Rituals

[TwinBahamut]

I have quite a few thoughts on this one.

1) Finally, categories of magic effects that make sense and have reasonable names. No more transmutation, abjuration, and conjuration! I was really afraid that they might keep those terms for rituals, even though they were removed from spells.

2) I like the different components and skill requirements, for many different reasons. It promotes having multiple ritual specialists in the team, it is a great way to handle material components, and it is thematically cool. For the first time ever the game actually makes it plausible to have real doctors! If healing rituals just require Heal checks and magical healing salves, then you don't need to describe every guy patching the PCs up as a priest. I can see why Mr. Hellcow thinks rituals are a good fit for Eberron.

3) Friends don't let friends perform Cure Disease rituals with a skill penalty. "Viruses die in acid, right? I just need to fill him up with this flask of acid, and he will be cured!"

4) I knew it! It is just Magic Circle now! I wonder if this is just a generic Magic Circle against everything, or if there are guidelines for determining the kinds of things you can set the circle to protect against (or contain).

5) Honestly, I don't really like the look of the Raise Dead ritual. Mr. Hellcow mentioned that they were changing the raise dead limitation to "you must have a destiny to be revived", and I really supported that change. Now though, it is just the terrible old 3E limitation with a "the DM can screw you over whenever he feels like it" caveat. I don't really like that "fix" very much.

Overall, rituals are just as good as I imagined them to be, with the only problems being in the details of particular rituals. Not bad at all.

 

[A'koss]

Notice the requirement for Raising Dead...

To perform the Raise Dead ritual, you must have a part of the corpse of a creature that died no more than 30 days ago.

So there are going to be fairly mundane ways you can permanently kill off opponents or PCs...

 

[hong]

Yeah, I'd have been fine with raise dead being limited in some way by tier, so that heroics can't be raised, but paragons and epics can.

 

[Korgoth]

It seems like they changed raise dead, it no longer mentions you having to have a special destiny to get raised.

Or perhaps that's in a different section of the book.

It does say that the gods can intervene and lay down a cosmic buzzkill.

I'm guess they'll have the uncanny tendency to do that when the king gets assassinated and the plot is about protecting the new regent. Naturally, if the ritual is known (which it might not be, depending on the DM), they will try to use it on the king. But the gods (or the Raven Queen or whomever) may be enforcing a "No kings" policy that epoch so no dice.

 

[TwinBahamut]

They never actually said that raise dead requires a special destiny. That was something that Keith Baker mentioned in passing, and everyone jumped on. KB posting a correction didn't stop the jumping to conclusions either.

He posted a correction? I never even heard of that. Do you have a quote? I am curious about what he said.

Either way, the lack of a good change to the system is disappointing.

 

[Korgoth]

Notice the requirement for Raising Dead...

To perform the Raise Dead ritual, you must have a part of the corpse of a creature that died no more than 30 days ago.

So there are going to be fairly mundane ways you can permanently kill off opponents or PCs...

Good catch. Fire Resistance is now even better than it already seemed to be.

 

[Hussar]

It does say that the gods can intervene and lay down a cosmic buzzkill.

I'm guess they'll have the uncanny tendency to do that when the king gets assassinated and the plot is about protecting the new regent. Naturally, if the ritual is known (which it might not be, depending on the DM), they will try to use it on the king. But the gods (or the Raven Queen or whomever) may be enforcing a "No kings" policy that epoch so no dice.

Pretty much. In other words, they are leaving it in the hands of the DM to come up with a reason why King Generacticus can't be raised.

My take would be that one or more religions in the nation have petitioned the gods to block it.

 

[FadedC]

It seems my dislike of generic components isn't common. Perhaps I'm missing something? Though I guess for a game like this, it makes sense to streamline it and not have people buy specifics for everything, but its just... Everything else that seems like a video game is only so due to mechanics. This seems like a video game in flavor as well.

(Though I guess it isn't terrible. I can get over the fact that botanists only need to know if a plant is rare or not, not names or origins or anything.)

I don't like completely generic component costs, but these aren't completely generic. You need different components for different types of rituals. It doesn't really bother me that two scrying rituals would have very similar components. Seems quite flavorful in fact.

I also like how you can disenchant a magic item to use for emergency components that work for any ritual.

 

[A'koss]

Good catch. Fire Resistance is now even better than it already seemed to be.

Though that won't be of much help on your scenic voyage through the digestive tract of some nameless beast...

 

[Korgoth]

Though that won't be of much help on your scenic voyage through the digestive tract of some nameless beast...

Now I'm seeing a party of adventurers frantically sifting through enormous Behemoth Pellets for a scrap of Rudgar the Fighter.

"Hey, I think I found some gristle!"