I'm GMing Strength of Thousands, in which rituals play a far larger part of the campaign than in a usual AP (usual being "almost none"). For some of the players this is the first time ever actually interacting with the ritual rules, while others were in a campaign where one was done (but none of them were involved in casting it, as I was the player handling that).
They've now attempted two different rituals over 5 attempts, and it has gone poorly. They've never succeeded. They've now figured out that they tend to need well above average numbers to succeed for the primary caster, or somewhere around average for secondary casters (and with 2 or 3 of those, odds are someone will get a bad roll and fail for a severe penalty to the primary caster). They're not happy with how hard this feels and I'm pretty sympathetic to that. It's not like they are particularly ill-suited to what they are trying to do, and there isn't any abuse going on. The DCs are just really high.
So I'm pondering ways to lower it. I know I can allow circumstances to change things, but I don't want to have to invent an excuse to give circumstance modifiers every time and would prefer to just adjust the baseline so they feel more confident even attempting it. Right now I'm toying with a few different options:
1. Lower the primary caster DC a step (this would effectively make it 3 lower than it is now.)
2. Lower the secondary caster DC 1 step (making it 2 lower), so the primary caster isn't penalized as often.
3. Lower the penalty for a secondary caster failing to 2 instead of 4 (so it's not as harsh if it happens, since with 4 secondary casters its pretty likely to happen). The players found this REALLY harsh so I think this would definitely be popular.
I'm worried about over-adjusting as I still want there to be a failure risk, but I just find the odds are too stacked against them given the costs and other risks involved.
Anybody have any thoughts on those ideas? Has anyone run into this and made other adjustments?
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Oh, I hope the new magic book announced really digs in to the unwritten aspects of ritual mechanics. It seems intended that the party can and should do things to make a ritual easier that typically fall in line with ritual tropes, like performing it under a blood moon or on consecrated altar, using a special reagent harvested at the tight time and with specialised ritual implements, but aside from a handful of examples the actual ritual mechanics are pretty quiet on these.
I would love to see a lot more ideas for these kinds of things made official, not the least of which reason being making it more likely to see them come up when AP authors want to reach for rituals as a narrative tool. I understand that Season of Ghosts involves a ritual or two and I haven't taken a look yet how (if) the author has chosen to handle the very high likelihood that the party might just botch after the typical 8 hours of chanting.
I don't know the particulars of the SoT rituals, but one thing that comes to mind is tying bonuses to specific plot-ish actions or subjects the party can do. Like maybe they go retrieve a special item held by some monster cult, or they travel to some temple to ritually cleanse themselves, or mark some kind of achievement that's metaphysically tied to the ritual (this might be more appropriate for Ghosts because of major spoiler reasons, but maybe the party learns some way they can make the ritual easier by studying astronomical texts or defeating monsters that would serve to strengthen the barrier between planets--say aberrations living into the area disrupting the flow of space magic by their innate strangeness
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I've actually never analyzed the math on rituals before.
Let's see here...
Consecrate: Rank 2
Primary check: Religion DC 18 +5 = 23
Secondary check: Crafting DC 18
Secondary check: Performance DC 18
Character level 3
Maxed skill bonus: 3(level) +4(expert) +4(attribute) = +11
non-Maxed skill bonus: 3(level) +2(trained) +2~+4(attribute) = +7~9
Primary caster needs to roll a 12 inherently assuming maximum investment into the skill.
Secondary casters need to roll 9 to 11 depending on details.
With about a 50% chance of failure on the two secondary checks, there is a 75% chance that at least one of them will fail and impose the -4 penalty to the primary check. Having both fail doesn't stack because the penalty is typed.
Which means that in the outcome that both secondary casters succeed, the primary caster has a 45% chance of success. In the more likely outcome that at least one of the secondary casters failed, the primary caster has a 25% chance of success.
No, those aren't good odds. And that is assuming that the primary caster has built specifically (though perhaps coincidentally) to cast this ritual. Expert proficiency in Religion may not be common to spend your one and only Expert skill bump on - even for a Cleric or other divine caster.
Character level 5
Maxed skill bonus: 5(level) +4(expert) +4(attribute) = +13
non-Maxed skill bonus: 5(level) +2(trained) +2~+4(attribute) = +9~11
Primary caster needs to roll a 10 inherently.
Secondary casters need to roll 7 to 9 depending on details.
Secondary casters are still at about a 50% chance of success, though 55% to 60% is more accurate. Even at a 60% chance of success each, that is still only a 35% chance of success for both of them - meaning a 65% chance that one of them fails.
Without secondary caster failures, the primary caster has a 55% chance of success. With a failure of a secondary caster, that drops to a 35% chance.
That is still not very good odds. And that is for a ritual that is one Rank lower than the Rank of spell that spellcasters are casting.
So yeah. Complaint checks out.
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Anybody have any thoughts on those ideas? Has anyone run into this and made other adjustments?
I like the theme of failed secondary casters imposing a noticeable penalty to the primary caster. I do think that -4 is a bit much and can see chopping that down to a -2.
I also like the idea of allowing duplicate secondary casters and taking the better result of their two rolls. One, that will give a Fortune-like effect on the secondary checks. Two, that will get more of the party involved in the ritual.
I am also thinking that a successful secondary caster check should be rewarded. RAW it has no effect on the primary check. I think it should have a bonus. Probably a +2 circumstance bonus. Though I am kicking around the idea of having it be untyped so that multiple secondary casting requirements stack. It gives meaning to having to have so many people involved in the ritual.
And of course, none of this have I actually tried in-game. So play with it at your own risk.
And clearly we are deep into houserule territory here.
Rituals are really easy...
...if you stick to the lower level ones. ;P
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Could it be they are 'expecting' these rituals to be key points and thus expecting the players to burn hero points on the roll if need be to insure they succeed?
Not saying that is intended, as the rules say that you can't use fortune effects on it, and hero points are treated as fortune effects, but it might be when they designed the rules and did probability checks on chances, hero point expenditure might not have actually been intended to be prohibited.
I could also imagine as some mentioned, paying more in specifically relevant material components for the ritual, or specific timing, would be very easily merit a reduction in the Target DC for the checks, potentially both the primary and secondary checks.
Another option you might allow spellcasters whom are acting as secondary casters expend a spell slot of the level of ritual they are preforming (during each up to day) for the ritual in order to have the option to re-roll their roll (but having to take the re-roll if made, and not otherwise compatible with other fortune effects).
By boosting the likelihood of the secondary casters being able to succeed you indirectly make it more likely the primary caster will be able to succeed, without making the primary check have an easy button. (which allowing the primary caster to just spend a slot to get a re-roll might end up spoiling the risk/reward, and handicap non-casters from rituals too much)
Another option to improve the results of secondary casters on the primary caster roll would be sticking to what the rules say that each secondary caster has to make a different check, but you would skip the mention of after each check has been made, other secondary casters make no rolls. Perhaps you could allow secondary casters to pick their check they take, but allow them each roll in sequence. As long as none have critically failed for a particular check, allow others to attempt for the same check to do better, such as to avoid the -4 circumstance penalty. This would allow additional casters to boost your chance of success, but would also increase the potential of a crit failure which would certainly be bad. I might be tempted to up the DC of secondary caster checks if they use more than double the specified secondary casters however as larger groups can become cumbersome to manage, to help more not always be a way to make it easier at any scale.
Another different option, you could switch the bonus for a successful secondary check to be a +1 untyped bonus, or +1 stacking circumstance bonus that would stack but only with other secondary check bonuses earned. Potentially having critical successes, instead of granting +2 have them grant the same stacking +1, but allow the primary caster to roll an additional primary check and drop the lower. Critical Failures might do as they currently say, or might make you roll an additional check, but forces you to discard your highest of your rolls for the primary check.
That is a lot of ideas, just a brainstorming... something might sound like something that would do what you want in your game, and help your players enjoy the process, and help you feel like you've accomplished making a fun playing experience.
Could it be they are 'expecting' these rituals to be key points and thus expecting the players to burn hero points on the roll if need be to insure they succeed?
Yes. SoT has a LOT Of rituals compared to normal adventures (where it tends to be 0 or maybe 1). There's two in the first book the party is expected to attempt, but neither has significant failure consequences.
Book 2 has a couple that are aimed at solving a problem, and while the adventure continues if the party fails to solve that problem, it can feel pretty bad for the players that are really trying and simply have the deck stacked against them this badly. (My players after the fourth attempt basically concluded it was beyond them and go recruited a teacher to help, who had no real reason to refuse.)
Later books have at least one ritual that is "the plot doesn't progress unless you succeed at this", which means this becomes a situation of keep trying until it works/GM changes the AP to be fail-forward so it works no matter what and just has consequences on a failure.
I'm pretty comfortable using fail forward, but I also don't want my players to groan when I say "there's a ritual for that." And right now that's kind of the reaction because of how difficult these are (Finoan's math comment shows that pretty well).
Not saying that is intended, as the rules say that you can't use fortune effects on it, and hero points are treated as fortune effects, but it might be when they designed the rules and did probability checks on chances, hero point expenditure might not have actually been intended to be prohibited.
We generally allow hero points on downtime stuff in my games already, despite that not being RAW. They did have them here and STILL failed it four times in a row.
I could also imagine as some mentioned, paying more in specifically relevant material components for the ritual, or specific timing, would be very easily merit a reduction in the Target DC for the checks, potentially both the primary and secondary checks.
Yes, though I don't want to have them (or me) have to invent reasons to get that reduction every time they're attempting one. I'd prefer a more reasonable baseline and they can further help themselves with those options. Especially since a lot of rituals already cost significant amounts to even attempt.
Another option to improve the results of secondary casters on the primary caster roll would be sticking to what the rules say that each secondary caster has to make a different check, but you would skip the mention of after each check has been made, other secondary casters make no rolls. Perhaps you could allow secondary casters to pick their check they take, but allow them each roll in sequence. As long as none have critically failed for a particular check, allow others to attempt for the same check to do better, such as to avoid the -4 circumstance penalty. This would allow additional casters to boost your chance of success, but would also increase the potential of a crit failure which would certainly be bad. I might be tempted to up the DC of secondary caster checks if they use more than double the specified secondary casters however as larger groups can become cumbersome to manage, to help more not always be a way to make it easier at any scale.
Interseting, yeah. I was thinking of changing the secondary caster failure to -2 and allowing it to stack twice, so one failure isn't as punishing, because with 3 or 4 people rolling, the odds are decent SOMEONE will get a low d20.
Another different option, you could switch the bonus for a successful secondary check to be a +1 untyped bonus, or +1 stacking circumstance bonus that would stack but only with other secondary check bonuses earned. Potentially having critical successes, instead of granting +2 have them grant the same stacking +1, but allow the primary caster to roll an additional primary check and drop the lower. Critical Failures might do as they currently say, or might make you roll an additional check, but forces you to discard your highest of your rolls for the primary check.
Also interesting. This would make succeeding feel better since it's doing something other than "you don't get penalized". Thanks for the ideas.
I don't know the particulars of the SoT rituals, but one thing that comes to mind is tying bonuses to specific plot-ish actions or subjects the party can do. Like maybe they go retrieve a special item held by some monster cult, or they travel to some temple to ritually cleanse themselves, or mark some kind of achievement that's metaphysically tied to the ritual (this might be more appropriate for Ghosts because of major spoiler reasons, but maybe the party learns some way they can make the ritual easier by studying astronomical texts or defeating monsters that would serve to strengthen the barrier between planets--say aberrations living into the area disrupting the flow of space magic by their innate strangeness
I like that idea, though in SoT specifically the rituals are often already tied to the plot and they're already doing that. There's one in particular that is required to advance the plot, and a bunch of the plot before that is already "setting up to be able to attempt this at all" because it's pretty obscure already. So adding more prep work on top of that to get a bonus doesn't feel great.
Likewise, "I'm counting that prep work so you get a bonus" feels arbitrary since that only makes ritual DCs feel good if they can find a way to make that happen all the time. I'd rather change the baseline so they feel like its a more exciting option, and then say "well if you can do special preparations and such you can try for the extra bonus." But since a lot of rituals already require specific items and preparations (especially the plot ones), I don't want them to feel like getting that bonus is required to make success actually feasible.
I want it to feel like a bonus vs a requirement.
Rituals seem intentionally designed to be higher than normal difficulty. I mean, "Primary checks usually have a very hard DC for a level that’s twice the ritual’s spell rank" pretty much lays it out.
The ritualist archetype dedication and assured ritualist archetype feat can both improve success chances. Maybe give one or more PCs Ritualist as a free archetype?
They do, but its too high I think. A 25% chance to succeed at an on level ritual is awful if you want players to actually want to ever cast rituals. Like in campaigns where rituals are not part of the plot I almost never see one attempted aside from if Resurrection is necessary (and that often comes down to finding an NPC). Even if it would be a cool option.
If they are required for the plot... well its required so you either have to have it work or you have them at a standstill until it does.
Ritualist helps a ton but I don't want it to be required, and I'm not sure I want to give them another free archetype in a campaign that already does that (which SoT does, though I've adjusted that some with full free archetype). I'm definitely encouraging them to consider it as it's really good in a campaign with lots of access to rituals and lots of time (SoT has both).
I just don't want it to be a case of someone feeling obligated to pay an "advance the plot" feat tax, you know? And if I can use these house rules in future campaigns where rituals aren't required but could be an option, giving out an archetype to everyone isn't my preferred method.
Some of these rituals take several days.
maybe at the current DCs allow 1 check per day of the ritual with the ritual completing upon the primary caster getting a success?
25% chance of success with a 3 day ritual might be pretty good and if they are lucky they end it early. Can still have a minimum number of days needed if the ritual is too powerful without it.
-1 the DC for every day less than 3 +1 for every day more than 3?
so that a ritual that takes 1 day or less only gives one chance and is around 35%
But longer rituals are more of a time investment and so having one chance per day of the ritual makes it easier to stomach the harder difficulty.
Yeah, I agree. Is there a reason you're not taking the simplest route of just dropping the difficulty level for all rituals to normal (i.e. -5 what they are now)? "It's a school of magic, the aetheric connection to [yada yada insert magicbabble here...] is stronger."
Dropping it to Hard instead of Very Hard (so -3 from what it is now) is one of the things I'm considering, yeah. I'm thinking it through more than maybe necessary because I don't want to overshoot and make it trivial, and I also want to use the same rules in other campaigns if someone wants to cast a ritual (I tend to want to use consistent house rules across campaigns whenever practical).
The secondary caster mechanics are getting a lot of focus because its a very "feels bad" situation right now.
This is just IMO, but rituals could also do with a "Quiet allies" type feat. I.e. substituting all the multiple rolls with one roll at the lowest participant's skill level. The math on multiple successful rolls needed is brutal, and it may also speed up game play. But maybe that already exists and I'm not aware of it...I haven't looked too much into this area.
Ritualist archetype has a "you can upgrade a failure/critical failure by one secondary caster" feat at level 10, which is pretty huge. There's no Quiet Allies equivalent beyond that. And yeah, it is brutal. This is an area I want to adjust because it just feels bad right now, and maybe "you only need one secondary caster" or even "secondary casters auto succeed if they meet the requirements" is an easier solution to that than the other ideas. They're still required to cast it, but that's not asking the group to succeed on four checks.
Course, people succeeding in secondary checks and having that give say a +1 to the primary caster might feel more fun to the players than not rolling at all.
I'm probably overthinking it. :)
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Yeah, I agree. Is there a reason you're not taking the simplest route of just dropping the difficulty level for all rituals to normal (i.e. -5 what they are now)? "It's a school of magic, the aetheric connection to [yada yada insert magicbabble here...] is stronger."Dropping it to Hard instead of Very Hard (so -3 from what it is now) is one of the things I'm considering, yeah. I'm thinking it through more than maybe necessary because I don't want to overshoot and make it trivial, and I also want to use the same rules in other campaigns if someone wants to cast a ritual (I tend to want to use consistent house rules across campaigns whenever practical).
The secondary caster mechanics are getting a lot of focus because its a very "feels bad" situation right now.
This is just IMO, but rituals could also do with a "Quiet allies" type feat. I.e. substituting all the multiple rolls with one roll at the lowest participant's skill level. The math on multiple successful rolls needed is brutal, and it may also speed up game play. But maybe that already exists and I'm not aware of it...I haven't looked too much into this area.
Ritualist archetype has a "you can upgrade a failure/critical failure by one secondary caster" feat at level 10, which is pretty huge. There's no Quiet Allies equivalent beyond that. And yeah, it is brutal. This is an area I want to adjust because it just feels bad right now, and maybe "you only need one secondary caster" or even "secondary casters auto succeed if they meet the requirements" is an easier solution to that than the other ideas. They're still required to cast it, but that's not asking the group to succeed on four checks.
Course, people succeeding in secondary checks and having that give say a +1 to the primary caster might feel more fun to the players than not rolling at all.
I'm probably overthinking it. :)
I don't think your overthinking it. The ritual rules are a bit bare bones.
Like what exactly are secondary casters doing?Consecrate for example is one secondary caster drawing symbols in the ground? is that why its crafting?
Is the other chanting along with the primary caster? is that why its performance? would a virtuoso in singing get a bonus to the check?
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Wait... just a thought. I think it would be completely within the rules to allow additional characters to preform Aid actions to help the Primary and Secondary Casters. So a ritual requiring a single primary caster and a single secondary caster could have a third person doing an Aid to help the Primary caster's roll, and a fourth person whom spend their time to Aid the secondary caster on their roll. This could give them a 'relatively easy to get' +2 to their check.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2552
In retrospect, it would seem like the rules on stacking, and the fact that secondary casters create a Circumstance Bonus to the Primary caster check, it makes sense that rule could be interpreted that you may only be able to aid the primary caster by being a Secondary caster. However, I think it would not be hard to imagine being able to say, preforming and Aid action to help Secondary casters achieve their result. The rules mentioned above indicate the person would need to be present at all times the secondary caster is preforming their actions for the ritual, but does indicate that aid actions don't have to be constrained to rounds.
It isn't hard to imagine a primary ritualist flanked by secondary participants and assistants/acolytes, etc. surrounding them passing them the things they need next.
Another option, after x days and the secondary casters have any failures, the primary caster can delay their roll a day, allowing any Failed casters to re-roll their individual roll. Casters that succeed need not re-roll unless they want to, but as the re-roll for the failed caster the caster must consider the new roll their roll after the reroll.
I question if that would/should apply to allow re-rolls of critical failures on secondary caster's rolls, as it seems like there should be some risk of accumulating a critical failure.
Perhaps if understanding the ritual is not proceeding as it should could become a roll that the primary has to make before making the final ritual roll, if they want to delay/extend the ritual.
Make the Delay/Extend the ritual roll be an Easy roll for 2x the Rituals rank. As long as they succeed they have the option to delay a day.
If people feel it make it too easy to get rid of Crit Failures from secondary rolls, you could make rerolling a crit failure requiring rolling a crit success on the easy roll. And extending could require at least one secondary caster does a re-roll, so if all have succeeded, but one had got a crit failure, extending the ritual fishing for a crit success on extension roll might be risky as the secondary caster could end up adding another crit failure.
I was wondering about Aid too. Seems there'd be idle hands, and those with advanced Arcane or Nature (one would think w/ the MCDs). Not that I know the Rituals in question which might be included because of their narrative power & designated Rank w/o considering the actual DCs they involve.
Are the secondary checks low enough that a PC taking Assurance in the requisite skill can make it? If so, that might be a solution. I know you said you wanted to avoid 'story tax' but assurance can be generally useful in a lot of cases so some of the PCs might be okay with it.
Sort-of.
TL;DR, secondary checks can probably be succeeded at with Assurance if the Ritual's Rank is 1 or 2 Ranks lower than the maximum available for the character level.
The DC by Level progression goes from level +14 (level 1 => DC 15) to level +20 (level 20 => DC 40).
Rearranging that, I see a pattern of:
level +10 +4 (+2 trained, +2 attribute)
level +10 +10 (+8 legendary, +2 attribute) or (+6 master, +4 attribute)
Or approximately:
level +10 +TEML +2
Assurance gives 10 +proficiency or:
10 +level +TEML
So you will succeed with Assurance at the standard DC for the level when the task level is about 2 levels lower than your character level. There is a bit of fuzzy math being done there, but it is a decent heuristic.
And this is supported by my spot-check math above regarding casting Rank 2 Consecrate as Level 5 characters. The secondary casters only needed to roll a 7 to 9 or so to succeed. Which is about the point where Assurance starts becoming successful.
However, another note is that this scales with TEML investment too. So at higher Ritual Ranks, you have to put build investment in the form of skill boosts into the character being able to cast rituals in general (or this particular ritual specifically if it takes something non-standard) in order for Assurance to keep up with the math.
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Like what exactly are secondary casters doing?
Consecrate for example is one secondary caster drawing symbols in the ground? is that why its crafting?
Is the other chanting along with the primary caster? is that why its performance? would a virtuoso in singing get a bonus to the check?
As it happens, at least some rituals are pretty explicit about this in the description. The Society/Legal secondary check in Geas for example is to create a contract, while the Diplomacy casters of Planar Servitor are meant to beseech the gods for you and explain your needs.
Would be nice to see more of that, but there are a few...
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Like what exactly are secondary casters doing?
Consecrate for example is one secondary caster drawing symbols in the ground? is that why its crafting?
Is the other chanting along with the primary caster? is that why its performance? would a virtuoso in singing get a bonus to the check?As it happens, at least some rituals are pretty explicit about this in the description. The Society/Legal secondary check in Geas for example is to create a contract, while the Diplomacy casters of Planar Servitor are meant to beseech the gods for you and explain your needs.
Would be nice to see more of that, but there are a few...
Atone is also very clear: the secondary caster is the one trying to Atone. This makes total sense, flavor wise... then it says the secondary caster must use Nature or Religion.
RAW, that means at high level if you didn't invest in that skill (and for something like a Champion there's no real need for you to be Master in Religion) you run serious risk of screwing the ritual up even if you're sincerely atoning just because you are forced to use a skill you're not good at.
Like, a level 15 character trying to Atone needs an 8th rank ritual. RAW DC for the secondary caster is 35. A level 15 character trained in Religion/Nature and we'll assume our theoretical Champion has invested in +3 WIS, so they're rolling at +20. That means they need a 15 on the dice to succeed, and a 5 is a critical failure which lowers the result of the ritual by 1 step.
So if our atoning Champion rolls a 5 or lower (25% chance), the primary caster is now rolling a DC 40 check with a -4 AND lowering the result by 1 step. If they don't roll extremely well, there is a major chance our atoning Champion "offends the deity and is thrown out of the faith entirely." They can afford a +2 item fairly easily at that level in the skill and would be highly recommended to go buy one before attempting this, but if its a skill they rarely use they might not have felt any reason to buy it otherwise.
Now I could give them a bonus for actions that show they're sincerely atoning, but the entire idea here is that a high level member of the faith won't even cast the ritual if they aren't seriously atoning... so why would that give a bonus?
The baseline here is just way out of whack. Even if the Champion above has the +2 item, an 11 on the dice is STILL a failure and the primary caster is rolling DC 40 with a -4. They're probably legendary in the skill at that point and minmaxed in it so it's at least doable for them, but still. I don't think I'd ever run Atone as written.
TBH I'd probably not run this particular ritual using the rules at all, as Atone in particular is a great candidate for a narrative style "your Deity challenges you to prove your faith in some appropriate way" scene as part of the ritual, rather than "lol the primary caster rolled a 1 so go change faiths I guess?" But the example does show how out of whack some of these numbers are.
For a SoT specific example that I ran into:
The secondary casters are doing magical repairs via art, memories, or other community spirit type activities. So it's at least given some direction as to what they're doing. This is what the AP wants them to use at level 5-6, and its a rank 4 ritual, so that's just painful... but the secondary casters do get some direction in terms of what they are doing. (My PCs didn't really attempt this without NPC help both due to lacking someone really Performance focused but also because they saw rank 4 and balked.)
If they don't want to, or can't do that one (such as no one Expert in Performance to lead it) they can use the rank 3 Unseen Custodians.
This one's secondary is Arcana/Occultism (whichever one is not Primary), and Diplomacy. Since its using Arcana and Occultism between the primary and secondary casters it's presumed that this is binding a spirit here, so that tracks... but Diplomacy is kind of an odd one. There's also no options here, you MUST use Arcana, Occultism, and Diplomacy. This is rank 3 so it's theoretically on-par for the PCs when they are asked to do it, but this is the one my PCs tried and it went poorly.
To be fair, from what I've heard with my friends running SoT, the books themselves don't exactly present the rituals as something you're meant to fail, as "some pretty important stuff" (I never asked what) is pretty much story-locked behind completing rituals.
Rituals ARE mostly meant to be something that you repeatedly do until you get the result you want, and since you don't need to be a spellcaster - only skilled in what the ritual entails - I think the general idea is fine.
But man if that Very Hard DC isn't rough - it'd be fine if secondary casters succeeding actually did literally anything, but that's not the case, and any singular person failing nearly guarantees a failure for the ritual if it's on-level.
And, weirdly, it seems success chance could even be proportional to how many secondary casters are in the ritual? You aren't given an UPPER bound of secondary casters (unless the ritual has none in the first place). Since it's a typed bonus, they won't stack if more people fail, but I guess if you manage to get enough crit successes to cancel out a failure...? I dunno.
Do remember that the rules (while loosey-goosey) do suggest the GM "can adjust the DCs of rituals, add or change primary or secondary checks, or even waive requirements to fit specific circumstances." Perhaps the students could try and ask around for special ritual spots or times, or even bring along well-themed paraphernalia to help them?
To be fair, from what I've heard with my friends running SoT, the books themselves don't exactly present the rituals as something you're meant to fail, as "some pretty important stuff" (I never asked what) is pretty much story-locked behind completing rituals.
That's later on in SoT, yes. The earlier ones less so.
Rituals ARE mostly meant to be something that you repeatedly do until you get the result you want, and since you don't need to be a spellcaster - only skilled in what the ritual entails - I think the general idea is fine.
A lot of rituals are pretty expensive and time consuming. I don't think you're meant to repeatedly spend gold and a day of downtime in the hope that someone rolls an 18.
And, weirdly, it seems success chance could even be proportional to how many secondary casters are in the ritual? You aren't given an UPPER bound of secondary casters (unless the ritual has none in the first place). Since it's a typed bonus, they won't stack if more people fail, but I guess if you manage to get enough crit successes to cancel out a failure...? I dunno.
That also ups the chance of a crit failure though, and a crit failure on a secondary caster is absolutely horrific.
Do remember that the rules (while loosey-goosey) do suggest the GM "can adjust the DCs of rituals, add or change primary or secondary checks, or even waive requirements to fit specific circumstances." Perhaps the students could try and ask around for special ritual spots or times, or even bring along well-themed paraphernalia to help them?
They can, but since the baseline is so out of whack difficulty wise, they're going to need to do that for every ritual to have it not feel awful, and at that point it feels like an obligatory thing they need to figure out how to qualify for, and that I need to figure out a reason to grant otherwise nobody has fun. I'd rather that extra work feel like a bonus rather than it feeling mandatory, especially for rituals like the one later in SoT that already has significant work required to even be able to attempt it.
To be fair, from what I've heard with my friends running SoT, the books themselves don't exactly present the rituals as something you're meant to fail, as "some pretty important stuff" (I never asked what) is pretty much story-locked behind completing rituals.That's later on in SoT, yes. The earlier ones less so.
Rituals ARE mostly meant to be something that you repeatedly do until you get the result you want, and since you don't need to be a spellcaster - only skilled in what the ritual entails - I think the general idea is fine.A lot of rituals are pretty expensive and time consuming. I don't think you're meant to repeatedly spend gold and a day of downtime in the hope that someone rolls an 18.
Indeed. I think the intent is that you need to be a few levels past the initial ritual access for it to be something you can do with regularity of success. Sort of a hidden balancing factor of sorts.
Kind of like how you can't really afford to get and use a bunch of consumables unless you start looking at things a couple levels lower than yourself.
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And, weirdly, it seems success chance could even be proportional to how many secondary casters are in the ritual?
It is actually exponential.
Multiple rolls, all of which have to succeed in order for the success outcome of the secondary checks overall and avoiding the -4 penalty applied to the primary check.
Approximating at 50% success rate for individual secondary caster checks:
One secondary caster => 50% success rate overall.
Two secondary casters => 25% success rate overall.
Three secondary casters => 12.5% success rate overall.
Four secondary casters => 6.25% success rate overall.
Five secondary casters => 3.125% success rate overall.
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Atone is also very clear: the secondary caster is the one trying to Atone. This makes total sense, flavor wise... then it says the secondary caster must use Nature or Religion.
RAW, that means at high level if you didn't invest in that skill (and for something like a Champion there's no real need for you to be Master in Religion) you run serious risk of screwing the ritual up even if you're sincerely atoning just because you are forced to use a skill you're not good at.
I feel like it's fair and thematically appropriate for a character to need to demonstrate sufficient knowledge and skill in their faith to be accepted back into their deity's good graces after violating their anathema hard enough to lose power, regardless what they're able to say about how sorry they feel they messed up - but it's also fair to say that a failure giving -4 to your elder's efforts to help you is pretty punishing for what feels like it should mostly be a narrative moment. Especially if the priest botches it on you and gets you excommunicated from the faith. The failure result is perfectly reasonable (you can try again, with better odds) but a number of the deity-related rituals have crit fail results that don't seem to make that much sense assuming kind and benevolent deities. It very well suits the history of religious ritual (you wanted only the high priest to sacrifice to Jupiter because you didn't want to bother the big guy for any old thing and then do something wrong) but it's hard to picture a well-meaning cleric of Sarenrae trying to call for a planar servitor to aid them on the quest only for her to send a servant to scold or attack them if they're too clumsy that day.
I feel like there's a lot about rituals that was cautiously designed to prevent any hint of power gaming in the sense of spamming a useful ritual to trigger a success or obtaining a mass amount of a useful result, but I feel like too many things were stacked together, especially when it comes to use rituals for more narrative purposes, like Atone and the one in SoT. It's one thing to say that rituals are difficult to use and should be used sparingly, but a DC that gives a minimal chance of success and sizeable chance of deleterious consequences for even trying doesn't really make them feel difficult, nmjust arbitrary, because (unless following the sparse guidelines for gaining ad-hoc bonuses) there's almost nothing a character can do in the moment to improve their chances except drop another day of downtime and another wad of cash.
And unfortunately, many rituals are not positioned to be usable at lower levels. If a PC needs to be resurrected, it's very unlikely that anything but a max level ritual will do, and the same for atoning. I would like the consumable comparison to be more true, and fair bringing a PC back from the dead would be a pretty top-tier consumable, but without tools to interact with rituals aside from already having a good skill and a lot of time and gold, it's mostly just not a feasible option compared to running to a high level cleric (if there are any clerics high enough level that you can beseech)
... I realize I'm preaching to the choir here rather than offering solutions, but I'm nowhere nearer to finding the combination of magic bullets to make rituals fun and useful for those who want to use them while still being balanced against abuse
Rituals are really easy...
...if you stick to the lower level ones. ;P
How does that work out for higher level rituals like Wish?
It doesn't?
Then why publish an option clearly not meant to be used (at the very least, by PCs)?
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Probability is not intuitive.
I feel like it's fair and thematically appropriate for a character to need to demonstrate sufficient knowledge and skill in their faith to be accepted back into their deity's good graces after violating their anathema hard enough to lose power, regardless what they're able to say about how sorry they feel they messed up - but it's also fair to say that a failure giving -4 to your elder's efforts to help you is pretty punishing for what feels like it should mostly be a narrative moment. Especially if the priest botches it on you and gets you excommunicated from the faith. The failure result is perfectly reasonable (you can try again, with better odds) but a number of the deity-related rituals have crit fail results that don't seem to make that much sense assuming kind and benevolent deities. It very well suits the history of religious ritual (you wanted only the high priest to sacrifice to Jupiter because you didn't want to bother the big guy for any old thing and then do something wrong) but it's hard to picture a well-meaning cleric of Sarenrae trying to call for a planar servitor to aid them on the quest only for her to send a servant to scold or attack them if they're too clumsy that day.Atone is also very clear: the secondary caster is the one trying to Atone. This makes total sense, flavor wise... then it says the secondary caster must use Nature or Religion.
RAW, that means at high level if you didn't invest in that skill (and for something like a Champion there's no real need for you to be Master in Religion) you run serious risk of screwing the ritual up even if you're sincerely atoning just because you are forced to use a skill you're not good at.
Yeah... like, does Iomedae care if you know the finer points of the holy text of Iomedae, like higher ranks in Religion imply? I don't really think so. To me, you atone to Iomedae by doing the thing she wants you to be doing: standing steadfast to protect the weak from evil, sword in hand.
So in that situation, I don't think Religion makes sense at all. If you've proven that you atoned for whatever you did wrong and are acting as a member of her faith should, that you are only Trained in Religion shouldn't be a problem. I don't see why she would care. Ditto for Shelyn, where it feels like Performance or Crafting would be appropriate instead. I just don't think this ritual as written is well thought out for what it's actually trying to do.
... I realize I'm preaching to the choir here rather than offering solutions, but I'm nowhere nearer to finding the combination of magic bullets to make rituals fun and useful for those who want to use them while still being balanced against abuse
Yeah I agree. My most recent thinking is something like this:
1. Ritual participants can decide if they want to have secondary casters roll at all. If they do not, they get the current success result. If they choose to roll, they get this set of results instead:CS: Add +2 to the primary caster's check (maximum +4)
S: Add +1 to the primary caster's check (maximum +2)
F: -2 to the primary caster's check (maximum -4)
CF: -4 to the primary caster's check (maximum -8)
So in this scenario if you have 3 secondary casters, one failure and 2 successes cancel each other out rather than the current -4. Thus if folks aren't very good at these skills you probably don't want to roll at all, but if they ARE good at it, you can take some risk to give yourself a potential advantage.
Its also possible I should just lower all the baseline DCs and say "if you abuse this to powergame, I reserve the right to raise them back up." The rulebook can't easily do that, but I certainly can at my table, and I'm pretty confident my players are acting in good faith. So worrying too much about protecting against abuse just isn't something that I should overly stress about.
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The fact that the DC is already designed to be difficult and no amount of secondary successes can ever counterbalance a single secondary failure is kind of a sticking point to me.
It takes a hard check and turns it into a check with multiple points of failure which really screws up the odds.
Then on top of that, most rituals have no downside for regular failure and a lot of them have limited downsides even for crit fails.
So you can just kind of... fail over and over again until you get lucky, which is imo like the worst way to possibly do a dice based mechanic.
I think as is rituals are too conservatively designed, they seem almost built to make sure they aren't abusable first... but like, they're uncommon by default so the game already sort of covers that. Instead of feeling powerful and arcane in a way that encounter level magic can't they just end up feeling like chores, and can sort of really ruin character fantasy if you just fail 5 times in a row before finishing it.
Looking at the minion rituals it does seem to suggest you should be doing rituals 4 levels lower then max.
My group in AV failed the portal ritual dozens of times, we gave it a go every time we went in, and every time we left until the GM said who cares you succeed just stop doing it.
This might have the nice knock-on consequence of supporting the story. I've never played SoT so I don't know if this sort of thing could be incorporated into it or not, but seeking out special places or people or things to do a story-demanded ritual seems like a classic questing sub-plot to me.
For the SoT "this ritual is required to continue the plot" one, significant effort goes into being able to do it at all. So effectively the "special preparations" are already factored in, as the PCs have to spend significant effort on being able todo it in the first place.
Hence while I can thus say "these mandatory preparations to do it at all also count to lower the DC" and solve this problem specifically, I have to do that EVERY time SoT wants them to do a ritual. Hence why I'd prefer to adjust the baseline: coming up with a reason to grant a lower DC every time doesn't give them an incentive to try any ritual other than the ones the AP forces on them unless I'm also going to give those the same lower DC treatment, which feels much more arbitrary than just adjusting the baseline so its not so punishingly difficult.
This might have the nice knock-on consequence of supporting the story. I've never played SoT so I don't know if this sort of thing could be incorporated into it or not, but seeking out special places or people or things to do a story-demanded ritual seems like a classic questing sub-plot to me.For the SoT "this ritual is required to continue the plot" one, significant effort goes into being able to do it at all. So effectively the "special preparations" are already factored in, as the PCs have to spend significant effort on being able todo it in the first place.
Hence while I can thus say "these mandatory preparations to do it at all also count to lower the DC" and solve this problem specifically, I have to do that EVERY time SoT wants them to do a ritual. Hence why I'd prefer to adjust the baseline: coming up with a reason to grant a lower DC every time doesn't give them an incentive to try any ritual other than the ones the AP forces on them unless I'm also going to give those the same lower DC treatment, which feels much more arbitrary than just adjusting the baseline so its not so punishingly difficult.
Just give them rings ritual casting. An item you make up for them that gives a secondary caster only one degree of success better when they roll.
I think that solves the main problem.Unless secondary casters crit fail on the roll they dont hurt the primary casters chances and if they at least succeed they help the primary caster.
And if you want to wall of higher level rituals like wish from this effect put a rank limit on the rings or get specific and say these are rings of x or y ritual casting.
Incidentally, I have since had the opportunity to check out the plot-significant ritual(s) from Book 3 of Season of Ghosts. Putting those behind a spoiler bumper even though I won't be discussing the precise nature or purpose of the ritual, because SOG calls for extra vigilance in plot reveals.
The first, easier, ritual only takes 1 hour to cast, allowing for easy repetition, and has a relatively trivial cost, comparable to a 5th level consumable. The spell does require expertise in at least one of Arcana or Occultism for the primary check, but can be substituted with an adventure-relevant Lore, and the secondary checks (3) offer a wide scope of checks including Perception. Finally, a critical success leaves a bonus effect which could remove the need to cast it a second time, and the critical failure is a hit of damage that can be walked off before retrying the ritual.
The second, greater ritual takes longer to cast (4 hours) but has a non-gold cost in ritually symbolic objects, but the real star of the 'plot-requisite' adaptations is that this ritual employs a modest amount of 'fail-forward' philosophy in that any result except critical failure results in you moving on to a challenge with either a bonus (CS), penalty (F) or no mods (S) depending on the success of the ritual--and once again the CF penalty is just a bunch of damage and a need to reset.
Perhaps even more significantly, the time pressures to discover and cast the rituals are measured in weeks as the adventure takes place over 3 months. They do suffer (mildly) from the fact that the plot won't continue until they succeed, but since the cast times are short and the timing isn't critical, there's no sense that they must succeed the first time at the crescendo of the party's hard work, but rather they function more like the culmination of the heroes' research, or a gearing up montage getting ready for what comes next.
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As for the ritual mechanics conversation, so far my favourite suggestions are allowing secondary casters to improve the initial check that stacks with other casters (and reducing the penalty for failure) while also allowing supernumerary secondary casters to cover each others' failures. I like the idea that you can over-meet the requirements to improve the odds, and having a larger body of casters feels appropriate for most rituals (not Atone, for example).
Short of an overhaul, though, the rest of my ideas involve figuring out a way to standardize some plot-adaptable techniques for gaining bonuses to the ritual. Not necessarily things like "extra rare incenses", but more like "you went on a quest to prove yourself and earned a title or item that gives you a bonus to that ritual" or "you took the time to cast this ritual across the three nights of a full blood moon, waive part of the gold cost". Non-repeatable (at least not easily) circumstances and things which prompt more stories and quests.
(and then for some rituals, just flat out reducing either the cost or difficulty, at least until such a time as I actually fear my players trying to abuse reliable castings)
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Just going to resuscitate this thread for a moment (because the resurrection ritual is far too costly for my budget =P) because I just saw that Mark Seifter and Linda Zayas-Palmer very recently put out a video on their channel, Arcane Mark, discussing ritual design. I thought this might be at least interesting to hear thoughts from one of the people who worked on Pathfinder 2e's design (even if I'm not sure Mark ever worked specifically on rituals).
Most of the comments are echoes of things we've already discussed here (esp the idea that 'a max level ritual required to progress the plot is not great design'), including using side-quests to allow you to bypass aspects of a ritual you can't supply yourself, using lower-level rituals, and finetuning the four degrees of success (for a plot-ritual) so that you 'fail-forward' even if you roll poorly and continue the plot at a cost.
One NEW idea I didn't notice mentioned here was to borrow some of the Victory Point subsystem as a means of modifying secondary casters so that their efforts are more collective (i.e. successes can counter critical failures etc) rather than one critical failure instantly dooming the ritual. In the video Mark limits the idea of victory points to the secondary casters, seeming to prefer that the ritual itself hinge on a single high-tension die roll, but I feel there's fertile ground here, whether the primary caster is a major part of the secondary casters' challenge, or they have their own challenge that is affected by the secondary casters' successes (or failures)
My first impression of this is that it gives another way for side quests to add to the ritual. If you have no one trained in Performance, the suggestion of a quest to find a magic harp that bypasses the performance check is good, but in a party where the checks are all covered, maybe the quest allows you to retrieve something which simply adds to the secondary casters' victory point total, allowing them to achieve a better result even on a failure, or pushing their successes beyond normal such that they can give the primary caster a boon.
One NEW idea I didn't notice mentioned here was to borrow some of the Victory Point subsystem as a means of modifying secondary casters so that their efforts are more collective (i.e. successes can counter critical failures etc) rather than one critical failure instantly dooming the ritual. In the video Mark limits the idea of victory points to the secondary casters, seeming to prefer that the ritual itself hinge on a single high-tension die roll, but I feel there's fertile ground here, whether the primary caster is a major part of the secondary casters' challenge, or they have their own challenge that is affected by the secondary casters' successes (or failures)
This is a cool idea and definitely promising for a more advanced ritual system. I really like it!
I've had a while to mull all these thoughts over, and my current feeling for my campaign is that I'll just do away with secondary caster checks entirely: the secondary casters auto-succeed if they meet the requirements.
That eliminates the odds of the penalty and doesn't require coming up with any new systems. The primary check is still a difficult one, but as the PCs are now only making one check, they can try to prioritize helping that person as much as possible with things like items (and without the -4 from a failure, the net difficulty is effectively easier). I can adjust further if needed from there, but I feel like my players would accept this.
Lots of great ideas in this thread, thanks everyone!