D&D 4E 4E multiclassing - is Arcane Initiate too powerful?

[Regicide]

The same reason you pay full price for everything you buy, but the store you buy it from pays half of what you foolishly gave them. And don't get me started on taxes...

 

[Lizard]

The same reason you pay full price for everything you buy, but the store you buy it from pays half of what you foolishly gave them. And don't get me started on taxes...

Usually, that's because the stores make the things they sell and charge you for the labor. But if you do the labor, usually, YOU get to charge someone ELSE for it...but as written, that can't happen. Out of the entire world, only the PCs pay a markup on ritual scrolls. NPCs "already have them", according to the box on page I Just Put My PHB Back In The Slipcover And Don't Feel Like Dragging It Out And My Wife Announced Dinner Is Ready So Smeg It.

(I know the game balance reason -- they don't want PCs becoming scroll merchants. The old way of solving this was via XP costs. With that eliminated, ham-fisted rules that make no economic or worldbuilding sense must be instituted. So it goes. Would be simpler, IMO, to simply remove the ability of PCs to make magic items at all, or make it nightmare inducingly complex and time consuming, as it was in 1e/2e. But that would conflict with the design goal of, basically, letting the players have whatever level-appropriate magic items they wanted.)

 

[Nail]

(Me, I want to know why the ONLY people who will pay full price for Ritual scrolls are the PCs. According to the rules, no one else will pay more than half price.)

This => "Well, it's D&D."


Making gear worth much less if you sell it prevents much of the "optimization of gear" shenanigans that occured in 3.xe.

 

[DreamChaser]

(I know the game balance reason -- they don't want PCs becoming scroll merchants. The old way of solving this was via XP costs. With that eliminated, ham-fisted rules that make no economic or worldbuilding sense must be instituted. So it goes. Would be simpler, IMO, to simply remove the ability of PCs to make magic items at all, or make it nightmare inducingly complex and time consuming, as it was in 1e/2e. But that would conflict with the design goal of, basically, letting the players have whatever level-appropriate magic items they wanted.)

So, to preserve a concept of economic soundness (which has no bearing on what the PCs do day to day) it would be better to remove a very fun part of the game that many players enjoy and many characters are built upon?

I very much disagree.

If we want to get technical, the idea that any economy could survive / support adventurers is absurd. If you compare the treasure values of a 10+ level character from 3e with the values of most towns and cities, you see that a hero coming back from slaying a dragon will glut the market with gold (making it worthless), drop the bottom out of the gem market, and destroy any magic shop's ability to do business for the next decade.

I am comfortable with the system as it is since I'm not playing Markets & Mavens but rather Dungeons & Dragons.

DC

 

[DracoSuave]

Luxury items tend to have obscene mark-ups in real economies to make up for the lack of turnover of those products. If you make a living selling food, for example, your mark-up doesn't need to be high because you're selling enough of it on a daily basis that you can live off the nickles and dimes that are constantly flowing in.

With luxury items, however, you have to mark them up much higher because you might only make one sale a week... or even a month. Given that one sale has to feed you AND restock your shelves, you can't afford to give the same smaller markup that you'd see for more commonly sold goods.

Not to mention, luxury items aren't cheaply made by the Do It Yourselfer. You can't make yourself a well crafted diamond ring for a fraction of the cost of a jeweler because you simply don't have the specialized skills to do so.

Adventurers don't, in general, have the specialized skills to enchant magic items nor cheaply acquire the materials to do it. If they want something, they can do it at retail by taking the quick and easy method of grabbing a ritual, and casting it. It's quick, easy, versatile, but it's probably not how those in the business do it.

But adventurers don't have the -time- to do it the way the businesses do it, because they're too busy adventuring to take up the trade. This is -realistic.- If the businesses are only paying 1/5 for the adventurer's stuff, this is because 80% markup on magic items -they might not ever find a buyer for- is -very- realistic.

You can't use the economic model for low-cost consumables to simulate the economics of luxury items. Think of it this way.

You go in, you buy a long sword, that's the equivalent economic investment as buying a workable car. It's not a great car. It's just a decent car.

However, you're in the business of using the sword to great purpose. A standard run of the mill economy car just doesn't cut it. Eventually you're going to need a sports car, because you need one that's bigger/faster/stronger/better. You're no longer in the ordinary peasent markets, you're going into the specialized luxury markets. You're making the one sale they'll get for the entire month, maybe even the entire year. They need to eat. You're going to have to -pay-.

 

[Gloombunny]

Getting back to the original topic... I think it's deliberate that it's not that hard to acquire ritual casting. There's not a whole lot of benefit to the party to have more than one character able to cast rituals, and most parties will have either a wizard or a cleric in them who can handle the party's ritual needs. Making it easy to acquire by feat just means that a party doesn't get screwed over just because nobody felt like playing a cleric or wizard that game.

 

[Lizard]

Deleted as it is off topic and I forked the thread.

 

[Andor]

Getting back to the original topic... I think it's deliberate that it's not that hard to acquire ritual casting. There's not a whole lot of benefit to the party to have more than one character able to cast rituals, and most parties will have either a wizard or a cleric in them who can handle the party's ritual needs. Making it easy to acquire by feat just means that a party doesn't get screwed over just because nobody felt like playing a cleric or wizard that game.

This is a good point. How exactly is it abusive for a fighter to have access to rituals? They serve no combat function, but any party without a ritual caster is screwed.

 

[Lizard]

This is a good point. How exactly is it abusive for a fighter to have access to rituals? They serve no combat function, but any party without a ritual caster is screwed.

It's not.

It's just (IMO) a reaction to a paradigm shift, akin to "How can DWARVEs be Wizards? How can half-orcs be paladins?" when 3e came out.

The idea that "Anyone can perform a ritual if they have training/a scroll with clear instructions" is pretty common in fantasy literature. Many quests involve finding the directions to perform some major ritual, and the people performing it usually aren't trained in magic.

 

[Mad Hamish]

Well the sneak attack one is a bit weak too given that you need to be using a light blade or xbow to use it. I'm not sure that any class other then rogue is likely to use that.

I'm playing a bow ranger with rogue multi-class and have started carrying a captured crossbow as a backup weapon and for the sneak attack shots.