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Oracle_Hunter
2010-08-12, 04:44 PM
Inspired by a recent thread on the matter, I have thought about the "Use Surges" option and come up with the following: Blood Rituals

In general
- Any Ritual Caster may turn any non-Creation Ritual into a Blood Ritual

- Blood Rituals allow for the substitution of some or all of the Component Cost to be replaced by Blood (as represented by Surges) from the Ritualist

- At Heroic Tier, each Surge may be used in place of up to 50 GP worth of component costs.

- At the start of a Ritual, 4 Surges may be expended to reduce the Casting Time of a Ritual by 1 degree (so hours -> minutes -> rounds). So a Ritual that normally takes 10 minutes to cast can be cast in 10 rounds. This option can only be used once per Ritual.

Special Rule: Permanent Rituals
Any Ritual whose normal duration is Permanent is modified as follows when cast as a Blood Ritual:
- The duration of the Ritual becomes 10 times the normal casting time (as calculated in minutes). This does not include additional prep time (such as the 1 minute / square for Magic Circle).

- Any Permanent-duration Blood Ritual that is still in effect at the end of the Ritualist's Extended Rest ends immediately, regardless of any remaining duration.

Other Notes
I plan on making Paragon & Epic-level Surges "worth" more, but I haven't decided on the numbers.

I suspect there will be problems in regard to Divination Rituals, but ATM I can't think of any.

So? Does it work? Is there something I haven't considered yet?

N.B. there is a complicated fluff reason for Blood Rituals in my game - including how it could be used for Evil with sacrificial victims. Don't worry about that stuff, I got it covered :smalltongue:

Kurald Galain
2010-08-12, 05:14 PM
It's a nice idea, but...
(of course there was going to be a but :smalltongue: )

Off the top of my head, must the caster spend the surges or can his allies help? And what about focuses? If you reduce casting time to one or two rounds, you need to define what that means, since 4E doesn't have full-round actions. And I note that 1 hour shortened becomes 1 minute, whereas 30 minutes shortened becomes 30 rounds, which is more than a minute.

An old non-D&D game I ran that had blood magic had the rule that casting permanent spells in blood magic would permanently reduce your hit points (or at least, until the magic was dispelled, because your life force was invested in the spell).

Four surges is probably a bit much to speed up a ritual. A casting time of e.g. 30 minutes has three effects: (1) it can't be used in combat no matter what; (2) if you are in danger or about to be discovered, you don't have time for this; and (3) doing a few skill checks is almost always going to be faster. The problem is that a casting time of 30 rounds has pretty much exactly the same three effects.

ShaggyMarco
2010-08-12, 05:37 PM
So, at heroic Tier, 10 healing surges raise a guy from the dead.

Why not keep that constant?

Paragon Surges=500 GP
Epic Surges=5,000 GP

Also, you should definitely be able to apply surges to rituals your ally is performing voluntarily. I can see a party of PCs gathering together, cutting their hands to contribute blood to bring back a fallen comrade--that picture is just cool.

ocato
2010-08-12, 05:51 PM
I have found in my home game that allowing a player to spend a surge and +10% of the components to use a ritual as a standard action is surprisingly popular.

Granted, I run a game where you can't really nip off to the item shop at any given time, so my players are more prone to using money for rituals, bribes, etc than other groups that I have observed.

mobdrazhar
2010-08-12, 06:14 PM
if you're going to do something like this then i would suggest looking at the "Martial Practices" in MP 2 pg. 147. It's basically Ritual Casting for Martial characters where they use healing surges for component costs.

Coidzor
2010-08-12, 06:29 PM
But can it make a mahogany desk out of trees that are 300 feet tall and breathe fire? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14D5wKSVlXg)

Oracle_Hunter
2010-08-12, 06:50 PM
Off the top of my head, must the caster spend the surges or can his allies help? And what about focuses? If you reduce casting time to one or two rounds, you need to define what that means, since 4E doesn't have full-round actions. And I note that 1 hour shortened becomes 1 minute, whereas 30 minutes shortened becomes 30 rounds, which is more than a minute.
(1) The Ritualist must spend all the surges themselves. This is to limit Ritual Cheese by having the Barbarian & Warden throw Surges at the Wizard that they weren't going to use anyhow. I might allow anyone who successfully helps (standing HR that you must be Trained in the Key Skill to Assist) to spend 2 Surges to contribute 1.

(2) Foci must be purchased on their own.

(3) A 1 round Ritual is complete at the start of the Ritualist's next turn. Casting a Ritual is an "exclusive" action - you can take no other actions (not even Free ones) while casting a Ritual.


Four surges is probably a bit much to speed up a ritual. A casting time of e.g. 30 minutes has three effects: (1) it can't be used in combat no matter what; (2) if you are in danger or about to be discovered, you don't have time for this; and (3) doing a few skill checks is almost always going to be faster. The problem is that a casting time of 30 rounds has pretty much exactly the same three effects.
Sounds like it works just fine :smallbiggrin:

Y'see, I don't need all Rituals (or even most of them) to be combat-usable. The "speed up" mechanism is an option for Ritualists who don't have the time for the full Ritual (say, 8 hours for Raise Dead) and are willing to make a large sacrifice to get it done in time.

@mobdrazhar: I've looked at Martial Practices and they're completely incompatible with what I'm doing.

Kurald Galain
2010-08-12, 08:43 PM
I have found in my home game that allowing a player to spend a surge and +10% of the components to use a ritual as a standard action is surprisingly popular.

I endorse this suggestion. I think this is the only houserule on rituals I've seen so far that makes a meaningful difference.

valadil
2010-08-12, 10:36 PM
Looks good at a glance. I don't know enough specifics of rituals to find anything breakable by this. I guess that if a character has a lot of surges they can rez for free. I don't know if that many surges is attainable by a caster (I guess a pally could take ritual caster and would have religion...) or if a free rez at the cost of one day's surges is going to break anything.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-08-12, 11:50 PM
Looks good at a glance. I don't know enough specifics of rituals to find anything breakable by this. I guess that if a character has a lot of surges they can rez for free. I don't know if that many surges is attainable by a caster (I guess a pally could take ritual caster and would have religion...) or if a free rez at the cost of one day's surges is going to break anything.
Valid concerns.

(1) A "free" Rez would cost roughly 10 Surges - which is very high for a "natural" Ritualist but not impossible.

(2) Rezzes should be costly, but a "free" resurrection 1/day is within 4e parameters. In any event, death is not terribly permanent so long as you have the corpse by that point.

Leolo
2010-08-13, 02:04 AM
One problem i can see is that you will end up casting rituals before you go to bed to have effectivly no cost at all from this.

Thats not a very big problem until you consider rituals that are already cast at this time. A alarm ritual will cost you effectivly nothing, because you cast it when you rest - and get your healing surges back.

Also there was a ritual that gave you the benefits of resting without resting. Fantastic Recuperation. This could be cast without any cost - and your party will double all their daily abilities.

If you have a bard in your group a normal rest will also take less time. Also - without any costs.

Therefore: Maybe you should change the costs to "you gave up one healing surge until the end of the next day and can not regain it until then"

Kurald Galain
2010-08-13, 03:45 AM
Inspired by a recent thread on the matter, I have thought about the "Use Surges" option and come up with the following: Blood Rituals
Since many rituals have pointless restrictions on them that rather impair their usage, it would be very useful to be able to spend a surge to bypass one of those.

For instance, if you head into orc territory, you may want to prepare yourself by casting Comprehend Languages. Except that it won't work, since the ritual has the pointless restriction that you must have heard the language today. Spend a surge to bypass that, and it becomes much more useful.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-08-13, 09:07 AM
One problem i can see is that you will end up casting rituals before you go to bed to have effectivly no cost at all from this.

Thats not a very big problem until you consider rituals that are already cast at this time. A alarm ritual will cost you effectivly nothing, because you cast it when you rest - and get your healing surges back.

Also there was a ritual that gave you the benefits of resting without resting. Fantastic Recuperation. This could be cast without any cost - and your party will double all their daily abilities.

If you have a bard in your group a normal rest will also take less time. Also - without any costs.

Therefore: Maybe you should change the costs to "you gave up one healing surge until the end of the next day and can not regain it until then"
Since all Blood Rituals end at the completion of an Extended Rest - no matter the length - I don't think the Bard Ritual will be a problem.

I haven't looked at Fantastic Recuperation yet, so that's good to know.

As for night-time Rituals, which ones are you thinking of? Most of them aren't that bad, IIRC, but I might be missing some crazy ones.

@Kurald: Eh, it's much harder to calibrate the surge-cost of so-called "pointless" restrictions. If there's one which is crippling the Ritual I'd rather just remove it entirely.

Leolo
2010-08-13, 09:42 AM
I haven't looked at Fantastic Recuperation yet, so that's good to know.


There is not that much to know...as told above it gaves you and all your allies the benefits of resting without that you have to actually take a rest. It has the restriction that you have to be able to take an "normal" extended rest (so you cannot cast it 5 times a day). But it is very powerful the way it is - and would be uber if you could reduce its casting time to 1 Minute and do not have to pay gold. The surges that you pay are back within a minute anyway...

The problem is solved if this isn't the case. The ritual is still awesome that way, but it would be in line with other options.



As for night-time Rituals, which ones are you thinking of? Most of them aren't that bad, IIRC, but I might be missing some crazy ones.

Not exactly crazy ones, but to have a rope trick every night for the price of 2 healing surges (that you get back at morning anyway) looks very cheesy to me. But ok...1000gp are not that much gold anyway once you reach level 12.

Also there are things like fools gold, where you create some effect, gave him away and be fine if it ends before you rest. Or think about divination rituals. You could burn surges for them to divine before you will rest. Next day you still have the knowledge (or the items that you have got through fools gold) and did pay nothing.

That might be ok, depending on the game style. But still it looks a little cheap. If the missing healing surges are still missing the next day this will be much more a true restriction. It might be favorable in comparation with gold expenses, but the player character will still feel that the ritual comes with a cost.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-08-13, 09:48 AM
Not exactly crazy ones, but to have a rope trick every night for the price of 2 healing surges (that you get back at morning anyway) looks very cheesy to me. But ok...1000gp are not that much gold anyway once you reach level 12.

Also there are things like fools gold, where you create some effect, gave him away and be fine if it ends before you rest. Or think about divination rituals. You could burn surges for them to divine before you will rest. Next day you still have the knowledge (or the items that you have got through fools gold) and did pay nothing.
Feh, I knew I had overlooked something.

Well... I don't want to make the cost too high. Perhaps if you use Blood Rituals then you start your next day at half your total Surge number. It's a cost, but not a terrible one.

Leolo
2010-08-13, 09:50 AM
Feh, I knew I had overlooked something.

Well... I don't want to make the cost too high. Perhaps if you use Blood Rituals then you start your next day at half your total Surge number. It's a cost, but not a terrible one.

I think this would be higher than my cost in some case. ^^

If you pay one healing surge (for example by assisting your wizard buddy) you should not loose 5 the next day. It is better if you just can not regain the surges for 24 hours or until the end of the next day.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-08-13, 09:55 AM
I think this would be higher than my cost in some case. ^^

If you pay one healing surge (for example by assisting your wizard buddy) you should not loose 5 the next day. It is better if you just can not regain the surges for 24 hours or until the end of the next day.
Well, I'd prefer to minimize bookkeeping.

How about you cannot recover more than half your total number? That will reduce the penalty on light users of Blood Ritualists whike not crippling heavy users.

Leolo
2010-08-13, 10:11 AM
I don't think that this might solve the problem, at least not if it is allowed to get surges from ritual participants.

Think about a normal group, containing a controller, striker, leader, defender and 5th character. They will have about 35-40 surges in summary.

With your rule they might still burn up to 20 surges before an extended rest that will be back at morning anyway. And you'll have to consider that not every day is an adventuring day where the characters might loose healing surges before morning. Sometimes they are just within the city, buying things or investigating.

Considering that the rituals above does not even cost 10 surges in summary this still looks very cheap. For example a ritual focussed wizard with some assistants could take 3 surges and create 150000gp at paragon tier. That will be less than half his surges amount - and be back at morning. The 3 magic items of lvl 16 you have bought will still be there.

Sure - this is also true if you are willing to pay 1500gp instead of 3 surges. But this time it is without any cost.

Timeras
2010-08-13, 10:14 AM
Maybe some Rituals simply cannot be cast as blood rituals (determined by the GM on a case by case basis).

Leolo
2010-08-13, 10:19 AM
Or you simple bring in only some new rituals that allow to reduce costs by spending surges (in fact this wouldn't even be new).

But there are so much rituals that are exploitable if you have no cost at all from them that this would change the game. And if the healing surges are back once you will rest (even if this is 5 minutes after you have cast your rituals) they do not have any cost.

A day with 7 instead of 8 surges if you have used 1 surge for blood magic the day before is not that hard. The players will feel it, but it is not to much.

Kurald Galain
2010-08-13, 10:22 AM
Not exactly crazy ones,
None of these strike me as problematic.

Considering how extremely weak divination rituals are, it's not a big deal to cast a few of them for free at the end of an adventuring day where you have enough surges remaining. Wooo, you get three rounds of spying on some item you left at home!

Fool's Gold? Sure, let the players buy what they want for awhile, and then get into trouble with the merchant's guild. This is really not all that different from PCs deciding to rob the local jeweler, and it's nothing a competent DM can't deal with.

Rope Trick basically means you won't get ambushed during the night, but most DMs don't ambush you at night anyway, and DMs that want to can still do that (either by having a creature detect and open the extradim space, or by being ambushed in the morning when you get out of there).

Or, if you want, fluff your blood ritual so that a "bloody" rope trick is distorted and eldritch, and sleeping there gives you nightmares.

BlckDv
2010-08-13, 10:27 AM
Speaking to the "free" overnight rituals issue, I have a simple suggestion...

Surges spent on a Ritual can not be regained by any means until after the Ritual's duration has ended. This means that if you set an overnight ritual, you would not regain the surges during that rest, you'd have to wait until the next rest.

Likewise; it would discourage the use of surges for long term or permanent rituals, while leaving the window open.

Saph
2010-08-13, 10:30 AM
Let's see . . .


- Blood Rituals allow for the substitution of some or all of the Component Cost to be replaced by Blood (as represented by Surges) from the Ritualist

- At Heroic Tier, each Surge may be used in place of up to 50 GP worth of component costs.

I like this one. The choice between spending surges or gold is interesting, since you normally don't know in advance which you're going to need more. This'd definitely make me more inclined to try using rituals.

There's still the problem that many rituals are simply weaker than the equivalent skills (like Eye of Alarm) but this evens it out a bit by making the resource expenditure renewable, as skills are.


- At the start of a Ritual, 4 Surges may be expended to reduce the Casting Time of a Ritual by 1 degree (so hours -> minutes -> rounds). So a Ritual that normally takes 10 minutes to cast can be cast in 10 rounds. This option can only be used once per Ritual.

This would probably be very rarely used - if you're short of time it's usually because you're expecting trouble, which is exactly when you don't want to be losing half your healing surges (ritualist characters usually only have 8-9 surges to spend) and the difference between 10 minutes and 10 rounds probably isn't worth that much.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-08-13, 10:36 AM
I'm personally not worried about Fool's Gold - as Kurald notes, the gold does vanish.

OTOH, even "weak" divinations can ruin the game when they're free. It's better for the PCs to go out and find the answers to their questions rather than camping in one place for a week spamming Consult Mystic Sages.

My goal here is to make a simple rule which can be used situationally and without DM oversight. Drafting new Rituals or making piecemeal rulings on Rituals isn't my style - I want to give the players the chance to figure out to use Rituals on their own.

EDIT: The "speed up" option is supposed to be rarely used. It's a Panic Button of sorts - when 10 minutes is impossible, but 10 rounds is merely very difficult. This should add drama to the situation when it is used, and hopefully I'll be able to trigger these sort of decisions as a DM.

Kind of like Haley holding off the Thieves' Guild, but for a reasonable time (10 rounds) rather than an insane time (100 rounds).

Leolo
2010-08-13, 10:42 AM
@Kurald: As said above - it is not really crazy or that much over than a fantastic Recuperation cast within 1 minute and without cost. It is much less a problem.

And in fact i like the idea of blood rituals. But the players should not trick out the costs. If you can get back your surges anyway whats the point of paying with them?

But while some divination rituals are indeed weak, others are not. Magic map is still great, but you could also think on loremasters bargain, hand of fate, Inquisitive’s Eyes or last sight vision.

The local bank was robbed? No problem - i can see the entry of it as it was when this things happened. I can tell you the number of the car they have used. (to stay in our time examples. It functions the same if we talk about a princess taken ransom)

If this costs you 680gp it is still cheap. But if it cost you only about one healing surge there is no reason not to use it - even if you do not know if there is something to see. Why should i search for clues with a perception check if i can see what is happened?

The point is: Divination is not only wizard's sight. And you do not loose the knowledge after you have regained the surges.

Saph
2010-08-13, 10:44 AM
OTOH, even "weak" divinations can ruin the game when they're free. It's better for the PCs to go out and find the answers to their questions rather than camping in one place for a week spamming Consult Mystic Sages.

Meh, most divination rituals are so restrictive that even if you take away the gold cost they aren't going to break many games. Consult Mystic Sages can get you some pieces of information to start looking with, but simply looking up the best sages in the area is going to be faster (as that would allow you multiple questions rather than one per day). The time you'd want the ritual is if it's not practical to make the journey to the nearest library, in which case the time/healing surge costs are likely to be nontrivial.

And regardless of whether you use the ritual or go to the library, you can't get any secret information (which is probably the kind you want). This means that you can get a starting point to begin your own investigations from, but no more than that.