Rule of Three for 7/25

[AbdulAlhazred]

What about adding a new resource that you get only at milestones? Permanent foci and crafted items still need to cost money, but just "charge" one milestone per ritual for anything else that needs "control". The resource should be persistent (not lost at an Extended rest).

Just an idea.

Yeah. My experience is people aren't overly fond of "you have to have this chit to do X, Y, or Z" and it adds to book keeping. If something like that was going to be added to the game I'd feel better if it wasn't just tacked on to deal with one minor issue and nothing else.

[MENTION=95211]mudlock[/MENTION] I think something like "this ritual can only be cast during the full moon" is OK for some kind of story based DM designed plot ritual. I'm not sure I'd be enthused by the idea that the DM's permission has to be obtained every time you want to cast any old ritual. It makes rituals a DM resource instead of a player resource. Divinations of course do already tend to be effectively something like that already. I'd be fine with it as long as the DM is willing to go to the trouble to design the conditions ahead of time so that the player can plan on when it will be usable or not.

 

[Balesir]

Yeah. My experience is people aren't overly fond of "you have to have this chit to do X, Y, or Z" and it adds to book keeping. If something like that was going to be added to the game I'd feel better if it wasn't just tacked on to deal with one minor issue and nothing else.

Even though my group don't see this issue (we just use coloured glass beads for APs, HSs and so on) I have heard this from a few folks so I assume it is a real issue.

On the other hand, the resource would only need to be tracked by those who had "opted in" by taking either a class or a feat to be a Ritual Caster/Martial Practiser/Whatever. The 'chits' also probably need to disappear occasionally - at level-up is probably a good time. Or they revert to one at that time.

Adding ritual materials to parcels isn't a bad idea, but you would need to make the sale price of such materials less than 100%, and they would have to become unusable for item creation. Possible, but isn't that getting into more bookkeeping, again?

 

[Tuft]

Even though my group don't see this issue (we just use coloured glass beads for APs, HSs and so on) I have heard this from a few folks so I assume it is a real issue.

It's so easy to forget updating your chits when things get heated. There is a good reason the "Illegal Procedure" rule exists in Bloodbowl...

("Illegal Procedure": If you forget to move your turn marker, and the opponent spots it, you have to forfeit the turn...)

 

[Balesir]

It's so easy to forget updating your chits when things get heated. There is a good reason the "Illegal Procedure" rule exists in Bloodbowl...

OK, I can see that in "stress" periods, but rituals are almost exclusively out-of-combat actions, so I would imagine it's less of an issue for that.

Even in combat, we seem to manage with APs and Healing Surges and Daily Item Uses ('cos we still use those, since we all consider the "rarity" system to be hopeless and misguided).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Even though my group don't see this issue (we just use coloured glass beads for APs, HSs and so on) I have heard this from a few folks so I assume it is a real issue.

It is certainly not a big issue in the small. Tracking one thing is pretty easy obviously. It is just when you already have to track AP, HP, HS, death saves, PP, possibly magic item uses, whether or not you've used each power, and then yeah I'm not interested in another kind of chit.

On the other hand, the resource would only need to be tracked by those who had "opted in" by taking either a class or a feat to be a Ritual Caster/Martial Practiser/Whatever. The 'chits' also probably need to disappear occasionally - at level-up is probably a good time. Or they revert to one at that time.

Sure, the thing is I don't think handing someone an extra thing to track is encouraging ritual use...

Adding ritual materials to parcels isn't a bad idea, but you would need to make the sale price of such materials less than 100%, and they would have to become unusable for item creation. Possible, but isn't that getting into more bookkeeping, again?

Why? They directly replace gold on a 1:1 basis. Their only reason for existing is just to put it in the player's faces that they have rituals and can use them.

 

[Riastlin]

Personally, I think that gp cost is fine for some rituals -- particularly the relatively cheap ones. 10 gp for instance can be easily handled by almost any character except maybe a brand new adventurer (in which case they likely only have a couple of rituals (at most) anyway.

As for other costs, while I realize there would be a bit of a logic leap involved, why not use HS but make it so that the surge(s) cannot be recovered until the next milestone is reached? This prevents spamming of rituals, or cast ritual then rest, etc. For higher levels you could even go so far as to require 2 milestones to be reached (thus also helping with the 15 minute workday).

Its not a perfect solution, and yes it does require tracking, but then we already track milestones and there are diseases that operate almost exactly like this (lose a surge that cannot be recovered). The biggest problem would be applying logic to the reason for this. I will confess it doesn't make a lot of sense from an immersion standpoint, but then this would hardly be the first such instance either.