I've wanted to create a home-brew rule so that Wizards can cast all spells as rituals (other classes would keep the casting rules as RAW). My inspiration was the 2nd chronicles of Amber books by Roger Zelazny where he described practitioners of magic as being able to use raw magic to blast things but to actually craft a spell would take time and forethought. The crafted spell could then be "hung" and triggered with just a phrase and/or gesture. This seems to me to be an interesting story explanation for how spells worked in older editions ("memorizing" the spells would be framed as "hanging" them and they could be "cast" with the triggering phrase). I posted the idea on En World a while back but the discussion kind of got bogged down into how to model Amber in D&D.
What I'm interested in is what people think of the idea, in a strictly rules sense, of making all wizard spells rituals. The wizard would still be limited by their daily allotment of slots, ie. casting a spell as a ritual would still cost a slot of the appropriate level. The preparation time (and therefore casting as a ritual time) would be 1 or 2 minutes per spell level and the casting time of a prepared spell would be the same as now. Just the explanation for what is happening would change. (Wizards can cast cantrips anytime, as in RAW. Wizards can cast any spell as a ritual-using a slot, by standing around and reading it from their books for a few minutes-only useful outside of combat. Wizards would "prepare" or "hang" spells as needed each day and can cast them using an action and a slot).
This would make wizards a little less powerful (because in RAW they can cast some spells outside of combat as a ritual without using a slot and still have their full allotment of slots available each day). To help this out a bit I'm thinking of allowing the wizard to cast an extra spell by making a CON save, and losing a level of exhaustion or two on a failure. This should allow them to cast a few extra spells a day, whether in combat or out, but at a substantial risk.
The rule about readying kind of makes this redundant. You can start casting a spell, then release it when the readying thing happens. Like you say: I'll cast a spell when the goblin walks over to you. Then when it happens, you would cast the spell. I personally think that if anyone should have all spells as rituals, then it should be druids. It just seems right that the druid would walk off into nature for ten minutes before battle, then come back with magic surrounding them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
I've wanted to create a home-brew rule so that Wizards can cast all spells as rituals (other classes would keep the casting rules as RAW). My inspiration was the 2nd chronicles of Amber books by Roger Zelazny where he described practitioners of magic as being able to use raw magic to blast things but to actually craft a spell would take time and forethought. The crafted spell could then be "hung" and triggered with just a phrase and/or gesture. This seems to me to be an interesting story explanation for how spells worked in older editions ("memorizing" the spells would be framed as "hanging" them and they could be "cast" with the triggering phrase). I posted the idea on En World a while back but the discussion kind of got bogged down into how to model Amber in D&D.
What I'm interested in is what people think of the idea, in a strictly rules sense, of making all wizard spells rituals. The wizard would still be limited by their daily allotment of slots, ie. casting a spell as a ritual would still cost a slot of the appropriate level. The preparation time (and therefore casting as a ritual time) would be 1 or 2 minutes per spell level and the casting time of a prepared spell would be the same as now. Just the explanation for what is happening would change. (Wizards can cast cantrips anytime, as in RAW. Wizards can cast any spell as a ritual-using a slot, by standing around and reading it from their books for a few minutes-only useful outside of combat. Wizards would "prepare" or "hang" spells as needed each day and can cast them using an action and a slot).
This would make wizards a little less powerful (because in RAW they can cast some spells outside of combat as a ritual without using a slot and still have their full allotment of slots available each day). To help this out a bit I'm thinking of allowing the wizard to cast an extra spell by making a CON save, and losing a level of exhaustion or two on a failure. This should allow them to cast a few extra spells a day, whether in combat or out, but at a substantial risk.
What do you think?
The rule about readying kind of makes this redundant. You can start casting a spell, then release it when the readying thing happens. Like you say: I'll cast a spell when the goblin walks over to you. Then when it happens, you would cast the spell. I personally think that if anyone should have all spells as rituals, then it should be druids. It just seems right that the druid would walk off into nature for ten minutes before battle, then come back with magic surrounding them.
'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
I'll worldbuild for your DnD games!
Just a D&D enjoyer, check out my fiverr page if you need any worldbuilding done for ya!