Essentials -- What happened to Rituals?

[OhGodtheRats]

I always assumed that the RC included a nod to Rituals was for the same reason the other books have a mild nod to the "Marked" condition....They knew people would be playing ye-olde-4E with Essentials & vice versa. Whether we'll see more of it in the future, I'm sure we will. Essentials is so freaking proud of being super retro (the podcast where they gush about Heat Metal & other goofy spells of yesteryear is telling) that we can count that they'll come back. Though....they may very well be presented in an alternate format, to not "replace" the old Ritual system. You know, like be called "Ritae", or just a Consumable Magic Scroll system, or whatever.
...my 2 pennies.
-Jared

 

[Jools]

I don't recall a specific statement about ritual casting coming up in any of those books. It is possible that Heroes of Sword and Spell is going to touch on the subject. Just not sure what, if anything, it will have to say on that subject.

Here it is.

Wow, I've been spending far too much time emmersed in the D&D product line if I'm ahead of the Enworld boffins. I need to get out more!

 

[Rydac]

I don't recall a specific statement about ritual casting coming up in any of those books. It is possible that Heroes of Sword and Spell is going to touch on the subject. Just not sure what, if anything, it will have to say on that subject.

Here is what amazon has in its blurb about the heroes of sword & spell

"Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell provides new character options for Dungeons & Dragons® Essentials players who are ready to move beyond the two player-oriented D&D™ Essentials books, Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms.

This book gathers five classes from the Player’s Handbook—the cleric, the fighter, the rogue, the warlord, and the wizard—and presents them in the new D&D Essentials class format introduced in Heroes of the Fallen Lands, with rules updates and errata. It features rules that allow D&D Essentials characters to select non-D&D Essentials powers, and it grants non-D&D Essentials characters access to class features from Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms. In addition, this book presents feats, rituals, and rules for multiclassing."

Though that book is one of the ones currently missing from the catalog. the last line mentions rituals.

BTW I very much agree with your thoughts in this thread Abdulalhazred

 

[Jools]

Here is what amazon has in its blurb about the heroes of sword & spell

"Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell provides new character options for Dungeons & Dragons® Essentials players who are ready to move beyond the two player-oriented D&D™ Essentials books, Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms.

This book gathers five classes from the Player’s Handbook—the cleric, the fighter, the rogue, the warlord, and the wizard—and presents them in the new D&D Essentials class format introduced in Heroes of the Fallen Lands, with rules updates and errata. It features rules that allow D&D Essentials characters to select non-D&D Essentials powers, and it grants non-D&D Essentials characters access to class features from Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms. In addition, this book presents feats, rituals, and rules for multiclassing."

Though that book is one of the ones currently missing from the catalog. the last line mentions rituals.

BTW I very much agree with your thoughts in this thread Abdulalhazred

The revamp of rituals is going to be in Player's Option: Champions of the Heroic Tier Ryda. Click on the big bold link in the post above yours.

I for one hope that it gives rituals to all classes with the limitation that you can only perform rituals appropriate for your power source (divine rituals for divine character, martial practices for martial characters etc.). Combine this with feats that allow you to perform a limited number of rituals without monetary cost and ritual components that explicitly cannot be used to make magical items for the party (and do not come out of the regular treasure pool) and I think pretty much all problems are solved.

 

[Raikun]

Didn't see this idea mentioned in the thread (but then again I'm reading at like 5am so I coulda missed it)...but the cost aspect of rituals is pretty easy to mitigate as a DM while encouraging players to use them...

...throw ritual components and such into the mix as treasure rewards. When my players defeat an evil wizard, his bag of components and ritual book find their way into players' hands.

(Personally what I do, is if there's say 1k gold of ritual components, I'll count that as 300-400g worth of a treasure parcel so it's not taking much from "real" treasure...though I kinda play that by ear.)

I don't give them enough components so that they always have enough either; but enough that it mitigates the cost some, and gets them thinking about using rituals...and it didn't take long before they'll be in town and realize "I only have x components left...I'll look for a shop keeper to buy some more".

 

[Jools]

Yeah, as long as you explicitely state that the components cannot be used to make magical treasure for the party it solves the problem just fine. I've been doing that for the last two years, it works well.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I just give away components. Yes, the party uses the majority of them to make items, but they always have them on hand and thus can come up with what they need out of pocket for the common rituals. If they really want to cast something expensive they are going to need to plan ahead anyway. I guess having a 'rituals only' type of component that can't be used with Enchant Item pretty well guarantees you know what it will be spent on though.

 

[OhGodtheRats]

In my game where I played the Litterbug like a fiend, I was a Ritual Caster and there was an early debate amongst a couple of the party members: Do we really want to expend our pool of resources on rituals? Like, sure, I can summon Mounts/Eagles/etc but their argument was...we can just walk, right? Basically it added this weird argument at the table where the ritual casters had to really fight to perform rituals. Do we split the party loot equally and then they pay for it out of pocket but then not help out the party because they didn't help pay or is it an assumed "loss' for Ritual Casters? (Alchemists are a bit the same way, since they make Combat Consumables, even harder to convince stingy folks are worth draining the Financial Barrel of Holding)
My DM solved the issue by giving me a Familiar Slot item (Capitalist Teeth, Beholderkin ate the item) that let me as a Daily "Sell" a Magic Item we found on a 1:1 basis instead of the usual 1:5 ratio, with the resulting "gold" being only able to be used on Rituals. Solve all our problems....cashing in one magic item like that means a huge pile of ritual components that didn't threaten some party member's feelings on Team Finance. (My DM also treated the Craft Magic Item thing a bit differently but that required "Gold" not Ritual Components, as per the Familiar Digestive Trick mentioned above)
There's something coming up with me talking about this more with Outsider, but some of the Essential Class Features that are "Ritual Effects" are great because they remove the $ aspect completely. Suddenly using the Cleric's Rez on an NPC guide/bride slain in an encounter is just an argument of "Can we take an Extended Rest" and NOT "Can we afford to heal an NPC that isn't really that important to us?" I've already seen several games where a randomly slain NPC gets brought back just for Roleplaying goodness.
-Jared

 

[UngeheuerLich]

NPCs can´t be raised per core rules.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

NPCs can´t be raised per core rules.

That is one way to interpret it, though probably not the most common. I've always kind of liked that interpretation though. It definitely reduces the plot complexifying aspect of the ritual.