4e: Combat rituals

[Erk]

It seems to me that the PHB is drastically missing out by not having combat-castable rituals. Am I the only one who loves the idea of a ritual caster struggling to keep a spell intact as combat rages around, the party working together to keep the ritual circle safe as enemies close in to stop it from coming to completion...

Anyway. Here are some rituals I have cooked up. Input?

GENERAL RULES
Size of a ritual circle
In combat, the area used to cast the ritual becomes more important than out.The average size of a ritual "circle" (the actual pattern used may vary depending on the ritual) increases as the ritual grows in level.
Heroic tier rituals require a ritual circle 1 square in size.
Paragon tier rituals require a ritual circle 2 squares to the side (4 total)
Epic tier rituals require a ritual circle 3 squares to the side (9 total)
Drawing a ritual circle
Inscribing a square of the ritual circle requires a minor action for any character with the Ritual Caster feat, or a standard action for a character without it. More than one character can work on the circle at once: a character must be standing in the square he/she wishes to draw, and then expend the action to draw it.
Interrupting the ritual
The ritual can be interrupted by:
1) effacing part of the circle: erasing a portion of the circle is a minor action and requires that the eraser be standing in the square to be erased. This immediately ends the ritual.
2) forcing the caster to leave the circle during casting
3) somehow preventing the caster from completing the standard actions required to cast the ritual.

RITUALS
Level 3: Protection Circle
Category: Warding
Time: 3 standard actions
Duration: See text
Component cost: 35gp
Key skill: Arcana or Religion
When creating the circle, designate a creature type from whom to protect from. For Undead, demons, devils and angels (and perhaps other types, depending on the setting), apply the religion skill. Other creature types, apply Arcana.

The caster designates the radius of the circle, centered on the square from which the ritual is cast, and then makes a relevant skill check.
DC: 10, +4 for every square of radius.
The strength of the circle is equal to the difference between the caster's skill check and the DC. This determines the bonus to defenses and saves for allies within the circle, and the duration of the circle in rounds.

The area of the circle becomes Difficult Terrain for the creature type from which it protects. Allies within the circle gain a bonus to all defenses and saves related to the protected creature type, equal to the strength of the circle.
Level 12: Sanctuary
Category: Warding
Time: 5 standard actions
Duration: See text
Component cost: 150gp
Key skill: Arcana or Religion
The ritual covers an area extending out from the ritual circle 3 squares in every direction. Everything within the area is protected from everything without by a dome of force. The dome lasts for a number of minutes equal to the caster's Arcana or Religion check if undisturbed. If attacked, the dome has defenses equal to the skill check and 20 HP per point of the skill check.

Gotta go for now, open to suggestions for more. I have a detailed summoning mechanic sorted out to post later, related to this.

Other ideas:
-powerful battlefield-altering spells such as large-scale illusions, terrain shaping effects
-massively powerful effects like time stopping spells (the tradeoff being the long prep time)
-a "reset" ritual that turns the encounter back to when it started
-some of the fun stuff missing from the Old Classics spellbooks

[Arbitrarity]

This... seems like a very good idea. Action costs are a bit heavy, but probably reasonable. Just need to make the investments worthwhile, or occasionally worthwhile.

[Erk]

This... seems like a very good idea. Action costs are a bit heavy, but probably reasonable. Just need to make the investments worthwhile, or occasionally worthwhile.

Yeah, the action costs will need some balancing I think. Aside from that, though, as long as they have occasional use they should be OK: it's not like there's a real restriction on how many rituals a caster can know, so there's not really such thing as knowing too man. I'd love to throw in some crazy ones with very limited use. Glad you like it otherwise...

[Shadow_Elf]

Am I the only one who loves the idea of a ritual caster struggling to keep a spell intact as combat rages around, the party working together to keep the ritual circle safe as enemies close in to stop it from coming to completion...


I wholeheartedly agree. Dfending the ritual caster à la WC3 campaign would be crazy awesome.
I'd love to help later, but going off to school in, like, five minutes. Will definitely post later.

[Yakk]

A design philosophy problem with these:
If they are optimal choices, you have ritual casters not doing anything for a huge chunk of game-play, other than casting the ritual.

If they are not optimal choices, people don't use them.

They work reasonably well as story components, where the ritual caster is not actually a player, or if the mechanics of actually casting it where more involved (say, a skill challenge, with some active effects, etc).

But I don't think having "in combat rituals" like this would actually improve gameplay on a day to day basis.

[AKA_Bait]

I generally agree with Yakk.

That said, as for the specific constructions, you might want to decrease somehow, or cap, the bonuses provided by the protection circle to those within it. At high levels it seems like this little ritiual could give the party much higher bonuses than is reasonable. Perhaps a cap at 2-5 per tier? It would still be strong then, but not insane, I think.

[Erk]

I generally agree with Yakk.

That said, as for the specific constructions, you might want to decrease somehow, or cap, the bonuses provided by the protection circle to those within it. At high levels it seems like this little ritiual could give the party much higher bonuses than is reasonable. Perhaps a cap at 2-5 per tier? It would still be strong then, but not insane, I think.

Good idea, perhaps a cap of 1/2 caster level would be decent. Amounts to 5 per tier but scales more smoothly... or perhaps "1/2 caster level or caster's relevant stat (int or wis) bonus whichever is lower": even at level 30, a +15 to all defenses is pretty absurd.

As for what the caster can do, I was thinking about that last night. If the Standard Actions of the ritual had some effects of their own, and/or requirements for the caster, it could get quite interesting to be the caster too. I've got to read about cancer therapy for now, but I'll see what pops into my brain by lunch break.

[Yakk]

More problems:

1) effacing part of the circle: erasing a portion of the circle is a minor action and requires that the eraser be standing in the square to be erased. This immediately ends the ritual.
Um, that makes these rituals nearly impossible to defend, given how mobile 4e combat is.

...

Back up from the emulationism for a second. What feel do you want these mechanics to have?

Should the player doing the ritual be effectively out-of-game, or should they be reading the ritual from a book while swinging a sword and shooting out magic spells?

What if the ritual required a move action instead of a standard action?

Rituals as Skill Challenges
A given Combat Ritual has a progress meter.

Each turn that someone generates at least 1 success, the progress meter advances 10 points. In addition, the first success that a person generates per round generates 2 points of progress, and each additional success generates 1 additional point of success.

A given ritual has a time limit -- if the ritual is not completed by that amount of time, the entire ritual fails.

When you start a ritual, you determine what level you are attempting the ritual at. This determines the strength of the effect and the difficulty of the skill rolls involved.

Primary Ritual Caster: Requires the Ritual Caster feat. DC is 15 plus 3/4 the ritual level.

Support Ritual Caster: Requires the Ritual Caster feat. DC is 10 plus 1/2 the ritual level, but you only gain 1 success for every two Support Ritual Casters who succeed on their checks.

Unskilled Support: DC is 5 plus 1/2 the ritual level, does not require Ritual Caster feat. 2 Unskilled supporters generating a success count as a single Support Ritual Caster.

Every ritual needs a Primary Ritual Caster, and the final success must be made by that Caster.

Note that fractional successes (ie, on a turn, one Support Ritual Caster makes a success, and nobody else) do not generate any benefits.

Advancing a Ritual requires you to be in a particular location, and requires the use of a move action. Advancing the Ritual provokes opportunity attacks.

----

There. That turns it into a skill-challenge like system, in which the characters progressing the ritual are making skill checks and possibly fighting.

If a given ritual requires 60 progress and must be finished in 6 rounds or it fails, you have a very decent chance of being able to disrupt the ritual by attacking it -- but you also have a hope of defending it.

The progress:rounds ratio determines if the ritual requires a large number of helpers (read: cultists, for NPCs).

The "progress meter" is used in order to generate the "right feel" -- I want consistency to be important (so you get 10 points for your first success), I want expertise to be important (As many primary ritual casters as you can pull off, despite the high DCs, are very much worth it -- and less skilled players can contribute as Support or Unskilled).

At the same time, once the Primary Ritual caster has generated a success this round, using the standard action to attack is well worth it (they only get 1 additional point of progress from a 2nd success). If you fail on your first action, the second action becomes worth throwing at the ritual.

Support ends up speeding things up slightly, but is more important to keep the ritual "together" in the event that the primary ritual caster flubs up. And in large numbers it can allow the casting of a ritual faster -- and allows the PCs to slow down a ritual by attacking hordes of enemy minions if you use it as a set-piece...

Of course, all of this introduces new mechanics, which is cruft.

[CyberRebirth]

What about summon monster #? I don't think that the current wizard has any summoning spells. (lame)

[CyberRebirth]

Back up from the emulationism for a second. What feel do you want these mechanics to have?

Should the player doing the ritual be effectively out-of-game, or should they be reading the ritual from a book while swinging a sword and shooting out magic spells?

What if the ritual required a move action instead of a standard action?

Rituals as Skill Challenges
A given Combat Ritual has a progress meter.

Each turn that someone generates at least 1 success, the progress meter advances 10 points. In addition, the first success that a person generates per round generates 2 points of progress, and each additional success generates 1 additional point of success.

A given ritual has a time limit -- if the ritual is not completed by that amount of time, the entire ritual fails.

When you start a ritual, you determine what level you are attempting the ritual at. This determines the strength of the effect and the difficulty of the skill rolls involved.

Primary Ritual Caster: Requires the Ritual Caster feat. DC is 15 plus 3/4 the ritual level.

Support Ritual Caster: Requires the Ritual Caster feat. DC is 10 plus 1/2 the ritual level, but you only gain 1 success for every two Support Ritual Casters who succeed on their checks.

Unskilled Support: DC is 5 plus 1/2 the ritual level, does not require Ritual Caster feat. 2 Unskilled supporters generating a success count as a single Support Ritual Caster.

Every ritual needs a Primary Ritual Caster, and the final success must be made by that Caster.

Note that fractional successes (ie, on a turn, one Support Ritual Caster makes a success, and nobody else) do not generate any benefits.

Advancing a Ritual requires you to be in a particular location, and requires the use of a move action. Advancing the Ritual provokes opportunity attacks.

----

There. That turns it into a skill-challenge like system, in which the characters progressing the ritual are making skill checks and possibly fighting.

If a given ritual requires 60 progress and must be finished in 6 rounds or it fails, you have a very decent chance of being able to disrupt the ritual by attacking it -- but you also have a hope of defending it.

The progress:rounds ratio determines if the ritual requires a large number of helpers (read: cultists, for NPCs).

The "progress meter" is used in order to generate the "right feel" -- I want consistency to be important (so you get 10 points for your first success), I want expertise to be important (As many primary ritual casters as you can pull off, despite the high DCs, are very much worth it -- and less skilled players can contribute as Support or Unskilled).

At the same time, once the Primary Ritual caster has generated a success this round, using the standard action to attack is well worth it (they only get 1 additional point of progress from a 2nd success). If you fail on your first action, the second action becomes worth throwing at the ritual.

Support ends up speeding things up slightly, but is more important to keep the ritual "together" in the event that the primary ritual caster flubs up. And in large numbers it can allow the casting of a ritual faster -- and allows the PCs to slow down a ritual by attacking hordes of enemy minions if you use it as a set-piece...

Of course, all of this introduces new mechanics, which is cruft.
(Quote Spoilered to prevent page stretching)

This idea is freaking awesome. I'm saving this thread just for that. :smallbiggrin:

[Yakk]

As an aside, when I say "2 support casters generating 1 success", I mean 2 support casters, not 1 support caster generating 2 successes.

I'm trying to make it less tempting to burn both actions on advancing the ritual, barring failing the first check.

[Erk]

Yakk, very nicely done. After work today I'll incorporate that into the main post and adjust the writing to suit.

as for effacing the circle ending the ritual, it could instead cause a loss of some number of ritual steps and require that the circle be redrawn.... my goal, though, is to make a region that the party members need to defend until the ritual has been cast.

Cyberrebirth: I have a mostly finished summoning ritual. I'll try to post it soon.