Rituals take too long and creative casting is dead

[abyssaldeath]

The only time I took utility spells for my wizard is if we didn't have a charcter to fill the job of that spell. Sure using the spells may have been more efficient, but why would I want to take away from the usefulness of a fellow player? Plus, knock still has its place. What would you do if the door is barred from the other side where you otherwise couldn't get to it?

 

[ironvyper]

That sounds like an exciting and wonderful way to have played that out in 3e.

In 4e you can't do that.

In 4e, you can do a skill challenge. Have your players use creative skills to save the boat during combat. The fighter uses endurance to bail out buckets of water while having to fight at the same time!! The wizard uses an int check to do the math and figure out a good way to plug the hole. The rogue uses streetwise to quickly determine find out among the crew whose the man for the job, and the paladin uses diplomacy (or intimidate) to get that person working as fast as possible.

We all have to recognize that there things in 4e you can't do compared to 3e, but we do have new tools to work with. Let's try these new tools out, and see if in the long run we like them better.

None of those are new tools. All of those skills existed before and all of their uses were possible before. I find this love of the skill challenge system frankly absurd. Its something that most DM's were basically doing as far back as secondary skills in 2e, all they did is copy and paste some of the advice from the World of darkness books on how to work skill tests and change the name marginally to skill challenge. Other then that though i agree.

When it comes to rituals for the most part i like the idea. Some of them should have been available as encounter or daily powers instead, silence especially comes to mind in this regard, and the cost seems a little too high but we cant really know that without knowing the implied wealth.

This is something easy to house rule if it bothers you though. Just take whatever ritual you think should not be one and make it a normal power.

Think 10 minutes is too long? I disagree, but just make it 5 minutes, or 2 minutes, whatever. As long as it cant be used in combat it serves its purpose as a ritual. However think of a ritual this way, the wizard has to draw a large magic circle to stand in, with runes every foot or so along the edge which must be drawn perfectly the first time. So if he messes up he has to start them over. Then he has to burn his sacred such and such till the smoke fills the circle. Meanwhile he's running over mental exercises and meditations preparing to channel this specific focused energy. And all of this has to be finished before he even begins all the chanting and hand waving.
If you look at it that way then 10 minutes might be far too short of a time for a ritual. So like most things in the game it can be explained so as to be perfectly reasonable if you use the right bit of fluff.

 

[Khyl'Dran]

casters...

DM: You face problem X.
Caster player: I cast Solve Problem X.

This caster vs non caster thing sorta reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NTAAvJIGrs


-Khyl

 

[Kishin]

'Creative casting' is in many places slang for 'The Wizard Does Whatever He Wants and Saves the Day."

Now excuse me while I add a second line to this post to avoid stealing Hong's schtick.

 

[ironvyper]

Those youtube videos were perfect, absolutely pre 4e caster and everyone else.

Perfectly captures one of the only things i like enough about 4e to have gotten me to order the books.

 

[stonegod]

comp. lang. was always one of my favorite stand-bys for Wizards; it just made sense. I'd be sad to see it gone (but I don't have the books yet, so I can't comment on the new language framework or if there is some deciphering like skill).

Grease was a life saver in 3E not for its tripping up capability (which became useless quickly) but for its bonus for escaping grapple. I can't count how many times I used it that way. I believe 4E is restructuring grapples, so not big there.

No summoning in the PH 4E? I thought they were going to try something (I know they were thinking about it). That makes my walks-the-evil-line conjurer sad.

These are not deal breakers for me, but it will require some head-wrapping-around.

 

[Praeden]

comp. lang. was always one of my favorite stand-bys for Wizards; it just made sense. I'd be sad to see it gone (but I don't have the books yet, so I can't comment on the new language framework or if there is some deciphering like skill).

Comprehend Language is a 1st level ritual in 4E

 

[Aldarc]

comp. lang. was always one of my favorite stand-bys for Wizards; it just made sense. I'd be sad to see it gone (but I don't have the books yet, so I can't comment on the new language framework or if there is some deciphering like skill).

Grease was a life saver in 3E not for its tripping up capability (which became useless quickly) but for its bonus for escaping grapple. I can't count how many times I used it that way. I believe 4E is restructuring grapples, so not big there.

No summoning in the PH 4E? I thought they were going to try something (I know they were thinking about it). That makes my walks-the-evil-line conjurer sad.

These are not deal breakers for me, but it will require some head-wrapping-around.

I heard that they were making unique classes for specialty wizards and mages, so there would be Conjurers, Illusionists, Enchanters, in addition to the Wizard class itself.

 

[Blackeagle]

Yes but it should not go the other way as well where the wizard really is so ineffective out of a fight because of exorbitant costs that all the non-casters with there superior skill lists are doing everything and the wizard becomes useless too play.

Superior skill lists? A Wizards' skill list is going to be as good as anyone else's (especially since they are no longer obligated to blow their skill resources on concentration).

 

[Vaeron]

You can cast a ritual in your book *whenever you want* with most of the lower level ones taking 10 minutes. In 3.5 preparing a spell you hadn't already prepared took at least 15 minutes - 5 minutes longer than the new rule. And you had to give up another spell to prepae it, so it took up a valuable spell slot.

So in 3e, your "pardon me creature, while I spend 10 minutes casting Comprehend Languages" would have been "Pardon me creature, while I spend 15-20 minutes finding a quiet environment to prepare a new spell, then come back and cast it on you."

Seriously, did your wizards prepare nothing but Comprehend Languages, Magic Mouth, Tensor's Floating Disc, etc? If so, I guess you better have hoped that situation came up. Now they can use that spell without even wasting space having to memorize it.

This sounds more like a complaint who from someone allowed wizards to cast spells out of their spellbooks whenever they wanted, instead of actually having to memorize them. If so, well, that wasn't in the rules either, so what's to stop you from houseruling the same thing in 4e?