+1 At-Will power and Ritual Caster options

[McTreble]

I was thinking of allowing my characters to select an additional At-Will power to give 3 total (or 4 if you're a human) at creation. This seems to open up options and tactical choices to the level that I feel is good. 2 just doesn't seem to cut it, though I suspect it was chosen for ease of use, esp for lvl 1 characters/ new players.

Does anyone have any stories in which this worked? Warnings against it? Variants on my idea? I would never add to encounter or daily powers, because then you mess with resource management issues.

I also think that the requirement for non magical classes to take Ritual Caster needs to be steeper. My initial one is to have it cost a second Feat slot (hold the 1st and use 1st and 2nd level Feat to gain it) or maybe have a minimum Int/ Wis score to take it... something you'd have to plan out at creation or buy at lvl 4, etc...

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Gort]

I'd have thought the players of classes like cleric, who only get two worthwhile at-wills in the PHB anyway, would not be massively impressed by your idea.

 

[RickVigorous]

Adding an extra at-will to everyone makes humans less interesting, since the marginal utility of at-wills decreases. It also benefits certain classes more than others; wizards, for instance, get more mileage out of an extra at-will than rangers. Finally, it's not clear why you think giving characters extra options is good in this case. It's certainly not always good; that's why characters can't just use all the at-wills. So why are the extra options needed here?

The same goes for increasing the feat cost for Ritual Caster for non-casters (which is an undefined term; do you just mean martial classes?). Why do it? It already requires training in Arcana or Religion, which aren't class skills for the martial classes. That means most martial characters will need to spend a feat for skill training/multiclassing in order to take Ritual Caster anyway. And since Arcana and Religion are Int-based skills, there's not much incentive to do so apart from RP reasons.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

I'll start off by pointing out my bias, I think that rituals and the ritual caster feat being open to anyone is one of the best things of 4e.

That said, How do you define Non caster? If you mean martial power source, what about rangers? should they be limited from rituals? that doesn't seem right. Rangers have always got nature based spells.

Alternately if you don't put the limitation on "caster" classes, how do you define what that is? Are Avengers really that much of a caster such that they would be better at rituals than rangers?

 

[McTreble]

For the Ritual Caster non-magical class, I think I meant any class that doesn't have Ritual Caster as a free feat. The point about the skill checks is a good one, and is probably enough to tip the scales.

As far as the Ranger goes, the 4e image of the Ranger is purely martial, so his spells from the past are gone, as is his innate ability to perform them. I think they answered that build with the Seeker class in PHB3.

For the extra at will, human characters would still get one more than everyone else. The reason it seems like a viable addition is that certain at-wills take advantage of certain situations better. I'm thinking Tide of Iron specifically for Fighters. To have 3 would give pause in almost every situation of "Which should I use for this..." with just 2, it's easy to gravitate toward just one, leaving it to the other one to prove its usefulness. I'm not saying the same wouldn't happen with 3 at wills, but I certainly don't think it would make it worse.

I still am looking for a convincing reason not to do it. Having cleric players upset cause their at will selection isn't good enough isn't going to cut it.

 

[the Jester]

I don't think 3 at wills would hurt anything, and it might make longer fights more fun since the pcs would have more options.

 

[fba827]

* time wise - are you okay adding the extra 5-150 seconds a player uses to decide between at-wills? (if your players take time in such decisions it would be towards the longer end, every round, times as many players as you have that make decisions this way)

* How long do your combats typically last (in rounds, not talking real time) ? At higher levels, you have several more encounter and daily (and magic item daily) powers, so at-wills see a lot less use. Example: an encounter that lasts 5 rounds is going to get maybe a couple encounter powers, one daily power, and one atwill power. It may not be worth the effort to do the extra atwill if it won't see that much use

* do your PCs most often revert to one of their two at-wills as a default, with the other being for special cases? If so, you aren't really adding anything other than an encounter power disguised as an at-will.


* Mechanically, some classes (like controllers since their control features are more situational) and something like the barbarian (that does a lot of charging and has a couple at-will choices that can be used when charging) will get more of a versatility boost than a class like the rogue.


having said all that -- while i haven't given this much thought beyond the 2 minutes it took me to type this response, i don't think you'll really "break" anything. I think it'll just be a matter of preference with regards to "are you willing to take the extra decision time" etc. As long as everyone knows the change before making their PCs and is okay with it, you should be fine (though adding the change after the fact may annoy someone who unknowingly picked a class/build that would get zero benefit from it).

As far as the ritual caster feat increase. i have to admit, i too am biased in liking the fact that it is opened up. but maybe instead of restricting the feat to two feat slots (which can make for messy book keeping), you restrict certain rituals in groups, making it a ritual caster feat per group...

something like one of these three alternate versions (i'm saying to use one of them, not all of them at the same time).

Ritual Caster (alt version 1)
Prerequs: whatever the prereqs are in PHB (I don't have it handy
Benefit: Select one skill that you are trained in (arcana, religion, nature, etc). You can cast rituals that have that as the key skill.
Special: you can take this feat multiple times, but must select a different key skill each time
-- keep in mind that all skill associations are not equal (some skills like arcana have far more rituals than religion)

Ritual Caster (alt version 2)
Prerequs: whatever the prereqs are in PHB (I don't have it handy
Benefit: Select one category of ritual (exploration, scrying, creation, etc). You can cast rituals in that category.
Special: you can take this feat multiple times, but must select a different category each time
-- keep in mind that all categories are not equal (some groups have far more than others)

Ritual Caster (alt version 3)
Prerequs: whatever the prereqs are in PHB (I don't have it handy
Benefit: You can cast rituals of level 10 or lower
Special: you can take this feat multiple times, each time you take it, your level limit of rituals you can learn is increased by 10 (i.e. you have to take this twice to be able to learn level 20 and lower rituals).


but, anyway, all that is getting in to house rule territory so I'll stop there.

 

[davethegame]

My working theory is that players tend to get one "go-to" at will and one situational at will. A third at will (currently for humans only) tends to be even more situational, so I would imagine it would make humans a good deal worse. It would depend on class of course but that may be food for thought.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Blackbrrd]

I have no problem with this.

I would maybe allow the player to select either an extra at-will or an extra feat.