Here's the thing: I think Occult Rituals were cool when they were introduced in Occult Adventures a few years ago. Non-spellcasters can cast powerful spells, with the caveats that
A)The primary caster can't take ten, twenty, or receive Aid Another on the multiple checks needed.
B)Most spells and items that grant skill bonuses don't work for this check.
C) Adding a bunch of secondary casters only grants small bonuses to the checks.
D)Backlash means even a successful check costs the primary and secondary casters something valuable, albeit temporary.
E) Failure consequences are not only incredibly high, but they usually seemed designed to specifically move the casters farther from their goal in a significant way. IE if a ritual is to make someone stronger, the failure will be a big whacking permanent strength penalty, etc.
Any kind of PC or NPC of say, 7th-10th level (the equivalent of someone looking to cast a 4th level spell) trying to hit these 28+ DCs is going to fail at least 3/4ths of the time, and be worse off than when they started.
And that's great for how the rituals originally worked, when they were either conducted by insane cultists trying to unleash great evil on the world and willing to suffer any consequences to keep trying, or heroes up against the wall with no good options.
The problem: Since the spate of Horror and Occult material, new campaign settings and player companion guides have kept including new rituals (looking at you Inner Sea Temples and Heroes of the High Court) for other casters to use in more prosaic circumstances. But of course, given the high probability of failure and horrific consequences of same, those rituals would never actually be performed by NPCs, or PCs. It doesn't add to the setting, or to any real player options this way. It feels like these books are being padded out with useless filler.
What do you guys think? Should non-horror, non-occult materials still include occult rituals, and if so, should they be changed in such a way that it's genuinely likely that NPCs at least would actually attempt them? If the problem is the occult ritual itself, should there be some kind of low-stakes ritual with a less punishing backlash and failure, but much smaller benefits?
