Tome of Ritual Magic [Alternate Magic System]

[Stratovarius]

Magic Items

Circumscribing Solution: One of many small items designed to help those engaged in ritual magic, this paint is used to mark the area of a sacrifice, helping to ease the transition of a soul into an energy form. It grants a +5 bonus on spellcraft checks required for a ritual. At the end of the ritual for which it is used, it is consumed.
Faint necromancy; CL 5th; Craft Wondrous Item; Price 50 gp.

Goggles of Unbound Sight: These crystal lenses fit over the user’s eyes, enabling him to see the general health and status of all creatures visible to him, as well as giving specific knowledge of any conditions affecting a creature (all this as per the Status spell). Once per day, the goggles may grant a flash of insight into the exact weaknesses of a single creature, allowing the wearer's next attack to strike with perfect clarity, gaining a +20 bonus on the attack roll.
Moderate divination; CL 11th; Craft Wondrous Item, true seeing, status, true strike; Price 25,000 gp.

Luminary's Jewel: A brilliant pure white diamond set into a metal enclosure, when activated by a command word it glows with a steady and strong light, revealing all incorporeal creatures, and stripping away the disguise on any undead creature attempting to appear living. Living creatures in the aura of the light gain the effect of a single martyr ritual of up to third level, created by the wielder of the jewel.
Strong evocation; CL 16th; Craft Wondrous Item, sunburst; Price 50,000 gp.

Ring of Rituals: This special ring comes in three kinds (ring of rituals I, ring of rituals II, ring of rituals III), all of them useful only to ritual users. The wearer gains knowledge of a single ritual of 1st level (I), 3rd level (II), or 5th level (III).
Strong (no school); CL 14th (I), 17th (II), 20th (II); Forge Ring, limited wish; Price 40,000 gp (I), 70,000 gp (II), 100,000 gp (II).

Ritual Bane: A ritual bane weapon excels at attacking those who use ritual magic. Against any creatures who are wielders of ritual magic or have the ritual subtype, its effective enhancement bonus is +2 better than its normal enhancement bonus. It deals an extra 2d6 points of damage against the foe. Bows, crossbows, and slings so crafted bestow the bane quality upon their ammunition.
Moderate conjuration; CL 8th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, summon monster I; Price +1 bonus.

Robe of the Murderer: This robe is made of pure black spun silk, and never rips, tears, or is stained. Made as a cabalist's robe, and often worn by ritualists to show their domination of life and death, it also allows the sharing of sacrificial magic. Whenever a beneficial ritual from the ritualist or ritual warrior list is used within 60', the wearer of the robe is granted the effect as well.
Moderate necromancy; CL 11th; Craft Wondrous Item, character must be at least 11th level; Price 120,000 gp;Weight 1 lb.

Sanguineous Scroll: These scrolls divulge the inner workings, habits and weaknesses of a single creature type, such as an orc or an aboleth. Those who read the scroll in its entirety gain the benefits of a 15th level ranger's favoured enemy ability against that creature type. This ability lasts for one day each time it is read, and cannot be used to meet any requirements. The scroll can only be read once per week.
Strong divination; CL 15th; Craft Wondrous Item, legend lore; Price 20,500 gp;Weight 1 lb.

Torc of Life Eternal: This device is a light cord with a small gem set so that it rests upon the forehead of the wearer. Worn by those who wish to enhance their ability to wield ritual magic, especially those who give up so much to use it. If worn during the creation of a ritual, the wearer heals 2 hit points per level of the ritual created, up to the maximum of 14.
Moderate conjuration; CL 5th; Craft Wondrous Item, cure light wounds; Price 3,000 gp.

Blindfold of Belief: A plain white cloth, worn over the user’s eyes, the blindfold renders the wearer sightless, and he is blinded while wearing the wrap. While under the effect of a martyr ritual, the wearer's vision is replaced by a gift from the martyr, channelled through the blindfold. The wearer gains blindsight of 5 feet per hit dice of the largest martyr ritual affecting him.
Moderate divination; CL 12th; Craft Wondrous Item, blindness/deafness, true seeing; Price 36,000 gp.

Light of Purity: This crystal appears to be a long, rough prism, carved with symbols representing the martyr's gifts of sacrifice and devotion. Upon utterance of a command word, the crystal emits bright light that functions as per the daylight spell. This light lasts for one hour, and can be activated once per day. While this light is active, all martyr rituals within the area of the daylight act as if they had 1 higher hit dice invested in them.
Faint evocation; CL 6th; Craft Wondrous Item, daylight; Price 13,000 gp.

Marker of Aid: This stone is brightly coloured and dangles on a gold chain. The wearer of this periapt can see the status of up to five allies by calling out their name and holding up the stone. The colour changes from a healthy blue to a poorly red to a dead black to indicate their status. Allies may be designated once per week, and must be touched with the stone at that time. If the creature leaves the current plane, the link is broken. By performing a level 5 ritual, the wearer of the marker may teleport to the location of the creature.
Moderate divination; CL 10th; Craft Wondrous Item, status; Price 15,000 gp.

Ring of Life's Wealth: Designed to aid martyrs in the creation of their rituals, and recognizing that sometimes it is incumbent upon the martyr to stay alive so that he may continue to serve, this ring adds +1 hit dice of the sacrifice to the wearer's martyr rituals. The martyr must still pay all base hit dice for the ritual himself.
Moderate conjuration; CL 7th; Forge Ring, cure critical wounds; Price 25,000 gp.

Robe of the Blessed Host: A robe formed from clean spun cloth, magical symbols, stitched in a slight shade of off-white adorn the robe, granting to those who wear it a +2 enhancement bonus to their effective martyr level, allowing them to sacrifice more of themselves. All rituals created while wearing this robe last for 1 day longer than usual.
Moderate divination; CL 11th; Craft Wondrous Item, character must be at least 11th level; Price 120,000 gp;Weight 1 lb.

Sacrificial Chalice: This golden cup holds the knowledge to perform a single ritual from the martyr list up to level 3. During the creation of the ritual, the chalice must be filled with holy water for the ritual to be successful.
Moderate conjuration; CL 8th; Craft Wondrous Item, character must be at least 9th level; Price 15,000 gp.

Supplicant Shield: This +3 heavy shield has been imbued with the magic of the martyrs. When wielding this shield, a martyr may sacrifice hit points to gain damage resistance of X/adamantium, where X is equal to one half of the hit points sacrificed. This benefit lasts for one minute.
Moderate abjuration; CL 8th; Craft Magic Arms and Armour, shield of faith; Price 64,000 gp; Cost 32,000 gp + 1,280 XP.

Bloodmist Cloak: Made with a strong affinity towards fogs and cloud spells and rituals, the bloodmist cloak is often a tool of the stalking ritual-wielder. Whenever inside a fog or cloud, magically created or not, the wearer may gain the benefits of the gaseous form spell as a swift action at caster level 9.
Moderate transmutation; CL 9th; Craft Wondrous Item, gaseous form; Price 7,200 gp;Weight 1 lb.

Hunter's Focus: These crystal lenses fit over the user’s eyes, enabling him to see the weak and vulnerable points in a foe's defences. While under the effect of a ritual from the ritual warrior or ritual-wielder list, the wearer gains a bonus on his chance to confirm criticals equal to one half the ritual with the single highest hit dice total. Thus, a ritual warrior with two hit dice 3 rituals and one hit dice 4 ritual would gain a +2 bonus to confirm criticals.
Faint necromancy; CL 3rd; Craft Wondrous Item, deathwatch; Price 2,500 gp.

Siphoning: This property can only be placed on a melee weapon. A weapon of siphoning adds 1 minute, 3 minutes, or 5 minutes duration to any ritual created with the Finishing Strike class feature.
Moderate necromancy; CL 8th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Extend Spell, vampiric touch; Price +1 bonus (lesser), +2 bonus (normal), +3 bonus (greater).

Spirit Conduit: This property can only be placed on a melee weapon. A spirit conduit weapon allows the wielder to use a ritual with a range of melee touch as part of a full attack action. He must designate this before he knows the result of any rolls. Uses of the ritual are deducted as normal.
Moderate necromancy; CL 9th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, bestow curse; Price +2 bonus.

Bloodplate: An armour treated with this ability appears to have veins running through its surface, and whenever struck, the armour bleeds slightly. Once per day, the wearer can cover all creatures within 20' with blood, as per the blood rain ritual. This spray of blood lasts for five rounds.
Moderate necromancy; CL 9th; Craft Magic Arms and Armour, creator must be at least 13th level; Price +1 bonus.

Chains of the Unyielding: These chains are used to bind a creature for sacrifice. Cruelly hooked and barbed, whenever the bound creature is struck for damage, the chains act to increase the damage dealt, raising the critical modifier by x1.They also sap the life energy of the bound creature, causing it to take a -10 penalty on any checks made to break free of the chains.
Moderate necromancy; CL 10th; Craft Wondrous Item, harm; Price 15,000 gp.

Phial of Soul Transference: A small blackened jar that pulses dully when filled, the phial allows the soul of a sacrifice to be stored for later usage. The phial must be held to the lips of a creature as it dies and for one minute thereafter in order to fill the container. Once filled, simply perform a ritual as normal, and as the final act open the phial, rather than using a sacrificial creature. Souls will only remain bound within the phial for one week, after which they dissipate. A lesser phial can hold a creature of up to five hit dice, with the more expensive versions increasing that limit to fifteen hit dice and, finally, unlimited hit dice for the greater phial.
Moderate necromancy; CL 11th; Craft Wondrous Item, magic jar; Price 4,000 gp (lesser), 16,000 gp (normal), 36,000 gp (greater).

Soultheft Armour: An armour cursed to suck the life from the wearer, it is often handed as a gift to foolish creatures. Those who don the armour must succeed at a DC 20 Fortitude save or die, and have their soul held within a phial of soul transference. The phial is concealed in a slot in the armour designed especially for this purpose. It requires a DC30 spot check to notice the hinging for the phial. The armour will magically resize itself to fit the creature to which it is given. This armour detects as if it had the invulnerability enhancement, rather than the soultheft enhancement.
Moderate necromancy; CL 9th; Craft Magic Arms and Armour, magic jar; Price +1 bonus.

[Stratovarius]

Artefacts

Lifebridge: A small device that looks much like an amulet, the Lifebridge is worn about the neck and inscribed with symbols that glow red when the device is half or more full. This device was crafted in ancient times by a cabal of ritualists, and it feeds upon the bodies of the living, hunting down their souls to store within its great cavern. The Lifebridge can hold up to 1000 hit dice of sacrifices and slain creatures, and once per round as a swift action can be directed to create a ritual from the ritualist list upon the bearer, with a hit dice of up to 20. Whenever the Lifebridge falls below half of its total hit dice capacity, it begins to look for ways to replenish its storage. If worn around the neck when performing a sacrifice, there is a 50 percent chance the Lifebridge will ingest the sacrifice at the end of the ritual, adding it to the stored hit dice total. The other resource it has at its disposal is the formation of a blood plague. Whenever it passes into a populated area and is below 500 hit dice stored, all creatures who are not marked as friends by the bearer must save or be infected by a disease called soul rot (soul rot: Contact 20, incubation 1 day, DC 20 save or die). Those who die from this disease have their hit dice added to the pool of the Lifebridge. It also has the power to show direction, distance, and provide basic information about any large population centres (1000 inhabitants or more) within 1 mile per stored hit dice. If in danger of being damaged, the Lifebridge will activate a Bloodwalk or Soul Portal ritual to flee.

Heartcage: A +5 full plate armour of heavy fortification that counts as medium armour made from the ribcages of long ago martyrs who died through use of their abilities, the Heartcage is a bleached white, and allows only those are the purest of intention (must be at least of good alignment) to wear it. All others must succeed at a DC 30 Fortitude save or find all of their hit points drained into the armour. This save repeats every round. The Heartcage stores 2000 hit points that can be used for the creation of rituals from the martyr's list, and the pool regenerates at 10 per day, meaning that if found, it is almost always full. Whenever it passes within 100 feet a creature whose alignment is at least neutral on the good/evil axis, the Heartcage will attempt to heal all ailments of that creature, and is able to create up to three rituals a round. Whenever the wielder attempts to use a beneficial ritual on a creature, the hit dice of the sacrifice counts as 1 higher for each point of difference between the hit dice totals of the target and of the wearer of the Heartcage, if the wearer of the Heartcage has the higher hit dice total. When threatened with destruction, the Heartcage, as an immediate action, will disappear out into the planes, resurfacing some time later in a place where it may be needed.

Lifereaver's Lament: A book detailing the life and history of a ritualist by the name of Gwaredigion Hun, it was penned by that same ritualist after his conversion away from the sacrificing of innocents, his reasons for doing so, and the text is imbued with the faith and power that allowed him that conversion. Upon completion of reading the text, a ritualist or ritual warrior may lose all their levels in ritual-using classes, and instead gain those levels back as martyr levels, or levels in classes that require the ability to sacrifice hit points to create rituals, as per the martyr. The converted may reselect any feats whose requirements are no longer met, but they must take only feats whose requirements they would have met at the level the feats were gained. Once has a choice has been made to convert or not, the tome disappears.

[Stratovarius]

Ritual Creatures & Subtype

Ritual Creatures
Any creature with ritual based powers has the ritual subtype. A ritual creature can be born with the subtype or can gain the subtype during its life.

A creature meeting any one of the following criteria has the ritual subtype:

• Creatures with the ability to use rituals or ritual-like abilities, including characters who have levels in a character class that grants them the ability to use rituals.
• Creatures that have abilities described as "ritual" or “ritual-wielding”.
• Creatures that possess abilities able to affect the flow of time. Often, these will have "Ritual-" as part of the name.

Traits: Other than the fact that all ritual creatures have at least one of the criteria listed above, ritual creatures have no specific traits. The ritual subtype serves to identify creatures that may be vulnerable to rituals, spells, and effects targeting ritual creatures.

The Ritual Subtype
The ritual subtype applies to creatures that can use rituals, abilities or that have the ability to create rituals. It also applies to creatures from other sources that can affect rituals, or are labelled as "ritual" or “ritual-wielding”.

Characters who have levels in any class that grants the use of rituals, or who have these same abilities as racial traits, gain the ritual subtype.

Traits: Other than the fact that all ritual creatures have at least one of the criteria listed above, ritual creatures have no specific traits. The ritual subtype serves to identify creatures that may be vulnerable to rituals, spells, and effects targeting ritual creatures.

[Stratovarius]

Blood Drained

Blood drained are creatures sacrificed by a ritualist, their blood and lifeforce stolen away and used as a power source. A blood drained creature is what occurs when that lifeforce, twisted and mangled by its time in a ritualist's thrall, returns to its body after a ritual has been completed.

Creating a Blood Drained Creature

“Blood Drained” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A blood drained creature uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here.

Size and Type: The creature's type changes to undead, and it gains the augmented and ritual subtypes. Do not recalculate the creature’s base attack bonus, saves, or skill points. Size is unchanged.
Hit Dice: Increase to d12.
Special Attacks: A blood drained creature retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the following attack.
Create Blood Drained (Su): A creature slain and eaten by a blood drained creature rises as a blood drained 1d4 days after death.
Consumptive Gift (Su): Whenever the blood drained creature kills a creature, it must spend one round per hit dice of the killed creature to consume it, gaining the effects of one ritual that only affects the ritual-wielder. It can only have one ritual active at a time, and cannot dismiss that ritual normally. It will only overcome the compulsion to feed when already affected by a ritual or when in serious danger, at which time it will defend itself or run. The ritual is randomly chosen from the highest level he could cast if he treated all hit dice as ritualist levels (max 20), and cannot exceed his hit dice cap. If it does, he must dismiss an existing ritual. Every day that it is not affected by consumptive gift, it must make a will save against fifteen plus the number of weeks it has gone without using consumptive gift or go into a frenzy, seeking out the nearest living creature, slaying and eating it.
Rituals Known: A blood drained creature knows one ritual that is uses for consumptive gift. Look at the ritualist's Maximum Ritual Level table, using the monster's CR (so CR 20 = Level 20, CR 5 = Level 5, etc.) to get the level of ritual known. Choose one ritual of that level or lower for the blood drained creature.
Expend Ritual (Su): The blood drained creature must achieve and maintain a grapple for one full round, and be under the effect of a ritual. If it does so, it can release itself from the torment of ritual magic and force that ritual into the grappled creature, dealing it 3d6 points of damage per sacrificial hit dice of the ritual. The blood drained creature loses the effect of the ritual and is again under compulsion to feed to create a new one.
Special Qualities: A blood drained creature retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following qualities.

• Immunity to turning.
• Damage reduction 5/–. A blood drained creature's anguish and twisted form allow it to shrug off normal attacks
• Resistance to Rituals: If the blood drained succeeds at a saving throw against any ritual, the ritual has no effect. If the ritual does not have a saving throw, it has only a 50% chance of affecting the blood drained creature. This does not apply to rituals the blood drained creates on itself.

Abilities: A blood drained creature's ability scores are modified as follows:[/b] +6 Strength, Wisdom 1, Charisma 1. As an undead creature, blood drained have no Constitution score. The rage and torment of the shattered soul give it extraordinary strength, but it has lost all sense of self or of any grasp on sanity.
Alignment: Always evil (any).
Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature +2.

[Stratovarius]

Bloodwalker

Bloodwalkers are creatures altered through the use of ritual magic, awakening and reinforcing the blood within the creature, allowing them to enhance their connection to ritual magic, and all that it entails.

Creating a Bloodwalker Creature

“Bloodwalker” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A Bloodwalker uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here.

Size and Type: The creature's type changes to outsider, and it gains the augmented, ritual and native subtypes. Do not recalculate the creature’s base attack bonus, saves, hit dice or skill points. Size is unchanged.
Special Attacks: A Bloodwalker creature retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the following attacks.
Awaken Blood (Su): One time per day per four hit dice, a Bloodwalker can bestow momentary consciouness on an opponent's blood. If he hits the foe with a melee touch attack, the target takes 10d10 points of damage. Contructs, elementals, oozes, plants, undead (except vampires), and any creatures without blood in their bodies are immune to this effect.
Bloodwalk (Su): Once per day as a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity, the Bloodwalker can enter a living creature (except for those types detailed in Awaken the Blood) whose size equals or exceeds his own and pass any distance to another living creature on the same plane in a single round, regardless of the distance separating the two. A Bloodwalker merely designates a direction and distance (“a living creature twenty miles due west of here”), and the bloodwalk ability transports him to a destination creature as close as possible to the desired location. He can’t specify a named individual as the endpoint unless he has previously obtained a sample of that creature’s blood and has it preserved in a vial that he carries. The entry and destination creatures need not be familiar to the Bloodwalker. A Bloodwalker cannot use himself as an entry creature. If an intended entry creature is unwilling, he must make a successful melee touch attack to enter. (A missed touch attack does not use up the ability for that day.) When exiting a creature, a Bloodwalker chooses an adjacent square in which to appear. Entering and exiting a creature is painless unless a Bloodwalker wishes otherwise (see below). In most cases, though, the destination creature finds being the endpoint of a magical portal surprising and quite unsettling. If he desires, a Bloodwalker can attempt to make a bloody exit from the destination creature. He bursts forth explosively from the creature’s body, dealing 10d6 points of damage unless the creature makes a Fortitude save (DC 10 + Bloodwalker’s class level + Bloodwalker’s Con modifier). When he makes a bloody exit, a Bloodwalker must succeed on a DC 15 Fortitude save or be stunned for 1 round from the shock of his expulsion.
Blood Drain (Su): On a successful attack, the Bloodwalker drains blood from the target. This results in 1d2 temporary constitution damage. The Bloodwalker uses the blood to fuel itself, gaining 5 hp with each successful strike.
Special Qualities: A Bloodwalker creature retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following qualities.

• Darkvision 60 feet.
• Damage reduction 10/-.
• The Bloodwalker's altered physiology make it immune to critical hits, mind-affecting effects and stunning.

Abilities: A Bloodwalker's ability scores are modified as follows: +2 Constitution.
Alignment: Non-good.
Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature +3.

[Stratovarius]

Cadaver Column

Cadaver columns are the animated corpses of creatures slain via the finishing strike of a ritual warrior, although there are supposedly alternate methods of creating the column. Immobile but powerful, they are sometimes seen as defenders of a individual location, but more often are used by the ritual warrior as a way to control and to shape the battlefield. Their torsos sink down into the ground, limbs rising to form a ring just under the head. It lashes out with these at any who come close. Those created by a ritual crumble into dust at the end of the duration.

Creating a Cadaver Column Creature

“Cadaver Column” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A cadaver column uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here.

Size and Type: The creature's type changes to undead, and it gains the augmented and ritual subtypes. Do not recalculate the creature’s base attack bonus, saves, or skill points. Size is unchanged.
Hit Dice: Increase to d12 and are recalculated.
Special Attacks: A Cadaver column loses all attacks and special attacks of the base creature and gains the following abilities.
Ferocious Assault (Ex): Each round, the cadaver column can make a number of attacks equal to the total number of limbs it possess. For a humanoid creature, this is four, two from hands and two from feet. The hand attacks deal 1d6 + Strength bonus in damage, while the feet deal 1d4 + ½ Strength bonus in damage. Claw and feet damage is adjusted for size.
Scything Death (Su): The Cadaver column explodes upon destruction, dealing damage equal to its hit dice to all creatures within 20 feet.
Special Qualities: A Cadaver Column creature retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following qualities.

• Immunity to turning.
• Damage reduction 5/–. A Cadaver column’s undead construction allow it to shrug off normal attacks.
• Immobile: A Cadaver column cannot move.
• Extended Reach: A Cadaver column’s reach is 5 feet greater than the base creature.

Abilities: A Cadaver column's ability scores are modified as follows: +6 Strength, Constitution -, Intelligence -, Wisdom 10, Charisma 1.
Alignment: Always evil (any).
Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature -2.

[Stratovarius]

Glân

Tiny Fey [Ritual]
Hit Dice: 1d6+1 (5 hp)
Initiative: +4
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), fly 40 ft. (perfect)
Armor Class: 18 (+2 size, +4 Dex, +2 natural), touch 16, flat-footed 16
Base Attack/Grapple: +0/–11
Attack: Electrical ray +4 ranged touch (1d6)
Full Attack: 2 electrical rays +4 ranged touch (1d6)
Space/Reach: 2-1/2 ft./0 ft.
Special Attacks: Electrical ray
Special Qualities: Damage reduction 5/cold iron, low-light vision, spell resistance 17, divisive nature
Saves: Fort +1, Ref +6, Will +3
Abilities: Str 5, Dex 18, Con 13, Int 10, Wis 13, Cha 14
Skills: Craft (any one) +4, Escape Artist +8, Hide +18, Jump +3, Listen +3, Move Silently +10, Search +2, Spellcraft +6, Spot +3
Feats: Ritual Knowledge, Stealthy
Environment: Temperate forests
Organization: Bushel (2–4), pack (6–11), or swarm (20–80)
Challenge Rating: 2
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral good
Advancement: 1–3 HD (Tiny)

Glân are small, brightly coloured balls of energy that tend to acquire a slightly furry appearance, as hairs and bits of twig become attached to the creature. Very friendly and chatty to those whom they think they can trust, it is their reproductive cycle that has lead to the most comment. Often travelling in packs, they are a highly social creature.
Glân speak Sylvan. Some also speak Common.

Combat
Glân are fierce when pushed to it, but prefer to use their supreme flying skills to avoid danger if possible.
Electrical Ray (Ex): A glân's electrical rays have a range of 30 feet.
Ritual Knowledge (Ex): The glân knows a single first level martyr ritual from the ritual knowledge feat, and can use it as a first level martyr.
Divisive Nature (Ex): The glân have a very unusual form of reproduction, and it has lead commentators to ascribe to the glân's species an eventual death. In order to reproduce, a glân must enter the body of a creature at least two sizes larger than it, and remain there for 1 week. During this time, the host creature is affected by the ritual that the glân knows. At the end of the week, the glân has successfully divided, and two fully healthy glân pop out next to the host creature, whom they thank before departing. If the host is killed while the glân is inside of it, both it and the glân are slain. A glân can only reproduce once every six months.

[Stratovarius]

Hematic

Hematics are creatures altered through the use of ritual magic, awakening and reinforcing the blood within the creature, to the point that it engulfs and swallows the original creature, leaving only the general shape behind, a morphic mixture comprised of bloody fluids swirling and twisting around. Strangely altered and warped by the process, the resulting hematic is a barely restrained hunter, looking to sup on the blood of any who come near to it. Vicious and evil, they remain alive after the death of their creator, and roam across the land, leaving trails of destruction and death in their wake. Their incomprehensible nature is responsible for the destruction of many a psyche in these travels.

Creating a Hematic Creature

“Hematic” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A hematic uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here.

Size and Type: The creature's type changes to outsider, and it gains the augmented, ritual and native subtypes. Do not recalculate the creature’s base attack bonus, saves, hit dice or skill points. Size is unchanged.
Special Attacks: A Hematic creature retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the following attacks.
Bloodbath (Ex): With a successful grapple check, a hematic may engulf a creature of up to its own size category. An engulfed creature is subject to drowning. The hematic may eject the engulfed creature at any time. A victim that is still alive when it emerges from the hematic's body (whether by escaping the monster's hold or by being ejected) takes 1d6 points of wisdom damage because of the strain on its sanity that the sensation of drowning in blood produced. Furthermore, the victim creature must make a successful fortitude save against DC 15 on emerging or be nauseated for one round and sickened for 2d6 rounds. The save is constitution based.
Blood Drain (Su): On a successful attack, the hematic drains blood from the target. This results in 1d2 temporary constitution damage. The hematic uses the blood to fuel itself.
Cause Insanity (Su): One time per day per four hit dice, a hematic may attempt to drive a living target insane. This ability functions like the insanity spell, with the caster level equal to the hematic's hit dice. The save is charisma based.
Special Qualities: A Hematic creature retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following qualities.

• Darkvision 60 feet.
• It cannot be raised or resurrected.
• Damage resistance 5/magic.
• The hematic's altered physiology make it immune to critical hits, mind-affecting effects and stunning.

Abilities: A Hematic's ability scores are modified as follows: +2 Constitution, -4 Wisdom.
Alignment: Always evil (any).
Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature +3.

[Stratovarius]

Hemic Swarm

Diminutive Outsider (Swarm) [Ritual]
Hit Dice: 12d8+39 (93 hp)
Initiative: +10
Speed: 5 ft. (1 square), fly 40 ft. (Good)
Armour Class: 20 (+4 size, +6 Dex), touch 20, flat-footed 14
Base Attack/Grapple: +12/-
Attack: Swarm (3d6)
Full Attack: Swarm (3d6)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./0 ft.
Special Attacks: Distraction, Blood Drain
Special Qualities: Damage reduction 10/magic, darkvision 60 ft., immune to weapon damage, swarm traits, split swarm
Saves: Fortitude +11, Reflex +14, Will +11
Abilities: Str 1, Dex 22, Con 16, Int 6, Wis 13, Cha 9
Skills: Hide +19, Listen +10, Spot +10
Feats: Alertness, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Toughness
Environment: Areas of great bloodshed
Organization: Solitary, fright (2–4 swarms), or terror (5–8 swarms)
Challenge Rating: 8
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral evil
Advancement: 13-24 (Diminutive)

A hemic swarm is comprised of thousands of small but unnaturally intelligent and cruel droplets of blood that feast upon any whom they run across. Swarming across their foes, all that is left behind is the dessicated husks of ruined creatures.

Combat
Like any swarm, a hemic swarm seeks to surround and attack any living prey it encounters. A swarm deals 3d6 points of damage to any creature whose space it occupies at the end of its move. The swarm siphons life out of the bodies of those they feast upon, gaining strength from the effect.
A hemic swarm’s attack is treated as an evil-aligned weapon and a magic weapon for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

Distraction (Ex): Any living creature that begins its turn with a hemic swarm in its space must succeed on a DC 18 Fortitude save or be nauseated for 1 round. The save DC is constitution-based.
Blood Drain (Ex): Any living creature that the hemic swarm damages takes 1d2 points of constitution damage. For every eight points of constitution damage dealt, the hemic swarm advances by a single hit dice.
Split Swarm (Ex): Once a swarm has gained enough hit dice to have a total of 18 or more, it can split into two equal sized swarms, each with hit dice equal to one half (rounded down) of the original, larger swarm. These swarms are free-willed independent creatures and generally go their own separate ways.

[Stratovarius]

Preserver of the Weald

Large Fey [Ritual]
Hit Dice: 16d6+80 (136 hp)
Initiative: -1
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armour Class: 23 (–1 size, –1 Dex, +15 natural), touch 8, flat-footed 23
Base Attack/Grapple: +7/+11
Attack: Slam +7 melee (2d10)
Full Attack: Slam +7 melee (2d10)
Space/Reach: 10ft./10ft.
Special Attacks: Preservation, martyrdom, awaken the land
Special Qualities: Earth glide, blindsight 60 ft, guardianship, damage reduction 10/-, regeneration 8, resistance to electricity 10 and fire 10, camouflage
Saves: Fort +10, Ref +9, Will +18
Abilities: Str 10, Dex 8, Con 21, Int 14, Wis 22, Cha 17
Skills: Hide +20, Knowledge (local) +21, Knowledge (nature) +21, Knowledge (religion) +21, Listen +25, Move Silently +20, Spellcraft +21, Spot +25, Survival +25
Feats: Alertness, Expert Executioner, Iron Will, Morphic Ritual, Opened Soul, Sacrificial Virtuoso, Skilled Executioner
Environment: Any natural environment
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 10
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always good
Advancement: 17–27 HD (Huge)

Preservers of the weald have a mutable appearance, adapting themselves to hide in their environment. In a forest, they tend to look like mouldy old treestumps. Underground, a stalactite or a stalagmite is more their choice of appearance. On the plains, perhaps a solitary tree. Regardless of appearance, they protect all natural life around them, and respond harshly to those who damage the environment.
Preservers can speak, but do so rarely. They understand Common, Sylvan, Celestial, Druidic, Elven and Terran.

Combat
Preferring to use its ritual magic capabilities to bolster the natural world around it, the preserver travels through the ground rather than let its motion be seen on the surface. Stealthy and reticent, they only fight under dire need, but when the need arises, they will do everything in their power to slay all unnatural invaders.
A preserver of the weald’s natural weapons, as well as any weapons it wields, are treated as good-aligned for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.
Earth Glide (Ex): A preserver of the weald can glide through stone, dirt, or almost any other sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water. Its burrowing leaves behind no tunnel or hole, nor does it create any ripple or other signs of its presence. A move earth spell cast on an area containing a burrowing preserver flings the fey back 30 feet, stunning the creature for 1 round unless it succeeds on a DC 15 Fortitude save.
Guardianship (Su): Whenever the preserver of the weald uses a martyr ritual, all non-evil plant and animal creatures within the range of the ritual receive the benefit.
Preservation (Su): At the cost of its life, the preserver of the weald can shift a large area of protected terrain into a safe place, in order to prevent the destruction of nature. All terrain and animal and plant creatures in a sphere 20 feet in radius per hit dice of the preserver is shunted into a hidden demi-plane, where they remain for 1 day per hit dice of the preserver. When the duration expires, the plants and animals and terrain are placed exactly back as they had been before. All non-plant and animal creatures are affected as if by an earthquake spell. The preserver dies when it creates this effect.
Martyrdom (Su): The preserver of the weald knows and may use martyr rituals with a martyr level equal to his hit dice. He does not gain any class features through this.
Awaken the Land (Su): The preserver of the weald’s most devastating ability, and one they employ only rarely, is the ability to awake the entire land in a fury against the invader. By sacrificing hit points equal to 6 + the hit dice of the preserver, it awakens, as per the spell, all plants and animals within a radius equal to 10 feet per hit dice of the preserver. Unlike the spell, the changes granted by awaken the land wear off after 1 day.
Camouflage (Ex): When not moving, the preserver of the weald gets a +10 bonus on Hide checks.

[Stratovarius]

Starving Carcass

Starving Carcasses are the animated corpses of creatures slain via the finishing strike of a ritual warrior, although there are supposedly alternate methods of creating the undead creature. Immobile and weak, they are used to delay and annoy opponents, rather than posing any serious threat. The one saving benefit is that they can be created quickly and without much cost, although they crumble into dust at the end of the ritual’s duration.

Creating a Starving Carcass Creature

“Starving Carcass” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A Starving Carcass uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here.

Size and Type: The creature's type changes to undead, and it gains the augmented and ritual subtypes. Do not recalculate the creature’s base attack bonus, saves, or skill points. Size is unchanged.
Hit Dice: Increase to d12 and are recalculated.
Special Attacks: A Starving Carcass loses all attacks and special attacks of the base creature and gains the following abilities.
Grappling Bite (Ex): Each round, the Starving Carcass will attempt to grapple the nearest enemy creature, and then to pin it. Once the Starving carcass successfully pins a creature, it deals 1d6 + Strength bonus damage to the creature as it slowly feeds.
Special Qualities: A Starving Carcass creature retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following qualities.

• Immunity to turning.
• Damage reduction 5/–. A Starving Carcass’s undead construction allow it to shrug off normal attacks.
• Immobile: A Starving Carcass cannot move.
• Extended Reach: A Starving Carcass’s reach is 5 feet greater than the base creature.
• Outsized Hands: The Starving Carcass’s hands distend and swell, allowing it better purchase upon opponents. It receives a +4 bonus to grapple checks.

Abilities: A Starving Carcass's ability scores are modified as follows: +2 Strength, Constitution -, Intelligence -, Wisdom 10, Charisma 1.
Alignment: Always evil (any).
Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature -4.

[Stratovarius]

Tutelary

Tutelarys are the animated guardians of forgotten holy places, arisen from the formerly faithful in order to protect what is right and good, and yet ignored. They tend to arise in great masses, the lay masses coming back to protect that which gave them succour and friendship. A rarity of a creature, their presence is often mistaken for an evil presence within the crypt, but should the intruder speak to the tutelary before attacking, they are generally peaceful. Disturb their tomb or holy ground, and their vengeance is swift.

Creating a Tutelary Creature

“Tutelary” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A Tutelary uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here.

Size and Type: The creature's type changes to undead, and it gains the augmented and ritual subtypes. Do not recalculate the creature’s base attack bonus, saves, or skill points. Size is unchanged.
Hit Dice: Increase to d12 and are recalculated.
Special Attacks: A Tutelary retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the following attacks.
Reversing Strike (Su): Taking the pain of a blow from an enemy, the tutelary transmutes it into a gift for an ally. When struck by an enemy's attack, he may instead sacrifice a number of hit points equal to the damage dealt by the attack, and use that to create one ritual that he knows. The tutelary must touch an ally (or himself) before the end of his next turn for the ritual to take effect. If creating a ritual in this way would put him above the maximum allowed number of hit dice, the tutelary cannot create this ritual and takes damage normally. This is a free action.
Call Forth the Faithful (Su): If the tutelary feels it necessary, he can call forth many more of the faithful who are buried around and within the boundaries of the holy place. By sacrificing a number of hit points equal to his hit dice, the tutelary calls forth a number of faithful as if he had gained the leadership feat. Instead of calculating the tutelary's leadership score normally, use the number of sacrificed hit points. All faithful called in this way have the celestial template, and return to their peaceful grave after 24 hours.
Special Qualities: A Tutelary creature retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following qualities.

• Immunity to turning.
• Damage reduction 5/–. A Tutelary’s undead construction allow it to shrug off normal attacks.
• Consecrated Home: Within the boundaries of its home, the tutelary has its hit dice advanced by 3, and gains regeneration 4.
• Martyrdom: The tutelary knows and may use martyr rituals with a martyr level equal to one half his hit dice. He does not gain any class features through this.
• Silvered Thread: When the tutelary ventures beyond a mile outside of the boundaries of it home, it loses 3 hit dice, as well as all special attacks and qualities granted by the template.

Abilities: A Tutelary's ability scores are modified as follows: +2 Strength, Constitution -, Wisdom +4, Charisma +2.
Alignment: Always good (any).
Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature +3.

[Stratovarius]

And I'm done! Feel free to post now.

[JoshuaZ]

This is... a lot of material. It may take people a lot of time to go through it all. Could you maybe identify which parts of the new system are core? It looks very interesting and the flavor is great, but figuring out how balanced it is may be difficult.

[Stratovarius]

You can pretty much think of this as another Expanded Psionics Handbook or Magic of Incarnum, and approach it the same way (basic rules -> base classes -> rituals). The Ritualist would probably be the best one to start with, since it was the class the original rules were written for. I think it should be fairly easy to follow, but if you ever get stuck, nudge me, I'll be happy to explain material.

And it's more or less possible to blame SirPercival for this appearing whole cloth - he and I have worked together for a while over on MMX, and he finally convinced me to start posting my content here as well. So I've got a few more of these systems ready to go when I get around to cross posting.

[Stratovarius]

Added a class feature to the Ritualist that gives it a small deflection armour bonus and gave it light armour proficiency, after a conversation with Nanshork. Will make it more survivable in close quarters.

Also cleaned up the Rituals of Combat on the Ritual Warrior to make it clear you have to learn them.

[Stratovarius]

Back in town after a while away, and figured I'd give this big boy a little bump.

[Stratovarius]

Made a few minor updates to the system, mostly around cleaning up Martyr rituals and the Martyr class.

[Stratovarius]

This class has two progressions, one based on the Martyr and one based on the Ritualist.

Animus Savant

"I see the flow of life, and I intend to use it."
– Mheagli Scoigh, Niwl Animus Savant

An Animus Savant is someone who has come to the realization of his talents late in life, one who has only just seen the web of life that exists all about him, and always has. Having had this revelation, he has decided to dedicate his life to exploring it, to mastering the flow of life, be it for good or for ill. For there are always those Animus Savants who see in the revealed mystery an opportunity for power over their fellow creatures, and plunge fully into what it might offer. Conversely, there are those who come to the realization that all creatures truly are interconnected, and that by offering of themselves they can assist their friends and allies. But whatever path the Animus Savant takes, it is quickly apparent to all around him that he is a changed man, exploring a new path through the world.

Becoming a Animus Savant
Animus Savants come in two distinct forms: Martyr or Ritualist. Those who see lifeblood as a weapon, a tool to be used to oppress and control others and to reap the benefit for themselves, they follow the path of the Ritualist, often learning in months what would take years by the traditional path. To them, the sacrifice of living creatures is entirely worth the end result, and they are willing to see it through until the end. For those who are more gentle of nature, the path of the Martyr holds its own appeal, allowing the sacrifice of self towards a greater good. But in either case, it is a late path to take, one that a person arrives at often through a chance encounter with a ritual-using creature, resulting in an epiphany into a new kind of magic not yet seen. And with that epiphany comes a flurry of activity, a process of learning compressed by the frantic desires of the newly formed Animus Savant.

Table 1: The Animus Savant
Hit Die: See below

Level  BAB   Ref  Fort  Will  Abilities                           Rituals Known  Maximum Ritual Level
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1      +0    +0   +2    +2    Healing Touch/Grasp the Lifeblood   2              2
2      +1    +1   +3    +3                                        3              2  
3      +1    +1   +3    +3    Ritual Research                     4              3  
4      +2    +2   +4    +4                                        6              3  
5      +2    +2   +4    +4                                        7              4  
6      +3    +3   +5    +5    Sacrificial Inspiration             8              4  
7      +3    +3   +5    +5                                        10             5    
8      +4    +2   +6    +6    Moment of Need/Close Enough         11             5
9      +4    +3   +6    +6                                        12             6
10     +5    +3   +7    +7    To Others, From One/Hemic Expert    14             6

Class skills (2 + Int modifier per level): Concentration, Craft, Knowledge (All), Spellcraft, Use Magical Device, Use Rope.

Requirements:
Feats: Iron Will, Research
Skills: Decipher Script 3, Knowledge (Religion) 5, Knowledge (Arcana) 5, Spellcraft 5
Special: Must never have used Rituals before taking this class.

Class Features
By exploring the web of life through furious research, your talents as a Animus Savant allow your influence to extend well beyond the paltry confines of your own body.

• Rituals: The Animus Savant gains rituals known from either the Martyr list or the Ritualist list. This is chosen when entering the class, and can never be changed. For all purposes, treat the Animus Savant as the chosen class, except that its ritual-wielder level is twice its class level. To choose the Martyr list, the Animus Savant must be Good-aligned, while to choose the Ritualist list, he must be Neutral or Evil.
• Martyr: You have focused on enhancing those less fortunate, turning your soul outward in a selfless act of compassion, putting all others in front of yourself. You have d12 hit dice.
  
  • Healing Touch (Su): The Animus Savant gives up some of his body as a gift for those who need it most. Once every five rounds, the Animus Savant can touch and heal a single target a number of hit points equal to the total number of hit points the Martyr has sacrificed through his class abilities or rituals. This is a standard action.
  • Ritual Research (Ex): The Animus Savant is drawn to the use of certain rituals, ones that appeal directly to his nature. Each time he learns a new level of rituals, he picks a single ritual of that level. He can treat the chosen ritual as if it had one more hit dice than sacrificed to create it. The affected ritual still requires a sacrifice that meets the hit dice requirement. This hit dice increase does not alter the cost of the ritual in any way. Reduce the time needed to create the chosen ritual by 1 minute per ritual level. If this would reduce the time below 1 minute per ritual level, it does nothing.
  • Sacrificial Inspiration (Ex): The Animus Savant learns something new every time he sacrifices of himself, seeing in the ways of the good and the true a new inspiration, a new light in which to view the world. While he is under the effect of a ritual he created, the Animus Savant gains a single feat for which he meets the prerequisites. He may change the feat to another for which he meets the prerequisites each time he creates a new ritual. If he is ever not under the effect of a ritual, the feat is lost.
  • Moment of Need (Su): Once per day, as a swift action, the Animus Savant can create a ritual, paying the sacrifice cost as per normal. The ritual only affects the Animus Savant, and instead of the normal duration lasts one hour per hit dice sacrificed. No feats or other class features may be used to alter this ritual.
  • To Others, From One (Su): To be good, to be noble, sometimes requires elevating others ahead of oneself. For the Animus Savant, this act is as natural as breathing. Whenever the Animus Savant creates a ritual, he may choose to take a penalty up to half his class level to any one statistic, skill, save, attack rolls, or damage rolls. All allies within 60 feet of the Animus Savant gain twice the penalty taken as a sacred bonus to the chosen ability.
• Ritualist: You have taken up a dark mantle, drawing upon the power of the living to feed your hunger for glory. You have d6 hit dice.
  
  • Grasp the Lifeblood (Su): As a standard action, the Animus Savant calls for the blood of the creature to slow and harden, damaging it's ability to move and to think. The target must make a will save of ten plus his Animus Savant level plus his charisma modifier. If the target fails, it is entangled and slowed. If the target falls below 20% of its hit points or 10 hit points, whichever is greater, it becomes paralysed instead of entangled or slowed. The duration is concentration. The target must be within 60' of the Animus Savant. This is a mind-affecting ability.
    
    As a move-action, the Animus Savant may attempt to brain-lock a target that has already been slowed and entangled. If the target fails a will save of ten plus his Animus Savant level plus his charisma modifier, that target is paralysed and immobile for six minutes per Animus Savant level. If the target succeeds at the save, remove all effects from Grasp the Lifeblood, and the target is immune to Grasp the Lifeblood for one hour. Only one creature may be under the effect of Grasp the Lifeblood at a time.
    
    Against undead creatures, this ability serves only to slow them, should they fail their saving throw.
  • Ritual Research (Ex): The Animus Savant is drawn to the use of certain rituals, ones that appeal directly to his nature. Each time he learns a new level of rituals, he picks a single ritual of that level. He can treat the chosen ritual as if it had one more hit dice than sacrificed to create it. The affected ritual still requires a sacrifice that meets the hit dice requirement. This hit dice increase does not alter the cost of the ritual in any way. Reduce the time needed to create the chosen ritual by 1 minute per ritual level. If this would reduce the time below 1 minute per ritual level, it does nothing.
  • Sacrificial Inspiration (Ex): The Animus Savant learns something new every time he sacrifices a creature, picking up little bits and pieces of knowledge from the soul energy of those he slays. While he is under the effect of a ritual he created, the Animus Savant gains a single feat for which he meets the prerequisites. He may change the feat to another for which he meets the prerequisites each time he creates a new ritual. If he is ever not under the effect of a ritual, the feat is lost.
  • Close Enough (Ex): When sacrificing a creature in a ritual, the Animus Savant can choose to treat the sacrificed creature as another creature of the same type that shares its alignment and whose hit dice total is within one of the creature actually sacrificed. He must make a successful knowledge check against a DC of 10 + hit dice of the chosen creature. The knowledge is as appropriate for the chosen creature.
  • Hemic Expert (Ex): When sacrificing a creature in a ritual, instead of creating the ritual's normal effect, an Animus Savant may choose to instead animate the creature as a controlled undead. If he does, the sacrificed creature gains the Blood Drained template, and is completely under the control of the Animus Savant. The duration is permanent, and the Animus Savant can have only one animated creature at a time. This does not count against his ritual hit dice cap.

[Stratovarius]

Completed the Ritualist half of Animus Savant, as well as adding two abilities to the Martyr side.

[Stratovarius]

Completed the Ritualist half of Animus Savant, as well as adding two abilities to the Martyr side.

The class is now complete.

[Stratovarius]

Ritual Warrior stuff:

General - Made everything 3rd person.
Bone Web - Changed from swift to standard, cleaned up.
Bloodform Champion - Boosted
Boosted Brume of Broken Blades, also cleaned it up.
Disfiguring Death - Cleaned up, rewrote a bit.
Boosted Evacuating Touch to all saves.
Fear Ward can now stack with itself.
Finality - Increased the range
Flesh of the Fallen - Boosted, changed
Grasping Hands - keep as swift action?
Hematic Shield - Boosted, made it a delay damage effect
Leeching Aura - Removed save
Permeable Ward - Renamed Impermeable Ward, extra damage taken dropped.
Rush of Blood - Now grants +Init as well.
Rush of Blood, Greater - No penalty for full attacking.
Scything Bane - Enemies only now.
Siphon Spirit - Boosted from 1/3 to 1/2.
Sympathetic Pain - Changed it, since it seemed weak for a 5th level ritual.

[Fizban]

How has no one commented on this?

So, how to read: a ritual-user effectively has 3*level points of shifting abilities from their known list, each most likely at a max power of HD=level (the Martyr's self sacrifice cap or the likely max HD of creatures you find to sacrifice, though at low and high levels HD are more plentiful in livestock and big creatures). Assuming a proper rotation of resting for a Martyr or chaining sacrifices for a Ritualist, these should be up all the time, or for charged abilities have charges=level per day. Note that with -3 hp/level (and change) the Martyr is effectively a d6 class with the option to pay some cash to get more max hp for a few days.

In the general Ritual description, it would help if this was written a bit more mechanically. Start or title each paragraph with the appropriate tag (Sacrificial Hit Dice, some keyword for Sacrificial Hit Dice capacity of 3*level, Duration, Saving Throws). Duration should include a note that many rituals have hour/HD durations (I expect that when originally written this was not the case).
*Pre-Edit: ah, right, all rituals are available for 1 day/HD, it's just that for some reason a ton of them also have effects that last 1 day/HD. Seems a little unclear since non-charged rituals basically have an extra day/HD duration that means nothing, and this caused me to disregard the Effect Duration. . . except looking at Spirit Manacle here, we have an Effect Duration of day/HD with the actual effect in the text clearly round/HD. New material/format changes may have caused that.

As noted below, there should be a general rule on range and targeting since it seems that many rituals lack this information. There should also be a mention of Spell Resistance, even if only a reminder that as Su abilities SR never applies (though a nod to some people's preference to X/magic transparency would be welcome).

I think I might be missing something very important: is there a minimum HD requirement for higher level rituals? My gut tells me this really should be a thing, though as I read the Martyr rituals I start to think they're intended to have the option of lots of lower level links and transfers and debuffs. I haven't read any Blood rituals yet, but any Martyr ritual that avoids the +ritual level surcharge on hp (say by not spending hp) is gonna get real strong.

On the other end, I see no maximum HD limit, making non-hp sacrifices dangerous. This is okay if you need bodies supplied by the DM but gold is cheap for Martyrs, see Fettered Mind, below. And personally I think there's a hole in the hp sacrifice: temporary hp are still hp and basically invalidate any mechanic that starts by taking damage no matter how un-preventable or un-redirectable it is. Just add a line that the damage bypasses temporary hit points and you're fine.
Pre-edit: finally noticed that the Martyr doesn't have a HD=level max on hp sacrifice like I must have assumed, it's just the same 3*level HD limit as everything else. That'll just be bananas.


I find the Martyr's more active abilities quite underwhelming. It's obviously more of a set buffs and go class, but still. The stunning touch from Wash the Sins gives you hp burn you can't heal until you rest, even if they make their save, so using it even once is a massive cost that just doesn't seem justifiable. Remove Temptation comes on at a a level where any weapon you sacrifice will be worth obscene amounts of cash that you should never give up-I also don't see why they'd ever fail to create a ritual unless they were already at max capacity (you could just make a 1HD ritual and let the rest go to waste). Reversing Strike is your way to speed up rituals so you can react in combat, but since you have to convert damage exactly it's quite a ways out of your control. On the other hand, Healing Touch is apparently usable on self with no upper health limit so the whole party is full all the time.

I'm pretty leery of the Ritualists at-will Entangle+Slow into Paralyze. Obviously it's there to make sure you can do a sacrifice and it's good that the brain-locked effect is all or nothing by releasing them on a successful save (though it could be a bit more clear that you do this after they've succumbed to the first effect), but that is still a really, really strong ability to have at-will with no cost. I'd let the first save grant immunity on a success, as with most at-will save or lose effects. As written it can't effect undead at all since it's mind affecting, just needs a note that undead immunity does not apply in addition to the altered effect.

Immolator Apostate should list the damage of a medium fire for convenience. Cleanse in Fire seems useless unless you took Martyr to 9th for Reversing Strike to flash-cast it but the PrC is set for 7th level entry, and it also doesn't specify range. Even then it has the same problem as Wash the Sins in that using it even once docks your hit points for the rest of the day (possibly longer) in exchange for a single attack. Especially now that I've read the Martyr's ritual list.

Planar Animist is, as most HD based summons are, ridiculously broken. Even assuming you have to pay HD equal to the HD of the outsider (as written you only pay for duration so you can just spend 1 HD for anything, unless I'm missing a base rule somewhere that says higher level rituals have a minimum HD cost), that still lets you get three times your own hit dice in outsiders, each of which can very easily have spellcasting greater than their own hit dice (Gheale Eladrin and Trumpet Archon are the two favorite standouts, acquired here at 4th level rituals for ECL 11, also you should really specify how to round level=1/3 outsider's hit dice, since if it rounds down that means you can go to Planetars at ECL 11 instead). As much as I love a no-cost buffet that's a no-guilt summon instead of a calling, there's a reason the Planar X spells have huge costs.

I don't see why the Quietus can get Allips before Shadows when Allips are better in every way. I'd also like to see Spectres on there, and Devourers are creepy as heck so nice choice. As cool as it is to be able to create and control NightXs, it comes in 2nd right under the Planar Animist for overpowered minions. The spellcasting progression is pretty cheap if you use something to expand the list, but not really a problem. I like the idea that they could sacrifice one of their undead to power a ritual, possibly one for making a new undead, except that as creatures created by a class feature you can't sacrifice your own undead. Also, the Quietus's undead animation brings up another point I may have missed: is there a requirement anywhere that a living sacrifice be sapient? Because turning cows into Allips and hunting dinosaurs for easy NightXs is probably not what you intended.

(I haven't read the other PrCs in-depth)

Spoiler: Martyr Rituals

Show

In general, I see a lack of ranges and individual effect durations, making many of these impossible to use. Affliction of Gluttony is ranged touch with no range, Chained Body has no given range or individual effect duration, FTP has no range, Fettered Mind has no range, etc. If the intent is that all rituals have a range of unlimited and no rolls then this needs to go in the general ritual rules at the beginning. You may also want to adopt some of the standard descriptor [tags], like [mind affecting], [death], and so on.

Absolve the Weak: I don't see the need for an hp cap here, unless you have another healer you'll run out of hit points anyway since your at-will healing doesn't work on yourself Pre-edit: wait, nevermind it totally does okay then. Comboing with someone who has Touch of Healing reserve isn't really overpowered.

Call Boon: 50k is low enough that a lot of the Artificer's choices aren't available, but with no restriction on charged items I could see a cl15 wand or a staff to burn being a good idea. Compares well enough to a warlock throwing an at-will 4th level spell, though Martyrs can't use wands without help. Until you realize a scroll of wish is under 50k, and boom, instant broken.

Call Boon, Greater: this is obviously bonkers. IIRC the epic item clauses do state that any item over 200k counts as epic, so that should be inlcluded here for convenience, but even then you can just take a week or so off and whistle up Rings of Three Wishes to get +3 inherent to all your stats. Both Call Boon rituals are easily fixed by including the usual xp clause, that any item duplicating a spell with an xp component charges you the same amount of xp. This limits them to only the most broken spell combinations a player can come up with when they don't have to spend money including access to 9th level spells at 13th level with Call Boon. I'd also suggest limiting them to printed items only, possibly even DMG items only, just so the scope of the power can be seen, and since you probably didn't intend scrolls/wands, put that in the description.

Chained Body: lists no individual effect duration, does that mean the target is marked for days until your ritual runs out? That's pretty cool, but also kindof a death sentence. Retaliation effects usually don't trigger unless the victim takes damage, and wear off quickly, so this is basically the perfect deterrent. Except without a given duration, using the last charge ends the ritual and thus is wasted. Also another good example of a power that's crazy good if you can spend only 1 or 2HD on it. From what I've read so far the Martyr kinda needs it though. Pre-Edit: well this seems to be the main thing they do, crazy strong debuffs with little or no save.

Face Thy Punishments: as written, a will save negates the force sphere as well as the planar travel ban. Change the save line to "see text" if that's not intended.

Fettered Mind: no save HD based effects are not the best in my mind. They're entirely binary and based mostly on player knowledge of enemy hit dice, either being grossly overpowered if they can boost the affected HD, in this case, by using 10gp per HD in sacrifice to avoid the level limit on hp sacrifice, in this case build right into the base system, or completely useless if the DM throws an advanced or unexpected creature at the party. A 5th level Martyr can spend 150gp to get a 15HD sacrifice, which apparently gets them a no-save unlimited-range lose effect against the next 15 evil creatures they encounter with 15HD or less, or just use 18hp.

Forge Lifebond: wait, so this lets you pass half the hp loss of setting up your rituals to someone else, at the cost of an extra 3hp and the drawback/benefit of Shield Other? Handy, but not so crazy due to maximum HD capacity. Excellent interactions with Reversing Strike since it's two-way, that will just foul up everything on both sides of the fight! I would change "shared equally" to "split evenly" just to be sure, and specify rounding.

Impregnable Spirit: needs to specify how much Fortification.

Judgement: so basically Wail of the Banshee vs evil, a bunch of times. Not impossibly strong but basically all you need against living foes. This is where lack of standard descriptor [tags] comes in: Death ward stops [death] effects, but does it stop Judgement? Undead can't die so they're fine even though the spell hits all creatures instead of only the living.

Justice: terminally vague, what happens if someone interferes? Does the effect end or does it have DM level denial of interference?

Life's Wrappings: just to be clear, a flying creature falls but cannot be directly harmed so they take no damage from the impact. As a defense, at 11HD you've passed the hardness of adamantine and they'll need magic or Mountain Hammer to break you out, if they don't realize they could just drown you. This and the upgraded version are certainly a way to protect squishy NPCs, it's just kinda lame that to do so in this game you really do need to put them in a box/cocoon/extradimensional pocket to make it work.

Network of X: I'm not convinced the penalties are neccesary. As a no-armor, d6 class (huh, what's up with that save progression?), you're already squishy enough that if the rest of the party is protected and you're not, you're dead. The penalties just force the player to literally wait back at camp or around the corner out of sight since they're now extra vulnerable to the foe they're specifically fighting. Pre-Edit: having finished the list, I can see why a full party-buff without penalty would be too much in addition to the various other shutdown abilities, but I still don't think it's a good design. Life's Gift gets a special mention: while it's more efficient than Absolve the Weak, it's still pointless out of combat healing when you could just use Healing Touch 30 times, and if used in combat with Reversing Strike the fast healing 2 isn't enough to really matter. Suffering Surrendered on the other hand is quite amazing, it's way easier to stack immunities on one person.

Network of Souls: again I'd change this to "split evenly," with directions on rounding/remainders.

Prayer Focus: sounds great until you realize that attacks and spells does not include the vast array of supernatural abilities in the game, including other ritual users. Probably for the best though.

Purge They Soul: implies rather than states that the creature returns to it's original position after the effect duration wears off. Save DC is obscenely high since it uses full HD rather than 1/2 like most (there are a couple other instances of this elsewhere), but it also doesn't have the potential prohibition on escape like most similar effects.

Radiance: unclear. So does it hit all targets with Sunbeam every round? Is it firing normal Sunbeams or producing a single-target version? Is the listed blind/miss chance in addition to or replacing the normal blindness of a Sunbeam? Can you exit the trance early by any means other than ending the entire ritual? (actually you can't since no actions means no free action to end the ritual). Sunbeam is already a multi-round spell, I'd say it doesn't need the reduced caster level, being stuck stationary is more than enough of a drawback to make up for the increased duration since any undead will either kill you where you stand or just retreat out of range until you stop.

Reflexive Retribution: nothing reflexive about it. I'd change the phrasing to "redirected" and "remainder" for clarity. This is similar to Chained Body, if anything more powerful since you're gaining DR/lol against every attack for two creatures. Another signature ability, they both necessitate foes with a wide array of abilities to keep the game meaningful.

Sacrificial Knowledge: what is the ritual wielder level of the affected target?

Shackled Thoughts: Ray of Dizziness without the ray, another staple ability that might be too strong.

Shadows of Sin: massive save DC again.

Shelter in my Soul: needs to specify what happens to worn and carried items.

Shifting Spirit: no-save forced teleportation at level 1, the only thing that undermines this is range being linked to uses, so you can't bring very many charges without shoving your foe so far away you'll disrupt your own party's ability to attack. Should specify if direction includes up/down, usual notes about being shunted out of solid objects (there might be a preference for landing closer or further from the user depending on what you want the power used for), the conjuration school would automatically prohibit appearing in thin air but the [teleportation] descriptor doesn't automatically I think.

Sorrow's Burden: high save DC again, and the way you've set up an active only multi-target "gaze" attack ought to explain what happens if a target wants to avert their eyes. You probably can't do so unless it's your turn, but this could give an incidental buff if foes fear it and avert or close their eyes on their turns after you use it, even if you don't continue doing so.

Soul Coffin: so for 2HD out of my max capacity I can just have an extra life waiting somewhere with reduced xp cost? It's no Jade Pheonix Mage or Sand Shaper but it's nice it's own ways. Beats the heck out of Clone.

Soul's Shards: what does this even do? How or what triggers the shards and what's the effective HD of the 3rd level rituals?

Spirit Aura: pretty lame restrictions for an ECL 13 ability, also bugs me a bit that it conflicts with the Oriental Adventures definition of spirit which includes incorporeal undead, Sight of Life or something would be better.

Spirit Manacles: another extremely potent ability, foul your foes' movement and double your net damage with no save or rolls required. Also lets you do obvious combos: summon a mook, bind it to your foe, and cut off it's head for a free crit (use bigger mooks to channel more damage, also useful if you can't order a summon to be helpless for a coup de gras). I'd generally never allow this aggressive of an ability with no save.

Spiritual Locus: I quite like seeing this ability come up earlier or at least cheaper than Refuge.

Splintered Soul: if they fission and fail the save they're stunned, but there's only one (very high) save so it's either fissioned+stunned or nothing. This is a pretty strong debuff against the right high level creatures, enough negative levels and it doesn't matter that they've got two bodies.

Swirling Lives: normally I'd say this is a decent healing effect, but for ECL 15 it's not, especially not compared to some of the no-save-just-lose effects you could be doing. It's roughly equivalent to a pair of Heal spells without the speed or extra effects, and at this level it's Heal or nothing. If it were a pulse that healed all party members then maybe. Note that Woven Tapestry, below, heals 18 points (4d8= 18 average) a whole level earlier with option to attack.

Trammel the Soul: unclear, is this an immediate action, or a non-action response choice, or or do you have to lay the curse on them before it starts working? Has that high save again, but its the first anti-caster I've seen here, and not until max level. Class does have a specific weakness then, at least until high levels.

Unbreakable Body: uh, you mean Unbreakable Mind? The last sentences of the whole Mettle/Evasion series are awkward, how about "and at 10 hit dice, the subject gains Mindblank (or X)". You can afford a couple more words.

Weaken Flesh: well dang, there's another super strong staple, targeted at monsters. Much more narrow which is good but still basically death against the right targets.

Weaver's Life: see, now this is a high level healing effect (probably a higher level healing effect, just automatically up to full hp is better than Heal in many cases). I like how this is somehow a heal spell that can miss, that'll create some tension, although being able to spam full heals while simultaneously dealing out as much damage as you're taking is huge. This would certainly teach the DM to target the "healer" first.

Woven Tapestry: eh, roughly equivalent to a casting or two of Darts of Life. It'll hold you until Weaver explodes onto the scene.

Okay, that was several hours, I think I'm done for now. Obviously I favor the Martyr class, simply because it's wholly self-sufficient and this also makes it the most easily breakable. I find it's class abilities extremely restrictive as written and hardly worth using, but many of it's Rituals range from stupid strong to grossly overpowered. With a heavy dependence on the rest of the party running cleanup I'd expect this to perform as well or better than a heal/buff/disable caster in the same hands.

Chained Body and "Reflexive" Retribution in particular should appeal to people who like the sort of aggro control found in MMOs (or anime about MMOs, I'm looking at you Log Horizon).

[Stratovarius]

Okay, so, couple things - a few of the things you're posting about are addressed, just not here yet (because I've been revising the Rituals over on my home forum). So I'll copy over the changes and post the change log below. And please note that a lot of tweaks to rituals are not mentioned, because any ritual that needed clarifying to have the same effect it already had didn't get listed. I'll then respond in a second post to everything from your list.

And I suspect the rules post not being as clear as it needs to be is the reason for it, but the minimum sacrifice for a ritual is equal to the ritual level (so 7hd for a 7th level). I'll update that when I get the chance.

Updated rituals were created after the changelist comments, and so are in response to them.

Spoiler: Changelist

Show

Ritual Warrior stuff:

General - Made everything 3rd person.
Bone Web - Changed from swift to standard, cleaned up.
Boneform Gear and Bloodform Champion are really similar. Not sure Champion is two levels better.
Boosted Brume of Broken Blades, also cleaned it up.
Cadaver Column - keep as swift action?
Disfiguring Death - Cleaned up, rewrote a bit.
Boosted Evacuating Touch to all saves.
Fear Ward can now stack with itself.
Finality - Increase the range it can affect creatures?
Flesh of the Fallen - This should be ritual level 1. Thoughts on changing it to increase power?
Grasping Hands - keep as swift action?
Hematic Shield - odd, not very useful. Rewrite?
Permeable Ward - Renamed Impermeable Ward, extra damage taken dropped.
Rush of Blood - Now grants +Init as well.
Rush of Blood, Greater - No penalty for full attacking.
Scything Bane - Enemies only now.
Seeping Spirit - Damagewise, outdoes Leeching Aura, but doesn't heal. Thoughts?
Siphon Spirit - Boosted from 1/3 to 1/2.
Striker's Gift - Boosted it, but don't really like the ritual as written. Thoughts?
Sympathetic Pain - Changed it, since it seemed weak for a 5th level ritual. Thoughts?

Edit: Updated Cabalistic Thaumaturge as follows -
Made it grant full progression in both Spells and Rituals
Clarified that you learn one Ritual of Spell Metamorphosis at each indicated level
Changed the prereqs of the spellpoint version slightly to account for system differences

Now for the Ritualist:

Changed all to third person
Barrier of Blood - Boosted retaliation damage to 1d6 per HD from 1d6/3 HD
Barrier of Blood, Greater - Boosted retaliation to 2d6/HD from 1d6/2 HD
Bloodspell - Added caster level
Bloodspell, Greater - Added caster level
Bloodstone - Boosted damage to 1d6/HD from 1d6/2 HD
Bolstered Blood - Changed effect from energy resistance to match Ritual Warrior version (fortification)
Boneform Gear - Changed to match Ritual Warrior version
Brume of Bolstered Blood - Changed to match Ritual Warrior version
Extract Essence - Underpowered and odd. Thoughts?
Flesh of the Fallen - Underpowered, same as Ritual Warrior version. Thoughts?
Forgotten Heritage - Now gain sacrifice's feats.
Lifeblood Shield - Now based on sacrificial hit dice
Rite of Immortality - Totally useless in most games. Thoughts?
Rush of Blood - Changed to match Ritual Warrior version
Rush of Blood, Greater - Changed to match Ritual Warrior version
Shattering Sphere - Boosted to 1/HD instead of 1/3 HD
Shroud Self - Drop a level?
Sickness in the Body - Unsure of combat effectiveness of this ritual. Thoughts?
Siphon Spirit - Changed to match Ritual Warrior version
Stolen Knowledge (Greater) - Cool concept, mostly useless. Thoughts?
Weapon of Blood - Changed to match Ritual Warrior version

And now for the Martyr:

Changed all to 3rd person
Added Range and Target entries
Changed range to 20 ft./hit dice
Divine Presence (all) - Changed to 1 day/hd instead of 1 hour/hd
Entwined Bodies - Changed to all physical stats
Entwined Magic - Now allows personal range spells
Entwined Spirits - Changed to all mental stats
Healer's Warning - Removed ability to affect a single ally with a ritual
Heavenly Gifts - Boosted slightly
Justice - Cleaned up, removed cap on boost
Life's Wrapping - Cleaned up, boosted healing
Network (all) - Removed penalties to Martyr
Radiance - Boosted significantly
Shield of the Soul - Cleaned up, boosted healing

All ranged touch attacks removed. It's Save or Suck all around.

Edit: Just noticed Radiance now completely overshadows Judgement. Thoughts?[/spoilers]

And now for the Rituals:
[spoilers=Updated Rituals]
Boosted Rituals:

Bloodform Champion
Level: Ritual Warrior 5
Ritual Duration: 1 day/hit dice of the sacrifice
Saving Throw: None

The ritual-wielder clothes himself in armour and weapons formed from the blood of the sacrifice. These items continually bleed, giving anyone trying to track the ritual-wielder a +10 bonus on their checks, except in rain or another condition that would wipe the trail clean. He gains proficiency with all martial weapons and all armours. When this ritual is completed, he must choose 1 suit of armour and either 1 two handed weapon, or a one handed weapon and shield. If it is a ranged weapon, it creates an unlimited supply of ammo. All items have a +1 Enhancement bonus to Armour Class, or Attack and Damage, for every 3 hit dice of the sacrifice. The ritual-wielder increases his size category by one (his gear growing to match), as well as increasing his BAB to match his character level. Finally, the ritual-wielder gains fast healing equal to half the hit dice of the sacrifice.

Finality
Level: Ritual Warrior 4
Ritual Duration: 1 day/hit dice of the sacrifice
Saving Throw: Fort negates

Whenever the ritual-wielder kills a creature and activates a ritual with his Finishing Strike class ability, one creature (within 5' per hit dice of the slain creature) must make a fortitude saving throw vs 10 + sacrifice hit dice (for Finality) + the ritual-wielder's intelligence modifier, or lose one half of its current hit points. If there is more than one legal target, the ritual-wielder chooses which must save.

Flesh of the Fallen
Level: Ritual Warrior 3
Ritual Duration: 1 day/hit dice of the sacrifice
Saving Throw: None

The ritual-wielder walls himself within the flesh of the sacrifice, creating a thick barrier over his body that wards off some of the damage from mundane attacks. He gains DR 1/magic for every two hit dice of the sacrifice. In addition, he gains fast healing 1 for every two hit dice of the sacrifice, but it only affects him at or below one-half his full normal hit points.

Hematic Shield
Level: Ritual Warrior 2
Ritual Duration: 1 day/hit dice of the sacrifice
Saving Throw: None

The ritual-wielder's blood thickens and slows within his body, becoming harder than the flesh that surrounds it, forming a second set of bones within his body. He can no longer bleed to death below 0 hit points. Any physical or elemental damage he takes does not take effect until the end of his next turn, and the total amount is reduced by one half the hit dice of the sacrifice.

Next round of fixed rituals:

Striker's Gift
Level: Ritual Warrior 1
Ritual Duration: 1 day/hit dice of the sacrifice
Saving Throw: None

Whenever the ritual-wielder kills a creature, for one minute his attacks deal 1d6 bonus damage for every two hit dice of the creature slain. The newest instance of Striker's Gift being activated takes precedence over preceding cases.

Extract Essence
Level: Ritualist 5
Ritual Duration: 1 day/sacrificial hit dice
Range: Personal
Saving Throw: None

The ritual-wielder pulls the very soul out of a creature, ingesting it and gaining strength from the slain sacrifice. The ritual-wielder gains one bonus hit dice (d6), the commensurate number of temporary hit points (apply the ritual-wielder’s constitution modifier, if any), a +1 competence bonus on attack rolls, and a +1 competence bonus to his ritual-wielder level for every two hit dice of the sacrifice. The bonus hit dice count as regular hit dice for determining the effect of spells or abilities that are hit dice dependant.

Rite of Immortality
Level: Ritualist 6
Ritual Duration: 1 day/sacrificial hit dice
Range: Personal
Saving Throw: None

As the sacrifice is killed at the end of the ritual and the ritual-wielder anoints himself, the lifeblood of the sacrifice flows into the ritual-wielder. The ritual-wielder becomes immune to any effect that would change his age category. As a swift action, he may become invulnerable to all damage or effects for one round. He may do this a total number of rounds equal to the hit dice of the sacrifice.

Shroud Self
Level: Ritualist 4
Ritual Duration: 1 day/sacrificial hit dice
Range: Personal
Saving Throw: None

When the ritual-wielder performs this sacrificial rite, his form twists and changes, taking on aspects of the sacrificed creature. He gains the benefits of the creature's three physical statistics, as well having his BAB increase to the sacrifice's (if this would grant an increase), and gaining all of the victim's natural attacks, if it possesses any. This cannot increase the ritual-wielder's BAB above his character level.

Shroud Self, Minor
Level: Ritualist 1
Ritual Duration: 1 day/sacrificial hit dice
Range: Personal
Saving Throw: None

When the ritual-wielder performs this sacrificial rite, his form twists and changes, taking on aspects of the sacrificed creature. He gains the benefits of one of the creature's three physical statistics, and the victim's primary natural attack.

Sickness in the Body
Level: Ritualist 3
Ritual Duration: 1 day/sacrificial hit dice
Range: Personal
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates; see text

The ritual-wielder force a series of diseases into the afflicted creature's body, cursing him with sickness and ill health. Once per sacrificial hit dice, the ritual-wielder may make a melee touch attack against a creature, causing its body to shake and crumble. If the struck creature fails a fortitude save, it is nauseated and staggered, and takes a penalty on all fortitude and reflex saves of -1 per two hit dice of the sacrifice.

Stolen Knowledge
Level: Ritualist 3
Ritual Duration: 1 day/sacrificial hit dice
Range: Personal
Saving Throw: None

The ritual-wielder searches the mind of the sacrifice as it dies, divesting it of its entire life history, and storing that knowledge in a corner of his mind. Once per hit dice of the sacrifice as a full round action, the ritual-wielder can target a single creature that he can see, and determine its name, race, alignment, and character class, and general estimate of its level or Hit Dice: low (5 HD or lower), medium (6 to 11 HD), high (12 to 20 HD), very high (21 HD to 40 HD), or deific (41 HD or higher).

Stolen Knowledge, Greater
Level: Ritualist 6
Ritual Duration: 1 day/sacrificial hit dice
Range: Personal
Saving Throw: None

The ritual-wielder searches the mind of the sacrifice as it dies, divesting it of its entire life history, and storing that knowledge in a corner of his mind. Once per hit dice of the sacrifice as a ten minute action, the ritual-wielder can target a single creature that he has met before, and determine its name, race, alignment, and character class, a general estimate of its level or Hit Dice: low (5 HD or lower), medium (6 to 11 HD), high (12 to 20 HD), very high (21 HD to 40 HD), or deific (41 HD or higher) and its location (including place of residence, town, country, world, and plane of existence).

Radiance
Level: Martyr 7
Ritual Ritual Duration: 1 day/hit dice of the sacrifice
Range: Personal
Area: 20 ft./hit dice of the sacrifice
Saving Throw: See text

The ritual-wielder freezes his body in order to allow his soul to shine through, channelling its power against all of those who wish him ill. The ritual-wielder may not take an action for the duration of the effect. The blinding light of his soul reaches out into the darkness for 20 feet per hit dice of the sacrifice. Invisible, ethereal, and incorporeal creatures lose the special protections those states grant and may be struck normally. Evil creatures (including undead) must succeed at a Will save or be stunned, nauseated, and paralyzed, as their souls battle against the goodness in the light. Neutral creatures must succeed at a Will save or be sickened and staggered. All evil and neutral creatures must succeed at a Fortitude or be blinded and dazzled. All evil and neutral creatures take 4d6 divine damage every round they are in the area. The ritual-wielder may activate this as a standard action once per hit dice of the sacrifice. It lasts for 1 round per hit dice of the sacrifice, and creatures must save each round they are in the area.

[Stratovarius]

How has no one commented on this?

I think because the system appeared whole cloth over here, and kind of possess a +5 Wall of Text attack. I wrote it originally back in 2007, and have been gently tweaking it ever since.

So, how to read: a ritual-user effectively has 3*level points of shifting abilities from their known list, each most likely at a max power of HD=level (the Martyr's self sacrifice cap or the likely max HD of creatures you find to sacrifice, though at low and high levels HD are more plentiful in livestock and big creatures). Assuming a proper rotation of resting for a Martyr or chaining sacrifices for a Ritualist, these should be up all the time, or for charged abilities have charges=level per day. Note that with -3 hp/level (and change) the Martyr is effectively a d6 class with the option to pay some cash to get more max hp for a few days.

The Martyr actually has to pay a bit more than that, because it's ritual level + the effective hit dice, so a 5th level ritual is 10hp minimum. But othe

In the general Ritual description, it would help if this was written a bit more mechanically. Start or title each paragraph with the appropriate tag (Sacrificial Hit Dice, some keyword for Sacrificial Hit Dice capacity of 3*level, Duration, Saving Throws). Duration should include a note that many rituals have hour/HD durations (I expect that when originally written this was not the case).

I added a General Terms section afterwards, which should hopefully help. And as of the update, almost all of the hour/HD durations are gone, if not all of them.

*Pre-Edit: ah, right, all rituals are available for 1 day/HD, it's just that for some reason a ton of them also have effects that last 1 day/HD. Seems a little unclear since non-charged rituals basically have an extra day/HD duration that means nothing, and this caused me to disregard the Effect Duration. . . except looking at Spirit Manacle here, we have an Effect Duration of day/HD with the actual effect in the text clearly round/HD. New material/format changes may have caused that.

Hopefully the cleaned up Rituals make this easier to understand, but that duration line, despite the name (my fault, I know) always meant the duration of the Ritual, not of the effect. It was a downside of originally starting from spells, which use Effect lines, but don't have two separate durations. So, no-use rituals last 1 day/HD. Use rituals last 1 day/HD or until their uses are expended, whichever comes sooner. Please note though that use rituals die after the duration of the final use, not before.

As noted below, there should be a general rule on range and targeting since it seems that many rituals lack this information. There should also be a mention of Spell Resistance, even if only a reminder that as Su abilities SR never applies (though a nod to some people's preference to X/magic transparency would be welcome).

This should all be in there, especially on the Martyr rituals where it was really lacking. That was one of the main goals of the update. Not quite sure what you're getting at with the transparency rules, though. There's not meant to be any here.

I think I might be missing something very important: is there a minimum HD requirement for higher level rituals? My gut tells me this really should be a thing, though as I read the Martyr rituals I start to think they're intended to have the option of lots of lower level links and transfers and debuffs. I haven't read any Blood rituals yet, but any Martyr ritual that avoids the +ritual level surcharge on hp (say by not spending hp) is gonna get real strong.

On the other end, I see no maximum HD limit, making non-hp sacrifices dangerous. This is okay if you need bodies supplied by the DM but gold is cheap for Martyrs, see Fettered Mind, below. And personally I think there's a hole in the hp sacrifice: temporary hp are still hp and basically invalidate any mechanic that starts by taking damage no matter how un-preventable or un-redirectable it is. Just add a line that the damage bypasses temporary hit points and you're fine.

Pre-edit: finally noticed that the Martyr doesn't have a HD=level max on hp sacrifice like I must have assumed, it's just the same 3*level HD limit as everything else. That'll just be bananas.

Yes, currently 3 * level is the only upper limit on rituals. Granted, that was written before the Martyr class, so it was designed with creature sacrifice in mind, which meant the DM had to be complicit in handing over something truly bonkers. And the minimum HD requirement is the ritual level (which might not be high enough).

I find the Martyr's more active abilities quite underwhelming. It's obviously more of a set buffs and go class, but still. The stunning touch from Wash the Sins gives you hp burn you can't heal until you rest, even if they make their save, so using it even once is a massive cost that just doesn't seem justifiable. Remove Temptation comes on at a a level where any weapon you sacrifice will be worth obscene amounts of cash that you should never give up-I also don't see why they'd ever fail to create a ritual unless they were already at max capacity (you could just make a 1HD ritual and let the rest go to waste). Reversing Strike is your way to speed up rituals so you can react in combat, but since you have to convert damage exactly it's quite a ways out of your control. On the other hand, Healing Touch is apparently usable on self with no upper health limit so the whole party is full all the time.

Updating the Martyr class features is already on the to-do list. I'm not super thrilled by them at the moment, and the 1st level ability (Touch of Friendship) is completely useless and needs to be replaced.

Remove Temptation - The Martyr doesn't get to decide what the hit dice of the sacrifice are. The gold cost of the item does that for him. But the whole gold sacrifice has always been a problem, and I'm very tempted to boot it over to the variant rule post and let it stay there.

Healing Touch - It's only supposed to work on other creatures, actually. Looks like I don't have that clause in there. The unlimited slow healing doesn't really bother me though, it's something I've got all over the place in my various systems. Just saves the party the cash of a wand of lessor vigor.

I'm pretty leery of the Ritualists at-will Entangle+Slow into Paralyze. Obviously it's there to make sure you can do a sacrifice and it's good that the brain-locked effect is all or nothing by releasing them on a successful save (though it could be a bit more clear that you do this after they've succumbed to the first effect), but that is still a really, really strong ability to have at-will with no cost. I'd let the first save grant immunity on a success, as with most at-will save or lose effects. As written it can't effect undead at all since it's mind affecting, just needs a note that undead immunity does not apply in addition to the altered effect.

It was at will so that the low level Ritualist had something it could do, in addition to the getting a sacrifice bit, because a lot of low level creatures are just boring and don't have the interesting abilities that rituals feed off of. I'll make the changes suggested though. In order to limit uses per day though, I'd probably need to create a second low level ability for the Ritualist in that case.

Immolator Apostate should list the damage of a medium fire for convenience. Cleanse in Fire seems useless unless you took Martyr to 9th for Reversing Strike to flash-cast it but the PrC is set for 7th level entry, and it also doesn't specify range. Even then it has the same problem as Wash the Sins in that using it even once docks your hit points for the rest of the day (possibly longer) in exchange for a single attack. Especially now that I've read the Martyr's ritual list.

Medium Fire it turns out is 2d6 a round, which is 1d6 higher than I wanted. I'll just write it into the text. Cleanse in Fire is poorly written, but it's actually a special ritual that gives you a fire burst attack, and is meant to be created via Self-Purgation. It needs to be reworked. It's also unlimited use.

Planar Animist is, as most HD based summons are, ridiculously broken. Even assuming you have to pay HD equal to the HD of the outsider (as written you only pay for duration so you can just spend 1 HD for anything, unless I'm missing a base rule somewhere that says higher level rituals have a minimum HD cost), that still lets you get three times your own hit dice in outsiders, each of which can very easily have spellcasting greater than their own hit dice (Gheale Eladrin and Trumpet Archon are the two favorite standouts, acquired here at 4th level rituals for ECL 11, also you should really specify how to round level=1/3 outsider's hit dice, since if it rounds down that means you can go to Planetars at ECL 11 instead). As much as I love a no-cost buffet that's a no-guilt summon instead of a calling, there's a reason the Planar X spells have huge costs.

Yeah, always knew this guy was a little strong. I'll have to revise it so it's relatively sane. Honestly, just switching it to Ritual Level = +1 per 2 hit dice probably would do it. That caps you at 14hd and under outsiders. And add in a clause I have elsewhere, which blocks the SLA cheese.

I don't see why the Quietus can get Allips before Shadows when Allips are better in every way. I'd also like to see Spectres on there, and Devourers are creepy as heck so nice choice. As cool as it is to be able to create and control NightXs, it comes in 2nd right under the Planar Animist for overpowered minions. The spellcasting progression is pretty cheap if you use something to expand the list, but not really a problem. I like the idea that they could sacrifice one of their undead to power a ritual, possibly one for making a new undead, except that as creatures created by a class feature you can't sacrifice your own undead. Also, the Quietus's undead animation brings up another point I may have missed: is there a requirement anywhere that a living sacrifice be sapient? Because turning cows into Allips and hunting dinosaurs for easy NightXs is probably not what you intended.

Because it was meant to be a Greater Shadow. Hence the level restriction. And no, there isn't... which means you could turn some of the large HD but squishy animals into very interesting options. The NightXs come online at level 16 at the earliest, so I'm a little less bothered, especially as your DM needs to hand you a 21 HD+ monster to sacrifice. Game balance by that point is kinda hosed anyway.

I'm not aware of the class feature rule on sacrifices, since this system never existed before... so I'd say you certainly can.

Okay, that was several hours, I think I'm done for now. Obviously I favor the Martyr class, simply because it's wholly self-sufficient and this also makes it the most easily breakable. I find it's class abilities extremely restrictive as written and hardly worth using, but many of it's Rituals range from stupid strong to grossly overpowered. With a heavy dependence on the rest of the party running cleanup I'd expect this to perform as well or better than a heal/buff/disable caster in the same hands.

Chained Body and "Reflexive" Retribution in particular should appeal to people who like the sort of aggro control found in MMOs (or anime about MMOs, I'm looking at you Log Horizon).

As mentioned above, the Martyr class abilities are in dire need of a clean-up. They're almost unchanged since it was first written and it shows. Chained Body got cleaned up/nerf-batted in the big update, but Reflexive Retribution still needs a few changes, looking at it again.

I'll answer the Rituals portion of the post when I've got more time. Thanks for taking a look at this! Nice to finally have someone give it the once over :D

[Stratovarius]

Overall changes:
Added General Terms to the Basic Rules

Immolator Apostate:
Self-Purgation - Shortened amount of rounds spent in fire. Clarified charred touch to MTA. Can now use hit points burned away in fire to create a single ritual. Removed fire size.
Cleanse in Fire - Clarified it was a ritual, added action, reflex save, and ritual level.
Fever in the Flesh - Clarified wording, added duration, boosted damage dealt.
Flame Transference - Now works on any attack that deals fire damage.
Lost in the Flames - Removed fire size.
Immolation - Added action, extended time when hit points could be used for ritual creation.

Planar Animist:
Planar Rituals - Can summon a creature up to 14 hd now, and they cannot use SLAs above the level of the ritual used to summon them.

Quietus:
Rituals of Undead Creation - To create sentient undead, sacrifice must have been sentient. Clarified it is a greater shadow. Undead cannot create spawn. Added Ritual of Pain Remembered (spectres).
Bloodless Sacrifice - Made it explicit the Quietus can sacrifice its own minions. Changed from duration/half to sacrificial hit dice/half.

Martyr:
Gift of Self - Removed gold sacrifice, now ignores temp HP.
Healing Touch - Cannot target self

Ritualist:
Grasp the Lifeblood - Any successful save renders target immune. Targeting undead no longer considered mind-affecting.

[Fizban]

Okay, so, couple things - a few of the things you're posting about are addressed, just not here yet (because I've been revising the Rituals over on my home forum). So I'll copy over the changes and post the change log below.

Makes perfect sense, one of the reasons so many people are using google docs nowadays. I appreciate your sticking to forums, at least for the moment, as I find them much more usable and readable on my end.

Spoilers to keep the thread navigable

Spoiler: General

Show

The Martyr actually has to pay a bit more than that, because it's ritual level + the effective hit dice, so a 5th level ritual is 10hp minimum.

If you're doing rituals of your highest available level it's a little less than 1.5*level, I used an "and change" note somewhere. You could also just do one ritual and have very little overcharge. I meant it as a quick comparison for people reading and didn't want to round to -4hp/level= d4 HD, since 3*level is the HD cap anyway, so I rounded down if you will.

I added a General Terms section afterwards, which should hopefully help. And as of the update, almost all of the hour/HD durations are gone, if not all of them.

I don't remember it being up there in the long descriptions before but it is now, and the terms list is a nice summary.

Please note though that use rituals die after the duration of the final use, not before.

Yeah I caught that, a number of rituals lacked that duration is all.

This should all be in there, especially on the Martyr rituals where it was really lacking. That was one of the main goals of the update. Not quite sure what you're getting at with the transparency rules, though. There's not meant to be any here.

I'll be taking a break for a while before diving back in again but scrolling up and down it looks good (until I noticed the Target lines, see below). What I meant by transparency is just that psionics and incarnum both make a point of it and I figure it's good to have under it's own header for any big system, so when someone asks the question it's in bold. I also just like acknowledging that everything can always be adjusted, so if a DM is finding that the lack of transparency is a problem they can change it-a reminder that sometimes needs to be repeated.

And the minimum HD requirement is the ritual level (which might not be high enough).

It feels reasonable, certainly for the Ritualist, I'd have to do some proper mock-ups. It'd probably be easier to fix individual (Martyr) rituals if needed than potentially cripple the other two classes by changing the minimum from what you designed them under.

Updating the Martyr class features is already on the to-do list. I'm not super thrilled by them at the moment, and the 1st level ability (Touch of Friendship) is completely useless and needs to be replaced.

Huh. It looks like it's supposed to let you pass personal rituals to others, but I'm guessing then that all the Martyr rituals are written this way to begin with. Being able to dismiss rituals as a free action instead of the usual full-round is definitely a thing though. Lets you free up capacity if you decide you're willing to take the burn for another ability or prepare to use Reversing Strike.

Remove Temptation - The Martyr doesn't get to decide what the hit dice of the sacrifice are. The gold cost of the item does that for him. But the whole gold sacrifice has always been a problem, and I'm very tempted to boot it over to the variant rule post and let it stay there.

I can't double check it now but I know I'd been writing for a while and didn't at the time. Dumping the gold option is probably better for balance, but in general I'd still say that forcing you to use the full value of a sacrifice is silly when the whole point of a sacrifice is that you're willing to give up the whole of it in return for whatever you're getting. Or the bad RL example: if I pay for a $1 item with a $20 bill and tell them to keep the change, most people will keep the change (unless the multiverse is afraid of the Better Business Beureu or something ). I was going to ask about basing it on cost to create rather than market value and how that makes mundane items only worth 1/3 and then I read the crafting rules in your main setting link and was wondering what exactly the magic item market price is then (you say that adding the xp cost of creation as gp drastically increases the cost: specifically the cost to create becomes 70% instead of 50%, so does that increase the market price to 120% or 140%?).

Healing Touch - It's only supposed to work on other creatures, actually. Looks like I don't have that clause in there. The unlimited slow healing doesn't really bother me though, it's something I've got all over the place in my various systems. Just saves the party the cash of a wand of lessor vigor.

Indeed, I was sure you couldn't use it on self for a good while, and I also don't really mind the healing. It's a solid reason to be around even if you botch your preparations.

(Re: Grasp the Lifeblood) It was at will so that the low level Ritualist had something it could do, in addition to the getting a sacrifice bit, because a lot of low level creatures are just boring and don't have the interesting abilities that rituals feed off of. I'll make the changes suggested though. In order to limit uses per day though, I'd probably need to create a second low level ability for the Ritualist in that case.

At-will should be fine if they're immune on the first save, just means you can try it once per opponent, and you still have to concentrate or go all/nothing. Choosing between concentrating or risking the second save-out chance is a nice dilemma.

Spoiler: PrCs

Show

(Re: Immolator Apostate) Medium Fire it turns out is 2d6 a round, which is 1d6 higher than I wanted. I'll just write it into the text. Cleanse in Fire is poorly written, but it's actually a special ritual that gives you a fire burst attack, and is meant to be created via Self-Purgation. It needs to be reworked. It's also unlimited use.

I still don't see a target for that burst, is it centered on self or what now looks like the standard-ish 20'/HD? (And if centered on self, do you also take the damage?) That's a lot of fire damage, up to 6d6 per level at-will.

(Re: Planar Animist) Yeah, always knew this guy was a little strong. I'll have to revise it so it's relatively sane. Honestly, just switching it to Ritual Level = +1 per 2 hit dice probably would do it. That caps you at 14hd and under outsiders. And add in a clause I have elsewhere, which blocks the SLA cheese.

Interesting, that should put a good damper on it until someone can go through and see if there's any gaps left.

(Re: Quietus) Because it was meant to be a Greater Shadow. Hence the level restriction. And no, there isn't... which means you could turn some of the large HD but squishy animals into very interesting options. The NightXs come online at level 16 at the earliest, so I'm a little less bothered, especially as your DM needs to hand you a 21 HD+ monster to sacrifice. Game balance by that point is kinda hosed anyway.

The DM doesn't have to just hand you a big animal though, you can go for a hunt as easily as you could any other downtime activity, or faster with the right magic items or allies to locate and teleport, at which point they have to find a reason to deny you. I'll have to beg to differ on game balance being automatically screwed: it's that attitude that usually causes the problem. Doesn't mean I don't like the ability mind you, that's friggen awesome, and the creatures are roughly equivalent in power to say Greater Planar Ally/Binding a Planetar or something. But like the Planar Animist, you can get multiple minions and pay effectively no cost, which is what pushes it over the edge even if you have to hunt a dino.

I'm not aware of the class feature rule on sacrifices, since this system never existed before... so I'd say you certainly can.

Paragraph three under Performing Rituals: "The creatures used for this cannot have been created, summoned or called, including being gained via any class feature, and they must be alive at the time of sacrifice." An undead you created via a ritual gained as a special class feature has two hits, and even if you use a spell it's still a creature you created.

Spoiler: Chained Body/Target Entries

Show

Chained Body got cleaned up/nerf-batted in the big update, but Reflexive Retribution still needs a few changes, looking at it again.

Solid nerf, but I strongly, strongly disagree with the convention of "Target: one creature/HD" when only one creature is affected by each activation. Simply put, I can't think of any other ability in the game that uses a target line to refer to multiple creatures over time without doing so in the same sentence (Ex: Implosion, which says "Target: one corporeal creature/round.") I expect this would cause massive confusion in anyone trying to read the entries quickly, obviously I know I would have been if I hadn't read the old version without them. The standard for target entries in any 3.5 system is that if it says multiple targets, they're all hit at once. If someone jumped to Chained Body because they heard it was good, saw "target 1 creature/HD" and didn't read carefully enough to notice that there's no "s" at the end of "creature" in the first sentence, they'd think it worked on multiple creatures every time. Further down on say, Spirit Shackles, it only says Target: Two creatures as expected (even though it has multiple charges), as does Justice (which has only one charge). Skimming makes it look like there are a ton of mass debuffs, when in actuality there are lots of charged single-target debuffs. Apologies if this is already being /has been addressed or sounds harsh, but I think it's very important. The rest of the new description blocks is all familiar and works as expected except this.

Spoiler: Responses to post-changelist entries from changelist spoiler

Show

Divine Presence: summoning changed from hours to days, most impact at lowest levels before hours last all day. Let's see: Lesser can get you a herd of bison or a flock of hippogriffs, that's actually pretty strong if only for overland travel. While I'm here, the middle can get you at best a scad of polar bears or Bralani, decent for wiping mooks but easily cooked by a caster, and greater is good for a pride of Leonals, which sadly at that level aren't all that crazy either (at-will Wall of Force always has uses though, and extra healing/fireballs never hurt anyone). Don't think there's any serious problems here then.

Entwined Magic: is that maximum level restriction or total levels transferred? I expect the former but can see argument for the latter. I'd use, "The highest level of spells transferable."

Healer's Warning: I didn't mind the remote casting, but you're right that usually isn't available that level.

Heavenly Gift: I'm more confused on this one now. Before it seemed like a small instant buff best used for immunity to poison before entering a lair. Now I can't tell if it's an aura or just a very long lasting AoE buff.

Justice: hmm, thinking on a book I re-read recently, I'd like a provision regarding false-surrender. If the benefactor surrenders he should forfeit his buff, but if the accused surrenders and then tries to attack after the buff's gone the buff should come back. Assuming aggressive player use, their ally is assumed to surrender truly (because they couldn't hack it even with the buff), and their enemy is assumed to be treacherous. Unless that's meant to be a valid way for a canny foe to negate your single-shot (though high-powered) ritual.

Network: aha, it seems you'd already removed the penalties, well played.

Radiance: has flipped from anti-undead to not really, since the only status effects here that work on undead are blinding and ghost anchoring. Pretty good array of effects and still does something against undead, but I'd still take Judgement because it doesn't make you stand stock-still for a minimum of 7 rounds each time you use it, that's just asking for it.

Life's Wrappings/Shield of the Soul: I mentioned these before, but I'll add that they're reminding me of the Druid's Rejuvenation Cocoon spell, except instead of being a solid combo of not dying this turn/Healed in three turns/get your buffs ready, this is just lay there and hope your allies fend them off. So it remains best as a somewhat humiliating method of keeping NPCs alive when in hostile territory.

Nice to finally have someone give it the once over :D

I'd like to give it a couple more, but I don't want to make any promises. I never did finish responding to all that 5e Eberron material like I'd intended.

[Stratovarius]

Martyr Rituals:
Absolve the Weak - HP cap removed
Call Boon (All) - Banned items with charges or uses
Fettered Mind - Removed HD limit, added Will save
Forge Lifebond - Added rounding
Judgement - Applies to undead, and all other unliving creatures
Justice - Added a nasty kicker for those who interfere
Prayer Focus - Now applies to (and blocks) special abilities
Sacrificial Knowledge (All) - Added in a ritual-wielder level
Shackled Thoughts - Added will save
Shelter in My Soul - Items are sheltered as well
Shifting Spirit - Cleaned up, added directions for unusable results
Sorrow's Burden - No longer a gaze
Soul's Shards - Cleaned up
Spirit Aura - Boosted power level
Swirling Lives - Made an AoE
Trammel the Soul - Clarified
Weaken Flesh - Fort save added
Woven Tapestry - Boosted to 6d8

[Stratovarius]

Makes perfect sense, one of the reasons so many people are using google docs nowadays. I appreciate your sticking to forums, at least for the moment, as I find them much more usable and readable on my end.

I'm not a big fan of google doc links, they always make me not bother to look at the class. And since I got handed 7 subforums to play with, I figured I might as well keep taking advantage of that.

Comments are inside the spoilers.

Spoiler: PrCs

Show

I still don't see a target for that burst, is it centered on self or what now looks like the standard-ish 20'/HD? (And if centered on self, do you also take the damage?) That's a lot of fire damage, up to 6d6 per level at-will.

It's the standard range. Added into the ability description.

The DM doesn't have to just hand you a big animal though, you can go for a hunt as easily as you could any other downtime activity, or faster with the right magic items or allies to locate and teleport, at which point they have to find a reason to deny you. I'll have to beg to differ on game balance being automatically screwed: it's that attitude that usually causes the problem. Doesn't mean I don't like the ability mind you, that's friggen awesome, and the creatures are roughly equivalent in power to say Greater Planar Ally/Binding a Planetar or something. But like the Planar Animist, you can get multiple minions and pay effectively no cost, which is what pushes it over the edge even if you have to hunt a dino.

Nightwalkers are sentient, which makes it a little more difficult to hunt down an appropriate target - a player is looking more at outsiders or dragons in terms of monsters that are both sentient and consistently hit those HD requirements, and hunting those down is a little more difficult.

Paragraph three under Performing Rituals: "The creatures used for this cannot have been created, summoned or called, including being gained via any class feature, and they must be alive at the time of sacrifice." An undead you created via a ritual gained as a special class feature has two hits, and even if you use a spell it's still a creature you created.

This was meant to stop people from using summons/calling creatures in as free sacrifices. I'll leave the general rule as is, since I've added a specific exception in the Quietus class feature.

Spoiler: Chained Body/Target Entries

Show

Solid nerf, but I strongly, strongly disagree with the convention of "Target: one creature/HD" when only one creature is affected by each activation. Simply put, I can't think of any other ability in the game that uses a target line to refer to multiple creatures over time without doing so in the same sentence (Ex: Implosion, which says "Target: one corporeal creature/round.") I expect this would cause massive confusion in anyone trying to read the entries quickly, obviously I know I would have been if I hadn't read the old version without them. The standard for target entries in any 3.5 system is that if it says multiple targets, they're all hit at once. If someone jumped to Chained Body because they heard it was good, saw "target 1 creature/HD" and didn't read carefully enough to notice that there's no "s" at the end of "creature" in the first sentence, they'd think it worked on multiple creatures every time. Further down on say, Spirit Shackles, it only says Target: Two creatures as expected (even though it has multiple charges), as does Justice (which has only one charge). Skimming makes it look like there are a ton of mass debuffs, when in actuality there are lots of charged single-target debuffs. Apologies if this is already being /has been addressed or sounds harsh, but I think it's very important. The rest of the new description blocks is all familiar and works as expected except this.

It's been changed to be more in line with normal entries.

Spoiler: Responses to post-changelist entries from changelist spoiler

Show

Divine Presence: summoning changed from hours to days, most impact at lowest levels before hours last all day. Let's see: Lesser can get you a herd of bison or a flock of hippogriffs, that's actually pretty strong if only for overland travel. While I'm here, the middle can get you at best a scad of polar bears or Bralani, decent for wiping mooks but easily cooked by a caster, and greater is good for a pride of Leonals, which sadly at that level aren't all that crazy either (at-will Wall of Force always has uses though, and extra healing/fireballs never hurt anyone). Don't think there's any serious problems here then.

I tried to set as many rituals as possible back to 1 day/HD, because otherwise they were just spells with more use difficulties. And glad that there wasn't anything hiding in the lists. I glanced over them, but never did go check all the monsters added via splats.

Entwined Magic: is that maximum level restriction or total levels transferred? I expect the former but can see argument for the latter. I'd use, "The highest level of spells transferable."

Maximum level restriction. I'll update.

Healer's Warning: I didn't mind the remote casting, but you're right that usually isn't available that level.

I also removed it because making it work cleanly was going to be a bit of a mess.

Heavenly Gift: I'm more confused on this one now. Before it seemed like a small instant buff best used for immunity to poison before entering a lair. Now I can't tell if it's an aura or just a very long lasting AoE buff.

Cleaned it up. It's an emanation around the ritual-wielder that buffs all of this allies.

Justice: hmm, thinking on a book I re-read recently, I'd like a provision regarding false-surrender. If the benefactor surrenders he should forfeit his buff, but if the accused surrenders and then tries to attack after the buff's gone the buff should come back. Assuming aggressive player use, their ally is assumed to surrender truly (because they couldn't hack it even with the buff), and their enemy is assumed to be treacherous. Unless that's meant to be a valid way for a canny foe to negate your single-shot (though high-powered) ritual.

It's not. The ritual is mostly intended to trap the BBEG in a duel with the charging maniac or similar, so that minions can't come to the rescue. I'll add in the false surrender provisions.

Network: aha, it seems you'd already removed the penalties, well played.

On review, they were just too much for using the rituals. They would have needed to be better to deserve that kind of backlash.

Radiance: has flipped from anti-undead to not really, since the only status effects here that work on undead are blinding and ghost anchoring. Pretty good array of effects and still does something against undead, but I'd still take Judgement because it doesn't make you stand stock-still for a minimum of 7 rounds each time you use it, that's just asking for it.

Flipped stunned for dazed, which undead aren't immune to, and also grabbed the damage multiplier from Sunburst against undead. So zombies will have to be a bit more careful now.

Life's Wrappings/Shield of the Soul: I mentioned these before, but I'll add that they're reminding me of the Druid's Rejuvenation Cocoon spell, except instead of being a solid combo of not dying this turn/Healed in three turns/get your buffs ready, this is just lay there and hope your allies fend them off. So it remains best as a somewhat humiliating method of keeping NPCs alive when in hostile territory.

It was mostly intended as an out of combat healing tool, and to be used as a last ditch "save my buddy" when they're crippled or dying. Because of that, I might change them to immediates to trigger.

So made a fair number of changes, with the only area still outstanding being the Martyr base class itself. I'm also a little surprised at the love for the Martyr - everyone else who's tested/used the system (and I do mean everyone) has chosen to side with the Ritualist/Ritual Warrior instead as their option of choice.

[Fizban]

Nightwalkers are sentient, which makes it a little more difficult to hunt down an appropriate target - a player is looking more at outsiders or dragons in terms of monsters that are both sentient and consistently hit those HD requirements, and hunting those down is a little more difficult.

That's a solid restriction then.

[Target lines] It's been changed to be more in line with normal entries.

Yay!

[Summon monster rituals]I tried to set as many rituals as possible back to 1 day/HD, because otherwise they were just spells with more use difficulties. And glad that there wasn't anything hiding in the lists. I glanced over them, but never did go check all the monsters added via splats.

Oh I didn't go over the splat stuff, just the core lists. Main here is BoED, checking lists 3, 6, and 9. SM3 has Coure Eladrin and Musteval Guardinal, that's incorporeal scouting and some magic missile spamming, 6 has the Equinal which is nothing special, 9 starts having problems because they dumped a ton of stuff on it. Moon Dogs are terrible in a fight but have Astral Projection and Ethereal Jaunt at-will, Firre Eladrin have 12 level cleric casting, and Ursinal Guardinals have 12 level wizard casting (compare to the standard Coutal's 9th level sorcerer casting). Owl Archons do have Reincranate SLA, and Sword Archons are rolling in Divinations. Monster Manuals don't have any real additions for Good SM lists, Fiend Folio's Movanic Deva's always been a bit nuts as written on SM7, and I found the Valkyrie in Tome of Battle for end lists.

Considering how few Good creatures there are on the SM lists, a specific list for the rituals might be better, or a hybrid, since using specific lists cuts off a lot of lower level options you might want, like Hound or Lantern Archons. Say:

Lesser: SM3 Good only+ Bauriar, Coure Eladrin, and Musteval Guardinal
[medium]: SM 5 and 6 Good only+ Lantern Archon, Leskylor, and Equinal Guardinal (SM5 includes flying and single attack options as well as the Hound Archon)
Greater: SM 7, 8, or 9 Good only+ Asura, Three-Headed Leskylor, Owl Archon, Sword Archon, Valkyrie and maybe Movanic Deva (FF, if you're fine with Hallow, Commune, and proper Raise Dead on tap)
(Absent: SM8 Warden Archon [True Seeing 3/day] and Hollyphant [no save stun attack], SM9 Quesar [neutral alignment], the Astral Projector and the lv12 casters)

That is, assuming you want it to feel like a summoning spell. Greater ends up extremely versatile, but still far less so than a normal SM9 which could get whole packs of the lower level options. And you're still comparing a Valkyrie or Leonal to 7 charges of Wail of the Banshee. If you want it more restricted, then I'd just cherry pick the well known and/or bland celestials:

Lesser: Celestial Dire Badger, Coure Eladrin, Musteval Guardinal, Lantern Archon (Dire Badger from SM3 for fighting, Lantern is moved down a bit to match it's Improved Familiar friends)
[medium]: Hound Archon, Bralani Eladrin, Equinal Guardinal
Greater: Sword Archon, Leonal Guardinal, and Valkyrie (for chaotic representation)

Edit: oh, hadn't considered the Protectar (Minatures Handbook), the littlest quasi-angels. Probably wouldn't show up on SM until 3, but could be appropriate for Lesser Divine Prescence, and take the place of the Celestial Dire Badger on the narrow version so it's all proper celestials.

It also finally occurs to me that the restriction to only one active copy of any ritual means that you in fact cannot summon a herd of bison or a flock of hippogriffs, which significantly reduces that utility, and makes the whole thing a lot weaker and less awesome (reminiscent of the Astral Construct nerf, except this was there from the beginning so it's not a nerf). Does the one at a time restriction also apply to special class rituals, such as the Planar Animist's summoning, or the Quietus's undead? (presumably yes to the first and no to the latter). Class based rituals often have multiple forms but it's not clear how distinct they are for purposes of maintenance. Since the Planar Animist has Planar Rituals, I could argue that each summon is it's own ritual, or each creature entry, or at the very least each available plane.

So made a fair number of changes, with the only area still outstanding being the Martyr base class itself. I'm also a little surprised at the love for the Martyr - everyone else who's tested/used the system (and I do mean everyone) has chosen to side with the Ritualist/Ritual Warrior instead as their option of choice.

Well I haven't actually read the Ritualist or Ritual Warrior's rituals yet, but yeah I prefer stuff I can just use rather than stuff I have to kill for. I can gladly justify executing or even sacrificing an enemy soldier, but making all my main features rely on doing so constantly is too far in moral and mechanical vulnerability. Not sure I'd actually want to play a Martyr since it's more reliant on effective party-mates and I never trust anyone to pull their weight, but I certainly prefer it in concept. Good use of summons or Immolator Apostate would help with that.

There's also the problem where even one Ritualist/Warrior rather darkens the whole party's alignment and makes a Martyr quite out of place.