Why all the ritual hate?

[MatthewJHanson]

4e is built around the encounter, and by design very little of true importance to the game takes place outside of encounters, because in encounters every character gets to contribute. If something is genuinely important to the party as a whole, the 4e philosophy is that it should be handled in a balanced encounter that everyone can contribute to. If it isn't important to the party as a whole, then it should not be especially important to the game.

Rituals are, by rigid design, completely dissociated from encounters, which makes them seem fairly incidental to the game overall. They are never necessary to accomplishing anything, except when the DM specifically tailors a use for them.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what the fix is here.

I disagree with this. Encounters are designed for combat. In the games the I play in and DM, all kinds of stuff happens outside of combat, and rituals come up frequently.

I can see it being a play style thing. If your play style is focused only on combat, than rituals probably are not that valuable. Many of the WOTC adventures focus on combat, but there is no rule that says they have to.

 

[Nightson]

This.

4e is built around the encounter, and by design very little of true importance to the game takes place outside of encounters, because in encounters every character gets to contribute. If something is genuinely important to the party as a whole, the 4e philosophy is that it should be handled in a balanced encounter that everyone can contribute to. If it isn't important to the party as a whole, then it should not be especially important to the game.

Rituals are, by rigid design, completely dissociated from encounters, which makes them seem fairly incidental to the game overall. They are never necessary to accomplishing anything, except when the DM specifically tailors a use for them.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what the fix is here.

Chapter 2 of the DMG seems to think something called exploration is pretty important as well.

4e has the combat encounter and the skill challenge encounter as mechanisms, but to suggest that's the whole of the game is crazy. There's exploration, conversation, roleplaying and problem solving all of which are generally important.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Rituals are, by rigid design, completely dissociated from encounters, which makes them seem fairly incidental to the game overall. They are never necessary to accomplishing anything, except when the DM specifically tailors a use for them.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what the fix is here.

I kinda wish there were a stronger mechanical connection between rituals and skill challenges, since both seem intended for non-combat encounters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Rituals are, by rigid design, completely dissociated from encounters, which makes them seem fairly incidental to the game overall. They are never necessary to accomplishing anything, except when the DM specifically tailors a use for them.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what the fix is here.

My thoughts currently run like this.

In early editions of D&D, the balancing mechanism was the dungeon itself. This is why, theoretically at least, the Fighter and the Mage and the Thief and the Cleric were all balanced with each other. They each had something to contribute Fighters would kill monsters, Thieves scouted ahead for danger, Mages were "utility knives" that could deal with magical and strange obstacles, and Clerics could recover the party from a failure.

To make rituals (and skill challenges) matter, we need to pull back the focus from the encounter, to the bigger picture that the encounter is embedded into: the dungeon.

"Supporters" should be able to help the party recover from a failure (healing rituals, Endurance, Heal, Survival, etc.). This maps to "leader."
"Scouts" should be able to look ahead (divination rituals, stealth skills, movement stunts, perception skills). This maps to "striker."
"Solvers" should be able to bypass things that are blocking progress (flight, lock-picking, riddle-solving). This maps to "controller."
"Sentinels" should be able to deal with NPC's and let the party set their own pace (intimidation, social skills, illusion rituals, etc.). This maps to "defender."

These are the "noncombat roles" of the PC's.

The dungeon could be a literal dungeon, but it could be any sort of challenge, really, that would usually be covered with a Skill Challenge. Any sort of event where all the characters need to participate.

Rituals (and utility powers) then become "noncombat powers" that the classes get to let them do special, unique, interesting things in these kinds of challenges.

Clerics are "Supporters" in that they can heal your long-term wounds, remove persistent diseases, raise the dead, etc.

Thieves are "Scouts" in that they can move deep into the dungeon with stealth, use keen perception to ascertain what's going on, and have light, unencumbered movement that lets them haul back to the party.

Wizards are "Solvers" in that they can undo barriers to progress, solving riddles that prevent progress, giving the party flight over big cliffs, and teleport you accross the world.

Fighters are "Sentinels" in that they can intimidate monsters, know the most defensive camping position, know how to keep fire without it attracting attention, etc.

Maybe when you're trying to convince the haughty Chancellor to let you have an audience with the king, your Thief has gathered dirt on the Chancellor that he might expose to the light of day, your Wizard has a brilliant logical argument, your Fighter has unquestionable loyalty that makes the Chancellor unable to launch his own volley, and your Cleric is there to remind the Chancellor of all your contributions, even if he doesn't believe the Wizard.

Druids are "solvers," Rangers are "scouts," Barbarians are "sentinels," Shamans are "supporters."

Bards are "sentinels," Assassins are "scouts," Monks might be "supporters," Psions can be "solvers."

Maybe Fighter powers are better at dealing with dungeons, and Bard powers are better at dealing with city environments, and Barbarian powers are better at keeping the party alive when they go explore the Wicked Wastelands. When the party goes to explore those Wastelands, even a Fighter knows the basics of desert survival, and the Bard has heard many tales from this land that have given him cautionary lessons, even if there's no Barbarian in the party.

Roles are useful for this, it's just a matter of envisioning any encounter like a combat encounter, and making the cut in the right places.

4e has the combat encounter and the skill challenge encounter as mechanisms, but to suggest that's the whole of the game is crazy. There's exploration, conversation, roleplaying and problem solving all of which are generally important.

It's subtler than that. Rules inform playstyle to a certain degree by providing support. There is a TON of support in 4e right now for combat. LOADS AND LOADS OF IT. This is really a pretty good thing. Combat eats up most of most games, and it should have the most support.

Both rituals and skill challenges have some issues in them that are still pretty deep, and they are basically the only support the rules give for making out-of-combat activities fun and engaging.

A DM is always free to do whatever they want, and a good DM will probably make non-combat fun even without a lot of rules support, but most average people will need substantial rules support, and most average people probably don't run pure-combat D&D games, when the game is mostly sold to you as an "Imagination Game" or a "Storytelling Game," not a "Combat Game."

 

[unan oranis]

Lets break this down...

1 - They cost too much.

I think the logic behind this complaint would be:

"they cost so much as to put an uncomfortable dent in the official gold piece value of a given characters equipment, therefore pinching that characters survivability, therefore rituals are broken."

But in order for that to hold water the following would have to be true;

"You have to have the option of using any of the rituals exhaustively and still have the insurance of a certain amount of wealth to be viable in combat."

This is not true. The character that requires 100 raise dead rituals is in the same boat as the party who piled all their money into a wagon and rolled it off a cliff.

So the real complaint is that there is no "wealth regeneration" system or mechanic in place to offset burning gold away, nor is this specific issue directly addressed in either of the dmg's.

IMO, If the party/character is limping along because of all the money they supposedly wasted on expensive rituals, tough .

If there were no penalty for failure there couldn't really be a reward for success.

Ways to handle:

1. Do nothing. Play through. The system corrects itself by outstripping previous treasures in the newer parcels.

2. DM notices party lacking funds; adjusts campaign to offset the *perceived* problem such as turning it into a hook for the next arc - despite Kamikaze's mantra this is in fact a play straight from the dmg, not a house-rule, rule zero or the difference maker between a good dm and a bad dm.

3. Dm decides that the party needs a ritual allowance in addition to their normal treasures, and makes adjustments like the ones you described.
You are now solidly in house-rule territory, and vulnerable to accusations that band-aids do not a solid system make.

2 - They are bland.

This is strictly a matter of opinion.

IMO, compared to other rpg material I think the majority of honest ratings would place it somewhere around "adequate".

You are correct that the bulk of how colorful any ritual is depends on the playing skill of those present at the table; midget is correct that this doesn't really matter re: rituals as written are bland.

3 - They don't do enough.

Clearly the list of rituals now accumulated on ddi do a lot of different things by any yardstick.

My complaint about rituals is that there are so many of them now, and so many of them totally alter any world that they are in (and any plot).

What's annoying is that specific issue is addressed in the dmg, so the designers were well aware of the problem.

I wish that all rituals were divided into function groups such as communication, warfare/sovereignty, engineering, travel etc.

It would be nice to have an easy handle on all these factors when writing an adventure or designing a semi-simulationist world.

 

[Leatherhead]

I don't see the Knock ritual as being any worse than wasting a daily spell slot on Knock as a spell in earlier editions. At least as a ritual it doesn't come at the cost of a combat or other utility spell. If you're going to have it as a backup for when the skill characters can't open a door, having it as a ritual certainly seems like the best resource pool to draw it from.

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.)

That's the point. The best person to do a task is someone trained to actually do it. Mages take second fiddle for once. as it should be. I loathed the old days of the best everything is a wizard.

I see a common theme here and I will address it, because it is one of my pet peeves:

Other Editions Don't Matter.

We are talking about 4e, and I don't care if it is an improvement over the way it used to be, rituals are not good enough now (for me at least). For the record, yes I did play previous editions, and yes I do enjoy a game of 4e. I just don't see how past editions handled things is relevant unless you are trying to start up an edition war. If the amount of rage and vitriol you have from previous experiences of wrongness prevents you from seeing things that are wrong now, then there is little hope for the future of the hobby and the industry.


Sure, rituals like knock should be "second string" to having a character with a good thievery score. But knock isn't second string, or even 5th string. Knock is over 10 times worse than the alternative. Ideally nothing is supposed to be required in 4e. But "options" like this really don't support that philosophy.

 

[Garthanos]

Sure, rituals like knock should be "second string" to having a character with a good thievery score.

Why cant my ritual only take one round to open the lock like a skill does => answer because it cant replace class features at a drop of a dime... is easier to argue the point if you mention previous editions people "get" it easily. The thieves lock picking is only likely to bring him center stage quite rarely, so if a scroll does easily and impressively --- plink. The argument is the same without mentioning where the experience comes from.

I want more rituals to become something that could take the duration of a fight to finish (1 minute rituals for example)... so we can do "protect the ritualist" scenarios --- that seems a valid desire its a classic scenario that involves everyone... but we still have to be careful about it. We dont want that to end up being the only scenario

We hold off the bad guys till you do the uber death spell that makes everything we do look lame... could also occur

 

[I'm A Banana]

Sure, rituals like knock should be "second string" to having a character with a good thievery score.

I'd actually kind of debate that. What if the party doesn't have anyone with Thievery trained? IMO, Knock should be just as good as thievery. Maybe even a little better, since Thievery is a very diverse skill, and Knock is a very specific ability.

I think that's part of why roles are a useful concept to employ here. Knock and thievery are two different ways of accomplishing the same goal (getting rid of an obstacle), just as the Fighter and the Paladin are. In my terms above, they're "Solvers," they remove barriers to accomplishing your party's goal. There should be one character in each party accomplishing this. In the proposed system above, it would be a Wizard. Maybe Knock is effective because it opens things at a range and triggers traps so that the PC's don't need to get close. Maybe Open Lock is more situational, for when the Wizard isn't around and the thief wants to try anyway, when they're far from the main party down a corridor somewhere. The thief isn't meant to open doors, by and large, the Wizard is.

Of course, the Wizard isn't meant to scout ahead. They don't have reliable divination, they can't predict the future, they're not actually there. Scry is iffy, chancy, and error-prone, like sending in the thief to open the door. Of course, now it's the thief's time to shine. The thief blends into the shadows seamlessly, and silently walks ahead, peering into the darkness with vision augmented by elite training by the best burglars in the dark warrens of the city. He can see what is going on better than the wizard from his vantage point in the shadows, and, better than that, his knowledge of criminal syndicate structure points out the leader of this band of goblins, the one they're all paying tribute to.

In Roles-speak, Wizards might have a little "Scout" in them, while Thieves might have a little "Solver" in them, but that is not the role they are meant to fill.

You could also flip it so that Scry is effective and spying isn't and Thievery is effective and Knock isn't, but the point is to have everyone in the party contribute something.

 

[AllisterH]

Knock, the original version, was designed under a totally different paradigm.

It was based on the RARITY concept. Basically, a Knock spell was rare to find and RARE to cast since it came at the cost of more powerful combat spells.

It was *FAIR* I think for Knock to be better than the actual lock picking skill since even a 20th level mage ONLY had 5 2nd level slots.

Furthermore, with the relatively high cost of making scrolls in pre 3e (really, how many people actually used the magic item creation system from either the DMG or Player's Option), those spell slots were the only certainity of having the actual spell.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In the interests of full disclosure, realize that I don't care for 4Ed very much.

However, I think that rituals are something the designers got essentially right.

I'm not concerned that the Knock ritual takes longer to open a door than a thief. Magic lets you do things that you ordinarily couldn't do...it doesn't mean that it must perforce do it efficiently.

(Which, FWIW, is a point brought up time and time again in various works of fantasy.)