Why all the ritual hate?

[darjr]

I also like rituals. I don't think they suck. I do think that their implementation has some issues and I usually take a more lax attitude towards their use.

One of the best moments I've had in D&D 4e had the party walking around in a submerged dungeon that was freezing cold. A couple of rituals and off they went. We all had a blast doing that slow motion 'underwater' pantomime cause nobody could talk to each other.

 

[Remathilis]

Just look at the knock ritual.

10 minute casting time, costs 35 gold and a healing surge, for something that can be done for free in about 6 seconds by a skill.

Or about 1 minute and a great-axe.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Just look at the knock ritual.

10 minute casting time, costs 35 gold and a healing surge, for something that can be done for free in about 6 seconds by a skill.

But anyway, you are twisting the rules in the rituals favor. They are not supposed to be free, if they were they would have their price listed as such. And that disk is only supposed to float over the ground.

Yeah if you change the rules they are ok, but isn't that what everyone is saying anyway?

This is a good example of why I hate rituals. They are poorly named. A ritual should involve mandrake, blood of a hanged man, and 3 virgins. A ritual is not a glorified lockpick.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Uh, point taken Kamikaze Midget? It'd be nice if you contributed something though, since calling out my specific examples doesn't really touch on the point of the discussion...

His point is that houserules don't make bad design turn into good design. It means that you, the DM, had to personally fix the bad design.

You're arguing that rituals are fine, but your own examples showed that, on the contrary, rituals aren't fine, since they require a DM to fix them.

 

[Garthanos]

Just look at the knock ritual.

10 minute casting time, costs 35 gold and a healing surge, for something that can be done for free in about 6 seconds by a skill. ?

And that skill one of a limited number you have available - for rogues it used to be central to a character role.... and how much did you spend to buy a knock... (a trivial cost lets have 5 spells replace the theif like in some previous editions - oh and yeh they did so without chance of failure.)

 

[Garthanos]

His point is that houserules don't make bad design turn into good design. It means that you, the DM, had to personally fix the bad design.

Including ritual components in treasures was part of the design not a fix...

But rituals do suffer because the whole economic system and its horrific explosion is nasty in my opinion. Making magic items and their purchase-ability way less central (like using inherent bonuses as presented in PHB2 and implemented in the CB), seems to help to.

Gathering interesting components is a cool in genre adventure hook...

 

[Garthanos]

Just bought Azagar's Book of Rituals from Goodman Games... haven't absorbed it yet but looks yummy.

 

[Garthanos]

My favorite ritual Affect Normal Fires....
A thread for what is your favorite ritual and/or what was the most interesting use you have seen a ritual put to would be cool.

 

[Nightson]

Rituals have situational uses. That's the point. Sure, you're not using knock on every door. But on that door after the encounter where your rogue died it might come in handy.

 

[Garthanos]

2 - Rituals, like everything else in the game, run in imagination power. Last session our Ritualist cast a ritual to determine the cause of a wagon crash. He and the DM tag-teamed a description whereby the ritual worked by him traveling across dimentions to view the 'echo' of the crash in real time, as a shadow. The DM's descriptions of the event were vivid, and the time/money was well spent

Was that a nice presentation of an already defined ritual?