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This article is starting something that I hope to continue in the future. Diegetic is an adjective derived from the noun diegesis, which just means conveying information in fiction via narrative. Diegetic generally means: existing or occurring within the world of a narrative rather than as something external to that world. The term is usually used when referring to music, which means, the music in a movie, play, or show is music that exists in the world, that the characters can hear, versus something like the soundtrack, which is a storytelling convention to convey emotion to the viewer, which is not part of the world, or something the characters can hear.

I’ve used this a little looser when talking about how things like rolling big numbers on damage roles convey information in the story. The number doesn’t literally exist, but the “rating” of how effective the attack is does exist in the setting. That’s not to say you shouldn’t attempt to wrap that number in descriptions, but the number itself is already starting to convey the story when it’s generated.

Mission Statement

I’m looking at something a little more specific in this series. Some rules constrain how level-based fantasy games work. Some of those rules don’t mean anything in the narrative of the world itself. For example, people don’t express all of the skills you can learn in a culture with a set list of skill names, but the rules define skills to make it easier to determine what characters can do, and how often they can leverage those abilities. Some rules tell you the upper limit of how many skills or languages your character can have at the start of the campaign, but no one in the campaign is going to say that someone can’t know more than X number of languages.

On the other hand, some rules are simplifications of the reality of the world you are using in your story. In most settings, we assume that people in the setting have an idea of what a cleric, druid, or paladin is. Magical scholars understand what the different magical sources are, and in many 5e SRD settings, many scholars have expressly discussed magic as categorized into the schools that exist in the SRD rules. What I want to look at in this series is how these diegetic rules can inform the story of your game.

Tales of the Valiant: Ritual Spells

In Tales of the Valiant, in contrast to ritual spells as defined in the standard 5e SRD, ritual spells aren’t spells that can be cast as rituals instead of spending a spell slot. They are spells that can only be cast as rituals, and the number of rituals available to spellcasters is tracked separately from spells cast with slots. In a way, it’s an extension of the concept of cantrips, in that they are magical abilities that a spellcaster always has access to, without being limited to a finite number of resources per long rest.

Something that 5e SRD rules, as well as the Black Flag SR, communicates, is that NPCs aren’t always built the same way as player characters. A stat block representing a cleric may be able to add spells into multi-attack routines, may have magical attacks only defined in the stat block, and not by external rules text, or may have a signature ability of a subclass that they can access, but with the details calculated in a different manner than the PC version of the ability, or expressed as a recharge ability instead of “proficiency bonus number per long rest,” as an example.

Some groups want to feel like characters with player-character abilities are among the very few in the world with that amount of easily available power. There may be spellcasters, but they aren’t slinging multiple combat-ready spells a dozen times per day. The tactic of saying that NPCs don’t have comparable abilities similar to PCs can work, but in some cases, you may not want there to be a lack of powerful NPC spellcasters, you may just want a dearth of adventuring spellcasters.

Because of the division of spells into standard spells and ritual spells, a GM running Tales of the Valiant has an additional storytelling tool that they can access. What if most of your NPCs only have access to rituals? How does that change the tone and feel of the setting? What would those spellcasters contribute to the world, and what would player characters be able to count on if this is true?

What Creates the Divide

We’re going to look like what ritual abilities look like for different sources of power, but before we look at that, why would player characters access magic in a different way than NPCs? While player characters may be just that exceptional, I think we have some real-world examples that can inform why PCs and NPCs don’t wield the same magical resources.

It’s possible that being able to cast non-ritual spells is the equivalent of being a magical athlete. With enough dedication and practice, anyone that can wield magic could cast non-ritual spells, but it takes constant practice and use to maintain that style of magic. Spell slots are essentially packets of energy, and not every spellcaster may practice the talent to collect and hold enough discreet energy to power non-ritual spells.

That also means that an adventurer who retires from adventuring may not retain their ability to cast non-ritual spells. Like an athlete who doesn’t continue to practice their sport, the ability to use that extraordinary ability might atrophy. In that way, you can have your powerful casters as quest-givers who remember adventuring, but they’re in no shape to delve into dungeons and sling fireballs because they’ve only been dealing with rituals for the last decade or so.

Non-Adventuring Spellcaster Capabilities

Because NPCs can have whatever stat block the GM wants to use, there is no reason to overly quantify what NPC spellcasters can do, in similar terms to how player characters access their powers. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful to think about what it would mean for spellcasters to only have access to ritual spells.

One consideration should be cantrips. Cantrips don’t require spell slots, so even a spellcasters that can only use ritual spells may retain the ability to use cantrips. This works well to represent spellcasters that were once adventurers, because they may not have spell slots, but they still know how to throw a firebolt enough to make it hurt. If you don’t want your NPC spellcasters to even have this level of combat, it’s easy to assume that your NPC spellcasters don’t have cantrips that do damage, change armor class, or modify armor class.

NPC spellcasters may also spend their time crafting items, rather than practicing their day-to-day spellcasting. It can take a long time to craft really powerful items, and maybe not spending time on gathering ambient energy into spell slots makes that process just a wee bit faster. These spellcasters can still count as a particular class when it comes to having access to magic items, so they may still be carrying powerful items. Attunement slots can help to explain why that NPC doesn’t have enough magic on them to annihilate others even without spell slots, because there will be a limit to what they can have attuned at any given time.

Wyrd Ritualists are probably the trickiest to support with this approach, because a Wyrd Ritualist with cantrips, rituals, but no spell slots, doesn’t look a lot different than a warlock. In fact, in Tales of the Valiant, it makes them look more like a 2014 Warlock. If you are going to present NPC spellcasters as “similar to PC classes, without spell slots,” you may also want to assume that a Wyrd Ritualist doesn’t have the Pact Magic feature, either. This makes sense if you assume that the Wyrd Ritualist is constantly making situational deals, rather than having one specific patron to grant more persistent abilities.

Wizards Are Always the Exception

One of the defining characteristics of the wizard is that they can continually add spells to their spellbooks, when they encounter new spells and can spend time studying them. That would seem to make wizard NPCs that don’t have access to spell slots a strange disconnect, implying that they may be entirely neglecting magic, not just the specialized practice of gathering energy for spell slots.

That doesn’t necessarily need to be the case. Wizards that don’t use spell slots can still get some utility from having tons of non-ritual spells in their spell books, outside of just keeping score with other wizards. While I’m mainly looking at wizards, to reflect why even a non-spell slot using wizard would still be collecting non-ritual spells, the following is true of most spellcasting NPCs.

Non-spellcasting NPCs might spend some of their time preparing scrolls, just in case they need to use something on the fly. Being loaded down with scrolls that require time and money to create isn’t really a viable alternative to having ready access to spell slots, when it comes to adventuring, but that old wizard that likes to take his time with his spellcasting may still feel as if it’s prudent to resources squirreled away, and they may also get a thrill learning a new spell, and enacting the spell as part of committing it to a scroll.

This also provides a reason for wizards, as well as other spellcasters, to have a number of scrolls on hand to either give to the PCs to aid them in their assigned tasks, as payment for their efforts, or as something available for purchase and trade.

Alternatives to Spellbooks

One other consideration you may want to make, specifically related to wizards, is what it means for a wizard to find a spell. If your NPC spellcasters are more likely to be magical theoreticians, you may want to introduce magical workbooks or theses. A player character wizard may be able to study this work and add a spell to their spellbook based on what they learned from the various topics expressed in the work. This shouldn’t take any more time or money than copying a spell from a spellbook.

You may want to quantify exactly what the PC wizard can get from a given thesis. You should probably specify what magical school the topics intersect with, and the most powerful effects the book details. That means you could detail a scholarly work like this:

• Title of the Work
• Subject of the Work
• Resources Gained

In other words, if a wizard finds The Parameters and Intensity of Warding Symbols, you might determine that the book can be used to add Abjuration spells to a spellbook, and for the resources gained, you could say that a wizard studying the work can add up to three spells to their spellbook, which are of the 4th circle or lower. That same wizard can’t read the book again later, and get any more benefit, at least in terms of spells added to their spellbook. Those spells are literally in the book, but the topic combined with the native knowledge of the wizard, allows them to make a breakthrough in recreating various spells.

What Do Dedicated Ritual Casters Look Like

Not every ritual circle is created equal. It’s possible in the future, we’ll have more utility items that make sense for non-adventuring spellcasters, and you can also assume that ritual spellcasters have some utility rituals that haven’t been defined in the rules, although you should still be careful not to expand those undefined abilities beyond what the various power sources normally allow.

It may also be useful to think about what it means to be a ritual caster. As we discussed above, these may be retired adventurers, in which case, your casters are still defined as being wizards, clerics, etc. But if you increase the presence of ritual only casters, some of those casters may never have defined their spellcasting in the same way that various player character classes do.

Dedicated Ritualists in a Setting

Arcane Ritualists may be sages that study the flow of ambient magic, untethered by other forces. This does mean that Arcane Ritualists are probably, by default, going to feel a little more like Wizards, or maybe Bards, rather than Sorcerers. You may still have a sage or expert that doesn’t study magic so much as they never fully explored the source of their sorcerous powers, but regularly cast rituals in their everyday life, or as a profession. That may look a little more like a fortune teller or a medium than a more scholarly Arcane Ritualist.

Divine Ritualists may be dedicated to the worship of a single god or religious practice, but they are also a great example of what a priest may look like that is trained in the observance of worship for a pantheon or family of deities. They might invoke different religious rituals, targeting different gods, depending on the ritual being utilized.

Primordial Ritualists may have a more difficult time accessing Primordial energies outside of the wilder places in the world. They may not be able to do so if they aren’t under an open sky, or within a natural cavern or cave. They may not be able to perform rituals on drastically modified lands, like farms. In this way, trained druids may serve as the ambassadors to the places in the world that push out Primordial energies, in a way that a Primordial Ritualist cannot. Even a Primordial Ritualist from a more agrarian culture may still need to take a pilgrimage to untouched wilderness when they want to perform rituals, and people that want to interact with the ritualist and benefit from those rituals may need to climb or swim to reach those areas of Primordial power, or they may need to endure cold or heat while waiting for rituals to complete.

Tales of the Valiant presents us with an interesting story element in this regard. What does a Wyrd Ritualist look like? They won’t have the persistent connection from a patron helping them to access the power source, but these aren’t natural energies that would be quantified in the same way that you might assume an arcane sage to be measuring. In this case, a dedicated ritual caster using the Wyrd power source may need to make some kind of sacrifice or short-term promise to a different entity each time they enact a ritual.

In fact, if the PCs go to them for help, the PCs may need to sacrifice something meaningful to themselves so the ritual caster can proceed. You may be able to present an interesting contrast between an Arcane Ritualist working as a fortune teller or medium, or the potentially more dangerous and unpredictable Wyrd Ritualist fortune teller or medium, and there may be a rivalry between those practicing similar professions in the same area.

A Day in the Life

I wanted to wrap all of this up by looking at what dedicated ritual casters would look like for each of the power sources, and what they would likely be able to provide for anyone that visits them. This is separate from assuming they might be able to prepare scrolls and potions, or that they may have magic items available to them.

Arcane Ritualists

Arcane Ritualists are going to be providing gathered information at lower levels, as well as having a few situationally useful abilities to place on objects. At higher levels, they are good at warding things and locations and pronouncing judgments on already incapacitated creatures. Transportation networks are going to be a big thing that powerful Arcane Ritualists can be in charge of, and potentially sending mysterious messages over great distances.

There are enough rituals available to them to make planar servants or undead justifiable retainers to add to their domains. Arcane Ritualists will be able to have weird, hard to find places to live that can punish unwanted visitors.

• Arcane Ritualist Novices (+2 PB)–Novices may have familiars to help them with research and gathering information. Identify is a useful ability but presupposes magic items to examine with the abilities. Unseen servants are going to be fairly common to take care of day-to-day needs. Novices may create coded messages for people, but that’s probably going to be very situational. Locking items, adding auras, or adding spoken messages are going to be situationally useful. Locate is probably one of their most useful utility spells. In fact, cantrips are probably going to be more generally useful, with the ability to mend, send messages, or do whatever things you can come up with using
• Arcane Ritualist Practitioner (+3 PB)—Animate Dead could be popular, in places where it’s considered acceptable, or people are too cowed by spellcasters to complain. Clairvoyance and Fabricate are probably the most useful rituals at this stratum of power. I can see there being a market for Glyph of Warding being placed on things. Magic Circle, and Tiny Hut probably requires the Arcane Ritualist to get out in be in potential danger. Hallucinatory Terrain and Private Sanctum would be good for the Arcane Ritualist’s reputation and privacy. Secret Chest might be a spell that the ritualist uses to hide away other people’s important items as well as their own.
• Arcane Ritualist Expert (+4 PB)–This degree of proficiency is where the Arcane Ritualist is going to really start to shine. Contact Other Plane and Creation are widely useful. Planar Binding and Create Undead are going to be great for getting the Arcane Ritualist some substantial servants. Scrying is one of the signature things you expect from the Arcane Ritualist sitting in their tower. Dream is going to be useful for the Arcane Ritualist needing to reach out to others to communicate. Geas might be a useful ability for sealing the terms of employment with retainers, and Guards and Wards are another signature means of protecting the ritualist’s home. Being able to create and maintain a Teleportation Circle network is going to be very important for people that are on good terms with the ritualist.
• Arcane Ritualist Specialists (+5 PB)–at this degree of proficiency, your Arcane Ritualist is going to have a nice, impressive, secure home with rituals like Magnificent Mansion, Mirage Arcane and Antipathy/Sympathy. Simulacrum and Clone are your go to spells for the paranoid Arcane Ritualist, and Simulacrum may be interesting if the ritualist wants to accompany employees in the field. Symbol is an amazing thing to be able to conjure, and once it’s in place, it’s going to show off the ritualist’s potential power, if they have the time to use it.
• Arcane Ritualist Masters (+6 PB)–An Arcane Ritualist may not be as dangerous in the moment, but being able to astrally project, utilize Foresight, or pronounce an Imprisonment on something dangerous that has been brought to them is pretty impressive.

Divine Ritualists

The lower powered Divine rituals feel very community service oriented. Toward the middle of their progression, they dovetail a lot with Arcane rituals, although from a narrative element, Arcane ritualist feel more like they are forcing concessions for the universe, while Divine rituals feel more like just imploring the deities for major events to happen. Reversing death and major injuries are very much signature abilities.

• Divine Ritualist Novices (+2 PB)—Purify Food and Drink, Augury, and Locate are all things I can envision a general priest doing as a useful ritual. Detect Poison and Disease may be an interesting thing for a Divine Ritualist to use on an afflicted person brought to them, which may then allow them to attempt an alchemical or herbal treatment or let them get out a scroll if the affliction is bad enough. Prayer of Healing could be good for injuries that aren’t immediately life-threatening, possibly as a follow-up to using Spare the Dying on someone.
• Divine Ritualist Practitioner (+3 PB)–Divine Ritualists gain similar abilities to Arcane Ritualists, except that they get much more definitive information gathering with access to Divination, which feels logical considering they are literally connected with the divine.
• Divine Ritualist Expert (+4 PB)–This tier of ability continues to be similar to Arcane Ritualists, except for a few really important differences. Raise Dead is a game changer, meaning that Divine Ritualists have some power over life and death when they are more powerful. Heroes’ Feast is also a major boost for Divine Ritualists sending champions out to perform a mission for their god or gods.
• Divine Ritualist Specialists (+5 PB)–The Divine Ritualist at this level has fewer options than the Arcane Ritualist, but Regenerate is an interesting “someone injured is brought to them” narrative element. Resurrection reinforces the access to the gods and powers over life and death, and Control Weather feels like something important for priests of some churches to be able to enact.
• Divine Ritualist Masters (+6 PB)–Divine Ritualists share Foresight with Arcane Ritualists, and True Resurrection is the kind of ability that can actually call legendary figures back from the afterlife.

Primordial Ritualists

Primordial Ritualists serve a very similar purpose to Divine Ritualists, but they take longer to have ritual access to some kind of immediate healing. They do maintain the “cast something to send off your champions” abilities, but they can’t negate death, at least not in the same way as a Divine Ritualist. It could be an interesting plot point for the PCs to be tasked with awakening animals that are important for some reason. They’re also obviously going to be the go-to for petitioning for a change in the weather.

• Primordial Ritualist Novices (+2 PB)–Primordial Ritualists early on have traits that lean close to Divine Ritualists, with a little bit of the Arcane Ritualist’s options to communicate via Animal Messenger, and to make a location more dangerous, via Circle of Stones.
• Primordial Ritualist Practitioner (+3 PB)–This tier of ability has fewer options for an NPC that is sedentary, and for rituals that aren’t supplemental to someone that’s an adventurer to begin with. Trestle and Water Walk are all about being able to move more easily or in a different way. Song of the Forest may be situationally useful if the Primordial Ritualist needs to examine something in their close vicinity, but Briar Rose is the most useful ritual here for an NPC Primordial Ritualist, as it can create something that is given to others to use later.
• Primordial Ritualist Expert (+4 PB)–This level of proficiency for the Primordial Ritualist is very similar to what the Divine Ritualist gets, but with a few changes. Primordial Ritualists don’t get the same mastery over life and death, but they can change common beasts into sapient beings, which can be a major plot point in a story, creating new helpers or retainers for the ritualist. They get the same “sending off the champion” ability with Heroes’ Feast. I’m going to play my “this opinion isn’t helpful in this context” card and say I can even touch on Reincarnation because it just bothers me as a concept, expressly in the way it’s used with this spell, in multiple editions of D&D. Moving on.
• Primordial Ritualist Specialists (+5 PB)—Oculus Blossoms may not be greatly useful for an NPC residing at a particular location, but it is a fun power for a character to use to prove they know everything going on in their personal domain. Control Weather is the signature Primordial ritual at this tier of access.
• Primordial Ritualist Masters (+6 PB)–There is only one new ritual option at this tier, which does allow the Primordial Ritualist to permanently alter something’s form, which feels potentially fitting to the theme. It is a reason that people would seek this NPC out, if no one in their party can do that.

Wyrd Ritualists

Wyrd Ritualists, as NPCs to consult, or as a patron to send the party to do things, should probably feel dangerous, and like a last resort. A lot of what will make them seem powerful at the lowest tiers of abilities will likely be via cantrips, with some situational use of other powers. Missions where PCs must bring a person or thing to the Wyrd Ritualist are going to be strongly thematic, and potentially supported by their ritual abilities.

• Wyrd Ritualist Novices (+2 PB)–At this early tier, the Wyrd Ritualist has similar access to abilities that Arcane Ritualists can use, but if it takes some kind of risk or sacrifice to perform this magic, there isn’t as much of a risk/reward calculation at this stratum. It does give the Wyrd Ritualist the possibility of an advisor in the form of a familiar.
• Wyrd Ritualist Practitioner (+3 PB)–This tier continues the trend of the previous tier of power, where the risk/reward for some of their utility may not feel like a great payoff depending on the sacrifice, although access to Speak with Dead is an important ability both as a worthwhile personal ability and as something others would seek them out to perform.
• Wyrd Ritualist Expert (+4 PB)–This is the strata of power where the Wyrd Ritualist is going to get more bang for their sacrificial buck, with powerful divinations, communications, and the ability to bind servants to them. Magic Jar is one of those abilities that sems to require the Wyrd Rituals to tag along with adventurers, but it does seem like you could work in some plot points where the PCs have to voice for the body swapped Wyrd Ritualist, after bringing them the person to swap with.
• Wyrd Ritualist Specialists (+5 PB)–They don’t get quite as many home base fortification abilities at lower levels, the way Arcane Ritualists do, but Wyrd Ritualists get some of that “warp my headquarters” abilities in this range.
• Wyrd Ritualist Masters (+6 PB)—Astral Projection and Imprisonment are both very thematic for a Wyrd Ritualist, as someone that can scout locations out of their bodies, or trap someone, somewhere, away from anyone else’s access. In fact, Imprisonment feels like a tool to “pay off” some entities that have granted powers elsewhere.

Building Around The Concepts

I haven’t had much time to implement this kind of world-building assumption in my games up to this point. There is something appealing to considering NPC spellcasters in my Thrones and Bones game, because that feels thematically appropriate for that setting.

If you give these concepts a try in your campaigns, or if you have already adopted something similar to this paradigm, I would love to hear about it. I’m intrigued at the inspiration provided to me by the implications of certain rules, and rituals seem to be a fertile ground for story-based inclusion. It’s also interesting to see how the ritual spell lists play into the themes of different types of magic. I really want to see more rituals across the board, and I hope that introducing additional rituals doesn’t blur the themes too much.

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/10/12/what-do-i-know-about-diegetic-rules-tales-of-the-valiant-rituals/

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Today, for
#MythologyMonday
, I've updated the
#dnd5e
/Tales of the Valiant stats for Thunderdell, a famous giant from the Jack the Giantkiller stories.

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#5EFeed

#BlackFlagRoleplaying
https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/dnd5eandblackflag/jacks-giant-of-the-week-thunderdell

My BBEG series for dnd and Tales of the Valiant gives you a fully fleshed out bad guy with statblock, plan, minions, and lair.

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Stop the Draugr King from killing all that lives in the lands he ruled long ago.

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