The cost issues in any objective analysis aren't really an issue, but they certainly seem to erect a psychological barrier. I think part of it is that when you start out with your first ritual casting character at level 1 your options are relatively expensive at first. They quickly become trivial costs but I suspect a lot of players simply never really notice.
It's not jsut a psychologicla barrier, it's a logistical cost. The actual cost of muddling out all that stuff is clearly non-trivial. I mean i put a lot of effort into the two games i run, but i still look at rituals and even treasure and go "ughhhhh". I eyeball XP as well.
The reason rituals HAVE a cost though, and one that isn't just erased as soon as you rest like an HS cost to cast, is legitimate though. Without some reason not to simply rely on them all the time the ritual caster starts to step on the toes of some of the other characters, like being able to just unlock almost anything with Knock. Many rituals simply have too profound an effect for that to work, and are mostly useful in contexts where a healing surge isn't really a cost, like on any day that the character is unlikely to face imminent combat or can easily rest.
But that happens anwyay. Have you looked at the cheaper rituals? How easy it is for say, mid paragon tier PCs to use lower level divinations all damn day? Not to mention knock. There are penty of rituals that stomp all over the game in their current form, especially if they get used a lot ocne their casting cost becomes trivial.
Well, I don't really see why you can't do that now with some rituals, like Tenser's Disc. I mean page 42 is right there begging you.
Because I didn't pay the people who made the game to show me a mirror and smirk. And again, i'd much rather spare all those clock cycles for the cool stuff rules can't do, like story.
And to be frank, endlessly eyeballing rituals is high dubious- you can very quickly end up playing 'giant eagle divebomb mission' every week instead of D&D. And i say this as somebody who has done combats with the pcs on the backs of their giant spirit eagles several times. A system that gives some guidelines will allow a GM and PC to improv with an item or ritual far more effectivly than one that lacks them. And page 48 is not enough- just give items and rituals a power level and a few keywords, and that allows improvisation, but also gives a solid frame fo refrence to help incorperate those actions into the game in a balanced way.
Do the rule books really need to spell out every possible use of every element in the game for players to even try it? AD&D spells certainly didn't and players obviously used them all the time.
Yes, but ad&d was a vastly inferior version of the game.
I'm sorry, i'm not one of these people who have decided to spin the failures of past editions as merits, or pretend that 4e has 'narrowed' d&d. 4e is better, period. All 4e does is free up more of my improv time for the places it can be put to best use- characters, situations, plot, and of course, incorperating player input.
I mean I can see where just using Thunderwave is an easier choice than figuring out how to use your disc to do something similar but I'm not sure adding even more mechanically defined options to the game is the way I want to go.
Then we disagree. Rituals need an overhaul and making them comparable to items is a good first step to fixing both.
It also tends to be a double-edged sword as once you define ONE possible combat use for something then all the other possible out-of-the-box ways people might try tend to be forgotten or denigrated.
People say this a lot, but i've never seen it happen. If anything, having clear abilities for a ritual just gives you a better frame of refrence to adjudicate other uses.
Well, it seems to me this kind of thing is really just implicit in the fact that it is a PnP TTRPG where the game is supposed to be open ended. Players should be coming up with this kind of thing all the time.
No, they should not. In fact id' say that 'this kind of thing' is a terribly narrow notion of how players can be creative, and I see too much of it in threads like this. Players and gms should not be expected to improv basic things that the system should give them a framework and give them hooks on. The system should be helping them do that.
Players get to be creative in all sorts of ways, as does the GM. we should not limit them to 'dungeon logic' or anything similar, and that's what you're doing if you insist that the system must be cast aside in key situations. The system is meant to be there to help. The system exists to give us a framework so that we can work less to have more fun. A system is a lever used to make our creative work more effective in the pursuit of fun. Tossing it aside is not a merit, it's just a vestige of the days when systems were more badly designed.
Again, I'm not really sure how you do this except to just spell out a bunch of examples where you can use things in different ways. Again once you spell out a few the uncreative types will add those few to their repertoire but they aren't likely to generalize that to "I can do anything with this if I can work out how to describe it in reasonable game terms."
I disagree. You're making assumptions about play, that serve your viewpoint, but are hardly verified. I've seen heaps of cases of people using system as a springboard for creativity and improvisation.
Well, I don't think I have a problem with adding some extra mechanical hooks onto rituals or items. Again though my basic response when I read this was "and most players aren't thinking like this already? Wow!"
Funny, my response was "The system isn't helping to do this? And people are saying that's a good thing? Lol what kind of terrible systems have they been playing with? Oh. . oh that's right." And then I have a flashback to my days playing 3e.
Tossing the system aside is a thing you do when the system is bad. A good system does not restrict options, it adds to them- people can still improv, and their ability to do so is only enhanced by a well made system. As an example of what I mean, consider a flame blade.
Give it a general power rating equal to it's level, and put in some guidelines on a brief universal table, and a GM and player can use that as a rule of thumb that's going to make it a lot easier for them to not only improvise with the item, but do so in a way that prevents the item (or ritual or whatever) from hyjacking the situation and overshadowing the controbutions of other players.
