Idea for spheres of power conversions

[Laurent]

Ok, so maybe it's a dumb idea but I didn't like that much that some class abilities giving specifical and flavorful spells where reduced to "you gain one sphere" in the archetypes for some classes.

For example, the patron of the witch, who was giving a few flavorful spells...
Let's see : the Vengeance Patron was giving burning hands and a few other offensive spells. Not it gives the Fate spell (I would have given the Destruction sphere but... ok).

My suggestion for an houserule is that when a class ability gives spells, instead of "one more spell or talent", you gain the spell as "written for free in a ritual book".
A ritual book (see rituals section in spheres of power rules) is like a "vancian" spellbook, BUT you cast at-will from it, but with a longer duration, or can use it to write a spell on a scroll, that would be one-use, and used as a standard action.

So, you gain "burning hands" in your ritual book.
You can use it by reading your spell book, but it takes 5 minutes. Not very practical for this spell, but interesting of other spells (example : cure light wounds, you have to count 5 minutes per use, so it could take a long time to heal everyone in a dungeon).
So, ok, 5 minutes gestures and reading, and voilà, burning hands.
Or, you write scrolls, 125gp each.
And sure, you can "refluff" the scroll as anything else. The witch is enchanting eggs that she crushes in her hand as a standard action to throw burning hands...

Same for bloodlines, domains...
It enable to use some "precise" spells from vancian system, but the use is marginal and spheres are still the main casting system, and the "flavour" of the patron, bloodline, domain is preserved.
What do you think about ?

[Mehangel]

Looks good, but I would like to see it as an alternative archetype for such classes. I wouldn't want to force players to choose the ritual book option, as sometimes having an extra talent is all one really needed for a build.

[Afgncaap5]

I like the Ritual book for some things (Cure Light Wounds works nicely as a ritual, as you point out), though for Burning Hands I feel like Spellcraft would be a better option. I'm not an expert at the Spellcraft system (much as I love it there's a few places where I still have trouble wrapping my mind around things), but theoretically a Spellcrafted spell that just has Destructive Blast (Fire Blast) and Sculpt Blast (limited to the close-range cone to, hopefully, mitigate cost a bit) could act in the stead of a Burning Hands spell (and, in fact, would eventually start to outpace Burning Hands in how much damage it could do.)

The class would also, unfortunately, wind up paying 2 extra spell points for each prerequisite not possessed, which is a bit of a drag, but if you were planning on getting the Destructive Sphere and Sculpt Blast anyway this doesn't turn into much of a big deal.

Also: I'm now in love with the idea of using the Focused Casting drawback with a giant spellbook as the focus item. A caster who has to keep constantly reading from his spell book to cast anything.