House Rules - Rituals

While wizards, clerics, and quite a few others throw powerful supernatural forces around during a fight, the effects available to most casters when pressured are rather limited. It is when a magician has time to focus and prepare that he is truly able to alter the fundamental laws of reality.

Rituals, in contrast to powers, represent truly significant casting - magic that changes the world and is spoke about in hushed tones for centuries to come. On the other hand, rituals also represent more utility-focused magic - arcane tricks that are perhaps simple to do, but most mages haven't developed the knack for casting them quickly in combat situations because they simply never needed to.

The 4th Edition Player's Handbook outlines rules for rituals, which are somewhat changed here to allow greater access to them, as well as to reduce, somewhat, the significant financial cost of using many rituals.

Who Can Cast Rituals

The short answer: anyone. Despite the fundamental difficulty of working with primal laws of reality, nothing prevents an armored warrior from learning how to do it. Trained casters have an easier time and find working with rituals to be simpler, but nothing more. The only other requirement is that at least rudimentary training is required - every ritual requires at least one, and sometimes more, of arcana, nature, and religion to be trained (see the ritual description for the key skill). Individuals can never learn a ritual keyed to a skill in which they are untrained.

Acquiring and Mastering Rituals

One of the significant features that distinguish rituals from other forms of casting is that ritual magic is complicated enough that, for most casters, at least, it requires the precise effects of the spell to be carefully followed. As such, ritual spells need to be recorded in some form for review - whether that be within a spellbook, through a series of specially knotted-ropes, or even stored in a mystical gem that speaks back the requirements on command. The exact format is irrelevant, save that the cost and physical properties of the storage method differ.

Ritual Caster [Heroic Feat]

You have trained your mind to work with rituals, finding them easier to master and far less costly to perform.

Benefit: You can learn and record a ritual in 1/5 the time that is normally required. In addition, you have learned to make small substitutions in the materials required to perform a ritual, allowing you to do so more cheaply. You may cast a single ritual per day, per-tier (one at heroic, two at paragon, etc.) at no cost, provided the ritual doesn't create an object of value.

Expert Ritualist [Heroic Feat]

Prerequisites: Ritual Caster, Int 13 or Wis 13

Working ritual magic is simple for you, whether due to a natural gift or an abundance of training.

Benefit: You may cast a number of rituals each day equal to your Intelligence or Wisdom modifier at 1/10^th normal cost, provided the ritual doesn't create an object of value. In addition, you gain a +2 bonus to all skill checks made to perform a ritual.

The second distinguishing feature is that the incredible potential of ritual magic demands a cost from the user - mortal minds are simply not inherently suited to understanding the fundamental source of the universe. There are ways around this - most commonly, specific meditative herbs - but they are neither cheap nor fast. Recording a ritual (in any medium) has a cost equal to 25% of the ritual’s market price (if purchased directly, the listed market price of a ritual includes this cost). This cost represents the materials required to ready a caster's mind for such an undertaking.

It requires forty hours of study to learn, understand, and record a heroic-tier ritual. It takes eighty hours for paragon-tier rituals, and a whopping one-hundred and sixty hours of study for epic-tier rituals. A character can devote up to eight hours a day to studying a ritual, and up to twelve if he makes a hard Endurance check (level equal to the level of the ritual). Some casters may learn rituals faster (see below).

Finally, a character can only master a ritual of his level or lower.

Performing a Ritual in a Hurry

While it is true that rituals are difficult to perform quickly, skilled characters may attempt to do so, at some risk. Not all rituals may be performed this way - there are some forms of magic that have yet to yield success when rushed. As a general rule, rituals of the creation category that create permanent objects, binding rituals that summon a creature, and restoration rituals that bring back the dead are all incapable of being cast quickly, though there are other exceptions.

In addition, the normal length of the ritual is of significant importance when it comes to casting it with haste - it's far simpler to cast a spell in an instant if it normally takes several minutes than if it takes several hours.

Ritual Casting [Combat Action]

You can begin casting a known ritual as a standard action. Casting time is an additional standard action per ten full minutes of non-combat casting time (i.e a ten minute ritual takes two rounds to cast, a 1 hour ritual takes 7 rounds to cast). If you are stunned, or unconscious, or you do not devote at least one standard action to a ritual on any given turn, you must begin again. Rituals which require special preparation (eg. a circle of silver dust on the ground, special symbols drawn on a subject) are still subject to those requirements.

In addition to the normal cost of a ritual, casting one rapidly puts severe strain on the physical and mental wellness of the caster - for each standard action spent to cast a ritual, the caster loses one healing surge. If he has no healing surges remaining, he instead takes damage equal to his healing surge value. Finally, the caster suffers a -5 penalty to any skill check involved in casting the spell unless he can make a hard difficulty Arcana or Religion check upon conclusion of the casting.