I have created several rituals associated with specific temples or gods, but I am a bit conflicted/uncertain as to what level they should be. In general terms I am stuck between intent (how commonly would the deity want the ritual to be employed) balance (how does it compare to other rituals in terms of power) and narrative (when do I want the ritual to be available to players).
I could use some alternate perspectives on this. also if anyone favors balance how do I compare the power level for very different ritual effects?
Level or I suppose rather Rank, should generally be tied to how powerful it is in game balance, or what level it should be able to begin coming into play.
If you want it to be usable at low levels, but rare, putting it as a higher level keeps it from being used. Instead of having it be uncommon, have it be Rare (or even unique for truly unknown rituals).
They can have heightened effects, so at higher levels you can get more important/useful effects.
If you need a ritual to be available at a lower level, but feel it is doing something more powerful that might normally require a higher level there are a couple things you can look at.
One have an NPC lead the ritual, and make the secondary caster requirements something they can fulfil, and make their secondary caster checks be reasonable for them to pass.
Other options would be to have the ritual require a focus or components that is impractical to acquire outside of the circumstances for which you are making it take place in the story.
The ritual might be a low level ritual, but requires the primary caster to have the 10th level relic of the deity in question. Which a relatively high level guardian carries it, and will only let it be borrowed for certain (storied) reasons allowing the PCs to use it just the once.
When setting the Rank, you'd probably set the level based on how much power it has to change the environment around the casters. Very much like a spell. If the is going to provide a buff to people in combats, it needs to not overwhelm the game balance, unless it is necessary to make the story work, in which you need narrative controls on it to insure it only affects the encounters it is intended to in future stories. (Ok, you might let someone come up a way to get it to work in some unforeseen future circumstance, but it shouldn't become a new, always win button)
As an example, creating an undead by ritual is limited to undead that are similar in level to what they could summon with a similarly high ranked slot spell, a bit higher at higher levels). However, it costs a bunch of money, thus reducing your resources in doing so. Because then you have the risks of failure, and have to deal with the logistics of getting your minion places.
So based on that, I say you try to base it on spellcasting, with respect to power. But you can fudge it a little, one way or another as long as factors keep it from being abused. (factors above an beyond being rare, for instance, because once you let them have it, it bypasses that restriction)
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Rituals typically have pretty high DCs (+5 above the normal level-based DC) so they're kinda risky things to try, and they tend to have ingredient costs as well.
Also, they take time, so to really benefit from them requires quite a bit of planning.
Now, what about the upsides? You don't have to be a particular class or have a particular spell in your repertoire. Although the skill checks you're rolling are often gonna correlate with caster classes anyway.
Mainly, rituals tend to produce benefits that last longer than spells, or are more exotic or powerful.
I also think a good ritual is something you do for a specific occasion or undertaking. You don't want to have a ritual that provides a nice buff that you'd do every adventuring day.
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Considering all those things, I'd still be aiming to create more low-rank rituals that are at first kinda risky, but later on will become things the players can do more reliably.
Also, (I run Strength of Thousands), I like to use rituals not as something that I'm going to write lots of ahead of time. Rather, any time I want to do something magical but there's no exact spell that does that, I just say "well one of your teachers knows a ritual for that". Or it could be something a player researches themselves to do a particular thing. And then maybe uses once ever. That's fine.
For priests it's nice to have some "signature" rituals that you use to convey the flavour of the religion. For those, I think keeping the power modest and the rank low is good, because it means you can afford to use them more. Like, blessing a granary to keep out mice can just be a rank 1 ritual that's more about showing off a civic-oriented deity. And then maybe one time the party uses it in a dungeon to disperse a rat swarm and it's cool.
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It's largely based on what it does. If the ritual provides something that is really useful to level 5 characters but pretty useless to level 10 characters, setting the rank and DC so high that only level 10 characters can cast it defeats the point.
A lot of rituals suffer from that problem due to how high ritual DCs are and how secondary caster checks make some of them extremely hard to actually do. By time you can do them reliably.
Beyond that it's a bit of an art form, but high level rituals should be something truly dramatic or major.
If you have an example we can probably brainstorm some rank ideas. :)
As a simple example- a god of rain has a raindance ritual that can either increase or decrease rainfall for a few days- the deity's name is Bactram, here is the ritual I have currently:
Cast 2 hours Cost 20 GP in incense, 1 point of sanctity
Secondary Casters:2
Primary Check Religion Secondary Checks Bactran Lore, performance (dancing)
Duration: see below
Requirements: lead ritualist with admired or better reputation with the court of Bactran
Dancing, praying, and the burning of incense is used to make the region either more or less attractive to rain spirits using the influence of Bactran.
Critical Success: rainfall is either increased by the normal seasonal maximum for three days or reduced to none for the next cycle of Celeres moon, depending on the ritual intent
Success:Rainfall is increased by what is typical for the season or reduced by 1/2 for the next 24 hours, according to the intention of the ritual
Failure: The same effects as success, but opposite the intentions of the ritual
Critical Failure: Same as the effects of critical success, but opposite the intentions of the ritual
The effects will always manifest according to actual intent- you cannot get the desired effect by intentionally failing at the opposite ritual.
I should note that I have a sanctity mechanism where another ritual (basically a worship ceremony) can raise the sanctity based on the size of the congregation, though it only raises by more than 1 on a critical success.
Feels like a 3 to me. 2 feels too low since control weather is 8, but this is a lot more limited in what it can do .
Feels like a 3 to me. 2 feels too low since control weather is 8, but this is a lot more limited in what it can do .Still 8. Yes, more limited, only rain. But otherwise effect is the same or stronger. Control weather doesn't allow downpour in Summer for some reason!
But also Control Weather is 1 day cast and this one is only 2 hours. Though CW is free and this costs money (even if irrelevant at higher levels) and some blessing from gods/spirits.
And this fall into the whole problem with rituals in PF2: That is so high level and high DC for what it does that it will basically never be used. The only time this will ever get cast is in a high level game where three characters each have a very high investment in a specific skill (including a Lore) and the GM contrives a reason to make them need to do it.
Like, this is level 15+ stuff and it'll be difficult even at that level. That's a very high level requirement for "make it rain less", and with quite possibly greater than 50/50 shot of doing the opposite of what you intend.
The sanctity ritual is another one I have created, much less costly in terms of failure... part of the reasoning here is that the ritual is asking a deity (or his representatives) for a favor, and gods can get touchy about people messing up their rituals when asking for a favor.
The sanctity ritual for Bactran:
Cast 4 hours Cost0 GP in incense per temple level
Secondary Casters:3+
Primary Check Religion Secondary Checks Bactran Lore, performance, acrobatics
Duration: see below
Requirement:congregation (see below)
When a Temple is consecrated it gains 1 level of sanctification. This ritual raises the current level of sanctity by 1 level. The congregation must be equal in number to the leadership chart in the DM's core for the level one higher than the current sanctity level. When the duration period of the consecration expires the sanctity drops by 1, if it reaches 0 then the consecration itself is undone.
Critical Success: The temple increases in sanctity to the level of the congregation size by the leadership table in the GM Core
Success: The temple increases one level of sanctity
Failure: Nothing occurs
Critical Failure: The temple loses one level of sanctity
I feel like this needs to be lower than consecrate, but beyond that I am uncertain about what the level should be here as well.
Also worth noting in terms of the original ritual- since it requires sanctity it has to be performed in a consecrated place of worship to Bactran that has that sanctity...
I wouldn't even bother writing these rituals in a normal game but this game is about survival and colonization and building and blessing structures where you might get help from gods seems relevant...
Well Consecrate is a 2nd rank ritual, so being less than that would make it a 1st rank ritual.
Something you could consider would be have the ritual only able to increase the sanctification level of the space to at most Twice the rank that the ritual is cast at. So casting it as first rank ritual could take a space up to 2nd level of sanctification.
It would be within the general concept of PF2 so say perhaps that the ritual might also only be able to advance up to the current level of the primary caster. So a first level primary caster, casting it as a 1st rank ritual should not be able to advance the sanctification up to a 2nd level sanctification.
Doing this you can make the baseline ritual smaller. You can scale cost based on the ritual rank, etc. And it should theoretically keep the ritual from allowing the players outside of expected game constraints.
Also with respect to your last ritual about the weather. I'd probably add a criteria that an area can only be under the influence of one instance of the ritual at a time. Subsequent attempts to change it automatically fail until the prior ritual expires. (if you did allow it to be overridden, such a resetting of the effects would have to be done by someone casting the ritual at both a higher ritual rank, and having a higher sanctification level. This would keep people from having repeated ritual battles trying to go one way vs the other.
Also, rather than have failure provide the reverse effect, have it have no effect other than giving all casters a -2 status effect on attempt to preform this ritual for the next 3d4 days. (and the failure effect would also occur on critical failure effects)
One thing that would limit the ritual back and forth is the question of how many temples could be in the same area, unless I suppose rival rituals are being performed in the same temple...
I think the increasing levels is a good point, I also might allow it to be cast at range (obviously in miles) at a higher level, if someone wants to try and flood a rival for example...
Part of the idea with the sanctity ritual is that it is based on the "leadership level" of the congregation rather than the officiant
The players probably don't, but it is there if they do.
I feel it is necessary in order to generate the feel of divine magic that I am looking for in the campaign.