Ritual of Vitality - am I understanding this right?

[The Lone Badger]

Say you're starting a new party of 7th level characters (21,000xp). One player decides to play a half-celestial, ending up with 3 paladin levels. Another player starts as a 7th level paladin, then has the party cleric use Ritual of Vitality and sacrifices 6000xp to turn into a half-celestial (dropping to 6th level) So now two otherwise identical half-celestial paladins are seperated by 3 levels?

Also the transformed guy is ECL10 and has 15,000xp, so would he need to accumulate 40,000xp to level up?

 

[Gwarok]

Where is this Ritual of Vitality located? Seems pretty measley to get turned into half celestial for only 6kxp. Unless that was just trying to add the 4 levels you would normally lose. If that is the case I would have the XP req be equal to whatever it would take to get that character to gain 4 levels unless he wanted to take a 4 level loss.

 

[The Lone Badger]

Ritual of Vitality is in Savage Species. You pay XP equal to the amount needed to advance to a level equal to the LA of the thing you are turning into (so 6000xp for LA+4). Note that's to, not by.

 

[thegreatbuddha]

Isn't there a rule against "burning" enough XPs to drop a level?

I was under the assumption that the only methods of losing a level were being raised etc or failing the Fort save to remove a negative level.

 

[FrankTrollman]

Also the transformed guy is ECL10 and has 15,000xp, so would he need to accumulate 40,000xp to level up?

I see that you've seen the inherent problem with this ritual.

The Ritual of Vitality is totally broken. It is trivial to attain an ECL equal to half again your current level. Thereafter, however, you are getting XP as the lower rate of your higher level, and to get another level you need to pick up enough XP to recoup the losses of the ritual, then get enough XP to have actually attained your new current level, and then get a level after that.

In short, while the immediately gained levels are hugely more than anything that should ever be allowed - in the long run, you'll never gain another level as long as the campaign goes.

So in the short game - it's way overpowered and totally broken.

And in the long game - it's horrendously underpowered and totally broken.

In either case it competely molests the level mechanic of the game and cannot ever be justified. It never ever should have seen print - there's no way to use it except to break the game one way or the other.

-Frank

 

[The Lone Badger]

Isn't there a rule against "burning" enough XPs to drop a level?

It is explicitly allowed for the Ritual of Vitality.

 

[Mal-2]

Say you're starting a new party of 7th level characters (21,000xp). One player decides to play a half-celestial, ending up with 3 paladin levels. Another player starts as a 7th level paladin, then has the party cleric use Ritual of Vitality and sacrifices 6000xp to turn into a half-celestial (dropping to 6th level) So now two otherwise identical half-celestial paladins are seperated by 3 levels?

Also the transformed guy is ECL10 and has 15,000xp, so would he need to accumulate 40,000xp to level up?

That sounds right. Obviously, you might not want to actually let it happen in your game though. The SS Rituals are meant so that a DM can open up playing a monster-type character to players that are already in the middle of a campaign. If you allowed them to play those same monster-type races from the beginning of the game, you'd be quite justified in saying that those rituals don't exist in your campaign world.

On the other hand, if you'd like the rituals to exist but still maintain a better balance in the game, instead of granting the template outright, design a leveled version that spreads the benifits out over the course of several levels. There are some exampel of this in Savage Species, as well as on the Wizards' web site.

Mal-2

 

[Lord_Fergus]

Just to point out - The Book of Exalted Feats has given the half-celestial some different LA depending on the base creature. If your Paladin is one of the normal PC races then the LA is +2.