Warfare Rituals

[77IM]

I think it makes sense for armies to have access to ritual magic as weapons. A war wizard who can sling fireballs at a moment's notice is cool and all, and really useful in a dungeon, but how many of those does the kingdom really have? OTOH, rounding up a squad of apprentices and having them chant doom upon the enemy forces, that could be practical. The idea here is that attack spells are analogous to a gun (a personal weapon that you can quick-draw and shoot with), while warfare rituals are more like heavy artillery (impractical and difficult to set up, but worth it on the battlefield).

Here is an example, that in my campaign is being used by the eladrin artillerie squads. The idea is that the PCs can carry the targeting acorns and use them on important targets.


Elemental Mortar
You and your allies scour the battlefield with arcane destruction.

Level: 3 / Component Cost: 150 gp, plus 4 healing surges
Category: Warfare / Market Price: 650 gp
Time: 10 minutes / Key Skill: Arcana
Duration: 1 hour

You conjure a swirling nodule of elemental destruction. For the duration of the ritual, you are slowed and must spend a Standard action each round to sustain the nodule. Hurling the nodule is a Standard action which ends the ritual and allows you to attack with one of the powers below. You can also end the ritual without attacking as a Standard action. If you fail to spend the Standard action to sustain the nodule, the attack goes off immediately, targeting you, and the ritual ends.

When you perform the ritual, select which type of elemental nodule to conjure, which determines which type of attack you can make when you hurl the nodule.

Blizzard Bomb (Arcane, Cold): Standard action; area burst 2 within 20; special attack bonus vs. Reflex; 5d8+8 cold damage, and the target is slowed (save ends). Miss: half damage.

Fire Bomb (Arcane, Fire): Standard action; area burst 4 within 20; special attack bonus vs. Reflex; 5d6+6 fire damage. Miss: half damage.

Lightning Bomb (Arcane, Lightning, Thunder): Standard action; ranged 20; special attack bonus vs. Reflex; 5d12+12 lighning damage, and creatures adjacent to the target take 1d10+5 thunder damage and are pushed one square away from the target. Miss: half damage.

Toxic Bomb (Arcane, Poison): Standard action; area burst 2 within 20; special attack bonus vs. Reflex; 3d4+4 poison damage. Hit or Miss: Until the end of the encounter, the area becomes a zone of toxic gas, which provides cover. Any creature that enters the zone or starts its turn there takes 2d4+4 poison damage.​

The attack bonus is based upon your Arcana check result.

DC : Attack Bonus
0-9: +3
10-19: +6
20-29: +9
30+: +12​

When you perform this ritual, you can use an acorn as an additional focus, which becomes a targeting acorn. If an allied creature can throws the targeting acorn at an opponent within 6 squares as a Standard action, you become aware of this event and know the general location of the acorn. If you can see the acorn's square, you can center the attack on that square or target a creature in that square, even if it is beyond your normal range. If you can't see the acorn's square, you can still attack beyond your normal range, but your attack is centered on a random square within 6 squares of the acorn.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I like this idea, and will adapt something like this into my WoBS campaign.

Not too sure about the healing surge cost, unless you intend on always having fresh assistance running about.

I also think there should be an initial 'Hit' line, and an effect, creating a zone that does something for the remainder of the duration.

Perhaps like:

Level 3:
At the end of the ritual, you summon a vortex of elemental enemy that bursts into existance, attacking all creatures within its range. Residual energy creates a zone that lasts for 1 hour.
Range: LOS
Burst: 2
Target: All creatures within burst
- Fire: Hit: 5D6 + INT fire damage and ongoing 5 Fire damage
Effect: The zone deals 10 points of damage to any creature that starts its turn within the zone or enters the zone
- Blizzard: Hit: 5D6 + INT Cold damage and Slow {Save ends}
Effect: Opportunity attack against all creatures that start its turn within the zone or enters the zone: Int vs Ref, Hit 5 cold damage and slow until end of your next turn

etc...
My numbers are probably off.. I should be asleep...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hmmmm.

Another tack to take would be making some REALLY high level rituals that would do some possibly more interesting things. These would be a lot more likely to have a serious effect on a battle IMHO, plus maybe avoiding the potential for problems that these lower level ones have. That is to say I can easily see a party deploying your Elemental Mortar ritual in an adventure. On the other maybe something along the lines of:

Devastation of Grummsh
You place a terrible curse on your enemies in the name of the god of slaughter.
Level: 21 Component Cost: 8,000gp plus 20,000gp focus
Category: Battlefield Market Price: 50,000gp
Time: 8 hours Key Skill: Religion
Duration: 24 hours

You designate an area of land up to one mile on a side. All creatures within that area take a -2 penalty to their to-hit rolls for the duration of the curse.

Obviously this could be fleshed out more, but I think it might be more on the lines of truly battle changing magic.

 

[77IM]

I think the key to these sorts of rituals is to make them convenient for an army to use, but inconvenient for an adventuring party to use (but not impossible -- otherwise it's an NPC-only ability and doesn't need to be written up as a ritual and is more like a trap or something).

For example, Elemental Mortar caries some serious drawbacks and risks (you're slowed, down 4 surges, and just one stun away from dropping 5dX damage on your own group). I think that if a party figures out a way to use that in an adventure, more power too them -- maybe they lob it at the orc encampment, but then maybe an orc patrol interrupts them during casting, too.

I think that just making the ritual high level has the opposite effect -- it makes the ritual inconvenient for armies (because presumably there aren't that many high-level casters running around), but too convenient for PCs. Devastation of Gruumsh, for example: any 21st-level party that has 8 hours and 8,000 residuum (not a lot at that level) and knows where their enemy is located is going to want to cast that ritual before charging in.

I know you were just making up Devastation of Gruumsh off-the-cuff and could probably think up more constraints to make it balanced (like, maybe the -2 penalty only affects creatures of level 11 or lower -- pretty useless to a level 21 party). I'm just using this example to point out the importance of such restrictions to prevent warfare rituals from become the bull's strength of 4e.

-- 77IM

 

[Eric Finley]

I think it's quite well constructed as originally posted. The healing surge cost means that your artillery team will want to cycle throughout the battle, going through peons like other things might go through ammo. The acorns are an excellent way to get PCs involved, as you obviously intended them to be. (We've used something similar in a LARP, to awesome effect. The player "playing" the magi-tech tank would get out, hold the prop shell in his hand, and run like hell across the battlefield toward his target. Great fun.)

For other variations you could steal a trick from Starcraft and the Terran nukes... tie the ritual to a spotter character; as soon as the ritual ends the enemy becomes aware of the general target of the ritual, and the fact that a spotter exists within X of that point; an encounter begins with all of the enemies present trying to find the spotter; if he's still alive and within range at the end of that time, the ritual goes off. Meanwhile the spotter is down (say) a Sustain Move to keep his spotting effect up, making it much more difficult for him to keep it up without allies. Fun!