Taking 5th Edition D&D Spells into 4th Edition D&D

[Adrian Mazur]

So I posted this question to Stack Exchange RPG and was referred here. I am new to GitP, so if I'm doing something wrong, or this is the wrong forum for this question (I still don't know if I should have gone to the Homebrew section or here, but whatever) please let me know and I'll take this down, if I can figure out how haha. I'll just copy paste the question, and elaborate further on if its needed. Thanks for any feedback, and let me know if I've posted this in the wrong section.

"Okay, so this is a question I have been thinking of for awhile, and I really want to make it work. Want I'm thinking of is taking roleplay-oriented spells from 5th Edition D&D and putting them into 4th Edition. I'm talking charm person, light, Thaumaturgy, Disguise self, minor illusion, and spells like that. NO combat spells, only spells designed really for out of combat use (at least in 5th edition terms). That means that the spells I'm thinking of transferring would not be used in combat, especially because a lot of them are restricted when fighting. I LOVE 4th Edition combat way more than 5th's, but sometimes the game feels limited due to lack of roleplay oriented spells. I realize that Wizard gets some spells like this, and Bard has fast friends, but those cover a very narrow portion of what you can do in 5th Edition.

I was thinking of making the "spell list" for each class separate from the powers each receives, and from there just using the 5th edition rules for how many spells and what spells you can have. Then it would simply be treated like a Power. Roll to hit vs a Defense, like Charm Person vs Will or Minor Illusion vs Passive Insight, stuff like that. Dunno if having spell slots would work, or something along those lines. Just wanna know any ideas you guys might have, or if this is even worth considering. But I can't be the only one who dreams of 5th Edition spells in 4th. Its like the best of both worlds haha. Thanks for any responses, really appreciate it."

[Marcloure]

Many of the non-combat oriented spells in 4th edition are cast as Rituals, and there are many, many rituals.
For instance, Disguise Self is a ritual called Change Self, there are also Dancing Lights and Continual Light rituals for producing light, Call of Friendship is similar to Charm Person, and so on: Animal Messenger, Planar Portal, Sending, Hallucinatory Creature, Detect Object, View Location, Time Portal, Create Tree of Life, Imprisonment, Rise Land, etc.
In fact, I think that there are more rituals than there are non combat related spells in 5th edition. Also, some Utility powers are made to work outside of combat.

For martial counterpart, there are the Martial Practices. Usually, these are "rituals" related to item forging, endurance boost, and other things that can be done with preparation, not magic.

[ThePurple]

Many of the non-combat oriented spells in 4th edition are cast as Rituals, and there are many, many rituals.

Something to keep in mind is that, in 4e, combat is done via combat stuff (powers, defenses) while non-combat is done with non-combat stuff (rituals, skills) and the rules for them are entirely discrete. You won't often find combat stats (which includes things like Defenses) for people you're supposed to interact with entirely as part of a social encounter. Because of this, "Int v. Will" type powers would be kind of useless (and, in fact, would probably slow down play and/or development because it would require putting together stat blocks for *everything*).

Something else to remember is that, unlike most other editions, NPCs aren't required to follow the same developmental rules as PCs: if you want a level 1 minion to have +30 Diplomacy (perhaps because they're an amazing diplomat that has literally never seen a day of combat in their entire life), you can do that because NPCs aren't forced to tie their non-combat performance to their combat performance.

Personally, I don't really like rituals or a vast majority of the non-combat spells because they make spellcasters *extremely powerful*. It kind of trivializes the entire skill system if Wizards (and Bards) are able to get a whole slew of encounter powers that allow them to use Arcana for pretty much anything and just returns it all to the heady days of *every other edition* where spellcasters are able to do everything better than every other class because they have a spell that does exactly that.

4e is unique in that it is an edition that is actually *balanced*. Spellcasters don't just trod unimpeded over martial characters "because magic!" (it's always bothered me that, in certain editions, martial characters are literally incapable of doing anything better than spellcasters, which begs the question why these martial traditions even exist anymore on a large scale).

Keeping in line with this, my own game runs without the standard 4e ritual system. Instead, a character with the Ritual Caster feat describes the non-combat magical effect that they want to create, I determine whether it's appropriate for their level and trained skills (and whether it would actually be useful), they spend a healing surge, and then it happens. In general, rituals just amount to being able to "buy" successes on skill challenges rather than having to roll for them. I find it to be a lot more effective for a multitude of reasons: players are no longer having to track their rituals, it's a lot more balanced (since it provides a success at a tangible cost at all levels rather than completely ignoring the skill challenge entirely if they have the right ritual, especially if it's a low level one that is effectively free), and it's a lot more flexible.

It won't work in every game (I have a lot of other house rules and I use Skill Challenges pretty heavily in my adventure designs), but it works extremely well in mine.

[Adrian Mazur]

Something to keep in mind is that, in 4e, combat is done via combat stuff (powers, defenses) while non-combat is done with non-combat stuff (rituals, skills) and the rules for them are entirely discrete. You won't often find combat stats (which includes things like Defenses) for people you're supposed to interact with entirely as part of a social encounter. Because of this, "Int v. Will" type powers would be kind of useless (and, in fact, would probably slow down play and/or development because it would require putting together stat blocks for *everything*).

Something else to remember is that, unlike most other editions, NPCs aren't required to follow the same developmental rules as PCs: if you want a level 1 minion to have +30 Diplomacy (perhaps because they're an amazing diplomat that has literally never seen a day of combat in their entire life), you can do that because NPCs aren't forced to tie their non-combat performance to their combat performance.

Personally, I don't really like rituals or a vast majority of the non-combat spells because they make spellcasters *extremely powerful*. It kind of trivializes the entire skill system if Wizards (and Bards) are able to get a whole slew of encounter powers that allow them to use Arcana for pretty much anything and just returns it all to the heady days of *every other edition* where spellcasters are able to do everything better than every other class because they have a spell that does exactly that.

4e is unique in that it is an edition that is actually *balanced*. Spellcasters don't just trod unimpeded over martial characters "because magic!" (it's always bothered me that, in certain editions, martial characters are literally incapable of doing anything better than spellcasters, which begs the question why these martial traditions even exist anymore on a large scale).

Keeping in line with this, my own game runs without the standard 4e ritual system. Instead, a character with the Ritual Caster feat describes the non-combat magical effect that they want to create, I determine whether it's appropriate for their level and trained skills (and whether it would actually be useful), they spend a healing surge, and then it happens. In general, rituals just amount to being able to "buy" successes on skill challenges rather than having to roll for them. I find it to be a lot more effective for a multitude of reasons: players are no longer having to track their rituals, it's a lot more balanced (since it provides a success at a tangible cost at all levels rather than completely ignoring the skill challenge entirely if they have the right ritual, especially if it's a low level one that is effectively free), and it's a lot more flexible.

It won't work in every game (I have a lot of other house rules and I use Skill Challenges pretty heavily in my adventure designs), but it works extremely well in mine.

Wow, I never thought to look at rituals, I always thought they were obscure, rarely usable things. But after looking at them, one problem I see is the time they take. In a social interaction, it's hard to have 10 minutes to sit and cast Detect Lies without obvious drawbacks. Do you guys just ignore the time requirement for them, or something like that? Thanks again for pointing all this out, really helps out

[MoutonRustique]

Wow, I never thought to look at rituals, I always thought they were obscure, rarely usable things. But after looking at them, one problem I see is the time they take. In a social interaction, it's hard to have 10 minutes to sit and cast Detect Lies without obvious drawbacks. Do you guys just ignore the time requirement for them, or something like that? Thanks again for pointing all this out, really helps out

This really depends on the kind of game you want.

If you want magic to be an "all-purpose tool" that is just better - it's easy to have rituals take little time, have no cost and such. In many ways this is D&D being D&D. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach : in fact, it's been the leading game by popularity for decades!

4e brought the idea that magic wasn't the "be-all-end-all". Now, there are miles of variance available, and the only wrong way to go about it, is the way that you guys don't like - if you like it, it's the right way.

Possible approaches include:
- rituals are cast in a few seconds and have no cost
- rituals are cast in a few seconds, have no cost, but have a usage limit (for instance, you could say that you can use your level in rituals per day, or something)
- rituals are cast in a few seconds, but have an increased cost (perhaps in healing surges)
- rituals are cast slowly, but have no cost
- rituals are used as presented
- rituals are cast more slowly, but have no cost
- etc, etc

Each and every one of those will give a different feel to your game world. In truth, there are only two things to consider :
1 - how do you want them to work
2 - will this make players that don't have access to rituals "unfun"

Point [1] is a matter of taste, point [2] is a matter of table choice.

So I suggest you talk it over with your players. Here are a few points that would be important to raise :
- if there were no ritual casters, would the game work ?
- if every one were a ritual caster, would the game work ?
- does the [ritualist] feat make sense in the game now ? (too good, not good enough, feels off...)
- does the game world make sense with this ?
- can NPCs use rituals like this? If not, why not? If yes, does the world make sense?

[ve4grm]

This really depends on the kind of game you want.

If you want magic to be an "all-purpose tool" that is just better - it's easy to have rituals take little time, have no cost and such. In many ways this is D&D being D&D. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach : in fact, it's been the leading game by popularity for decades!

4e brought the idea that magic wasn't the "be-all-end-all". Now, there are miles of variance available, and the only wrong way to go about it, is the way that you guys don't like - if you like it, it's the right way.

Possible approaches include:
- rituals are cast in a few seconds and have no cost
- rituals are cast in a few seconds, have no cost, but have a usage limit (for instance, you could say that you can use your level in rituals per day, or something)
- rituals are cast in a few seconds, but have an increased cost (perhaps in healing surges)
- rituals are cast slowly, but have no cost
- rituals are used as presented
- rituals are cast more slowly, but have no cost
- etc, etc

I always liked the idea that you could pre-cast a ritual, taking the time and resources to cast it as per normal, and then triggering its effects at a later point. So if you expected to use Detect Lies, you could cast it in advance, and just trigger it as a standard action (still obvious that you're casting magic). This fit in well with the idea that Rituals were for when you had time to prepare for a non-combat situation.

(On the flip side, this also means that if you pre-cast a ritual, and don't need it, you still expended those resources. Interesting trade-offs for both ways, so one method isn't distinctly more useful than the other.)

[Kurald Galain]

Something to keep in mind is that, in 4e, combat is done via combat stuff (powers, defenses) while non-combat is done with non-combat stuff (rituals, skills) and the rules for them are entirely discrete.

That's not true at all.

Almost everything the OP mentions are utility powers. Charm person is a wizard utility, as is light. There are encounter utility powers that give an illusion (for a standard action), and there's also several disguise powers on class lists. Just look around, and take the feats Skill Power, utility power swap, and/or Secrets of Belial as necessary.

Wow, I never thought to look at rituals, I always thought they were obscure, rarely usable things.

Rituals are obscure, rarely usable things. Back when this forum was active, there were common threads about how completely useless rituals are, and many players forget they exist entirely.

[Marcloure]

Rituals are obscure, rarely usable things. Back when this forum was active, there were common threads about how completely useless rituals are, and many players forget they exist entirely.

At the table I DM, the cleric and the druid have spent more gold in rituals than buying magic itens. They have used Sending, Commarade Succour, Cure Disease, Consult Mystic Sages, Breath Underwater, Ghost Walk, and many others rituals a lot of times, including scrolls.
I understand why people often forget about them, but I think their usage depends on the game, as does "Charm Person" or "Create Food and Water".

[ThePurple]

Almost everything the OP mentions are utility powers. Charm person is a wizard utility, as is light. There are encounter utility powers that give an illusion (for a standard action), and there's also several disguise powers on class lists.

I meant power within the confines of the "Abil v. Defense" model ("attack power" would've been more accurate for what I intended). Word of Friendship is a power but it doesn't follow the same model as attack powers because it provides a bonus to Diplomacy checks rather than being resolved as a normal attack power.

You'd notice this if you actually read the full text that I wrote separating the categories as "combat stuff" and "non-combat stuff" rather than simply screaming about the semantic wrongness of a tiny subset of what I actually said. Light would be considered by most to be a non-combat power, as would Word of Friendship (which specifically improves Diplomacy, which has few combat uses). Sleep is a combat spell (indicated by the fact that it's an attack power and has every facet of its function spelled out explicitly) as are a whole slew of other charm spells (a vast majority, in fact).

The separation of combat from non-combat is what I was actually trying to get across.

Btw, I couldn't actually find "Charm Person" specifically on the wizard spell list anywhere. There are plenty of Charm spells and spells that accomplish a similar goal (namely, turning someone to your side for a short period of time), but I couldn't find Charm Person (or even just "Charm") anywhere.

[ThePurple]

At the table I DM, the cleric and the druid have spent more gold in rituals than buying magic itens. They have used Sending, Commarade Succour, Cure Disease, Consult Mystic Sages, Breath Underwater, Ghost Walk, and many others rituals a lot of times, including scrolls.
I understand why people often forget about them, but I think their usage depends on the game, as does "Charm Person" or "Create Food and Water".

In the right game, Rituals can be *obscenely powerful*, just as non-combat and/or spells that don't do direct damage are often the most game breaking in a 3.X game. The major difference comes down to how much your game deals with non-combat scenarios rather than being purely combat driven. Of course, rituals are also discretely separated from the entire rest of the rules and are largely ignored in a lot of the later content so it makes sense that people forget about them because it sometimes seems like the devs did.

But, as you said, it depends upon the GM, the players, and the game as much as it depends upon the mechanics themselves.

[MwaO]

In the right game, Rituals can be *obscenely powerful*, just as non-combat and/or spells that don't do direct damage are often the most game breaking in a 3.X game. The major difference comes down to how much your game deals with non-combat scenarios rather than being purely combat driven. Of course, rituals are also discretely separated from the entire rest of the rules and are largely ignored in a lot of the later content so it makes sense that people forget about them because it sometimes seems like the devs did.

But, as you said, it depends upon the GM, the players, and the game as much as it depends upon the mechanics themselves.

One thing to remember is that gold gets very exponential in D&D. A 1st level ritual at 1st is expensive, but the effective cost at say 11th is nearly non-existent. i.e. if you cast a 1st level ritual that costs say 20 gp 100 times between 1st and 11th is barely more than the cost of a 6th level item...

[Yakk]

Instant-cast Detect Lies is an example of a horrible spell. It removes an entire set of subplots, destroys a character type (someone who is insightful), and replaces it with "I am a wizard, thus can do anything".

Being able to detect all lies (you cannot be lied to) is an awesome character hook, and you can do it in 4e. It just doesn't consist of a single spell. You just invest in an insane skill level in insight.

[Kurald Galain]

But, as you said, it depends upon the GM, the players, and the game as much as it depends upon the mechanics themselves.

To be precise, it depends upon the GM ignoring the mechanics.

There are two parts to rituals (as with powers), i.e. the fluff text and the mechanics. Most rituals have some pretty cool fluff text, and if your GM stops reading there and does what the fluff says, they're pretty good (and I'd call that an example of good GM'ing). However, in most cases, the mechanics for rituals explain why the ritual does NOT do what the fluff text suggests. So if you folllow that part of the text, rituals are almost entirely worthless.

For instance, there's the Comprehend Languages ritual. It sounds like it allows you to converse with random non-hostile monsters, but it's actually "when you first meet a monster, you spend ten minutes chanting while hopefully your party won't try any social checks, and afterwards you can understand the monster but not speak to it". So yeah, that's pretty useless (and that's before you check the MM and realize that almost everything speaks Common anyway )

So get your GM to focus on the fluff text and ignore the rules text, and you'll be fine.

[Yakk]

Most rituals can be pointless while rituals themselves remain powerful.

Divination ones tend to be pretty good. Communication and Travel ones to, so long as the world doesn't move at the speed of plot. Magic Circle can be crazy strong with enough Arcana pumping (especially the "nobody can cross" version).

[Dimers]

Most rituals can be pointless while rituals themselves remain powerful.

And of course homebrew can rescue the pointless ones. Or enliven the gameworld! E.g. without any mechanical benefit in mind, I created a "take a photograph" ritual for my curious wizard to use, because it's a thing that could easily exist in a world with magic.

[UrielAwakened]

We allow people to cast rituals with a casting time of 10 mins or less as a standard action if they spend a healing surge.

Has not broken the game so far and we're level 12.

[Jaeda]

We allow people to cast rituals with a casting time of 10 mins or less as a standard action if they spend a healing surge.

Has not broken the game so far and we're level 12.

I really wish I had thought of that. It would make certain rituals, like Arcane Lock and Comprehend Languages, much more useful. Now you can seal a door behind you while you run away from the minotaur. Although maybe the lock shouldn't be permanent if cast hastily like this. Still, most of the potentially problematic rituals have longer casting times. The biggest potential offender that I see is Linked Portal.

[Yakk]

If you are going to do that, you really really need to awesome up martial practices, or introduce a real skill system (one that has hard narriative effects, not just modifiers on d20 rolls).

Even with rituals as-is, arcana is the best skill in the entire game by an order of magnitude. Making rituals even better bends things further.

If wizards are sealing portals in seconds, barbarians need to be jumping from mountain top to mountain top.

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I mean, Arcane Lock is awesome in any case where your characters have a base of operations. You can arcane lock every door and entry way, and at the very least you are told if anyone breaks into your base. With enough arcana optimization you can make it basically impossible to break into.

Back it up with some Magic Circles and we are talking a serious arcane fortress. All for a tiny bit of downtime and a trivial amount of gold at paragon and above.

No, it doesn't let you retreat past a door in combat and make it unpassable; but rituals are not meant for combat-speed situations. A utility power, or even magic item, that lets you seal a portal makes sense there; those come from a different character power budget.

---

I'm not opposed to adding more such utility powers to 4e. Having an Arcane Lock ritual that can be quick-casted sounds great.

But:
(A) having an unlimited number of such rituals that a character knows and/or can choose from gets rid of the 4e design principle of "keep it simple"
(B) if arcana gets it, so should other skills

Leap (Athletics): As a standard action you can leap (Strength score)+(Level)+20 feet horizontally and/or half that vertically. By expending a healing surge you can do this as part of a move action (increasing your speed by the distance jumped), or double the distance you jump as a standard action.

Level 0: 20 strength, 40/80 foot jump (20/40 vertical)
Level 30: 30 strength, 80/160 foot jump (40/80 vertical)

Still not "between mountains", but impressive jumps. Burning a standard action in combat to jump far is going to be tactically dubious usually, but there is no other artificial "preparation" time.

Not polished, but I hope you get the idea. Collecting such "talents" should be about as hard as "burn a healing surge to do a ritual" rituals are.

[UrielAwakened]

I also don't let people simply trade gold for rituals. We track each ritual's component ingredients individually (Arcana, Nature, Heal, etc..) and they need enough of each to do whatever ritual is necessary.

It might work for us because we don't really have anybody that's purely martial. Our closest thing is an Orc Barbarian that's also a Cleric, and a Battlemind.

[Jaeda]

I've thought before about giving some rituals quicker version that have reduced power (so Arcane Lock wouldn't be permanent and might have a penalty to the roll). Some sort of accompanying "rituals prepared" mechanic might be needed so you can't just use all of your rituals at an instant.

What you're describing reminds me of the alternate skill-based utility powers. Some utility powers do cover space similar to what some quick rituals could provide. If I was redesigning the system, I'd look for some way to reconcile the two ideas.

If you're willing to accept that martial training is essentially its own kind of magic, it does open up a number of these abilities. A single strike that lets you cleave through walls. A powerful leap that can clear a chasm. Jumping down the chasm without harm. Running up the wall. Climbing a tree by jumping up its branches. Being so unassuming as to be invisible. Walking on water. Most of these are probably better suited as utility powers, but some of them could be rituals and I'm sure that you could come up with more.

[Dimers]

A single strike that lets you cleave through walls. A powerful leap that can clear a chasm. Jumping down the chasm without harm. Running up the wall. Climbing a tree by jumping up its branches. Being so unassuming as to be invisible. Walking on water.

Scaring a door into opening ... or into staying locked.

[Excession]

Dragon 405 already introduced the ritual Hold Portal that is basically a standard action Arcane Lock. It could use some more details, like the range. Personally I would allow thievery to do roughly the same thing, with the component cost of one wedge or dagger, though maybe that would depend on what way to door opens.

[Meta]

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Back it up with some Magic Circles and we are talking a serious arcane fortress. All for a tiny bit of downtime and a trivial amount of gold at paragon and above.

Not polished, but I hope you get the idea. Collecting such "talents" should be about as hard as "burn a healing surge to do a ritual" rituals are.

Magic Circle is 1 hour casting time I believe, much to my chagrin. the wall version is 1000 GP which gets to be pretty pricey, especially in a party that shares resources.

A lot of the times my character will use a ritual when one isn't really needed as well. As a player I know my DM is supremely unlikely to put us in a situation where everyone's survival depends on a given ritual I have, so I end up spending gold to roleplay basically. That will dent one's expected wealth at any level.