Pinotage said:
Interesting article. It's pretty much what I suspected it would look like. Disappointed by the low number of rituals, and in particular that they take 10 minutes. I mean, a wizard can blast fireballs around and do all sorts of powerful things in the blink of an eye, and yet it takes him 10 minutes to find a secret door. Just weird.
Pinotage
This is what I like about them. As noted before, it puts more emphasis on skill use, role playing (figuring stuff out), and less on using magic to just deal with it. (I played a wizard in a group with a thief once. He was having fun finding/disarming traps, climbing a treacherous wall and the like. It took quite a awhile and many skill checks. When he eventually failed (roll enough d20s and you eventually roll low) my guy dropped a
feather fall (on the Thief),
fly, and
protection from normal missiles (1st ed) and basically rescued him, bypassed every trap and got past the traps in seconds. It was demoralizing for the Thief.
Another thing it does, is balance play better. Puzzles, secrets, mazes and such become/remain role playing challenges more than simple obstacles to be rid of with a spell. I hated the Knock spell, because it meant a locked door usually meant resting for a night to swap spells. By making them take time and money, the party must determine whether it is worth the brief pause, but not a game stopping one.
Another thing I like about it is it makes good use of the Spell Book! As an old school gamer, I remember my spell books weighed a hundred pounds or more. And while that seemed interesting from a 'flavor' perspective, it was irritating from a player perspective. Now I can see traveling without one's books, or just a couple special books for likely needs. I like the idea of using the books during the ritual instead of before it. It makes the scholarly wizard/cleric seem more scholarly.
Lastly, I can certainly imagine using rituals in reverse. The bad guys are going to use a ritual, so they need certain components, or they are trying to open the sealed portal, or they will be out at the henge in order to raise their fallen comrade. If the party finds that out, they can try to defeat the ritual themselves. We could do that before, but with old spell-based system, it was at best a temporary thing. You can interrupt the spell, but they can try again tomorrow, or next round. This way, if you take the book, or component or what have you, you could make a more permanent impact.
Caveat: None of the above are impossible with 3.x, but I think the flavor of 4E makes it easier to represent.
