Template talk:Ritual

Can we merge the Ritual template with the Spell template? After all, many rituals in 4th edition are ordinary spells in other editions, which leads to some overlap of lore. The template also isn't popularly used — there are only five pages that use it: Two of which also use the Spell template, and the last is a duplicate of Speak with dead.
 * Remove affliction
 * Gentle repose
 * Make whole
 * Amanuensis
 * Speak with dead (ritual)

I'm currently looking at something that's a 9th-level spell in 2nd edition, an epic spell in 3rd, and a ritual in 4th, and have been wondering which infobox to use.

With a few new entries in Spell, and six pages to update, it seems like a relatively easy change. — BadCatMan (talk) 08:53, January 1, 2015 (UTC)


 * This is fine with me. If there are no objections to the merge, I volunteer. Would you like this to be a pass-through to Spell like the others, or just eliminate it altogether? Popularity notwithstanding, there are quite a few more rituals in 4th edition that no one has taken the time to document. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 21:19, January 1, 2015 (UTC)


 * I'll do it, you do enough infobox work. :) I'll keep Ritual as a pass-through/redirect to Spell for existing discussion and pages. — BadCatMan (talk) 12:35, January 2, 2015 (UTC)


 * Okay, I updated Spell and subpages and tested it out on amanuensis. Let me know if you see a glaring problem. :) Later, I'll try to work out how to automate categories. — BadCatMan (talk) 13:15, January 2, 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for updating those pass-through templates. Okay, I figure using Spell table to generate categories of the form Category:Nth-level Creation rituals would be easiest. I almost have it working, but how can I introduce a Ritual variant alongside the Discipline, Evocation, Exploit, Hex, Prayer, and Channel Divinity Prayer we have for the 4e spells? It's still defaulting to "spells". — BadCatMan (talk) 05:53, January 3, 2015 (UTC)


 * You just needed to update the Power plural template (which I apparently neglected to document, sorry about that). It's used at the very top of the template to set the pluralform variable, which is used everywhere else to generate category names. I went ahead and made the change. I also added category and skill parameters because we have non-edition params for everything else, so I thought we should stay consistent. A type of "ritual" now modifies the infobox like it does for the other 4th edition types. Let me know if you find anything amiss. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 17:28, January 3, 2015 (UTC)


 * Aha! Thanks so much for sorting that all out for me. Is it possible to also add Category:Nth-level rituals (4e), with no ritual category included? I figure this would also be required, given the way they're organised. Also, can we have simply Category:Rituals (4e)? I realised the other editions have ritual-like activities (e.g., Lords of Darkness), though they are less well-defined, and I think distinguishing the edition may become useful. — BadCatMan (talk) 03:06, January 4, 2015 (UTC)


 * The Category:Rituals (4e) was an easy change, but note that we do not put (4e) after the other types, e.g., Category:At-will prayers (4e), so this fix is not consistent. That's okay if we're treating Rituals differently than the other types, I just want people to be aware of this behavior and discuss if necessary. (EDIT: To get the category to show up, you need to set type4e to "Ritual".) The other change requires modifying the spell table template, and presents a few questions. Do you want to treat Rituals like we now treat Spheres and Domains? That doesn't seem to be the case, but I want to be sure before hacking the template. So for Speak with dead do you want all three of these: Category:Exploration rituals (4e), Category:4th-level exploration rituals (4e), and Category:4th-level rituals (4e)? Also, do you want to have pages for the various types of rituals, like we do for Domains and Spheres? This would require specifying the ritual category this way:


 * It's not necessary, but this would allow the same or similar logic to be used to generate the extra category. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 17:15, January 4, 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm beginning to regret getting involved in this. :) You and Darkwynters are much more familiar with the new spell category system, so I'd mostly go with what you recommend, with ideas.
 * First, I think Rituals should be treated a bit differently from spells, etc., since they have been treated differently in each edition: in a rather ad hoc fashion in the older editions, and with completely different rules in 4th. So, I see the following category tree:


 * Category:Rituals
 * Category:Rituals (1e), Category:Rituals (2e), Category:Rituals (3e), as/if required.
 * Category:Rituals (4e) Probably the only one to formally arrange by level and category/type.
 * Category:Rituals by level (4e)
 * Category:Nth-level rituals (4e) etc.
 * Now, ritual categories. 4e uses "Category", which gets confusing when used in wiki categories, so maybe "Type" would be better, but less accurate. But a ritual caster doesn't learn all rituals of a category, they're more like descriptors. The categories don't seem to have a bearing on much. The key skills are more relevant, rules-wise, so Category:Arcana rituals (4e) etc. could be possible, but some rituals use both skills, which would surely be too tricky to sort out. So the following are kind of optional:


 * Category:Rituals by category (4e) or Category:Rituals by type (4e) or Category:Rituals by function (4e)
 * Category:Exploration rituals (4e) etc.
 * Category:Rituals by skill (4e)
 * Category:Arcana rituals (4e) etc.
 * Now I've thought about it further, I think Category:4th-level exploration rituals (4e) etc. may be a step too far. So please discard that.
 * Sorry for the fuss. What do you think? — BadCatMan (talk) 04:06, January 5, 2015 (UTC)

Okay, we already suppress the Nth-level category for Domains and Spheres, so I'm going to use the same logic to suppress the Nth-level category rituals category and all will be right with the world. This means specifying the ritual category as shown above with the word "ritual" after "Exploration" so the logic picks it up. I think using "Category" is fine, we just have to make it clear by context that we are referring to a ritual category and not a wiki category. Still not sure about an Nth-level rituals (4e) category. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 18:12, January 5, 2015 (UTC)


 * Okay. I still figure "Nth-level rituals (4e)" would be the most important kind of subcategory, given the way they are organised in the sourcebooks. Rituals are given out as treasure, and that's determined by level. I found I can cheat the system by using with a blank entry in place of the first class/category/domain/sphere: " ||1 ", as at amanuensis. That easily creates: Category:Rituals (4e), Category:1st-level rituals (4e), Category:Creation rituals (4e), Category:1st-level creation rituals (4e). Which, except the last, is everything I want. :D — BadCatMan (talk) 02:58, January 6, 2015 (UTC)


 * Heh, I definitely don't want anyone cheating the system; that way lies madness. The Spell template already generates the first one (Category:Rituals (4e)) and I have a fix to generate the second (Category:1st-level rituals (4e)) and suppress the fourth (Category:1st-level creation rituals (4e)). To get the third one, I would like to require that the ritual categories have the word "ritual" at the end, as in "Exploration ritual", as shown above in the example box. This would make them linkable without ambiguity, e.g., Restoration ritual instead of Restoration, and I would use the word in creating the third category (Category:Creation rituals (4e)). Is that acceptable? &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 04:05, January 6, 2015 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Thinking about it, I don't think we really need links or separate articles for the individual ritual categories, like "Restoration ritual". There's so little specific information that individual articles on the types of 4e ritual would just break the Three-Sentence Rule. They'd just be redirects to a Ritual page. So if it would be easier for simply:


 * or


 * or the like, with no links, then that would be fine. — BadCatMan (talk) 04:25, January 6, 2015 (UTC)


 * I was thinking most or all of them would start out as redirects to the Ritual page and then that page get expanded to describe the different categories and required skills (and there might be a Dragon article or two on rituals). Someone already linked "Exploration" so I want to be ready for that possibility. The link allows us to shorten the name ( Exploration ) which I like because we already have the word "Ritual" in a few places in the infobox and it just gets redundant. Regardless, as long as the name is specified as in your second example, with or without link, the template should generate the correct categories. All-or-none on the "ritual" word makes for a simpler template. If you want to handle both cases, then it requires more logic to test for the presence/absence of the word. Hmmm... Let me think about it for another day, I might have a way... &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 05:10, January 6, 2015 (UTC)


 * I mean, whichever works best for you and the code. "Exploration" or "Creation" is all it needs. So, as you think best. I don't even play 4e, I just wanted to sort out the redundant infobox. — BadCatMan (talk) 05:45, January 6, 2015 (UTC)


 * I love template work :) I couldn't quite reuse the old logic, but I found a relatively simple solution. The Spell table template will now accept any of the following for the ritual category:
 * Exploration
 * Exploration ritual
 * Exploration
 * Exploration ritual
 * Exploration
 * It should correctly generate the two Categories that you requested (the Spell template takes care of the third). I will update the documentation in the next day or two. I did test it, but let me know if you find any misbehavior. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 03:33, January 7, 2015 (UTC)


 * Awesome! I'll start updating up some ritual pages (a few didn't have infoboxes) and see how it works. Thanks for all your work. — BadCatMan (talk) 08:52, January 7, 2015 (UTC)

I eliminated the Category:Rituals by level (4e) because we didn't have the same thing for Spells. Then I noticed that User:BadCatMan suggested that category (up above). So, if you want it back, I can undo my changes. I believe I eliminated the Spells by level category a long time ago because it was unnecessary, the spells all lined up neatly by level anyway. With 4th-edition having spell levels that go into the double-digits, I had to add the sortkey to the categories so they line up properly, but now it is more symmetric :) &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 04:24, October 18, 2015 (UTC)