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View Full Version : [4e] Discussion of Rituals. Looking for Advice.



Gryffon
2010-07-22, 01:22 PM
I'm starting up a new 4e campaign as the DM, and I'm tweaking things here and there to make them more to my liking. One of the things that I would like to do so with are Rituals. Sadly, I've not had a lot of personal interaction with the mechanics of rituals as my previous 4e characters weren't ritual casters.

I love the idea behind and the flavor of rituals in 4e. But I have heard a lot of detraction in the component cost of rituals. I'm looking for some discussion on how to make rituals more friendly, and to be able to encourage their use.

One suggestion I saw online was to mimic what was done with Bards, which is to allow one free ritual a day(at heroic tier). For Bards this is simple, as this ritual must be one that requires being a Bard. For other classes, they suggest the free ritual be based on the skill relevant to the caster. That's still somewhat limited, as any class can take the Ritual Caster feat(disregarding how beneficial that might actually be). Using this method, I would probably allow the character to choose a skill that they would be allowed their ritual from.

Another method that I'm considering is to the make the ritual's component cost, more of a focus cost. A one time purchase will allow the caster to use the ritual as they please(well, as far as component cost goes). This would also allow things like masterwork foci, magical foci, and being able to add these to treasure(successful Arcana/Religion/Nature check determines which ritual it's for) instead of including generic Residuum.

Any additional thoughts in this? Ideas to share?

Ubercaledor
2010-07-22, 11:00 PM
*snip*
Another method that I'm considering is to the make the ritual's component cost, more of a focus cost. A one time purchase will allow the caster to use the ritual as they please(well, as far as component cost goes). This would also allow things like masterwork foci, magical foci, and being able to add these to treasure(successful Arcana/Religion/Nature check determines which ritual it's for) instead of including generic Residuum.

Any additional thoughts in this? Ideas to share?

I was thinking this one. Have a re-usable item, which would negate some of the repetitive costing while focusing the player towards re-using specific rituals rather than negating the cost of them across the board.

Other ideas could be giving them scrolls as treasure, which would encourage them to try it out. Make it useful in the directly subsequent scenario to put them in the frame of mind "Oh, we'd better have that prepared just in case!"

I think much of the weakness of Rituals in 4e is that unless you get ritual caster as a class ability, it isn't worth the feat, and there are so many ways around needing to be a ritualist that it just ends up being that thing you carry around but never really use. YMMV.

cupkeyk
2010-07-22, 11:26 PM
As for the bard variant, consider making the vistani feats available without taking the Vistani Heritage Feat. They basically let you use a ritual of a type without cost once a day. Example, Vistani Pathfinding lets you cast an Exploration ritual once a day at no cost.

There are also rituals that use a magic item as focus instead of component cost. You can amend the other existing rituals to help this out.

CarpeGuitarrem
2010-07-23, 12:33 AM
Also maybe if there's someone giving out missions, they can give them ritual scrolls and components as "get ready" gear for the mission. That'll get them into the mindset. Once they realize that "rituals can do stuff!", they might start using them more often. Also work components into treasure as bonus items, not deducting from the parcel.

Kurald Galain
2010-07-23, 02:51 AM
There's bigger problems with rituals than just the cost. I refer to Saph's insightful remarks (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7860326&postcount=46), who states that "It's not so much that they cost you money (although they do) and it's not so much that they take too long (although they do) and it's not so much that they have a ridiculous amount of restrictions on them (although they do). It's the fact that in just about any conceivable situation, it's easier to figure out a way to solve the problem non-magically than it is to figure out a way to solve the problem using a ritual."

Yes, the price is the most often talked about issue with rituals, but even making all rituals free (except creation rituals, presumably) wouldn't be enough to make them a useful option.

Telok
2010-07-23, 07:04 AM
Owning a ritual book isn’t enough to let you perform the ritual or rituals in it. You must first master a ritual by studying it for 8 uninterrupted hours

As long as you have the ritual’s book handy, you can perform a mastered ritual whenever you want.

When you ... copy a ritual into an existing book, you don’t just write a series of words on each page; you bind some of the ritual’s magic into the book. Therefore, you need a book of the highest quality, exotic inks, and expensive components, with a total cost equal to the ritual’s market price.

In addition to requiring gold, creating a ritual book or copying a ritual into an existing book takes time: 8 hours for a heroic tier ritual (1st–10th level),
16 hours for a paragon tier ritual (11th–20th level),
and 24 hours for an epic tier ritual (21st–30th level).


I once summarized the ritual rules for myself. I'll try to remember it here for you.

Master a ritual = 8 hours
Copy a ritual into your book = 8 hours per tier and market price
Buy a copy of a ritual = market price + 50gp (for the book itself)
Make a scroll = 8 hours per tier + market price + component cost
Buy a scroll = market price + component cost

It turns out that you either end up carrying lots of books or spending piles of money and time on just writing down the rituals. Funny thing tho, aside from Comrad's Succor, enchant, disenchant, transfer enchant, the disease and raise dead ones, you almost never ever use rituals. Until you get to epic it's easier to do without then to use rituals.

Dragosai
2010-07-23, 07:54 AM
There's bigger problems with rituals than just the cost. I refer to Saph's insightful remarks (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7860326&postcount=46), who states that "It's not so much that they cost you money (although they do) and it's not so much that they take too long (although they do) and it's not so much that they have a ridiculous amount of restrictions on them (although they do). It's the fact that in just about any conceivable situation, it's easier to figure out a way to solve the problem non-magically than it is to figure out a way to solve the problem using a ritual."

Yes, the price is the most often talked about issue with rituals, but even making all rituals free (except creation rituals, presumably) wouldn't be enough to make them a useful option.

Funny enough the above comments are precisely why I really like 4ED rituals. They remove the whole "Oh yeah I can just cast one spell and fix all that. What’s next?" spell toolbox that was 3.x. I think the one free ritual a day is better than a foci type solution, only because rituals can do very powerful things so setting maybe an upper limit on the "free" ritual a day might still keep things in line. All depends on how much you want the PC's to turn to rituals at all times or only when there is no better choice. I'll give an example of why I like rituals; Eagles Flight -a level 10 ritual it costs 1000gp to learn and has a component cost of 400g. The ritual summons 8 eagles to carry people and based on the skill check they fly at faster speeds. This gives level 10 characters access to flight, which IMO is one of those abilities that changes games dramatically. For example the PC's can cast this and miss a lot of encounters, less encounters can lead to less XP which can lead to the PC's not being the correct level to face other encounters down the road. At 400gp it's not crazy expensive but is not something level 10, or even a few levels higher, PC's will want to cast every day. Also it's not SO much the flat 400gp as it is walking around with 400gp worth of components burning a hole in your pocket.

Kurald Galain
2010-07-23, 08:29 AM
Funny enough the above comments are precisely why I really like 4ED rituals. They remove the whole "Oh yeah I can just cast one spell and fix all that. What’s next?" spell toolbox that was 3.x.
That is an exaggeration about 3E, though. While it's true that 3E wizards are overpowered, their non-combat utility magic is not a very big factor in this, and WOTC has overcompensated quite a lot in nerfing this.

For instance, forum people sometimes complain about how a 3E wizard's Knock spell made rogues unless, but they're missing three important points. One, that rogues have quite a lot of other abilities. Two, that in most campaigns, opening locks is neither common nor a big deal in the first place. And three, that 4E does the opposite, in that a rogue's (or anyone's) thievery skill makes the Knock spell useless.

Printing useless abilities is bad design. It doesn't matter whether this ability is a skill, power, or ritual; either way, if it is useless, it is a design flaw.


only because rituals can do very powerful things
Most of them actually can't. Of course, there's a very simple solution: play the rituals by their fluff text rather than their rules text, and the problem goes away. This is a staple of good DM'ing, but it's also an Oberoni fallacy (in that ignoring a bad rule doesn't make it any less of a bad rule).


This gives level 10 characters access to flight, which IMO is one of those abilities that changes games dramatically. For example the PC's can cast this and miss a lot of encounters
Eagle's Flight is still higher level than Linked Portal. If it is a problem that players fly over encounters, then the obvious solution is to have them encounter flying enemies. Also, a single hit from an enemy archer will force the eagle to land.

potatocubed
2010-07-23, 08:44 AM
To combat the terrible design of 4e rituals, might I recommend Azagar's Book of Rituals? It was put out by Goodman Games, features a whole load of rituals of every level, and most of them are considerably more useful than the ones in the PHB.

Of course, some of them are stupidly overpowered and a few are stupidly underpowered, but that's what you get with a 3rd-party product. Mostly it's on the money.

Kurald Galain
2010-07-23, 09:01 AM
To combat the terrible design of 4e rituals, might I recommend Azagar's Book of Rituals?

Interesting, I hadn't heard of that one. I'll look into it, thanks.

Dragosai
2010-07-23, 10:02 AM
That is an exaggeration about 3E, though. While it's true that 3E wizards are overpowered, their non-combat utility magic is not a very big factor in this, and WOTC has overcompensated quite a lot in nerfing this.

For instance, forum people sometimes complain about how a 3E wizard's Knock spell made rogues unless, but they're missing three important points. One, that rogues have quite a lot of other abilities. Two, that in most campaigns, opening locks is neither common nor a big deal in the first place. And three, that 4E does the opposite, in that a rogue's (or anyone's) thievery skill makes the Knock spell useless.

Printing useless abilities is bad design. It doesn't matter whether this ability is a skill, power, or ritual; either way, if it is useless, it is a design flaw.


Most of them actually can't. Of course, there's a very simple solution: play the rituals by their fluff text rather than their rules text, and the problem goes away. This is a staple of good DM'ing, but it's also an Oberoni fallacy (in that ignoring a bad rule doesn't make it any less of a bad rule).


Eagle's Flight is still higher level than Linked Portal. If it is a problem that players fly over encounters, then the obvious solution is to have them encounter flying enemies. Also, a single hit from an enemy archer will force the eagle to land.

Clearly you don't undersand why they made rituals work they way they do in 4ED. Also thank you for all that stuff about 3.x wizards, overpowered, rogues etc it gave me my first big laugh of the day, good stuff!

tbarrie
2010-07-23, 02:35 PM
To combat the terrible design of 4e rituals, might I recommend Azagar's Book of Rituals?

Using that book as a comparison will certainly combat the notion that WotC's rituals are terribly designed, yes.


Of course, some of them are stupidly overpowered and a few are stupidly underpowered, but that's what you get with a 3rd-party product. Mostly it's on the money.

I didn't read the book cover-to-cover, so I may have had bad luck, but I came away with the impression that the vast majority fell into the stupidly mispowered categories.

Kurald Galain
2010-07-23, 02:46 PM
I didn't read the book cover-to-cover, so I may have had bad luck, but I came away with the impression that the vast majority fell into the stupidly mispowered categories.
Well, the vast majority of WOTC's rituals fall into the "stupidly mispowered" categories, so Goodman can hardly do any worse than that.

Gryffon
2010-07-23, 02:51 PM
Ok, I like the feedback. I think I'd like more specific opinions though. Here's a few rituals. I've chosen them because of perceived utility. For each of these examples; do you feel it's a worthwhile ritual, is the cost appropriate for it's value. Elaboration on your answers helps. If you find none of the examples worthwhile, please include a ritual that you do deem so. Also, just sticking to the heroic tier for the moment, as it's the most relevant.

Comprehend Languages(Level 1)

Magic Circle(Level 5)

Detect Object(Level 10)

Townopolis
2010-07-23, 04:25 PM
While detailing the utility-belt wizard, Kurald Galain went over what he thought were the best rituals.


Rituals
It has been pointed out before, but nearly every 4E ritual sucks to the point of uselessness. They take too long to cast, cost way too much, simply don't do much to begin with, and in many cases, all of the above. Batman draws a tool from his Utility Belt; he doesn't spend ten minutes chanting in some obscure language.
That said, you get rituals for free as a wizard, and just a handful of them are cheap enough to be worth keeping around just in case they become useful.

* Amanuensis. Copying official documents can be useful at times.
* Animal messenger. Rarely practical, but doesn't really cost anything either.
* Duplicate. As with Amanuensis.
* Enchant / Disenchant Item. Possibly required to get the items you want.
* Hallucinatory item. Useful for creating hiding places, by making an illusory wall.
* Knock. This actually can open things that the Thievery skill cannot.
* Magic mouth. Also useful for sending messages, although the Sending ritual is better.
* Make whole, since craft skills no longer exist.
* Remove condition, technically the cleric's job but too good not to list.
* Sending, if you really need to get a message across.
* Tenser's Floating Disc, without doubt the best low level ritual.

And for heroic tier, that's pretty much it. Anything else is all too easily duplicated with physical tools (e.g. Excavate) or too easy to ignore (Arcane Lock, for one) or much too limited to be of actual use (e.g. Water Walk). Your money is better invested elsewhere.
Note, however, that many DMs tend to handwave the many restrictions on rituals and lets them work by their fluff text, rather than their rules (e.g. let Commune With Nature actually find something rather than give you three yes-or-no answers). In this case, they may become useful in your campaign.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-23, 04:41 PM
For instance, forum people sometimes complain about how a 3E wizard's Knock spell made rogues unless, but they're missing three important points. One, that rogues have quite a lot of other abilities. Two, that in most campaigns, opening locks is neither common nor a big deal in the first place. And three, that 4E does the opposite, in that a rogue's (or anyone's) thievery skill makes the Knock spell useless.
Points #1 & 2 don't actually address Knock v. Pick Locks:
- #1 just says "fine, so Rogues shouldn't take Pick Locks - they can do other stuff" which accepts that magic has nullified a theoretically core part of the Rogue class.

- #2 says "picking locks was never that important anyways" which says a lot more about how 3.5 handles locked doors than the potential use of locked objects in campaign settings.
#3 is still wrong. A Wizard is going to be able to produce Arcane Locks that are absolutely unpickable by an even-leveled (or higher) PC Rogue, let alone NPC Rogues. I'll reproduce the math (again) if you'd like, but I'm sure everyone knows it by now.
The core of the argument is that Arcane Lock is giving you a +5 to the DC, and that depending on your RAI with Aid Another (RAW gives the Ritualist an edge) it can become trivial to make unpickable locks.

Even without Aid Another, a 1st LV Eladrin Wizard (INT 18) is making a +16 v. DC 31 check to construct an unpickable lock (DEX 20, Trained, Take 20) - not a great check, but hardly hopeless.
By this point, folks are having fine ideas about making Rituals work (I like the idea of nuking the ridiculous learn times and giving folks access to "free" Rituals) but I had to drop by to parade out my old refutation of the Arcane Lock argument.

Nightson
2010-07-23, 04:58 PM
In my game I changed the Ritual Caster feat or class ability from a requirement for casting them to something that made them stronger, cheaper and easier.

Ritual use increased. I also liked from a game world stand point anyone being theoretically able to learn a ritual. So that master dwarven smith has the ability to craft magic arms and armor without being able to cast magic missile or other rituals.

And, just from a world building standpoint, there are plenty of people who'd never be able to learn a ritual too.

BobTheDog
2010-07-23, 05:35 PM
As a DM, my favorite way to encourage Ritual use is... to encourage ritual use. What I mean is:

First off, I make a list of what rituals they players have/use, eventually check the builder/compendium for good rituals to add as treasure (in line with the PCs style of ritual using). Then, I try to include situations where their favorite rituals might help (including an instance where Knock was used to bypass a very hard lock), and/or point out to them that ritual X might be useful at a certain moment.

I also like to make rituals a part of skill challenges. Players can get free/extra successes with the right ritual (e.g. tree stride and traveler's chant to make trips shorter).

It helps that my players normally look at rituals when planning stuff, and I can see where some groups might get in the "rituals suck" mindset and forget they exist.

Colmarr
2010-07-23, 10:30 PM
If I were to DM 4e, I'd "fix" rituals by:


halving the component cost of all rituals except crafting/creation
dividing most casting times by 10 (to a minimum of 30 seconds)
allowing every ritual caster to master one ritual of their level or lower per level (or perhaps every even-numbered level).


I think the "everyone else can do it" argument overlooks the fact that some parties simply can't. My group, for example, has no training in Streetwise or Thievery, and Acrobatics, Endurance and Perception aren't really our strong points either.

So rituals have a place, IMO. You just need to make them affordable enough to learn (the ritual caster shouldn't be personally paying for powers that are going to be used for communal benefit) and cast on both the time and gp axis.

Telok
2010-07-24, 01:52 AM
Comprehend Languages(Level 1)

Magic Circle(Level 5)

Detect Object(Level 10)

I'll leave the whizzing contest alone answer your questions.

CompLang isn't a bad ritual, out of 3896 monster entries in DDI 'only' 2202 speak common. With the pruning of languages in 4e as long as you have more than 2 races in your party the players probably won't encounter any language barriers unless the DM wants them to. The place where the ritual is actually useful is in reading written languages, especially the old forgotten ones. Do note that you have to beat a 35 arcana check to speak or write a language.

Magic Circle is overpowered in the hands of a power gamer or a practical joker. With a good arcana skill and a utility power or item that allows them a reroll anything level appropriate for the party to encounter will be unable to break the circle. The downside is the hour long cast time, this means that the players need to know well ahead of time that they need to spend 100gp and have no other options than a circular forcefield. Also the rules fail to address the vertical dimension, you will need to houserule whether the ritual creates a cylinder or a sphere and if it can be dug under.

Detect Object costs 400gp and 10 minutes with a duration of 5 minutes. A 10th level caster will hit the 20 to 40 range of results on this ritual giving them a 30 to 100 square range to find an object that they are "very familiar" with. On the other hand the Detect Magic use of the Arcana skill has a range of 15 squares, takes one minute to use, has no cost, no penalites for not having lived with the item, and everyone who is trained in Arcana can do it. If the McGuffin of the fetch quest is non-magic and limited to a single large building or one farmer's field, they might use the ritual. Considering that it only costs 360gp to make anything a +1 improvised weapon almost anything worth finding (at 400gp a pop) ought to be magic at 10th level. It's your call on the ritual, personally I think they might use a scroll of Detect Object if they found one as loot. As a side note that scroll will have a sale price of 700gp, slightly more than a level 8 magic item.

Kurald Galain
2010-07-24, 04:12 AM
Comprehend Languages(Level 1)
It's generally worthwhile, but hampered by its silly casting time. If you encounter some creature you don't understand, you shouldn't have to stall it for ten minutes while the wizard chants.

However, for written languages, it's easier to carry the cheap, cheap magic reading spectacles.


Magic Circle(Level 5)
Rather situational, but useful if you have to defend some place. You can usually get your arcana high enough that it really does keep out creatures that are a threat to you.


Detect Object(Level 10)
Worthless. In the time it takes to cast this, you can search the (rather small) affected area by hand twice over.

Galdor Miriel
2010-07-24, 06:56 AM
We tweaked rituals to make them more fun and usable. Most rituals have a hp casting cost now. So that as you get to higher level low level rituals are very easy to use. (hp = 5 + 2*level)

With this we get a lot of ritual use which adds to the game, especially out of combat. Rituals rock, completely.

GM

potatocubed
2010-07-24, 06:57 AM
Well, the vast majority of WOTC's rituals fall into the "stupidly mispowered" categories, so Goodman can hardly do any worse than that.

Well, in all fairness I'm not the world's best judge of balance. Perhaps I should amend my recommendation to "I read it, I liked it, I felt it restored something to rituals that they were lacking previously."

Leolo
2010-07-25, 09:21 AM
There's bigger problems with rituals than just the cost. I refer to Saph's insightful remarks (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7860326&postcount=46), who states that "It's not so much that they cost you money (although they do) and it's not so much that they take too long (although they do) and it's not so much that they have a ridiculous amount of restrictions on them (although they do). It's the fact that in just about any conceivable situation, it's easier to figure out a way to solve the problem non-magically than it is to figure out a way to solve the problem using a ritual."

Yes, the price is the most often talked about issue with rituals, but even making all rituals free (except creation rituals, presumably) wouldn't be enough to make them a useful option.

And still it is not true, but this discussion has been already done.

It depends on the situations that are part of your game. A simple example is to find an object. Can you do it without an ritual? Sure you can.

Can you do it easier if you know the direction and distance to it? Without any doubt.

The little Tammy is disappeared? Maybe captured by the evil guy who sneaks through this cities streets and kills little girls? Well, we could search the town and we could find her. Maybe dead, maybe alive.

Or ask her father for her comb to find her via a magic map. It will be more expensive. But there is no way that we could find her within 10 Minutes only by searching the town.

The only question is how important it is for your characters to find Tammy alive. In this example the game may be fine with her slaughtered and the evil guy kicked in his ass 2 days later. And this is the best way to make rituals useful.

Make it important if you do things faster, with less danger or less resources. Because rituals can provide this.

Kurald Galain
2010-07-25, 09:38 AM
Make it important if you do things faster, with less danger or less resources.
Yes, because a casting time of one to eight hours is useful if you need to do things faster, and spending several thousand gold on reagents is useful if you need to conserve resources.

Leolo
2010-07-25, 09:45 AM
That would be a great argument if the ritual in the example above wouldn't have a casting time of 10 minutes (not much more than a short rest...you did it all the day during your adventures, didn't you?).

And wouldn't cost much less than "thousands of gold"

And of course if i did not already said that it depends on how important tammys life is to the group. Maybe it is not worth a penny? Than the ritual is too expensive. Maybe 1000 GP if we bring her back alive? Than you could do it twice just to get sure. And still would make profit. Maybe tammy is a good old friend of the wizard?

Her life couldn't be worth any more.

It simple depends on the situation.