Are Rituals Vaporware?

[hong]

Because it WOULD have been new.

And yet, what was provided was apparently new enough and substantive enough to get people thinking about and posting stuff like this. Such is the conundrum in which we find ourselves.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

Interesting.

This seems to imply the "Bag-o-scrolls" will still be around in 4e, it will just be a bag of mostly non-combat scrolls. I'm not sure if I like this or not. Well, I don't like it if it's just scrolls. I *do* like it if PCs can learn these rituals, as it feels in-character for someone to say "I know a rite which will remove the plague from you". But I'm back to NOT liking it if rituals are, in essence, an at-will out of combat power once you've learned them, because if a)All it takes is a feat, and b)anyone can learn that feat, and c)there's no resource cost once the ritual is learned, you lose a lot of character distinctiveness as everyone has access to the same non-combat "spells".

I'd really like for there to be a limit on rituals known, even if it has to be coupled with 'retraining' for balance, but I think it's been stated outright that there will not be.

Rituals are obtained by buying ritual scrolls or ritual books. Ritual scrolls are consumed after one use, books teach the ritual to you permanantly. All rituals seem to have a casting time of at least 10 minutes, require a material component, and require the use of the ritual casting feat (which wizards and clerics get for free at 1st level) Most of the divination spells in 3.5 are now rituals as well as some of the old illusion spells.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=15692105&postcount=26

I think its also safe to assume from the tiers excerpt that rituals will have some sort of level requirement.

As for the amount of rituals known, lets say at 30th level so that no other restrictions would reasonably apply, the only limiting factor would be money/availability of the ritual books as determined by the DM. I dont have a problem with that. PCs can either have good equipment, or they can buy a lot/powerful rituals. Its part of the give and take of building up your character.

You can even turn rituals into plot points. Something has happened and the only way to resolve it is to use a specific ritual, but in order to use that ritual you have to know how its done, and in order to do that you must go on a quest to retrieve the ritual. I like that.

 

[Lizard]

Bad design... the trap is always behind the wall your players used passwall at... (its called adapting your dungeon on the fly)

but don´t tell your players...

And this is why good DMs don't need to remove fun, interesting, spells from the game.

I want to reiterate I like the idea of rituals. The 4e breakdown of magic feels acceptable to me; you've got basic tricks which are things any trained mage can do simply because they know enough magic, you have powerful abilities which require special preparation (daily spells), and you have arcane rituals which take time and effort and can't be done while an orc is whacking you. It even makes logical sense -- as magic is learned and evolves, you're going to want to learn to cast 'fireball' in six seconds but it probably doesn't matter if it takes 5 minutes to cast 'raise dead' -- he's not getting much deader, after all. My main concerns, at this point, are that:

a)The advantage of rituals in making region- or world- affecting spells possible as something other than DM fiat will be ignored.

b)They will be so easy to learn/cast everyone will know them. While it's an interesting character concept for a thief to know a ritual or two, I don't want it to be a no-brainer that everyone in the party knows the "good" ones.

c)The way in which the non-combat/utility spells helped distinguish clerics from wizards will be lost when they're all just "rituals".

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I would guess there are requirements to the power source that not any wizard can raise dead...

 

[SilverAgent]

See, I'm of the opposite viewpoint. They killed a lot of holy cows, and now 'Warlords' heal too, if in a different way. Clerics have really good combat spells, even if they buff others instead of having area effects, and so on.

I hope that healing rituals -don't- require you to be a cleric. I could live with a requirement of being trained in the Religion skill, though.