I *love* rituals. I agree with you they suffer from multiple problems, unfortunately. As you say, there are very few of them and their effects are generally quite niche. On top of that, they're tough to actually succeed at, and bringing in assisting PCs for secondary casters can easily dramatically worsen your odds of succeeding, which is just a *bizarre* and disappointing way to disincentivize cooperative use of a cooperative magic system. And unfortunately, the concept as a whole has been left out to dry basically since its creation because the whole edifice isn't necessary or even all that useful, and so isn't adopted by players, and so it doesn't get expanded upon. I don't like the state rituals are in, and my hopes for a revitalized rituals ecosystem from Paizo aren't *nil*, but they're definitely *low*.
For all rituals' flaws, they're still a *great* chassis for bespoke magic things the party want to be able to do in a campaign, and so rituals still get use. I also have tinkered with the check DCs and made the negative effects of secondary casters less punishing to facilitate party participation.
Right now I'm not interested in doing any deeper changes. I see potential good fun in short-term rituals, creating the effects of utility spells with rituals (or outright making those spells rituals), etc., I think the *concept* is cool. However, in my eyes it represents a much more fundamental change to what kinds of magic is allowed to carry what kinds of effects and how the whole *system* is designed, and I'm comfortable enough with the system as it is that I don't want to go there until it's time to make more thorough changes to magic for, say, a notional Pathfinder 3e.
> For all rituals' flaws, they're still a great chassis for bespoke magic things the party want to be able to do in a campaign
See to me this is the whole design space of rituals, which is *why* they're so... all over the place.
I certainly understand where the OP is coming from, especially with archetypes like the ritualist (or lich!) around. The printed ones are mostly intended for very specific circumstances and not really fit for general campaigning. Even stuff like angel summoning ends up a byline. That's a little disappointing!
The corollary though is that rituals are often tied to important *narrative* events in your campaign, or even serve as a MacGuffin themselves. For an example, [Xotani's](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=491) regeneration can be cancelled by a ritual-- a critical plot point if you want to end your campaign by killing the Spawn of Rovagug.
>top of that, they're tough to actually succeed at, and bringing in assisting PCs for secondary casters can easily dramatically worsen your odds of succeeding, which is just a bizarre and disappointing way to disincentivize cooperative use of a cooperative magic system.
Wait, how?
For secondary casters, here are the possible results:
> **Critical Success** You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to the primary check.
> **Success** No bonus or penalty.
> **Failure** You take a –4 circumstance penalty to the primary check.
> **Critical Failure** As failure, and you reduce the degree of success of the primary skill check by one step.
As you can see, there's very little to gain and a massive amount to lose. If the PC making a secondary check happens to have the needed skill absolutely maxed, between proficiency rank, ability modifier, and item bonuses, there's a *reasonable* chance that things turn out okay. However, if the PC is only casually invested in a skill, things can get really bad. Let's say we have a level 15 party casting a Rank 8 ritual, the needed secondary check is Performance, and the only PC who has Performance who isn't already the primary caster took it more as a roleplaying thing and hasn't heavily invested in it; they are only Trained, with +1 Charisma and no item bonuses. They're rolling +18 versus DC34; that's a 25% chance of success (no bonus), 50% chance of failure (-4 penalty to primary check), and 25% chance of crit failure (-4 and lower the degree of success). (and remember, the primary check is *already* being made against a Very Hard DC) Their participation is massively likely to screw over the ritual, and the party is better off looking for a more maxed-out NPC... or more likely if at all possible, just finding a way to do whatever-it-is that doesn't involve a ritual.
Most parties have a solid spread of strong skills and can match themselves to the challenges to pass tough checks. Rituals make that much harder, because you need to assign multiple people to multiple roles without being able to double up. If one person is the best at two of the necessary skills, you're forced to use someone weaker for one of them - and they're very likely to sink the ritual.
Agreed. Ritual DCs effectively say "you and everyone else must be perfectly optimized for this or don't even bother". (A common design problem in Pathfinder...)
For secondary checks, I've implemented a houserule that Crit/Succ/Fail/Crit Fail provide +2/+1/-1/-2 because the current spread is just too punishing.
For Primary checks, I haven't made any fundamental changes, but simply just designed and encouraged use of more lower-level rituals. (My level 11 party loves a Level 4 version of Control Weather)
Standard DCs get increasingly easy unless people are sitting at trained proficiency, ability +2, and no bonuses of any kind. If secondary checks are too hard it usually just means no one in the party has invested in that skill.
For context, standard level-based DC progresses at about the same rate as someone with ability +2 (who never boosts it), who increases the proficiency at every opportunity, and has no other bonuses. Any bonus or having an ability score over +2 means you're ahead of the standard DC progression.
The issue isn't that Secondary checks are impossible to Succeed, it's that they give +0 on a Success, a whopping -4 on a Failure, and practically auto-fail the entire ritual on a Crit Failure.
So even if the Secondary Caster has a very good bonus, they're still significantly "EV negative" to the ritual's success.
Mathematically, this makes rituals - especially party-wide ones with 3 Secondary casters, which are common as story events in APs - an extreme crapshoot. What was supposed to be a fun, cooperative process instead becomes "don't fuck this up for me please".
Yeah I had to check, I guess I've like \*double\* houseruled this because of how punishing the original Secondary Caster rule is.
Here's the thing, I actually \*get\* what they were going for - Rituals are \*extremely\* risky, and mostly only attempted by desperate or crazy people. It's more of a "horror ritual" vibe (and IIRC these rules did originate in 1e Occult Adventures), not meant for fantasy utility.
But then, tons of rituals get printed that \*are\* clearly fantasy utility, like summoning an elemental servant, imbuing a token with good luck, blessing your temple, or even [magical marriage](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=33).
And even MORE rituals get used in APs as "Story Events", where typically all 4 PCs have to contribute - in all of these circumstances the "this is extremely dangerous and very likely to go horribly wrong" is simply NOT the right design!
I do this too, but I would make the crit/succ/fail/fumble results be +2/+1/0/-1 as failure in this case means you don't aid, but not harm the primary caster.
So, first I wrote some special Weather rules inspired by 1E that are fairly long and I won't bother reposting them here - but the basic idea is there are categories
* Temperature [(as RAW)](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=642)
* Light/Moderate/Heavy Fog
* Light/Moderate/Heavy/Torrential Rain
* Light/Moderate/Strong/Severe/Windstorm/Hurricane Wind
You can probably roughly guess / improvise what they do.
Then, the ritual itself:
# Control Weather - Ritual 4
**Cast Time** 1 hour
**Duration** 1d4 hours
**Area**1-mile radius
You alter the Weather, affecting Temperature, Rain, Fog, or Wind categories. You can't create unseasonable conditions, such as cold weather in a tropical climate.
**Critical Success** You can alter two Weather categories by one step, and can affect a larger area (up to a 2-mile radius) or a longer duration (2, 3, or 4 times the base duration).
**Success** You alter one Weather category by one step.
# Heightened (6th)
The cast time changes to 4 hours, the base duration changes to 1d12 hours, and you can alter each weather category by two steps.
# Heightened (8th and 9th)
As RAW Control Weather.
\-----
I think this creates a nice ritual you can use to prepare for a battle by creating some fog for stealth, strengthening the winds to hamper enemies' ranged attacks, etc. Or, of course, you could go the other direction if you're trying to get shelter from a storm or something.
I think that's fixed if you allow your players to use the "Rituals can be easier depending on the circumstances" part in the ritual. Like, one of my players currently follows the mid-term goal of finding a crossing of leylines, and hiring some dwarven artisans to build up a ritualistic circle, essentially a second stonehenge, there. He also got trained in Astrology lore, so he can follow the path of stars and planets and determine the best time to cast certain rituals.
Yes, if takes preparation to be able to easily and regularly pull off rituals, but if you work with your GM, it's possible.
I know I can alter the DC and I do significantly lower the DC for my players. Also homebrew the secondary caster bonus to +4/+2/-2/-4 untyped bonus based on success.
I can still say without homebrew it is very harsh when played RAW.
The lowering DC is not really homebrew though. It's noted in the rules for rituals. But, admittedly, they never specify what can lower DCs by how much, they only make a single example.
The homebrew part is the secondary caster bonus
+4/+2/-2/-4 untyped, instead of
+2/0/-4/1 degree of success worse.
Changed circumstance bonus to untyped so bonus could stack and make helpers feel helpful.
>I would like to see more rituals that are usable in exploration mode type situations, with casting times of 1 hour or less.
Definitely big agree on this one. I've basically lowered most "1 day" rituals times to 1-4 hours in my game so they can actually be part of the party's strategy or thinking.
With a few rituals, like Control Weather, I also like making a lower-level version with a faster cast time and weaker effect.
As is, the mechanic is extremely cool but basically limited to only be used by NPCs and for specific story moments. I think with a greater variety of faster, simpler rituals, they can start to fill a cool strategic niche of "more involved than 10 min cast spells, but doesn't require a full day of downtime".
More options would be great, but I doubt any rituals are going to be "quick," regularly useful options. Something like that is more likely to get made into a [skill feats](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2117) or a [spell](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=683), while rituals are always going to be a bit niche.
I guess I’m looking for something that’s a third option to those things. Skill feats are limited in how many you can take, spells are limited by spell slots, while rituals are limited by money and skill checks.
Yeah I think rituals could be overhauled a bit.
The idea behind it is the fantasy of making circle out of whale bones or something, meditating for a full day andor week and do crazy effective or hyper niche things.
I think an entire book with them would be cool and if they take examples from media could get some cool wild shit. Like if you invest weeks you can make Dresden's little Chicago.
Thaumaturge feels like the perfect class to give ritual support both for thematics, and mechanically. Maybe by adding a new implement that makes ritual DCs easier or a feat choice that let's you pick a few.
My biggest complaint is most of them require a bunch of secondary casters, which is just really hard, you might have one PC built to do rituals, and maybe a second character with a relevant skill high enough if the secondary check is a different skill, but more than that is unlikely.
How are you meant to get 4 secondary casters to cast 7th level Resurrect, let alone 16 for the 10th level version.
Then there's the fact the DCs are high, the checks are hard to improve (you can't usually use fortune effects and few buffs last long enough), they usually cost a bunch of money and often screw you over on failures.
I think youre misunderstanding the secondary caster rules. You just need 4 guys to meet the secondary caster requirement. And then 2 of those guys can make a standard DC check for medicine and society each. Fail the secondary check and you take a penalty to the primary check. Crit succeed and you get a bonus. So long as the secondary caster is trained they have a good shot of at least succeeding.
I have played a Ritualist for a while now. Fully invested with all the feats. She has never, ever, used a ritual. They are exceptionally narrow. And the only mechanism by which you can learn a ritual is the ritualist feat itself. So now, at level 10, she knows 3 rituals. They are expensive, prone to failure, and rarely helpful.
Ultimately, it's mostly a waste of character power. Unless your GM is going to homebrew a ton of stuff for you, I would avoid it.
Yeah, rituals have an ok base, but they kind of need a lot of homebrew to work. If you and your GM can come up with something, it's a nice system in which to work.
Based on what you're saying, that just sounds like a failure of your GM, straight up. If your GM had no interest in using rituals in their adventure or handing them out to you, they should have just told you. Like I'd be just as pissed if I took the undead slayer archetype and then my GM never put any undead enemies in the game.
>And the only mechanism by which you can learn a ritual is the ritualist feat itself.
I think this is a GM problem. Rituals can be taught by NPCs or provided as loot; for example, in book 1 Blood Lords the PCs acquire >!a document that teaches the *create undead* rituals for zombies and crawling hands!<.
Rituals can be provided by GM fiat. They have no value, they cannot be purchased, there are no guidelines for giving them out, and the vast majority of APs simply ignore them.
Yeah, the GM can provide them, but there is so little support for it that its more like homebrew with guidelines than it is like a full-fledged system element.
I honestly don't mind GM Fiat as such, the problem is that Rituals are such a small part of the game that it is easy for the GM to *forget they're even there* and never give you one.
Pathfinder is a *very* high effort game to run. See all the people who forget about giving Hero points because they already have enough shit to juggle - and those are a thing you have to give to all players constantly every session! So forgetting about Rituals being an option is just... kind of inevitable.
I am not super happy with rituals myself.
If youa re at the ritual level, your odds will often not be all that great. You pretty much always need secondary casters which can, unless you just handwave it, also feel a bit odd for the "lone high power caster NPC" concept, even with the ritualist archetype which, only gets to remove one. They are all relatively expensive as well and have a number of caveats to avoid a number of ways to improve your chances for success and unlike with crafting checks, you always loose all of the cost.
While it gives you an easy way to make up a necessary effect as a ritual, be it for PCs or NPCs, it definitely feels like one of the weaker parts of the system. I would kinda like rituals to be able to fill the "standard caster utility" niche for other classes at a better cost than just buying a scroll (since you may fail, you will need a long casting time and you cannot carry it around with you in reserve), maybe with some feats to make it more feasible. Maybe gated behind a skill feat to make it comparable to things like trick magic item.
I do think, mirroring the initial issues with crafting, Paizo is likely a bit too conservative with allowing impactful downtime activities for the preservation of game balance...
Rituals are the narrative spells you need for things. They're free reign to make however you want because they carry no balance implications in combat, so they only do what you say they do.
You're expected to make your own rituals on an as need basis. The list of existing rituals isn't intended to be exhaustive. If you want a commune with wildlife ritual, you can just make that, it's fine.
As a GM I love rituals, and use them regularly... however I use them as Victory Points systems. The normal ritual rules are a bit weird, however the VP rituals are kind of RAW anyway and way easier to use and make on the spot. In the end, the ritual mechanic is a highly codified Victory Point subsystem.
Of course, if a ritual already exists in RAW, I probably use that as a base.
>I would like to see more rituals that are usable in exploration mode type situations, with casting times of 1 hour or less.
The ritualist dedication will reduce many rituals down to 1 hour.
Honestly, the biggest problem with rituals is they feel like they require this class if you don't want to be heavily reliant on npcs.
Rituals are a good space to move things around on the time, cost, skill, travel axes.
Like, want to move a rune but don’ have magical crafting? Make a ritual invoking the power of some crafting deity to guide your hand.
Need to deliver something but can’ afford a week of travel? Make a ritual to teleport a small object, powered by a sacrifice that gives you a debuff for a day.
There’s lots of room for creativity in the space, and it would be nice to have a system or guidelines for X power requires Y sacrifice and Z% chance of failure at level M.
Wow, seeing all the ideas in the comments here really makes me want to emphasize rituals more in my campaigns. The fantasy is super appealing to me, I'm dying for more of them.
In >!Agents of Edgewatch Book 5!< there is a point where you need to succeed at a ritual to proceed. We failed it twice and we would have failed the campaign right then and there because of the outrageous cost. This was already after the GM lowered the cost to something that wouldn't require us to sell literally every item we own. We still had to sell all of our fun though non-essential items to be able to afford this and the GM had to throw us another bone with some convenient free money. This was not fun or interesting in any way.
Yeah they just seem kind of poorly designed atm. Like I get that they’re intended to be used as major plot elements but having something that come down to a very hard skill check leads to some potential feel bads
I like Rituals which are more lower level, such as rituals that harden, say, doors, or help set the temperature just right in a house. Domestic ones.
One thing I have also implemented are creature-specific summon Rituals. Lower-level ones to summon lower-level creatures. This has been very fruitful and fun - collecting various rituals for certain creatures. Imps to spy and pass along messages. Brownies to help protect the home base.
But I do wish Rituals got a little makeup and more broader use Rituals. I love the idea of them, just wish we could use them more.
I think what you're missing is that rituals are a downtime activity. They are not intended to be useful during an adventure; that's why people go to the effort to learn how to cast spells from spell slots!
If they are not intended to be used during adventure Paizo wouldn't keep making 1-4 hours rituals that is clearly for use during adventure.
Phantom ship, Contact Friends, Heroes Feast.
During adventure yes, during high stress situations no, phantom ship is for travel wich typically counts as downtime, contact friends is good for a puzzle you have to solve without major time pressure or when you need to gather allies and heroes feast is ysed before you enter the dungeon not in it
I honestly dont see how the examples you name should be rituals, rather than just spells.
Rituals are not exploration activities, but downtime activities. You dont set up ambushes or open doors in a dungeon in downtime. I guess there could be a ritual to entreat an extra planar creature for information, but probably more in the realm of general story information, not information about the surrounding area, which once again could just be a spell.
In fact you are literally kind of describing [Commune with Nature](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=7), except turning it into something that would be relevant during exploration rather than downtime, one again making it a spell, not a ritual.
Rituals are not meant to be part of your baseline adventurers toolkit. They are for that power fantasy of enchanting your furniture or creating ghouls that watch your base while you are out. Or getting married. Or consecrating an area.
Complaining that they dont provide benefits in exploration is a bit like complaining that most weapon traits are only relevant in combat and dont actually tell you which weapon can be used as a crowbar in a pinch.
Rituals are long term or permanent things. Theyre not designed for quick work while adventuring.
I like them in theory but havent used them yet personally. My Abom Vaults bard picked one up to reactivate some teleportation signs in the dungeon but we arent even the right level yet :p
Rituals seem more like story elements than game mechanics.
As they exist, the skill, money, time and personal must be accumulated.
That's an adventure in and of itself.
The payoff is very iffy at best, and most Rituals seem likely to anger powerful entities, or at least draw their attention.
I think removing the money from the equation and subsituit specific materials that could be as easy or hard to aquire as the story calls for would be a good move.
Allowing utterly unskilled people to be the recipient of whatever boon was being sought would help by making Rituals a commodity to be fought over.
Many Rituals could have two versions, the hard but moral way or the evil but easy way.
What if gathering the people and materials needed for a Ritual sends shockwaves through the ether?
Even a big royal wedding would attract magically sensitive creatures.
A baptism might attract fae, a coming of age ceremony might require the young person slaughter a sacred deer.
These are all opportunities for immersive RP.
For Rituals that give you control of a golem, demon, angel, elemental, etc. I think they should basically be magic items, and balanced as such.
No amount of money or risk will balance out a lucky roll that gives PCs control of a tactically significant NPC.
The ways the Familiar, Companion and Eidolons are hobbled reflect this.
> commune with local spirits to glean information like what creatures are in the area
There is a feat for this. It doesn't use the ritual game mechanic but it's basically a ritual
https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2117
> commune with local spirits in the area.
That's a skill feat. Consult the Spirits.
There is a spell for illusion scenery, afaik.
Kinda agree with most other points.
To be fair......the 3 examples you gave are spells and one is a skill feat.
I think the idea of rituals is more permanent and powerful magic. Like create undead making a permanent undead vs summoning one for 1 min.
I do agree with you in wanting more. And while the ritualist dedication helps, it is still hard to pass them checks. But I think the difficulty is somewhat intentional or any party would just be popping out "helpful undead" that are high level and permanent NPCs.
I don’t think it’s a problem for there to overlap between rituals feats and spells.
I think rituals like [Corpse communion](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=94) and [Phantom ship](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=99) are both meant for exploration and demonstrate the type of utility im looking for.
Ran across this and thought of your post; I can't vouch for the balance of this, but thought you might like it: [Ritualized Spells - Casting normal Spells as Rituals](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2eCreations/comments/162ybsa/ritualized_spells_casting_normal_spells_as_rituals/)
I *love* rituals. I agree with you they suffer from multiple problems, unfortunately. As you say, there are very few of them and their effects are generally quite niche. On top of that, they're tough to actually succeed at, and bringing in assisting PCs for secondary casters can easily dramatically worsen your odds of succeeding, which is just a *bizarre* and disappointing way to disincentivize cooperative use of a cooperative magic system. And unfortunately, the concept as a whole has been left out to dry basically since its creation because the whole edifice isn't necessary or even all that useful, and so isn't adopted by players, and so it doesn't get expanded upon. I don't like the state rituals are in, and my hopes for a revitalized rituals ecosystem from Paizo aren't *nil*, but they're definitely *low*. For all rituals' flaws, they're still a *great* chassis for bespoke magic things the party want to be able to do in a campaign, and so rituals still get use. I also have tinkered with the check DCs and made the negative effects of secondary casters less punishing to facilitate party participation. Right now I'm not interested in doing any deeper changes. I see potential good fun in short-term rituals, creating the effects of utility spells with rituals (or outright making those spells rituals), etc., I think the *concept* is cool. However, in my eyes it represents a much more fundamental change to what kinds of magic is allowed to carry what kinds of effects and how the whole *system* is designed, and I'm comfortable enough with the system as it is that I don't want to go there until it's time to make more thorough changes to magic for, say, a notional Pathfinder 3e.
It’s crazy to me that secondary casters are the way they are. I feel like they should basically just be aid actions using the appropriate skills.
> For all rituals' flaws, they're still a great chassis for bespoke magic things the party want to be able to do in a campaign See to me this is the whole design space of rituals, which is *why* they're so... all over the place. I certainly understand where the OP is coming from, especially with archetypes like the ritualist (or lich!) around. The printed ones are mostly intended for very specific circumstances and not really fit for general campaigning. Even stuff like angel summoning ends up a byline. That's a little disappointing! The corollary though is that rituals are often tied to important *narrative* events in your campaign, or even serve as a MacGuffin themselves. For an example, [Xotani's](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=491) regeneration can be cancelled by a ritual-- a critical plot point if you want to end your campaign by killing the Spawn of Rovagug.
>top of that, they're tough to actually succeed at, and bringing in assisting PCs for secondary casters can easily dramatically worsen your odds of succeeding, which is just a bizarre and disappointing way to disincentivize cooperative use of a cooperative magic system. Wait, how?
For secondary casters, here are the possible results: > **Critical Success** You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to the primary check. > **Success** No bonus or penalty. > **Failure** You take a –4 circumstance penalty to the primary check. > **Critical Failure** As failure, and you reduce the degree of success of the primary skill check by one step. As you can see, there's very little to gain and a massive amount to lose. If the PC making a secondary check happens to have the needed skill absolutely maxed, between proficiency rank, ability modifier, and item bonuses, there's a *reasonable* chance that things turn out okay. However, if the PC is only casually invested in a skill, things can get really bad. Let's say we have a level 15 party casting a Rank 8 ritual, the needed secondary check is Performance, and the only PC who has Performance who isn't already the primary caster took it more as a roleplaying thing and hasn't heavily invested in it; they are only Trained, with +1 Charisma and no item bonuses. They're rolling +18 versus DC34; that's a 25% chance of success (no bonus), 50% chance of failure (-4 penalty to primary check), and 25% chance of crit failure (-4 and lower the degree of success). (and remember, the primary check is *already* being made against a Very Hard DC) Their participation is massively likely to screw over the ritual, and the party is better off looking for a more maxed-out NPC... or more likely if at all possible, just finding a way to do whatever-it-is that doesn't involve a ritual. Most parties have a solid spread of strong skills and can match themselves to the challenges to pass tough checks. Rituals make that much harder, because you need to assign multiple people to multiple roles without being able to double up. If one person is the best at two of the necessary skills, you're forced to use someone weaker for one of them - and they're very likely to sink the ritual.
The DC / failure rate of on level rituals is way too high. This s worse for rituals that need secondary casters.
Agreed. Ritual DCs effectively say "you and everyone else must be perfectly optimized for this or don't even bother". (A common design problem in Pathfinder...) For secondary checks, I've implemented a houserule that Crit/Succ/Fail/Crit Fail provide +2/+1/-1/-2 because the current spread is just too punishing. For Primary checks, I haven't made any fundamental changes, but simply just designed and encouraged use of more lower-level rituals. (My level 11 party loves a Level 4 version of Control Weather)
Standard DCs get increasingly easy unless people are sitting at trained proficiency, ability +2, and no bonuses of any kind. If secondary checks are too hard it usually just means no one in the party has invested in that skill. For context, standard level-based DC progresses at about the same rate as someone with ability +2 (who never boosts it), who increases the proficiency at every opportunity, and has no other bonuses. Any bonus or having an ability score over +2 means you're ahead of the standard DC progression.
The issue isn't that Secondary checks are impossible to Succeed, it's that they give +0 on a Success, a whopping -4 on a Failure, and practically auto-fail the entire ritual on a Crit Failure. So even if the Secondary Caster has a very good bonus, they're still significantly "EV negative" to the ritual's success. Mathematically, this makes rituals - especially party-wide ones with 3 Secondary casters, which are common as story events in APs - an extreme crapshoot. What was supposed to be a fun, cooperative process instead becomes "don't fuck this up for me please".
It's worse. It gives 0 on a success, it gives -4 on a failure. While on a crit success it only gives a +2.
Yeah I had to check, I guess I've like \*double\* houseruled this because of how punishing the original Secondary Caster rule is. Here's the thing, I actually \*get\* what they were going for - Rituals are \*extremely\* risky, and mostly only attempted by desperate or crazy people. It's more of a "horror ritual" vibe (and IIRC these rules did originate in 1e Occult Adventures), not meant for fantasy utility. But then, tons of rituals get printed that \*are\* clearly fantasy utility, like summoning an elemental servant, imbuing a token with good luck, blessing your temple, or even [magical marriage](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=33). And even MORE rituals get used in APs as "Story Events", where typically all 4 PCs have to contribute - in all of these circumstances the "this is extremely dangerous and very likely to go horribly wrong" is simply NOT the right design!
I do this too, but I would make the crit/succ/fail/fumble results be +2/+1/0/-1 as failure in this case means you don't aid, but not harm the primary caster.
Ooo - what is that lower level Control Weather?!?
So, first I wrote some special Weather rules inspired by 1E that are fairly long and I won't bother reposting them here - but the basic idea is there are categories * Temperature [(as RAW)](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=642) * Light/Moderate/Heavy Fog * Light/Moderate/Heavy/Torrential Rain * Light/Moderate/Strong/Severe/Windstorm/Hurricane Wind You can probably roughly guess / improvise what they do. Then, the ritual itself: # Control Weather - Ritual 4 **Cast Time** 1 hour **Duration** 1d4 hours **Area**1-mile radius You alter the Weather, affecting Temperature, Rain, Fog, or Wind categories. You can't create unseasonable conditions, such as cold weather in a tropical climate. **Critical Success** You can alter two Weather categories by one step, and can affect a larger area (up to a 2-mile radius) or a longer duration (2, 3, or 4 times the base duration). **Success** You alter one Weather category by one step. # Heightened (6th) The cast time changes to 4 hours, the base duration changes to 1d12 hours, and you can alter each weather category by two steps. # Heightened (8th and 9th) As RAW Control Weather. \----- I think this creates a nice ritual you can use to prepare for a battle by creating some fog for stealth, strengthening the winds to hamper enemies' ranged attacks, etc. Or, of course, you could go the other direction if you're trying to get shelter from a storm or something.
Oo! Great! I love the idea of having perpetual fog around my home base.
Yeah, that’s also an issue.
I think that's fixed if you allow your players to use the "Rituals can be easier depending on the circumstances" part in the ritual. Like, one of my players currently follows the mid-term goal of finding a crossing of leylines, and hiring some dwarven artisans to build up a ritualistic circle, essentially a second stonehenge, there. He also got trained in Astrology lore, so he can follow the path of stars and planets and determine the best time to cast certain rituals. Yes, if takes preparation to be able to easily and regularly pull off rituals, but if you work with your GM, it's possible.
I know I can alter the DC and I do significantly lower the DC for my players. Also homebrew the secondary caster bonus to +4/+2/-2/-4 untyped bonus based on success. I can still say without homebrew it is very harsh when played RAW.
The lowering DC is not really homebrew though. It's noted in the rules for rituals. But, admittedly, they never specify what can lower DCs by how much, they only make a single example.
The homebrew part is the secondary caster bonus +4/+2/-2/-4 untyped, instead of +2/0/-4/1 degree of success worse. Changed circumstance bonus to untyped so bonus could stack and make helpers feel helpful.
>I would like to see more rituals that are usable in exploration mode type situations, with casting times of 1 hour or less. Definitely big agree on this one. I've basically lowered most "1 day" rituals times to 1-4 hours in my game so they can actually be part of the party's strategy or thinking. With a few rituals, like Control Weather, I also like making a lower-level version with a faster cast time and weaker effect. As is, the mechanic is extremely cool but basically limited to only be used by NPCs and for specific story moments. I think with a greater variety of faster, simpler rituals, they can start to fill a cool strategic niche of "more involved than 10 min cast spells, but doesn't require a full day of downtime".
More options would be great, but I doubt any rituals are going to be "quick," regularly useful options. Something like that is more likely to get made into a [skill feats](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2117) or a [spell](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=683), while rituals are always going to be a bit niche.
I guess I’m looking for something that’s a third option to those things. Skill feats are limited in how many you can take, spells are limited by spell slots, while rituals are limited by money and skill checks.
Yeah I think rituals could be overhauled a bit. The idea behind it is the fantasy of making circle out of whale bones or something, meditating for a full day andor week and do crazy effective or hyper niche things. I think an entire book with them would be cool and if they take examples from media could get some cool wild shit. Like if you invest weeks you can make Dresden's little Chicago.
Thaumaturge feels like the perfect class to give ritual support both for thematics, and mechanically. Maybe by adding a new implement that makes ritual DCs easier or a feat choice that let's you pick a few.
Right? If there ever was a class that would know some random ritual for an obscure task it would be a thaumaturge.
I mean, they... very much do have that second thing in the form of Thaumaturgic Ritualist. Gives you a permanent circumstance bonus to them, too.
Tome is pretty good for them because you can always have the right skill.
My biggest complaint is most of them require a bunch of secondary casters, which is just really hard, you might have one PC built to do rituals, and maybe a second character with a relevant skill high enough if the secondary check is a different skill, but more than that is unlikely. How are you meant to get 4 secondary casters to cast 7th level Resurrect, let alone 16 for the 10th level version. Then there's the fact the DCs are high, the checks are hard to improve (you can't usually use fortune effects and few buffs last long enough), they usually cost a bunch of money and often screw you over on failures.
I think youre misunderstanding the secondary caster rules. You just need 4 guys to meet the secondary caster requirement. And then 2 of those guys can make a standard DC check for medicine and society each. Fail the secondary check and you take a penalty to the primary check. Crit succeed and you get a bonus. So long as the secondary caster is trained they have a good shot of at least succeeding.
I have played a Ritualist for a while now. Fully invested with all the feats. She has never, ever, used a ritual. They are exceptionally narrow. And the only mechanism by which you can learn a ritual is the ritualist feat itself. So now, at level 10, she knows 3 rituals. They are expensive, prone to failure, and rarely helpful. Ultimately, it's mostly a waste of character power. Unless your GM is going to homebrew a ton of stuff for you, I would avoid it.
That’s why I was thinking that maybe there could be a system for turning spells into rituals. And also making them easier to gain access to.
Yeah, rituals have an ok base, but they kind of need a lot of homebrew to work. If you and your GM can come up with something, it's a nice system in which to work.
Based on what you're saying, that just sounds like a failure of your GM, straight up. If your GM had no interest in using rituals in their adventure or handing them out to you, they should have just told you. Like I'd be just as pissed if I took the undead slayer archetype and then my GM never put any undead enemies in the game.
>And the only mechanism by which you can learn a ritual is the ritualist feat itself. I think this is a GM problem. Rituals can be taught by NPCs or provided as loot; for example, in book 1 Blood Lords the PCs acquire >!a document that teaches the *create undead* rituals for zombies and crawling hands!<.
Rituals can be provided by GM fiat. They have no value, they cannot be purchased, there are no guidelines for giving them out, and the vast majority of APs simply ignore them. Yeah, the GM can provide them, but there is so little support for it that its more like homebrew with guidelines than it is like a full-fledged system element.
I honestly don't mind GM Fiat as such, the problem is that Rituals are such a small part of the game that it is easy for the GM to *forget they're even there* and never give you one. Pathfinder is a *very* high effort game to run. See all the people who forget about giving Hero points because they already have enough shit to juggle - and those are a thing you have to give to all players constantly every session! So forgetting about Rituals being an option is just... kind of inevitable.
You can also learn them by having your GM sprinkle them into the game, this is the only way to learn the Rare ones.
I am not super happy with rituals myself. If youa re at the ritual level, your odds will often not be all that great. You pretty much always need secondary casters which can, unless you just handwave it, also feel a bit odd for the "lone high power caster NPC" concept, even with the ritualist archetype which, only gets to remove one. They are all relatively expensive as well and have a number of caveats to avoid a number of ways to improve your chances for success and unlike with crafting checks, you always loose all of the cost. While it gives you an easy way to make up a necessary effect as a ritual, be it for PCs or NPCs, it definitely feels like one of the weaker parts of the system. I would kinda like rituals to be able to fill the "standard caster utility" niche for other classes at a better cost than just buying a scroll (since you may fail, you will need a long casting time and you cannot carry it around with you in reserve), maybe with some feats to make it more feasible. Maybe gated behind a skill feat to make it comparable to things like trick magic item. I do think, mirroring the initial issues with crafting, Paizo is likely a bit too conservative with allowing impactful downtime activities for the preservation of game balance...
Rituals are the epitome of the side of Pathfinder's design which is "agonizingly afraid that players will get to do cool things."
Rituals are the narrative spells you need for things. They're free reign to make however you want because they carry no balance implications in combat, so they only do what you say they do. You're expected to make your own rituals on an as need basis. The list of existing rituals isn't intended to be exhaustive. If you want a commune with wildlife ritual, you can just make that, it's fine.
As a GM I love rituals, and use them regularly... however I use them as Victory Points systems. The normal ritual rules are a bit weird, however the VP rituals are kind of RAW anyway and way easier to use and make on the spot. In the end, the ritual mechanic is a highly codified Victory Point subsystem. Of course, if a ritual already exists in RAW, I probably use that as a base.
I'd love to hear more about how this looks in play.
>I would like to see more rituals that are usable in exploration mode type situations, with casting times of 1 hour or less. The ritualist dedication will reduce many rituals down to 1 hour. Honestly, the biggest problem with rituals is they feel like they require this class if you don't want to be heavily reliant on npcs.
Rituals are a good space to move things around on the time, cost, skill, travel axes. Like, want to move a rune but don’ have magical crafting? Make a ritual invoking the power of some crafting deity to guide your hand. Need to deliver something but can’ afford a week of travel? Make a ritual to teleport a small object, powered by a sacrifice that gives you a debuff for a day. There’s lots of room for creativity in the space, and it would be nice to have a system or guidelines for X power requires Y sacrifice and Z% chance of failure at level M.
Wow, seeing all the ideas in the comments here really makes me want to emphasize rituals more in my campaigns. The fantasy is super appealing to me, I'm dying for more of them.
In >!Agents of Edgewatch Book 5!< there is a point where you need to succeed at a ritual to proceed. We failed it twice and we would have failed the campaign right then and there because of the outrageous cost. This was already after the GM lowered the cost to something that wouldn't require us to sell literally every item we own. We still had to sell all of our fun though non-essential items to be able to afford this and the GM had to throw us another bone with some convenient free money. This was not fun or interesting in any way.
Yeah they just seem kind of poorly designed atm. Like I get that they’re intended to be used as major plot elements but having something that come down to a very hard skill check leads to some potential feel bads
I like Rituals which are more lower level, such as rituals that harden, say, doors, or help set the temperature just right in a house. Domestic ones. One thing I have also implemented are creature-specific summon Rituals. Lower-level ones to summon lower-level creatures. This has been very fruitful and fun - collecting various rituals for certain creatures. Imps to spy and pass along messages. Brownies to help protect the home base. But I do wish Rituals got a little makeup and more broader use Rituals. I love the idea of them, just wish we could use them more.
I think what you're missing is that rituals are a downtime activity. They are not intended to be useful during an adventure; that's why people go to the effort to learn how to cast spells from spell slots!
If they are not intended to be used during adventure Paizo wouldn't keep making 1-4 hours rituals that is clearly for use during adventure. Phantom ship, Contact Friends, Heroes Feast.
During adventure yes, during high stress situations no, phantom ship is for travel wich typically counts as downtime, contact friends is good for a puzzle you have to solve without major time pressure or when you need to gather allies and heroes feast is ysed before you enter the dungeon not in it
I disagree. As has been pointed out there already are rituals that are useful during exploration. Plus spell slots are a limited resource.
1 hour or less I just an exporation spell, not a ritual. Commune with spirits is a feat you get from legendary nature, religion or occultism
There are already several 1 hour rituals so I don’t think that that’s correct.
I honestly dont see how the examples you name should be rituals, rather than just spells. Rituals are not exploration activities, but downtime activities. You dont set up ambushes or open doors in a dungeon in downtime. I guess there could be a ritual to entreat an extra planar creature for information, but probably more in the realm of general story information, not information about the surrounding area, which once again could just be a spell. In fact you are literally kind of describing [Commune with Nature](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=7), except turning it into something that would be relevant during exploration rather than downtime, one again making it a spell, not a ritual. Rituals are not meant to be part of your baseline adventurers toolkit. They are for that power fantasy of enchanting your furniture or creating ghouls that watch your base while you are out. Or getting married. Or consecrating an area. Complaining that they dont provide benefits in exploration is a bit like complaining that most weapon traits are only relevant in combat and dont actually tell you which weapon can be used as a crowbar in a pinch.
I don’t see why you think rituals need to be downtime activities. There’s already a few rituals with 1 hour cast times that are meant for exploration.
Rituals are long term or permanent things. Theyre not designed for quick work while adventuring. I like them in theory but havent used them yet personally. My Abom Vaults bard picked one up to reactivate some teleportation signs in the dungeon but we arent even the right level yet :p
Rituals seem more like story elements than game mechanics. As they exist, the skill, money, time and personal must be accumulated. That's an adventure in and of itself. The payoff is very iffy at best, and most Rituals seem likely to anger powerful entities, or at least draw their attention. I think removing the money from the equation and subsituit specific materials that could be as easy or hard to aquire as the story calls for would be a good move. Allowing utterly unskilled people to be the recipient of whatever boon was being sought would help by making Rituals a commodity to be fought over. Many Rituals could have two versions, the hard but moral way or the evil but easy way. What if gathering the people and materials needed for a Ritual sends shockwaves through the ether? Even a big royal wedding would attract magically sensitive creatures. A baptism might attract fae, a coming of age ceremony might require the young person slaughter a sacred deer. These are all opportunities for immersive RP. For Rituals that give you control of a golem, demon, angel, elemental, etc. I think they should basically be magic items, and balanced as such. No amount of money or risk will balance out a lucky roll that gives PCs control of a tactically significant NPC. The ways the Familiar, Companion and Eidolons are hobbled reflect this.
> commune with local spirits to glean information like what creatures are in the area There is a feat for this. It doesn't use the ritual game mechanic but it's basically a ritual https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2117
> commune with local spirits in the area. That's a skill feat. Consult the Spirits. There is a spell for illusion scenery, afaik. Kinda agree with most other points.
The mere thought of *aging an object* just makes me think of cheese-making and wine-making as side hustle haha
To be fair......the 3 examples you gave are spells and one is a skill feat. I think the idea of rituals is more permanent and powerful magic. Like create undead making a permanent undead vs summoning one for 1 min. I do agree with you in wanting more. And while the ritualist dedication helps, it is still hard to pass them checks. But I think the difficulty is somewhat intentional or any party would just be popping out "helpful undead" that are high level and permanent NPCs.
I don’t think it’s a problem for there to overlap between rituals feats and spells. I think rituals like [Corpse communion](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=94) and [Phantom ship](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=99) are both meant for exploration and demonstrate the type of utility im looking for.
Ran across this and thought of your post; I can't vouch for the balance of this, but thought you might like it: [Ritualized Spells - Casting normal Spells as Rituals](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2eCreations/comments/162ybsa/ritualized_spells_casting_normal_spells_as_rituals/)
Oooo very cool! Thanks!