Milambus’s Game Codex

Earlier today Mike Mearls asked “Thursday’s #dnd question - have rituals seen much use in your game?”

Looking through several responses, it looks like many groups have not used rituals.  Those groups that have used rituals, do not use rituals very often.  The largest complaint about rituals were the casting costs associated with them.

My proposed solution to this problem is to follow the example given in the Player’s Handbook II with the Bards.  Bards are allowed to perform one ritual per day of their level or lower without having to pay the component cost.  The only catch is that the ritual must be a bard specific ritual.  At paragon and epic tiers the bard is allowed one additional ritual per day for free.

Following this example I would extend this class feature to the Wizard, Cleric and Druid classes, since I consider these to be the main ritual casting classes of their power sources.  Wizards would be only be allowed to perform Arcane based rituals for free.  Clerics would be restricted to Religion based rituals, while Druids would only be allowed to cast Nature based rituals without component cost.

This house rule should increase the usability of rituals in your campaign, and make the Wizard, Cleric and Druid classes the best ritual casters of their power source.