All right, so you have had some time to play the game now.
If you can spare the time, I would like to hear a critique of Rituals. Please tell me the positives and negatives from both a GM's and Player's point off view.
All right, so you have had some time to play the game now.
If you can spare the time, I would like to hear a critique of Rituals. Please tell me the positives and negatives from both a GM's and Player's point off view.
GMs:
Pros - Control is put in my hands for what the party has access to in terms of rituals. I can assume they'll have access to rituals of their level or below, but beyond that it's my call. Also, if I want to give the party access to a one-time ritual effect for the purposes of the story that I don't want them to be able to duplicate freely in the future, I just put a ritual scroll somewhere and the problem is taken care of.
Cons - A number of rituals require a fair amount of DM adjudication, but that was true of a number of spells in previous editions as well. If you were able to deal with divinations and the like in earlier editions of the game, you'll be able to handle the party's rituals just fine too.
Players:
Pros - As a spellcaster I can now have a full complement of spells that make me useful in combat as well as a full complement of rituals that give me utility out of combat. No longer do I have to sacrifice one for the other.
Cons - The rituals system needs more rituals. The basics are in there, but there is SO MUCH room for expansion. It can feel a little limiting.
On the whole, it's a great system for both players and DMs, and happens to be one of my favorite new design elements of 4th Edition.
I like them, and they're one thing I pulled from 4e into my 3.X campaign. I've ruled that everything listed as a ritual in the 4e PHB is now a ritual for my campaign, with those rules, along with some others as I see fit. For example, the 1st ed Find Familiar spell is pretty obviously a ritual, and players had a lot of fun gathering the ingredients to cast the ritual and get familiars. And I was able to broaden it so the other arcane casters could also get familiars without burning a feat.
But there are too few of them in 4e for usefulness. I prefer my interpretation.
I like them, and they're one thing I pulled from 4e into my 3.X campaign. I've ruled that everything listed as a ritual in the 4e PHB is now a ritual for my campaign, with those rules, along with some others as I see fit. For example, the 1st ed Find Familiar spell is pretty obviously a ritual, and players had a lot of fun gathering the ingredients to cast the ritual and get familiars. And I was able to broaden it so the other arcane casters could also get familiars without burning a feat.
But there are too few of them in 4e for usefulness. I prefer my interpretation.
That is not a bad idea, I rather like the ritual concept; I may do this for my game as well.
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All right, so you have had some time to play the game now.
If you can spare the time, I would like to hear a critique of Rituals. Please tell me the positives and negatives from both a GM's and Player's point off view.
I think Scott did a good summation. What makes rituals so great is that they give me:
1) The ability to actually USE some of the utility-style spells without having to waste combat slots for them.2) The structure allows the GM to be sure it isn't a game breaker.
3) The manner of the spell is flavorful and adds to the role-play aspect.
4) The opportunity to learn a little of the ol' "hedge magic" is available to anyone as long as they're willing to slot for it (Arcana or Religion skill and the Ritual Caster feat.) Again, this adds some flavor to the game that players and DMs can use to tune backgrounds and stories.
As was already mentioned, my concern is the amount available. They are pretty sparse. Fortunately we've already seen a few released in the Forgotten Realms guides and Dragon Magazine, but there is room for more to be certain. Also, Player's Handbook 2 will be adding a good handful more.
My main negative is my players always forget they have them. I think one had been used once in 15+ game sessions and that was with a lot of prodding on my part. Maybe if I printed them on little cards..
My players also forget about them, and there aren't enough of them yet.
I know this was brought up in another thread, but I will repeat the concern:
My players love the concept of rituals and their utility, but they feel the rituals are too expensive. My party cleric wants to cast the ritual that guards the campsite (I forget the name, because he's never done so), but feels the component cost is too expensive to justify its use nightly. The party is 9th level and almost never uses rituals (other than Transfer Enchantment, Cure Disease, and Raise Dead) even the lowest level ones.
Does anyone else see this as a problem, or do I just have greedy players? If it is a problem, does anyone see a fair way of modifying the system?
O
I know this was brought up in another thread, but I will repeat the concern:
My players love the concept of rituals and their utility, but they feel the rituals are too expensive. My party cleric wants to cast the ritual that guards the campsite (I forget the name, because he's never done so), but feels the component cost is too expensive to justify its use nightly. The party is 9th level and almost never uses rituals (other than Transfer Enchantment, Cure Disease, and Raise Dead) even the lowest level ones.
Does anyone else see this as a problem, or do I just have greedy players? If it is a problem, does anyone see a fair way of modifying the system?
O
I get around this by making the cost of the ritual component (25 GP in the case of "Eye of Alarm," the ritual you're trying to remember) be the cost of the item when purchased at the insane mark-up at MageMart.
Let's say, for example, that a spell component is a sprig of rosemary. What's the cost of a sprig of rosemary? In the real world, my grocer sells tiny sprigs in plastic packages which cost $5. In the real world, I also have a bush outside my window where I can break one off and have it for nothing.
Apply the same logic to the D&D world: What you're getting from MageMart is a neat little grisgris bag filled with all the components you need to do the spell, pre-measured, product-tested and guaranteed. If you're on a budget and have the time, you could get all the same ingredients at the bazaar for a tenth the price, and if you were to go out and gather them, say a tenth of that.
Or put it this way:
Spell Component Prices
MageMart: 25 gp
Bazaar: 25 sp + Spellcraft check (you compound it yourself)
Gathered by self: 25 cp of stuff you still had to pay for + Spellcraft check + time for minor quests to get items.
My players were just doing a Find Familiar ritual and were having to run around finding thieves' eyes and the teeth of a rat king, among other ingredients, finally gathering up bags of grot that would have cost 200 gp at MageMart, did such actually exist.
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Does anyone else see this as a problem, or do I just have greedy players? If it is a problem, does anyone see a fair way of modifying the system?O
So what are they spending their money on?
With effectively no market in magic items in 4th edition, players seem to run out of things to spend on sometime around 6th-7th level. If you have kept the 3rd edition ideas of a functioning magic item market, that may be a bit different. In that case, they need to see whether they save the component cost, on average, by casting that ritual. If they're rarely attacked at night, or if losing a single surprise round isn't that big a problem, then it's not worth the cash.
Does anyone else see this as a problem, or do I just have greedy players? If it is a problem, does anyone see a fair way of modifying the system?O
So what are they spending their money on?
With effectively no market in magic items in 4th edition, players seem to run out of things to spend on sometime around 6th-7th level. If you have kept the 3rd edition ideas of a functioning magic item market, that may be a bit different.
Ummm ... I'm not sure what you mean by this.
Your DM might say that you can track down a seller for the item you want to buy or you might have to do some searching, but in general you can buy any item you can afford.
My party adventures primarily in a large city, so they can generally find most items (certainly anything they can afford), and, due to roleplaying circumstances in the campaign, they are able to buy items at the standard cost, without the 10-40% mark-up.
O
I get around this by making the cost of the ritual component (25 GP in the case of "Eye of Alarm," the ritual you're trying to remember) be the cost of the item when purchased at the insane mark-up at MageMart.Let's say, for example, that a spell component is a sprig of rosemary. What's the cost of a sprig of rosemary? In the real world, my grocer sells tiny sprigs in plastic packages which cost $5. In the real world, I also have a bush outside my window where I can break one off and have it for nothing.
Apply the same logic to the D&D world: What you're getting from MageMart is a neat little grisgris bag filled with all the components you need to do the spell, pre-measured, product-tested and guaranteed. If you're on a budget and have the time, you could get all the same ingredients at the bazaar for a tenth the price, and if you were to go out and gather them, say a tenth of that.
Or put it this way:
Spell Component Prices
MageMart: 25 gp
Bazaar: 25 sp + Spellcraft check (you compound it yourself)
Gathered by self: 25 cp of stuff you still had to pay for + Spellcraft check + time for minor quests to get items.My players were just doing a Find Familiar ritual and were having to run around finding thieves' eyes and the teeth of a rat king, among other ingredients, finally gathering up bags of grot...
I really like this idea from a flavor standpoint ... do you ever feel a problem with treasure balance? I should add that my party has cast Raise Dead twice over the course of the campaign and is therefore down 1000 gp, so I'm not TERRIBLY worried about overtreasuring the party, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something.
I really like this idea from a flavor standpoint ... do you ever feel a problem with treasure balance? I should add that my party has cast Raise Dead twice over the course of the campaign and is therefore down 1000 gp, so I'm not TERRIBLY worried about overtreasuring the party, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something.
Treasure is only as good as what you can buy with it. If you're in the wilderness, there is no MageMart, and all your bag of gold is good for is encumbrance value. Maybe you could use it as a sap, but that's about it.
MageMart can exist, but there isn't going to be one in every village, let alone every town. There aren't enough wizards to make it a lucrative business prospect. The only place you'll find a MageMart is in a major city that has either a wizard's college or else a wizard's quarter, if not both.
You'll also have to let characters make Nature and Gather Information checks to find weird stuff, and Spellcraft and Arcana checks to figure out substitutions. The spell calls for something made of ivory. Is that elephant ivory, or will walrus tusks work? What about hippo teeth and rhino horn?
You can also sometimes let something be better. Let them discover that using vampire dust mixed with dragon fewmets in place of the usual bat guano makes fireballs with some kewl metamagic effect.
From time to time, I include ritual components as part a treasure - pickled newt's eye, dried wyvern's tail, dragon's tooth, that sort of thing. These can't be sold for something else, they have to be used for casting rituals (I guess you could let them be sold at 20%, but why bother) - I usually just say, "500 gp of ritual components", flavouring to taste. But even without that, I don't think there would be an issue in our group - it's pretty much like how wizards were under 3.x, having to spend lots of loot on scrolls, wands, scribing spells, etc - if the player thinks it drains too much money from their character at the expense of other uses for their cash, the other players should be encouraged to chip in from the party's funds.
To be honest, so far my wizard player hasn't blinked an eye at the cost of his rituals - if he sees a potential use for one, he'll splash out the cash. He tends to cast at least one or two a session, and only about half of them seem to end up being useful, but he's never complained; quite the opposite - the other players all enjoy his ability to spice up the out of combat phases with some magic. From memory, he's guarded the room when they rested in a dungeon overnight, tried to stop a sonic effect with silence, summoned a bunch of horses to travel over water (they even helped pull a ship into port before they disappeared), stuff like that. He's also invested a feat in extra points of Nature, to help him cast the full range of rituals (he's the only ritual caster).
Where are the cool rituals? Sure there are some pretty good ones out there, but as a dm there are certain rituals that I want to know more about that the designers seem to assume unnecessary since players shouldn't likely get to use them. For example- creating undead. I bought open grave, and in it there are some rituals, but strangely there is no ritual in the book around the creation of undead. You would think that a book all about undead would have information about rituals that can create them. Instead you get undead servitor, which creates a totally combat useless walking minion to carry your bags. Here and there in the book it mentions necromancers creating undead and such, but I want to know more as a dm. How high a level would a "necromancer" (class that doesn't yet exist in 4E) have to be to create undead. Is there a different ritual for different types of undead. How many undead would be reasonable for said necromancer to control etc.... The same thing goes with the binding of fiends. There's nothing about this in the game right now. I want to know more about how it would work, even if it is magic that for the most part will stay out of the hands of players.
Where are the cool rituals? Sure there are some pretty good ones out there, but as a dm there are certain rituals that I want to know more about that the designers seem to assume unnecessary since players shouldn't likely get to use them. For example- creating undead. I bought open grave, and in it there are some rituals, but strangely there is no ritual in the book around the creation of undead. You would think that a book all about undead would have information about rituals that can create them. Instead you get undead servitor, which creates a totally combat useless walking minion to carry your bags. Here and there in the book it mentions necromancers creating undead and such, but I want to know more as a dm. How high a level would a "necromancer" (class that doesn't yet exist in 4E) have to be to create undead. Is there a different ritual for different types of undead. How many undead would be reasonable for said necromancer to control etc.... The same thing goes with the binding of fiends. There's nothing about this in the game right now. I want to know more about how it would work, even if it is magic that for the most part will stay out of the hands of players.
But that's just it - rituals are designed as player tools. If you're the DM and you're making yourself a necromancer NPC, the component cost, level and associated skill for a Create Skeleton Army ritual is completely unimportant - if you want him to have a skeleton army, he has a skeleton army.
Now, if you want your players to be able to create a skeleton army, you'll have to come up with something.
Where are the cool rituals? Sure there are some pretty good ones out there, but as a dm there are certain rituals that I want to know more about that the designers seem to assume unnecessary since players shouldn't likely get to use them. For example- creating undead. I bought open grave, and in it there are some rituals, but strangely there is no ritual in the book around the creation of undead. You would think that a book all about undead would have information about rituals that can create them. Instead you get undead servitor, which creates a totally combat useless walking minion to carry your bags. Here and there in the book it mentions necromancers creating undead and such, but I want to know more as a dm. How high a level would a "necromancer" (class that doesn't yet exist in 4E) have to be to create undead. Is there a different ritual for different types of undead. How many undead would be reasonable for said necromancer to control etc.... The same thing goes with the binding of fiends. There's nothing about this in the game right now. I want to know more about how it would work, even if it is magic that for the most part will stay out of the hands of players.
I'm with Scott here.
I think that it was essentially intentional that rituals don't necessarily allow you to emulate some of the monsters more standard capabilities. There is no reason to specify that low level Necromancers can't create some undead and no particular reason to spell out exactly what a high level Necromancer can or cannot do - in both cases he can or cannot do whatever the DMs plot requires.
In some ways this issue is a core example of the benefits of splitting what characters can do off from what monsters can do since making the same rules for both leaves the DMs hands tied. Either the bad guys abilities are so limited that you can't easily make and adventure around them or they are so strong that any character that utilizes them is inherently unbalanced.
A good example of this issue is dominate from 3.5. Take a look at that spell or, even worse, its psionic equivalent. Its made out of cheese and at its root the problem is an attempt to make the bad guys behave the same as the good guys. So we need spells that explain how Illithids can dominate whole hordes of people to fight for them and yet in so doing we actually essentially open up the option for the players as well.
I'm particularly familiar with the dominate example because its exactly what my PCs are doing in Maure Castle - except, of course, PCs are not 'hindered' by play balace etc. so if they come upon an enemy archmage you basically know that their plan will be to do a couple of subdual damage hits while taking the archmage down. If they can manage that then they drag the unconscious mage back outside the dungeon so that they can tie him up and gage him. The players have to go through this effort because dominating archmages is hard work - they have ungodly will saves. Your going to have to use dominate over and over again until they finally fail the save - it'll be worth it though when you get to wander around with your very own archmage.
Hence it would be nice to get some rules for players to give them access to demons to summon and I suspect we'll see classes (if we have not already seen them) that do this but those summoned creatures are going to come with some big time restrictions. There will be limits to how many you can have and it'll probably cost you actions to make them do anything at all. These restrictions don't apply to the Evil Cultist summoning horrors from the netherworld that must be stopped by a party of stalwart adventurers. His evil Demonic servants will fight all on their own and there might be dozens of them.
Essentially the DMs evil bad guys play by rules that say that they can do anything the DM wants so long as it makes a good story - its the DMs job to insure that her story is one that the players have a reasonable chance of handling.
On the other hand the rules for what the players can do need to focus very specifically on being play balanced so if you have the ability to summon something really cool and very potent then thats going to come with bucko restrictions.
I see your rationale, and I know that I have certainly dealt with my share of the issues you speak of dming 3E (ie. malconvoker PC binding a pit fiend etc...). At the same time, I want to have some concrete explanations for things being the way they are in the game without hand waving it all away by saying- "since he's a nasty bad guy he gets to have small armies of undead and demons at his disposal" (I'm sure I could word it better than that for my players, but you get the idea). I'm facing this situation right now, as I've been converting the Second Darkness campaign. In the Armageddon Echo the main villain is a drow wizard. He's had a number of demonic and undead minions such as ghouls, battlewights, canoloths, evistros and even a vrock that they found bound in a magic circle. I do want our party's wizard to gain access to his ritual book as part of the treasure, and I know that both the wizard PC and the PC's player will want information about how he managed to create various undead and bind the demons etc... I would like to be able to provide some such info, but have major drawbacks to go along with it should the player ever try to use any of the rituals- ie giving your soul to Abraxas the demon patron the drow worship.
Right now I've prepared a couple of books for them to find. One is the standard ritual book with rituals out of core books. The second, I've only loosely detailed and I've essentially said that it is a vile tome detailing various horrific rituals to summon and bind several types of demons. However the rituals all require giving one's soul to Abraxas's and committing other acts of unspeakable evil etc... I guess this will be about all the info they get on the subject, but I think it would be nice to be able to give them a little more than that. The book on the creation of undead is the third tome, and I've described it the same sort of way. I'm not sure if this will satisfy my players, but it is about the best I can offer based on the rules I've seen.
I do like how in the lich section of the monster manual they actually have a ritual detailed for becoming a lich, even though PCs aren't ever going to use it in a game I run. I am hoping to see more rituals detailed like this that would essentially be for dm use only.
I see your rationale, and I know that I have certainly dealt with my share of the issues you speak of dming 3E (ie. malconvoker PC binding a pit fiend etc...). At the same time, I want to have some concrete explanations for things being the way they are in the game without hand waving it all away by saying- "since he's a nasty bad guy he gets to have small armies of undead and demons at his disposal" (I'm sure I could word it better than that for my players, but you get the idea). I'm facing this situation right now, as I've been converting the Second Darkness campaign. In the Armageddon Echo the main villain is a drow wizard. He's had a number of demonic and undead minions such as ghouls, battlewights, canoloths, evistros and even a vrock that they found bound in a magic circle. I do want our party's wizard to gain access to his ritual book as part of the treasure, and I know that both the wizard PC and the PC's player will want information about how he managed to create various undead and bind the demons etc... I would like to be able to provide some such info, but have major drawbacks to go along with it should the player ever try to use any of the rituals- ie giving your soul to Abraxas the demon patron the drow worship.
Right now I've prepared a couple of books for them to find. One is the standard ritual book with rituals out of core books. The second, I've only loosely detailed and I've essentially said that it is a vile tome detailing various horrific rituals to summon and bind several types of demons. However the rituals all require giving one's soul to Abraxas's and committing other acts of unspeakable evil etc... I guess this will be about all the info they get on the subject, but I think it would be nice to be able to give them a little more than that. The book on the creation of undead is the third tome, and I've described it the same sort of way. I'm not sure if this will satisfy my players, but it is about the best I can offer based on the rules I've seen.
I do like how in the lich section of the monster manual they actually have a ritual detailed for becoming a lich, even though PCs aren't ever going to use it in a game I run. I am hoping to see more rituals detailed like this that would essentially be for dm use only.
Well, if you want them to potentially be able to employ that ritual, you'll have to come up with something. There's nothing wrong with leaving a ritual like that intentionally vague in terms of its results, however. You could simply word its effects as "By performing this ritual, Abraxas grants you a boon in the form of demonic minions and dark creatures of unlife to do your bidding. Though you may damn your soul in the process, and though the power you are granted is left to the whim of Abraxas, one cannot argue that the power gained by employing this ritual is significant."
Mind, I haven't read Second Darkness so I don't have an idea of whether this is appropriate to the story. But it's really unnecessary to spell out exactly what the ritual would grant your players.
In all honesty, however, I'd advise against providing the players with the ritual book. Given the immense cost of the ritual, it sounds like it was probably used in a very limited fashion anyway - this is the perfect scenario for a ritual scroll, which would be consumed in the performance of the ritual anyway. If you want your players to come across the ritual, just leave a single scroll for them to find. They'll be able to argue over the dilemma it presents (assuming any of them are keen on trying it out), but they won't be able to copy it for their own, repeated use.