D&D5e House Rule: Permanent Rituals
Permanent Rituals is a house-ruled mechanic meant to encourage collaborative roleplay and help mages feel like their magic can have lasting impact even at lower levels, by giving them a way to make their ritual spells last indefinitely.
A Permanent Ritual generally goes by the following steps:
- Envision the Outcome
- Conduct the Ritual
- Determine the Cost
This document is split into two parts: The Rules states how a Permanent Ritual works mechanically, and Example of Play gives an example of them being used.
The Rules
Envision the Outcome
When a player character (or NPC) wishes to enact a Permanent Ritual, they must choose a spell that they know and are capable of casting as a ritual, and state what exactly they wish to achieve by making the ritual permanent.
If the GM accepts this use of the spell, they then determine the cost of the ritual. A Permanent Ritual has the same material components as the normal spell, but also requires additional material components worth a certain amount of gold, which may be consumed by the spell. The GM is the overall arbiter of how much these extra materials cost, but a good baseline is 300gp for a spell of 1st or 2nd-level, 3000gp for 3rd or 4th, and 30000 for 5th or 6th. (to my knowledge there are not currently any ritual spells of 7th-level or higher)
The GM does not have to accept the use of the spell in this way if they feel that it does not make sense or would be game-breaking. For instance, they may not allow divination to be cast as a Permanent Ritual if this would allow the player to have unlimited access to a divine hints hotline. In such cases, the player must either rethink the spell (the GM and other players can of course offer suggestions) or simply be unable to cast it in this way.
Conduct the Ritual
When the player is ready to begin, they must set out the ritual materials as they see fit. They may also acquire the aid of other party members or allies with magical talent, if said allies are willing.
Meanwhile, the GM must decide the total number of "successes" the spell requires. If the spell has a countable effect, such as summoning an entity, a good rule of thumb is three times the total number of times this effect occurs. It is up to the GM whether to tell the players this number ahead of time, but it usually helps for their planning.
It is up to the players and GM to decide whether a character has suitable magical talent to help in the ritual; it need not be the possession of spell slots. For instance, a Wild Magic Barbarian may offer to pitch in, using their innate chaotic power to help fuel the spell.
The ritual itself is conducted over a number of rounds; however unlike in combat, each round takes roughly the length of time to cast the spell as a ritual normally. All participating characters must roll initiative to determine the order in which they take turns during the ritual; if they lose concentration as though concentrating on a spell, they are removed from the turn order and cannot rejoin the ritual.
On each character's turn, they must choose a skill and make an ability check with it, describing what they are doing and how it benefits the ritual. They may choose any skill, however GM will set a DC for the ability check based on how appropriate they think it is; 10 for something very appropriate and sensible, 15 for something a little more unusual, and 20 or more for something that feels far-fetched (the GM may also raise or lower these DCs based on how cool they think the player's description of their actions was). Once a skill has been used by a participating character, no other character may use that skill for the rest of the round. When the round resets at the top of the initiative order, the skill may be picked again by a different character, however a participating character cannot use the same skill more than once throughout the ritual. The GM keeps track of how many successful and failed checks were made; the ritual is complete when the required number of successes has been met.
The GM may also allow bonuses to individual skill checks for the expenditure of class resources, if it is appropriate to the spell. As a rule of thumb, expending a spell slot could grant advantage, while a less powerful resource like a Twilight Cleric's Steps of Night might grant a +1 bonus per point spent.
Determine the Cost
Once the ritual is complete, the envisioned outcome takes effect; the spell has become permanent.
The GM divides the total materials cost by the number of required successful checks; for every failed check during the ritual, that much of the material components is consumed, up to the original cost.
If the number of failed checks exceeds the number of successes, the GM may decide to impose additional consequences on the participants, some examples of which are given below:
Life Drain
The ritual demands a price in blood. For each failed check over the number of successes, each participant must expend one of their hit dice, roll it, and suffer that much necrotic damage; this damage cannot be reduced or prevented in any way. If a participating character cannot expend a hit die because they have none remaining, they die.
This makes act of performing a Permanent Ritual more punishing for low-level players, and much more trivial for high-level ones.
Mitigated Life Drain
As above, except in this instance only one participating character suffers the damage for each failed check. The GM or the character who was leading the ritual decides which character suffers the damage for each check individually.
This lessens the dangers of the Life Drain consequence, making it less punishing to low-level characters and even more trivial at higher levels. It also allows the ritual leader to enact the trope of an archmage sacrificing their acolytes for more power, which can be juicy but may also lead to conflicts at the table if not handled right.
Ritual Exhaustion
As with the Life Drain or Mitigated Life Drain consequences, except instead of taking damage and expending hit dice, characters suffer levels of exhaustion.
This makes the consequence equally punishing at all levels, but has the dangerous cutoff of 6 failures resulting in instant death. It will also take characters out of commission for longer, due to the recovery time on exhaustion levels.
It is up to the GM whether these costs and consequences are applied during the ritual, or immediately afterwards, depending on how difficult they want to make it for the characters to finish the ritual.
Example of Play
Envision the Outcome
The party are in the process of renovating a tavern to establish a source of income within their home city. To save on staff costs, Katja the Witch wants to conduct a Permanent Ritual to summon three unseen servants and bind them to the tavern, which can then act as mystical waitstaff, in keeping with the tavern's proposed "spooky" theme.
The GM agrees that this is an acceptable use of the spell, and says that it will cost 300gp worth of gilded knucklebones, black candles, onyx stones, and ritual chalk. Given the spooky theme of both the tavern and the campaign at large, the GM also notes that this spell will stray more into the realms of Necromancy, as to achieve permanency the servants will not be simple arcane constructs, but conjured spirits from the beyond.
The party acquires these materials (with a generous returns policy) from Katja's coven, paying the 300gp up front as a deposit, before the ritual begins.
Conduct the Ritual
Katja's player describes setting up the ritual components, and draws a basic diagram in MS Paint. Darius the Bard and Roger the Warlock have offered to help conduct the ritual too; even though they do not possess the unseen servant spell or, in Roger's case, the ability to cast rituals at all, their magical ability is sufficient that they can help cast this spell with Katja leading it. Darius grants an inspiration die to the other two each before they begin.
The GM informs them that the spell will require nine successes to complete; three per servant. The ritual begins, with Roger acting first in initiative, followed by Darius, then Katja.
Round 1
- The GM begins the ritual by describing how the lights dim and strange shadows crawl across the walls, as low muttering and gibbering fills the air. The spirits of the dead have been called, and they are displeased. The ritual is begun.
- Roger chooses the Performance skill and expends a spell slot to cast protection from evil and good, describing how he begins setting up additional wards to prevent the spirits from spilling out into the surrounding neighbourhood. The GM grants him advantage, and he passes with a 22.
- Darius chooses Acrobatics, trying to lead the sprits in a confusing dance as he draws them to the waiting vessel. Unfortunately, he fails with a 10, and the spirits begin to hiss and claw at the veil with malevolence.
- Katja rolls History, knowing that the tavern stood here centuries before the party took ownership of it, and trying to turn the ritual to those spirits who had served there in life. She gets a 19, and succeeds.
- The round ends with two successes and one failure.
Round 2
- Roger uses Investigation to begin identifying spirits that might be easier to coax into the vessel, casting command to force them to reveal themselves. The GM once again grants him advantage, and he achieves another success with a roll of 19.
- Darius bargains with the spirits, rolling Persuasion to set out amenable terms of binding, and succeeds with a 21.
- Katja weaves a detect magic spell into her ritual chant, attempting to use Insight to identify weaker spirits who will be more easily bound to service. She rolls a 10, and decided to add Darius' Bardic Inspiration to it, turning it into a 16; another success.
- The round ends on five successes and one failure.
Round 3
- Roger rolls Survival to call upon his fiendish patron to help bind the spirits, without letting the power corrupt the ritual itself. he succeeds with a 13, but Darius learns more about the nature of Roger's magic, to be followed up another time.
- Darius then plays a dwarven drinking song, rolling Performance to sway the spirits of former staff or patrons to his side. He gets a 21, succeeding. Note that even though Performance was used previously, it is a new round and a new character using it.
- Sensing the ritual drawing to a close, Katja rolls Arcana to infuse the spell with a final boost of magic, expending two uses of a class resource to draw upon her own well of power. The GM grants her a +2 bonus to the roll, and she succeeds with a 23.
- The round ends with 8 successes and one failure.
Round 4
- Roger attempts a Sleight of Hand check to cast mage hand and pluck the final spirit from the shadows and force it into the vessel. He rolls a 15 and succeeds.
- With nine successes met, the ritual is concluded without Darius or Katja needing to take more turns.
Determine the Cost
With nine successes and only one failure, the GM decides that the ritual ended up consuming 30gp, 6sp, and 6cp worth of the additional material components; the party is able to return the rest and collect the remainder of their deposit.
All that is left is for Darius, Katja, and Roger to each name one of the unseen servants, and the spell is complete. The servants will remain in the tavern indefinitely, able to help with cleaning, cooking, and waiting, without Katja needing to re-cast it over and over.