Conceptually, in both cases the existing Creature Creation rituals are 'constructing' an entity or in one case 'awakening' one and thereby potentially making the caster be able to make it a minion. What sort of concerns would one have with the idea of creating a Conjure Elemental ritual patterned off these, which could call up an elemental of the given power in the table.
Create Undead
Animate Object
Awaken Animal
Elementals are such a staple of Conjuration and Summoning it feels like it makes sense for such a ritual to exist. I'd probably plan make it tied to Arcane and Primal, instead of Occult or Divine Traditions/skills but is there something inherently problematic about allowing Elementals to be longer term minions of a character if they have invested resources in them?
I imagine that the Success result for such a ritual would probably be similar to the Create Undead ritual, making a guess.
Suggestions for any improvements?
Conjure Elemental Ritual 2
Uncommon
Source Inspired by Player Core pg. 390 2.0
Cast 1 day; Cost rare elemental building blocks/items see Creature Creation Rituals; Secondary Casters 2
Primary Check Arcana or Nature (expert); Secondary Checks Arcana, Nature or Religion (different from primary)
Range 10 feet; Target(s) 1 new elemental creature
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You imbue a target with a collection of Elemental material in such a manner as to create an elemental creature with a level up to that allowed by the Creature Creation Rituals table and of a type corresponding to ritual (specific rituals create specific types of elementals).If the creature created is more rare than Uncommon, the ritual takes on that Rarity.
Creature Creation Rituals (table from other creation rituals)
Creature Level Ritual Rank Required Cost
–1 or 0 2 15 gp
1 2 60 gp
2 3 105 gp
3 3 180 gp
4 4 300 gp
5 4 480 gp
6 5 750 gp
7 5 1,080 gp
8 6 1,500 gp
9 6 2,100 gp
10 7 3,000 gp
11 7 4,200 gp
12 8 6,000 gp
13 8 9,000 gp
14 9 13,500 gp
15 9 19,500 gp
16 10 30,000 gp
17 10 45,000 gp
Critical Success The target becomes an elemental of the appropriate type. If it's at least 4 levels lower than you, you can make it a minion. This gives it the minion trait, meaning it can use 2 actions when you command it, and commanding it is a single action that has the auditory and concentrate traits. You can have a maximum of four minions under your control. If it doesn't become a minion, you can give it one simple command. It pursues that goal single-mindedly, ignoring any of your subsequent commands.
Success As critical success, except an elemental creature that doesn't become your minion is only friendly to you, and an unintelligent elemental that doesn't become your minion leaves you alone unless you attack it. It marauds the local area rather than following your command.
Failure You fail to create the elemental creature. The taint of meddling with fundamental elemental components settles the casters and they take a -1 to diplomacy checks with elemental creatures for 1 week.
Critical Failure As with Failure except that you do create the elemental creature, but it goes berserk and attempts to destroy you.
On the side, I got some feedback; I've made some adjustments.
One suggestion was that this ritual should only allow maintaining one minion sourced via this ritual. It was suggested that elementals might be more socially acceptable than undead, and that having four elemental minions may be more impactful to a campaign than four undead. How do people feel about it. Does it make sense to gate this more strongly on how many minions they can get with this method.
They also recommended making the diplomacy penalty greater/longer to increase its impact an flavor on failures.
I'm also considering adding Crafting as a potential secondary caster skill with the concept of putting the elements together to form the initial body. What do people think?
Conjure Elemental Ritual 2
Uncommon
Source Homebrew inspired by Player Core pg. pg. 393 2.0
Cast 1 day; Cost rare primordial materials, see Creature Creation Rituals; Secondary Casters 2
Primary Check Arcana or Nature (expert); Secondary Checks Arcana, Nature or Religion (different from primary)
Range 10 feet; Target(s) 1 new elemental creature
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You shape raw elemental material into a living elemental creature of the appropriate type (air, earth, fire, metal, water or wood). The creature’s level, rarity, and ritual rank are determined by the Creature Creation Rituals table. If the chosen elemental is rarer than uncommon, this ritual takes on that rarity.
The elemental is permanent, though your ability to control it depends on your success.Creature Creation Rituals (table from other creation rituals)
Creature Level Ritual Rank Required Cost
–1 or 0 2 15 gp
1 2 60 gp
2 3 105 gp
3 3 180 gp
4 4 300 gp
5 4 480 gp
6 5 750 gp
7 5 1,080 gp
8 6 1,500 gp
9 6 2,100 gp
10 7 3,000 gp
11 7 4,200 gp
12 8 6,000 gp
13 8 9,000 gp
14 9 13,500 gp
15 9 19,500 gp
16 10 30,000 gp
17 10 45,000 gpCritical Success The target becomes an elemental of the appropriate type. If it's at least 4 levels lower than you, you can make it a minion. This gives it the minion trait, meaning it can use 2 actions when you command it, and commanding it is a single action that has the auditory and concentrate traits. You can have a maximum of four minions under your control. If it doesn't become a minion, you can give it one simple command. It pursues that goal single-mindedly, ignoring any of your subsequent commands.
Success As critical success, except that an elemental that cannot become your minion is only friendly to you and does not follow commands. Unintelligent elementals leave you alone unless provoked.
Failure The ritual fails, producing no creature. The meddling leaves a trace of elemental dissonance: you take a –2 circumstance penalty to Diplomacy checks with elementals for 1 month.
Critical Failure The ritual fails catastrophically. You still create the elemental, but it emerges uncontrolled and hostile, attacking all creatures nearby until destroyed or driven off. You also take the same –2 Diplomacy penalty for 1 month.
Excellent point, I had intended that the Ritual was to summon a specific type of elemental, not all elementals. But as pointed out that may not be completely transparent/clear in the text of the ritual.
I imagined for instance it being Conjure Elemental (Cinder Rat) as opposed to Conjure Elemental (Fire), or just plain Conjure Elemental. I will confess I had not decided exactly how specific it would need to be, would Elemental, Scamp be enough or Elemental, Wisp or would it have to be Elemental, Fire Wisp? Would you have a single one for Gennayn? They can attune to different elements.
With respect to the access to spells, decent point to consider. Perhaps an even more relevant concern might be to access to the Wish ritual (or variants) by way of Genies.
Would that perhaps mean that this ritual should exclude Genies from being able to be created? Or exclude Genies so created from leveraging Wish Rituals? Or should creating Genies with the ability to preform wishes require additional cost in the creation to equal the cost of a Wish ritual, and have a caveat that any 'conjured' Genie which preforms a wish ritual becomes free of its creator in the process? Or require to preform the wish ritual, the conjured Genie must have the components to preform a standard Wish ritual, and is freed from the conjuration during the process of the ritual prior to its final interpretation.
I'd also been given some additional feedback to potentially require creatures of 10th level or above to require additional requirements, like an otherwise undefined Primordial Heartstone as an additional material component. Perhaps Higher level Genies might require such a component. Maybe a Primordial Genesis Shard. A rare gem that is very hard to acquire and has a cost of at least 100,000 gp.
II think I'm inclined to say Conjured Elementals don't have access to grant wishes by their traditional Wish rituals, until they preform their first Wish ritual, using a 100k gp Primordial Genesis Shard, which frees them from any magical ties to their creator in the process of the ritual. (the 100k gp is the cost of preforming a normal rank 10 Wish ritual)
One could also make conjuring Genies generally harder as a general rule, and add an additional material component cost to Genie conjuring rituals equal to the cost of a permanent magic item of the creature's level, in order to conjure a Genie.
Thanks for your feedback!