Rituals

[reciprocity]

I can see your points, though I'm still not crazy about it. Sure, there are hundreds of kinds of sand, herbs, salves, so forth, but in practice, there are four components and a wild card. When I make my game, I want player's inventories to say "Prince Ran's Warmace" or "Egyrian Health Potion," rather then "+1 Stick" and "10HP Pot." When I reveal that there there is a leather bag at the bottom of the pit with a number of vials of colourful dust, I don't want my players to list "Arc Ritual x200gp"

But I digress. No amount of argument is going to change this. I'll just have to sit and brainstorm a way to make it work for me. The rest of 4e is worth it.

One interesting way of keeping the ease of the "category" components while adding some flavor might be to invent components which would boost the skill check made when the ritual is cast.

That way if they want to just use "300gp of herbs" that's fine, but if they recall that they found that vial of Crimsonweed they get +3 on the Heal check when used in a Cure Disease ritual. That way you can still have exciting stuff at the bottom of your treasure chests.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Very good point, and I agree there have been issues.

I do think that there was some balance though, since you had your limited spell slots a day. You couldn't just run around detecting at will (though you could for the duration).

Wands of Knock and the like have been pretty common in games I've played in. Automatic detection of secret doors was available both as a wand and a magic item property back in 1E. So spell slots per day aren't that a big of a limiting factor. I'm really satisfied with the way such rituals work now in 4E.

 

[malraux]

*blink*

You know, now I have to go back and check my book. I always thought that was the case. But it may just have been an assumption on my part...

I don't see anything that says that you must be trained in the skill, just that the success is sometimes dependent on the check result. So it just benefits you to be trained, but you can probably get by without it.

 

[MindWanderer]

7. Anybody want to bet that Undead Creation exists as a ritual... in the DMG? I'm betting that a lot of the "reserved for evil characters" stuff has migrated there, as demonstrated by how evil gods were handled.

I'd take that bet, against you. Most "evil" rituals are going to happen off-camera, so they can easily be hand-waved. The only way they'll interact with the PCs directly is if they find a book containing the ritual the necromancer used. If they won't use it themselves, it's just a cash-equivalent, and if they do, it's a potential DM nightmare. I see this appearing only in a Book of Vile Darkness-type book, for evil PCs.

 

[JohnSnow]

This is OK. I'd like to see more rituals ... though I'd have to go look at an older PHB to see how many spells really translate.

What form does magic item poop residuum take, anyway? Do you carry it around in a bottle?

Well, someone brought up The Dresden Files earlier in this thread, but I thought I'd do it again by way of the explanation I plan to use for "what form residuum takes."

Harry Dresden uses a lot of components for his ritual spells that can only be described as "non-material." Off the top of my head, he has:

- a jar of mouse scampers (that's the noise of mouse footfalls)
- a vial of children's laughter.
- a handkerchief with captured sunlight.
- a bottle of moonlight.
- a cannister of pixie smiles.
- a box of hurricane wind.

Honestly, all that stuff sounds a fair bit like "magical residue" to me. How you collect those things, I have no idea, but offhand, I'd say they fit in fairly well with the concept of residuum.

I like both having a mechanical thing you can keep track of, and leaving the imaginative details to the description of the character performing the ritual.