(4e) About rituals.

[Sebastian]

It seems there is a lot of discussions about rituals in other threads so I thought to start this one.

This is a thread about rituals. Why they rock, why they sucks, how to use them, how to abuse them and if they are worth it.
It would be interested in creative use of rituals in your games, a thing that 4e seem to be a little lacking of (that is, the creative, out-of-the-box use of magic).

[Morty]

I find 4th edition rituals overwhelmingly bland. I thought that 3ed magic lacked spice and flavor, but rituals are worse. You just find a book, expend some generic components and cast. Bleh. And all a fighter needs to teleport people around and raise dead is two feats, or one if he's an eladrin. The good thing is that serious effects now require long casting - then again, so do trivial spells. All in all, they're not really bad, but they fail to evoke any interest in me.

[Sebastian]

Bland is certainly a problem, another problem (IMHO) is the vagueness, it is not clear what casting a ritual involve, someone could see it as an advantage and sometime is not a problem, but for some ritual (i.e. passwall, knock or arcane lock) I think it would be useful to know, for example, how noisy they are, if I want to enter into a guarded fortress and to do it I must stand 10 minutes under the patrolled wall, I'd like to know how much noise I'm going to make in the process before I even think about trying it.

Or again, can you cast a ritual in complete darkness? or while knee deep into water (or worse)? or into a ship in the middle of a storm? It is a little hard to say when you don't have the slightest idea of what you need to do to cast one. Also can you cast a ritual from another person book or you need your personal one? If a fighter get the necessary feats can master rituals in his free time using the cleric/wizard ritual book? And when you kill a enemy wizard/cleric can you take his book to use for your own or for the secondary ritualist in the party?

[MartinHarper]

Also can you cast a ritual from another person book?

Yes. However, you need to spend X hours to master them before doing so. See PHB.

If a fighter get the necessary feats can master rituals in his free time using the cleric/wizard ritual book? And when you kill a enemy wizard/cleric can you take his book to use for your own or for the secondary ritualist in the party?

Yes and yes.

[Asbestos]

Tenser's Floating Disc can be used to do some creative things. Its straight up a magical disc with a diameter of 5ft that can carry stuff 1ft off the ground. Pile up the right amount of stuff on it, and bam, mobile cover. Open to DM interpretation of course, since RAW says nothing about it being used this way, but if I basically make it carry around a propped up giant shield I don't see why I can't hide out behind it.

[Artanis]

I won't argue whether/how much/why they suck, since it depends on the ritual and has been debated a LOT, especially recently. I'll just stick with the OP's request for creative uses of what players have to work with.

There's the obvious ones, of course, like (Dis)Enchant Magic Item and Raise Dead. Knock and Arcane Lock are being debated ad infinitum et nauseum at the moment.

Tenser's Floating Disc has been mentioned for one use. Another use is to ferry people across dangerous terrain. A Wizard can ferry somebody across five squares of pressure plates, magma, or shark-infested waters. If he finds somewhere to stand in the middle, that becomes up to 11 squares.

Drawmij's Instant Summons is good for sneaking a weapon somewhere you normal shouldn't, such as into the throne room of a king you wish to assassinate.

Comprehend Language can be used for secret messages because it doesn't specify that it has to be a real language. So if the sender makes up a language that only he understands, then Comprehend Language would be the only way to "decrypt" the message.

[Ninetail]

The rituals in the PHB are pretty limited, and a lot of them aren't very inspiring.

The idea of rituals, though... that's golden. Breaking out a lot of the old "utility" magic that people rarely memorized/prepared, making it something at once more involved and more accessible? Very cool. Now it doesn't seem contrived that the party would break into the temple just in time to interrupt the evil cultists' ritual -- because it's not a full-round cast time, it's ten minutes, or an hour. Maybe more, if it's a really powerful ritual.

As with most things, you tend to get more out of rituals if you put a bit of work into them. Sure, Comprehend Languages might cost you 10gp, but you can say "deduct 10 gp" or you can describe the character invoking the crystal lens he'd spent some time enchanting, and peering through it to translate the unknown writing. Lens? Yeah, between the gold and the materials needed for the quick enchantment, it cost him 10gp.

Remember spell components? They're fluff now, but they're still there if you want 'em. Mystical trappings really help make rituals.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Rituals are actually a lot more useful than they look. The trick is to examine in the context of the rest of the 4E system, rather than from a 3E point of view.

My favorite example is Arcane Lock. A 4th level Eladrin Wizard (18 INT) with 4 helpers and Skill Focus can create a DC 39 Arcane Lock on a roll of 10; the very best Rogue of the same level can only pick that on a 20. Every 1 point over DC 39 requires 2 levels of Rogue to bring it back to the Natural 20 range. That is a very good lock; plus it can be opened by anyone the Wizard likes as a normal door. Handy.

Really, to get the best use out of Rituals, you have to focus on casting the ones that are levels below you, rather than on par. Hand of Fate is great for dealing with "Chalice Problems" when you're Paragon, but not so good at Level 4.

[Colmarr]

My 4th level campaign has so far only seen 3 rituals used.

Gentle repose - to stop a corpse we recovered from stinking us out on the way to Winterhaven. Fluff only, but for 10gp, why not?

Comprehend languages - Allowed us to read Kalarel's journal and pointed us in the direction of the next adventure.

Our wizard just picked up Enchant Magic Item (and immediately used it to make armour for the rogue), and my cleric just picked up Brew Potion. Obviously both with see significant use throughout the rest of the campaign.

I'm also thinking of picking up Battlefield Elocution. It's effectively 4e one-way telepathy, which I suspect will be amazingly useful for a party that relies heavily on its rogue for scouting (with entailed long-distance planning issues).

[Kurald Galain]

Rituals are a lot less useful than they look. This is because the fluff (i.e. what they look like) doesn't match up with the rules (i.e. what they do). For instance, the ritual for Commune With Nature is that it lets you "know exactly where to find food, shelter, or a clue to the location of the thing you seek". But what it actually does is give you three yes/no answers about your immediate surroundings. Obviously, that exactly does not let you know where to find anything. A good DM will probably let you find things anyway, but the point remains that by RAW, you really can't.

There are a handful of exceptions of course. Overall, the division is that a handful of rituals are must-haves (e.g. resurrect, linked portal), about a dozen more are unlikely every to be used, but cheap enough to keep around in case you might need them (e.g. ) and the rest is really, really useless.

There's only a handful of rituals that come up regularly when people cite examples of ritual use. That is precisely because there's only a handful of rituals that are actually usable in practice. Some people extrapolate that since some rituals are useful, the rest probably is too, but this assumption is false on closer analysis.

Tenser's Floating Disc has been mentioned for one use.

Tenser's is great. And nothing prevents you from summoning two of them, standing on one while directing the other.

Drawmij's Instant Summons is good for sneaking a weapon somewhere you normal shouldn't,

Yes, but (1) this is highly situational, (2) there are much, much easier ways of sneaking a weapon in, and (3) by the combat rules, you don't need a weapon to assassinate someone.

Comprehend Language can be used for secret messages because it doesn't specify that it has to be a real language.

That's very clever. It does require a bunch of scrolls for the party members that don't have the Ritual Caster feat (since the ritual affects yourself only). But they're cheap. It doesn't even need a made-up language since there's plenty of obscure ones on the list.

My favorite example is Arcane Lock. A 4th level Eladrin Wizard (18 INT) with 4 helpers and Skill Focus can create a DC 39 Arcane Lock on a roll of 10;

Yes, and what you consistently overlook is that the rogue will pick the lock in five or six rounds, because he gets to retry that every round (and it takes 100 rounds to cast the ritual). Absent a rogue, bashing down the door also works. Really, OH, it would help if you'd stop repeating an example that has long since been disproven, over and over again.

Really, to get the best use out of rituals, you need a DM that houserules them. It is apparent that OH's DM does precisely that, and that is a good thing because it improves the game. However, that doesn't change the fact that rituals as written really don't work. "There's no problem since you can houserule it" is known as the Oberoni Fallacy.

But yes, the idea of rituals is solid. It's just the execution that is lacking. The fun part is that WOTC is completely aware of this. For instance, they know that Arcane Lock has a ludicrous casting time for what it does. Therefore, in the very next book (AV) they printed a cheap item that does the same thing as a standard action. Likewise, the previews for the PHB2 show ritual use without components, and a ritual with hugely reduced casting time.

So yes, there is a problem, and WOTC is working on it, as they care for the game and continue to improve it. That is a much more satisfying answer than doing the Oberoni.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Yes, and what you consistently overlook is that the rogue will pick the lock in five or six rounds, because he gets to retry that every round (and it takes 100 rounds to cast the ritual). Absent a rogue, bashing down the door also works. Really, OH, it would help if you'd stop repeating an example that has long since been disproven, over and over again.

No he won't, because it is impossible. Look, I'll re-post the whole of the quote:

My favorite example is Arcane Lock. A 4th level Eladrin Wizard (18 INT) with 4 helpers and Skill Focus can create a DC 39 Arcane Lock on a roll of 10; the very best Rogue of the same level can only pick that on a 20. Every 1 point over DC 39 requires 2 levels of Rogue to bring it back to the Natural 20 range. That is a very good lock; plus it can be opened by anyone the Wizard likes as a normal door. Handy.

Again: Focused Eladrin roll an 11+ and the Rogue cannot pick the lock, no matter how many times he rolls. Honest, I did the math.

Now, I'll agree that the Damaging Objects rules are FUBAR'd - there's no reason a STR 10 Wizard should be able to punch down an iron portcullis. I've re-written the Damaging Objects rules to make some more sense, and I think it fits into the rest of the 4E rules easily. If you use my rules, it now makes perfect sense to Arcane Lock an iron portcullis or the Baron's Vault door (while you're preparing a Linked Portal to escape with his loot ).

[The New Bruceski]

: Rituals work great for how I want to use them.
: Rituals are silly for how I want to use them.
and : (10+ pages of "You're wrong!", "That's a stupid way!" and the like.)

[Kurald Galain]

and : (10+ pages of "You're wrong!", "That's a stupid way!" and the like.)

Of course! What else would we be doing on the internet?

[Dead_Meat]

No he won't, because it is impossible. Look, I'll re-post the whole of the quote:



Again: Focused Eladrin roll an 11+ and the Rogue cannot pick the lock, no matter how many times he rolls. Honest, I did the math.

Now, I'll agree that the Damaging Objects rules are FUBAR'd - there's no reason a STR 10 Wizard should be able to punch down an iron portcullis. I've re-written the Damaging Objects rules to make some more sense, and I think it fits into the rest of the 4E rules easily. If you use my rules, it now makes perfect sense to Arcane Lock an iron portcullis or the Baron's Vault door (while you're preparing a Linked Portal to escape with his loot ).

I don't understand, the only way to break open the door or do damage to it, according to the dm's guide is to roll strength and beat the arcane lock according to the arcane lock description, then you have to beat the doors check of 16, 20 if reinforced assuming wood, now for a portcullis of 23, since the check is strength to open the portcullis but the portcullis is assumed immune to break checks barring gm intervention, thus a strength ten wizard has no chance to do so for he has plus 0 on a roll of 20 maxing out at 20.

[Meta]

The magister epic destiny makes rituals extremely interesting if only for a small portion of the game.

[Mando Knight]

...Dead thread was dead. Leave it be.