Rituals To Grant Powers?

[Lizard]

A ket design element of 4e is "The monster/NPC has what it needs to do what it has to do in the story". This is great if you have any smeggin' idea where the story is going. It's less useful if you're busily making it up as fast as you can. When that happens, having an NPC with 20-odd spells prepared means it can fulfill a whole LOT of different "roles". (Last night, the players were convinced someone in the local church was a cultist of Orcus. I hadn't wanted to go with the whole 'corrupt priest' routine, but they were wasting soooo much time trying to find one I eventually decided, fine, there is one. Naturally, the PCs put him in a bad spot. Based on my hastily deciding his level, he had Slay Living, which let him off the High Bishop when the PCs tried to force a confrontation, then he won initiative and Plane Shifted away. Next round, the bishop's guards rush in to find a dead bishop, two PCs, and no other suspects. To be continued!)

ANYway...

From what I've seen of 4e, people don't have that many different powers. It's believable for a 10th level 3e cleric to have those spells prepared; less so that a 4e NPC would, since those would likely be the only powers (or the rough equivalent) that they'd have, period. A "Gating Assassin" might, but that would mean I would have needed to plan for this in advance, and "plan in advance" isn't my strength. I build worlds, not scenarios. But getting back to my point (and yes, I have one...)

Could there be a ritual called "Grant Power"?

You perform the ritual, and you gain a spell/prayer/exploit which you can keep for (an hour? Until used?). This allows NPCs to have a few useful powers "stocked", without them being part of their basic template. Make it expensive enough, and it won't be exploited -- or, hell, just make it an NPC-only trick, though I tend not to like those. Make the cost something like 100 gold * power level ^ 2, and I don't think you'll end up with a lot of PCs using them, though it does give NPCs some unexpected tricks, and helps justify, even retroactively, an NPC having just the right ability when he needed it. ("Yeah, he, uh was prepared for that...")

 

[PeterWeller]

One of the things I've been doing for a while (since it was suggested in one of the dozens of 3E splats I bought) is to not actually fill out all of a high level caster NPC's spell slots. This lets me give them whatever I think would be really great for them to have in whatever situation they end up in, and I justify it because super genius wizards and stunningly wise clerics should know well enough to prepare the right spells even if I don't.

I'll probably continue doing the same thing with 4E NPCs.

 

[inkmonkeys]

If the NPC was prepared for the assault and had a contingency plan for escape, then that's what he had all set up. If that's a gate of some sort, skippy. But writing it down as a ritual is asking for trouble. PCs will get it, PCs will want to use it, and it breaks one of the cardinal rules of ritual design: they don't help in combat time. Reintroduce the buff spell, and players will use it. And soon, they won't go into combat without the right rituals active.

Better, in my mind, to say the NPC in question has a one-shot magic item, or a magic item that must be recharged by bathing it in the blood of innocents. Y'know. Something abhorrent.

 

[Cadfan]

Let me get this right. You were perfectly happy retconning this NPC's personality, history, role in the plot, etc. Turning him from a friendly character into an evil cultist was no big deal for you.

But you're REALLY WORRIED about whether 4e might have also forced you to retcon his powers. So you want something that mechanically justifies, sans retcon, giving a retconned character a previously unlisted power. You think a ritual might help- because then you could retcon that the ritual had taken place, instead of retconning whether the npc had the ability to begin with.

See, I'd say that anything that hasn't yet affected the plotline isn't "real," and changing it doesn't count as retconning. But my willingness to change things so quickly and without permission from the game rules is probably just further evidence of my ADD. And the fact that I think this makes so much more sense than believing that retconning a character's in game nature is less disruptive than retconning an npc's unused powers is probably just evidence of my narcissism.

 

[Lizard]

Let me get this right. You were perfectly happy retconning this NPC's personality, history, role in the plot, etc. Turning him from a friendly character into an evil cultist was no big deal for you.

But you're REALLY WORRIED about whether 4e might have also forced you to retcon his powers. So you want something that mechanically justifies, sans retcon, giving a retconned character a previously unlisted power. You think a ritual might help- because then you could retcon that the ritual had taken place, instead of retconning whether the npc had the ability to begin with.

Yes, because, overall, my sense of 'plausibility' is less strained by 'Of the 30-odd powers he has access to at his level, which he can change every day, 2 of them are thus-and-so' than by 'Of the three powers he has, total, two of them are thus-and-so'.

IAE, that was the event which got me thinking about power granting rituals; once I started thinking about them, I decided I liked the concept in general as a way to increase flexibility or offer unique rewards or 'gimmicks'. In City of Heroes, you often get 'temporary powers' for the duration of a mission; other MMORPGs give you 'clickies' that grant short-term abilities. A scroll and a ritual which required rare ingredients could be used to give characters a single-use power which they could "hold on to" until it was needed; it might be a general "power up" to get them through a scenario or it might be a "puzzle power" which was needed to solve a specific problem (though I try to avoid those Zork-isms).

4e actually provides some rules frameworks for things which used to be pure handwaving, and that's good.

 

[Jack99]

Let me try this.

Say with me: Ex-cep-tion ba-sed mon-ster de-sign

Build the cleric NPC as a "monster" with a cleric template, and give him gate and kill-other-NPC spell on top of the powers from the guidelines. Et voila.

Cheers.

 

[abyssaldeath]

Let me try this.

Say with me: Ex-cep-tion ba-sed mon-ster de-sign

Build the cleric NPC as a "monster" with a cleric template, and give him gate and kill-other-NPC spell on top of the powers from the guidelines. Et voila.

Cheers.

For the dyslexic among us that was actually difficult to say.

 

[Sitara]

What do these class based template do again? give you a coupleof stock powers all those with the template have and then you add 2-3 more that you like? Also, is there advice on how to scale these powers relatvie to level, or is it possible to give a level 5 npc a power that does 20D20 dmg?

Also, there is nothign preventing us from making a bad guy/villain using the pc character building rules right? So a level 5 cleric built using the options in PHB just like a player would build his pc?

 

[Mallus]

I hadn't wanted to go with the whole 'corrupt priest' routine, but they were wasting soooo much time trying to find one I eventually decided, fine, there is one.

Nice. I became a much better DM the day I finally realized you should things like that...

You perform the ritual, and you gain a spell/prayer/exploit which you can keep for (an hour? Until used?).

Couldn't you use the 'make item' ritual to create a bunch of special one-shot items? Flavor-wise, that matches a lot of film/tv/lit. magicians; they're powers are often bound up in items.

 

[Lizard]

Couldn't you use the 'make item' ritual to create a bunch of special one-shot items? Flavor-wise, that matches a lot of film/tv/lit. magicians; they're powers are often bound up in items.

Works for me. Also fits a lot of modern fantasy source material, which is big on "Do the ritual, create the demon slaying knife, hope the guy with the knife doesn't drop it at the last minute".