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Hey, I just finished this new base class which is also a whole new roleplaying option. It's pretty long, so I'll really appreciate anyone who reads the whole thing and gives me feedback. Thanks in advance. here's the link:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/8043772/Ritual-Priest
Also, if you have any pictures that would work for the gods I didn't put pictures for, that would also be awesome.
No one? That's disappointing.
Just reading the crunch. A few questions:
Does the ritual priest know all of their spells on the list?
Second question: incredibly overpowered much!? Here's me, a wizard. I don't like touch spells, it makes me get in melee. I don't have enough feats. I don't like increasing my caster level to cast metamagic spells.
I know! I'll take one level in this class. Yeah.
So, in my opinion, way too powerful stuff for first level. Spread it out a bit more. And never offer a bonus feat stacked onto 5 abilities for a single level. Bonus feats are filler, when there's no ability to put there.
This class is way too topheavy. Why would you even want to go past level 5? There's no point at all! Their spell list isn't that interesting, it's basically just Druid+Wizard+Cleric. If I were playing this class I'd either only level-dip into it, or multi-class out as soon as possible to a more powerful casting class, or a prestige class of some kind.
I really like the idea though, it just needs some work. Also, your fluff is annoying spread throughout the crunch. Trivial, however.
I actually did a lot at level one for a reason. First of all though, the mystic reach ability and the rituals can only be applied to ritual priest spells. I said that, though I realize it's easy to look over (I did that myself in editing, lol.) The reason I put so much stuff for level one is that it all changes as you progress. The reason I gave them a bonus feat at level one is because without metamagic, most of their abilities become pointless, and therefore they would only have one metamagic feat at level one (assuming the player isnt a moron and gets none) and that would kind of make the class boring. As to the spell question, they prepare their spells every day like a cleric.
And regarding it being overpowered, I've heard overpowered from some people I've showed it to and underpowered from others. I think it's pretty balanced because they cast with two abilities and can't wear armor.
Finally, you would play past level 5 so you could use all those abilities you got in the first 5 levels with useful spells. You really wouldn't want to multiclass because the rituals can only be used with ritual priest spells. Unless, of course, it was a prestige class, but good job roleplaying this with any of the divine prestige classes :smallwink:
Give me a chance. I spent those 5 hours tucked up in bed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vourge
That said, do you have some way of publishing it in a human-friendly (as opposed to printer-friendly) format? I have to constantly scroll up and down in order to read that, which distracts from the actual information content. And that thing doesn't let me highlight text, which is very helpful in reading information contained in very long paragraphs.
That said, you have a mechanic for ritual of health in which sacrifice cost suddenly jumps every 4 class levels. This actually makes a 4th level character significantly weaker than a 3rd level character for using that ability. I'd instead use some kind of exponential spell-level progression to determine time/hp/moojoo required for the rituals (eg. 1/3/6/10/15/21/28/36/45).
The ritual of unbinding seems excessively expensive. Given the choice between a single use of a metamagic feat, or 50 uses of a wand, it would have to be a useless spell wand indeed to make it a fair exchange.
Right, well that's the point, so if you had a wand of feather fall say, that might not be as useful as a 2nd level ritual. I actually wasn't going to even put this ritual in for that exact reason, but i could see it being useful in certain situations. I really didn't want that being a ritual that players would use often, just like they wouldn't use the ritual of soul sacrifice often. It would be more of a thing like "hmm, im in a bind here, ive got 4 health and no time. I know! ill just take this useless wand of hold portal and get out of this"Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashtagon
I don't see how that would solve the problem. Earlier levels would still be significantly better. The players just has to take that loss if they want access to higher level spells. DND is already full of these, just take 3rd level fighter for instance. I suppose I could make it happen at every level, though I'd have to figure out a different formula.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashtagon
Unfortunately that's the only one I was able to find. The file is too big for google docs, and I can't just copy and paste it into a post because of the two-columns (I tried taking it out of double columns but it just screwed everything up). If you want, you can tell me you e-mail and I'll send the file to you, but other than that there's not much I can do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashtagon
It will, you just need to select the highlight tool rather than the hand/scroll thingQuote:
Originally Posted by Ashtagon
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vaynor
No really, past level 5 I'm not taking a single level. This class isn't bad, it's just boring. Bonus Feats... I think the Fighter and Wizard proved us Bonus Feats were not a good choice of class feature. Take example on Pathfinder, make it so each level is interesting (or, as many levels as possible). Also, waaayy too much pictures :smalltongue:.Quote:
Finally, you would play past level 5 so you could use all those abilities you got in the first 5 levels with useful spells. You really wouldn't want to multiclass because the rituals can only be used with ritual priest spells. Unless, of course, it was a prestige class, but good job roleplaying this with any of the divine prestige classes
Edit: An ability that gets more powerful with levels AND a capstone ability could help you with people only taking 5 levels of the class.
Flipping through Complete Divine, and I don't think Contemplative has an imagery problem meshing with Ritual Priest. As a non-player I can't speak for how good a class it necessarily is but it DOES have class features, so you have something to compete with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vourge
Divine Oracle could work too. Or Sacred Fist, which actually synergises remotely well when you consider that Ritual Priests can't wear armour anyway. Void Disciple might manage it too. Houston, we have competition for class features.
Also, the lose-health-for-metamagic thing's multiplier shouldn't be going up. At all. What was the idea behind it, "Oh, no, casting metamagic spells is no longer the primary source of damage for a Ritual Priest"?
Here's the difference: a 3rd level fighter gets nothing, right? Getting nothing for leveling up kind of sucks. The Ritual Priest though? He actually gets worse, since the penalty increases without the benefit increasing. Which is a problem that I'm not sure how to fix.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vourge
If you're looking for Ritualist-style ideas, however, I'd like to point you to the Ritualist, a class Lord_Gareth and I collaborated on. Even if you don't like it, you may find it gives you some food for thought.
Okay, so about the empty levels, if any of you have any ideas about other rituals I could put in at higher levels, I'm completely open to suggestions. Alternatively, could give them a number of at-will special abilities. It would fit with the flavor, and give them some extra stuff. If I went this route I would make abilities where the use wasn't immediately obvious (for example at a certain level I could give them the power to enter people's dreams and alter them somewhat)
As for the sacrificial ritual issue, the problem is if i keep it constant than the sacrificed health becomes a non-issue past say, level 4. The idea is it needs to be constant with the character. So would making it increase (by a smaller amount obviously) every level solve the problem?
And as for the ritualist, that's not really what I'm going for. The rituals are supposed to be a different way of casting spells, not special abilities all on their own.
More Ritual Foci, obviously, although I'd recommend no more than 4. In fact, the capstone could be that once you have four separate foci, you can at last Quicken your spells by using all four of them that round, in return for not being able to use them for any other purpose that round. The resulting spell would still require both a swift action (Quickened Spell) and a move action (ritual) but it's better than nothing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vourge
I wouldn't be so sure. Unless there's a healbot constantly working on them, a Ritual Priest is getting - and thus metamagicking - more spells per day as she levels up, and therefore losing more health to sacrifice per day without any further action on your part.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vourge
There's one precedent I can think of off-hand for a similar ability - the Tainted Sorcerer prestige class from the SRD. Its "Tainted Metamagic", which is a similar deal to the sacrifice ritual of the Ritual Priest - but the Tainted Sorcerer takes CON damage, not lost hitpoints, per level of metamagic skipped by his ability. CON damage is never going to stop being an issue, so you could use that instead of HP damage for the blood sacrifice gig.
This would also solve a trick that I find rather obvious in retrospect - casting Maximized Inflict spells and then healing yourself of the metamagic damage.
Indeed this leads me onto another thing you could throw into some dead levels, beside the 3rd and 4th foci and Ritual Quicken Spell.
"Bottle Blood: At 6th level (or so) a Ritual Priest learns to store blood in bottles or jars or whatever is appropriate. When she does so, she inflicts CON damage on herself or another person, as if using the Sacrificial Ritual normally. Then, for four weeks after the blood is bottled, she may empty the whole bottle instead of, or in addition to, a normal Sacrificial Ritual. Each point of CON sacrificed to make the bottle counts as a point of CON used in a Sacrificial Ritual. If the bottle is used for a ritual of a level smaller than the CON damage done in its creation, the excess points from it are wasted. No bottle may contain more than 4 CON worth of blood.
A Ritual Priest may prepare 1 such bottle, plus 1 for every 3 levels of Ritual Priest after 6th (so, 2 bottles at 9th, 3 at 12th, 4 at 15th, and 5 at 18th, if it starts at 6th level)"
EDIT: Also, you could make a fewlevelsRANKS, to prevent confusion, of Improved Ritual of Unbinding. For example, at rank 1 the formula is Item level * Item charges / 25, at rank 2 it's IL * IC / 20, at rank 3 IC*IL/10, and there are no more ranks after 3 under this model of Improved Ritual of Unbinding.
EDIT EDIT: I'd also remove the restriction against Evil Ritual Priests using willing targets for the Sacrificial Ritual. "Oh, I'm so eeeeeviil that I may not take help willingly given to me!" To make it fairer you could say that in theory, the Good Ritual Priest can also use helpless victims under extreme extenuating circumstances, but not having arbitrary moral restrictions on your actions is kinda the point of being Evil.
okay, that's alot. First of all, I'm not ruling it out completely, but I'm not sure I like the idea of 4 ritual foci. First of all, just from a flavor perspective, it's hard to imagine someone using 4 items on his body, especially since ideally his two ritual foci are things he's holding. From a mechanic perspective, it wouldn't be particularly useful because the Ritual priest, as of now, only has 4 rituals, and 2 of them have very limited usage.
Second of all, I'd much rather have them sacrifice health than take CON damage, and if I made it increase every level, that would pretty much fix the problem the same way. As for the casting maximized inflict then healing it back, I actually want that to be a possibility. In addition, it would have to increase, because otherwise to maximize a spell all they would have to do is sacrifice 3 health, not really a big problem once you get past the first couple of levels.
For the bottle of blood, it's a bit too... Blood magus-y. Also, it really doesn't fit with the flavor of a sacrifice, in which the point isn't the blood itself, but the sacrifice of life.
I'll definitely take away the ban of Evil Ritual Priests not being able to affect willing target, you're right that make absolutely no sense. And the changing ritual of unbinding is good too.
Finally, for the quickened ritual, I really don't see how that can work. I mean, if you want to explain it to me better, I'm open to it, but the idea is they are performing a ritual, and the idea of quicken spell is that it takes almost no time to cast the spell, and those two don't really compute.
That said, I don't want to seem like I'm just shooting down everything. If I'm misinterpreting something or you think I've got the wrong idea, I'm still open to argument or suggestions. Thanks for the input.
In retrospect, yes, having 4 individual ritual foci would be pretty bizarre - and in fact, now I look, I completely misunderstood the point of the second Ritual Focus. I thought it was to make Rituals of Worship faster, not allow the use of two rituals at once.
The thing is, if you have the Priest lose more health for metamagic as she levels up, as has already been pointed out, no one is going to want to take the level where that starts happening. No one. For something of a precedent, look at the Blood Magus - they always need only 1 point of damage to eschew material components and increase the spell level by 1, and this never, ever increases with respect to their current hitpoints. You seem to want to have it both ways - having the sacrifice for metamagic always be an actual sacrifice, yet tying it to something that is expected to naturally be more and more available as a player levels up.
Is there an actual reason why you would prefer that Ritual Priests offer HP, not Con damage? If it's only so they can do the "recover from my own metamagic" trick, you could add a special use of Blood Magic that lets them easily heal up Con damage. Say, 5 HP of blood magic healing for every 1 point of Con damage healed - likely not all that balanced, but it only works on Con damage, not Str/Dex/Int/Cha/Wis damage or Con drain. If it's because Con damage takes days to heal, you could explicitly say "Constitution damage dealt by Sacrificial Rituals heals at the rate of 1 every 1 hour/10 minutes/6 rounds (your preference) not the usual 1 every day and 2 if bed rest. In addition, no matter how much was done, it is all completely healed by 8 hours of rest (such as the 8 hours required for a Ritual Priest to prepare her spells).
In fact, switching the metamagic source to "Less Deadly Con Damage" could lead to another line of things to fill out dead levels.
Blessing of the Old Gods: At 1st level, a Ritual Priest recovers Con damage inflicted on herself by her own Sacrificial Ritual at the rate of 1 point an hour regardless of her actions, and not 1 point per day as is usually the case. In addition, all points of self-inflicted Con damage caused by Sacrificial Rituals are recovered by 4 hours of complete rest. At 4th level this healing is increased to 1 point of Con damage every 30 minutes; at 12th level it is increased to 1 point every 10 minutes; and at 20th level it is increased to 1 point every round. When performing a Sacrificial Ritual with someone else's life, Ritual Priests may pass this improved healing onto the person whose Con they are damaging, whether they are a willing target or a helpless victim. Blessing of the Old Gods only applies to Con damage caused by Sacrificial Rituals, not Con damage from any other source.
(The choice of 4th and 12th as the levels that boost Blessing of the Old Gods is arbitrary, and should probably be changed when results from playtesting have come in. In fact, so is the 1 point/hr to 1pt/30mins to 1pt/10mins to 1pt/round for the purpose of this example ruling.)
Also, recall that Blood Magic has a limit of "only gets to heal within 1 hour of use"? You could extend that to 2 or 3 hours as an excuse to not have a dead level. Even in a caster class, dead levels are a Bad Idea when you are competing with PrCs that don't have dead levels.
I admit the bottle of blood doesn't quite fit with a life sacrifice, but the mechanic of "sacrifice now, benefit later" is sound. Probably. It could be screwed around with to make a fifth ritual:
Ritual of Offering: If a Ritual Priest of 7th level or higher kills an ordinary animal (Int 1 or Int 2) with a coup de grace, she may offer its life to the old gods. In doing so, she gains a number of "Offering Points" equal to the animal's Hit Dice, up to a maximum of 10. She may then expend any number of these points in any combination during a Sacrificial Ritual. Each Offering Point expended in a Sacrificial Ritual counts as 1 point of HP / Con damage for the purposes of performing a ritual. For example, a Ritual Priest of 7th level could cast a maximised, empowered, heightened, silent inflict minor wounds by performing a level 7 ritual. This would normally require the offering of 7 HP/7 Con damage (delete as applicable). However, by expending 5 of the 8 Offering Points she gained by performing a Ritual of Offering on a dire lion earlier that day, she may reduce the required sacrifice to 2 HP / 2 Con damage (delete as applicable). If a ritual priest has any Offering Points left when she prepares spells for the next day, they all disappear and are wasted; she will have to kill another animal to get new Offering Points.
The Ritual of Offering's maximum Offering Points could be increased as the Ritual Priest levels up, of course.
(For alignment reference, though an evil Ritual Priest might slay intelligent creatures in a ritual manner just for fun, the old gods will not grant any Offering Points at all for such offerings. Nobody really knows why, although the fact they are Neutral and not Evil may be something to do with it. :P.)
On a final note, I notice you only took the Ritual of Unbinding to IC*IL/15 at rank III. I was saying it wouldn't advance to better than IC*IL/10 at the highest rank. Is this a deliberate executive decision on your part?
I really like the blessing of the old gods idea. both that and improving blood magic to more hours would be good ways to get rid of new levels.
One thing I just wanted to point out though: the amount of health sacrificed increased with character level, not class level.
The problem with the "sacrifice now, benefit later" idea, as you put it is that it seems kind of overpowered. It seems like after every battle every ritual priest would go running into the woods to go hunting, and then in the next battle cast a maximized, empowered, twin, whatever at the first enemy without increasing the casting time, losing health, xp, magic items, or increasing the spell level, as with normal classes. in other words, no sacrifice for increased power on their part.
The reason I decided to switch it to divided by 15 rather than 10 is because should it be 10, sacrificing a lvl 1 fully charged wand would give 5 ritual levels, which is a lot, but not absurd. however, that is only level 1 spells. If it is even a 2nd level spell wand, that's 10 levels. I think it would just be to much
again, thanks for the input, im going to take your con damage/recover faster idea
You're welcome! Good to see I've been of help.
I was originally thinking of slapping a "Once per day" on the whole offer up an animal gig, but then foolishly thought it could be solved with the limit on Offering Points. It could be a high level thing, too... because D&D begins to crack anyway at high levels, and the Ritual Priest needs to be able to keep up. :PQuote:
Originally Posted by Vourge
So yeah, would it still be overpowered at only 10 points/day, and then only if you can find a 10 HD animal to sac that day?
No, that would be good. so basically once/day, only up to 10 HD animal
Sweet. I actually planned on basing a character in a web-comic to something similar. I like it so far then again I haven't been playing that long so I'm no expert.
Glad you like it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ra_Va
Okay, I made the changes. Let me know if any of you have any more ideas to fill more of the dead levels.
After a little more reading I have two questions.
Exactly how does your healing work(This being the base use of Clerics and such)? I get the fact that it was an exchange but an example would be nice.
Are the old gods limited to the ones you offered (The Fathers ,Sons, and Daughters) or are there other 'old' pantheons.
Okay, so you use maximized inflict light wounds to do 9 damage. For the next hour you can heal 9 damage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ra_Va
It's just those 12Quote:
Originally Posted by Ra_Va
How disappointing, I was hoping that they'd be able to sacrifice 11+ HD animals and still only get a level 10 Ritual out of it. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Vourge
First, DM fiat is liable to change that if absolutely necessary.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vourge
Second, you have an Old Gods list that doesn't include Cthulhu. :P
I hope the DM doesn't decide to, I spent a while on those gods and I really like them. And Cthulhu doesn't even come close to fitting with what I'm doing here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Omegonthesane
No real relation to the class, but thought I'd note that Cthulhu is actually a high priest, not a god (though he is one of the Old Ones).Quote:
Originally Posted by Omegonthesane
Owrtho
Getting back to the class, if anyone has any ideas for other rituals or other ways to fill some more of the dead levels, please let me know. I'd love to find something to put in levels 10 and 15...
I had a thought: to fill the dead levels I could give blessings of certain old gods at specific levels. So, I would change "blessing of the old gods" to "blessing of the life-giver" and then at certain levels give them a blessing of one of the old gods that they could choose from a list or given at certain levelssuch as:
Blessing of the Judge: gain the ability to cast Detect Good/Evil/Chaos/Law at will
Blessing of the Frozen One: Gain the Timeless Body ability, and appears not to age
Blessing of the Dreamer: add the oneiromancy spells from the Heroes of Horror to your spell list
Blessing of the Spirit-Mother: Can only be picked once 17th level is attained Automatic true resurrection. Once used, does not occur again until the next (week? month? year?)
etc. etc.
any feedback on that?
So far I like it.
Although the blood sacrafice gets a little out of hand at later levels. For example one could easily cast an empowered maximized chain lightening at level 11+, an 11th level spell. Then they wouldnt even have to deal with the hurts if they used the Heal spell directily afterwards. Also the heal spell doesnt really seem to go with their whole form of inflicting/curing and I would like an explanation of the how their healing works for example would it be that
I cast an inflict spell deal 8 damage and the same turn I could use 3 of that damage on the injured fighter, 2 on the bleeding cleric, and reserve the final three for myself later? also would it be relevant if the cleric was 5 feet away or 30? Personally I liked to think its a standard action touch like the paladins lay on hands but I really cant say for sure.
Actually in response to the whole !@#* load of abillities at level 1 whats up with mystic reach? I mean I know its handy but isn't that just like every casters dream? and the purpose of the spectral hands spell. Seriously That kinda thing is one of the Archmage Prcs High arcana stuff. And it requires they PERMANETLY lose a spell slot in order to get it. seems like a waste of 15th level prestige class if you could just get it and a mess load of other awesome abbilities in a single level, not to mention a chance at an extra 4 hp and some new melee weapon profecencies.
Although then again I haven't actually played D&D in months so I might be forgetting a couple of rules about those things, if so just never mind me
Nice pictures by the way I'm wondering if you drew them yourself or just found them online cause they look Awesome :D also I really like the fluff you put behind the old gods, Personally I might ask my DM if I can worship one of them despite the fact that he only lets us use core rulebook materials, you got this class down pretty well actually although there are a few kinks to work out in the sacrafice thing, Maybe you could say the old gods would take it as an insult if you healed the wounds any way other than naturally and the spell would just fizzile? I dunno just a thought.
I wouldnt put that last thing in because most of those are high level powers of other classes and the blessings of the old gods power at level 20 is already extremely beefy because if you even just got 23 con then you could just heighten a wail of the banshee up 20 levels and Just sitting here looking at it I could think of a way to make it so the Dc is easily 50+ which is a fortitude save to not die even the Tarrasque would be more likely to fail then succeed and you'd bounce back after 20 turns... Jeez that would be really scary if you did that then all of a sudden you bounced back to life at full just do cast another crazy epic round of spells. over all this character doesnt need more powers he needs less.
sure at low levels he works as an overall only slightly stronger character then the other classes with a learning curve thrown in but serioursly at mid and high levels he completely worth it... even low levels he's alot better then say a sorcerer or a wizard since he gets some of their better spells and then some of the clerics and druids healing capabillities...
Sorry If I began to rant a bit of I repeated anything, I left this message and came back to it after an hour and its like 2 in the morning so Im a bit jittery :smallsmile:
Glad you like the roleplaying aspect :smallbiggrin: Let me address some of the issues you posed.
Again, mystic reach only works for Ritual Priest Spells. I looked over their spell list to make sure nothing would be overpowered and it really wasn't. I mean, what, inflict wounds, some buffs/debuffs? nothing major really.
As for the heal spell, that was just a f--- up. *fixed
I found the pictures online. I'm not that good of an artist :smallwink:
I was going to make blood magic work for a 30-ft range just like spells affected by mystic reach, but I'm open to argument on that one.
what?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ioth
The healing 1 Con dmg per round at level 20 was not my idea, but some feedback on this thread. However, I think it fits because, well, classes should be absurd at level 20. However, if you think I sould extend it to, 2 per 5 rounds or something else, I'm open to suggestions.
Finally, for the blessings idea, none of the abilities are too major (other than the spirit mother, which is way up there,) so I don't think it would be overpowered. It would just be a way to fill some dead levels while at the same time giving them some fun abilities.
any more suggestions or feedback on the blessings ideas are still welcome
Okay, so more information on the blessings of the Old Gods idea:
I'm going to put each blessing at a certain level, so there's the ones I had before plus the new ones, and the level for each:
Level 5 - Blessing of the Dreamer: add the oneiromancy spells from the Heroes of Horror to your spell list
Level 6 - Blessing of the Judge: gain the ability to cast Detect Good/Evil/Chaos/Law at will
Level 7 - Blessing of the Soothsayer: See briefly into the future; 1/day reroll any saving throw, skill check, or attack roll and take the better of the two rolls
Level 9 - Blessing of the Rider - Summon an Asperi (MM2) at will, works like Paladin mount
Level 10 - Blessing of the Archivist: Add 1/2 your class level (rounded down) as a bonus to all knowledge checks, can make knowledge checks untrained
Level 11 - Blessing of the Beastman: Wild Empathy, also for sentient plants
Level 13 - Blessing of the Hunter: 1 time ritual to gain permanent effects of two of the spells that give +4 to abilities (Cat's Grace, Eagle's Splendor, etc.) The animals in the name of the spells must be sacrificed during the ritual, and parts of the two animals must be made into an item in order to gain the effects. For example, if the two spells were Bear's Endurace and Eagle's Splendor, the Ritual Priest could make a cloak out of the Bear's hide and Eagle Feathers
Level 15 - Blessing of the Frozen One: Gain the Timeless Body ability, and appears not to age
Level 17 - Blessing of the Spirit-Mother:Automatic true resurrection on death. Once used, does not occur again until the next (week? month? year?)
My questions are these: Does this make the class overpowered? What would be good abilities for the Drowned One and the Wanderer and what levels should they be? and Is this a good idea?
Also, should I instead, at each of those levels, instead put "Blessing of the Old gods" and give those options at each level, with a level 17 requirement for blessing of the spirit-mother?
This idea is actually pretty cool. I think I'll use it in one of my campaigns