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<blockquote data-quote="slobo777" data-source="post: 6008714" data-attributes="member: 6694877">My objection to 4E rituals is that they are essentially self-serving money drains. In a balanced game, where narrative is player driven and focussed on what PCs can do, then the only worthwhile rituals are those based around crafting magic items. The rest are tools to solve problems that the DM cannot - in a fair game - present without an alternative path (that may or may not involve spending the same cash). The problem being that with the ritual you get to spend the players' cash resource (which is primarily in 4E a gamist resource for combat enhancements) on story elements (which primarily do not affect combat unless the DM makes significant effort to entangle the results).At best, with some effort to the DM, the use or not of a ritual can be made a cost/benefit decision (e.g. Do we suffer loss of Healing Surge or spend 20 gold on Endure Elements).The problem in my eyes is resource contention by re-using gold for two diverging purposes. If rituals drew on some other resource, or gold was a story resource and not primarily for combat bolt-ons, then I think 4E's rituals would be sitting pretty.An alternative &quot;fix&quot; could be attempted if gold investment in a ritual interplayed with taking or avoiding risks . . . a smart DM can set that up in 4E as-is, but only by considering what rituals were already available to the PCs, which is why I consider them &quot;self-serving&quot;. Better from an (optimising) player's perspective not to have the rituals in the first place and avoid the issue.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="slobo777, post: 6008714, member: 6694877"] My objection to 4E rituals is that they are essentially self-serving money drains. In a balanced game, where narrative is player driven and focussed on what PCs can do, then the only worthwhile rituals are those based around crafting magic items. The rest are tools to solve problems that the DM cannot - in a fair game - present without an alternative path (that may or may not involve spending the same cash). The problem being that with the ritual you get to spend the players' cash resource (which is primarily in 4E a gamist resource for combat enhancements) on story elements (which primarily do not affect combat unless the DM makes significant effort to entangle the results). At best, with some effort to the DM, the use or not of a ritual can be made a cost/benefit decision (e.g. Do we suffer loss of Healing Surge or spend 20 gold on Endure Elements). The problem in my eyes is resource contention by re-using gold for two diverging purposes. If rituals drew on some other resource, or gold was a story resource and not primarily for combat bolt-ons, then I think 4E's rituals would be sitting pretty. An alternative "fix" could be attempted if gold investment in a ritual interplayed with taking or avoiding risks . . . a smart DM can set that up in 4E as-is, but only by considering what rituals were already available to the PCs, which is why I consider them "self-serving". Better from an (optimising) player's perspective not to have the rituals in the first place and avoid the issue. [/QUOTE]

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