RITUALS will be officially modified :)

[AbdulAlhazred]

I can't comment on the racial backgrounds of the book (due to the Mark of Justice on my forehead), but I'll say this: I was never a fan of "17 flavors of elves" from earlier editions.

They'll be fine Personally I never had any big hate on for sub-races, they never made a huge difference but could be handy to portray demi-humans as more diverse instead of being some sort of monolithic cultural group that is exactly the same all over the world (while mysteriously humans alone of all races have vast cultural differences). Not a NECESSARY part of the game, but interesting.

In any case if they are built using the character background mechanism of 4e just exactly how big a deal can they be? Slight differences in languages, a different skill choice, maybe different racial weapon proficiency choice, etc. Really, even if it involves being able to pick a different racial power it isn't that earth shaking. I mean we already have half-elves and humans that have a choice of 2 racial features. Why not give dwarves that choice too and call it "Hill Dwarf" vs "Mountain Dwarf"?

Obviously we don't even know enough about what the rituals changes are going to be to comment on them. Personally I was happy with the existing ritual casting rules and I have never fathomed what people's problem with them was. It is like everyone wanted them to just all be handed to them free on a plate with instant casting, get over it, lol. However if something pretty close to the existing mechanics still exists and it makes the mysteriously disliking rituals people happy I won't complain. Always interesting to see new ideas.

I'm going to have to say I hope themes have been redesigned to avoid forcing people to take them or be penalized and to acquire a theme AFTER the PC has been played a bit. That would make them ideal.

I don't really see where anything was really wrong with the existing familiar rules either. They could have used a bit of clarification on a couple rules points but as a basis they seemed pretty good. Some elaboration on the non-combat uses and characteristics of familiars and some new familiar related content would be quite cool though, they certainly haven't been mined for their full potential yet.

As far as professions go, I could REALLY lose that. It is actually pretty hard to see how any kind of meaningful rules could be added that did anything useful beyond what "Oh, you're background says you were a farmer, well have a +2 circumstance bonus to tell if that cow is sick" already does for you. I can imagine some "world building" guidelines that would bear on backgrounds though. Dropping in a chart of hiring costs for ordinary professions for instance would be good.

 

[Obryn]

Out of curiosity, what exactly is the problem with Rituals as they are now for typical players?

Being slow is a bit of an issue, but I think it's more that they are unreasonably expensive, by and large.

-O

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Being slow is a bit of an issue, but I think it's more that they are unreasonably expensive, by and large.

-O

Really gone down the list and determined the cost relative to the cost of other things at the relevant levels? VERY few rituals have significant cost relative to anything else a PC of the same level would purchase. Most of them are considerably cheaper than a consumable of the same level, which is already 5x cheaper than an item. Most of them are pretty useful even at much higher levels than they are introduced as well, unlike most items and consumables. So basically 95% of all ritual casting is from pocket change, not even worth accounting for in most situations.

I don't generally get the slowness argument much either. Most rituals aren't going to be cast in a situation where the difference between 1 minute, 10 minutes, and an hour is going to matter much. The few situations where this is not the case are almost entirely situations where the ritual replaces or steps on the abilities of some other class and thus really NEEDS to be a slightly more situational or slightly less convenient backup solution (Knock for instance).

So I still don't get it. The entire issue seems to me to be rooted in "wizards got to do that instantly for free in 3.x." Well, if you want to go back to the situation where the wizard could just whip out something from his spell list and replace any other PC then it makes sense to make rituals free and cast instantly (or closer to that). If the idea is to provide the players with a way for a wizard to do stuff that is mysterious and and magicky and can do something nobody else can do in the right situation, and give them that real "Hey, I really know magic inside and out" feel, then the existing ritual system is pretty good. It is a nice bonus that it can be easily grafted onto other classes too if you want to make some kind of non-combat casting character (rogue that uses magic to supplement his thievery skills for example).

There are a few individual rituals that could probably use a tweak or two. That is true of powers, feats, items, etc as well though. I don't think the whole mechanic should be condemned. Going through and making a few adjustments on casting times, costs, levels, etc is not at all a bad idea. Drastic changes being needed? I just don't get that. Honestly I think in my DMing I've relied on leveraging the ritual system more than any other new thing in 4e to do cool stuff. It is a system that was just BEGGING to exist in older editions and we finally got it. Heck, go back and look at early issues of Dragon, there were a bunch of different attempts to do basically the same thing, it isn't a new need.

Anyway, I honestly hope that whatever changes HAVE been made to rituals aren't all that drastic, or if they are they allow for them to continue to fill their existing niche in much the same way because if that isn't true, heck I'll just stick with the old version. There's no way I'm giving up something I've wanted for over 20 years and finally got.

 

[samursus]

Wow... I mean... wow. Talk about caving in to your customers demands. Wizards is SOOOO whipped.

Seriously, quite a bit of options (revision?) addressing the issues of the vocal minority. (Let me clarify that I don't intend that term to be derogatory; lets face it, feedback givers ARE a minority.)

In some cases its the previous edition crowds desires (professions, sub-races?, asymmetrical character balance) and sometimes the 4e crowd (rituals, themes, racial mods).

Never seen an D&D(or any RPG) respond to the rumblings of a portion of their customer base so quickly.

This either bodes well for the future (new design philosophy=give em what they want) OR doesn't (man, things aren't selling and we are in trouble=give them what they want) or somewhere in between? Any thoughts?

 

[zoroaster100]

I find that players rarely use rituals in my games, in fact often hardly remember they have them. They are either too expensive or too long to carry out and there are usually free alternatives that accomplish the same goal, such as skill challenges, role playing through a solution, etc. The epitome of this problem for me is that low level ritual that creates curtains to hide the inside of a room. Doh! Why not just buy curtains and hang them?

 

[AllisterH]

I really don't get the cost issue.

Pretty much ALL rituals (90%+ scale) with level in that they don't become LESS useful unlike powers/items/consumables.

Yet their costs remain static so that even as level 5, level 1 rituals become pocket change...ESPECIALLY given that most rituals help the entire party and thus the cost should be split 5 ways....

 

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

I must add that I like the change that are coming

for rituals I hope that

1) wizard get a few "free" ritual each day,

2) Material Components: instead of generic components each ritual should get a little more "magical" with nice material (spells) rituals components (was I the only one who used material components back in the days?)

3) some way to quick cast a ritual (healing surge use or whatever)

 

[MarkB]

Really gone down the list and determined the cost relative to the cost of other things at the relevant levels? VERY few rituals have significant cost relative to anything else a PC of the same level would purchase. Most of them are considerably cheaper than a consumable of the same level, which is already 5x cheaper than an item. Most of them are pretty useful even at much higher levels than they are introduced as well, unlike most items and consumables. So basically 95% of all ritual casting is from pocket change, not even worth accounting for in most situations.

We don't use consumables much, either. The one time our group accumulated any significant quantity of them was when we were going into a troll-heavy area and had only one flaming weapon. We bought out just about every alchemical flask and dragon-breath elixir we could lay our hands on.

We ended up using about two of them. After picking up an acidic weapon early in the quest, we ended up timing things so that one or the other weapon was used to finish off the trolls, and pretty much avoided using the consumable items at all.

I don't generally get the slowness argument much either. Most rituals aren't going to be cast in a situation where the difference between 1 minute, 10 minutes, and an hour is going to matter much. The few situations where this is not the case are almost entirely situations where the ritual replaces or steps on the abilities of some other class and thus really NEEDS to be a slightly more situational or slightly less convenient backup solution (Knock for instance).

So I still don't get it. The entire issue seems to me to be rooted in "wizards got to do that instantly for free in 3.x."

I think it goes deeper than that, to a particular attitude to resource-management. I can't speak for others in my group, but I know that when I play computer games that include powerful consumable items, like scrolls and wands in the Baldur's Gate games, I tend to equip them to quick-slots ready to use at a moment's notice - and then reach the end of the game with them still there, ready but unused, because I was always saving them for the moment I'd really need them. I think the same thing tends to happen with rituals.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I've been of the opinion for a while now that the biggest problem with rituals is that they're not part of the power system. I really hope they're re-written as pseudo-utility powers.

Spit balling, I'd make the casting time for most as Short Rest (kind of like the pre-release Artificer powers). Some longer ones might be an hour, or as part of an extended rest. Most durations would be in the immediate to "end of next encounter" range, with some until "end of next extended rest". Ritual Caster would give one free ritual per day. Additional rituals could be paid for a number of ways - Residuum, Healing Surges, Burn a Daily Power... there's room for playing around here.

A very rough possible example:
[sblock]
Tenser's Floating Disk
Arcana Utility 1
Ritual * Arcane, Creation, Force
Short Rest * Ranged 5
Effect: You create yadda yadda yadda. The disk lasts until the end of your next extended rest or until banished by the caster (as a free action).
Component: 10gp Residuum.
[/sblock]

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I must add that I like the change that are coming

for rituals I hope that

1) wizard get a few "free" ritual each day,

2) Material Components: instead of generic components each ritual should get a little more "magical" with nice material (spells) rituals components (was I the only one who used material components back in the days?)

3) some way to quick cast a ritual (healing surge use or whatever)

Well, see here's why I think at least 1 and 3 aren't really great ideas (though they COULD work for some specific rituals, bards for instance already have free rituals).

1) Once you make a ritual free then there's NOTHING stopping the character from spamming it like crazy. This is fine for rituals you really can only get any use out of in fairly specific circumstances, but even those can be problems in specific situations that the game designers can't really anticipate. Animal Messenger is usually pretty trivial for instance. If you make it free though using it without limit could present an issue for a given story line. For rituals like Knock and Arcane Lock making them freebies kneecaps rogues and is just a bad idea. Thus many rituals have a rather trivial cost. It is not enough to make it too expensive to use when you need it, but it does mean it is cheaper to just buy the rogue a set of lockpicks and be done with it.

3) This is also problematic. Again it could work for a few cases, but basically those would be rituals you really generally aren't going to find all that useful in combat, which makes it fairly redundant. Again, it is a lot like the old issue with the wizard being the go-to guy for practically every problem. I'd be happy with some rituals that worked that way or some kind of feat or whatever that allowed certain specific rituals to be cast this way. As a general rule I don't think it works too well though.

2) I remember WELL the 1e AD&D days of material spell components. What an accounting nightmare. This rule was pretty much the first thing everyone ignored in 1e and in fact I cannot actually recall personally ever playing in a 1e game where this rule was inforced. It is just far too much of a pain in the butt. I think the existing component rule was at least a decent attempt to both provide some level of component requirement and yet make it as simple as possible to administer. Even so I personally find it a pain to track. Remember, any given ritual can have specific rules and many of them do have 'focus' items or other conditions. Unusual DM provided rituals can always have other types of restrictions too, but these are generally story elements and not player resources.

I think any of the above suggestions can work for specific situations and be used optionally depending on the desires of the group. I'm not sure they are things I'd want to see written in as general rules that always apply.

I think it goes deeper than that, to a particular attitude to resource-management. I can't speak for others in my group, but I know that when I play computer games that include powerful consumable items, like scrolls and wands in the Baldur's Gate games, I tend to equip them to quick-slots ready to use at a moment's notice - and then reach the end of the game with them still there, ready but unused, because I was always saving them for the moment I'd really need them. I think the same thing tends to happen with rituals.

What I've found is that yes players will tend to horde anything. OTOH when the situation clearly calls for use of consumable resources they will come out. The DM may want to make sure to highlight a few opportunities. It seems like once the players have gotten into the habit of using consumables and rituals they'll pay more attention to them. It also helps to make them the only really easily available option for some things. When permanent heal boosting items are hard to come by for instance and potions of resistance and regeneration and such are readily available then the players will pretty much get into the groove of relying on those instead of just being decked out with the Medic's Weapon, the Healer's Brooch, Healer's Sash, and a Belt of Sacrifice, etc. The same can be said for other things. If the player's can't just forge a flaming sword whenever they need one (thank you Essentials changes) then the Alchemist's Fire actually starts to seem like a pretty cool thing.

So I think the main issue with 4e's consumables is that it has been so far SO easy to get permanent items that solve the same problems that consumables rarely seemed vital. In a game with more restricted access to the magic smörgåsbord this problem is reduced.

It will be interesting to see with the new magic item rules what impact that has on rituals as well. It seems like there is now less motive for PCs to store up gold since the items they can make or purchase are now pretty limited. We may find that creating potions and casting rituals takes on a bit more significance.