Tiers Excerpt (merged)

[DandD]

In my days, we have internet, and public commercials...

 

[Cyronax]

We know from this preview that there is a divination like ritual "Divination rituals such as Consult Oracle grant access to knowledge they might otherwise not have" and "include more and better kinds of divination, including the ability to spy on distant beings with Observe Creature". Also teleportation is also in "Epic characters can use True Portal to transport themselves instantly anywhere in the world"

Also I never thought that those spells were problematic. its the other people who constantly whined that spells like those ruin their (imo poorly thought out) plot.

Poorly thought out plots? Bad DMs? Is that all you equate the argument of 'problem spells' with?

Even a plot that takes these sorts of spells into account might suffer from the fact that scry-buff-teleport tactics get boring and very anti-climatic after a while. I DM a largely character driven campaign (and do a LOT of on the spot improvisation because of this) and still keep those spells in the game, but I honestly don't enjoy this sort of fantasy (all) the time. So I glad that 4e will be more modular with respect to many aspects of its powers.


C.I.D.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Well in MY day we walked uphill both ways to watch nude brown bears that tried to eat us, and we never complained!

In MY day we walked uphill both ways to watch brown bears eat nude volleyball players, and we liked it!

 

[Lizard]

I would almost hope that rituals would require some sort of side quest. Knowing the ritual and getting everything you need to use it would be two separate things. For example, yes - my cleric knows the Raise Dead ritual. It may require that I take a trip to the underworld to rescue my buddy and bring him back to his body though. It might require some rare component. Or both.

It's too early to speculate, obviously, but that would be more of a "cost" that would be inline with the heroic ideal.

Or it might require you say "OK, I'm using Raise Dead...someone hand me a pencil so I can mark down I used it for this session. And tell Bob to shut down the PlayStation, he's alive again."

(I mean, we're doing the 'trip to the underworld' shtick in our current 3e game to give the spell some flavor. Historically, ALL D&D magic has been bippity-boppity-boo, you're healed/raised/turned to stone/teleported to the moon. I wanted to use ritual magic from Atlas Game's excellent supplement instead of standard magic in my D20M game, and my potential players threw a huge hissy fit and almost walked out on me, and I relented, and I think the campaign, overall, was poorer for it. In general, magic in D&D is reliable, cheap, and easy. Now, it would be NICE if "rituals" were risky, expensive, and difficult, to the point where 'do we or don't we' is a major in-character debate...but I'm not counting on it. Not at all. Any DM can *make* them harder, trivially, but don't expect it to be the default.)

 

[hong]

In my days, we have internet, and public commercials...

Well, I know you can get pr0n on the Interweb, but on public commercials? Yow!

 

[Lizard]

I think that article gives us more about rituals than we think, by materializing them in our mind (even if it doesn't talk about the inner workings) and letting use visualize which spell in 3E could have been transformed into rituals and at what lvl they will be available in 4E.

Heroic : Raise the Dead
Paragon : Passwall, Shadowwalk, Consult Oracle, View Object
Epic: True Portal, Observe Creature


Oh and .. the ferocious tarrasque

It kind of bothers me that scrying is so high level, as it's usually a low-power Old Wise Woman trick. It's the sort of thing I'd expect to be a Heroic Tier ritual, so the Court Wizard or the Mysterious Gypsy Woman could have it. Then again, with "Exception based design", I suppose I could say "Gypsy Fortunetellers (6th level Elite Controller (Leader)) have the Scry ritual. You can't learn it until you're 20th level. Sucks to be you."

I think "Sucks to be you" is going to be my answer to a lot of player questions, if I ever run 4e...

(Please don't tell me about the obvious game balance reason. I know the game balance reason. It's another case where flavor and Classic Tropes have been ambushed by game balance, poisoned, stabbed, and flung into the icy river to drown, only to stagger out later and...oh wait, that's Rasputin. Where was I going with this?)

 

[Lizard]

Well, I know you can get pr0n on the Interweb, but on public commercials? Yow!

See what you miss when you don't watch Fox?

 

[hong]

It kind of bothers me that scrying is so high level, as it's usually a low-power Old Wise Woman trick. It's the sort of thing I'd expect to be a Heroic Tier ritual, so the Court Wizard or the Mysterious Gypsy Woman could have it. Then again, with "Exception based design", I suppose I could say "Gypsy Fortunetellers (6th level Elite Controller (Leader)) have the Scry ritual. You can't learn it until you're 20th level. Sucks to be you."

How very strange. 1st level teleporting fey is bad, but 1st level plot-breaking scrying is good.

 

[Cadfan]

Random comments

1. Yeah, it sucks we can't see any rituals, but honestly, they just gave us the entire class ability progression chart. I'd like to see rituals as well, but if they're going to be doing this several-times-per-week preview thing, they can't give away the whole store up front.

2. "Observe Creature" doesn't do it for me. Nor does "View Object." If those are the names we're going to get when naming goes strictly literal, then bring on the fancy names. I'll take a five word phrase that invokes two colors, an animal, a magic related adjective, and a sort of related verb over "view object" any day of the week. "I cast View Object." Seriously?

3. Four encounter powers at level 30 doesn't bother me. First of all, that's class powers. Several races have encounter powers, or grant additional powers. Many magic items grant encounter powers. You don't want too many encounter powers in the game, because a 10 to 15 round combat probably shouldn't involve an encounter power every single round.

4. Retraining has the ability to break verisimilitude. But it also has the ability to be very thematic (exchanging levitation for fly, etc). Which one it turns out to be depends a lot on you and your players. Making rules to require it to be thematic would probably be a huge hassle, so I'm cool with them just leaving it up to us to season to our taste.

 

[Belphanior]

Real divination doesn't kick in until the paragon tier. But we also heard that about coming back from the dead, and that's in (late) heroic.

So maybe the wise woman can still do the 2nd level Read Tealeaves ritual, the court wizard has Peek At Glass Sphere, and the gibbering old cultist has The Stars Are A Little To The Left But I'm Sure It Counts. All divinations, just pretty weak and vague.

And if they're not in, oh well. It sounds easy enough to implement.