WalterKovacs
First Post
So you can look at a 100% of characters on the online Character Builder designed for D&D Encounters, and still not draw a valid conclusion about how widespread ritual magic is. It would be like concluding that people don't like to play clerics, or invest in expensive magic items and metal weapons, after an Encounters season of Dark Sun only.
Of course, that would involve deliberately misreading a small portion of available data and reaching an improper conclusion. "There are no epic tier characters designed for D&D Encounters! Oh noes!". Considering that part of what the character builder does, the first thing it does in fact when designing a new character, is allow you to seperate it into what kind of campaign setting it is designed for. So, they can easily look at all the non-Encounter characters to look at Ritual use. Yes, some Encounter characters may have been built outside of the 'correct' method, but characters in the builder can have rituals. They can have martial practices, etc, etc, etc. I highly doubt that the people using the collated data and thinking:
"None of the people that can't use rituals are using rituals ... people must not like rituals!"
And the second part of my post is about backing up one's promises with words. WotC has said time and again that they'd support epic level play, that they are aware of the issue and what not. And then they come out with a release schedule which pegs 3 out of 3 campaign settings this year in heroic tier play. And to see re-pricing extant rituals as a way of "supporting rituals", let alone an adequate way thereof, admittedly requires more charity or optimism than I can muster.
I don't really recall the time after time. They were asked many times, and then they said that, because they screwed up Epic play originally (not in those words), they aren't just going to throw out epic 'support' that probably wouldn't be useful since the problem to epic content being crap isn't more crap. They did promise support in Dungeon magazine.
As for rituals ... what is something that needs to be done by a ritual that isn't already possible? Would people start jumping up and buying existing rituals if only there was a new ritual? People aren't using existing rituals ... repricing them is a way to possibly support rituals, by getting people to actually use them. What "support" in the magic item book would do that? Some item that let's you get rituals easier, cast them quicker and cheaper, etc? They already did do some of that support. There are skill powers, feats, items, paragon paths and epic destinies that can make rituals quicker to cast, cheaper to cast, various means of getting access to rituals (and cast some for free), and often give a side effect to make the feat useful even when not used as a means of getting rituals.
Rituals are a long term investment that solves short term crises, and thus becomes a cumbersome swiss army knife. In some cases, you can use them proactively, especially the ones that speed up travel and allow you to skip doing travel stuff. Of course, this depends on a situation where:
(a) The DM/campaign/adventure actually treats travel as something that matters, be it because of time limits, skill challengers/encounters during travel, and other associated costs
(b) The party is fine with spending money to skip over these things. Some parties would be perfectly fine with getting another 5 or 6 encounters under their belt getting to the BBEG and maybe leveling up before they have to fight him.
So, the DM has to both be making travel interesting by having it be important, but also making it slightly tedious, annoying and bookkeepy such that the players spend gold on not having to bother with it.
In other cases, it's just a 'tax' to get to a place you couldn't otherwise. A bridge you can't cross until you get to the right level, then you can pay to go back and forth across it.
Stuff like Resurection depends on whether players want to come back, or rather make new characters. The various remove affliction/disease things are something you don't know you'll need until it's too late. The various item creation/destruction/transfer are a means of "shopping" out of town, but require components, so most of your cash is only useful ... when you get to town, and large quantities of residuum or arcane components would probably be just as hard to come by as magic items of the same value. So, outside of creating your own residuum, you have to hope the DM is dumping lots of residuum into the party treasure otherwise you still have to wait to get back to town to "buy" new magic items.
Scrying, and related stuff is a mixed bag ... it's hard to know whether or not it will be useful at the time you'd first be buying the rituals, so it's up to knowing your DM.
In fact, that's probably one of the biggest issues with rituals: Potential buyer's remorse. You have to pay to get them initially, and likely invest in having the resources to use them later. So, you are trying to estimate their worth often long before you use them, spending money that could be used on magic items you know you will be using fight after fight, or at the very least, will be able to use, for free, a few times and can always get some of your money back on. There is a good chance that most rituals will end up as 'too awesome to use', or something like it, as any ritual components will be saved since they may be MORE useful later, so unless you absolutely have to, you'd avoid spening them now. Like if the party had a potion that say, gave 100hp for a single surge whe someone drank it ... they would probably try to never use it until someone could actually get 100hp of use out of it, and even then, they probably would only use it if, on top of that, they were out of any other options. Since rituals can do so many things ... the 'potential' value of material components (which can always be traded for cash and then for magic items, or used with enchant to 'level up' an item) is so high, that many will avoid using them most of the time.
I would think that martial practices, since many were free and only used surges, a renewable resource, that they might see more play. However, I think that feat cost probably got in the way. Most ritual casters have it because they get it as a class feature, or perhaps got it as part of multiclassing (might as well get a skill thrown in for free), or dragonmark, etc ... but you have to take a feat to get 'into' martial practices, and then buy them, etc.
Alchemy is similarly underused.
All have a variety of costs to learn and cast, and different ways to get in (alchemy being able to sub in for rituals, although often at a cost, since you give up class features granting free rituals) but all follow a similar formula, and all are underused. I don't think it's support that is the issue, although the 'best' supported (rituals) is the one that is most often seen, if only because it's the default option given to a number of classes. A bigger redesign than just "more stuff" is probably needed.