Rituals (3.5e Variant Rule)
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Contents
Rituals
What are Rituals?
Rituals are a way of bringing player agency and world-shaping abilities to games that lack spellcasters such as the wizard or cleric. They give such powers to all characters--after all, why should only the spellcasters have the ability to change the world around them? Rather than giving only traditional spellcasters such abilities, this variant grants them to all characters.
Mechanics
Rituals require an amount of time to enact, and duplicate some sort of effect. While many rituals appear in the world, most can only be cast by a character of a certain character level (CL from now on). The following table defines at what CL characters can cast a ritual of what level:
| Character level | Ritual Level |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 3 | 2 |
| 5 | 3 |
| 7 | 4 |
| 9 | 5 |
| 11 | 6 |
| 13 | 7 |
| 15 | 8 |
| 17 | 9 |
Casting a Ritual
There are a number of components to casting a ritual. Depending on the ritual's nature, it has either a short casting time (one minute), medium casting time (ten minutes), or long casting time (one hour).
Rituals require special materials, incense, or other components to cast; this cost is equal to the ritual's level squared x 50. These components are consumed regardless of whether the ritual succeeds or fails.
Finally, characters require a Charisma check to successfully cast a ritual, made at the end of the ritual's casting time. The DC for this check is equal to 10 + ritual level.
Collecting Rituals
Rituals can be found or researched; either way, recording them requires a ritual book (identical to a spellbook). Alternative materials can be used to record a ritual as per Alternative Spellbooks in Complete Arcane. Each ritual requires 100 gp per ritual level in special inks, adhesive dust, or similar material to record, and takes a single page of the ritual book.
While many rituals are found, they can also be researched. Characters can research rituals that are at least one level lower than the highest-level ritual they can cast, and researching a ritual requires 1,000 gp per ritual level to research as well as three days per level of the ritual.
Sample Rituals
Here are a number of sample rituals to get you started. Remember that the level of any specific ritual may change from one campaign to another, or may even be missing from a campaign altogether at the DM's discretion.
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