Great AP (so far), but rituals are a REAL pain

[The.Vortex]

We just finished book 3 yesterday and I have to say that I hugely enjoy many aspects of this Adventure Path. But for the love of all the gods of Golarion: Who thought it was a good idea to use rituals as a roadblock multiple times in this AP?!

The very first of the roadblocks (earlier adventure, not getting into spoilers here) we needed 8 tries to finally finish the ritual. EVERYONE was complaining about that broken system at the end. But it worked out and just took us a lot of time. No real harm done, I guess?

The second time (end of chapter two of book three) we had to do a ritual again. We got flashbacks to the first ritual and where dreading a similar situation. First attempt failed, but this one at least had a fail forward mechanic. Yay!

But then came the end of the book. We had the almost perfect group for the ritual. Primary and Secondary casters where Masters in the relevant skill, everyone had the maxium attribute of +4 (Level 9), non-lore-skills had items with a +1 - the primary caster could have gotten a +2 item, which would have been the only thing we could do to improve our chances. But not by much.
We tried. And (critically) failed. Time and again. The GM handed out extra Hero Points to improve our chances. We tried to find spells or items that could help us, but there just isn't anything in the system that CAN help with a 5 day ritual. It all came down to rolling dice and hoping. But we failed and failed and failed. This wasn't fun for anyone.
In the end the GM had to pull the "deus ex machina" the adventure offers as a solution to the problem. Usually most of the players would have voted against using such a crutch, but in this case, the rules for rituals are just SO STUPID and the fact that this ritual is there as a roadblock felt so bad that we decided to take the only out the adventure gave us. Otherwise it would have soured our opinion of the whole AP more than it already has.

Who designed the ritual system and ever thought it would be a good idea? Why does this otherwise stellar AP use it as a hard roardblock multiple times?

As a maths nerd I did some calculations and found out that our chance of success or critical success as about 35% per try. So even with our almost perfect stats and the maximum of 4 tries before time runs out, there was about an 18% chance of failing every single one of those. That means that about 1 in 5 groups WILL fail this. And other than the deus ex machina solution, that means the AP stops there. Can that really intended?

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

Rituals are a terrible disappointment for me as written. I was hoping the remaster would see a fresh take on them, but it turns out not. The unfortunate part is that, because they represent a potential source of power that doesn't rely on character build resources, they are under an extremely tight leash for exploitation--and even more unfortunately, plot-advancing rituals seem to have to share the same design space as player-toy rituals.

I feel like it would be valuable for adventure designers to think of on-level rituals like on-level consumables. It's not that characters should be using them at this level, but rather that this is one of the most powerful things an equal-level character can use. Plot rituals should not be set to a level where a maximally invested character only might succeed.

Or alternatively, plot-necessary rituals should always be set so that, at most a critical failure results in not continuing. Failure should be a "continue with consequences" mode. Frankly, more rituals in general could use this pattern in general. I get that designing four degrees of success for every thing is hard (I'm not especially a fan of the divine rituals which have 'your god gets mad at you for trying' as a crit fail result, for example) but when the whole ritual comes down to a single very hard die roll, it kind of behooves the designer not to make the most likely result 'nothing interesting happens'. Rituals only come up in the first place because something interesting must happen by the time you've finished spending all the time and money and effort. Saying that taking special preparations can modify the DC isn't really enough if no one ever adds special preparations that can be made.

...

Ranting aside, I've only put the most cursory thought into what might make a more engaging and effective ritual system, but my first instinct is to not have the whole ritual hinge entirely on one dice roll. It should operate more like a skill challenge or victory points--the more successes you pull off toward completing the ritual (whether that's secondary checks or using special implements, materials, places and times of power) improves the result you will get. On top of that, lacking certain resources might give you penalties you could still overcome. Maybe you have to rush a ritual in half the time, or without an important reagent, but you're doing it under a blood moon on the summit of a sacred mountain, so by the time you finish all your checks you can stick the landing with a decent result (whether that's a full success or a fail-forward type success-with-consequences)

And then just. Leave the rituals that might actually break the game if it was too easy to fire them off as the ones that require everything go just-so to get the desired result so the risks and trade-off actually match the needs.

[The.Vortex]

My solution to make rituals easier, while using a only slightly modified system, would be to shift the effects of secondary casters by one degree:

Critical Success: IMPROVE the degree of success of the main roll by one
Success: Circumstance Bonus of +2 to the main roll
Failure: Nothing
Crit Failure: Circumstance Penalty of -4 for the main roll

That way, the secondary casters don't feel like they are most likely a burden on the already tough main check, but have a good chance of actually HELPING, sometimes even in a very significant way.