Martial Rituals

[The Cartographist]

I'm really enjoying where the conversation is going. Thanks, guys.

I definitely agree that an expanded list (beyond simple combat bonuses) of rituals is the way to go. They were just my first off-the-top-of-my-head stab at them. With that said, I think that minor combat bonuses could be okay for a few of them, provided that they are less powerful than a feat, etc. and conform to the general consensus restrictions above.

Not as much fun, I know, but some of the rituals proposed here would come to dominate combat to the point where fighters would feel "entitled" to Martial Ritual as a bonus feat, since all fighters then "must" have Martial Ritual.

My personal opinion on this thought is that I don't buy it. No player should feel entitled to anything at any time. But THAT is a whole other discussion...

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I'm starting to be disadvantaged by the talk of 3E gaming, because I've only come back to DnD since 4E is out--but I'll just need to get up with it.

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Going back to the beginning: Perhaps rituals aren't the mechanic to accomplish what I am trying to do. I like the idea (as I've said above) of warriors, soldiers, etc. doing things in their "off" time that contributes to their success on the battlefield. It happens in the real world--and I believed that the ritual might be the way to accomplish the same thing.

The more I think about it, the less martial rituals make sense to me. Whatever it is, it's probably not a ritual. None of the suggested skills for martial rituals are knowledge based, whereas all the existing ritual skills are.

Perhaps it's not a ritual. Although I don't agree with your idea that a ritual has to by definition be knowledge based. More to ponder...

 

[Quickleaf]

The more I look at rituals the better I think they can simulate combat rites, or at least the underlying concept minus the ritual book/scrolls fluff. They require time to master, are useful in specific circumstances, have a cost to use, are mostly optional (e.g. only clerics and wizards automaticall get ritual casting), and the DM has the say over which appear in the game and when. They are helpful and add flavor to a PC, but not a must have.

I see martial rituals being divided into three broad types. The most numerous would be those that provide a unique ability outside of combat (eg. forced march). Then there would be some providing enhanced/epic skill use (eg. Acrobatics to duck alongside horse and use for cover). Last, there would be a few providing a minor bonus for a specific type of combat encounter (e.g. meditation to suppress condition).

Here are some further ideas for martial ritual categories:

Arming (Endurance): Caring for, enhancing, and making arms & armor.
Chivalry (Diplomacy): ?
Cunning (Bluff, Stealth, or Thievery): ?
Exploration (Endurance or Nature): A catch-all category, exploration rituals include a variety of effects useful in everyday adventuring.
Meditation (Endurance): These rituals allow you to heal faster, suppress conditions, and focus.
Might (Acrobatics, Athletics, or Endurance): These rituals allow you to accomplish amazing physical stunts.
Strategy (Bluff, History or Intimidate): These rituals grant you a strategic edge on your foes.

 

[The Cartographist]

Quickleaf - By your listing of categories, it seems to me that you recommending a strong break from normal 'arcane' rituals for these new martial rituals. I think that that might be the way to go. It certainly removes some of the restrictions that I felt when thinking about how to implement my ideas.

I definitely like the categories that you've come up with. Now I need to go off and think of some ideas to contribute...

 

[Quickleaf]

Hey Cartographer, I'm very interested in this idea you've come up with - it's something I would definitely use in the campaign I'm planning.

As a starting place I realized that many rituals are based on either Wizard or Cleric spells of older editions. While there's much less to work from for the martial classes, I'm pretty sure 2nd edition's player's option series had some cool ideas as did OD&D. Heck, it could even be a way to model the Leadership feat, like a ritual to swear an oath with a companion, or to muster troops (i realize this breaks with 4e's economy of actions, but i think the shaman does that, and maybe there's a way to incorporate some of the swarm rules/homebrew unit rules to represent low-level combat units?)


Here's an example of what a combat rite (for lack of a better name) could look like...

Balancing Act
Preparing yourself for a death-defying balancing act in the midst of battle, you feel your feet touch the ground like sensitive hands.

Level: 2?
Category: Might
Time: 10 minutes
Duration: 10 minutes
Cost: 1 healing surge
Key Skill: Acrobatics

This ritual allows you to maintain your guard while balancing. The benefit you receive is determined by an Acrobatics check.

19 or lower: You do not grant combat advantage while balancing.
20-39: You can move at 3/4 your speed while moving across a narrow or unstable object.
40 or higher: You only fall on a fail of 10 or more. A fail of 5 or more instead causes you to lose the rest of your move action, and grants combat advantage and reduces your speed to 1/2 until the end of your next turn.

 

[JoeNotCharles]

Existing rituals appear to exist specific situations: a locked door, distant travel, a dead or diseased ally. They also fall into one of nine categories: Binding, Creation, Deception, Divination, Exploration, Restoration, Scrying, Travel, and Warding. None of those look like to hit or damage bonuses, and indeed, few of the rituals are useful in combat. Indeed, none of those categories seems very martial.

Well, that does give me a few ideas, though.

Warding: by meditating, praying, or doing a set of physical exercises before bedding down, you center yourself mentally to sleep soundly while waking at any disturbance. Gives you a bonus to perception while asleep (or something), enabling you to wake easier if disturbed. Or a bonus to initiative the first round after being woken, so you can leap to your feet and start lashing out.

Another sleep-related possibility is trading a half hour of exercises (which is better mechanically than sleep because you don't have to worry about being surprised - you're awake but busy) for an hour off your extended rest requirements.

Yet another possible ritual would allow you to sleep comfortably in your armour.

Exploration: Oil Your Armour. Apply expensive oils to your armour (large component cost) so it doesn't creak: ignore ACP to Stealth checks.

 

[Smeelbo]

I think the biggest mistake made so far with the existing PHB rituals is their use of fixed casting times and durations, unlike almost the entire rest of the game. I really think Rituals or their analogs need to be done in terms of short and extended rests. If you're going to invent something new, I recommend avoiding the ten minute/one hour/24 hours format.

Smeelbo

 

[dammitbiscuit]

My personal opinion on this thought is that I don't buy it. No player should feel entitled to anything at any time. But THAT is a whole other discussion...

Entitled might have been a confusing word choice. The thing is that +1 to attack rolls is pretty tasty, and fairly hard to come by. There are few feats that give +1 to attack rolls, and only in specific situations. +2 is typically something you enjoy only if you endanger yourself (by getting into melee for combat advantage) or receive a power-based bonus (which means it typically only lasts 1 round). +3 to attack rolls means that if an attack normally would need to roll an 11 to hit, you only need an 8. That's huge.

Whether or not the particular player feels entitled to it, it will become something that every martial character squeezes into their build. Damage bonuses might not be too bad to include, but attack bonuses will make everyone want to take that ritual - and they might feel disadvantaged otherwise.

 

[Falling Icicle]

As far as putting a cost on these "rituals", components would make absolutely no sense, and action points are far too rare a commodity. I think healing surges would be the best way to go.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Seems to me that it would certainly be fine to allow for a bunch of non combat type bonuses with no real issue. I agree with the idea that instead of a 'casting time' it should be described as either being usable in a short or extended rest. That's an easier mechanic to fit into the game. Basically the casting time thing devolves down to that anyway. A 10 minute ritual is essentially a 'short rest' ritual, a 1 hour one is an extended rest ritual, and a longer ritual is one you only use when bunkered down in your 'base of operations' or some other highly secure location you can afford to remain in for a period of time.

Component costs are a bit more problematic. They COULD fit in to the fluff for some of these things, like something that provides a way to use equipment in an enhanced way, but it doesn't really mesh too well with the original 'kata' sort of concept where the character is meditating or something like that. Game mechanics wise it works OK, but it just has the wrong flavor.

I am also not too fond at this point of designing Marshal Rituals that do 'feat like' things. That is if you want a combat bonus of some kind, take a power or a feat. Otherwise the ritual caster feat WILL end up being a 'swiss army knife' for marshal characters, just as it seems to threaten to become for Clerics and Wizards.

I'd say there could be a few categories of things that would make sense to allow:

1) Rituals that allow an attribute check bonus, like increasing your str bonus for the next attribute check you need to make ONLY. So you could 'summon inner strength' and break down a door. It might be ok to extend it to attribute bonus applied to a single skill use as well, like you meditate and then can get a plus to escape bonds. Those are things that right now are not really addressed by existing feats/powers much and at worst the ritual is less good than say Endurance, which is always in effect.

2) Rituals that bend other non combat rules somewhat, like 'forced march' where the character can increase his overland move rate somewhat for a day.

3) Rituals of obeisance that could be used to improve the morale or other capabilities of an NPC under the player's command in a general way. That might be modeled by giving the NPC an action point or an extra surge use or just encourages the DM to increase the NPCs willingness to follow an order it might not otherwise follow (granted this is one of those things where the game does not supply explicit mechanics, but most DMs probably model these as skill check or straight charisma checks anyway and then it is pretty simple).

I think that covers the MAIN sorts of things that might be desired. Using an HS as the cost also seems to me to work well within both the mechanics and the flavor of the thing. Not only is the character giving up some other feat they could have had to get Ritual Casting, but they also pay a not insignificant and concrete cost to actually use the feat. Remember, existing rituals don't have these kinds of penalty (one or two do, but they are all LONG casting time anyway and not really something you'd use on most adventures).

As a sort of aside, I just don't like the whole casting cost mechanism to begin with. Money is really a rather secondary consideration in FRPG. It is hard to track and players are never quite sure how much they have and etc. Residuum just adds an entire second set of mechanics on top of THAT to deal with, and fluff wise is hokey as all get out to boot. Personally I think the good old 'components' mechanism is the nicest. It was a bad idea for spells, but for rituals and magic item creation it works great. You want to make a suit of Elderscale armor, then you are going to have to come up with the scales of an elder dragon! If the DM wants that to be a money cost item, then he can let you buy it, but otherwise its a plot hook. Same with casting some super powerful ritual, you want to use Shadow Walk, then maybe you need some Spectre Dust or something like that.

 

[Quickleaf]

Four things we've established about combat rites:
(1) They require a short rest or extended rest to prepare
(2) Most require you to spend a healing surge
(3) They don't provide bonuses in combat
(4) Combat rite checks can use many skills but default is Endurance

Looking at the categories for regular rituals, I've gone through and decided which are appropriate to combat rites...

Binding: No martial application, cut this category.
Creation: Could be used to model crafting and "Arming" skill.
Deception: Maybe some roguish stuff working off Bluff could go here...I'm still not sure.
Divination: No martial application, but this could be replaced with a History based "Strategy" category.
Exploration: Keep it.
Restoration: There might be a few, but this probably should be left to regular rituals.
Scrying: I wonder if spying/scouting the enemy could apply to a similar category "Scout" based on Stealth/Perception?
Travel: These effects are too magical, and the non-magical stuff can be folded into Exploration.
Warding: Might work if based as "Guard" (Endurance/Perception) representing different guarding states like tending the campfire, acting as bodyguard, defending a castle's walls, etc.

So from this list we might get the following categories:

Arming
Guard
Exploration
Scout
Strategy

To this list we can add a few new categories like Meditation, Might, and Obeisance... and come up with this final list:

Arming (Endurance): Caring for, enhancing, repairing, and making arms & armor.
Exploration (various): Catch-all category for everyday adventuring
Guard (Endurance, Perception): Keeping watch over your allies.
Meditation (Endurance): Increase your recovery, suppress conditions, and enter states of hyper focus.
Might (Acrobatics, Athletics, Endurance): Accomplish amazing physical stunts, pushing your skills beyond what others can.
Obesiance (Diplomacy, Intimidate): Take leadership of NPC allies, inspiring them to stand up for your cause.
Scout (Perception, Stealth): Gather intelligence on nearby enemies.
Strategy (History): Draw on your knowledge of military history and your own strategic genius to manipulate the battlefield.

Can anyone see anything missing from this list? For example, should there be a category for animal handling?

EDIT: Thinking about it, Scout could just be rolled into Exploration. Also, there might be a category for Techniques/Forms which links a # of powers and grants you a bonus to last one if you perform all successfully.