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BlackRabite
2009-01-30, 05:30 PM
My group is starting a new 4e campaign this weekend and we're trying out something different with Rituals. In this campaign all rituals, with a few exceptions, will follow these rules.

- Casting a ritual takes one standard action, either from scroll or from a Ritual Book
- Anyone can cast a ritual from a scroll whether they are trained in ritual casting or not
- Rituals cast from scrolls do not require training in a particular skill
- If the ritual has a varied effect dependent on a skill check, the player casting the Ritual makes that check, even if casting from a scroll
- If the ritual has a varied effect dependent on a skill check you may increase the casting time on it to take a number at the ratio of 1 minute per number. This allows you to sacrifice time in order to make sure a ritual is successful. (Example: You can cast Cure Disease as a standard with a normal heal check, or you can take 20 minutes to cast it and resolve it as though you rolled a 20)
- Anyone with Ritual Casting may make scrolls for use, the cost is equal to the component cost and that scroll can then be used by anyone at no additional cost.

The group feels that Rituals were dumbed down enough that the ridiculous casting times on some of them just went way overboard. There are obvious exceptions like Raise Dead, Create Magic Item, things like that. Has anyone done something like this to the Ritual system and did it work out for you?

We're hoping this brings back some of the creativity we had with problem solving and assault planning from 3.5. The powers are great but most of them are not good for multi-tasking.

KillianHawkeye
2009-01-30, 05:47 PM
This seems pretty unnecessary to me. The 10 minute casting time for rituals just isn't that big a deal outside of combat, and the rituals aren't meant to be used during combat at all. I think that allowing in-combat ritual casting is going to open up more problems than you think it will solve.

That being said, remember that the enemies should be using rituals all the time now just like the PCs will. Ritual scrolls will become a huge market, and the prices will probably increase (for some rituals) due to the increase in demand.

BlackRabite
2009-01-30, 06:00 PM
I've been in a lot of scenarios where a ritual would be extremely helpful, but sitting stationary in one spot for 10 minutes is completely unfeasible. Let's go with Silence. You can't imagine a scenario where you might want to cast Silence in under 10 minutes? I have a hard time thinking of a scenario where I can predict which burst 4 area I might need silenced in about 10 minutes outside of the obvious "meeting in a certain room" situations. =:smallfrown:

We were worried about the potential in combat problems but none of the rituals are designed to do anything in combat, very very few of them have feasible applications while in combat. Mostly they would be useful during for the in-between combat time. Infiltrating a castle using Passwall for instance. You can get a window of opportunity between guard patrols to sneak up to a wall and Passwall through it, but it's a lot less feasible to set up an uninterrupted 10 minutes next to a castle wall with which to finish casting the ritual while your party waits nervously behind you.

Kaun
2009-01-30, 06:16 PM
hehe 1 standard action Linked portal. Takes the fear out of just about any dugeon crawl.

i think the reason why they have casting times like they do is because there not ment to be used as an OMG ****!!! reaction spell. Some of them can be used efectivly in combat with some preplaning but no more of this "Ow my, a rampaging mob of townfolk!!!! here play with this Hallucinatory Creature for a bit while we run away style strats.

standard action Disenchant magic item ... hehe game breaking

Draz74
2009-01-30, 06:18 PM
So compromise -- instead of 10 minutes or 1/10 of a minute, try 1 minute.

That's a hard -- but not impossible -- amount of time to find between patrols next to the castle's walls.

If that's still too restrictive, you could take just some Rituals, like the stealthy ones, down to a 2- or 3-round casting time (15 seconds or so). And leave the rest at one minute -- or even 10 minutes, for big stuff like Teleporting.

Artanis
2009-01-30, 07:02 PM
I've been in a lot of scenarios where a ritual would be extremely helpful, but sitting stationary in one spot for 10 minutes is completely unfeasible. Let's go with Silence. You can't imagine a scenario where you might want to cast Silence in under 10 minutes? I have a hard time thinking of a scenario where I can predict which burst 4 area I might need silenced in about 10 minutes outside of the obvious "meeting in a certain room" situations. =:smallfrown:

We were worried about the potential in combat problems but none of the rituals are designed to do anything in combat, very very few of them have feasible applications while in combat.
If it won't make a real difference, then why bother? You already say that you're going to make exceptions to the rule, so it'd be just as easy to say "Rituals X, Y, and Z cast in one standard action instead of the normal 10 minutes".


Mostly they would be useful during for the in-between combat time. Infiltrating a castle using Passwall for instance. You can get a window of opportunity between guard patrols to sneak up to a wall and Passwall through it, but it's a lot less feasible to set up an uninterrupted 10 minutes next to a castle wall with which to finish casting the ritual while your party waits nervously behind you.
If you can cast the ritual in under six seconds, you aren't going to be doing much "nervous waiting". The adventure of trying to infiltrate the castle, with the elaborate plan and exquisite teamwork replace by:
"Is there a guard nearby?"
"No."
"I use passwall. Everybody into the castle!"

BlackRabite
2009-01-30, 07:02 PM
hehe 1 standard action Linked portal. Takes the fear out of just about any dugeon crawl.

i think the reason why they have casting times like they do is because there not ment to be used as an OMG ****!!! reaction spell. Some of them can be used efectivly in combat with some preplaning but no more of this "Ow my, a rampaging mob of townfolk!!!! here play with this Hallucinatory Creature for a bit while we run away style strats.

standard action Disenchant magic item ... hehe game breaking


There are obvious exceptions like Raise Dead, Create Magic Item, things like that.

Or we could have exceptions.. like obvious exceptions. Like linked portal and a few others.

Kaun
2009-01-30, 07:08 PM
Ok maybe for this post to work you should tell us which rituals you are planing to leave as is and which you are changing because obvious exceptions is a bit to much in the eye of the beholder.

KKL
2009-01-30, 07:42 PM
You DO know that what you're doing is regressing to 3.5e where magic was the easy way out and that's EXACTLY what WotC wanted to avoid and the SPECIFIC reason WHY they implemented rituals in the first place?

Artanis
2009-01-30, 08:25 PM
He pretty much said that that's exactly what he's trying to do.

BlackRabite
2009-01-30, 09:29 PM
I guess that's what I'm trying to do. Except the Rituals are vastly underpowered compared to 3.5 spells. Not only did they lower them in power, they made them cost money and they gave them prohibitive casting times.

KKL
2009-01-30, 09:42 PM
I guess that's what I'm trying to do. Except the Rituals are vastly underpowered compared to 3.5 spells. Not only did they lower them in power, they made them cost money and they gave them prohibitive casting times.

Yes, because magic is not supposed to be an instant solution to every little problem on hand. You're only supposed to use rituals when the situation really warrants it, or a second/third resort.

If anything, 4e rituals are fine, and 3.5e spells were disturbingly, utterly overpowered.

lesser_minion
2009-01-30, 09:51 PM
I think this variant is probably a big mistake. There are quite a few points behind rituals in 4e

They prevent skills from becoming redundant, like they can be in 3.x
They also make sure that casters don't get any good 'easy ways out' - part of the imbalance in 3.x was because a caster could usually escape from any bad situation - and a well-prepared caster was invincible.
They allow magic to be portrayed as powerful without risking any game balance issues. This one is actually quite important.
They also get across the idea that this is what most magic is really like when you get past the flashy combat spells.



Except the Rituals are vastly underpowered compared to 3.5 spells. Not only did they lower them in power, they made them cost money and they gave them prohibitive casting times.

Except that in 3e it is well worth banning several of the spells that are now rituals so that you can actually get some use out of the skills system. Knock and Detect Secret Doors are big examples. Just because they have limited combat use doesn't mean that they should be trivial.

Grynning
2009-01-30, 10:29 PM
Another point about 4th ed. rituals - people seem very upset about the whole "10 minute casting time" thing. First of all, it's not like it's 10 minutes of actual time. You can cut straight to the end of the casting if you don't want to RP it out. Second, they are called rituals (http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=ritual&search=search). If you can do them in a standard action (about 3 seconds) what exactly is ritualistic about them? 10 minutes is actually pretty fast for something like that...I mean hell, it takes me more than 10 minutes to make dinner or take a shower, I can't imagine how long it would take me to say, re-shape reality so I could talk to animals or raise the dead.

Also, as the DM, you can have a ritual go faster or slower if the plot requires it. You can integrate a ritual into a skill challenge (they are a skill check, after all). You can use them in much more interesting ways than 3.5's "spells as anti-challenge ammo" system. Granted, not every ritual is going to be useful to every group. Likewise, some rituals may not have much of a use at all; that's just design mistakes, they happen in every game. Just help your players choose good ones that they will use and give them opportunities to use them.

BlackRabite
2009-01-30, 10:51 PM
I think this variant is probably a big mistake. There are quite a few points behind rituals in 4e

They prevent skills from becoming redundant, like they can be in 3.x
They also make sure that casters don't get any good 'easy ways out' - part of the imbalance in 3.x was because a caster could usually escape from any bad situation - and a well-prepared caster was invincible.
They allow magic to be portrayed as powerful without risking any game balance issues. This one is actually quite important.
They also get across the idea that this is what most magic is really like when you get past the flashy combat spells.




Except that in 3e it is well worth banning several of the spells that are now rituals so that you can actually get some use out of the skills system. Knock and Detect Secret Doors are big examples. Just because they have limited combat use doesn't mean that they should be trivial.

Neither of those make the skills redundant because of the limitations set on them. Detect Secret Doors costs 25 gold to check for a secret door or hidden door only if it is in your Line of Sight when you cast it. It's obviously much better to burn 25 gold in each room you come to, sometimes multiple times in the room if it contains a LoS bend or large pillar than to have someone with the actual skill do it for free. If the door is opened by a switch or lever it doesn't show you the mechanism, only that there is a door there. Knock is even better, nothing is more awesome than burning money and a healing surge each time I want to try and open something. Hope I don't botch the roll.

As for the "RP through the casting time" the reason for this houserule isn't because we're tired of listening to our wizard say "still casting" for 10 minutes. The reason for it is to make rituals worthwhile in the situations they seem to be designed for, when you need extra help and you don't have time to do it in a mundane fashion. A lot of them burn resources to do something you could do mundanely for free, why should they take longer as well. Can you give me an example of when you would use Detect Secret Doors when you have someone with a high perception with you?

Heck, the flavor text for Passwall almost invalidates itself. "A gap opens in the impenetrable Caldanis Fortress Wall, peeling the solid stone into a passageway as if it were a pair of tent flaps. “Come,” says your guide, 'we have only a short time before they notice this trick . . . or it closes on us.' "

They could notice us at any second. Good thing they didn't gander over here in the last 10 minutes when I was chanting and drawing arcane symbols on their wall.

Aron Times
2009-01-30, 11:42 PM
Note that you don't need to cast a ritual to perform utility magic. According to the RAW, an Arcana check lets a character manipulate magical phenomenon such as dispelling a harmful magical effect.

If you skim through the traps section in the DMG, you'll notice that most of the magical traps can't be disarmed by Thievery; you'll need to succeed on an Arcana check, or in some cases an Arcana skill challenge, to dispel the magical trap. Several planar hazards in the Manual of the Planes can be rendered inert by a successful Arcana check or skill challenge.

The same holds true for Religion when it comes to divine magic. 3.5's Consecrate and Desecrate have been folded into the Religion skill in 4E. In several LFR adventures (which are mandated to follow the RAW), Religion is used in this way.

Basically, rituals are there as a last resort. Use skill checks and skill challenges instead for most occasions.

TheOOB
2009-01-31, 03:39 AM
If you are going to make rituals more used and accessible, try finding a way to work with the price. While most rituals are low priced, the fact is if your are following the DMG you are supposed to give a specific amount of gold to the players, and using rituals uses up a consumable resource that could be spent on magic items that make you better for longer times.

Just giving ritual components as treasure doesn't work, because they'll just be used to make magic items if the group is smart.

Funkyodor
2009-01-31, 04:33 AM
Well, by using scrolls you can already halve the time to cast the ritual. So, I'm thinking if you wanted to modify the cast time of the ritual you can just apply a penalty to the skill check. And if there is no skill check, you can't quick cast the ritual. You can even add a feat to reduce the penaltys for quick casting. So, for example. If you use a scroll you halve the time. Reduce the time by 1 miniute for a -5 penalty on the skill check (minimum of one standard action). Feat makes this a -3.

So to reduce a ten minute ritual to one standard action you use a scroll and reduce it 5 minutes for a -25 on the skill check or take the feat to reduce it to -15 on the skill check.

Saph
2009-01-31, 05:45 AM
I think this variant is probably a big mistake. There are quite a few points behind rituals in 4e

The problem is that most of these points you've listed aren't really true.


They prevent skills from becoming redundant, like they can be in 3.x

Skills aren't redundant in 3.X. Spending vast amounts of money and effort to be half as good as what the rogue can do for free doesn't make the rogue redundant, it just makes you a sucker. Making rituals effective wouldn't make skills redundant in 4e, either.


They allow magic to be portrayed as powerful without risking any game balance issues. This one is actually quite important.

For the vast majority of the rituals, in the 10 minutes it takes to cast them, you could solve the same problem with mundane skills for free. You seem to be saying that it's possible to make rituals largely useless while still making them appear 'powerful' - but it doesn't work that way. Either rituals are effective or they aren't, and as things are, they mostly aren't.

The fact is that the majority of rituals in 4e, frankly, suck. You have to spend resources to learn them, you have to pay money to cast them, you have to take 100 combat rounds to use them, and then their effects are usually so weak as not to be worth the trouble in the first place. They'd be worth it if you could use them reasonably quickly, but the 10 minute casting time makes most of them ridiculous. As things are, there are about half a dozen rituals that are must-haves (Raise Dead and Linked Portal being the big ones) and dozens more which are money sinks.

I've DMed 4e games, and every time someone's tried to play a ritualist, the dialogue has gone something like this:

Ritualist: "Hey guys, look at this situation! This is a perfect place to use Ritual X!"
Party member A: "Dude, we don't need it."
Ritualist: "But I want to get to use my class features! I never get to cast a ritual! Please can I use it?"
Party member B: "Hey guys, while you were talking the rest of us decided on a different way to do things which takes less time and less effort and less money. You can catch us up."
Ritualist: "..."

Reducing the casting time on all those 10 minute rituals would do a lot to make them less useless.

- Saph

Telok
2009-01-31, 11:01 AM
Had an idea

1) Make a top 10 list of rituals (better yet, make the players do it)
2) Anything on that list takes 10 minutes per level to cast.
3) Anything not on the list takes 1 round per level to cast.

Thus the all important Raise Dead takes 80 minutes to cast while Knock merely takes four rounds.

Kurald Galain
2009-01-31, 01:42 PM
This is a good idea.

Whatever the intent was of WOTC for rituals in 4E, the practice is that nearly all of them are restricted to the point of utter uselessness. This has been a massive overreaction on WOTC's part

Rituals should have one of (1) a high cost, (2) a high casting time, or (3) a limited effect; most rituals as printed have all three. So relieving that would certinaly help.

As past threads on the topic have shown, in most cases where rituals do see frequent use in play, the DM is (consciously or not) waiving the many, many restrictions on them. Players aren't necessarily aware of that. But with only a few notable exceptions (e.g. floating disk, resurrect, enchant item), if you find a ritual useful, you're not playing it by RAW.

Limos
2009-01-31, 02:02 PM
You could force them to make an Arcana or Religion check to use the Ritual in combat (even if you normally don't make one) and give them a +10 to the DC for it being rushed. Then of course you also have to make it a Full round action.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2009-01-31, 02:03 PM
That being said, remember that the enemies should be using rituals all the time now just like the PCs will. Ritual scrolls will become a huge market, and the prices will probably increase (for some rituals) due to the increase in demand.Economics? In DnD? BLASPHEMY! (See: Purchase and sale prices for magic items)

---

Honestly I don't think you're going to be able to get a quick fix for rituals. Each ritual has its own set of problems that require individual attention to balance/make useful so that any universal easing to the ritual system (including decreasing casting time) is going to break some formerly 'useless' rituals completely.

Even the clever 'top 10' idea will break at least one #11+ ritual. I guess there are workarounds, but the solution that ends up with the best balance is the thorough one that takes lots of work.

lesser_minion
2009-01-31, 02:49 PM
Skills aren't redundant in 3.X. Spending vast amounts of money and effort to be half as good as what the rogue can do for free doesn't make the rogue redundant, it just makes you a sucker. Making rituals effective wouldn't make skills redundant in 4e, either.

Where do you have to spend vast amounts of money and effort to automatically succeed at something that the rogue might fail? The only issue is only being able to do so a limited number of times in a day. I actually said that they can make skills redundant - there are skills that remain useful, but it still feels like 3.x wizards and sorcerers tread on the toes of the rogue too much when the character concept doesn't really demand it. I don't know how much I can speak for the designers, but that was a pretty significant factor in changing rituals.



I've DMed 4e games, and every time someone's tried to play a ritualist, the dialogue has gone something like this:

Ritualist: "Hey guys, look at this situation! This is a perfect place to use Ritual X!"
Party member A: "Dude, we don't need it."
Ritualist: "But I want to get to use my class features! I never get to cast a ritual! Please can I use it?"
Party member B: "Hey guys, while you were talking the rest of us decided on a different way to do things which takes less time and less effort and less money. You can catch us up."
Ritualist: "..."

My understanding of some of the explanation behind rituals leads me to believe that many of the rituals are there solely as a last resort for when players can't solve the problem quickly and efficiently. There is an article on the Wizards (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080528a) site that has some explanation.


We're hoping this brings back some of the creativity we had with problem solving and assault planning from 3.5. The powers are great but most of them are not good for multi-tasking.

This is worth trying to achieve, but I think that in the very least you need to review each ritual on a case-by-case basis and make sure that they are less available than in 3e, even if you want to give them some more use.

I think a good compromise would be to ban the rituals from being used in any stressful situation and keep the cost. (the financial cost being the main balancing factor really)

I don't really see how nerfing 3e's selection of spells like teleport, knock, detect secret doors and so on is a bad move however, and I would strongly suggest thinking twice about reversing the decision to do so.

hamishspence
2009-01-31, 03:04 PM
many, but not all. Some are designed to be used as part of the adventure. A trip across the planes needs the right rituals, for example.

and some are practically useless but have an element of style- Raise Land, for example. May be not very directly useful, but the idea of ripping a two-mile wide chunk of land from its roots to soar into the sky may appeal to some players.

Draz74
2009-01-31, 03:12 PM
Rituals should have one of (1) a high cost, (2) a high casting time, or (3) a limited effect; most rituals as printed have all three.

I approve this direction.

Saph
2009-01-31, 07:47 PM
I don't know how much I can speak for the designers, but that was a pretty significant factor in changing rituals.

The problem is, that as a lot of people have noted, the designers overreacted. Instead of limiting the power of utility magic but making it still effective, they boosted a select handful of rituals to be so crazy-good that you'd have to be insane not to take them (Raise Dead, anyone?) and nerfed the rest into near-uselessness.


My understanding of some of the explanation behind rituals leads me to believe that many of the rituals are there solely as a last resort for when players can't solve the problem quickly and efficiently.

This does seem to have been the intention, but the PHB doesn't actually say this - the rituals are presented as things that are supposed to be really useful. So new players look at them and think "hey, that would be cool to do!" and then find out that they don't really work.


I don't really see how nerfing 3e's selection of spells like teleport, knock, detect secret doors and so on is a bad move however, and I would strongly suggest thinking twice about reversing the decision to do so.

I think you're pretty far off base here. Of the three spells you've listed:

Detect Secret Doors: I have never seen this spell used, ever, in all my years of playing 3rd edition. What on earth's the point when Search is free and finds everything? Would never put it in my spellbook, and would only get a scroll as a novelty item if I had the money to throw away.

Knock: Used to carry a wand of it as a wizard. Useful occasionally. Open Lock is still better on average. I only had the wand because I picked it up as treasure - I wouldn't have spent the 4,500 gold on it otherwise. If making a new wizard, I'd probably buy a scroll or two of it, but no more.

Teleport: Excellent spell. Of course, 4e has pretty much the same thing with Linked Portal, which functions in largely the same way (the cost is negligible). Linked Portal is another of the must-have rituals that you'd have to be crazy not to get. Linked Portal has the advantages that it can do a whole party at once and can't misfire, while Teleport has the quicker casting time and has slightly more freedom of location. I'd have a very hard time choosing between the two if they were both made available to me as 3.5 spells.

So of the three spells you listed as needing nerfing, two are niche spells that you can go the best part of a campaign without using, and the third didn't really get nerfed at all, only adapted (and still just as good).

- Saph

TheOOB
2009-02-01, 12:21 AM
The only rituals my party every uses are a few basic ones for creating items or teleporting and the like.

I personally think the whole ritual system needs to be re-worked. I'd like to see more rituals with more reasonable cast times(rituals shouldn't be combat cast able, but you can do that by making the ritual take 1 minute, 10 minutes isn't neccesary), scrolls shouldn't have any cost to use(it should be included in the cost of the scroll) and ritual casters should have a certain amount of rituals they can use per day without components.

FoE
2009-02-01, 03:16 AM
As for the "RP through the casting time" the reason for this houserule isn't because we're tired of listening to our wizard say "still casting" for 10 minutes.

You're not casting them in real-time, are you? The whole point of the time duration was so that you couldn't cast rituals in combat. But you're allowed to skip ahead.

Here's how I would play it:

Player: I cast Detect Secret Doors in the room.
DM: (Mentally considers whether anything will happen to disrupt ritual and decides against it) OK. The ten minutes pass swiftly, and the magical outline of a door appears in the left wall.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-01, 05:15 AM
The problem is, that as a lot of people have noted, the designers overreacted. Instead of limiting the power of utility magic but making it still effective, they boosted a select handful of rituals to be so crazy-good that you'd have to be insane not to take them (Raise Dead, anyone?) and nerfed the rest into near-uselessness.
QFT.


Player: I cast Detect Secret Doors in the room.
DM: (Mentally considers whether anything will happen to disrupt ritual and decides against it) OK. The ten minutes pass swiftly, and the magical outline of a door appears in the left wall.
Other player: while the wizard is busy for ten minutes, I start making perception checks.
DM: Ok, after thirty seconds you have found the door.
Other player: wizard, you can save your money and stop casting now.

And that is why DSD is a useless ritual.

FoE
2009-02-01, 07:10 AM
Other player: while the wizard is busy for ten minutes, I start making perception checks.
DM: Ok, after thirty seconds you have found the door.
Other player: wizard, you can save your money and stop casting now.

Your argument is flawed. If you could already find the secret door with a Perception check, why would you bother casting the ritual?

A large number of rituals, especially the lower-level ones, are just there to fill gaps in the party's abilities to get through a dungeon. Don't have a rogue or another party member with the Thievery skill? Put the appropriate rituals in your ritual book. It costs a little gold, but it's better than nothing.

Saph
2009-02-01, 07:25 AM
Your argument is flawed. If you could already find the secret door with a Perception check, why would you bother casting the ritual?

You wouldn't. That's the point.


A large number of rituals, especially the lower-level ones, are just there to fill gaps in the party's abilities to get through a dungeon. Don't have a rogue or another party member with the Thievery skill? Put the appropriate rituals in your ritual book. It costs a little gold, but it's better than nothing.

Yes, but to use the above example: how likely is it that by, say, 4th-level, a five-member party won't have a single character with good Perception? I mean, really?

- Saph

MartinHarper
2009-02-01, 07:51 AM
Other player: while the wizard is busy for ten minutes, I start making perception checks.
DM: Ok, after thirty seconds you have found the door.
Other player: wizard, you can save your money and stop casting now.

PHB: Perception says "Failure: You can't try again until circumstances change" and "usually searching takes at least 1 minute".

Reverent-One
2009-02-01, 11:06 AM
Yes, but to use the above example: how likely is it that by, say, 4th-level, a five-member party won't have a single character with good Perception? I mean, really?

If your die rolls suck, having a good perception might not be enough. A +15 on perception might not mean you'll find a secret door if you roll a 1.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-01, 04:49 PM
A large number of rituals, especially the lower-level ones, are just there to fill gaps in the party's abilities to get through a dungeon.
Yeah, that's what they're intended for, except that they don't actually work that way.

Theory is all fine and dandy, but your examples don't hold up in practice. Parties without thievery skill are rare; and even then, unless your DM is deliberately ruling "yuo need a ritual heer!!!" your odds are still better by having the high-dex character roll a bunch of times. Did you notice how e.g. the Open Lock action allows infinite retries, one per round? Oops.



PHB: Perception says "Failure: You can't try again until circumstances change" and "usually searching takes at least 1 minute".
One minute is still a lot less than ten. You do realize that the ritual is pointless unless you already know in which room the door is, right? Otherwise you have to repeat it in every location where there might be a door, which does wonders for your cash flow.

Reverent-One
2009-02-01, 05:54 PM
One minute is still a lot less than ten. You do realize that the ritual is pointless unless you already know in which room the door is, right? Otherwise you have to repeat it in every location where there might be a door, which does wonders for your cash flow.

How is it pointless if you merely in which room there is a secret door? That doesn't mean you know where the door is so you can go through it, which is what the ritual Detect Secret Doors tells you.

Yuki Akuma
2009-02-01, 06:35 PM
One minute is still a lot less than ten. You do realize that the ritual is pointless unless you already know in which room the door is, right? Otherwise you have to repeat it in every location where there might be a door, which does wonders for your cash flow.

You do realise that even though one minute is less than ten, the point is that you can only try once, right?

Ranger: Okay, we've found the room with the secret door! I make a Perception check. *roll* ... Five.
DM: After a minute of searching, you don't find anything.
Rogue: Alright, I'll make a Perception check instead. *roll* Fifteen! Did I find anything?
DM: Nope.
Wizard: *sigh* Okay, I cast Detect Secret Doors.
DM: Wizard performs the ritual. After ten minutes, the ritual complete, a ghostly outline of a door appears in the left wall.
Wizard: Seriously, guys, stop rolling so badly, this is really playing havoc on my funds.

FoE
2009-02-01, 09:01 PM
Yeah, that's what they're intended for, except that they don't actually work that way.

Theory is all fine and dandy, but your examples don't hold up in practice. Parties without thievery skill are rare; and even then, unless your DM is deliberately ruling "yuo need a ritual heer!!!" your odds are still better by having the high-dex character roll a bunch of times. Did you notice how e.g. the Open Lock action allows infinite retries, one per round? Oops.

Which brings us to the other benefit of Rituals: they emphasize the importance of skills. You could go the lazy route of using rituals ... but they can't be cast in a pinch and they'll cost you money no matter what. So why cast a ritual when you could pick the lock yourself?

Hatu
2009-02-01, 11:31 PM
Which brings us to the other benefit of Rituals: they emphasize the importance of skills. You could go the lazy route of using rituals ... but they can't be cast in a pinch and they'll cost you money no matter what. So why cast a ritual when you could pick the lock yourself?

They don't really "emphasize" the importance of skills at all. It's just that, since Rituals do next to nothing themselves, whatever value skills have remains unchallenged. If Rituals gave a bonus to certain skill use that could only be used when trained, that might emphasize the importance of skills. As is, they merely fail to overshadow skill use.

-H

cupkeyk
2009-02-01, 11:59 PM
I like some rituals, but some really are retarded. My problem with the arguments so far is that they are all encompassing.

Yuki Akuma makes a good point about Rituals. Wizards, which more often are Orb wizards because They are broken, would try a perception check before resorting to DSD anyway.

I particularly like the FRPG Rituals, Like Symbul's Conversion and Darklight.

Raise Land basically creates you and Earth more, Throw in a Shift Mote and you have a very expensive, albeit cool, airship that you control with your brain. Not to mention you can have your house and farm there.

The Dragon 366 also offers useful Rituals like Delay Affliction and Earthen Ramparts.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-02, 12:40 AM
They don't really "emphasize" the importance of skills at all. It's just that, since Rituals do next to nothing themselves, whatever value skills have remains unchallenged. If Rituals gave a bonus to certain skill use that could only be used when trained, that might emphasize the importance of skills. As is, they merely fail to overshadow skill use.

Well, I'd like to say that the "Rituals do nothing" belief is wrong - at least in my experience. In play I use Rituals all the time, at full cost and full time expenditure. The trick is to use Rituals that are lower than your level.

You will have enough gold at, say, Level 11 to cast Linked Portal whenever it is convenient. Or Phantom Steed or Water Breathing. Detect Object is too expensive to use casually, so you'll actually have to go out and find the missing object most of the time. It's fun, trust me.

Now, I've already argued with Saph & Kurald Galain about the assertions they've made here, so I won't bother repeating myself. To sum up:
(1) The Time & Money requirements in Rituals makes magic less of a Plan A than in 3E. This makes the players spend more time planning and considering the proper course of action rather than just using a magic shotgun (however creatively they use the spells). For more on why this is good, see this podcast (http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/05/18/writing-excuses-episode-15-costs-and-ramifications-of-magic/).

(2) Within the framework of 4E, even "low powered" Rituals can be tremendously useful. Arcane Lock, for example, can be used to make a virtually unpickable lock at 1st level, which is handy for securing the campground in a dungeon or for trapping hostiles within their base. All it takes is creative thinking and planning.

As for the proposed house rule, my major concern is the "substitute time for skill" rule. This revives the "scroll monkey" character of 3E, who merely has a high enough UMD or Caster Check to use spells well above his level. In 4E, this sort of power-boost was restricted by skill checks for several rituals. Now, instead of being completely beyond the reach of low level characters, anyone can use Cure Disease without concern for the patient, and every Arcane Lock is either Knockable or impossible to pick without one.

If you want to have 3E magic in 4E, use all your rules except this one, and you should be OK.

KKL
2009-02-02, 12:46 AM
Wizards, which more often are Orb wizards because They are broken,

Orb Wizards are fine, it's only when you layer on penalties to save ends that it becomes really troublesome.

Grynning
2009-02-02, 01:28 AM
Orb Wizards are fine, it's only when you layer on penalties to save ends that it becomes really troublesome.

well, also the fact that there is no duration on the penalty - it just stays on for the rest of the encounter. That's fairly nasty.

Anyways, I think part of the problem is that the anti-ritual folks are all assuming automatic success on skill checks like perception, for one. As others pointed out you CAN fail these rolls - as a DM I see my group botch on moderate to high DC checks I ask them for pretty consistently. I DO believe that skills should be better than rituals, but I DON'T think that makes rituals useless.

The other part of the problem is that people are thinking of the time and money aspects as if they were hard and fast mechanics, which they really aren't. Game money and game time have absolutely no relation to how well the system works and can be glossed over very easily.

I don't strictly enforce economics/wealth in my games because D&D economics have always been a joke. I keep the players in magic items appropriate for their level but generally assume they have enough cash on hand to do things like rituals unless it has a particularly high cost. It's just like how most DM's in 3.5 that I knew never really made the wizards keep track of spell components.

Also if you think about it the time factors given for skills are just as artificial as those for rituals. Why does it only take one "minute" to make a perception check to find crap? Who knows? I certainly spend more than a minute looking for crap in my house on a daily basis. It's a game, it doesn't follow the rules of the real world.

Point is, if you don't like the expense of rituals - house rule it out. Ta-da! Same with the time factor. Just keep them A) not usable in combat and B) not automatically better than a skill check and they are functionally THE SAME.

4E =/= simulation. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to work. Do crap on the fly. Role-playing out skill and ritual use does wonders for both if you just realize that mechanics don't always follow perfect logic.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-04, 05:21 AM
How is it pointless if you merely in which room there is a secret door?
It means that whenever you don't actually know where the secret door is (because it is, you know, a secret door), the ritual won't help. Honestly, how often are you really looking for a secret door that you already know the location of? And then, if it lets you find it, it doesn't tell you how to open it either. As Saph already pointed out, DSD is a heavily nerfed version of a 2E/3E spell that nobody used back then, either.


You do realise that even though one minute is less than ten, the point is that you can only try once, right?
Sure, but if you assume that the entire party rolls so poorly on finding the door that the players already know is there, it is also quite possible for the wizard to roll so low on his ritual check that he won't find it either.

So to sum up, for DSD to be useful,
(1) the players must know where a secret door is
(2) the characters must fail their perception checks to locate it
(3) in addition, the characters must lack access to several skill boosts, such as assisting, bardic Inspire Competence, ranger Advise, or the LFR card that lets you take 10.
(4) it must be important enough (and safe enough) to spend several minutes on
(5) during this time, the DM must disallow other ways of searching for the door (e.g. tapping the walls; remember that we're looking for a door that we already know is there)
(6) the ritual user must pass the (admittedly easy) check to locate the door with the ritual
(7) now, the party still has to figure out how to open it
(8) and the ritual user must have prepared for this situation in advance by investing money in it that he could have better spent elsewhere.

Wow, yeah, that will happen a lot.


Which brings us to the other benefit of Rituals: they emphasize the importance of skills ... So why cast a ritual when you could pick the lock yourself?
That's a hilarious remark. It's like saying that Dwarf Bread on the Discworld is good food. So the point of rituals is now that they are so utterly useless that players will opt to do something else instead, and this is somehow any different from not having rituals in the first place.


My problem with the arguments so far is that they are all encompassing.
Really? Read this one again: "Rituals should have one of (1) a high cost, (2) a high casting time, or (3) a limited effect; most rituals as printed have all three."



I particularly like the FRPG Rituals, Like Symbul's Conversion and Darklight.

The Dragon 366 also offers useful Rituals like Delay Affliction and Earthen Ramparts.
I like the idea of Darklight, but it's too expensive to use on a regular basis (and also, mostly for flavor). Trading a daily power for a healing surge is not a good trade, ever (you only run out of surges if the part is in Big Trouble, and if it is, you'd better have your dailies ready!) Earthen Ramparts is highly situational and easily ignored because of movement rules, in addition to being done cheaper and more quickly with a shovel. Delay Affliction is not bad, but very situational.


Well, I'd like to say that the "Rituals do nothing" belief is wrong
That's because it's a straw man. The actual belief is "Rituals should have one of (1) a high cost, (2) a high casting time, or (3) a limited effect; most rituals as printed have all three."


In play I use Rituals all the time, at full cost and full time expenditure.
And that's also a straw man, because (based on your examples here) there are just three or four rituals that you use a lot. There is, indeed, a category of "highly specific things that are cheap enough to keep around in case you need them". What you're overlooking is that (1) this is a very small category, and (2) pretty much every other ritual is utterly worthless.

* Linked Portal is useful
* Phantom Steed is mostly flavor (because you could also use actual horses, and note that flying mounts are available way earlier than this ritual lets you get them)
* Water Breathing is highly situational and will likely come up no more than one or two times per campaign, but isn't too expensive either.
* Detect Object is silly, because it has such a tiny range that indeed you must go out and find the missing object. So it's a dwarf bread.
* Arcane Lock is completely useless, because you're overlooking the fact that any enemy that's a credible threat to you can bypass it in less than thirty seconds, on average (whereas it takes ten minutes to cast).



Anyways, I think part of the problem is that the anti-ritual folks are all assuming automatic success on skill checks like perception, for one.
That was just one example, and note that the ritual user can just as easily fail his ritual check. To use a better example: although neither needs a skill check, why would you sink a lot of money into Earthen Ramparts when you can do the same, for free, and faster, with a shovel?


I DO believe that skills should be better than rituals, but I DON'T think that makes rituals useless.
If skills are better, and they're also cheaper and faster (which, indeed, they are), how does that not make rituals useless? Or do you subscribe to the Dwarf Bread idea above?


The other part of the problem is that people are thinking of the time and money aspects as if they were hard and fast mechanics, which they really aren't.
My point for a long time has been that anyone who is using rituals frequently has a DM that, yes, handwaves away the restrictions and requirements (such as, yes, time and money). Threads on the subject indicate that this is indeed the case (either that or, like OH above, the player unknowningly sticks to only the few rituals that do work).

I believe that is a good thing. However, it is also an Oberoni fallacy: it doesn't change the fact that as written, most rituals are utterly useless.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-04, 11:07 AM
And that's also a straw man, because (based on your examples here) there are just three or four rituals that you use a lot. There is, indeed, a category of "highly specific things that are cheap enough to keep around in case you need them". What you're overlooking is that (1) this is a very small category, and (2) pretty much every other ritual is utterly worthless.

Did you just call my personal experience a "straw man?" :smallconfused:

You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.

But, if you decide that you need an exhaustive list of Rituals I've used:
Water Walking - to deliver a corpse into deep water

Secret Chest - to conceal and transport wealth securely

Hand of Fate - to select a book in a library that would most assist us on our quest

Eyes of Alarm - to ward our campsite

Arcane Lock - to protect our rear when infiltrating a cultist's church, and to seal up side entrances when sneaking through a giant's home

Phantom Steed - quick travel between non-Circled locations

Commune with Nature - to avoid navigational hazards while sailing

Magic Circle - to create a secure staging point when assaulting a demonic fortress

Linked Portal - obvious

Water Breathing - obvious

Comprehend Languages - also obvious

I repeat that Rituals are most useful once you have a few levels on them. 1st level Rituals are plenty powerful, but are really too expensive to use until you have enough wealth that 70-100 gold isn't that much. This limits the use of magic-as-problem-solver, which has several salutatory effects (see previous post).

Kurald Galain
2009-02-04, 11:56 AM
You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
Here you go (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw man), enjoy reading.



But, if you decide that you need an exhaustive list of Rituals I've used:
That's such a short list that you've just made my point for me. And I suspect that even on that short list, there are several that you've only used once, or that you needn't have used in the situation in question.



I repeat that Rituals are most useful once you have a few levels on them.
To reiterate, there is a category of "highly specific things that are cheap enough to keep around in case you need them". What you're overlooking is that (1) this is a very small category, and (2) pretty much every other ritual is utterly worthless.

So you're saying rituals are great because a small group of them are useful, and I'm saying rituals are badly designed because all of them outside that small group are completely pointless. That's not even a contradiction.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-04, 01:21 PM
Here you go (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw man), enjoy reading.

Since we're quoting:

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.


Well, I'd like to say that the "Rituals do nothing" belief is wrong - at least in my experience. In play I use Rituals all the time, at full cost and full time expenditure. The trick is to use Rituals that are lower than your level.


And that's also a straw man, because (based on your examples here) there are just three or four rituals that you use a lot. There is, indeed, a category of "highly specific things that are cheap enough to keep around in case you need them". What you're overlooking is that (1) this is a very small category, and (2) pretty much every other ritual is utterly worthless.

I don't see how providing an anecdote of my own experience is misrepresenting an opponent's argument.

At any rate, I feel confident I can let my points rest as presented (if anyone is still reading). I have provided anecdotal evidence of Rituals being used effectively by RAW, and I have provided links to support my arguments as to why 4E Ritual casting is designed as it is. Others have noted, hypothetically, why Rituals are impossible or impractical to ever use. At this point, other readers will just have to draw their own conclusions, I suppose.

But if anyone is interested in me rehashing arguments:
Your argument appears to be that no amount of actual Ritual use will prove that Rituals are useful as written. If that is not your actual argument, I would appreciate it if you could outline the conditions which would make Rituals "useful." In a previous threat I listed slightly over half of the available Rituals in Core that were useful as written, and your response was to say "no, these are only useful in select situations."

Now, if Rituals required unique components or were Vancian this would be a good argument, but since there is no opportunity cost for having a Ritual ready to use (unlike memorizing a spell in 3E) this does not matter. There is no penalty for "having" a Ritual, and even if it is only useful in a specific, but not unique, circumstance (like having to stay underwater for a long time) then it must still count as "useful."

If your definition of "useful" is "can be used in most situations" then you miss the point of 4E magic. It is supposed to be something used rarely or in special situations; it is not supposed to be a panacea. If you prefer "magic as panacea" then 4E is obviously not for you.

4E Rituals are not things like "Summon Cream Pie" or "Hold Clown," they are spells that can (and are) used to solve not uncommon situations that one would run into on an adventure. Using them in non-obvious situations is an art, just as it was in 3E, and they can, in fact, be used in this fashion.

I know. I have used them in a game with full casting times and full casting costs, played by the RAW.

Saph
2009-02-04, 07:21 PM
At any rate, I feel confident I can let my points rest as presented (if anyone is still reading). I have provided anecdotal evidence of Rituals being used effectively by RAW, and I have provided links to support my arguments as to why 4E Ritual casting is designed as it is. Others have noted, hypothetically, why Rituals are impossible or impractical to ever use. At this point, other readers will just have to draw their own conclusions, I suppose.

That's a pretty unfair summary of what I've been saying. I've said that, in practice, the majority of rituals are useless because it's nearly always possible to solve the problem better/cheaper/faster with skills or with common sense - while at the same time, there are a select handful of rituals which are so ridiculously good that you'd have to be insane not to take them. That isn't hypothetical, it's based on actual play.

I'm also unimpressed with the claims made in this thread about how 3e magic 'solves everything'. If your reasoning leads you to conclude that Detect Secret Doors is some kind of uber-spell, I think it's pretty obvious that you've made a mistake somewhere.

- Saph

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-04, 07:44 PM
That's a pretty unfair summary of what I've been saying. I've said that, in practice, the majority of rituals are useless because it's nearly always possible to solve the problem better/cheaper/faster with skills or with common sense - while at the same time, there are a select handful of rituals which are so ridiculously good that you'd have to be insane not to take them. That isn't hypothetical, it's based on actual play.

I'm also unimpressed with the claims made in this thread about how 3e magic 'solves everything'. If your reasoning leads you to conclude that Detect Secret Doors is some kind of uber-spell, I think it's pretty obvious that you've made a mistake somewhere.

Yes, and I've countered in practice that Rituals are useful for solving the very problems that skills cannot solve. I've given examples, but that doesn't seem to be enough.

As for the "magic solves everything" claim, I'll reiterate the discussion we had in a previous thread
Magic in 3E was virtually costless, both in terms of time and money. As noted in this podcast (http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/05/18/writing-excuses-episode-15-costs-and-ramifications-of-magic/), costless magic results in people using magic to solve everything. Why invest in picking locks when your party wizard can cast Knock? Or, better yet, invest in scrolls of Knock? Why improve your Hide skill if the party wizard can just cast Invisibility (or use a scroll or a wand)? Those scrolls ran at about 200 gold apiece, chump change for LV 5+, and a Wand of Invisibility was 9K - pricey, but not crippling. And those very effects are available for free to anyone with sufficient caster levels; for spontaneous casters, the "investment" needed is trivial.

Plus, these spells had, by and large, a 100% success rate, as opposed to skills which could fail. So you had a situation where you could choose between 100% Success x Small/No Cost versus >100% Success x Small/No Cost; the correct answer would almost always be to use magic.

And we're not even talking about higher level shenanigans, like Wish loops and such silliness. Magic could deliver results for many (perhaps most) situations for as much actual cost as a skill, but with no chance of failure. This is "magic solves everything;" logically, anyone with magic can and should solve their problems with magic rather than mundane means.

MartinHarper
2009-02-04, 07:49 PM
Honestly, how often are you really looking for a secret door that you already know the location of?

By coincidence, it happened in my second 4e session. They had a rough map of the place they were invading (the Sunless Citadel). None of the players rolled well on Perception, and the Wizard didn't have the Detect Secret Doors ritual, so they had to skip past the first secret door in the dungeon.


during this time, the DM must disallow other ways of searching for the door (e.g. tapping the walls; remember that we're looking for a door that we already know is there)

Tapping on the walls and all that stuff is included in the Search check. This isn't OD&D.

FoE
2009-02-05, 12:41 AM
That's a hilarious remark. It's like saying that Dwarf Bread on the Discworld is good food. So the point of rituals is now that they are so utterly useless that players will opt to do something else instead, and this is somehow any different from not having rituals in the first place.

Not "useless." That wasn't my point. Rituals aren't useless. It just means that the solution to every problem isn't "I cast a spell!" Now there's more emphasis on using skill and wit to solve puzzles and get through dungeons.


That's because it's a straw man.

I've read that Wikipedia page too. You're mis-using the term. If anything, you were committing the same fault you're accusing Oracle Hunter.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-05, 04:24 AM
Yes, and I've countered in practice that Rituals are useful for solving the very problems that skills cannot solve. I've given examples, but that doesn't seem to be enough.
If you're trying to prove that rituals in general are so great, and the best you can come up with is a short list with eleven rituals (some of which you used only once, and some of which didn't make a difference when you used them) then you have completely failed to prove your point. Ironically, your evidence underlines Saph's and my statement, that only a very small group of rituals are ever worth using.



As for the "magic solves everything" claim, I'll reiterate the discussion we had in a previous thread
Actually, Saph has a fair point. That you insist in trying to turn this into a 3E-vs-4E debate really shows that you don't have an argument. This isn't about 3E, or any other RPG I could name. This is solely about 4E, which happens to have a few design flaws. Even if no other RPG in the world existed, those flaws would still be there.

It's no coincidence that most character building guides point out how useless rituals are. Even WOTC is (becoming) aware that they messed up with rituals, because they've begun printing items that obsolete certain rituals by doing the same job as a standard action, and classes that can use certain rituals for free. Wanna bet that Arcane Power has some feat or class feature that makes rituals less nonsensical for the PHB classes?

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-05, 04:48 AM
If you're trying to prove that rituals in general are so great, and the best you can come up with is a short list with eleven rituals (some of which you used only once, and some of which didn't make a difference when you used them) then you have completely failed to prove your point. Ironically, your evidence underlines Saph's and my statement, that only a very small group of rituals are ever worth using.


:sigh:

My point is that Rituals are not as totally worthless as you seem to believe. Yes, some of the Rituals are poorly costed, but the idea of using time & money to limit "mundane" spellcasting is not as crazy as it sounds. And indeed, many of the Rituals are just fine as written.

I have listed 11 Rituals because I am playing a level 13 character and therefore have no experience with the higher level ones. Of the 39 Rituals I have available to me, I've found use for a third in a couple of months of play, and if our DM cared about food or carrying capacity, I may have use for some more. In fact, of the Rituals I haven't used, the only ones I think are useless are:
Magic Mouth - I suppose you could use it to leave a message for your party, but meh
Detect Secret Doors - DMs don't put Secret Doors that you can't find, by and large.
Hallucinatory Item - the "can't move" limitation makes this virtually useless for adventurers
Wizard's Sight - ridiculously limited
Detect Object - the range limit is too tight
Hallucinatory Creature - very limited, and the "touch to disbelieve" line eliminates most uses.

I've used 11 (actually, I forgot about Speak With Dead and Endure Elements... and maybe some others) and I find only 6 of them to be worthless, out of 39 total. To me, that's not so bad.

Now, this is not to say that Rituals are perfect. I think it's a good idea to give some classes free casting for certain low level Rituals (I would add "Gentle Repose" for Clerics and one 1st level Rituals of their choice for Wizards) but I do not expect to see Paragon Paths getting free access to Linked Portal any time soon. Or at least I hope not; WotC has a nasty habit of Codex Creep.

Briefly, I'll note that accusations of "edition warz" are both out of line and non-responsive. I made a legitimate comparison between the style of magic used in 3E and 4E - 3E is designed to have low-cost magic, and 4E is designed to have high-cost magic. I then made actual arguments as to why I prefer the 4E system, and what I mean by "magic solves everything." If you would like to explain why my argument is flawed, I would be happy to hear it.

Oslecamo
2009-02-05, 07:16 AM
Plus, these spells had, by and large, a 100% success rate, as opposed to skills which could fail. So you had a situation where you could choose between 100% Success x Small/No Cost versus >100% Success x Small/No Cost; the correct answer would almost always be to use magic.


O'rrly?

Invisibility has actually a big chance of failing. By levels 5 and above monsters start to have stuff suh as see invisibility at will, true sight, "something"sense, or simply obscene spot checks, so the invisible wizard gets find and butchered before he can say "time stop".

Your friendly neighbour rogue on the other hand who bothered to take hide ranks and craven can go inside the dragon's vault and out whitout anyone ever noticing.

Knock is really fun. Untill you find several doors locked in a row. Rogue can use pick lock ad nauseum.

Why use charm monster when you can bluff/diplomacy out of any situation?

Don't have magic powers? Just pick some ranks in UMD and you can play caster all you want!



And we're not even talking about higher level shenanigans, like Wish loops and such silliness. Magic could deliver results for many (perhaps most) situations for as much actual cost as a skill, but with no chance of failure. This is "magic solves everything;" logically, anyone with magic can and should solve their problems with magic rather than mundane means.[/spoiler]
Fact, is, in 3e you're not fighting against mindless monsters with only combat abilities like in 4e.

You're fighting monsters with LOTS of utility abilities, who can see your juicy soul a thousand kilometers away, create a thousand doors on their lair, laugh at your scry atempts, have wizshes of their own, and solving all those problems with magic can get very expensive very quickly.

And actually, if these boards are any proof, knowledge checks are one o the caster's strongest weapons, since it allows the caster to know it's oponent's ADN and history life no matter how well said oponent is proetected against magic.

That's 3e skills true power for you. Int is never a dump stat.

MartinHarper
2009-02-05, 08:59 AM
If you're trying to prove that rituals in general are so great, and the best you can come up with is a short list with eleven rituals (some of which you used only once, and some of which didn't make a difference when you used them) then you have completely failed to prove your point.

Well, there are many magic items - many more than rituals. Most people will only ever use a fraction of them. Using over a quarter of the available rituals in a single campaign is actually good going.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-05, 09:45 AM
Well, there are many magic items - many more than rituals. Most people will only ever use a fraction of them. Using over a quarter of the available rituals in a single campaign is actually good going.

Not if it's the same quarter (actually less than that) in every campaign. Because that indicates the remaining 75% or more might as well not exist.

With a handful of exceptions or misprints, if a random party finds a randomly chosen magical item (of appropriate level), the item will be a net benefit to the party. However, with a handful of exceptions, if a random party finds a randomly chosen ritual (of appropriate level), using it can easily be a net detriment, so the party is better off selling it to an NPC.

To slightly expand on OH's list - Travelers Feast costs a lot more than, and does the same as, actual food. Shadow Walk is problematic since its extreme casting time (and rather short duration) conflict with the fact that you only need the ritual if you're in a hurry. And observe creature / view location / view object suffer from the same problems as wizard sight.

Kaiyanwang
2009-02-05, 09:52 AM
O'rrly?

Invisibility has actually a big chance of failing. By levels 5 and above monsters start to have stuff suh as see invisibility at will, true sight, "something"sense, or simply obscene spot checks, so the invisible wizard gets find and butchered before he can say "time stop".

Your friendly neighbour rogue on the other hand who bothered to take hide ranks and craven can go inside the dragon's vault and out whitout anyone ever noticing.

Knock is really fun. Untill you find several doors locked in a row. Rogue can use pick lock ad nauseum.

Why use charm monster when you can bluff/diplomacy out of any situation?

Don't have magic powers? Just pick some ranks in UMD and you can play caster all you want!


Fact, is, in 3e you're not fighting against mindless monsters with only combat abilities like in 4e.

You're fighting monsters with LOTS of utility abilities, who can see your juicy soul a thousand kilometers away, create a thousand doors on their lair, laugh at your scry atempts, have wizshes of their own, and solving all those problems with magic can get very expensive very quickly.

And actually, if these boards are any proof, knowledge checks are one o the caster's strongest weapons, since it allows the caster to know it's oponent's ADN and history life no matter how well said oponent is proetected against magic.

That's 3e skills true power for you. Int is never a dump stat.

Copypasted. (Even as a DM i cheat knowledges sometimes, sometimes against and sometimes in favor of the players :smalltongue:)

Further, in 3.x some magic has some cost. Barred XP, there are campaign-specific or plane specific (as an example, cast a divine spell in the Shadowlands in Oriental Adventures).

More, IMHO the whole solving magic thing is somewhat linked to the 4 encounters/day issue - or the misinterpretation of the concept. (and how encounters are runned - how many utiity spells spellcaster must prepare, and what spells- maybe a zone of the underdark has, as an example, an issue with nodes - so node spellcasting spells must be prepared, or spells liked to that node.. or whatelse. So you must decide, and you don't have infinite spell slot

And the magic item availability in the campaign could not be the standard one.

Just before the flame wave, I say this thing not to say that 3.x is perfect but the IMHO, the "magic solves anything" in actual play sound to me like "I can only charge and full attack". A sign of unimaginative gamestyle.

*drinks another half pint of grog*

Saph
2009-02-05, 11:36 AM
Magic could deliver results for many (perhaps most) situations for as much actual cost as a skill, but with no chance of failure. This is "magic solves everything;" logically, anyone with magic can and should solve their problems with magic rather than mundane means.

Didn't you just say something about theoretical as opposed to practical a few posts back? I run a 3.5 game - I have it written up on these boards, in fact - and 3.5 magic does not make skills obsolete or solve everything. My players routinely get into problems because they're all full casters and don't have a skillmonkey in the party. If your reasoning was accurate, the full casters would all be able to solve every problem as well or better than a party which had skills. They can't.

I obviously can't disagree with your argument about why you prefer the 4e ritual system to the 3.5 utility magic one, because it's your preference. However, I can check your generalisations about 3.5 vs. 4e magic against my actual gameplay experience, and I can tell you they don't match at all.

- Saph

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-05, 02:24 PM
Didn't you just say something about theoretical as opposed to practical a few posts back? I run a 3.5 game - I have it written up on these boards, in fact - and 3.5 magic does not make skills obsolete or solve everything. My players routinely get into problems because they're all full casters and don't have a skillmonkey in the party. If your reasoning was accurate, the full casters would all be able to solve every problem as well or better than a party which had skills. They can't.

But isn't that odd? The theoretical calculations makes it fairly clear that, particularly for dangerous situations, people would choose the 100% effective option versus the >100% effective one, if both are available (and they usually are). The only reason why I can see people not rely on magic (via UMD, for example) is because their skills are also 100% effective. This gets into an (even more off topic) point about the flaws of a skill point system, so I'll digress.

But, for my edification, could you give an example of a situation where your casters got into a problem that a skill monkey would have solved better?

Saph
2009-02-05, 03:51 PM
But isn't that odd? The theoretical calculations makes it fairly clear that

Oracle, your theoretical calculations are wrong! That's the whole point! If they were right, they would accurately model the way 3.5 games work, and they don't.

I could go into detail as to the reasons, but the summary points would be that you significantly overestimate the effectiveness of magic (the spell does what it says, not necessarily what you want), you don't take into account the opportunity costs (what could you have bought instead of that 2nd-level wand?), and you don't consider the fact that most magical effects have magical counters (dimensional lock, detect magic, see invisible).

Finally, you treat magic and skills as if they're an either/or choice, when the truth is that they're far more effective when used to complement each other. The intelligent question to ask in a 3.5 game isn't "Why should we use skills instead of magic?", it's "Why would we ever want to use one or the other when we can be so much more effective by using both?"


But, for my edification, could you give an example of a situation where your casters got into a problem that a skill monkey would have solved better?

Diplomacy.

- Saph

BlackRabite
2009-02-05, 03:51 PM
The thread hasn't exactly gone off topic, but it has veered somewhat. Before I get on with my post I will note one thing. Some people seem to be making arguments with the assumption that 4ed rituals are as effect as the 3ed counterparts. They are not. Many of them simply replace the skill you would be using with an arcane check and I can't recall one off the top of my head that is 100% effective.

Anyway. These are the changes we're going to try in our next campaign, we're running our first session this weekend and if this thread is still going I'll post the results of any ritual usage.

All Rituals will follow these rules with a few exceptions to be noted in the rules.

- The time it takes to complete a ritual is 1 standard action for every 10 minutes it would normally take. The minimum amount of time to cast a ritual is 1 standard action. Any rituals taking longer than 1 standard action prevent the usage of other actions in between standard. (IE: If it took 30 minutes it now takes 3 rounds, you can't take move or minor actions in between the standards it takes to cast. You can however take a move and minor on the first round you begin, before you start casting.) This rule does not apply to rituals in the Travel category or any rituals that create or destroy a magical item. (Examples being "Disenchant Magical Item or Brew Potion)
- When casting a ritual that involves a skill check the ritual caster may choose to extend the amount of time spent casting in order to "take a number" instead of rolling that skill check. The number you take is equal to the number of minutes spent casting the ritual to a maximum of 10. (Taking 10 minutes to cast Water Breathing completes the ritual as though you had rolled a 10 on your dice.)
- Ritual Scrolls are usable by everyone as before, the same rules apply to the scroll users as above. The scroll costs the Market Price if bought from a third party, or a party member that has Ritual Casting and knows the ritual may make a scroll for the monetary component cost. Making a scroll takes time equal to the original casting time. Using that scroll later has no additional monetary cost, other costs such as Healing Surges are paid by the scroll user upon use.
- New Feats and Rules for classes that begin play with Ritual Casting.

Arcane Ritual Caster (Wizard)
Prerequisite: Trained in Arcana
Benefit: You can master and perform rituals of your level or lower. See Chapter 10 for information on acquiring, mastering, and performing rituals. Each day you may cast a number of Rituals equal to half your level without expending components, excluding rituals that create a magical item. These rituals must be no higher than half of your level and must use Arcana as a Key Skill. Making scrolls always costs components.

Divine Ritual Caster (Cleric)
Prerequisite: Trained in Religion
Benefit: You can master and perform rituals of your level or lower. See Chapter 10 for information on acquiring, mastering, and performing rituals. Each day you may cast a number of Rituals equal to half your level without expending components, excluding rituals that create a magical item. These rituals must be no higher than half of your level and must use Religion as a Key Skill. Making scrolls always costs components.

Primal Ritual Caster (?? Is there a Primal yet that begins with Ritual Casting?)
Prerequisite: Trained in Nature
Benefit: You can master and perform rituals of your level or lower. See Chapter 10 for information on acquiring, mastering, and performing rituals. Each day you may cast a number of Rituals equal to half your level without expending components, excluding rituals that create a magical item. These rituals must be no higher than half of your level and must use Nature as a Key Skill. Making scrolls always costs components.

Edit: Changing the Scroll creation/use rule. Only monetary components are included in the scroll. Extra costs like Healing Surges are paid by the scroll wielder.
Edit2: Changed the max number you can take to 10 and excluded item creation rituals from the free uses per day.

MartinHarper
2009-02-05, 05:14 PM
If this thread is still going I'll post the results of any ritual usage.

I'd certainly be interested to see those, particularly if your gaming session turns out to have many problems that can be solved by skills and fast rituals, or if you find that some rituals have surprising combat uses.


- New Feats and Rules for classes that begin play with Ritual Casting.

Any reason you aren't making those available to all characters with the Ritual Casting feat?

BlackRabite
2009-02-05, 05:59 PM
Those three feats are replacing the Ritual Casting Feat. The DM for this campaign wanted some way for people casting out of ritual books to have so many low level rituals per day that they could use without components, so we split Ritual Casting into three different feats that gave that ability to specific rituals depending on your power source/training. If you play a class that begins with Ritual Casting you would just choose the most likely feat. A wizard would choose Arcane Ritual Caster and so forth.

Those feats are specific to the campaign world, if I use the other rules in future campaigns I plan on leaving the costs as they are and utilizing the economy as a strong limiting factor in my players decisions.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-05, 06:49 PM
- When casting a ritual that involves a skill check the ritual caster may choose to extend the amount of time spent casting in order to "take a number" instead of rolling that skill check. The number you take is equal to the number of minutes spent casting the ritual. (Taking 20 minutes to cast Water Breathing completes the ritual as though you had rolled a 20 on your dice.)

This still worries me. Time is seldom as precious as Gold (or Reagents), so you may start finding auto-succeed or auto-fail Rituals. Spending an hour to cast Arcane Lock, for example, will make a door unpickable - so why don't NPC wizards use these instead of locks? The only person who could "pick" said lock would be another wizard casting Knock and spending about an hour on it - which is harder to do, if the building is defended.

My alteration would be to add in an additional components cost for each extra minute (or some increments of minutes) that a Ritualist takes when casting. Or to cap the bonus (I guess 20 would be natural). Capping is not as good, since +20 to any roll is incredible - particularly in Heroic - but if you want low-cost Rituals, that's the best route.

@Saph

I could go into detail as to the reasons, but the summary points would be that you significantly overestimate the effectiveness of magic (the spell does what it says, not necessarily what you want), you don't take into account the opportunity costs (what could you have bought instead of that 2nd-level wand?), and you don't consider the fact that most magical effects have magical counters (dimensional lock, detect magic, see invisible).

On "counter magics" I'll note that this just results in a Lensman Arms Race (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LensmanArmsRace) which results in absurd amount of magic being required to safeguard even a middling fortress against adventurers. One can argue "My players don't abuse spells" or you can ban/modify spells, but that is just responding to the symptoms rather than looking at the problem.

More to the point, I find it absurd that every king in the land has millions of gold to spend keeping themselves from getting knocked-over by some random wizard - not even a particularly high level one! This is clearly an issue of personal taste, so I move on.

As for "opportunity costs" I think this feeds into my point. The only opportunity costs being considered are choosing between alternative forms of magical aid - do I buy a Scroll of Knock or Invisibility? A Wand of Invisibilty or Glitterdust? Magic is the dominant consideration of the party, not individual skills or talents. There are other things one can spend gold on (hirelings, guild licenses, land, titles) but considering the primacy of magic, why bother?

As for Diplomacy: Glibness (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/glibness.htm). Having an utterly convincing lie can bolster one's diplomatic endeavors tremendously. And the listener has barely a chance to detect it (base duration 50 minutes, no save) and little chance to penetrate the lie. Or you can go low-tech and have an Invisible Wizard cast Silent Charm Person on people with poor will saves. All it costs is a night's sleep.

And yes, while Charm Person can tick off the individual if they pass their save, this matters little against the low-powered (interrogating minions, for example) or those with no recourse (black marketeers). And Glibness is unlikely to be detected, and therefore unlikely to provoke bad feelings.

Magic is very powerful in 3E and unless you have access to thousands of gold in countermeasures (or a pet wizard of your own) there is little you can do to thwart it. It is almost always the safest, fastest, and most effective course of action a party can take. All it requires is a little preparation and a well-designed spell book.

EDIT:

- Ritual Scrolls are usable by everyone as before, the same rules apply to the scroll users as above. The scroll costs the Market Price if bought from a third party, or a party member that has Ritual Casting and knows the ritual may make a scroll for the component cost. Making a scroll takes time equal to the original casting time. Using that scroll later has no additional cost, it was paid at scroll creation.


:eek:

This is a disaster.

Now you can start cranking out scrolls 1 per standard action and then hand them out to whomever needs a little extra magic. A bundle of Knock scrolls for the party Rogue, or Linked Portal scrolls for everyone... this opens a can of worms... purple worms!

Basically, this decouples (completely) Ritual Magic from Ritualists. Combined with the Skill Time Rule above, anyone can use Ritual Magic just as effectively as the Ritual Caster; they don't even need to carry around Reagents. It costs exactly the same to bring along a Ritual Caster as it does to bring along a Scroll, and the results vary only slightly. It's like a game of 3E where everyone has UMD for free at max ranks.

BlackRabite
2009-02-05, 07:51 PM
Sorry, typed that out from memory and I did forget those things. Making scrolls takes as long as the original ritual cast time to create, and you can't go higher than 20 when you take a number.

As far as the UMD comment, I can't remember but I thought that was how scrolls already worked.. anyone can use them, the cost is included in the scroll. In fact I think using them makes them cast faster.

Edit: I edited the 20 cap, the other bit about scroll creation was already in there though.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-05, 09:44 PM
As far as the UMD comment, I can't remember but I thought that was how scrolls already worked.. anyone can use them, the cost is included in the scroll. In fact I think using them makes them cast faster.

The original 4E Ritual Scrolls had two safeguards
(1) Skill Checks
A 1st level Fighter just isn't going to be able to get a good enough Arcana check to disable a decent Arcane Lock, even if he has a Scroll of Knock. This means that mainly folks trained in the appropriate Knowledge skills are going to get the most benefit from a scroll.

(2) Time & Money
It takes a ridiculously long period of time to make a Ritual Scroll. And it costs a good deal of money to get one. This prevents PCs from "stocking up," and makes learning new Rituals both useful and exciting.

The original Skill Check requirements made Arcana and Religion kind of a UMD skill, except that PCs generally didn't see many scrolls so you didn't have to worry about magic proliferation. But, by being able to Take 20 on a Skill Check, you have given everyone the ability to Take 20 on UMD. Think about what that does in 3E, and extrapolate.

Furthermore, by making scrolls cheap and easy to make, you are going to have PCs stocking up on scrolls "just in case." It will no longer matter what your Ritual Caster has in their Ritual Book; the PCs will just buy the necessary scroll and move on. The only use for Ritual Casters now is for their "free" Rituals. Heck, why bring the clumsy Wizard along on the Castle raid when you can just load up the party Rogue with the necessary scrolls?

cupkeyk
2009-02-05, 11:03 PM
I like the idea of Darklight, but it's too expensive to use on a regular basis (and also, mostly for flavor). Trading a daily power for a healing surge is not a good trade, ever (you only run out of surges if the part is in Big Trouble, and if it is, you'd better have your dailies ready!) Earthen Ramparts is highly situational and easily ignored because of movement rules, in addition to being done cheaper and more quickly with a shovel. Delay Affliction is not bad, but very situational.
30gp is cheap at level 4... and darklight becomes useless at high levels anyway.
i don't see how swapping out dailies for healing surges is a bad thing whe i have a salve of power. i can now swap my level 2 utility daily power for a daily attack power... hell yeah!
I don't think creating a five foot thick, five foot high, and at least twenty feet wide wall is possible with the same resources with a shovel than with earthen ramparts.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-06, 12:33 AM
i don't see how swapping out dailies for healing surges is a bad thing whe i have a salve of power. i can now swap my level 2 utility daily power for a daily attack power... hell yeah!
See, here's the flaw in your plan: getting an additional daily attack power is good. However, you're getting that from the salve of power, not the ritual. Spending a surge on the salve to get the power? Good. Spending a bunch of cash and a power to get that surge? Bad.

You could have had both the daily power and the utility power, and a bunch of gold left over. That would have been a better deal.

Knaight
2009-02-06, 12:39 AM
Tapping on the walls and all that stuff is included in the Search check. This isn't OD&D.

On the other hand outright attacking the walls isn't, and odds are the door will break pretty quickly. If you need stealth then its not a great idea, but if you need stealth then the ritual isn't much better, what with all the chanting.

cupkeyk
2009-02-06, 12:49 AM
See, here's the flaw in your plan: getting an additional daily attack power is good. However, you're getting that from the salve of power, not the ritual. Spending a surge on the salve to get the power? Good. Spending a bunch of cash and a power to get that surge? Bad.

You could have had both the daily power and the utility power, and a bunch of gold left over. That would have been a better deal.

But then wouldn't that scenario show that i just started my day? my scenario is depicting encounter three or so after having used my attack daily but not my utility daily and expecting a fourth encounter where an attack daily and healing surges to spare will be more useful than a utility and some gold. symbul's convertion allows for resource management.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-06, 12:58 AM
But then wouldn't that scenario show that i just started my day? my scenario is depicting encounter three or so after having used my attack daily but not my utility daily and expecting a fourth encounter where an attack daily and healing surges to spare will be more useful than a utility and some gold. symbul's convertion allows for resource management.
Well, no. A daily power (or daily utility power) is worth a lot more than a healing surge. Trading something valuable for something common is technically resource management, but that doesn't make it a good trade.

If you're short on surges, boost your con. Or grab that feat that gives you extra. Or one of those items that improve your healing. Or talk to the Leader role in your party. Or, you know, improve your defenses so you won't get hurt as often. Any or all of that are better than dropping a daily (utility) power for a single surge.

Totally Guy
2009-02-06, 05:37 AM
On the other hand outright attacking the walls isn't, and odds are the door will break pretty quickly.

I've seen this happen. The walls were loadbearing and rocks started to fall.

BlackRabite
2009-02-06, 08:37 AM
The original 4E Ritual Scrolls had two safeguards
(1) Skill Checks
A 1st level Fighter just isn't going to be able to get a good enough Arcana check to disable a decent Arcane Lock, even if he has a Scroll of Knock. This means that mainly folks trained in the appropriate Knowledge skills are going to get the most benefit from a scroll.

How is that different in this system? Sure the fighter can take a 20 by extending the casting time, but skill checks don't automatically succeed or fail on 20's and 1's. Even with a 20 that fighter is looking 20 + half is level and that's it. Most people with thievery/arcana can get that on a roll of 8 or above. There will be plenty of rituals that don't auto succeed when they take 20. Mostly what this rule does is prevent you from wasting the money it takes to cast a ritual then botch it all on a terrible roll. It's making rituals more cost effective. It seriously blows to roll a 1 after 10 minutes of casting and not only fail to remove a disease but screw your party member over to boot.



(2) Time & Money
It takes a ridiculously long period of time to make a Ritual Scroll. And it costs a good deal of money to get one. This prevents PCs from "stocking up," and makes learning new Rituals both useful and exciting.

You know, I can't remember ever reading over that section before, thank you for bringing it to my attention. It takes 16 hours, 16 freaking hours under the normal system to make a scroll of Tenser's Floating Disc. That's absurd and I'm glad I changed it.



The original Skill Check requirements made Arcana and Religion kind of a UMD skill, except that PCs generally didn't see many scrolls so you didn't have to worry about magic proliferation. But, by being able to Take 20 on a Skill Check, you have given everyone the ability to Take 20 on UMD. Think about what that does in 3E, and extrapolate.

I know what it does in 3E, I also know what it does in 4E, not anywhere near as much damage. You seem to be operating under the idea that 4E rituals are overpowered copies of 3E spells. They aren't, they are bad. They cost money, take time and feats to use and they aren't even close to a guaranteed outcome. In every situation in which a ritual isn't your only option, like water breathing, they are usually your worst possible option. Even giving them the ability to take 20 is just means that if they take the time as well as the resources to cast it, they are guaranteed an effect.



Furthermore, by making scrolls cheap and easy to make, you are going to have PCs stocking up on scrolls "just in case." It will no longer matter what your Ritual Caster has in their Ritual Book; the PCs will just buy the necessary scroll and move on. The only use for Ritual Casters now is for their "free" Rituals. Heck, why bring the clumsy Wizard along on the Castle raid when you can just load up the party Rogue with the necessary scrolls?

They still cost money to make. I don't know if your campaigns just rain money but stocking up on scrolls will get expensive and the opportunity cost should be pretty high. Yes it's always nice to have the free rituals, it's also nice to have a wizard or a cleric with you. That argument made no sense. Why would you bring the ritual caster, he only has the highest arcana/religion check thus being the most potent ritual caster, when the rogue can just use a scroll and have a 70% chance to fail each ritual. Even if you have the time to take a 20 the whole point of the system is that most rituals are pointless when you have the time to cast them.

Saph
2009-02-06, 11:47 AM
As for Diplomacy: Glibness (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/glibness.htm). Having an utterly convincing lie can bolster one's diplomatic endeavors tremendously. And the listener has barely a chance to detect it (base duration 50 minutes, no save) and little chance to penetrate the lie. Or you can go low-tech and have an Invisible Wizard cast Silent Charm Person on people with poor will saves. All it costs is a night's sleep.

The dominant diplomacy encounters in Red Hand of Doom involve negotiating with powerful people (e.g. town rulers) to persuade them to take certain courses of action or to grant you assistance. Both of your suggested courses of action would have been of dubious effectiveness at best and disastrous at worst. Quite frankly, if you had been playing a wizard in my campaign and had acted in a way consistent with what you seem to believe ("I don't need any of you to use skills, my magic is much more powerful") I think you would have had quite a good chance of sabotaging the party's efforts completely.


Magic ... is almost always the safest, fastest, and most effective course of action a party can take.

Your arguments so far have proven the opposite if anything - your lie/charm strategy on the Lords of Brindol would have been neither safe nor effective.

- Saph

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-06, 01:46 PM
Your arguments so far have proven the opposite if anything - your lie/charm strategy on the Lords of Brindol would have been neither safe nor effective.

What about Glibness though? I can't help but notice you haven't mentioned that route. The ability to say "your town will die unless you do X" and have it believed without question is a very good bargaining chip. Either you have to start arbitrarily saying "no way they'd believe that" (which neuters the intent of the spell) or cap Diplomacy modifiers in a silly fashion. If the mayor believes that "the town is about to be destroyed" and "we are the only ones who can stop it," wouldn't you say that gives a pretty substantial modifier?

And yes, you can say "oh, the NPC only believes that the PCs believe what they're saying" but doesn't that also neuter the effectiveness of the Bluff skill? As I see it, only by use of Oberoni's Fallacy can stop Glibness from being a perfect example of skill substitution by magic.

@BlackRabite
On Skill Checks
Cure Disease kills on a roll of 9 or less, and eats up 2-3 Healing Surges on a roll of less than 20.

Eye of Alarm doesn't have Darkvision if you roll less than 20

Loremaster's Bargain requires a Skill Challenge to work at all

Magic Circle keeps out creatures of level (Arcana Check -10)

Phantom Steed summons only normal horses for checks of less than 20.

These are just a few examples. By allowing PCs to Take 20 on skill checks, you're letting them use Rituals as if they were at least one tier higher. Magic Circle, in particular, is problematic since it can make the PCs immune to anything of Heroic Tier.

And as for Mr. Rogue - remember that he can substitute time for skill. 20 minutes really isn't that long if, say, he needs to open the Big Trapped Vault hidden in the Castle. Particularly if he Arcane Locks the only entrance and Linked Portals his way out with the loot.

On Power Levels
The point is that, while 4E Rituals are weak compared to 3E spells, they are strong compared to other things in 4E. Relative, not absolute, power is what matters. Few things in 4E can counter a Ritual, and because Rituals are expensive the wealthier party (usually the PCs) has a large advantage.

The problem as I see it is that many people only look at 4E Rituals in a 3E context. You really have to see how the Ritual rules interact with the system as a whole before judging their effectiveness.

On Gold
Rituals are not as expensive as they seem. As I said before, Rituals are most useful if you cast ones which are below your level, because you can afford the cost. Fast Scroll making has an additional advantage in that you don't need to carry around hundreds of gold worth of components for your Rituals.

Perhaps you don't consider carrying capacity (physical space, not weight) but 100 gold worth of Eye of Newt takes up a lot of room. Unless your PC wants to fill an entire Bag of Holding with components (or only carry Residuum) there is a practical limitation to the amount of components he can carry on an adventure. However, if he can just hang out in the back room of the local herbalist for a few hours to convert all he needs into scrolls, he suddenly doesn't have to worry much about what to bring along.

Now, it's obvious that I disagree with your changes in principle, but it is your game, so go for it. I have attempted to make suggestions which work with your stated goals, but most of them are not strictly necessary for your game to function.

However, the Take 20 rule has the potential to break your game right in half and I heartily recommend you reconsider it. Being able to act like a Paragon when you are only Heroic is going to be a problem, no matter how you slice it.

Marshall
2009-02-06, 03:26 PM
This thread has actually given me an idea that I *might* use in my campaign.

Bring back Vancian casting, but for rituals.

After an extended rest, a character with Ritual Casting can prepare a number of rituals (maybe, a number of rituals equal to the higher of the Int/Wis mod? With the total level of rituals not to exceed the caster's level. Or maybe 2x level? anyway, some mechanical way to give a 'reasonable' number of rituals prepared).

The caster then performs those rituals in the morning, expending the casting time (except for 1 standard action?) and some portion of the material components (50%?)

Then, the caster can complete the ritual at a later time, expending the action and the remainder of the component cost, and cast the spell. Possibly with a modifier to the skill roll for casting in combat (that could be limited by lengthening the incombat casting time?)

Hmm. I'll have to look into it, but giving classes a limited number of 'quick cast' rituals that cost them whether or not they get expended might have some validity. I'll have to make sure there aren't any rituals that break the game if they can be cast in combat though.

BlackRabite
2009-02-06, 04:52 PM
On Skill Checks

Cure Disease kills on a roll of 9 or less, and eats up 2-3 Healing Surges on a roll of less than 20.

Eye of Alarm doesn't have Darkvision if you roll less than 20

Loremaster's Bargain requires a Skill Challenge to work at all

Magic Circle keeps out creatures of level (Arcana Check -10)

Phantom Steed summons only normal horses for checks of less than 20.

These are just a few examples. By allowing PCs to Take 20 on skill checks, you're letting them use Rituals as if they were at least one tier higher. Magic Circle, in particular, is problematic since it can make the PCs immune to anything of Heroic Tier.

And as for Mr. Rogue - remember that he can substitute time for skill. 20 minutes really isn't that long if, say, he needs to open the Big Trapped Vault hidden in the Castle. Particularly if he Arcane Locks the only entrance and Linked Portals his way out with the loot.

I don't understand what point your trying to make here. You're saying that taking the random dice factor away is destroying the rituals, it's not doing any such thing. None of those rituals do anything more than they could do with a good dice roll. If you have a problem with magic circle it's not that you can take a 20, it's a level 5 ritual which means a normal wizard of that level will add 11 or 12 to the roll. You have a better than 50% chance to completely lock out the heroic tier already. Even under my rules it takes 6 rounds to cast and 1 extra minute for each square inside the circle. You can't cast that one fast anyway, so it's purpose is completely unchanged. Who cares if you can take a 20 and lock out all creatures of a chosen type level 21 or under. You could already do that it was just random. If you know somethings coming for you and have 20+ minutes to prepare for it then Magic Circle it up, it's not much different than an hour according to you, since time is completely irrelevant in your campaigns, the only difference is my caster didn't waste an hour of his time to roll a 1 and die a horrible death due to chance. All this rule does is give you a better guaranteed result for your time, it doesn't alter the rituals purpose. If the rogue in the castle can take 20 minutes to arcane lock a door and then another 20 minutes to Knock open a locked chest, then another 10 minutes to cast linked portal and make his escape with no one noticing and no one able to beat a 28'ish DC to open the arcane lock to stop him then he deserves it. Heck doing it that way took longer than doing it with older style rituals and skills.



On Power Levels
The point is that, while 4E Rituals are weak compared to 3E spells, they are strong compared to other things in 4E. Relative, not absolute, power is what matters. Few things in 4E can counter a Ritual, and because Rituals are expensive the wealthier party (usually the PCs) has a large advantage.

The problem as I see it is that many people only look at 4E Rituals in a 3E context. You really have to see how the Ritual rules interact with the system as a whole before judging their effectiveness.


Some rituals are strong because they are unique. Rituals like Animal Messenger and Linked portal. The ones that you keep using as examples are not strong because they are easily countered. Have you even read these rituals? You keep mentioning Arcane Lock as though it doesn't blow. Arcane lock uses your arcana check +5 as the DC to open the portal with a thievery check. A wizard can get a pretty good DC, about the same kind of DC a same level rogue can make with a thievery check. Arcane lock also goes away if they make the check, you dismiss it or the door is destroyed Depending on what kind of door you put it on, it's not going to be long before a commoner with an axe puts paid to your fancy magic. You can take the 20 minutes under my system and put a pretty strong arcane lock on something, but unless it's a really nice door it's going to take much less time and money to destroy it.



On Gold
Rituals are not as expensive as they seem. As I said before, Rituals are most useful if you cast ones which are below your level, because you can afford the cost. Fast Scroll making has an additional advantage in that you don't need to carry around hundreds of gold worth of components for your Rituals.

Perhaps you don't consider carrying capacity (physical space, not weight) but 100 gold worth of Eye of Newt takes up a lot of room. Unless your PC wants to fill an entire Bag of Holding with components (or only carry Residuum) there is a practical limitation to the amount of components he can carry on an adventure. However, if he can just hang out in the back room of the local herbalist for a few hours to convert all he needs into scrolls, he suddenly doesn't have to worry much about what to bring along.


If you read the section on the reagents all of the possible reagents are extremely small and easy to transport items. Like vials of powdered metals or sacred oils. I suppose you may houserule a weight to your ritual components but by RAW carrying the components for 100 rituals can weigh anywhere from 10 ounces to 20 pounds. No matter which it is it's probably just as inconvenient to thumb through a giant stack of scrolls until you find the one your looking for.



Now, it's obvious that I disagree with your changes in principle, but it is your game, so go for it. I have attempted to make suggestions which work with your stated goals, but most of them are not strictly necessary for your game to function.

However, the Take 20 rule has the potential to break your game right in half and I heartily recommend you reconsider it. Being able to act like a Paragon when you are only Heroic is going to be a problem, no matter how you slice it.

I've already considered that it may be a problem, this is a trial run on the system and as I said I'll be posting the results of said run on Monday. Either way the take 20 rule is doing nothing that the dice couldn't do, it's just more consistent. I'm all about a randomizing element when it can create tension, like in battle or in a tight situation, but there is no reason to have to say "I take ten minutes to cast arcane lock *roll* crud I got a 2. I guess I'll burn the gold and take ten more minutes to recast it and not get screwed. *roll* Ok, I can live with a 12" That just seems idiotic. Now if your running from a giant hurtamathing and you manage to shut a steel door behind you, turning around and spending a standard to say "I cast arcane lock on the door, let's hope I roll well and buy us some time *roll* Sweet! a 16, take that hurtamathing!" That seems a bit more awesome and gives rituals a non-boring and non-useless role.

Saph
2009-02-06, 05:14 PM
What about Glibness though? I can't help but notice you haven't mentioned that route. The ability to say "your town will die unless you do X" and have it believed without question is a very good bargaining chip. Either you have to start arbitrarily saying "no way they'd believe that" (which neuters the intent of the spell) or cap Diplomacy modifiers in a silly fashion. If the mayor believes that "the town is about to be destroyed" and "we are the only ones who can stop it," wouldn't you say that gives a pretty substantial modifier?

And yes, you can say "oh, the NPC only believes that the PCs believe what they're saying" but doesn't that also neuter the effectiveness of the Bluff skill?

Not really, no. It allows you to lie convincingly, which is the point of the skill. Pretty much every DM I know plays Bluff this way, so I don't know where you're getting the idea that this 'neuters' it.

Anyway, there are two responses here, depending on how you want to play:

a) "Bluff says the target believes it! I'm playing by RAW no matter how stupid it is and you're using the Oberoni Fallacy if you don't go along!" Okay, fine. Bluff isn't Diplomacy. The Red Hand of Doom module asks for a Diplomacy check, not a Bluff check, so it doesn't matter what your Bluff result is. Unreasonable? Sure, but then you shouldn't have tried to play rules-lawyer in the first place.

b) "Okay, let's go with a reasonable interpretation . . ." Good, since this is what I was going to do anyway. You use Glibness and lie convincingly. However, the mayor is not a complete moron, so he also discusses the problem with other PCs and NPCs. Contradictions occur. He goes back to you; you still pass your Bluff check. The mayor now has conflicting testimonies with no obvious way of telling which one is true and which one is false. Which one does he pick? At this point the encounter could go in several different directions, although it's still quite possible that you could succeed (with a Diplomacy check, natch).

However, at this point I would also make the out-of-character comment that your character is acting like a complete moron. All you had to do was pass a single DC 15 or 20 Diplomacy check. In fact, you didn't even have to do that! All you had to do was stop talking long enough for the party face to do what he's good at. Instead, you tried to prove that you were better than the skillmonkey, and ended up landing in a web of lies that was totally unnecessary . . . all of which could have been avoided if you'd just let the skill characters handle it.

So explain to me how your chosen solution was 'safer and more effective' than just having the paladin take 10 on a Diplomacy roll?

- Saph

Artanis
2009-02-06, 05:59 PM
(maybe, a number of rituals equal to the higher of the Int/Wis mod? With the total level of rituals not to exceed the caster's level. Or maybe 2x level? anyway, some mechanical way to give a 'reasonable' number of rituals prepared).
What about this:

Each ritual is based on a certain skill, right? Well, all of them are either Arcana (INT), or Religion/Heal/Nature (WIS). So...

Maximum total number of prepared rituals equal to the higher of WIS/INT mod.
Maximum number of prepared rituals for each stat equal to that stat mod.
Multiple-stat rituals (like Brew Potion) choose which of the skills it will ultimately use when cast, and counts as using that stat for filling prep slots.

For instance, say a caster has +3 INT mod, and +4 WIS mod. He'd be able to prepare a total of 4 rituals, with at most 3 of them being Arcana. If he preps 3 Enchant Magic Item rituals (Arcana), then if he wanted to also prep Brew Potion, he would have to prep it for Religion.

Kurald Galain
2009-02-06, 07:08 PM
- The time it takes to complete a ritual is 1 standard action for every 10 minutes it would normally take. (et cetera)
This is a very good idea. The time factor is the most substantial one in making ritual casting ineffective.


Bring back Vancian casting, but for rituals.
This is a good idea, but note that your double restriction (1. limit of X rituals per day, and 2. must pay even if you don't end up using them) may not actually be required. I would suggest that in actual gameplay, only one of the two will actually matter. In other words, the KISS principle.

Essentially, your idea boils down to the same as BR: remove the time constraint. Why WOTC would print a ritual that is used for when you're in a hurry (e.g. Shadow Walk) and have it take an hour to cast... it boggles the mind. It sounds like those websites that promise to make you rich, if you'll just pay them a fee they'll tell you how :smallbiggrin:


I don't understand what point your trying to make here. You're saying that taking the random dice factor away is destroying the rituals, it's not doing any such thing.
Yeah, I must say I have trouble following that too. It seems that OH is repeating theoretical points that have already been refuted in practice by Saph et al. A repeated assertion does not strike me as evidence for anything.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-06, 07:46 PM
@BlackRabite

Auto Success
The problem here is that you have removed all element of risk from an encounter. Magic starts becoming your go-to problem solver as the chance of failure drops, and being able to take 20 minutes to solve a problem is why people always Took 20 in 3E to find secret doors or traps, or to pick locks. IMHO, auto-success takes a lot of the thrill out of adventuring, but YMMV.

Also, as far as I remember, there is no provision for Taking 20 in 4E. I may have missed it (I saw the Take 10 page though), but I imagine you'll be using it anyways. I think that may kill a lot of potential Skill Challenges, but so be it.

Time
Time is not irrelevant in my games, but 10 minutes (and 20 minutes) is not as long as people seem to think. 3E PCs consistently take naps whenever the casters needed to restore their spells, and most of the time, they could without harm to the story. That lost ruins isn't going to become any more lost if you sleep another night before finding it, after all.

10 minutes is a nice number because it is long enough to keep it from being used in time-sensitive situations (like combat) but not so long that PCs can't feasibly use them when in a dangerous area. Think about it - even in a cavernous BBEG castle, does he have enough guards to ensure that every inch is checked in less than 10 minutes? Particularly if the PCs have already neutralized some of them? A round is 6 seconds long; try to see what you can do in 6 seconds. It's really very little time at all.

An hour, or even half an hour, though, that's real time. No BBEG worth his salt will have patrols with gaps of an hour or more, and even random creatures might wander by in an hour. Magic Circle is something that is time intensive to cast, and costly to attempt (even without the risk of failure); it is very powerful as a result. It is designed to seal away MacGuffins, to provide a refuge for a wounded party, or to protect someone very important.

Take away the time component (a minute to cover a four-man party) and you have a really handy protective fortress to be used in the room before the BBEG - or even around the BBEG if you have a strong enough guy to hold him Immobile for 7 rounds. Take 20 and a 5th level Wizard can seal away anything up through Paragon, or create an invulnerable seal against anything 16th level or lower. Heck, with Arcana Focus, the same Wizard could affect everything up through Paragon too!

Not a bad way to seal the Lich's amulet forever, no? And a 10th Level Wizard can block out everything except Level 30 creatures. This is problematic.

A 10 minute Ritual can be used strategically; a 1 round Ritual can be used tactically. 4E wanted to encourage strategic thinking by adding these time requirements, and IMHO it did this very well.

Ritual Selection
I like using Arcane Lock because, in an earlier discussion, it was stated that said Ritual was absolutely worthless. It's not, and here's why.

First, you have to use it wisely. Don't use it on the plywood internal door; use it in the big, banded doors of doom that the BBEG designed to defend himself from invasion. Hilarity ensues if you do this on the outside while the (non-Ritualist) BBEG is inside. Bonus points if you use it on his bed room :smallbiggrin:

Note that it affects portcullises too. Very handy.

Secondly, look at the actual DCs involved. A 4th level Eladrin Wizard (18 INT) has a +13 on Arcana. A 4th level Halfing Rogue (18 DEX), with tools and Skill Focus has a +18. If both sides Took 20, the Arcane Lock would be DC 38, as would the Rogue's pick. But if the Eladrin took Arcane Focus, the very best Rogue of equivalent level could not pick it. That is worth 25 gp to me.

Now, if you roll normally, no wizard will be guaranteed a perfect lock. It is very likely that the Skill-focused Eladrin will create a good lock, and one which non-Rogue monsters are unlikely to be able to bypass short of destruction. But if you allow Take 20, well, you run into the Magic Circle problem on a smaller scale.

If this Ritual, which you (and many others) have dismissed as useless can do all that, think about the real power of the useful Rituals. This is why it makes such a handy example.

Hopefully the above convinced you that Take 20 Rituals can lead to disastrous results very quickly. It allows low-level Ritualists to cast Paragon-Class Rituals, and makes every fighter with a scroll nearly as good. If you must have a "Take X" rule, maybe you should lower it further. No matter what incarnation you have it, it will play havoc with the 4E rules, but you can do a lot to minimize it.

@Saph

So explain to me how your chosen solution was 'safer and more effective' than just having the paladin take 10 on a Diplomacy roll?

You allow people to Take 10 on a Diplomacy roll? :smallconfused:

If so, then of course I'll look for the PC who has the skill to the point that 10+Skill will pass whatever DC is expected. No need to roll at all; using the skill is now 100% effective and even less costly than magic. It's what I do with Pick Locks and Search anyhow; whether that's a desirable outcome is a different story entirely.

I, for one, don't allow PCs to Take 10 on social encounters - it keeps the outcome dicey and means that even the best liar in the world will have to choose his lies wisely, in case he rolls poorly. I mean, for goodness sake, a Bard who can Take 10 on social checks can basically get whatever he wants after a few levels, unless you set the DCs extremely high. And a Beguiler need never speak a word of truth again.

But, on Glibness

A successful Bluff check indicates that the target reacts as you wish, at least for a short time (usually 1 round or less) or believes something that you want it to believe.


Your speech becomes fluent and more believable. You gain a +30 bonus on Bluff checks made to convince another of the truth of your words.

I'm not entirely sure that I agree with your analysis based on the RAW. Disregarding Response A (since I doubt any DM says It's The Only Way for social checks) I don't see how you get Response B. If you are convinced of the truth of someone's statement, do you always do a background check? That sounds like the action of someone very paranoid or someone who isn't "convinced."

For further clarity:

Convince: To bring by the use of argument or evidence to firm belief or a course of action.

To be sure, very large lies may result in people making second thoughts, but if the lie has a time requirement ("Orcs are marching on your town right now! If you don't give me aid, it will be too late") then someone who is convinced of your lie may decide not to interrogate everyone else.

Considering that few people have Sense Motive as a class skill, a trained liar with Glibness may be unbeatable with a +30 bonus (since even the most outlandish lies only give the listener a +20 to their Sense Motive). Since you would be using this on difficult Diplomacy checks (a 5+ check is not one) it is clear that Glibness can easily conquer such social challenges, by RAW.

Is Glibness the "win button" for all social challenges? No, but it is tremendously powerful for any time that a well-placed lie would be helpful... which is surprisingly common for adventurers.

Saph
2009-02-07, 05:49 AM
If so, then of course I'll look for the PC who has the skill to the point that 10+Skill will pass whatever DC is expected. No need to roll at all; using the skill is now 100% effective and even less costly than magic. It's what I do with Pick Locks and Search anyhow; whether that's a desirable outcome is a different story entirely.

Right. So you're agreeing that in these situations, the skill is a better option than magic, yes?


I don't see how you get Response B. If you are convinced of the truth of someone's statement, do you always do a background check? That sounds like the action of someone very paranoid or someone who isn't "convinced."

To be sure, very large lies may result in people making second thoughts, but if the lie has a time requirement ("Orcs are marching on your town right now! If you don't give me aid, it will be too late") then someone who is convinced of your lie may decide not to interrogate everyone else.

If the NPC is so gullible that they don't think to check a surprising claim, how have they gained a position of power in the first place? Your PC isn't the only one with the Bluff skill. Would you be happy if your PC was treated this way by NPCs? "Okay, your entire party failed your Sense Motive roll, so now you all believe everything he says completely. No, you're not allowed to check it, he said that you don't have time, remember?"

I doubt you'd find that very much fun, so I wouldn't do it to you. In return, I wouldn't allow you to do it to others.

I have to say, I think you're really reaching here. Your argument has come down to trying to explain why Bluff should be able to be a substitute for Diplomacy, which neither makes much sense nor does anything to prove your point about 3.5 magic.

- Saph

Timeras
2009-02-07, 05:56 AM
"Okay, let's go with a reasonable interpretation . . ." Good, since this is what I was going to do anyway. You use Glibness and lie convincingly. However, the mayor is not a complete moron, so he also discusses the problem with other PCs and NPCs. Contradictions occur. He goes back to you; you still pass your Bluff check. The mayor now has conflicting testimonies with no obvious way of telling which one is true and which one is false. Which one does he pick? At this point the encounter could go in several different directions, although it's still quite possible that you could succeed (with a Diplomacy check, natch).

But if you use diplomacy, the mayor won't even think of cosulting his advisors?


However, at this point I would also make the out-of-character comment that your character is acting like a complete moron. All you had to do was pass a single DC 15 or 20 Diplomacy check. In fact, you didn't even have to do that! All you had to do was stop talking long enough for the party face to do what he's good at. Instead, you tried to prove that you were better than the skillmonkey, and ended up landing in a web of lies that was totally unnecessary . . . all of which could have been avoided if you'd just let the skill characters handle it.

So explain to me how your chosen solution was 'safer and more effective' than just having the paladin take 10 on a Diplomacy roll?


Some partys don't have a specialist for every problem.
TWhy WOTC would print a ritual that is used for when you're in a hurry (e.g. Shadow Walk) and have it take an hour to cast... it boggles the mind.

Spending an hour for the ability to travel at five times your normal speed for the next eight hours sounds like a good idea if you are in a hurry.

Totally Guy
2009-02-07, 06:12 AM
I like using Arcane Lock because, in an earlier discussion, it was stated that said Ritual was absolutely worthless. It's not, and here's why.

First, you have to use it wisely. Don't use it on the plywood internal door; use it in the big, banded doors of doom that the BBEG designed to defend himself from invasion. Hilarity ensues if you do this on the outside while the (non-Ritualist) BBEG is inside. Bonus points if you use it on his bed room :smallbiggrin:

And don't forget that when the door on an Acane Lock is opened, whether by magic or by force, the caster will know about it.

Unfortunately my only experience of rituals is as a DM but that's really good way to deliver a plot hook. "The BBEG has opened his bedroom door somehow!"

My players have been using some rituals recently but they've never gone out of their way to aquire more rituals so recently I started substituting gold treasure parcels for gc worth of rituals to master.

Now my players have a little trick they use to master new rituals. The one ritual caster casts Tensers Disk and the other ritual caster sits upon it to learn a new ritual over that day's travel. (This bypasses the precedent I set that you can't use your own disk to study whilst travelling because of the move action per round you're using.)

Kurald Galain
2009-02-07, 06:14 AM
Spending an hour for the ability to travel at five times your normal speed for the next eight hours sounds like a good idea if you are in a hurry.

It does sound good. But if you think about it, it really isn't good. Seriously now, how often does this come up, ever, unless the DM explictly goes out of his way to make sure it does? And would you really make a substantial investment on this tiny chance?

Whenever you have to make up an extremely convoluted circumstance in order to make a ritual useful, you're really only proving that it isn't useful.

Saph
2009-02-07, 06:27 AM
But if you use diplomacy, the mayor won't even think of cosulting his advisors?

Actually, in my campaign, he did. Since the paladin was not lying, however, this was not a problem - in fact, the ensuing evidence backed up the paladin's recommended course of action.

Telling a bunch of lies to a would-be-ally when you can simply present the truth persuasively instead is not a smart thing to do. That's why I'm a little exasperated at Oracle recommending it.

- Saph

Timeras
2009-02-07, 08:58 AM
It does sound good. But if you think about it, it really isn't good. Although you try to imply otherwise, I did think about it.


Whenever you have to make up an extremely convoluted circumstance in order to make a ritual useful, you're really only proving that it isn't useful.

Fist you say, the ritual is useless, because when you're in a hurry you don't have the time to perform it. After I explain that this is not the case, you say it's useless because you'll never be in such a hurry anyway.

And it doesn't take extremely convoluted circumstance to make it useful.
Actually, in my campaign, he did. Since the paladin was not lying, however, this was not a problem - in fact, the ensuing evidence backed up the paladin's recommended course of action.

Telling a bunch of lies to a would-be-ally when you can simply present the truth persuasively instead is not a smart thing to do. That's why I'm a little exasperated at Oracle recommending it.

I do not know the campaign, but if just telling the truth ist enough and the mayor even has evidence, that you are telling the truth, you shouldn't even need diplomacy in the first place.

MartinHarper
2009-02-07, 12:44 PM
Whenever you have to make up an extremely convoluted circumstance in order to make a ritual useful, you're really only proving that it isn't useful.

Well, it's showing that it is only circumstantially useful. This is obviously different from the situation Rabite wants. The main problem in my mind with Rabite's house rules is that they represent a straight power boost for Clerics and Wizards, which could lead to those classes overshadowing others in puzzle situations.

I looked through the rituals in the PHB, and saw how they changed under Rabite's house rules and feats. Some that seemed odd:
Enchant Magic Item: A level eight wizard can create four level eight magic items a day, for free, taking four hours to do so.
Leomund's Secret Chest: summon chest as a standard action, climb in as a move action, and dismiss it as a minor action.
Drawmij's Instant Summons: not really any better than it used to be. Situationally useful, as it was before.

BlackRabite
2009-02-07, 04:18 PM
Changing the number you can take by increasing the casting time to 10 maximum, and excluded rituals that create magical items from the number of free casts per day in the feats.

Also, I thought they had made an errata on Secret Chest?

Kurald Galain
2009-02-07, 05:17 PM
Well, it's showing that it is only circumstantially useful.
The problem is not that rituals are only circumstantially useful (in fact, that would be the point of them not being powers). The problem is (1) that they require a large investment beforehand, planning for a circumstance that might never occur, (2) they require the situation to persist for 10 - 60 minutes which the wizard needs to spend chanting, and (3) that several of them really aren't useful in the circumstance they claim to be for (e.g. witness how many people overlook that an Arcanely Locked door can be opened in seconds by repeated thievery or strength rolls).

Many succesful DMs already handwave one or two of these restrictions.

A good example of a circumstantial item is Clearwater Potion. It has a simple effect that you're unlikely to need - but it is very cheap. So a preparation-minded individual could carry several of such measures around, look cool if the situation occurs, and not be seriously nerfed if it never does.


The main problem in my mind with Rabite's house rules is that they represent a straight power boost for Clerics and Wizards
While that is a valid point, the moment rituals became powerful more people would simply take the Ritual Casting feat. A ranger or warlock could easily pull it off.


Enchant Magic Item: A level eight wizard can create four level eight magic items a day, for free, taking four hours to do so.
True. That needs to be an exception.



Leomund's Secret Chest: summon chest as a standard action, climb in as a move action, and dismiss it as a minor action.
No - the problem with LSC is that it can be used to transport people in the first place, not whether it takes seconds or minutes to do so.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-07, 05:26 PM
And it doesn't take extremely convoluted circumstance to make it useful.
I do not know the campaign, but if just telling the truth ist enough and the mayor even has evidence, that you are telling the truth, you shouldn't even need diplomacy in the first place.

Seconded. And I'd like to note that many lies (like "the Orcs plan to attack you next") are not easily checked, but still very helpful. Hell, if I found my DM was arbitrarily having everyone from shopkeeper to king do an interrogation every time I used Bluff, I'd get into the habit of pretending to cast Divinations to get my "secret information" so that the PCs can reply, truthfully, that what I said must be true.

As for the "Take 10," I'd like to refer back to my original reason that magic is the first recourse in D&D:


Magic in 3E was virtually costless, both in terms of time and money. As noted in this podcast (http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/05/18/writing-excuses-episode-15-costs-and-ramifications-of-magic/), costless magic results in people using magic to solve everything. Why invest in picking locks when your party wizard can cast Knock? Or, better yet, invest in scrolls of Knock? Why improve your Hide skill if the party wizard can just cast Invisibility (or use a scroll or a wand)? Those scrolls ran at about 200 gold apiece, chump change for LV 5+, and a Wand of Invisibility was 9K - pricey, but not crippling. And those very effects are available for free to anyone with sufficient caster levels; for spontaneous casters, the "investment" needed is trivial.

Plus, these spells had, by and large, a 100% success rate, as opposed to skills which could fail. So you had a situation where you could choose between 100% Success x Small/No Cost versus >100% Success x Small/No Cost; the correct answer would almost always be to use magic.

And we're not even talking about higher level shenanigans, like Wish loops and such silliness. Magic could deliver results for many (perhaps most) situations for as much actual cost as a skill, but with no chance of failure. This is "magic solves everything;" logically, anyone with magic can and should solve their problems with magic rather than mundane means.

Now, for extended explanation
The equation is Cost x % Success.
For normal skills, this is (small time) x >100% chance of success
For magic, this is (small time + 1 per-day usage) x 100% chance of success
For auto-success skills, this is (small time) x 100% chance of success

Failure Costs are relevant, of course, but for magic & auto-success they are 0 - all that adding Failure Costs does is make normal skill usage less attractive. Opportunity Costs are generally greater for skills, since Wizards can always invest in a larger spellbook, but skill points only appear when a level is gained. For spontaneous casters, the cost is higher since they cannot expand their spell collection, but I think this is balanced by their ability to spontaneously cast any spell from their list, rather than from a strict list of memorized spells. In either case, the ability to use Pearls of Power or other magic items tends to keep the Opportunity Cost of spell-use lower. As does the fact that spell selection or per-day use can be fixed costlessly with a single night of sleep; skill point selections cannot ever be reset, unless you allow retraining.

A special mention should be made of magical counter-measures. If the PCs are aware of such countermeasures (or find them likely) then they will reduce the chance of success for magic accordingly. However, since magical countermeasures are costly (sometimes substantially so) while casting is generally not, only a truly exceptional organization should be able to mount sufficient countermeasures to magically stymie PCs on all fronts. And many of those very countermeasures make mundane attempts impossible, which removes normal skill usage from the running entirely.

Time is not terribly relevant, since all cost roughly the same amount of time to accomplish (most spells only take 1 round to cast, or can be cast when time is not at a premium). The only cost for using a spell is the 1 per-day usage which, as I mentioned above, is regained by a night of sleep. Skills, of course, generally have no usage cost.

Thus, the only real concern in this equation is the chance of success. At most, a non-automatic skill can have a 95% chance of success and most have a success rate far below that. In addition, magic can make impossible tasks (high DC jump or climb checks, for example) not only possible but automatically successful; it can even make merely difficult checks 100% successful. Provided the PCs do not know the exact DC of a check, and there is some cost of failure, it makes sense for them to choose the course of action that has the highest likely rate of success - costs being equal, or roughly so.

Auto-success skills, by this calculation, are strictly better than magic. Not only do they never risk failure (like magic) but they do not even use resources, scarce or otherwise. In 2E, we'd refer to this situations as ones which are not a challenge; no roll is necessary to get out of bed, for example. I find it personally problematic that a DEX 16 Rogue can avoid AoO against anyone, be they gods or goblins, by level 5, but that is neither here nor there.

Summary
The equation for decision making is Cost x % Success.
For auto-success skills, this is (small time) x 100% chance of success
For magic, this is (small time + 1 per-day usage) x 100% chance of success
For normal skills, this is (small time) x >100% chance of success

In all possible situations, an auto-success skill is strictly better than the other options.

IF
- Failure has some cost
- The PCs cannot accurately calculate their chance of success before they roll

A rational PC would select the option that provides the highest possibility of success for the lowest overall cost. As spell usage rarely, if ever, imposes significant costs and nearly always provides a substantial bonus to success, magic would always be the first choice of response for a given PC.

Saph
2009-02-07, 08:06 PM
I do not know the campaign, but if just telling the truth ist enough and the mayor even has evidence...

Red Hand of Doom, and yes, it's what the module says. If you want to know more, you can find a discussion of this issue between myself and kjones elsewhere on this board.

- Saph

Asbestos
2009-02-07, 11:31 PM
(3) that several of them really aren't useful in the circumstance they claim to be for (e.g. witness how many people overlook that an Arcanely Locked door can be opened in seconds by repeated thievery or strength rolls).

By level 4 my (unoptimized) Wizard will have an 11 in Arcana. Presumably I want to make the best Arcane Lock I can, so I enlist the aid of 4 of my friends in the ritual. The maximum DC Lock I can create is 20+11+2(x4)+5 or 44. 44! I would LOVE to see a 4th level rogue, optimized for Thievery open that or a fighter break it down.

As well, Knock allows me to do things that are quite beyond Thievery checks (removing bars and bolts on the other side of the door/gate) and lets me take on things that have a DC of 20 + skill + 8 + 5 which is quite a bit higher than a check that anyone else can make.

Both are well worth the 10 minutes.

FatR
2009-02-08, 04:10 AM
I don't really see how nerfing 3e's selection of spells like teleport, knock, detect secret doors and so on is a bad move however, and I would strongly suggest thinking twice about reversing the decision to do so.
There is a version of teleport in 4E. Nerfing teleports is a bad move, because it takes from high-level parties an opportunity to skip the boring parts of adventure. Nerfing others is a bad move, because they are already worse than skills, moreoverm this takes away an oppotunity to get around in dungeons without a skill-monkey. By the way, the defining role of a rogue is stabbing people for extreme damage, and these spells do not interfere in it.

Reluctance
2009-02-08, 04:51 AM
The current form is the "nerfed" form. I haven't ever seen anybody complain that 4e rituals are too powerful. Usually, it's people trying to make a 4e feat the equivalent of a powerful 3e class ability.

And I really don't see the problem with the casting costs for 4e rituals. Allowing players to bypass them will just cause wonkiness later in the system. If I thought they needed fixing, the two things I'd work on would be the casting times (slashing most of them by 90% would lead to faster magic but not necessarily more powerful magic), and learning costs (which, if you don't expect to use the ritual all that often, inflates the real price from "reasonable" to "unfair"). I might steal from Rabite and allow a "Floor 10" for extra time/money, but I don't know if that'd be worth the time and effort to create a good system for that.

(Making up the concept of Floor 10. It's like the Warforged feature; roll, and if it's less than 10 you treat it as 10.)

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-08, 05:10 AM
(Making up the concept of Floor 10. It's like the Warforged feature; roll, and if it's less than 10 you treat it as 10.)

So, a warning here.

A lot of Rituals that use Skill Checks use them not only to reduce the success-rate of the Ritual, but also as an internal power check. Rather than making Arcane Lock, Improved Arcane Lock, and Greater Arcane Lock, they just used one Ritual and took advantage of the smooth leveling in the Skill System to provide the three different levels of effect.

Phantom Steed is a good example. At Heroic, you usually just get horses, but a good Ritualist might get fast horses that ignore Difficult Terrain. At Paragon you'll always have the Fast Horses, but sometimes you'll get Water Walkers. At Epic, you'll always get Water Walkers, but sometimes you'll get fliers.

By allowing the Take 10, you are basically bumping Ritualists up a Tier - at Level 6 for Fast, and Level 10 for Water Walkers. Fortunately, Auto-Fliers remains an Only Epic result, but you can see the effects here.

The Take 10 power inflation is far less severe than a Take 20, but it is something people should be aware of.

MartinHarper
2009-02-08, 09:53 AM
The moment rituals became powerful more people would simply take the Ritual Casting feat. A ranger or warlock could easily pull it off.

That leaves the ranger/warlock a feat behind to achieve the same things a cleric and wizard get for free. My suggestion would be to split the feat into three: Ritual Casting (arcana), Ritual Casting (religion), and Ritual Casting (heal/nature), which provide access to rituals of the appropriate type. Clerics start with Ritual Casting (religion), and Wizards start with Ritual Casting (arcana). Also, any Improved Ritual Casting feats should not require users to be of a particular class.

Edit: You might also consider an "Improved Ritual Scroll User" feat that lets a level X character use X/2 scrolls per day of level X/2 without using up the scroll.

hamishspence
2009-02-08, 10:02 AM
Warlocks- maybe. Would be nice if there was something like the old Tome of Magic Binder system- they seem to have taken on that flavour, but we never see warlocks doing that sort of thing without the feat.