Why all the ritual hate?

[Garthanos]

I'd actually kind of debate that. What if the party doesn't have anyone with Thievery trained?.

nope it still too damn cheap ... lets pick another.
What if somebody doesn't have stealth trained give me a ritual that works better so we can all sneak in to the castle and nobody will ever have incentive to train stealth.

 

[Stalker0]

Rituals aren't my favorite thing in 4e, but I don't hate them, I do think there are some fixes that could be made.

1) They cost too much.

This one depends on the ritual. I think tenser's floating disk is fine. I think having to pay all the gold for wizard's curtain is just silly. Same with teh scrying rituals, they are way too expensive for how short a time they last.

Overall I say that gold piece value is generally a bad way to go with rituals...because money is always at the mercy of the DM. No matter how the DM compensates, it always feels like I'm spending a resource that I'm not going to get back. Healing surges are useful in that they tend to be a finite limit that has a certain cost.


2) They take too long to cast.

I'm in big agreement on this one. I'm personally fine with the 1 minute casting time...or the 1 hour casting time. 1 minute feels like an expenditure of energy more than the normal spell. The wizard closes his eyes, and actually does an incantation instead of just a quick hand wave and magic appears.

1 hour rituals feel like....rituals. Like I draw a big circle on the ground and have 7 people speak a chant while casting the big mojo.

10 minutes feels...out of place. Too long for casual ritual magic, too short to feel like a big ritual. I prefer if most rituals were 1 minute. But really this an easy fix in the long run, I can easily houserule this.

3) They are bland.

This is the great conudrum of ritual casting. 4e attempts to balance fighters and mages. But you can't give mages all of their big mojo without making them better than fighters (and skill users for that matter).

If rituals can replicate the 3e magic system then mages come on top again. While technically a fighter can take the feat and cast rituals he's never going to be as good as the mage with big arcana. In some ways its actually better for the mages with 3e like rituals simply because they don't have to memorize slots.

So how can you give people cool rituals without making them too powerful? Well..that's a tricky problem and one the current system doesn't address too well. Instead the rituals provided aren't generally that strong (though the paragon divinations aren't bad)


Misc Issues

I think the ritual system has a few other issues...the most notable is how strong aid another can be with ritual casting. For another, there is 0 incentive to have multiple rituals casters in the group generally....or more specifically, for two casters to have the same ritual. If your mage has craft magic item, there is 0 advantage to the party if the cleric does as well...which I'm not a fan of.

 

[I'm A Banana]

nope it still too damn cheap ... lets pick another.
What if somebody doesn't have stealth trained give me a ritual that works better so we can all sneak in to the castle and nobody will ever have incentive to train stealth.

This is the kind of thing roles are pretty good at fixing. So if you have someone in the party who is the "designated sneaker," then whatever mechanic they use to sneak (which could be several different mechanics -- a stealth skill, or an invisibility ritual, or whatever) is the best, and all others aren't so good, or are very situational.

So if the rogue is the designated "best sneaker" role, no ritual should be able to give someone more stealth than the rogue can acquire. It might be able to do enough to get by (like an untrained skill), but it wouldn't be able to equal it.

I don't think magic should be a panacea, but it should have its role to play. I don't think it should be weaker just because it's magic, personally. I also don't have a problem with giving "martial" classes a little bit of magic (rogues who learn how to turn things invisible, forex), though that's probably something D&D as a whole can't get away with.

 

[Ourph]

Other Editions Don't Matter.

Perhaps not to you, but my experience with other games, including other editions of D&D, is the only basis I have for comparison when it comes to judging roleplaying mechanics.

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).<snip> I just don't see how past editions handled things is relevant unless you are trying to start up an edition war.

To me, it's relevant because past editions are another reference point for how designers handled the issue of resource distribution and balance. I don't know what a "perfect" game mechanic would look like. I don't know if it's even possible. All I have are varying levels of good. To me, the solution of having Knock draw from a different resource pool than the pool used for combat spells is a better solution than other solutions I have seen. In fact, it is the best solution I have available to me at the moment in the form of official rules for a fantasy RPG. I can only come to that conclusion by a process of comparison.

Sorry if that pushes your buttons.

 

[Leatherhead]

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.

Ritual Casting is a class feature.
The Thievery skill is not.
Both can be attained with a feat for anyone.
The Rogue's class role is striker, not lock-picker; The Thief is not a class in 4e.

In this case previous editions only serve to distract from the facts.

 

[Garthanos]

Ritual Casting is a class feature.
The Thievery skill is not. .

A skill granted automatically for a class... makes it a class feature too.

And ritual casting does how many different things? ... damn near as many as you want.?
that one ritual (not the ability to cast rituals) is not even close in terms of how central it
is to the character... or how much of an expended resource to aquire...skill slots or feats versus
gold available

 

[Leatherhead]

A skill granted automatically for a class... makes it a class feature too.

I forgot about that, but anyone can still get it with a feat.

But more importantly, lockpicking isn't the rogues reason to be anymore. Just something handy that happens every so often.

 

[Garthanos]

Note making a chimes of unlocking ritual so that the best person to enhance was still the thievery trained individual. just like invisibility is going to work best on a stealthy character is another way knock could be made... well better independent of the time or cost.

 

[Garthanos]

This is the kind of thing roles are pretty good at fixing. So if you have someone in the party who is the "designated sneaker," then whatever mechanic they use to sneak (which could be several different mechanics -- a stealth skill, or an invisibility ritual, or whatever) .

Its called reflavoring or reskinning of skills.

An Intimidate skill can be readily (and has been in my games) called focusing the characters fear aura

The detect magic function of Arcana can be presented in full ritualistic mumbo jumbo fashion.

An Endurance skill can be attributed to daily rites linking the character to the unicorn force. (no I don't exercise I am an Eladrin aristocrat).

Stealth could be invisibility magic describe it as your Drow chanting for a few seconds... it muffles his sounds he just moves normally and makes him seem like he is just part of the scenary in the minds of those viewing him. Better than chanting it involves using a complex set of symbollic gestures... very nimble finger work a must for this magic.

 

[LostSoul]

Well, Water Walk and Feather Fall generally negate Swimming and Climbing respectively.

There's no drama in scrabbling down a cliffside while being shot at by goblin archers if you can just Feather Fall your way down.

Feather Fall isn't a ritual.

Water Walk is - and it's the kind of thing that players should realize they should cast when they have to fight Kuo-Toa, or rabid demon-sharks, or whatever.

It's an adventure design thing - the DM should make water a hard challenge, and if the players are smart they'll cast (or get access to) Water Walk before they go into it.

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.

It's the 4E philosophy, but the system is more robust than that.