Talk:Rituals (4E)

Casting time and duration

The following is some thoughts I have and that were mentioned while painting. --TexaS 23:33, 7 April 2009 (CEST)

Rituals use minutes and hours when all other time in the game has been made abstract.

Casting time should be "Can be cast during short rest.", "Can be cast during long rest." or "Can be cast as a standard action." and so on.

Duration should be handled in mush the same way. It should be encounter, until milestone, daily, until the party have a few days, for an adventure arc or permanent and so on.

Using Rituals

Participants

Many rituals mention participants. A participant is someone who tried to support the success of the ritual, whether successful or not.

Rituals and Resting

Rituals with a cast time of 10 minutes can be performed during a short rest.

Deception Rituals & Disbelief

The disbelief difficulty on deception rituals in the original rule varies too widely. With a good caster check supported by ritual assistants, disbelief is impossible even on an Insight roll of 20. This becomes especially important with illusions that cannot merely be ignored, such Hallucinatory Terrain, Sympathy, and Fairy Debt.

A proposed way to resolve this is that the Insight DC is 10 + the Arcana skill bonus of the caster, regardless of the ritual check result. In extreme cases, it is still impossible to disbelieve, but this comes up much more rarely.

Rituals as Skill Challenges

In certain cases, it might be necessary to perform a ritual in an action scene, usually because of time constraints or because the opposition interrupted the ritual casting. In such circumstances, one minute of cast time is equal to one success during a skill challenge. The key skill of the ritual is the primary skill of the skill challenge, and other skills can be used depending on the situation and type of ritual. The listed secondary skills generally work, in addition to any creative skill uses players can come up with.

The DC of these checks is 15 +2/3 level of the ritual. One character able to cast the ritual must always try and use the key skill each round. Record each such roll; the highest such attempt is used as the ritual check, with a +2 for each other character who contributed at least one success to the ritual.

If the ritual is performed in combat, there is no time limit. If it is performed out of combat, the usual three-round limit on skill challenges applies.

Key Skill	Secondary Skills
Arcana	Bluff
Religion	Diplomacy
Nature	Athletics
Heal	Endurance
Ritual Type	Secondary Skills
Binding	Intimidation
Creation	History
Deception	Diplomacy
Divination	Perception
Exploration	Stealth
Restoration	Insight
Scrying	Dungeoneering
Travel	Acrobatics
Warding	Thievery

Acquiring Rituals

It is personal knowledge, not a ritual book, that enables you to cast a ritual. Some form of handbook or description is needed to actually cast the ritual, but the magic is in you, not in the prop. The market price of the ritual is the cost to learn it, generally in materials needed to practice with the ritual until you have mastered it, but it also includes tutor or book expenses. Merely purchasing a writeup of a ritual costs 10% of this cost, and if useful if your ritual book is lost or as a back up.

Creating Rituals

Creating a new ritual from scratch is a long, hard, expensive process. It is generally best to see if one can be found somewhere in the world before endeavoring to research it from scratch. Developing high-level rituals is an especially daunting task.

To make a new ritual you need to go trough the following steps.

• Design the ritual rules, making a complete writeup and have the GM agree to it.
• Research the ritual for one day per level of ritual, paying five times the market price.
• Make a roll using the key skill, with a difficulty of 10 + the level of the ritual.
  • If this roll fails, it can be attempted again, at the cost of one week and the casting cost of the ritual in components.
• Once created, decide if you want to keep the ritual secret, or spread it and gain profit. If you choose the later, you earn back four times the Market Price of the ritual.

Obsolete Rituals

The Obsolete Rituals (4E) page contains rituals not likely to get any more attention or development, but which I still don't want to just delete

Rituals in Development

This section describes rituals in development for use with 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Totem Scout Circle

Project your spirits in the form of animals.

Level: 8	Component Cost: 150 gp.
Category: Exploration	Market Price: 625 gp.
Time: 10 minutes	Key Skill: Nature
Duration: Variable

This is the same as the Totem Scout ritual, except each participant in the ritual can posses an animal based on their totem.

Totem Scout

You project your spirit in a totem animal.

Level: 6	Component Cost: 75 gp.
Category: Exploration	Market Price: 325 gp.
Time: 10 minutes	Key Skill: Nature
Duration: Variable

This is a Totem ritual.

You gain control of an animal of your totem species and can see trough its senses. This animal must start within a thousand squares (one mile) of you. If there is no animal of the correct species in range, the ritual fails. Sustaining the ritual is a standard action, and allows you to control the totem scout and perceive through its senses. There is no need for line of sight or line of effect.

The totem scout uses your attributes except as outlined below, but is a minion and cannot make attacks. It cannot speak, manipulate objects, open doors, or otherwise interact intelligently with creatures or objects. The ritual ends if the totem scout takes any damage. The size of the totem scout is the same as that of a natural animal of its type. The totem scout gains a special bonus depending on your totem.

Totem	Benefit
Gatherer	Totem Scout can manipulate objects and open doors
Grazer	Ritual does not end when the totem scout is damaged; it can take as much damage as you can.
Hunter	+4 speed
Pouncer	+2 speed, +4 initiative
Prey	+2 Speed, +5 Perception
Stalker	+5 Stealth

The maximum range and duration of the ritual depends on the result of the Nature check.

Nature Check Result	Duration	Range
0-9	10 minutes	1,000 (1 mile)
10-19	1 hour	5,000 (5 miles)
20-29	2 hours	10,000 (10 miles)
30-39	4 hours	15,000 (15 miles)
40 or more	8 hours	20,000 (20 miles)

The totem scout is magically linked to you, even after it has been defeated, and counts as a personal possession for the purpose of targeting powers and rituals.