Martial Rituals

[The Cartographist]

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Rituals lately. I like the mechanic and how they are inherently different from spells for use in combat. Is there a way to benefit martial characters in the same way that rituals can benefit those that are ritual casters? What I mean is that, a spell is a one-off for use in combat whereas a ritual takes longer to cast and can have much greater effects. Why not something similar for the martial characters, where they spend a much longer period of time conducting a ritual and get a longer-term benefit out of it.

I know that, as written, rituals are all magical in nature. But does that have to be the way? I’ve envisioned a whole series of rituals to be used by martial characters that have very little to do with magic.

In the current rule set, I think that they would all have to be in the Exploration category, but I’d rather create a new category:

Martial (Athletics, Dungeoneering, or Endurance): These rituals aid the martial combatant in preparing for battle.

Without going into full write-ups, some examples:

Sharpen My Blade
With stone and oil, you polish your blade, honing its edge to razor sharpness.
Level: 1
Time: 30 minutes
Duration: Special
Component Cost: 20gp
Key Skill: Dungeoneering

This ritual allows you to temporarily increase the sharpness of any bladed weapon. Your Dungeoneering check determines how sharp your blade becomes, as a bonus to damage to each successful attack from this weapon.

Dungeoneering Check Result Damage Modifier
19 or lower +1 hp per attack
20 – 29 +2 hp per attack
30 – 39 +3 hp per attack
40 or higher +4 hp per attack

[I have a couple of different ideas on how to handle duration. Most simplest would be a straight period of time. Perhaps most complex would be a system that tracks the amount of bonus damage that the character does with the weapon, and the bonus decreases every X number of hp dealt—this would probably be the most realistic, as any blade slowly dulls during repeated use.]

Dance With My Sword
You practice your movements with your sword, swinging, feinting, and ducking, in preparation for the upcoming battle.
Level: 1
Time: 30 minutes
Duration: 6 hours
Component Cost: ?
Key Skill: Athletics

This ritual allows you to focus your mind and hone your connection to your blade. You Athletics check determines the level of concentration that you achieve with your sword, as a special power bonus to your attack rolls when using that specific weapon.

Athletics Check Result Attack Bonus
25 or lower +1 power bonus
26 – 35 +2 power bonus
36 or higher +3 power bonus

[Anybody that has seen Conan the Barbarian and watched Arnold practicing with his sword should be able to picture this.]

Inspirational Concentration
You meditate in preparation for your next battle, concentrating on your allies and their fighting styles and how you might best assist each on the battlefield.
Level: 1
Time: 30 minutes
Duration: 6 hours
Component Cost: ?
Key Skill: Endurance

This ritual affects your ability to inspire your compatriots on the battlefield. Completion of the ritual increases your ability to grant bonuses to attacks or defenses based upon the exploits that you use. At the time that you conduct this ritual, you must decide whether the bonus that you will grant is in support of your allies attack or defense rolls.

Your Endurance check result determines the power bonus you grant. For example, if you use an exploit that grants a power bonus to attacks, this ritual grants an additional bonus equal to the result from the Endurance check. Likewise, for those exploits that grant a power bonus to defenses, this ritual grants an additional bonus equal to the result from the Endurance check.

Endurance Check Result Power Bonus to Attack or Defense
25 or lower +1
26 – 35 +2
36 or higher +3

Those are just a few examples, but even in that group, possible problems become apparent. Issues that I see:

1. Component cost is a way that the PHB controls the use of magical rituals. Except for some minor cases, most martial rituals won’t have component costs. They will have a time cost, which in some gaming groups will count for something but in others will just be ignored. How can these be controlled to prevent them from becoming too powerful or becoming completely normal for the characters?

[One way might be to state that only the benefits of one martial ritual are available to a character at any given time, so that the character can only get one given bonus at a time. This would force the martial character to decide which one he wants for a given period of adventuring.]

2. DnD’s inherent math assumptions could be severely broken by the use of these rituals, especially at epic levels. What restrictions could be put in place to prevent (or at least minimize) this?

3. The Ritual Caster feat probably wouldn't apply here, as these are not magical rituals. I suppose a new feat would have to be created, similar to Ritual Caster but designed specifically to account for this new class of rituals.

Does anyone have ideas for other rituals of this type?
Can anyone offer ideas for how these can be done without breaking the game?

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Yes, yes and YES! You and I are on the same path of thinking. I created a variety of martial rituals, strikingly similar to the ones you posted.

My recommendation? Eliminate the GP cost, and have players expend Action Points to use these rituals.

 

[The Cartographist]

Moniker -

I created a variety of martial rituals

Care to share?

Eliminate the GP cost, and have players expend Action Points to use these rituals.

If they are using action points, wouldn't that necessitate them conducting the ritual during combat (when action points are used), or do they use the action point outside of combat and just have one less when in combat situations?

 

[Quickleaf]

The concept reminds me of Arcana Evolved's Combat Rites. I think they'd convertly over to 4e rituals nicely. Rank 1/2 = Heroic-tier. Rank 2/3 = Paragon-tier. Rang 3/4 = Epic-tier.

Here's an example of what I'm thinking...

Calmness of Thought
You clear your mind, creating a mental trigger to return to this state.

Level: 4
Category: Martial
Time: 30 minutes
Duration: Special (activate within 6 hours of ritual)
Cost: Action point
Skill: Endurance

You make saving throws at the beginning of your turn, instead of at the end. Your Endurance check determines how long this lasts once triggered.

Endurance check Duration
19 or lower 2 rounds
20-29 4 rounds
30-39 6 rounds
40 or higher 8 rounds

If they are using action points, wouldn't that necessitate them conducting the ritual during combat (when action points are used), or do they use the action point outside of combat and just have one less when in combat situations?

I agree that action points are the best way to model combat rites, meaning that any PC won't be using more than 1 martial ritual every couple encounters.

 

[Alex319]

The thing that worries me is that, since the only cost to using them is time, they basically become a "free bonus" every time you're not under time pressure. And the bonuses can add up - a +2 or +3 to every attack roll is worth a lot. After all, one of the stated design goals of 4e was to avoid the problem with 3.5e where there were so many ways to get passive bonuses that you could stack them all on top of each other and create ridiculously powerful characters.

Certainly, if you were planning on doing this, using action points as the cost would probably be a good idea, because it forces a meaningful cost. The only problem is that if the benefit is too low, it will never be worth doing instead of just using an action point the regular way. But it could be an interesting dynamic as you have to decide whether to use an AP on the ritual (giving you a bonus for the whole day) or the regular way (lots of extra power at one point in time).

On the other hand, I am not sure, specifically, what your goal is with this system. The purpose of magic rituals was not to provide a bonus in combat; rather, it was to enable players to use magic to do out-of-combat things while still providing a substantial cost (in time or gold pieces) that is meaningful out of combat. 4e rituals replaced a lot of the 3.5e out of combat spells, but got rid of a lot of (perceived) problems with how they worked (too low a cost to use, obsoleted other character classes, having to pre-guess which ones you would end up needing, etc.)

The purpose of your rituals just seems to be provide yet another way to get a passive combat bonus. Or am I missing something?

 

[Smeelbo]

If they cost a Ritual Combat feat, with a pre-requisite Wisdom 13+ or something, only one ritual could be in effect at once, and the result lasted until you took an extended rest, what you'd have essentially is a variable feat, and that would make it easier to see when it was out of balance. If the ritual could be performed every day, and it was clearly better than any feat, then it is too good, because they could in essence spend one feat to get something better than a feat.

But if each ritual were clearly worse than a decent feat, then it might be balanced. Being able to slot different rituals would make up for them being worse.

But if any ritual is clearly better than a good feat, then it is unbalanced.

Smeelbo

 

[The Cartographist]

Alex319 – The original idea for the system derived from a need for fluff. Literature, popular culture, and the real world are full of examples of warriors preparing for battle with their little routines (or rituals). List of examples:

- The Karate Kid practicing his poses on the beach.
- Conan the Barbarian practicing with his sword.
- An American Indian warrior painting his face and joining in a war dance with his tribe prior to going into battle. (Okay, maybe contrived and may or may not have any historical accuracy—but the idea exists in popular culture.)
- Pick just about any Viet Nam movie where the soldiers would do little things to prep themselves before going out on patrol.
- American football players painting their faces, stretching, and then getting excited in team huddles before the game starts. (For that matter, just about any team sport where the team excites itself prior to the game.)

[Perhaps my examples are lacking—but you get the point.]

I like the idea of warriors doing things to prepare themselves for combat. I am hoping to develop a game mechanic that captures that.

I share your “free bonus” concern—which is why I’ve posted my ideas here so that collectively we can fix my idea before it completely breaks my game.

Smeelbo – I think that you are on to something. Perhaps the measure of how strong these rituals are should be based on a feat as you say. Or there could be a combination of the two. In those cases where the ritual result was worse than a typical feat, then it might be balanced. If there are rituals that are slightly more powerful, then they would have to incur an additional cost, whether it is in the form of an action point, some gp, or maybe even a healing surge.

My thought after posting was that a cost of one healing surge might be appropriate for some of the “personal” rituals, so the character starts adventuring after an extended rest with one less surge available, but he does have the benefits of the ritual. This wouldn’t make sense for some of the rituals--the Sharpen My Blade ritual, for instance.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Heh, I was just thinking about the same thing on my way to work. The first thing that comes to mind is the warrior's trance that Ryld Argith used in the War of the Spider Queen novels.

I think that it would be interesting to play around with giving some of these rituals penalties as well as bonuses and see how that balances things out. You could also use them as a method of item creation.

 

[dammitbiscuit]

Instead of simply giving a vanilla bonus to attack rolls, how about actually making it into a combat ritual, or kata? If the warrior practices a set of moves in a ritualistic fashion, then when he executes those specific moves in that particular sequence, he gains +X on his next Y attack rolls, where X is based on the skill check, and Y is equal to the number of moves that are in his "combo", "kata", or "sequence". Y should probably ignore the first move in the sequence, especially if it's an at-will.

 

[The Cartographist]

dammitbiscuit - it's Brilliant! (Said aloud, that sounds differently than it looks written. Anyway...)

Are you saying that by practicing a given Encounter or Daily Power ahead of time, the character gets a bonus when using that power in combat? Or am I missing your point?

If that is the case, does the "one martial ritual per day" idea that was discussed above still apply? What about costs?