No, a ritual would not suffice. See, when you want to make a fucking wall, you want to make it now, not 9 minutes after all your companions have been slaughtered and you are completely surrounded by enemies who are just waiting for you to finish making the wall so they can mock you for sucking so much.
Making a wall in 3 seconds is cool. And useful.
And a power. In fact, wizards can already conjure walls - not of stone, but other walls. Wall of Fire is a level 9 power. Wall of Stone would probably, at a rough guess, be similar in level or a little lower. No damage, but harder to get through.
Making a wall in 10 minutes that costs 8374589gp is shitty.
A level 6 ritual costs ~150 gp. Level ~10-ish seems to hover around 500. The highest level ritual in the PHB, True Portal, costs 50,000gp. That's for a permanent magical portal from anywhere, to anywhere. Raise Dead on a heroic-level is 500gp. I think it's a safe bet that a permanent stone wall would cost something far more reasonable. Maybe a few hundred per square? Again, not something you use to make a house, or use as part of your standard options in combat, but when you see the smoke of an approaching army, being able to whip out walls in an hour or so is pretty damned awesome in my books.
Because you can just use that 8374589gp to hire a bunch of guys with fucking pickaxes and shit to make the damn wall for you in 10 minutes.
That is some godly masonry right there. Laying sandbags, maybe. Even laying down bricks to fill, say, a 10' x 10' square would take a little longer than that, wouldn't it? I'm no brickie, so I may be way off, but that seems rather fast.
When I talk about changing the world, I mean in some way that is different then a level 1 Commoner. Seriously, a level 1 Commoner can hire people to perform the actions of any ritual as fast as the ritual can be performed.
A level one commoner can hire people to create teleportation circles in an hour? To raise the dead in a few hours? To completely repair a door, currently in splinters, in ten minutes? To pull eight horses out of thin air in ten minutes? To break through 5-square-thick wall of solid rock or iron and repair it again in the same timespan?
You're absolutely right. With enough gold, he can hire someone to cast the ritual. Unless the peasantry got powers to tear holes in reality, I don't see any other way.
I'm okay with rituals being able to do economy changing things.
We are talking about human civilization managing to stay afloat in a world that's always tearing itself apart.
It's a question of scale, to my eyes. Keeping a village alive through a harsh winter is one thing. Creating a brand spanking new mine where there was nothing before is rather far-reaching. I mean, it alters trade routes, rewrites strategic points... in fact, wars over resources pretty much end if a source can be magicked up. Everyone has every resource. No one ever starves, no one ever suffers from a drought... assuming there's someone who can collect taxes, they'd pay the gold to get their taxes back. If there's not, a relatively low-level ritualist could earn some solid gold, or some property or something, without risking his neck in combat.
Depending on your campaign, your preferences, this may or may not be an issue. It does beg the question, though - why send a team of adventurers down to clear the kobolds and undead from the mine, when a single wizard can just cave it in and make a new one?
But yeah, I reckon some more economy-ish rituals wouldn't hurt at all. Being able to nurture a village, build a keep, that sort of thing... that's just as rewarding as killing the goblin chieftain. Maybe even more so.
3) Why should rituals only be able to be done by certain people? I think it's bullshit that a farming community can't hold their hands and do a little prayer that cures their littlest cancer patient or ensures a good harvest. The peasants only have to suck spellcaster cock because the current system makes them.
Hold on, which system? 4e? Ritecasting is just a feat, which requires training in Religion or Arcana. If you stat up an NPC like a PC, easy. Give 'em the feat and a ritual called "conjure light rain" or something. If you stat them up like a monster, you're pulling abilities out of wherever you want, so they can still have it. Expensive, but doable every so often. Peasants don't go casting rituals to cure themselves of a headcold or poison ivy problems, but they could probably use it every few years to ward off drought or famine or something.
So, really, anyone can cast rituals.
You're not completing your analogy. A real life D&D analogy for this situation would be having to go to your Congressman and ask for their attention when you're sick.
I'm not quite sure that works. It's probably somewhere in the middle. I doubt high level wizards are like doctors - you can probably get to a GP pretty quickly, wizards are more... reclusive. But then, you've probably only got one congressman. There might be quite a few high-level wizards about the area, and even more lower-level ones. So it's probably more like a private investigator. You might not know where to find one off the top of your head, but if you look hard enough, there'll be someone about. They just cost money, and might not be as skilled as you'd like.
