Ritual De Lo Habitual: 4e, Rituals and you

Something you may or may not be using a lot in your 4e games are rituals. If you’re not using them, it’s understandable –rituals are a little wierd, aren’t they? They’re sort of spells, but they can’t be used quickly and they require some planning on the part of players. Here are some thoughts for how rituals can be useful in your games.

Pieces of a Puzzle. Rituals can be used by the party to solve puzzles that you place before them. The broken shards of the some ancient text written in stone can be re-assembled with the “Make Whole” ritual. If the players have it, great. If not, then finding that ritual in a book could be another part of the quest that they are on.

Skill Challenge Breakers. A well placed ritual can give players free successes in a skill challenge or break the skill challenge open all together. Looking for something hidden in the forest? I would each question earned with “Commune with Nature” equal one success in the challenge. “Detect Object” could grant a +2 to all Perception checks to find the item.

Make a Bridge. Need the players to be able to get somewhere? To another town, quickly or to another plane? Access to a ritual can help you move the story easily to a new locale. A Ritual can open a portal or be

A Plot Element. A ritual that does something important can be a major piece of your campaign’s story. In my campaign, for example, there is a secret cabal of doppelgangers looking to bring ruin to the region. The party found a ritual called “Name the Faceless” which allows you to see who is and who is not a doppelganger for a period of time. Obviously the doppelganger cabal wants this, and they want access to whoever may have learned the ritual (our lucky party warlock). The players must find a way to break the protective enchantments on the ritual book, destroy it, and protect the warlock from the doppelgangers who wish to silence her. That’s a lot of story progression for one ritual.

An Arcane Telephone. Rituals like “Animal Messenger” can be used to communicate with important NPCs or PCs over a long distance. You can have PCs use this, but you can also have NPCs use this to relay special information or assist the party. You could even use a ritual like this for the main BBEG to deliver some sinister warning to the players

Warding. I use rituals in my campaign for protective warding. Werewolves in a church’s baseement were held off for a time by special warding rituals. Whole towns can be protected with wards. I’ll post some of my warding rituals in future posts, but the general warding ritual formula is to define an area (a bubble usually) and give the area a bunch of hit points that the creature type it wards against must deal with before they can get in. Extra people in the ritual can provide extra hit points and define a bigger area.

Explain the Big Stuff. What keeps the town on the lake of fire from burning up? The ritual of “Firehome” of course protects the buildings from instantly burning to a crisp. You don’t want to explain everything with “oh, it’s just a ritual”, so save it for something very bizarre and peculiar. Something noteworthy that only magic can build.

Do you have any other uses of rituals in your campaign that you want to share?