Rituals without failure.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, so, we know that the rituals in the 4E system suck anus. Unlike the skill challenge or the power system, it's really hard to figure out what they were trying to do here. As far as I could tell it was to open up certain game effects so people wouldn't have to always suck wizard cock. It was also to prevent wizards from blowing their spell slots on stuff like Guards and Wards when there was supposed to be a dungeon crawl. It was also part of 4E's paradigm that things that last longer than 5 minutes should have a permanent cost. Finally--and most importantly--the ritual system was done to completely snip the balls off of things like 'affecting the world' and 'player control' like naughty poodles... all in the name of balance. The first two I'm sympathetic two, the second two are bullshit. So I'm throwing away the third and fourth design principles right now.

Still, the basic idea isn't that bad. The ritual system should be easy to grok, encompass a wide range of effects, have the individual effects of the spells be flexible so that higher-level characters can get more out of some of the rituals, and whose primary cost should be time.


Note: When this proposal talks about a Time / Value / Distance Progression scale I am referring to a mechanic in d20 Modern (it may be in other Superhero RPGs, but that's where I first saw it) where instead of nitpicking ranges it was done more abstractly. An effect may have a smaller or greater value depending on what its value was on these scales. For example, a Power Level 6 fireball would travel much further than a Power Level 3 fireball. Here's an example of such a chart:

Rank Time Value
1 3 seconds 1
2 6 seconds 2
3 1 minute 5
4 5 minutes 10
5 20 minutes 25
6 1 hour 50
7 5 hours 100
8 1 day 250
9 1 week 500
10 1 month 1000
11 3 months 2500
12 1 year 5000
13 5 years 10,000
14 1 decade 25,000
15 5 decades 50,000
16 1 century 100,000
17 5 centuries 250,000
18 10 centuries 500,000
19 50 centuries 1 million
20 100 centuries 2.5 million

Obviously the scale will have to be rebalanced for our D&D game, but that's what I'm getting at here.

Rituals are game effects which can change depending on the amount of effort that you put into them. They are the reverse of extended tests; rather than deciding how much gets done within a certain amount of time and skill, the ritualist expends a certain amount of time and effort to see the effect. Rituals often take much longer than extended tests (up to a period of dozens of years or more!) and are thus more flexible on someone's time. All rituals are inherently extraordinary; if someone needs to accomplish a mundane task then they are better served with repeated skill checks or extended tests. While a large range of activities fall under the heading of 'Ritual', they do not inherently correspond to a or even any power source. A Ritual granted by a Fighter's class feature might be Martial, a ritual read off of a magical scroll could be arcane, or a ritual gained from a skill stunt may be unsourced.

When you decide to conduct a ritual, you decide how much time you want to spend on it. Choose a value of time on the Time Progression Scale (TPS) and examine the corresponding number (i.e. 2 for one hour, 8 for one year, etc.). The corresponding number is used as described in the effect with the [Ritual] tag to determine an outcome. Once the ritualist decides how much time they want to spend on the project they cannot decide to end the ritual early to complete it at a lower effect. It may be in the ritualist's best interests, therefore, to split a task into smaller rituals if possible rather than risk being interrupted or having overestimated the effort by trying to do one large ritual at once.

Next to the Ritual tag is a value in braces; the first number is the entry on the TPS of the minimum amount of time that someone must continually work on the ritual in order to count as a session and advance the completion time. The second number is the maximum amount of time someone can choose to go between ritual sessions before the ritual automatically fails. For example, a ritual with a value of {2/6} means that you must spend at least one hour working on it and cannot leave the project idle for more than a month. As long as those requirements are met a character can take as long as they would like to on a ritual. If a ritual takes longer than 12 hours to qualify as a session, a person is only allowed to perform non-stress activities such as sleeping, eating, drinking, and/or light exercise and conversation in the interim; regardless a person cannot take more than 12 hours off.

Some rituals have costs to perform; this represents the amount of materials, pay, training, etc. that the ritualist needs to provide for the ritual. The ritual will state whether the payment needs to be up-front or whether the payment will require a cost per unit of time once the ritual is started. In case of the latter, it is prudent for the ritualist not to spend too much time between tasks. If a ritual has an up-front cost then if the materials get lost, destroyed, or made unusable in the interim the ritualist must immediately pay the difference before starting the ritual again. If a ritual has an ongoing cost then the ritual immediately halts and cannot be worked upon until all of the previous costs since the time of stoppage has been paid--if the time lag has been too long, it may be more prudent to start over. If the ritual is seriously disturbed, such as with the death of the participants or the destruction of the site, the ritual may fail altogether. Payment towards a ritual is not recoverable if the ritual fails or has an effect less than what the ritualist wanted it to be. If a cost says 'equal to time spent', this means that the ritualist must link the entry number from the time spent on the TPS to corresponding entry on the Value Progression Scale.

While many rituals can exist and be used by others in the forms of scrolls, devices, and magical items there are many rituals that cannot exist in such a form--those are typically rituals granted by class features or skill stunts. Some rituals are blatantly better or worse than others; this effect is counterbalanced by how difficult it is to use or obtain.


Example Rituals:

Mastery of Disease Control [Ritual] {2/4}
Prerequisites: Heal bonus of +4 or greater
Cost: Equal to Time Spent - 2
Range: Personal
Effect: Choose to cure or inflict one non-magical disease of your choosing when starting this ritual. After spending a value on the Time Progression Scale on this ritual, add this entry level plus one-half your level to determine a new entry number on the Distance Progression Scale to see how far your ritual reaches. Then make a Heal check against the disease in question. If the check succeeds, then you instantly eliminate every trace of the pathogen in that radius or introduce it to the area. If you chose to inflict the disease, then everyone is considered to have been considered exposed to the disease. The disease counts as a magical infliction in this case but can be cured as if it was non-magical. Mundane barriers or precautions do not stop someone from being able to be infected or cured; the effect manifests instantly in their contact zone.

Training the Peaceful Villagers [Ritual] {3/6}
Prerequisites: Administration bonus of +5 or greater, character level 11.
Cost: Equal to Time Spent -4 plus 100 gp per week.
Range: Personal, but see below.
Effect: Subtract 2 from the entry number of the amount of time you are planning to expend on the Time Progression Scale, then compare it to the Value Progression Scale. This is the number of intelligent humanoids that you can train with this ritual. The people you intend to train must be capable of paying attention to you and of you to them at least a little bit in order to get any benefit. Any individual being trained must also meet the ritual time and attention requirements to get any benefit; if your trainees are routinely being interrupted you may need to hold more sessions so that none of them go too long between sessions. Once the appropriate time of the ritual is spent make an Administration check. The results of your check determine the maximum level your trainees can have, total. You decide which NPC class you trained your subjects in. DC: 20 (Level 2) DC: 26 (Level 3) DC: 32 (Level 4) DC: 38 (Level 5)

Mountainhome [Ritual] {6/6}
Prerequisites: Nature and Craft Bonus of +5
Cost: None
Range: To point where the ritualist can see at least part of what they're working on or 500 feet, whichever is greater.
Effect: You attempt to raise a hill and/or excavate an area in it. This ritual draws in earth and stone of their choosing from the Elemental Plane of Earth. The ritualist can choose to have their Mountainhome be one solid mass of rock or be split up into several types/structures. If during the creation of the Mountainhome it within 25 feet of material more than one ton of matter that isn't unworked water, earth, or stone the ritual stops and the hill cannot be worked on until the obstruction is cleared. It's thus recommended that the ritualist use this spell either on existing mountaintop or after taking care to uproot trees/houses/etc. beforehand. After the ritual is at least halfway complete, ritualist can also start to add create crude, unworked tunnels anywhere within the area of the Mountainhome of and to their liking. The magic of the ritual makes it stable while the Mountainhome is being created, but when it ends the shape, location, and excavation of the structure may cause it to collapse on itself. No point or slope on the outside of the Mountainhome can be greater than 5 feet higher or lower than within a 1m radius of its surroundings. The Mountainhome grows at the same rate throughout the ritual. The final size of the mountain home has an entry on the VPS equal to the time spent on the TPS.