4E: Improved Ritual Casting

In basic 4th Edition D&amp;D, rituals tend to see minimal use due to their high cost (making them too expensive to use regularly) and long casting times (which limit creative tactical functions). While magic in earlier editions tended to become overpowering, these rules attempt to strike a balance between the incredible utility of 3.5E spells and the improved balance of 4E rituals.

For details on how each individual ritual has changed, see the Revised Ritual List.

Ritual Standardization &amp; Ritual Tiers
Most rituals now have standardized casting costs and casting times. Some rituals, roughly one-quarter of those presently released, still have longer casting times and more expensive component costs. The rest, however, are determined by a relatively simple formula which can be easily calculated on the spot. Partially as a consequence of this standardization, rituals are now organized into five-level-wide "tiers." Thus, rituals of levels 1-5 are a tier, as are levels 6-10, 11-15, and so on. Standardization was intended largely to reduce the cost and time of rituals. All rituals standardized in this way now use the alternatives below in place of their original casting time and cost. Note that while many rituals are both time-standardized and cost-standardized, some have one but not the other.
 * Casting Time: All time-standardized rituals have a casting time of 5 rounds (30 seconds).
 * Component Cost: All cost-standardized rituals have a cost equal to (level * tier base cost). Each tier of rituals has a base cost with it, which is the primary factor in the casting cost of a ritual. These costs are shown on the table to the right.
 * Example: Consider Animal Messenger (1) and Linked Portal (8), two common cost-standardized rituals. Casting Animal Messenger under these rules would cost 5 gp (1 * 5 gp), while Linked Portal would cost 80 gp (8 * 10 gp).

Buying and Learning Rituals
The market price of a ritual is five times its casting cost. Thus, hiring a spellcaster to cast Animal Messenger would cost 25 gp (1 * 5 * 5). Some rituals now have no cost to cast; such rituals have a market price of 10 gp.

Learning a new ritual still costs the market price of that ritual in most cases; however, this cost represents the fee paid to acquire the ritual formula and practice it, not special materials used for scribing that ritual into a book. In line with this thematic change, if a character manages to acquire a ritual formula, it may be copied into their own ritual book for only twice the casting cost. For example, while learning Animal Messenger would normally cost its market value of 25 gp, borrowing a friendly NPC's ritual book would let a character learn Animal Messenger for only 10 gp. To offset this, a character may only cast a ritual from their own ritual book or from a ritual scroll. Any rituals one wishes to cast must be copied into one's own book or scribed into a scroll.

Free Ritual Casting
Several classes (artificers, bards, clerics, druids, and wizards) receive Ritual Casting as a feature at 1st level. These classes may now cast two cost-standardized rituals of any tier below their own for free each day. Thus, while a level 1 wizard could not cast free rituals at all, being in the lowest tier, a level 14 wizard could cast two free rituals of level 10 or lower every day. Characters who acquire Ritual Casting from normal feat selection or multiclassing do not gain this benefit; the free casting represents a character's natural aptitude for magic.

Scrolls and Accelerated Casting
As before, ritual scrolls reduce the casting time of a ritual. For non-time-standardized rituals, scrolls still halve the casting time. For a time-standardized ritual, a scroll reduces the casting time to one full round. Creating a scroll takes 10 minutes or the full casting time of the ritual, whichever is longer.

Ritual casters may also choose to invest a ritual with their personal reserves of magical energy in order to cast it more quickly. When a character begins casting a ritual, he may choose to expend two healing surges to treat it as if it were cast from a scroll. These surges are spent immediately, and are not recovered if the ritual is interrupted or otherwise fails. A ritual scroll cannot be accelerated in this way.

Item-Linked Rituals
Dragon Magazine #385 introduced a new type of ritual which requires specific magical items as foci. These rituals are thematically excellent, but still overly restrictive. Therefore, item-linked rituals have undergone the following changes. The ritual no longer requires the specific item as a focus; any broadly equivalent item (ring, armor, etc.) will suffice, whatever its value. DM discretion is advised here; for example, it would be ridiculous to allow a character to cast Memory of the Dragon (which communicates with the spirit of the first dragon slain by a weapon) on an item which had never, in fact, slain a dragon. However, if the caster does have the proper item to use as the focus, he gains the following benefits:
 * The casting time of the ritual is halved (as if cast from a scroll). If the ritual is already cast from a scroll, it is halved again.
 * The caster gains a +5 bonus to all skill checks related to the casting of the ritual.
 * The ritual's casting cost is reduced to 0 gp.

Revised Ritual List
The Revised Ritual List is hosted externally on Google Docs for ease of use.

This list serves several functions. First, it is a complete (as of August 2011) list of all rituals, making it valuable to anyone trying to find a new tool for their character. Second, it matches each ritual with newly-adjusted costs and casting times. Finally, it shows which rituals are associated with which skills, making it simple to find the appropriate rituals for your character and ignore the rest.