Ritual Casting Only

[mgshamster]

If you were to play/run a game where there were no major casting classes (9th level casters) or no casters at all, but instead had most of the major magic be through ritual casting, what spells would you add to the ritual list?

How would you expand the ritual list?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Healing and-especially- curing spells for certain.
Divinations
Stuff like Goodberry or Fabricate, with permanent or near-permanent effects.
Probably also long-duration buffs and BFC- Mage Armor, Darkvision, Tiny Hut... Maybe even a selection of "concentration, up to 1 hour" spells.

[mgshamster]

Ritual spells only go up to 5th level; would you add higher level spells?

I think this could be a fun game. Completely eliminates any caster-martial disparity from the game, as anyone could have access to magic with a single feat.

[Joe the Rat]

All of the return-from-the-dead spells have potential here. You may need to add some additional limitations: Raise dead taking 8 hours to process, during which you cannot cast another ritual; exhaustion penalties, etc.

[smcmike]

The easiest answer is to allow ANY spell to be cast as a ritual, then eliminate or nerf anything that seems problematic - by adding very long casting times, for example.

Many spells would be mostly useless for adventuring, but still interesting, I think. For example, ritual fireball sounds awful, but may still be usable under very limited wartime circumstances. Alternatively, you could allow spells to be held (through concentration) following the completion of the ritual. This is basically very limited vancian casting, of course.

[Rysto]

The easiest answer is to allow ANY spell to be cast as a ritual, then eliminate or nerf anything that seems problematic - by adding very long casting times, for example.

Allowing unlimited casting of healing spells is almost certainly a bad idea.

[mgshamster]

Allowing unlimited casting of healing spells is almost certainly a bad idea.

Not necessarily. While HP resources can be a factor for adventure design, for the most part out of combat healing isn't overpowering.

However, if it's an issue, just make those rituals take longer. One hour makes them equivalent to a standard short rest. If they can spend the time to completey heal up in that situation, then they might as well long rest and go up to max anyways.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

Allowing unlimited casting of healing spells is almost certainly a bad idea.I'm not sure. Long rests already heal fully and short rest hit-dice healing is available to anyone and can be used by the whole party at once rather than forcing a caster to heal them one at a time. As long as you keep it to level 1 Cure Wounds, I don't think it would be an issue since it would still cap out at 1d8+5 hit points per 10 minutes invested.

If you are concerned about ritual Cure Wounds, you could add a material component that gets consumed. Probably nothing too expensive (maybe costing a little less than a potion for a similar amount of healing) but having a consumed component at all would mean that the party would have to plan ahead to have access to ritual healing and would still have in limited numbers.

Edit: I DMed enough 3.5 with a party carrying around multiple Wands of Cure Light Wounds that I feel okay saying from experience that letting the party heal up as much as they want between fights isn't an insurmountable problem for a game (as long as the DM knows the party can do it and designs adventures and encounters accordingly, of course.)

[Waffle_Iron]

I'm not sure. Long rests already heal fully and short rest hit-dice healing is available to anyone and can be used by the whole party at once rather than forcing a caster to heal them one at a time. As long as you keep it to level 1 Cure Wounds, I don't think it would be an issue since it would still cap out at 1d8+5 hit points per 10 minutes invested.

If you are concerned about ritual Cure Wounds, you could add a material component that gets consumed. Probably nothing too expensive (maybe costing a little less than a potion for a similar amount of healing) but having a consumed component at all would mean that the party would have to plan ahead to have access to ritual healing and would still have in limited numbers.

Edit: I DMed enough 3.5 with a party carrying around multiple Wands of Cure Light Wounds that I feel okay saying from experience that letting the party heal up as much as they want between fights isn't an insurmountable problem for a game (as long as the DM knows the party can do it and designs adventures and encounters accordingly, of course.)

I'm going to second your entire post, and add the observation that random encounter tables based on time spent idle will go a long way towards balancing the potential healing.

[Rysto]

Hit dice are a limited resource. On average a PC can heal 1.5 times their HP limit per long rest. Changing that into being able to heal an infinite amount of HP changes the balance of an adventuring day entirely. The DM can certainly try to rebalance, but it's going to be tricky. Simply making your monsters hit harder makes combat swingier and you're a lot more likely to drop a PC (and without in-combat healing magic, they aren't getting back up). Giving the monsters more defense (so they have more rounds to dish out damage) drags out combat and that may get old.

Unlimited healing also devalues defensive options. It doesn't matter if you beat the monster with 1HP remaining or 20HP. All that matters is dropping it before it drops you, because you'll get all of that HP back.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Ritual spells only go up to 5th level; would you add higher level spells?

I think this could be a fun game. Completely eliminates any caster-martial disparity from the game, as anyone could have access to magic with a single feat.
Depends on what your overall goal for the campaign is. If you want a very low magic game, I'd... actually, I might stop at 4th level; 5th level magic still includes some world-shaking stuff like Commune, Raise Dead, Planar Binding and the like. If you're going to go higher, I'd make the 6th-9th level rituals more demanding, somehow. Maybe they take a few hours, or you can only do so many a day.


Allowing unlimited casting of healing spells is almost certainly a bad idea.
It's a change in how the game is played, to be sure-- attrition is much less of an issue. You wind up with fewer, deadlier encounters than before. You remove or fast-forward past minor skirmishes in favor of bigger, more dangerous battles. You might potentially pair it with increased monster damage-- and probably some form of HD-based in combat healing, if you're totally removing magic-- but I think overall it's not a big deal. Cleric players will certainly be happier.

[Dimcair]

Summon demons and raise dead! (a modified version of the summoner and necromancer spells we have)

[Mith]

I've wondered if it would be worthwhile to have all spells be rituals, with the difference between caster and martial characters being that casters can hold rituals in their head. Cantrips are residual magic that one gains from the practice of Magic as a lesser version of Signature Spell.

[kaoskonfety]

for PC access... looking it over for higher level options...
Planeshift
Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion
Resurrection
Raise dead
Mirage Arcane
Demiplane
Astral Projection
Imprisonment

If you want spells to stay terrors you can sprinkle in:
Tsunami
Storm of Vengance
Earthquake

[Alerad]

I would probably add a mechanic that expands ritual casting to require more time, components or skill checks for success/failure.

Another idea is to allow several casters to work on the same ritual (like the magic item creation allows) to reduce the time or increase its power. Spells that can be cast at higher level can easily be reworked as "For each additional caster helping, to a maximum of X". Or additional casters can decrease the casting time, making circles of spellcasters more powerful. You can go as detailed here as you want, the Wheel of Time d20 is a great resource for magic circles.

Most Divinations can be allowed as rituals (many already are). Healing spells too, you can adjust the time to match short/long rest cycles.

Healing Word can be reworked as a Concentration ritual. You prepare it as a ritual and concentrate on it until you cast it.

Most offensive spells can be difficult to use as a ritual, unless you go creative with or modify Glyph of Warding, Guards & Wards or Contingency.

[Sigreid]

Wasn't that called 4e? I understand a sizable number of people really liked it.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

Unlimited healing also devalues defensive options. It doesn't matter if you beat the monster with 1HP remaining or 20HP. All that matters is dropping it before it drops you, because you'll get all of that HP back.I disagree with this. Keeping some HP between you and zero is, if nothing else, a valuable safety net. Even if you can heal up after the fight ends, hanging on to more HP is objectively and obviously better than dropping lower when the fight isn't over because you can still be dropped with a solid hit. If you want to ignore your HP in favor of an all-out offense, that's a risk you can choose to take and it does have benefits but it's still a risk. There are plenty of things that can go wrong or change the course of a fight or prevent or delay an after battle heal-up if you don't want it to happen every time.

A lot of your post made it sound like you're assuming the PCs will have unlimited time to heal up which really shouldn't be the case very often, ritual healing or not, and there are a lot of things that a DM can include in games that keep PCs from having unlimited time without tricky rebalancing. These kinds of factors should keep PCs from feeling comfortable going to low HP no matter how much healing they'll have access too once the fight ends (and especially if that healing comes trickling in at slow ritual speed.) Off the top of my head:
Roaming monsters
Reinforcements arrive either during or after a battle ends
Enemies getting lucky hits/crits
Time sensitive objectives
Environmental hazards (like extreme heat or cold) that keep players from just flopping down where they stand when a fight ends

Again, I've literally played whole campaigns where out-of-battle healing was basically unlimited or at least very plentiful and it was never as difficult to balance or as uninteresting/low-danger as you make it out to be. If the OP is concerned about it despite what mgshamster, Grod and I (among others) have said, a few alternatives (like longer casting times and material components) have been offered but unless the game is intended to have a really gritty tone, they probably wouldn't be necessary.

[Sigreid]

Allowing unlimited casting of healing spells is almost certainly a bad idea.

Rituals take at least 10 minutes. By the time you've applied any significant healing to the party, you may as well have taken a short rest.

[JoeJ]

So how would it change things if you also said that all rituals have to be performed skyclad? :smalltongue:

[Grod_The_Giant]

So how would it change things if you also said that all rituals have to be performed skyclad? :smalltongue:
Good for Tome Warlocks (or at least the partymates of Tomelocks :smallbiggrin:). No-one really wants to look at the poor wizard without their robe, and of course heavy armor-wearing clerics are just sad all over.

[R.Shackleford]

I'm going to second your entire post, and add the observation that random encounter tables based on time spent idle will go a long way towards balancing the potential healing.

Same here, as a long time 3e/4e DM unlimited healing was never an issue.

I recall people absolutely freaking out when Final Fantasy 10 boosted out of Battle healing with save points. But now that is a staple that many people love.

It doesn't really change all that much.

[Pex]

Hit dice are a limited resource. On average a PC can heal 1.5 times their HP limit per long rest. Changing that into being able to heal an infinite amount of HP changes the balance of an adventuring day entirely. The DM can certainly try to rebalance, but it's going to be tricky. Simply making your monsters hit harder makes combat swingier and you're a lot more likely to drop a PC (and without in-combat healing magic, they aren't getting back up). Giving the monsters more defense (so they have more rounds to dish out damage) drags out combat and that may get old.

Unlimited healing also devalues defensive options. It doesn't matter if you beat the monster with 1HP remaining or 20HP. All that matters is dropping it before it drops you, because you'll get all of that HP back.

All opposing NPCs and monsters have full hit points when combat starts. Why should it be an abomination that PCs have full hit points also?

[Giant2005]

Ritual spells only go up to 5th level; would you add higher level spells?

I think this could be a fun game. Completely eliminates any caster-martial disparity from the game, as anyone could have access to magic with a single feat.

Ritual Spells actually currently go up to 6th level. Drawmij's Instant Summons and Forbiddance are both 6th level spells.
I would make every spell a ritual, but I'd make rituals require differing amounts of time to complete depending on the level of the spell. Something like:
1st level: 1 minute
2nd level: 10 minutes
3rd level: 30 minutes
4th level: 1 hour
5th level: 2 hours
6th level: 6 hours
7th level: 12 hours
8th level: 24 hours
9th level: 48 hours

[mgshamster]

Ritual Spells actually currently go up to 6th level. Drawmij's Instant Summons and Forbiddance are both 6th level spells.

Huh. What about that? I was using WotC's handy spell list document that lists all the spells by class/level, and again by school, and again by ritual. They have both those spells listed as ritual spells of 5th level, but elsewhere in the same document they're listed correctly as 6th level spells.


I would make every spell a ritual, but I'd make rituals require differing amounts of time to complete depending on the level of the spell. Something like:
1st level: 1 minute
2nd level: 10 minutes
3rd level: 30 minutes
4th level: 1 hour
5th level: 2 hours
6th level: 6 hours
7th level: 12 hours
8th level: 24 hours
9th level: 48 hours

I like this, it's a good idea. I was also tossing around the idea of reducing the time to cast by some segment of time per additional ritual caster (someone else also mentioned this above). You'd get some interesting scenes where a bunch of casters are performing rituals together to launch fireballs in war, or some other cool spell.

[RedMage125]

Good for Tome Warlocks (or at least the partymates of Tomelocks :smallbiggrin:). No-one really wants to look at the poor wizard without their robe, and of course heavy armor-wearing clerics are just sad all over.

I've played some elven wizards that were actually fairly attractive.

And it takes a lot of strength to wear heavy armor all the time, builds a lot of muscle. Some people think very muscular guys look good*.

*fortunately for me IRL, my wife likes skinny, nerdy guys.

[JoeJ]

I've played some elven wizards that were actually fairly attractive.

And it takes a lot of strength to wear heavy armor all the time, builds a lot of muscle. Some people think very muscular guys look good*.

*fortunately for me IRL, my wife likes skinny, nerdy guys.

I'm now imagining a wizard's guild that has attractiveness standards for prospective apprentices.

[Anonymouswizard]

And it takes a lot of strength to wear heavy armor all the time, builds a lot of muscle. Some people think very muscular guys look good*.

To go all realism here, people wearing heavy armour will vary as much as wizards in robes do looks-wise, from the body-builder physique that is apparently attractive (how?) to people who just look rather bulky, to those who look no different to the average farmer body-wise.

Also, as Charisma has been likened to appearance in this thread, I feel compelled to offer the 'Charisma stat to chest size' table.
3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19: too small.
4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20: too large.

[Shining Wrath]

I wrote a homebrew "Enhanced Ritual Casting (https://www.dmsguild.com/pub_edit_product.php?it=1&it=1&worlds_id=&is_worlds=1&products_id=180236)" and published it via DM Guild. I provide a mechanism for casting all spells as rituals using "ritual slots", which are like spell slots but for rituals. Spells with the [ritual] tag proceed normally.

Also, there's Ceremonies, which allow you to cast spells that are higher level than you have slots for - at a risk of failure.

[Dr. Cliché]

If you were to play/run a game where there were no major casting classes (9th level casters) or no casters at all, but instead had most of the major magic be through ritual casting, what spells would you add to the ritual list?

How would you expand the ritual list?

Well, a few thoughts:
- I'd probably make the polymorph/shapechange spells ritual ones (possibly with extended maximum durations).
- I'd also make some/all of the summoning ones rituals (again with longer durations).
- Not sure about healing spells.
- Most/all divination spells (if they aren't already).
- Any spell that 'feels' right as a ritual (Many Necromancy ones are probably right for this).

Regardless, I actually really like the idea that casting is a time-consuming process and so has to be done in advance.

That said, if it were up to me, I'd want two further changes:

- Firstly, an increase in the duration of many spells (I'd probably scrap Concentration altogether, since we're already putting some serious limits on magic). Basically, I wouldn't want my players (or my sorcerous villains, for that matter :smallwink:) to have to spend 10 minutes casting a 'Concentration up to 1 minute' spell. We'd never get anything done. I think it would be reasonable for most combat-based Ritual spells to last at least an hour.

- Second, I'd want most rituals - especially powerful ones to require non-trivial sacrifices. e.g. Conjure Elementals is useful, but if each casting requires a 500gp Diamond, you can't just have a dozen fire elementals following you around for every encounter. Shapechange is awsome, but if casting it required you to don a cloak of human skin (which is destroyed in the casting), you probably won't be casting it often. And your friends might well give you funny looks when you do.

Now, the sacrifices don't have to be quite that severe (especially for weak/low-level spells). The main point is that the rituals aren't free.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Now, the sacrifices don't have to be quite that severe (especially for weak/low-level spells). The main point is that the rituals aren't free.
Though you don't want to go too far or you'll end up with a 4e situation, where using utility magic is so expensive it doesn't feel worth it.

[Dr. Cliché]

Though you don't want to go too far or you'll end up with a 4e situation, where using utility magic is so expensive it doesn't feel worth it.

True. Though I think this would be a bit different, since it's the only way to cast magic.


But I'll admit that I'm exceedingly biased, in that I prefer magic to have a cost.

[Doug Lampert]

Though you don't want to go too far or you'll end up with a 4e situation, where using utility magic is so expensive it doesn't feel worth it.

I've heard that repeatedly, and it's one of the weirdest delusions I've seen about 4th edition. TIME for rituals was often a problem, but any ritual more than one or two levels below your current level was the next best thing to "free" as far as components were concerned. Many utility rituals were like 50 GP, that's too expensive past level 2 or so?

It's like the XP cost to craft in 3.x, a bunch of people went, "NOTHING IS WORTH SPENDING XP" and never realized how completely they were nerfing themselves. Similarly, in 4th edition, people were so conditioned by 3.x to think "money is VITAL" that they never noticed that spending money or rituals was trivial and could have quite nice effects. (Mind, the cost of scribing rituals into your book could easily grow to be non-trivial if you're a completest, but that's a different problem.)

Perception of cost is very different from actual cost. (In my own experience the actual block was people rarely remembering that rituals were available or not thinking they could spare 10 minutes to several hours for a ritual.)

[Dr. Cliché]

I've heard that repeatedly, and it's one of the weirdest delusions I've seen about 4th edition. TIME for rituals was often a problem, but any ritual more than one or two levels below your current level was the next best thing to "free" as far as components were concerned. Many utility rituals were like 50 GP, that's too expensive past level 2 or so?

It's like the XP cost to craft in 3.x, a bunch of people went, "NOTHING IS WORTH SPENDING XP" and never realized how completely they were nerfing themselves. Similarly, in 4th edition, people were so conditioned by 3.x to think "money is VITAL" that they never noticed that spending money or rituals was trivial and could have quite nice effects. (Mind, the cost of scribing rituals into your book could easily grow to be non-trivial if you're a completest, but that's a different problem.)

Perception of cost is very different from actual cost. (In my own experience the actual block was people rarely remembering that rituals were available or not thinking they could spare 10 minutes to several hours for a ritual.)

With regard to 4th, was it to do with the cost of the ritual, or the cost in relation to the actual effect?

I mean, if you're spending an hour and 50gp just to cast Knock, well it would probably be easier to just spend that time training yourself with lockpicks. :smallwink:

But I honestly can't remember what the 4th edition rituals were like.

[Hrugner]

I'd let everything in as a ritual and increase the amount of level appropriate ritualists required to cast a spell increase for each quality missing from the spell. So if it's a spell in the right level range, I'd have two casters for it. If it was one level above the right level range you'd need three casters. So if you want to cast a ninth level spell as a ritual you'd need the first caster plus one for making it a ritual and plus one more for each spell level over 6 for a total of 5 17th level characters with ritual casting as a feat or class ability and the spell available to them in order to cast your ninth level spell.

It would use the lowest ability score in the group if one was needed.

[2D8HP]

So how would it change things if you also said that all rituals have to be performed skyclad? :smalltongue:
The PC's or the players? Might be a wee difference.

[Dr. Cliché]

In a system like this, where spells can only be cast as rituals, would there be less diversity between spellcasting classes, do you think?

e.g. with no spell slots and no metamagic, would there be any need to differentiate between sorcerers and wizards? Would Warlock pact features differentiate them enough to be worth keeping separate?


Also, are there any other class features that should be made into rituals? e.g. should Wild Shape be performed as a ritual?

[JoeJ]

The PC's or the players? Might be a wee difference.

Characters only, unless I'm playing a 1 on 1 game with my wife.

[Anonymouswizard]

Characters only, unless I'm playing a 1 on 1 game with my wife.

For you, maybe. :smalltongue:

Might try to get 'skyclad only' as a restriction on Magery the next time I play GURPS.