this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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How many rituals is too many? (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I have a player who is an experienced player while I am a new(ish) DM. Our party consists of path of Devotion Paladin, Bladesinger Wizard (the player), Thief Rogue, College of Eloquence Bard, College of Whispers Bard, and Battle Master Fighter. It’s already a strong party and the two bards can throw a wrench in a lot of stuff.

My campaign is doing a time jump (homebrew) of 2-2.5 years following the end of the original Phandelver. The wizard (who is a Changeling) is asking if he can pick up the following rituals during this time jump:

  1. water breathing
  2. unseen servant
  3. tensers floating disk
  4. phantom steed
  5. magic mouth
  6. leonmunds tiny hut
  7. illusory script
  8. identify
  9. gentle repose
  10. find familiar
  11. detect magic
  12. comprehend languages
  13. augury
  14. alarm

My response to him was as follows:

“I want to be a yes DM, but also you’re so low of level that many of these will subvert a lot of potential enemy actions. It feels like a little too much utility for [level] 5. With two bards, it’s already ridiculous with what you all can get away with.”

I did say that I am willing to let him have a few though.

Am I being too strict? If not, how many would you allow?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

I'd say your instincts are good, and that this is too many rituals to give out. In fact, this looks more like a list of all rituals than a player's wishlist of rituals.

You've got some good advice here on how many to allow, so let me take a different tack here and give some advice for handling a lot of rituals at once.

The foremost important rule of a ritual is that it takes ten minutes longer to cast a spell as a ritual than to simply cast the spell.

Many of these spells have a duration of one hour. Say you have three rituals going: comprehend languages, floating disk, and unseen servant. Every hour you would have to rest for 30 minutes to refresh your spells, then you'd have another 30 minutes of adventuring before they begin to expire.

So if your player wants to have the rituals active and ready, the entire party only travels at half speed. I'd have NPCs take the piss out of them and I'd encourage the players to do the same (in character, and all in good fun)

Time is important to you as a DM because you can use it to put pressure on the party. You can do this narratively by imposing deadlines, or taking NPCs hostage, or what have you. However, you can also impose this mechanically by having random encounters.

As the DM you get to decide how to do random encounters. The most common rule I see is to roll once per hour to see if there's an encounter.

Now, a lot of this sounds like you might be punishing the player for using too many rituals. That's not strictly true though. You're enabling the player to make choices, and choices have consequences. Enforcing these rules are a way that you can be the Yes DM you want to be while also keeping the power level grounded.