Excerpt - Rituals

[CapnZapp]

It seems strange and wrong to have some rituals called out as "Bards only", after the opening up of rituals that they did in 4e. I like that the 4e wizard can cast "Raise Dead" (or even the 4e Fighter can cast "Raise Dead" if he has the requisite ritual caster feat and trained skill).

Bard-only rituals? Bah! Barred!

I would hold off any decision til I actually saw the rituals myself.

 

[Tuft]

I would hold off any decision til I actually saw the rituals myself.

The may actually be class features in disguise, or somesuch.

 

[Spatula]

I can control a mighty army of 3 whole sparrows at Epic Level! Three, fear me yea tyrants of the world and my small flock of pigeons.

Well it is a level 5 ritual...

This would have been the perfect use for a 4e perform skill.

Hm! Neat idea! But perhaps Tuft is correct and these are simply class features with another name.

 

[Celebrim]

IMO?

This would have been the perfect use for a 4e perform skill.

Agreed.

Likewise, I can think of rituals that would have been perfect for a 4e craft skill.

And people are laughing about the 'make sandwich' ritual, but if a 4e 'Dungeons and Dragons Online' is anything like alot of other MMORPG's, there definately would be a place for a 'make sandwich' ritual.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm starting to think it might have been better to have separate ritual feats for the different skills - e.g. Arcane Ritual Caster, Divine Ritual Caster, Nature Ritual Caster - so the Ranger who wants to learn nature magic rituals doesn't find himself able to do any old arcane ritual too.

Cheers

I think you've just reinvented the spell list.

 

[Stogoe]

Absolutely!

Otherwise known as the "choose to target Fort with blinding smoke which will obscure vision even if they don't save, OR choose to target Will with a HUGE (120ft!) radius blinding effect spell"

At 4th level used it to bring a mounted charge by 20 nomads into a confused collapsing pile of blind nomads and horses. The rogues loved the way I set things up for them time and time again.

See, this is why it was made a ritual - noncombat magic turned into over-dominance by pushover DMs.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I have checked the PHB 1 all rituals have a casting time of 10min. I want to stress the Animal Messenger Ritual in particular. It has similar prerequisits as the animal minion ritual but here the casting time is also 10 mins. Thus there really seems to be a drop in casting time from 100 combat rounds to 10... I hope this trend doesn´t continue for all rituals... actually i think binding an animal could take 10mins at least...
but: I could imagine a ritual like pyrotechincs or arcane lock only taking 1 min to finish. This could lead to interesting combats which takes advantage of the increased comba time: holding the enemy at bay for 10 rounds that the mage can finish his ritual to seal the door.
Or maybe a binding ritual, prepared on a scroll, which an NPC must read, while you pin down the mighty demon for 5 rounds...

actually, this was what i was expecting from rituals at first place

 

[Plane Sailing]

See, this is why it was made a ritual - noncombat magic turned into over-dominance by pushover DMs.

I beg your pardon? This doesn't seem to make sense as Pyrotechnics was never noncombat magic (it had saving throws, remember), and I don't know where you get the idea of pushover DMs from either.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Bard-only rituals? Bah! Barred!

I ought to point out that this is a joke, a play on words (as it appears that some people didn't get it!)

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

Also, I agree with the various comments that this is crying out for Perform skill (for musical rituals), just like it cries out for craft skills for certain other rituals.

Ah, the perils of unnecessary simplification!