Homebrew Skill Rituals Part 1

A while back I decided some of the stuff about rituals just bugs me and I can’t really help it, much the same time I found out that treasure parcels bug me as well. It’s just that the idea of keeping up with the WBL has always felt fiddly to me. Back in 3.5 it was a pain making sure PCs always had the money they were “supposed” to have all the time. I’m always looking for ways to fix that.

Here in 4e it’s easier – thanks to the DMG2 (or just an eye to the item progression table), I don’t have to constantly keep on top of what kind of neck slot, weapon and armor item each PC has to make sure it’s up to the minute, since I can internalize those bonuses. This serves to cut a lot of time from my DM planning because I no longer have to worry about dropping treasure and being fair and timely in giving everyone items. They no longer need them, so I can just give them stuff when it feels natural to have cool treasures around.

Making cheaper rituals was one way to keep on top of them, but frankly, a lot of rituals are just annoying because of the rules they all share.  They use up money, sometimes pocket change compared to the level the PCs are, and they take a lot of time. Buying components and counting coins gets really fiddly. Sometimes I like fiddly – I play GURPS. But I don’t play 4e for fiddly. In fact 90% of 4e was about elimination of fiddly-ness and I like it that way. But some elements of fiddly-tude remain. The time usage, relative size and complexity of the texts and resource expenditure of rituals outweighs their usefulness. The classic example is Knock, where you spend minutes, money and a healing surge to open a door.

It’s great that the 4e rituals don’t infringe on the Rogue and other classes by being instantly better than Skill checks. But I think they could stand to be a little better by taking a cue from powers, and from the things Rituals got right. Here’s my logic on this, I don’t expect anyone to agree, but at least for my game, I feel I want to do this. Here’s what I think.

We learn from Powers:

•Being limited in amount by your level and frequency is a good thing for balance.
•Being essentially resource-less is a good thing for fun.
•Being brief is a good thing for play.

We learn from Rituals:

•Being time-intensive is a good thing for balance.
•Being varied and useful outside of combat is a good thing for fun.
•Being divided into categories is a good thing for play.

Mashing this up, I came up with the idea of Skill Rituals. A Skill Ritual is a small skill challenge, small enough to fit on the typical power card (if Disguise Self and Bigby’s Grasping Hands can fit in one power card, then any of these can). All Skill Rituals are, at best, Encounter powers. This is so that PCs cannot invoke the mini skill challenge whenever they want. Not only that, Skill Rituals take more than a Standard action to fulfill. They have successes and failures like normal skill challenges do, and they take a certain amount of time to use.

Skill Rituals are divided into three types – Exploration, Social and Preparation. Exploration Skill Rituals are used to handle out of combat movement, knowledge and physical obstacles. Social Skill Rituals are used to handle out of combat social and psychological obstacles. Preparation Skill Rituals are used to gain some kind of benefit before the next combat. Preparation Skill Rituals are the ONLY Skill Ritual type that requires money, and not all of them do – they are used to prepare for combat in some way. As you’ve figured out by now, Skill Rituals aren’t just magic. You’ll see some of that in a moment.

Taking a cue from powers, Skill Rituals are limited by level. Different GMs can assign them in different ways. I would have PCs be able to start with 1 Skill Ritual, and earn additional ones at 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th and 30th levels. PCs with Ritual Caster as a feature get an extra Skill Ritual, but it must be the same power source as they are.

Skill Rituals are short. They’re typically 2 successes before 3 failures. You cannot be aided during them, EXCEPT if the Ritual has a skill that allows you to be aided by someone. Skill rituals have set DC types – Easy, Moderate, Hard, like normal skill checks. The DM assigns these based on your level or what you’re doing. For example, trying to hit a harder lock with Knock will earn you a harder DC regardless of your level. The Lock won’t get easier if you’re too weak. Instead of recovering a daily item power, you can recover a Skill Ritual during a milestone.

Skill Rituals all use skills to roll, and you must be trained in the skills the ritual mentions to use it.

With this established, I’ve come up with a few examples of the concept:

Knock Level 1 Encounter Ritual
You use arcane magic and some mundane know-how to open a lock.
Encounter @ Arcane, Exploration
1 minute or 1 standard action per check, once per turn; Melee Touch or Ranged 3
Target: One lock
Difficulty: 2 successes before 3 failures
Arcana (DC set by lock; or Moderate) – You utilize magic power to try to force the lock.
Thievery (Moderate) – Support (move action). +2 bonus to your next Arcana check result.
Success: You open the lock.
Failure: If you fail to open the lock, but scored at least one success, the next ally attempting to use Thievery to open the lock gains a +2 power bonus to his or her Thievery checks to open the lock.

To dissect the stranger parts: some Skill Rituals have appropriate uses within a combat, so they have a separate combat time. You can only ever make one check each turn (to keep things interesting, and reserve action points for things like attacks). Support means it can be done by either you or an ally, and also has a “combat time” equivalency for such cases. Supports are ALWAYS faster than the normal ritual action. That way you can take a break, use the support, blast away a bad guy with your standard action, then return to your work the next turn. However, an ally can only support you once per skill ritual.

Some rituals DON’T have appropriate combat uses though. You won’t be trying to make a magic sword inside a combat, or any other Preparation type Skill Ritual.

So why have both the time duration and an encounter duration? Sometimes DMs want to know how long an action initially takes, even if you won’t be able to do it again for 5 minutes. DMs who don’t care can use a simple time frame – say, 1 standard action per check once per turn, until completion. Thievery is still faster than this – one check and you pop the lock. And you can do it more often – you don’t get paralyzed for 5 minutes if there’s two locks on the door. You can also keep trying if you fail. So there’s still some ample room for Thievery in the game, therefore, as I see it, it’s still balanced.

Here’s a few more examples. In the next post on this subject, I’ll clean up the rules and present the keywords and such (i.e. Support) in a more easily digestible format closer to how the PHB would talk to you on the subject.

Magic Circle Level 5 Daily Ritual
You create a barrier around an area that cannot be easily penetrated.
Daily @ Arcane or Divine, Preparation
1 minute or 1 standard action per check, once per turn; Close Burst 1
Target: An area centered on you
Difficulty: Special.
Arcana or Religion (Hard) – You attempt to create a magic circle that keeps out enemies. You roll until you have 2 successes or until your first failure. The Close Burst is expanded by the amount of successes you have.
Dungeoneering (Hard) – Support (move action). +2 bonus to your next Arcana or Religion check result.
Success: You create a magic circle that is a Close Burst 2 zone that keeps out enemies for an hour. The magic circle is a zone that enemies cannot enter unless their level is higher than your own. If a higher-level enemy moves into the zone, it becomes weakened while inside the zone.
Failure: You create a magic circle that is a Close Burst equal to the number of successes you had before failing. It lasts 30 minutes. Enemies of a level lower than your own cannot enter the zone. If an enemy with a level equal to or higher than your own moves into the zone, it has a -2 penalty to attack rolls while in the zone.

Sending Level 5 Daily Ritual
You send a message into the distance.
Daily @ Arcane, Exploration
5 minutes or 1 standard action per check, once per turn; anywhere on the same plane
Target: One creature
Difficulty: 2 success before 3 failures.
Arcana (Moderate) – You weave the spell that will carry a message to your desired location.
Nature (Hard) – Support (move action). +2 bonus to your next Arcana check result.
Success: You send a 25 word message to the target and he or she receives it mentally and can respond likewise.
Failure: You send a 25 word message to the target. He or she receives it mentally, but he or she cannot respond, and some of the message might be scrambled in transit.

Tongues Level 1 Daily Ritual
You can speak any language.
Daily @ Arcane or Divine or Primal, Exploration
1 minute; personal
Target: You
Difficulty: 2 success before 3 failures.
Arcana or Religion or Nature (Moderate) – You imbue yourself with the ability to speak and understand any language.
History (Hard) – Support. +2 bonus to your next Arcana or Religion or Nature check result.
Success: Select 1 language you have seen or heard recently. You can speak and understand that language until the next extended rest. If you suffered no failures, you can write that language natively as well.
Failure: You can comprehend the language on one piece of writing or one spoken conversation you had recently, but you cannot speak, write, or carry this understanding to other pieces of writing or conversations in general.

Brew Potion Level 1 Encounter Ritual
You concoct a magical potion.
Encounter @ Arcane or Divine or Primal, Preparation
1 hour
Cost: Special
Difficulty: Special
Arcana or Religion or Nature (Hard) – You attempt to brew a potion. The Ritual’s cost is the market price of the Potion. You roll until you suffer a failure. For every 2 successes before a failure, you hasten the ritual by 20 minutes. For every 3 successes before a failure, you cut the ritual’s price by 1/5th. You end the ritual after six successes or at the first failure.
Arcana or Religion or Nature (Moderate) – Support. +2 bonus to your next Arcana or Religion or Nature check result.
Success: You brew the potion, perhaps faster and cheaper, and higher quality – it might sell for more than 1/5 the price if you can find a buyer.
Failure: You brew the potion for the full market price after an hour of work, and at the average quality. It sells as usual.

These are just ideas right now, but I’d find these a lot more endearing than the rituals we have now, and I’m going to try hard to find a way to implement them into my games from now on. The good thing about it is that it’s pretty easy for the DM to just come up with something for you to do here. You can even keep your normal rituals alongside these. As I said before, these can also work for Martial things, not just for magic. Here’s two examples.

Awesome Jump Level 5 Encounter Ritual
You leap an incredible height.
Encounter @ Martial, Exploration
1 minute or 1 move action per check per turn; personal
Target: You
Difficulty: 2 success before 3 failures.
Athletics (Moderate) – You gear yourself up for a huge leap.
Endurance (Hard) – Support (minor action). +2 bonus to your next Athletics check result. Allies cannot support you and you can only roll the supporting skill once per ritual.
Success: Add 10 to the sum of the total results of both your successful jump checks together to determine the distance you jump. You count as though you had taken a running start, and you can leap the same amount horizontally OR vertically, rather than tallying vertical distance differently.
Failure: You leap 4 squares horizontally or vertically.

Infiltration Level 1 Daily Ritual
Creeping along the shadows and past the guards, you make your way through an area.
Daily @ Martial, Exploration
10 minutes; personal
Target: You
Difficulty: 2 success before 3 failures.
Stealth (DC set by DM) – You creep along an encounter area (such as one map) the whole of which you know, can see, or have seen before.
Acrobatics (Hard) – Support. +2 bonus to your next Stealth check result. Allies cannot support you and you can only roll the supporting skill once per ritual.
Success: You move through the area undetected and may be able to find a way to help your allies inside.
Failure: You fail to clear the area, but might be able to escape without being caught.

Some of them come out a little ambiguous, but that’s because Skill Challenges are so flexible in my view that giving a chance for a different outcome is important.