Defeating peristent rituals?

[Alabast]

Is there a "Dispel Magic" type of effect that works on rituals? I ask because My PCs are going to sneak up on an enemy camp that has an Eye of Alarm watching over it, and I'd like to know if there's any way they can defeat it magically. I can't find anything about it in the PHB.

 

[Mort_Q]

I don't see why Dispel Magic wouldn't work... although I perhaps you could invent a skill challenge to bypass it.

As written, the ritual heavily favours the caster, which is usually a PC, not an NPC, so you may have to fudge some stuff to make it interesting.

 

[Alabast]

Dispel magic technically only works against Zones and Conjurations now. I was thinking about treating it like a Warder Trap. Problem is, The DMG is pretty low on purely magical traps. They can apparently be defeated by a Thievery or an Arcana check, though I'm having a hard time imagining just how that works.

 

[Mort_Q]

Stealth to sneak up unseen, and thievery to interfere with the focus, perhaps?

 

[TarionzCousin]

The Sorcerer has a level 10 utility power that ends zones or conjurations.

Theoretically, you could put that ability into a magic item, probably as a Daily power.

Of course, if your PC's are sneaking up on the enemy camp right now, they probably wouldn't be able to find said magic item unless it was laying just beyond the firelight.

 

[LostSoul]

My take on 4E is that you can pretty much do anything your imagination and the DM allows. It doesn't matter that there's no way to dispel a ritual in the PHB; you have the tools to resolve that action.

The question is, I guess, as DM, how do you see this working in your setting? Is it possible, or not? If it is possible, how does one do this - do they need a ritual or will a skill challenge work? What about using the power Dispel Magic out of combat, as part of a skill check? (Think of Dispel Magic as a tool that you need to get the job done.)

I would personally go with a skill challenge, setting the level of the challenge equal to the level of whoever created the Eye of Alarm. I would also allow a single check with Dispel Magic.

 

[Starfox]

I suppose the story reason for that ritual to be there is to make the camp hard to infiltrate, so make it exactly as hard to infiltrate as you feel it should be.

I think there is a ritual to dispel the effect of other rituals, but barring that some kind of skill challenge seems appropriate.

 

[Tuft]

I suppose the story reason for that ritual to be there is to make the camp hard to infiltrate, so make it exactly as hard to infiltrate as you feel it should be.

Yes, the 4E way of doing this would be to not dispel the ritual, but just to factor it in into the general difficulty level, and then run an overall skill challange against that difficulty for the entire infiltration.

 

[Wolfwood2]

Yes, the 4E way of doing this would be to not dispel the ritual, but just to factor it in into the general difficulty level, and then run an overall skill challange against that difficulty for the entire infiltration.

It's even built into the ritual. Eye of Alarm gets to make Perception checks against Stealth. It doesn't see creatures automatically. (Well, unless you cast the super-high Arcana check Tremorsense version.)

The way to actually handle this would be for one of the group's Stealthy characters to sneak in and get the focus (perhaps aided by other people's checks to figure out where it would be), disabling the ritual so the rest of the group can come inside. Or a character could use Bluff to fool the eyes into thinking they're an authorized access person.

 

[DracoSuave]

Yeah, sneaking up on rituals like this is supposed to be more of a Stealth-skill thing than a 'cast a spell, make it go away' deal. Rogue-country, if you will.