[4e] What would happen if I made rituals free?

[AvatarZero]

Do rituals really need to be expensive to balance the game? Even the rituals that do the same job as a skill take longer to cast than the skill would take (ie. Detect Secret Doors or Knock both take ten minutes to cast).

Any thoughts? I've wanted to get more use out of rituals from both sides of the DM screen, but the cost has always seemed prohibitive. Did Wizards of the Coast move too far away from the frequently encounter breaking but fun utility magic of third edition?

[Kylarra]

Well I presume you mean other than the obvious Brew Potion/Enchant Magic Item ones.


I think if you just negated any cost <100g it'd be fine. That'd free up most of your utilities while still preventing silliness like Raise Dead "at will".

[ghost_warlock]

Some of the newer classes that have Ritual Caster as a class feature can already cast a certain number of freebie rituals each day. If nothing else, it probably won't break the game to give the same utility to other classes that have Ritual Caster as a feature, or even 1 freebie/day to anyone with the Ritual Caster feat (item creation being the exception, of course).

I'm considering it as a house rule for my game, anyway.

[potatocubed]

A lot of the rituals presented in 4e really aren't useful no matter how cheap they get - the silence one, for example, is borked by its 10 minute casting time and relatively short duration, not its cost.

But some of the rituals are good. The bard one that gives you a +5 (I think?) bonus to Bluff checks. Raise dead. Enchant magic item. Detect secret doors. If you let people cast them 'at will' then things get very broken, very fast. The only real solution to 4e rituals is to fix each one individually.

But! One stopgap option you could use is to allow all ritual casters something similar to the bard ability to 1/day cast a ritual of your level or lower without paying component costs (although you still need a focus, if necessary). That should encourage more ritual use without going completely off the rails.

[Malicte]

From my experience, I have to agree with Potatocubed. Give ritual casters 1 or 2 or however many free casts per day, and you'll see them get more use. As long as you leave Enchant Magic Item as is, it shouldn't be a problem at all, even if you give them free Raise Dead.

[AvatarZero]

But some of the rituals are good. The bard one that gives you a +5 (I think?) bonus to Bluff checks. Raise dead. Enchant magic item. Detect secret doors. If you let people cast them 'at will' then things get very broken, very fast.

I wasn't thinking of item creation rituals before, but those could make things odd if they were free. Not necessarily broken, since the game encourages DMs to place magic items that are of higher levels than the PCs as treasure and creation rituals can only create equal or lower level items, but definitely at odds with traditional DnD. I leave it to personal taste as to whether Raise Dead should cost less/more/nothing/the soul of your firstborn son. (It's a girl! In your face, Raven Queen!)

I'm not sure about skill substitution rituals like Detect Secret Doors though. It seems like those already have casting time as a negative factor built in to the spell. If you're willing to ignore the ten minute preparation time then you could also just have the guy with the Perception skill take 20. And if you don't have a guy with the Perception skill, then the game definitely doesn't need to charge you for using a ritual to progress as opposed to going home.

The only real solution to 4e rituals is to fix each one individually.

I was afraid that would be the consensus. That said, I was wondering if anyone had done anything like that.

Has anyone got any experience using rituals that they would like to share? How did they work in your game?

[Hal]

I think a better solution would be to provide rituals or their material components as part of the treasure you find.

Most players save their cash to buy a shinier magic weapon or magic armor, and so it often seems counterproductive to spend that money on learning a new ritual (not to mention the fact that stingy DMs can leave you without the cash to buy at level rituals . . . not that I would know anything about that). Rituals tend to benefit the party more than the caster (generally speaking), but try convincing the party that they should chip in so you can learn and perform a ritual . . . it doesn't always go over so well.

I'd just toss it in with the loot. It seems like it would encourage the use of them more (since it's not "costing" you anything).

[Thajocoth]

The vast majority of rituals no one in any of my groups would've ever cast even if free. Cure Diseases, Remove Affliction, Brew Potion, Enchant Magic Item, Transfer Enchantment, Raise Dead and Animal Messenger are the only ones that we've ever cast. There's been talk of using Tenser's a few times, but every time ends with: "Turns out you can't actually do that with it... It's just for holding extra stuff, which is useless since we'll never come anywhere near encumbrance to really even need to track it."

So making the others free is still not going to make them worth getting or casting, but will make the 7 that are worth casting ridiculous. Tossing a ritual in with loot will certainly get it into the player's ritual books.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I'm not sure about skill substitution rituals like Detect Secret Doors though. It seems like those already have casting time as a negative factor built in to the spell. If you're willing to ignore the ten minute preparation time then you could also just have the guy with the Perception skill take 20. And if you don't have a guy with the Perception skill, then the game definitely doesn't need to charge you for using a ritual to progress as opposed to going home.

There is no "Take 20" in 4E.

The time penalty in Rituals isn't sufficient to balance for the skill substitution ones - remember that it takes 20 minutes in 3E to "Take 20" for a Search check (IIRC - if not longer). Furthermore, most Rituals balance casting time and duration fairly well (ex: Silence is used to make conversations private, not to cloak yourself from detection); the gold cost just prevents them from being used At Will. Think about Hand of Fate, for example. Enough said

Personally, I've had good experience with Rituals - you just have to remember that they're not meant to be used all the time. In general, you start using lower-level Rituals more often than equal-level ones; you may use Linked Portal to zip around the world at Level 15, but you sure as hell won't at level 8. I do support giving all Ritualist classes a 1/day casting of an appropriate 1st level Ritual; nice and flavorful.

If you don't like gold, try Spell Points; Ritualists get n(LV) spell points per day and they can spend them to cast Rituals at Spell Point cost of Ritual Level; Animal Messenger costs 1 SP while Linked Portal costs 8 SP. The value of "n" depends on how often you want Rituals to be used

[Jack_of_Spades]

I let Wizards do 1 ritual a day with no casting time. They're just really good at it. Everyone else can pay the cost for one ritual early in the day and activate it later.

Say a cleric expects the worse and prepares Raise Dead at the start of the day. He spends all relevant costs and everything. Two encounters later, the bard dies. The cleric then pulls out his holy symbol that was invested with power at the start of the day and brings him back to life during the short rest, and the adventure continues.

[AvatarZero]

There is no "Take 20" in 4E.

You know, I'd never noticed that before. I just assumed it was in one of the books somewhere because it's in 3E.

I like the idea of giving out components as treasure to encourage people to use rituals. You could do the same with ritual books and scrolls. It could be fun to have a scroll sit in your inventory until you suddenly realise you're in a situation well suited to it, which is another thing I like about 3E utility magic.

[kieza]

One good way to encourage use is to cut down the casting time. A lot of rituals have 10 min. casting time; as my groups like faster-paced games, I cut most such rituals down to 1 minute (excluded most healing rituals and a few others), making cast time 5 rounds with a scroll. Since then I've seen uses of Arcane Barrier, Magic Circle, and a few others during combat from scrolls, as well as a lot more use in quick rests between waves of a fight.

[Thajocoth]

One good way to encourage use is to cut down the casting time. A lot of rituals have 10 min. casting time; as my groups like faster-paced games, I cut most such rituals down to 1 minute (excluded most healing rituals and a few others), making cast time 5 rounds with a scroll. Since then I've seen uses of Arcane Barrier, Magic Circle, and a few others during combat from scrolls, as well as a lot more use in quick rests between waves of a fight.

I really like this idea. My players are storming a powerful ritualist's son's tower right now... I think I'll toss an item in the tower that lets a player cast a ritual in (specified minutes)/2 rounds, so long as they spend the time doing nothing else. Though, I might make it an item daily. Or maybe the father's soul wound up in the item and it's an artifact... And it starts off as a daily, but improves with concordance...

[shadzar]

If you made them free you wouldn't have to worry about that residuum crap.

If then you have no need for residuum, you would have to figure something else for disenchanted weapons to become.

[Draz74]

Rituals need to either:

(A) Have a really dramatic effect to make their cost and casting time worthwhile. E.g. magic item creation, raising the dead, long-distance teleportation. (Even then, don't go overboard. Teleportation won't be too abusable if it takes 10 minutes to cast and has a small but nonzero price.)

(B) Be practically free, but take a while to cast. A number of minor utilities like Tenser's Disk or Animal Messenger could fall in this category.

(C) Have a moderate cost, to keep them from getting used constantly, but take a minute or less (maybe even just 2 rounds or something) to complete, so that they'll actually be useful in tense situations. A lot of the skill-replacement rituals like Detect Secret Doors could fall in this category. Probably Silence too.

(D) If a ritual is so situational that characters wouldn't use it constantly even if it were completely free and required only a minor action to complete, then don't worry too much about limiting them via either cost or casting time. Can't think of any examples offhand, but I'm sure there are some.

[Mystic Muse]

just make sure your players never get a hold of the monster manual. unless you want to give them a free 250,000 GP ritual which makes them a lich and therefore almost completely indestructible.

[ninja_penguin]

Two bits: While there is no take 20 in 4e, I highly suggest allowing it occasionally if only to move things along when the players are staring at a totally normal wall, trying to roll higher on perception to see if it makes a difference.

A particular house rule that I've had has been that a wizard/ritual caster can prepare X rituals per day of the exploration variety, and can cast them out of combat as a full round action, and has to expend the cost of the ritual at that point in time. (where X is a random number I pull out of the air) So far, no problems, but I think it's because I used to be the player who would crunch numbers so hard that I'd see where the crazy stuff was.

[Thajocoth]

Two bits: While there is no take 20 in 4e, I highly suggest allowing it occasionally if only to move things along when the players are staring at a totally normal wall, trying to roll higher on perception to see if it makes a difference.

What I do is require a base roll first, and if they're not threatened and decide to take 20, I fast forward, adding 1 to the roll per 1 in-game minute until either they see something worth noticing, they hit the max they could've rolled, or the time spent waiting actually matters. Doesn't apply in combat, skill challenges, other tense situations, for knowledge checks or checks for which failure does anything. I'm not sure what else fits the above stipulation besides perception to search, but I'm leaving it open just in case.

[JMobius]

I wasn't aware that Take 20 wasn't part of 4E. I had some players fast talk something by me the other day that really shouldn't have been permissible, then... it certainly adds some potency to the Undead Ward ritual.

[AvatarZero]

just make sure your players never get a hold of the monster manual. unless you want to give them a free 250,000 GP ritual which makes them a lich and therefore almost completely indestructible.

Good point, although one of the things I try to remember when I think up houserules is that I will be there. I'll be in the room to say "Don't be silly.". And if that doesn't work, is it really an issue with the rule, or is it an issue with a player who doesn't accept that his character can't be immortal?

[Yakk]

What I do is require a base roll first, and if they're not threatened and decide to take 20, I fast forward, adding 1 to the roll per 1 in-game minute until either they see something worth noticing, they hit the max they could've rolled, or the time spent waiting actually matters. Doesn't apply in combat, skill challenges, other tense situations, for knowledge checks or checks for which failure does anything. I'm not sure what else fits the above stipulation besides perception to search, but I'm leaving it open just in case.

Make it every "duration of 4 repeat uses of the skill, you get a +2 on the previous roll", with a max of getting a "20" on the roll.

Ie, if you rolled to pick a lock. It has DC 30. You rolled a 10, +12 from skill = 22, taking 1 minute to attempt to pick the lock.

If the player says "I just keep picking it", they are short +8. That is 4 "extended attempt" of 4 minutes each, or 16 more minutes before he goes "aha, I got it" and the lock is picked.

Or to be more evil, roll 1d8 for every +2 the player is short. That is how many multiples of a single attempt it will take.

[Ninetail]

Do rituals really need to be expensive to balance the game? Even the rituals that do the same job as a skill take longer to cast than the skill would take (ie. Detect Secret Doors or Knock both take ten minutes to cast).

Any thoughts? I've wanted to get more use out of rituals from both sides of the DM screen, but the cost has always seemed prohibitive. Did Wizards of the Coast move too far away from the frequently encounter breaking but fun utility magic of third edition?

It's not too bad to just eliminate the costs on most rituals.

There are a few where the cost is a balancing factor, like True Portal, Raise Dead, and the item creation rituals. But even there, you have a long casting time.

Since the PHB2 gave freebies to some ritual casters, I've house-ruled one free ritual per day to other ritual casters. I see no reason why the cleric or wizard should be worse at casting them than the bard or druid.

I also have a house-rule where I permit a fast casting instead of a free one. The casting time gets reduced by a step (hours to minutes, minutes to rounds) in exchange for spending the normal amount of gold.

I've considered extending both these rules beyond the once-per-day, allowing the PCs to choose whether they want to cast (almost) any given ritual quickly but expensively, or slowly but cheaply. I want to play with the current rule for a while, though, and see whether any abuses I can't live with pop up. So far, so good.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Make it every "duration of 4 repeat uses of the skill, you get a +2 on the previous roll", with a max of getting a "20" on the roll.

Ie, if you rolled to pick a lock. It has DC 30. You rolled a 10, +12 from skill = 22, taking 1 minute to attempt to pick the lock.

If the player says "I just keep picking it", they are short +8. That is 4 "extended attempt" of 4 minutes each, or 16 more minutes before he goes "aha, I got it" and the lock is picked.

Or to be more evil, roll 1d8 for every +2 the player is short. That is how many multiples of a single attempt it will take.

While this is a fine (though time-consuming) fix, I'm happy they got rid of Take 20 - it resulted in the Secret Door Duality.

Spoiler

Show

For certain checks, it is almost always reasonable to Take 20 - searching for Secret Doors is one of them. Whenever faced with such a check, the DM suddenly is faced with only two types of Secret Doors - doors the PCs always find, and doors the PCs never find. Aside from having the problem of "targeted skills" (skills trained to a known fixed DC), this basically eliminates the point of most Secret Doors; that they are secret, but findable.

Picking Locks is another fine example. A targeted thief is able to either always pick a given lock or never pick that lock - locks are no longer a challenge, they're just a pass/fail test.

By removing Take 20 I can now have challenges that can be reasonably DC'd and are actually challenges. A Skill Challenge 4/3 Lock is now something the Rogue has to be careful about, or he might jam it - requiring a different course of action. Or, for extra lulz, the lock may need to be opened quickly due to an incoming trap.

Anyhoo, allowing a Take 20 on Rituals is pure lunacy; it just supercharges the Secret Door Duality. I don't think anyone was going there, but in a previous thread that possibility was discussed - so, preempted

EDIT:
On Free Rituals - I limited them to flavorful choices. Clerics get Gentle Repose, and Wizards get Tenser's Floating Disk. Merely granting everyone "1 free Ritual per day" is rather bland, wouldn't you say?

...but after looking at the Bard, Druid & Invoker 1/day Rituals, I may have to pick better Rituals - particularly since Wizards are the primary Ritualists in my world!

[Colmarr]

There is no "Take 20" in 4E.

I don't have the DMG, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere (likely a 4e preview) a suggestion that if PCs search an area with no time constraint then the DM should reveal to them anything that could be found with a roll of 20 on the perception check of the character with the highest perception modifier.

It's not quite the same as 3.Xe "Take 20", but it's the same principle.

As for the original post, I've never really had a problem with the cost of rituals. The real problem IMO is that the casting time makes them so marginally useful that a cost/benefit analysis almost always fails.

If I were a DM, I'd seriously consider reducing the casting time of all rituals by 50% (to a minimum of 1 minute), and then add a feat that reduces casting time by 50% again (does not apply to scrolls - total reduction of 75% on normal rituals as currently printed).

If the time cost comes down far enough, the component cost becomes less of an issue.

[Gralamin]

Must resist Shameless plug. Must resist Shameless Plug. Ah screw it (Take a look at the link in my Sig).

The problem with rituals is there is to much cost to not enough Effect. I think better effect might be a good choice.

[Kurald Galain]

Do rituals really need to be expensive to balance the game?

No, not at all. If you were to make them free, they would be marginally better, but most of them would still be useless in practice because of (1) their ludicrous casting time, and (2) their many, many restrictions. In other words, there are three fundamental problems with rituals, and thus by removing one of them the issue isn't resolved.

Even the rituals that do the same job as a skill take longer to cast than the skill would take (ie. Detect Secret Doors or Knock both take ten minutes to cast).

It would seem that the entire ritual chapter was written last-minute as an afterthought, so they could claim to the 3E crowd that really, utility magic still exists (while simultaneously nerfing it into oblivion).

It is also a severe overreaction: a common (albeit exaggerated) complaint about 3E is that magic eclipses skill use; the result is now that skill use eclipses magic. And we get such fun gems as a Locate Object spell that takes so long to cast, and has such a tiny range, that it is much easier and cheaper to search it by hand.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I don't have the DMG, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere (likely a 4e preview) a suggestion that if PCs search an area with no time constraint then the DM should reveal to them anything that could be found with a roll of 20 on the perception check of the character with the highest perception modifier.

Spoiler

Show

Perhaps, but there it is used for things that Should Not Be Challenging - like finding the gem buried in a pile of skulls when nothing is going on. Here, this sort of assumption is designed to move the game forward, not reward metagaming.

This feeds into the general 4E ideology - roll for challenges, fiat for everything else.

So, Rituals. Ideas:
- Make a Wizard Feat that allows you to learn to use another Ritual (that you know) 1/day for free; said Ritual must be n levels below your current one.
- Make a Cleric Feat that allows you to learn to use another Religion or Healing Ritual 1/day for free; said Ritual must be n levels below your current one.

These both allow Wizards & Clerics to become better Ritualists - Wizards in general, and Clerics in their specialty. Combined with the Gentle Repose / Tenser's Disk 1/days I think this puts them back on par with the other "free Ritualists." Wizards are supposed to be very good at Rituals and Clerics are supposed to be very good at Healing or Divination.

Both Feats cannot be taken multiple times, but you can retrain them to pick a new Ritual to be Practiced in.

As for the level restriction, how about LV-3? That allows a Wizard to pick up another 1st level Ritual at 4, and they won't get Free Linked Portal until Paragon (which I think is reasonable). I personally don't think a Paragon Cleric with Raise Dead 1/day is going to be much of an issue either; unlike the Rez Dailies, it still takes a long time and has the risk of seriously wounding the revived person.

Another bonus: dangling a 1/day Ritual in front of PCs will make them want to hunt down good ones - just like AD&D Wizards did with new spells

@Kurald Galain
Ah, the old battle. In short:

"Rituals more useful than you think. Arcane Lock v. Super Thief."

That said, some Rituals need fixing for sure - just not that many.

[Kurald Galain]

A lot of the rituals presented in 4e really aren't useful no matter how cheap they get - the silence one, for example, is borked by its 10 minute casting time and relatively short duration, not its cost.

The vast majority of rituals no one in any of my groups would've ever cast even if free.

The real problem IMO is that the casting time makes them so marginally useful that a cost/benefit analysis almost always fails.

Precisely. The ludicrous casting time is actually more of a problem than the cost in gold. The other problem being that you need to prepare (and spend money) in advance for an obscure situation that is unlikely to ever come up.

My initial fix was a "power swap" feat that lets you trade in a utility power for a ritual of the same level or lower, usable 1/day as a standard action (with exceptions for e.g. healing and creation rituals). Then I realized that this was a really bad feat and that this trade really wasn't worth it. Yes, most rituals are that bad.

Has anyone got any experience using rituals that they would like to share? How did they work in your game?

Short answer: they didn't.

Slightly longer answer: There are about 30-40 4E players in my area, about 60% of which do RPGA and the rest of which do homebrew. Literally everyone who took Ritual Caster as a feat retrained it two or three levels later as they realized how pointless it was; those that get RC as a class feature occasionally use Tenser's Floating Disk but that's pretty much it. The same applies to the Alchemy feat, which if anything is even worse than Ritual Caster.

Ironically, I am the most prolific ritual user among those people, having actually bought (wasted money on) a handful of rituals other than my free picks as a wizard, and having cast some of them once or maybe twice (and most of them, never yet). It just doesn't come up; whenever we're in a situation that might be solved by a ritual, then either we don't have 10 minutes to spare, or the restrictions on the ritual make it pointless, or there's an easy workaround involving skills or roleplaying instead. Or often, all three of the above.

I think a better solution would be to provide rituals or their material components as part of the treasure you find.

In that case, the sensible player reaction is to sell the ritual books/scrolls for cash, and to save up all the components to cast Enchant Magic Item. It's like Roy's Shillelagh Oil: you forget you're even carrying it, because it's never any help anyway.

Most players save their cash to buy a shinier magic weapon or magic armor, and so it often seems counterproductive to spend that money on learning a new ritual

Not just "seems", it is. You can either spend money on a permanent bonus (any magical item) or use it once on a one-shot thing. This means that potions, scrolls and other consumables need to be pretty cheap to be worth even considering.

There is no "Take 20" in 4E.

No, but there is "roll every round until you get it right" for most important skills and actions, which boils down to the same thing.

remember that it takes 20 minutes in 3E to "Take 20" for a Search check

Generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round.

Personally, I've had good experience with Rituals

Yeah, we know. You bring that up in every thread, and when your statements are examined more closely it turns out that your DM is houseruling them. That is both a sign of good DMing, and an Oberoni Fallacy.

(D) If a ritual is so situational that characters wouldn't use it constantly even if it were completely free and required only a minor action to complete, then don't worry too much about limiting them via either cost or casting time. Can't think of any examples offhand, but I'm sure there are some.

Examples include Drawmij's, Eye of Warding / Alarm, Gentle Repose, Hallucinatory Whatever, Leomund's, Secret Page and probably others.

For certain checks, it is almost always reasonable to Take 20 - searching for Secret Doors is one of them.

That only holds true if you already know where the secret door is, in which case it isn't much of a secret anyway.

Picking Locks is another fine example. A targeted thief is able to either always pick a given lock or never pick that lock

True, but this is still the case in 4E, because any thief can keep trying the lock until he rolls a 20. Making it a skill challenge isn't the answer either (because of the inherent problems with those, and that a SC is very boring if it involves only one skill and one party member). The more elegant answer is to turn more skills into "retry: no". If a lock is beyond your skill, then trying it again is only an exercise in frustration.

[MartinHarper]

No, but there is "roll every round until you get it right" for most important skills and actions, which boils down to the same thing.

True for: Acrobatics/Athletics (Escape from a Grab) ; Bluff (Feint) ; Heal (first aid) ; Stealth (with errata) ; Thievery (open lock)

False for: Acrobatics/Athletics (except Escape from a Grab) ; Arcana ; Dungeoneering ; Endurance ; Heal (treat disease) ; History ; Insight ; Intimidate ; Nature (knowledge and forage) ; Perception ; Religion ; Streetwise ; Thievery (disable trap, pick pocket, sleight of hand)

DM fiat for: Bluff (except Feint) ; Diplomacy ; Nature (handle animal)

To my mind the key mistake here is opening locks, which works fine in combat, but should be "retry: not unless circumstances change" out of combat, with a lower DC.

[Artanis]

I too was unaware that Take 20 is not officially in 4e, but it kinda makes sense. Take 20 was really just a common-sense thing that just fast-forwarded through a bunch of rolls:

In other words, eventually you will get a 20 on 1d20 if you roll enough times.
...
Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding.

So to expand on what Kurald Galain said, you can still get the same end effect of a Take 20 just by rolling over and over and over, at which point the DM will slap you and say "OK, you got a 20". But rather than trying to account for every possible situation a player may want to Take 20 in that chapter of the book, it instead puts it in the hands of the DM. So the players will still (probably) be able to get the equivalent of a Take 20 when it's appropriate, but unlike 3.5, there's no rule "making" the DM allow it. So if the DM wants to avoid the "Secret Door Duality" that Oracle_Hunter mentioned, he can tell them at the start of the campaign, "oh yeah, you can't Take 20 when searching for a secret door".

Anyhoo, allowing a Take 20 on Rituals is pure lunacy; it just supercharges the Secret Door Duality. I don't think anyone was going there, but in a previous thread that possibility was discussed - so, preempted :smalltongue

Actually, I don't think you'd be able to Take 20 on a ritual anyways. It says "no penalty for failure" as one of the prerequisites, and even those rituals with scaling effects could be read as a low check "failing" to reach a certain tier