Rituals Designs

[donfie]

It's rare indeed that a thread concerning any D&D mechanic has a 100% consensus on what the precise "best" rule should be. Person A thinks it's too expensive/limited/unworkable. Person B thinks it's just fine and dandy.

Threads like these are great though as they give people a chance to see other options and ideas.

We threw alignments out completely a long, long time ago. Just didn't suit our games. You follow them as written. Just suits your game. Someone else has changed them. Just suits their game. That, to me, is the beauty of this game over practically any other. You can - and I would argue SHOULD - change ANYTHING you don't like into ANYTHING you do. I tried that once playing football. Wasn't as warmly received as I'd hoped.

We play rituals as is. I'll tell you why because someone might find it useful, and not because I think anyone doing anything else with them is wrong in any way, shape or form. There may be no one who finds it useful, but I can type really, really fast and there's nothing on TV just now, so what the heck?

Fighters spent their "formative years" learning how to fight; thieves spent their formative years learning how to thieve; rangers spent their formative years learning how to range; and wizards spent their formative years learning how to, er, wiz.

The ranger who wants to chat with little furries needs to be a druid or, at least, partly druid. Done and done. The thief who wants to magically find traps needs to be a wizard or, at least, partly wizard. Done and done.

You can be a super-starry robed and pointily-pointy hatted wizard with magic shizzle up the kazoo, who wouldn't dream of wasting his lovely shiny loot on a trick the shady midget can do for free. Done and done.

You can be a penniless god-botherer who loves his natty ceremonies and his "pointing at stuff through walls" trick. Done and done.

For us, nothing the players do is designed to "win" in strictly mechanical terms. The ranger even uses a shortbow because he says the longbow gets in the way when he climbs trees. That's just who we are. We loveth the fluff.

Again, I'm not making any comment on anyone else's style of play. D&D is the most bestest game ever invented in the history of games (except for Buckaroo) because it's YOUR game to do with as you will.

 

[ender_wiggin]

Threads like these are great though as they give people a chance to see other options and ideas.

Exactly. I will share what we do.

I threw out more or less all the existing rituals and worked with players on a one-on-one basis to design custom "special abilities" for each character (which includes but is not limited to rituals). This makes characters feel unique (as nobody playing RAW D&D can ever mechanically mimic them), and allows me to have a finer hand in shaping the capabilities of the party. The downside is that it takes somewhat more time than just relegating this to a book, but I've tried to boiled down what I'm doing to some loose rules in order to make things standardized.

#1: Nothing done here may have any direct impact on combat mechanics. 4E is an extremely rules-heavy system whose rules focus 95% on combat. It is a complete package, and anything added to the combat rules is unlikely to make my game much better.

#2: What replaces the ritual design space comes in a variety of narrative flavors but usually falls into one of several categories: (1) Arcanist/Divinist learns and casts rituals (2) A character owns an artifact that does cool things, (3) A character builds a following, (4) Something unique [Morningstar of Ell's ability (from Sagiro's story hour) to navigate Ava Dormo is a good example of what would in theory fall into this category]

#3: What can these abilities do? KM's post from a few posts up gives a good list, and I'll just quickly reiterate: (1) Travel across long distances or across otherwise impossible terrain, (2) Divination, (3) Communication across distances or with unusual entities, (4) Conjuration/Creation of cool things, (5) Skill replacement. An example of the last category is my version of the ritual Knock, which allows an arcanist to use his Arcana skill one time to replace Thievery for the purpose of opening a lock. Alternatively, a cleric that has built a following can call on his disciples to investigate something for him - he may use Religion in place of Streetwise. I leave it up to the player to justify the mechanics with narration. Most of my players extraordinarily creative and frequently surprise me with the cool stuff they come up, but if somebody is new or having trouble I will take the time to throw a few suggestions their way. For the most part, however, the onus of coming up what rituals actually do is up to them.

#4: How do I give my PCs these abilities in-game? My method is to have downtime between adventures, and have time as a resource for learning things and exploring other in-game stuff. In heroic tier, the basic unit of off-time is one week (in paragon the month, in epic the season). Each week of off-time, the player may declare that his character spends time learning whatever ability. I ask the PCs to roll a relevant skill, and if they pass a moderate DC, I count that a success. Usually four successes are required to learn something new. Sometimes I complicate their learning by making them talk to a specific NPC or travel to a specific city.

#5: What is the cost associated with using these abilities? I actually don't keep track of money in my game; I like to focus on the story and bookkeeping is too cumbersome for me. I tend to use healing surges and time as the two resources that fuel these abilities: the former for short-form abilities (a ritual that be cast in 1 hour) and the latter for long-form (calling on one's following). My homebrew is set up so that using surges makes narrative sense. I imagine other DMs can use more traditional costs for this method.

Hopefully that made some semblance of sense, but I'll clarify in case there are big holes in my explanation as to how this could possibly work. Comments welcome.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I for one would be opposed to a house rule that gives you rituals for an associated skill if you take the skill. While Arcana and Religion mean something different in D&D-land than in real life, if a ranger takes Nature, they shouldn't suddenly be able to talk to nature spirits. Learning to hunt isn't the same thing as controlling primal forces.

I borrowed D&D 4e for Dummies over the holidays. It's written by three WotC authors, so I guess it's semi-official. They suggested every party take these rituals:

Knock (I don't agree with this one, use Thievery)
Cure Disease
Sending
Linked Portal
Raise Dead
Remove Affliction

It occurred to me the ones I basically had to give my PCs for free were the healing ones. I don't think Sending is necessary; one should not count on NPCs, nor should the party split.

When it comes to thinks one should be able to do with rituals, I think old spells like "Charm Person" (or "Instant Friends") should fall under that umbrella.

 

[marelion]

Regarding the knock ritual i can see why they included it in their list of essential rituals. The arcana skill is a lot easier to boost than thievery Add in all the item powers that help with rituals and you have a strong impetus to use knock. Apart from monk and rogue there simply are not that many classes excelling in thievery and the DCs are set in a way it encourages players to max that given skill out or pass it entirely if they cannot max it out due to the ability spread of their character. And thievery is a classic of `skill better left to the pros` as you might accidently trigger traps along the way of picking that `rosty ol`treasure chest' or simply fail every tme you are trying (the runepriest with thievery training comes to mind) due to a lack of dextereity.