Essentials -- What happened to Rituals?

[Mithreinmaethor]

Ummm use a Feat and take the Ritual Caster Feat and then you can have Rituals. Neat huh

 

[Doc Eldritch]

I'm looking at it as an excuse to pick up copies of the PHB1 and DMG1 and 2 again. While I plan to run an "Essentials only" game as far as classes go, I also plan to introduce some options, such as Rituals, from 'core' 4e.

Knowing me, I'll likely fiddle around and "Essentialize" the Warlord and add on some extra bells and whistles to the current essentials classes (like more domains for the Warpriest, more schools for the mage, possibly an extra paragon path or two for each class).

I like the simplicity of the Essentials classes (they feel even more like old school DnD to me), but there are some really nice things from core that I would not mind allowing in the game.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Ummm use a Feat and take the Ritual Caster Feat and then you can have Rituals. Neat huh

But, if I'm new to the game and only have the Essentials books, I don't have that feat, do I?

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

But, if I'm new to the game and only have the Essentials books, I don't have that feat, do I?

We always encourage posts to be helpful to other poster's questions, not to knock them down for asking them.

 

[Saracenus]

Olgar,

Another option is a DDI account where all the rituals from all sources are listed. Get a one month sub and copy and paste them all into a document for yourself. Compendium is a great thing, and it already incorporates the errata.

My two coppers,

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Olgar,

Another option is a DDI account where all the rituals from all sources are listed. Get a one month sub and copy and paste them all into a document for yourself. Compendium is a great thing, and it already incorporates the errata.

My two coppers,

It helps, but the one issue is that because the RC didn't reprint the core rules for ritual casting and the DDI Compendium does not contain those rules there is actually one and only one source, a printed copy of a PHB1, which isn't that hard to get but isn't exactly a book that most players buying Essentials would expect to need and which they're rather unlikely to pay $25 or thereabouts for just to get that one thing.

I mean to ME it is no big deal. It is less than nothing, but it is kind of hard to argue that a game option that as of now doesn't exist in a current product and is actually basically 'written out' of what is the current product is supported to the same degree as things that are in Essentials.

I'd also like to say that the 'ritual like' class features of Mage and Warpriest are are far cry from an adequate replacement. You get access to a very small number of 'rituals' with no choices and the ones that are available really seem to only exist because mechanically the game really requires them. All the 100's of other cool and flavorful choices are gone. Plenty of people have complained about 4e's support for non-combat options and unfavorably compared it to PF, and here's WotC for whatever reason cutting out more options. I certainly hope some kind of reference for ritual casting support will continue to be made available in the future.

 

[avin]

Looks like Rituals were a good idea poorly implemented... and now they don't know what to do with this.

Guess it will be solved only in 5E.

 

[ourchair]

It's unfortunate because I felt Rituals represented some great design.

In AD&D a magic-user is presented with a list of spells. Some of them are stupid. But you don't know which ones if you're a first time player and have no idea what an Adventure entails.

So they take all those spells no one took and make them Rituals. Perfect. Now you can be effective in an encounter, and have cool things to do outside of combat.

I agree.

Sure a lot of people (mostly strategist-oriented 2e/3e grognards) complained that the comparable casting times between rituals and their Vancian equivalents kind of sucks, but at least players are no longer hosed for 'wasting their memorization limits' or memorizing the wrong stuff in the morning, which was the problem with utility spells: they covered specific situations in a highly useful way, but were useless when no situation called for them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree.

Sure a lot of people (mostly strategist-oriented 2e/3e grognards) complained that the comparable casting times between rituals and their Vancian equivalents kind of sucks, but at least players are no longer hosed for 'wasting their memorization limits' or memorizing the wrong stuff in the morning, which was the problem with utility spells: they covered specific situations in a highly useful way, but were useless when no situation called for them.

Yeah. There were also a few major differences between the way things worked in 2e and the way they are in 4e. First of all a LOT of the AD&D 'utility' type spells, even though theoretically they could be cast in combat, never were. Taking them meant you were pretty much just giving up a good combat option. Something like Fool's Gold for instance, perfect ritual. If a 2e wizard memorized it, it was purely as a 'town spell' and 90% of the time it just went on a scroll (which annoyingly you had to be 7th level to do, at which point it was a rather trivial spell generally speaking).

OTOH if I look at my old 14th level 1e/2e wizard 90% of his combat casting was done with a Staff of Power and most of the stuff in his spell book was for emergencies. 4e simply doesn't have the equivalent of that kind of item. The whole equation is a lot different. Rituals make pretty good sense in 4e and are a great solution. It's an elegant mechanic that solves all the problems with this kind of spell, it is just not featured prominently enough. They should have been right up there in the wizard and cleric class sections of the book instead stuck way in the back for instance, and adventures really should feature situations that call for them.

 

[jcayer]

I haven't really looked at the Essentials stuff, but without rituals, how does a cleric Raise Dead?