Rituals take too long and creative casting is dead

[Fenes]

No, I do not think it would be a good idea to give fighters the ability to cast fireballs that they can then decline to use if they have a wizard in the party.

Desert Wind - Cone of fire!

 

[hong]

Crap. Okay, never mind me.

 

[Byronic]

That's... really not true. 4e has a good number of illusions.

Illusions or delusions? (sorry, couldn't help myself)

 

[broghammerj]

That's... really not true. 4e has a good number of illusions.

Mostly as rituals which makes them slow and not very useful.

Why did this get moved to the general forums. It's a thread about 4E rituals?

 

[Toras]

I for one have always supported the more creative outlets for things such as spells, enchantments, and gnomish inventions (love those).

As the fighter in the party, I befriended a small group of bytopian Gnomes from whom I commissioned a number of interesting items. The first where a pair of guantlets with the ability to store alchemical substances in the wrists under pressure. It came in real handy when I need acid to burn through the ropes or some of that liquid rope in a hurry.

I also combined a backpack which was pressure sealed, a decanter of endless water and a perm. bless water spell to create an anti-fiend field peace for the Bloodwar. You get a few mortals with these on the battle field and you can functionly repel massed fiends for some time as well as rendering the battlefield hazardous to them.

Neither of them where as powerful as swinging a sword, but they did come in handy on occassion.

 

[el-remmen]

As I have not seen the list of ritual yet or how they work, I cannot say for sure, but I get the idea that the list of spells that are now ritual is probably a little longer and wider ranging than I would have personally made them.

Utility spells like comprehend languages, for example, would not be a ritual.

Part of the fun of playing a wizard for me has always been the resource management part that includes figuring out a good balance of combat vs. utility spells to prepare - I got around the ubiquitousness of certain broadly useful spells by limiting the number of new spells wizards get automatically (1 spell every 2 levels, instead of 2 every 1) and by using a spell rarity system.

 

[hong]

Part of the fun of playing a wizard for me has always been the resource management part that includes figuring out a good balance of combat vs. utility spells to prepare - I got around the ubiquitousness of certain broadly useful spells by limiting the number of new spells wizards get automatically (1 spell every 2 levels, instead of 2 every 1) and by using a spell rarity system.

You realise that one of the design goals for 4E was to explicitly remove this tradeoff, yes?

 

[el-remmen]

You realise that one of the design goals for 4E was to explicitly remove this tradeoff, yes?

Yes. I have long realized that 4E was designed with a playstyle other than mine/my group's in mind.

 

[billd91]

It's nice that you never tried to overshadow the rogue in your parties, but you could have easily. And the rogue class simply did not have the ability to intrude on most the wizard classes' many, nearly all encompassing niches. A DM can mollify some of these issues by making frequent use of antimagic and spell nullifying situations. But that seems to be an inelegant way of managing things, IMO. Much better to prevent problems through solid design right out of the gate.

Actually the wizard could not completely overshadow the rogue, because he always had a limited number of castings while the rogue could pick locks, search for traps, pick pockets, and sneak around all day long. Wizards had much more significant resource management if they wanted to perform some of the rogue or other skill monkey's job.

That's something people don't seem to really want to acknowledge. Yes, in previousl editions of D&D, the wizard and cleric could do some of the things other classes had as their so-called "schtick". But, in reality, the ability was pretty severly limited. You had to prepare in advance for it and balance other needs and so you really only did it when you needed the fool-proof method. As I saw it, that was a STRENGTH of the game design because it meant there was some possibility of redundancy in the party. If the rogue got himself cacked or if the party didn't have one in the first place, you still had options available to you, even if somewhat limited.

 

[monboesen]

he always had a limited number of castings

Have you heard of scrolls and wands?

In 3ed both are easy and cheap to create when dealing with low level spells. That means spellcasters more or less have unlimited use of utility spells if they want it.