAlhazred May 29, 2009 11:13:39	Almost everything included in the "rituals" mechanic is stuff that has the potential to break the game or at least undermine drama; I tend towards making it harder for players to use them, not easier. If you're keen on players being able to stop bar fights, just encourage them to use more diplomacy and make it more effective when they do. (DC 15+half-level Diplomacy check to call out, "Cease this foolishness!" in a commanding battlefield voice, if you need mechanics for it.) The ability to calm emotions, for example, as (say) a standard action, is great for a bar fight. But then your PC starts using it (as they will) on the grief-stricken mother after her children have been killed by gnolls, on the black dragon that goes into a rage when it sees the party wearing dragonskin armour, and on the wrathful king who's about to declare the war that the whole plot is contingent on. Emotion is the core of drama and you're not well served by giving players an at-will version of Evard's Sphere of Plotline Negation. However, if you're really keen on more rituals, just slash costs and casting times in half across the board and give ritual casters a free ritual every time they level up. It'll certainly make the game feel a lot more like 3.5 - I don't consider that a good thing, but I realise that's a subjective opinion. (Also be aware that buffing rituals means you're buffing every class that gets Ritual Caster for free, without giving non-ritualists anything to compensate.) I totally agree. Nothing was more classic in older editions than the DM's look of horror when some player whips out his Utility Spell of Ultimate Adventure Destroying and wrecks the entire story. And there was not a blasted thing you could do about it. Any old spell or some combo could potentially wreck everything. What were you going to do, ban every utility spell in 2e? You practically HAD to once people hit 5th level spells. Nope, rituals are right there where they belong IMHO. They are either things that would be useless in combat anyway so should not have a slot wasted on them, or they are plot breaking or encounter negating effects that are banned from use during most encounters for a good reason. And I'm just not seeing the whole problem with cost. A level 1 party acquires 720 gp in cash by the standard parcels. There are no level 1 rituals that cost more than about 25gp. If the adventure consists of say 3 adventuring days then how many real ritual casting opportunities are there? 4 or 5 max during the whole level. So WOW, the party might burn 100 gp on ritual casting. That is the equivalent of 2 healing potions, which seems like a pretty fair trade to me in general. Lets look at it say around level 5. At that level the party will find around 2000 gp. The available rituals are STILL mostly in the under 100 gp cost range, and most are still below 50 gp. So perhaps the party might spend 300 gp on casting rituals. I just don't see the problem. There are certainly some very expensive high level rituals, but they are not things you will cast often. If the adventure MUST depend on casting a specific ritual then the cost should not be counted as part of a parcel or extra treasure should be given to make up for it. The costs of these things are there mostly to give them a sense of importance and deter the party from using them constantly just for a trivial purpose. And at higher levels the costs of the low level rituals is a joke. I mean come on, you're telling me a 10th level wizard would even notice the casting cost of Tenser's Floating Disk??? At that level they are carrying around large sums of cash, 10 gp or even 100 gp is pocket change. If your players have a problem with ritual costs I have to say I think they are just incredibly tight fisted and haven't actually thought through the economics of it very well because rituals are good value for the money if you use them reasonably.
#10 kryx May 29, 2009 15:00:26	So perhaps the party might spend 300 gp on casting rituals. I just don't see the problem. 300/2000? That's 15% of their intake. It's putting rituals on the scale of potions that are to be used very sparingly and I understand why. If it gives you extra HPs in combat it should cost extra. But my party should essentially receive 15% lower treasure to run faster(Traveler's Chant)? A bard's music is inspiring. How does it cost the bard anything to twiddle his flute for 10 mins? Basically my mindset is if I don't get it alloted to me for free I'll get by without using the ritual, which is always the case. It just detracts from using rituals at all which IMO fails. I recognize that I'm a stingy spender, and only those who throw around money plainly will use rituals more freely, but do they recognize at which cost they do so? If you require your party to use a ritual to beat some encounter then you're just giving the party less treasure unless you give ritual money in addition to normal treasure. Truthfully I've honestly ignored most rituals because I'd rather have +X magic item or Boots of _____ instead of constantly throwing out money every adventure to cast a ritual that takes 10 mins to begin with. 15% of all treasure is a good amount. The only way I as a player would ever consider using rituals beyond my free ones would be if I were given spell components as treasure in addition to normal treasure. If it was given in place of normal treasure I would talk to my DM about it and explain we'd rather have gold to buy items.
#11 kieferz May 29, 2009 21:08:50	I've been thinking about this too, and my conclusion is that perhaps the way to encourage ritual use is to reduce casting time for some (not all) of them. If it took 1 minute (10 rounds) to cast some of them, like Arcane Barrier or Snare, then I think you'd see more use of them, especially on scrolls which cut the cast time to 5 rounds. Plus, it's nicely cinematic; "the Wizard stands in the midst of his allies chanting the words from a scroll as orcs strive to reach him; finally, a wall of force springs into existence between the group and the orcs' barracks, separating the brutes from their reinforcements." I'm thinking that for casting in combat, the caster loses all actions, but is treated as though taking the Total Defense action (or better). If hit, he makes no progress, and if criticaled, the ritual fails without expending reagents. EDIT: Oh, and auto-damage doesn't count as a hit.
#12 axleleft May 29, 2009 23:30:59	Introduce a ritual that binds a ritual to an object - i.e. you can create consumable items which for a standard action complete an already performed ritual. You pay more for it but if you have the foresight of needing a ritual done fast it could well be worth it. Slightly off-OPost but concerns a side effect increased ritual use or they are plot breaking or encounter negating effects that are banned from use during most encounters for a good reason. To extend on this: rituals are like any other item a player pays for in that they make life easier for players and harder for DMs. Increasing ritual use increases the "magic solves everything" factor of a campaign. The OP may have been a bard or a wizard or who knows, but a Calm Emotions spell used in that situation would have been a throw back to the "wizard solves everything with a spell" days with the reduced synergy between players. A bar fight is great place for the fighter with the high intimidate score or the warlord with high diplomacy to get some screen time.
#13 AbdulAlhazred May 30, 2009 10:25:48	300/2000? That's 15% of their intake. It's putting rituals on the scale of potions that are to be used very sparingly and I understand why. If it gives you extra HPs in combat it should cost extra. But my party should essentially receive 15% lower treasure to run faster(Traveler's Chant)? A bard's music is inspiring. How does it cost the bard anything to twiddle his flute for 10 mins? Basically my mindset is if I don't get it alloted to me for free I'll get by without using the ritual, which is always the case. It just detracts from using rituals at all which IMO fails. I recognize that I'm a stingy spender, and only those who throw around money plainly will use rituals more freely, but do they recognize at which cost they do so? If you require your party to use a ritual to beat some encounter then you're just giving the party less treasure unless you give ritual money in addition to normal treasure. Truthfully I've honestly ignored most rituals because I'd rather have +X magic item or Boots of _____ instead of constantly throwing out money every adventure to cast a ritual that takes 10 mins to begin with. 15% of all treasure is a good amount. The only way I as a player would ever consider using rituals beyond my free ones would be if I were given spell components as treasure in addition to normal treasure. If it was given in place of normal treasure I would talk to my DM about it and explain we'd rather have gold to buy items. But you're missing an important point. Rituals help you. They are not just an expense, they are an investment you make in the success of whatever adventure you are on. If Traveler's Chant gets you someplace in time to succeed in that adventure or do better in it so you get more XP or gold or whatever then it was well worth it! This will frequently be the case in my campaign at least. Other DMs may ignore such things, that's up to them, but they shouldn't complain if the players ignore using rituals if the results of using them is the same as not using them. 15% of treasure is not really that big a deal. Whatever permanent magic item you could get for that price would be far below level. It certainly MIGHT be as handy as the ritual casting, but hey there are always choices and I'm not saying casting a ritual is always the best choice. My feeling is that if you look at the trade offs between casting some rituals, buying/making some consumables, and buying/making some low level items that on the whole the choices tend to be fairly balanced. And as I said before, if I were making an adventure where it was specifically required for the characters to cast a ritual to succeed then either it would have no cost or it would be factored into the next treasure drop. Even that seems arguably not required, after all do you drop extra treasure because a character had to use his potion of healing? It is just expected that there will be SOME cost to adventuring. In any case the whole treasure system isn't meant to be some kind of investment broker game where you calculate out that the ROI of one option is 2.735% less than the ROI of another option. There is always going to be some variance between groups at any given time. Some parties will end up a bit richer than others. Such is life. The rules provide a target for the DM to shoot at that will put PCs on the expected power curve that encounter difficulty assumes. Thus it behooves a DM to keep fairly close to those targets to simplify his life, but a few 100 gp (or even 10k gp at epic levels) of variance is not something to get worked up about.
#14 magus_stragus May 30, 2009 10:50:59	Well, in my personal experience, I've house-ruled ritual's component cost to be ignorable when it's below 50gp. However, I take into account how many rituals they have used during an adventure, and then I discount that from the treasure obtained.
#15 Sakebito May 30, 2009 11:45:16	If you've really got some problems with ritual component cost, tell your players to take a look at the Draconomicon. It's got some guidelines for using dragon body parts as part of ritual components. Grab a handy haversack and harvest all the dragons! The wizard in my party is still on his 1st dragon with another 1 1/2 in his bag (the 1/2 was one awesome fight :D ) and he uses rituals fairly regularly. Hell, he even used a ritual to create a big pile of illusionary gold that feels real for 24 hours to distract a dragon while the party snuck up on him to kill him, thereby getting more ritual components! It's a vicious cycle.
#16 Tzepish Jun 01, 2009 11:35:16	Another idea (just figured I'd throw it in here): For ritual casters, give them a free amount of components equal to their level x 10 per day. Flavor them however you want (like "Spell Points" or "Mana"). For example, a level 2 wizard would have 20 Spell points per day, so he could use 20gp worth of rituals for free in a day. He could use one 20gp ritual or two 10 gp rituals for free in a day. If he uses a 25 gp ritual, he could use his 20 spell points and pay 5 gp.
#17 pyromancer2k Jun 01, 2009 23:57:46	I don't know if you guys already do this but our group finds a great way to encourage ritual and other consumable uses is to give full value back for magic item's sold. The players normally loss 80% of their wealth from an item when it's sold. That's easily a couple hundred gold even on +1 items. And since items cost 5x as much for the next + up it's kinda hard to use that money to save up especially when treasure tends to be 1-4 levels higher then the group. So even as early as level 2 when the players start getting +2 (one level 6 item) they potentially begin replacing old items. And depending on how the group feels about pooling their treasure to help out the group they might end up with a bit of extra cash that will often keep falling short of the item they want to buy or will have enough right as they find treasure worth that item. Then they can't really argue it's taking away from their treasure cause it's extra cash they wouldn't of had in the first place. Plus the higher level you get the more affordable the rituals become. I mean 25 gp is nothing to a level 10 party who gets 10K in gold plus level 11, 12, 13, & 14 item (Worth 56K gold). And people are complaining Comprehend languages which only cost 10 gp is "To much"? Besides D&D is not all about combat. There are non-combat encounters as well. Rituals are mostly to help you do interesting thing in the world to help facilitate role-playing and over come non-combat obstacles. As for things like Traveler's Chant it can be handy if your DM keeps track of time. I know many don't so how fast a party gets someplace isn't always that important. Over the course of 3 days it will allow the group to have effectively traveled 4 days distance without their normal speed. This could be handy if the DM tells them they need to be someplace in 3 days but it's a 4 day trip. They either use the ritual or the perhaps buy horses for much higher cost.

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

Tzepish

May 14, 2009 13:43:12

I love 4e, and I have only one large-ish gripe when it comes to the new system (and a few, less important, small gripes) - something I realized during a session...

A bar fight erupted, and I was unable to quickly use a spell like Calm Emotions or anything like that to stop it. There's no Attack or Utility power (that I know of) that accomplishes anything similar, and Rituals take too long and are too expensive to use.

Reading through a whole bunch of the rituals, it struck me how greater access to them would help restore some of the "magical" feel to DnD that I had in the previous edition. I think WotC has sort of noticed the same thing, giving the PHB2 classes limited ability to bypass Ritual components on a daily basis.

Are you guys using any house rules to increase the amount of Rituals used in your campaigns? Or, do you have any suggestions? I'm concerned about imbalancing the game, so I want to be careful - obviously some rituals would be exempt from any house rule that allows limited, free access.

The first house rule that comes to mind is to give Wizards and other classes that get the ability to cast rituals right out of the box the ability to cast a total number of ritual levels = their level per day. For example, in a day, a 3rd level wizard could cast a 3rd level ritual, or a 1st level and a 2nd level ritual, or three 1st level rituals. Anything beyond this would incur component costs, as normal.

bartleby42

May 14, 2009 14:23:26

A bar fight erupted, and I was unable to quickly use a spell like Calm Emotions or anything like that to stop it. There's no Attack or Utility power (that I know of) that accomplishes anything similar, and Rituals take too long and are too expensive to use.

This has two sides to it. The first is that you wanted to come up with a clever way to avoid combat. The other side is that in all likely hood the DM wanted this to be a plot point. If it is a plot point then avoid combat entirely could cause issue with your DM's plan. If the DM had the brawl break out do to advanced douche-baggery by a PC then the brawl was meant to be a consequence to the PC's actions.

Try Diplomacy, see if you can think of a creative way to use one of your powers as an impressive show to get peoples attention. Or you could always just walk away.

But onto the possible rules:

Free rituals are a very sticky point. Mostly because Tenser's floating disk is still horrifically powerful. Then when you get higher in levels you run into the 3.X problem of Scry being used continuously.

If you wanted to have higher ritual use the quickest way to do so is an in game fix, give residium or material components as treasure. If you keep giving it to the PCs they will be more likely to use it. This can be applied even to trying to get PCs to take feats you want them too (see how long it takes the fighter to pick up plate proficiency when he has a sexy suit of plate armor waiting for him).

If the PCs still don't use rituals, then they don't want to. Leave it at that.

If you are a PC talk with your DM about possibly getting some components as treasure so you can do some of the neat things, most of the time they are more than willing to help.

If you must have a rule (and I'd suggest against it), you need to break the rituals into class categories, make all the Arcana checks "wizard rituals" and the divine checks "cleric rituals". Once you do that take all of the ones that could easily be abused (tenser's, scry, any others I missed here) and make them untyped again. Then let anyone with ritual casting as a class feature be able to cast one ritual of the correct type (i.e. wizards cast wizard rituals) of the class level or lower for free once a day.

The real trick is finding the unbalancing rituals, a good rule of thumb is if it has a focus it should be untyped, if it has a cost higher than all the other rituals of that level, it should be untyped.

That being said, it's easy to work in the framework given that trying to make a rule for something that can shift the balance of power drastically.

AbdulAlhazred

May 14, 2009 22:02:56

I haven't found that making rituals cheaper really makes a difference. Most players will happily spend money, at least within reason. They most likely aren't using rituals because they just have not paid much attention to them.

The rituals are stuck back in the back of the PHB and what I've found is that most players treat them as somewhat of an afterthought. They probably haven't read through most of them carefully and since they aren't usually spelled out on the character sheet exactly what they do the player just isn't bothering to open the book and find out.

There are a few things you can do. The suggestion to give out more money as treasure, or even give out a bunch of ritual components as treasure, is a good one. Another good one is to educate the players on the handiness of rituals. Have them witness some really nice ritual use by an NPC. Once they see that they'll start to think more about how THEY can benefit.

kryx

May 28, 2009 15:41:49

I haven't found that making rituals cheaper really makes a difference. Most players will happily spend money, at least within reason. They most likely aren't using rituals because they just have not paid much attention to them.

I disagree. Rituals are cost prohibitive. Why should I have to shell out a good amount of money to do something that I could easily do on a per day basis in 3.5? Not to start the edition wars, but rituals costing money is just dumb. I agree that some things like cure disease and raise dead should obviously cost money, but 10 gp to comprehend languages? 25gp to create a ward (Eye of Alarm)? It just isn't reasonable if you expect your characters to use rituals on any sort of regular basis. Now if you make the argument that rituals should be used sparingly then I would say they fail in that sense. Rituals used sparingly just = low magic world. There is a reason they ditched spell components for Wizards and other casters, because it was cost prohibitive.

By the time I cast several rituals I've already reduced my gold supply and can then buy fewer items. If they helped in combat like potions I would understand that - the choice of spending gold on temporary +3 boosts or permanent +1 boosts, but that is not the case. I honestly ignore all rituals that I do not get for free on my Bard.

There have been many posts on these forums about how poor rituals are. I'm surprised there is no good homebrew remedy.

If the DM gave out ritual components on top of normal treasure it would be a fix, but simply giving ritual components in place of normal treasure just forces your players to use rituals and have less money for buying items. If you increased the cost of the initial purchase and removed the per use cost it would be more interesting to me as a player.

zackal

May 28, 2009 17:52:33

My take on rituals is as such:

They are not supposed to exactly mirror the utility spells of yore. Since they have a component cost and casting time, they're not used so much as a crutch to solve a problem (I remember the Fly spell from last edition... that could be fun to deal with at times). They're also not supposed to make certain skills obsolete.

Still, I also feel like there are times where these rituals are almost useless because of their casting time. Like in your example, how would one use Calm Emotions fast enough to ever quell a fight? Granted, Diplomacy could be used, but still there are times when you want to use magic to solve problems. And then there's the whole component cost... sometimes it almost feels like a waste. "Well, I could have just used Diplomacy to save some money."

Basically, I'd like to still keep rituals as they were intended, but I also want to give flexibility for ritual casters when they really, really wanted to use them. So here are some suggestions:

Have them spend resources to accomplish what they want. Spend a couple extra healing surges or an action point to get that ritual off quickly, just in the nick of time.

Have there be a way to use the relevant skill to speed up the casting. This would also place more on an emphasis on having a good skill for "No Check" rituals. You'd try to get a separate, high enough roll to ensure a faster casting time (although something instant would most likely impose a very high penalty). I'm unsure if this option should always be available. It'd also encourage everyone to cooperate, whereas the rest of the party would try to assist the ritual caster's skill check.

Have ritual casters, perhaps specific ones (like wizards), be able to cast low-level rituals (compared to their current level) at a reduced cost and/or perhaps casting time. After all, if they are level 30, they might be able to have more of a mastery over that level 1 ritual, perhaps to the point where they don't even need components. You could also allow a small number of free castings of rituals per a day (somewhat like what a bard does, although if you choose to do this, make sure you compensate them in some way).

Introduce special items or places that'd help take the cost off of certain rituals. (A holy river, for instance, might allow Healing rituals to cost less and cast quicker on those submerged within it). If it feels like it costs way too much to cast rituals in general, then just including ritual components in treasure (in addition to, rather than in place of) could help.

And if all else fails, find a way to acheive the ritual just in time to help, perhaps by relying on other allies to delay the situation (in that brawl, a successfull Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, or basically something to serve as a distraction, may have given the ritual caster enough time to get the ritual to complete). Just make sure it's fun!

Tzepish

May 28, 2009 19:15:24

Another idea that comes to mind is to allow a ritual caster to burn Daily and Utility powers in order to cast rituals without component costs. So, a wizard could burn his Level 5 Daily to cast a Level 5 or lower Ritual without expending components. If he spends an Encounter or At-Will Utility power in this manner, it is gone until he takes an extended rest.

half_dragon_infernal

May 28, 2009 20:42:56

The trick is to watch item creation, raise dead, and future-seeing rituals. Also, things like Calm Emotions replaced Diplomacy. WotC has put more emphasis on skills than magic now.

gregt_314

May 28, 2009 21:24:17

Almost everything included in the "rituals" mechanic is stuff that has the potential to break the game or at least undermine drama; I tend towards making it harder for players to use them, not easier. If you're keen on players being able to stop bar fights, just encourage them to use more diplomacy and make it more effective when they do. (DC 15+half-level Diplomacy check to call out, "Cease this foolishness!" in a commanding battlefield voice, if you need mechanics for it.)

The ability to calm emotions, for example, as (say) a standard action, is great for a bar fight. But then your PC starts using it (as they will) on the grief-stricken mother after her children have been killed by gnolls, on the black dragon that goes into a rage when it sees the party wearing dragonskin armour, and on the wrathful king who's about to declare the war that the whole plot is contingent on. Emotion is the core of drama and you're not well served by giving players an at-will version of Evard's Sphere of Plotline Negation.

However, if you're really keen on more rituals, just slash costs and casting times in half across the board and give ritual casters a free ritual every time they level up. It'll certainly make the game feel a lot more like 3.5 - I don't consider that a good thing, but I realise that's a subjective opinion.

(Also be aware that buffing rituals means you're buffing every class that gets Ritual Caster for free, without giving non-ritualists anything to compensate.)

AbdulAlhazred

May 29, 2009 11:13:39

Almost everything included in the "rituals" mechanic is stuff that has the potential to break the game or at least undermine drama; I tend towards making it harder for players to use them, not easier. If you're keen on players being able to stop bar fights, just encourage them to use more diplomacy and make it more effective when they do. (DC 15+half-level Diplomacy check to call out, "Cease this foolishness!" in a commanding battlefield voice, if you need mechanics for it.)

The ability to calm emotions, for example, as (say) a standard action, is great for a bar fight. But then your PC starts using it (as they will) on the grief-stricken mother after her children have been killed by gnolls, on the black dragon that goes into a rage when it sees the party wearing dragonskin armour, and on the wrathful king who's about to declare the war that the whole plot is contingent on. Emotion is the core of drama and you're not well served by giving players an at-will version of Evard's Sphere of Plotline Negation.

However, if you're really keen on more rituals, just slash costs and casting times in half across the board and give ritual casters a free ritual every time they level up. It'll certainly make the game feel a lot more like 3.5 - I don't consider that a good thing, but I realise that's a subjective opinion.

(Also be aware that buffing rituals means you're buffing every class that gets Ritual Caster for free, without giving non-ritualists anything to compensate.)

I totally agree. Nothing was more classic in older editions than the DM's look of horror when some player whips out his Utility Spell of Ultimate Adventure Destroying and wrecks the entire story. And there was not a blasted thing you could do about it. Any old spell or some combo could potentially wreck everything. What were you going to do, ban every utility spell in 2e? You practically HAD to once people hit 5th level spells.

Nope, rituals are right there where they belong IMHO. They are either things that would be useless in combat anyway so should not have a slot wasted on them, or they are plot breaking or encounter negating effects that are banned from use during most encounters for a good reason.

And I'm just not seeing the whole problem with cost. A level 1 party acquires 720 gp in cash by the standard parcels. There are no level 1 rituals that cost more than about 25gp. If the adventure consists of say 3 adventuring days then how many real ritual casting opportunities are there? 4 or 5 max during the whole level. So WOW, the party might burn 100 gp on ritual casting. That is the equivalent of 2 healing potions, which seems like a pretty fair trade to me in general.

Lets look at it say around level 5. At that level the party will find around 2000 gp. The available rituals are STILL mostly in the under 100 gp cost range, and most are still below 50 gp. So perhaps the party might spend 300 gp on casting rituals. I just don't see the problem.

There are certainly some very expensive high level rituals, but they are not things you will cast often. If the adventure MUST depend on casting a specific ritual then the cost should not be counted as part of a parcel or extra treasure should be given to make up for it. The costs of these things are there mostly to give them a sense of importance and deter the party from using them constantly just for a trivial purpose.

And at higher levels the costs of the low level rituals is a joke. I mean come on, you're telling me a 10th level wizard would even notice the casting cost of Tenser's Floating Disk??? At that level they are carrying around large sums of cash, 10 gp or even 100 gp is pocket change.

If your players have a problem with ritual costs I have to say I think they are just incredibly tight fisted and haven't actually thought through the economics of it very well because rituals are good value for the money if you use them reasonably.

#10

kryx

May 29, 2009 15:00:26

So perhaps the party might spend 300 gp on casting rituals. I just don't see the problem.

300/2000? That's 15% of their intake. It's putting rituals on the scale of potions that are to be used very sparingly and I understand why. If it gives you extra HPs in combat it should cost extra. But my party should essentially receive 15% lower treasure to run faster(Traveler's Chant)? A bard's music is inspiring. How does it cost the bard anything to twiddle his flute for 10 mins?

Basically my mindset is if I don't get it alloted to me for free I'll get by without using the ritual, which is always the case. It just detracts from using rituals at all which IMO fails. I recognize that I'm a stingy spender, and only those who throw around money plainly will use rituals more freely, but do they recognize at which cost they do so? If you require your party to use a ritual to beat some encounter then you're just giving the party less treasure unless you give ritual money in addition to normal treasure.

Truthfully I've honestly ignored most rituals because I'd rather have +X magic item or Boots of _____ instead of constantly throwing out money every adventure to cast a ritual that takes 10 mins to begin with. 15% of all treasure is a good amount.

The only way I as a player would ever consider using rituals beyond my free ones would be if I were given spell components as treasure in addition to normal treasure. If it was given in place of normal treasure I would talk to my DM about it and explain we'd rather have gold to buy items.

#11

kieferz

May 29, 2009 21:08:50

I've been thinking about this too, and my conclusion is that perhaps the way to encourage ritual use is to reduce casting time for some (not all) of them. If it took 1 minute (10 rounds) to cast some of them, like Arcane Barrier or Snare, then I think you'd see more use of them, especially on scrolls which cut the cast time to 5 rounds. Plus, it's nicely cinematic; "the Wizard stands in the midst of his allies chanting the words from a scroll as orcs strive to reach him; finally, a wall of force springs into existence between the group and the orcs' barracks, separating the brutes from their reinforcements."

I'm thinking that for casting in combat, the caster loses all actions, but is treated as though taking the Total Defense action (or better). If hit, he makes no progress, and if criticaled, the ritual fails without expending reagents.

EDIT: Oh, and auto-damage doesn't count as a hit.

#12

axleleft

May 29, 2009 23:30:59

Introduce a ritual that binds a ritual to an object - i.e. you can create consumable items which for a standard action complete an already performed ritual. You pay more for it but if you have the foresight of needing a ritual done fast it could well be worth it.

Slightly off-OPost but concerns a side effect increased ritual use

or they are plot breaking or encounter negating effects that are banned from use during most encounters for a good reason.

To extend on this: rituals are like any other item a player pays for in that they make life easier for players and harder for DMs. Increasing ritual use increases the "magic solves everything" factor of a campaign. The OP may have been a bard or a wizard or who knows, but a Calm Emotions spell used in that situation would have been a throw back to the "wizard solves everything with a spell" days with the reduced synergy between players. A bar fight is great place for the fighter with the high intimidate score or the warlord with high diplomacy to get some screen time.

#13

AbdulAlhazred

May 30, 2009 10:25:48

300/2000? That's 15% of their intake. It's putting rituals on the scale of potions that are to be used very sparingly and I understand why. If it gives you extra HPs in combat it should cost extra. But my party should essentially receive 15% lower treasure to run faster(Traveler's Chant)? A bard's music is inspiring. How does it cost the bard anything to twiddle his flute for 10 mins?

Basically my mindset is if I don't get it alloted to me for free I'll get by without using the ritual, which is always the case. It just detracts from using rituals at all which IMO fails. I recognize that I'm a stingy spender, and only those who throw around money plainly will use rituals more freely, but do they recognize at which cost they do so? If you require your party to use a ritual to beat some encounter then you're just giving the party less treasure unless you give ritual money in addition to normal treasure.

Truthfully I've honestly ignored most rituals because I'd rather have +X magic item or Boots of _____ instead of constantly throwing out money every adventure to cast a ritual that takes 10 mins to begin with. 15% of all treasure is a good amount.

The only way I as a player would ever consider using rituals beyond my free ones would be if I were given spell components as treasure in addition to normal treasure. If it was given in place of normal treasure I would talk to my DM about it and explain we'd rather have gold to buy items.

But you're missing an important point. Rituals help you. They are not just an expense, they are an investment you make in the success of whatever adventure you are on. If Traveler's Chant gets you someplace in time to succeed in that adventure or do better in it so you get more XP or gold or whatever then it was well worth it! This will frequently be the case in my campaign at least. Other DMs may ignore such things, that's up to them, but they shouldn't complain if the players ignore using rituals if the results of using them is the same as not using them.

15% of treasure is not really that big a deal. Whatever permanent magic item you could get for that price would be far below level. It certainly MIGHT be as handy as the ritual casting, but hey there are always choices and I'm not saying casting a ritual is always the best choice. My feeling is that if you look at the trade offs between casting some rituals, buying/making some consumables, and buying/making some low level items that on the whole the choices tend to be fairly balanced.

And as I said before, if I were making an adventure where it was specifically required for the characters to cast a ritual to succeed then either it would have no cost or it would be factored into the next treasure drop. Even that seems arguably not required, after all do you drop extra treasure because a character had to use his potion of healing? It is just expected that there will be SOME cost to adventuring.

In any case the whole treasure system isn't meant to be some kind of investment broker game where you calculate out that the ROI of one option is 2.735% less than the ROI of another option. There is always going to be some variance between groups at any given time. Some parties will end up a bit richer than others. Such is life. The rules provide a target for the DM to shoot at that will put PCs on the expected power curve that encounter difficulty assumes. Thus it behooves a DM to keep fairly close to those targets to simplify his life, but a few 100 gp (or even 10k gp at epic levels) of variance is not something to get worked up about.

#14

magus_stragus

May 30, 2009 10:50:59

Well, in my personal experience, I've house-ruled ritual's component cost to be ignorable when it's below 50gp. However, I take into account how many rituals they have used during an adventure, and then I discount that from the treasure obtained.

#15

Sakebito

May 30, 2009 11:45:16

If you've really got some problems with ritual component cost, tell your players to take a look at the Draconomicon. It's got some guidelines for using dragon body parts as part of ritual components. Grab a handy haversack and harvest all the dragons! The wizard in my party is still on his 1st dragon with another 1 1/2 in his bag (the 1/2 was one awesome fight :D ) and he uses rituals fairly regularly. Hell, he even used a ritual to create a big pile of illusionary gold that feels real for 24 hours to distract a dragon while the party snuck up on him to kill him, thereby getting more ritual components! It's a vicious cycle.

#16

Tzepish

Jun 01, 2009 11:35:16

Another idea (just figured I'd throw it in here): For ritual casters, give them a free amount of components equal to their level x 10 per day. Flavor them however you want (like "Spell Points" or "Mana").

For example, a level 2 wizard would have 20 Spell points per day, so he could use 20gp worth of rituals for free in a day. He could use one 20gp ritual or two 10 gp rituals for free in a day. If he uses a 25 gp ritual, he could use his 20 spell points and pay 5 gp.

#17

pyromancer2k

Jun 01, 2009 23:57:46

I don't know if you guys already do this but our group finds a great way to encourage ritual and other consumable uses is to give full value back for magic item's sold.

The players normally loss 80% of their wealth from an item when it's sold. That's easily a couple hundred gold even on +1 items. And since items cost 5x as much for the next + up it's kinda hard to use that money to save up especially when treasure tends to be 1-4 levels higher then the group. So even as early as level 2 when the players start getting +2 (one level 6 item) they potentially begin replacing old items.

And depending on how the group feels about pooling their treasure to help out the group they might end up with a bit of extra cash that will often keep falling short of the item they want to buy or will have enough right as they find treasure worth that item.

Then they can't really argue it's taking away from their treasure cause it's extra cash they wouldn't of had in the first place. Plus the higher level you get the more affordable the rituals become. I mean 25 gp is nothing to a level 10 party who gets 10K in gold plus level 11, 12, 13, & 14 item (Worth 56K gold). And people are complaining Comprehend languages which only cost 10 gp is "To much"?

Besides D&D is not all about combat. There are non-combat encounters as well. Rituals are mostly to help you do interesting thing in the world to help facilitate role-playing and over come non-combat obstacles. As for things like Traveler's Chant it can be handy if your DM keeps track of time. I know many don't so how fast a party gets someplace isn't always that important. Over the course of 3 days it will allow the group to have effectively traveled 4 days distance without their normal speed. This could be handy if the DM tells them they need to be someplace in 3 days but it's a 4 day trip. They either use the ritual or the perhaps buy horses for much higher cost.