Martial Practices how can we fix them, systematically?

(Psi)SeveredHead said:

I definitely would not want to get rid of rituals. A problematic "spell" like Teleport was quite well-fixed just by making it a ritual. You can't just run away from being detected or combat, you can't teleport anywhere you want to go (only where the setting allows it), etc.

The Martial Practices seemed pretty weak, unfortunately. Some also didn't play nicely with others. There's one that let you run faster. Great. The rest of the party can move at regular speed, or use the Phantom Steed ritual and give everyone a high speed (plus sometimes the ability to walk on water).

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You can easily add those limitations into a utility power.

Rituals are a weird kludge bolted onto the system.

Tony Vargas said:

Yep. Well, the most RL authentic, in the sense of what people actually used to believe about magic, and what modern practitioners do.

When it comes to fantasy, at-wills can also be pretty authentic. The typical evil sorcerer type might have one or two tricks he can kill people with in the moment, with no particular useage restrictions evident, and then do some big horrible working that the hero has to interrupt that can only be done 'when the stars are right' or something. They rarely do anything in between, like taking exactly 18 seconds to create a fireball, then forgetting how they did it, then doing it again the next day.

OT: For 5e, I've seriously considered doing away with 'slots' if I ever run a 'low magic' game. You could still play a caster, but it'd be all cantrips and rituals.

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Noticing you didnt mention dailies

I have to admit I always did find dailies rather kludgy... in myth and legend a time restriction on a magic would be things like just as the sun reaches its zenith ... or the moon enters this phase or at day break on the spring equinox.

The normal technique takes time,components and possibly situational time of day or location

I think of what all the spell casting that heros do as what I would call feats of magic

feat of magic (fast cast) you may cast ritual X fast without spending the normal amount of preparation and processing.
feat of magic (cheap/no component expended.) you may cast ritual X with only an inconsequential component OR component is not expended
feat of magic (out of season) you may cast ritual X at a time of your choice
feat of magic (out of place) may may cast ritual X in a location of your choice.

Environmental situations like a crossing of ley lines might allow even those without a given feat to cast as though they knew such feats and might be locations of great strategic value richly fought over.

So back to Martial Practices

I combined the effects of Forge Armor and Forge Weapon into Forge Mastery, and enabled them to do special effect enchantments on the equipment as well and in a way that keeps the martial flavor, this is still technically inferior to the extremely versatile ritual so it might be reasonable to reduce the level or grant it some other benefit (yes it allows constructing of the item from the ground up but that really is a mundane triviality especially since it does require forge etc etc and is something I would allow with the right background story even without the feat/ritual/mp)

Heck one might argue that most magic weapons of myth and legend were built by Martial types not erudite squishy mages and just remove making arms and armor from the mages ritual.

The Human Target said:

You can easily add those limitations into a utility power.

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I've yet to see a utility power that had a casting time of 5 or 10 minutes. A utility power is something you would want to use every day. Many rituals wouldn't be used daily.

Garthanos said:

Is the pole vaulting an example of that aspect well maybe not...

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That's a quick skill use. Sounds more like a utility power. Running all day is more like a Martial Practice.

(Psi)SeveredHead said:

That's a quick skill use. Sounds more like a utility power. Running all day is more like a Martial Practice.

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I considered just adjusting Mighty Leap to have a clause that allowed one to jump beyond your move with the aid of a suitable pole-arm or long spear. (thing is IRL a high jump goes from 8 feet to 20 feet or very much like a +10 on your jump skill ... if you have the tool and the specific skill - some martial practices seem exactly specialized skill use)

Some Celtic Heros actively may have used "Riding the Spear" surprise factor to do things like penetrate the line of battle (could be flavor text of certain barbarian powers although most of the time I would identify those as "Salmon Leap") or a GMT can be made that has similar enabling.

Garthanos said:

I want them to partake of more of the super human in many cases...

Is the pole vaulting an example of that aspect well maybe not... the context for it being superhuman only seems to arise within the context of a GrandMaster Training so I might have failed at my own goal even if the MP is functional within the rules for MP. Where as Blood Demand I think hits that sweet spot of awesome and legendary... as does the Blood Brotherhood rite.

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Blood Brotherhood seems pretty cool. I think that feels like an MP should feel. Something that you learn how to do, and you do it, and it has some significant durable strategic effect.

(Psi)SeveredHead said:

I've yet to see a utility power that had a casting time of 5 or 10 minutes. A utility power is something you would want to use every day. Many rituals wouldn't be used daily.

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Exactly. There are MANY MANY things that are far too situational to be worth taking up one of a very few precious utility slots for, even assuming powers were reworked to allow for long casting times. Rituals (and MPs by extension) should tend to be things that only work in specific situations, or are useful as preparation or are prophylactic in nature. This sort of stuff is pretty much never very useful taking up slots. I mean, 5e has the other viable approach to this. Have slots that regulate how much aggregate casting you can do, but don't define exactly which slot has to be used for each effect. 5e's version of rituals really isn't strictly needed, its more icing on the cake for casters in that system. In the 4e system rituals are very much a needed thing.

Garthanos said:

Noticing you didnt mention dailies

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I tried to mock traditional Vancian.

I have to admit I always did find dailies rather kludgy... in myth and legend a time restriction on a magic would be things like just as the sun reaches its zenith ... or the moon enters this phase or at day break on the spring equinox.

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Yes, exactly.

I find it helps to think of a limitation like daily or encounter as a player resource rather than a IC resource. In character, the hero has his reasons for not 'just summoning some eagles and dropping the ring in a volcano,' and they're not "it's a daily and he already used it" - if those reasons aren't explained, well, it gets labeled 'Author Force.' There are many things that might affect whether magic works, and tracking them all objectively would be a nightmare for a DM. So, instead, you give the player an ability to manage when he does something awesome, a limited number of times, and imagine the fiction as necessary to explain it. So the player says "Not worth the Daily, they're only goblins, gank 'em with at-wills" but the character says "If I did, the Dark One would sense it, the risk is too grave - we must face this peril with but our wits and our swords."

Of course, I also think that kind of thing works better if you couch the limitation as Story and Scene rather than Daily and Encounter. More storytelly, less clock-punchey.

Tony Vargas said:

I tried to mock traditional Vancian.

Yes, exactly.

I find it helps to think of a limitation like daily or encounter as a player resource rather than a IC resource. In character, the hero has his reasons for not 'just summoning some eagles and dropping the ring in a volcano,' and they're not "it's a daily and he already used it" - if those reasons aren't explained, well, it gets labeled 'Author Force.' There are many things that might affect whether magic works, and tracking them all objectively would be a nightmare for a DM. So, instead, you give the player an ability to manage when he does something awesome, a limited number of times, and imagine the fiction as necessary to explain it. So the player says "Not worth the Daily, they're only goblins, gank 'em with at-wills" but the character says "If I did, the Dark One would sense it, the risk is too grave - we must face this peril with but our wits and our swords."

Of course, I also think that kind of thing works better if you couch the limitation as Story and Scene rather than Daily and Encounter. More storytelly, less clock-punchey.

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But how do you do that?

I actually thought that 4e did a pretty good job of making it easy to narratively ignore the resource system. My example is always a fighter, where it works best, but it does work for other classes too. Your guy goes into battle, lets assume he's level 1. He has a daily, an encounter power, 2 at-wills, an AP, probably a theme power, and potentially racial stuff. His at-wills can range in effectiveness (depending on the dice) up to as good as some uses of an encounter power, and likewise encounter powers can easily rival a daily. On top of that you can toss an AP on top of anything and do basically a combo. You can also spin things like OAs and CC as part of another move. In other words, there's a lot of variability there in terms of what ACTUALLY happens narratively over a series of rounds. It is quite likely that it won't play out in that narrative as "one big honking attack every day, a couple of lesser ones per encounter, and a bunch of filler."

So the whole idea of daily as being a significant thing in world terms that characters perceive is rather hard to credit.

Its not quite as easy to pave over with a wizard who's powers each have very distinct effects, where creating a Flaming Sphere once a day isn't exactly narratively colorable as just tossing off another Icy Rays. At least 'magic' can be said to follow some fairly hard to fathom rules though, and most characters DO have a couple ways to accomplish similar things (IE Flame Burst and Fireball, different more in terms of how well it happened to work that time vs being distinct powers in the narrative).

Most classes fall somewhat in between, with various similar and narratively interchangeable ways to do their shtick, like healing someone for instance, or granting a bonus to an ally.

Finally, since 'story' and 'scene' are even LESS narratively based than day and encounter, what makes them more acceptable?

(Psi)SeveredHead said:

I've yet to see a utility power that had a casting time of 5 or 10 minutes. A utility power is something you would want to use every day. Many rituals wouldn't be used daily.

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You could have the usage time of utilities be whatever you want. Standard action 5 minutes, 24 hours, whatever fits.

If an ability isn't going to be used often, does it even need to exist? 4e already heavily goes away with the specific to rare situations problem solving powers.

Or why not make those really specific abilities more broadly useful?