Surprised by a ritual
- Thread starter MerricB
- Start date
Alan Shutko
Explorer
We have been gradually increasing our use of rituals. We started out our campaign reagent poor, and that's slowly been improving. We've gotten to the point that we can use a ritual every few sessions without running out, although they're still limited to the most important uses.
Timeboxer
Explorer
This is definitely true. By the time you hit Epic levels, rituals are actually amazingly cheap, to the point where my ritual-focused warlock is the party's main information-gathering asset.
inkmonkeys
First Post
They remain one of my favorite parts of the game.
A
amerigoV
Guest
Before we got TPK'd, my cleric used two rituals (we were low level schmucks):
Gentle Repose - he worshipped Avandra, so as a traveller, he would buy a big shank of meat and GR it so he could eat well on the road.
Silence about got the half the party killed. He put it up during a furneral ceremony for a fallen friend. The Swordmage heard a noise in the woods and decided to investigate. He left the LOS of the group and was ambused by orcs. We, of course, could not hear his screams. The fighter then wanders off to see what happened and was attacked as well (she at least stayed in sight so the rest of us could respond).
Quite frankly, the group deserved its eventual TPK (well, my cleric left them to their deserved fate). But that is another story.
Gentle Repose - he worshipped Avandra, so as a traveller, he would buy a big shank of meat and GR it so he could eat well on the road.
Silence about got the half the party killed. He put it up during a furneral ceremony for a fallen friend. The Swordmage heard a noise in the woods and decided to investigate. He left the LOS of the group and was ambused by orcs. We, of course, could not hear his screams. The fighter then wanders off to see what happened and was attacked as well (she at least stayed in sight so the rest of us could respond).
Quite frankly, the group deserved its eventual TPK (well, my cleric left them to their deserved fate). But that is another story.
Wormwood
Adventurer
During the last adventure I ran for my group, they used Water Breathing to completely bypass two combats I'd prepared---instead slipping into the enemy commpond undetected.
They also used Magic Circle to contain a dangerous psychic prisoner until they could remove the (artifact-level) enchantment placed upon him---neatly short-circuiting a Skill Challenge I wrote to deal with the NPC.
So that made three encounters that the party was able to short-circuit through clever use of ritiuals---and I couldn't be happier. While I love my turns behind the DM Screen, I sometimes get bored since I usually know what is going to happen in the course of an adventure. Rituals allow the players to both surprise me and take the game into unexpected directions---which keeps me on my toes as well as forcing me to be creative as possible.
And like Wedgeski posted upthread, I have also found that seeding the treasure with interesting Ritual Components helps encourage the party to use rituals (as they don't worry so much about blowing the party gold). In this case, I turned one treasure parcel into 3,000 worth of "feytouched dragon scales" (arcane components) which they were able to harvest from the dragon they had just killed.
They also used Magic Circle to contain a dangerous psychic prisoner until they could remove the (artifact-level) enchantment placed upon him---neatly short-circuiting a Skill Challenge I wrote to deal with the NPC.
So that made three encounters that the party was able to short-circuit through clever use of ritiuals---and I couldn't be happier. While I love my turns behind the DM Screen, I sometimes get bored since I usually know what is going to happen in the course of an adventure. Rituals allow the players to both surprise me and take the game into unexpected directions---which keeps me on my toes as well as forcing me to be creative as possible.
And like Wedgeski posted upthread, I have also found that seeding the treasure with interesting Ritual Components helps encourage the party to use rituals (as they don't worry so much about blowing the party gold). In this case, I turned one treasure parcel into 3,000 worth of "feytouched dragon scales" (arcane components) which they were able to harvest from the dragon they had just killed.
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