Esoteric Rituals: Ritual Fix Thread

[Tvtyrant]

One of the common complaints about 4E is that the ritual system is borked, and the suggested fixes go the opposite direction and make casters too strong.

So I am thinking of stealing from urban fantasy shows (Buffy, Supernatural, etc). Rituals are no longer connected with classes at all, there are no arcane, divine, psionic, etc. rituals. Instead they are lumped together with a new skill called Esoterica.

Esoteric magic can be done by anyone, and consists of lots of pouring through books for forgotten charts and phrases. An Esoteric Ritual of less then 10 minutes can be cast out of combat or on the first round of combat by burning a healing surge. The Esoteric skill uses the highest stat a character has instead of a particular related score.

Discovering Esoteric Rituals requires the individual to spend significant down time in libraries, crypts and black markets taking one day per ritual level plus the acquirement cost to find.

There are additional esoteric rituals that would be added, like creating constructs, undead, finding mounts in the wild, banishing a primordial, etc. The more powerful a ritual the narrower, so a ritual that binds a god would require weeks to discover, binds a single defeated god (say tiamat or lolth) and is usable a single time.

I based this on the trope common to urban fantasy where opponent magic is a snap of the finger, while the good guys often require weeks of research, get used once and then never mentioned again. Thoughts?

[Wasteomana]

Rituals aren't connected with classes most of the time anyway? There are a few things that can be 'bard rituals' but most of the rituals are generic. Just got to find someone willing to sell/share it first. Which could be an entire adventure in and of itself.

[Tvtyrant]

Rituals aren't connected with classes most of the time anyway? There are a few things that can be 'bard rituals' but most of the rituals are generic. Just got to find someone willing to sell/share it first. Which could be an entire adventure in and of itself.

Making them arcana based and requiring feats for those outside a narrow group is class based, yes. They are also almost as bad as skill challenges for rules support, and don't fulfill their narrative purpose IMO.

So I am altering them to be easier to pick up and use, more egalitarian, and someone wider of purpose. A ritual for finding and taming a wild mount fits well if the knowledge to do so is secret but not necesarily magical, aka esoteric.

[Beoric]

Making them arcana based and requiring feats for those outside a narrow group is class based, yes. They are also almost as bad as skill challenges for rules support, and don't fulfill their narrative purpose IMO.

So I am altering them to be easier to pick up and use, more egalitarian, and someone wider of purpose. A ritual for finding and taming a wild mount fits well if the knowledge to do so is secret but not necesarily magical, aka esoteric.

I'm not sure you need training in the key skill to use the ritual. If there is no roll required, I think the key skill just identifies the components necessary if you aren't using residuum. So all you really need is one feat. Which you can give as a bonus feat, if you think that is too onerous.

I think the best quick thing you can do to make rituals more interesting is to adjudicate them without strictly adhering to their mechanics. After all, they are used outside of combat, so you can afford to be a bit less pedantic about balance. Let the ritual do what everyone thinks it ought to be able to do.

I also note that a lot of rituals have little use using standard 4e adventure tropes, but may be more useful in a non-standard game.

An obvious example is Alarm, which is only of value if nobody can keep watch. This requires either a very small party of sufficient time pressure that you can't take longer than 6 hours for an extended rest, neither of which are the edition's default assumption.

A different type of example are rituals like Hallucinatory Terrain which seem to have relevance only in very specific situations. These are a lot more fun if you run a campaign where players are encouraged to come up with nutty schemes to resolve issues - behaviour which is discouraged by resolving everything using a traditional skill challenge. They also need fairly loose adjudication if they are ever going to be relevant to anything.

Casting times may also need to be changed. Taking Hallucinatory Terrain as an example, it can put a crimp in your plans to lure team monster into the hazard you want to conceal if you have to hope they will stay put for 10 minutes while you cast the thing. For anything that was a standard action or a round in other editions, 1 minute is plenty to make sure it never gets used in combat.

[Kurald Galain]

the suggested fixes go the opposite direction and make casters too strong.

Which suggested fixes would that be, then? As far as I know there's never been any consensus on how to fix rituals.

[Tvtyrant]

Which suggested fixes would that be, then? As far as I know there's never been any consensus on how to fix rituals.

Either lowering costs or letting you spend a healing surge or daily to shorten the time.

[darkdragoon]

That has precedent in that there's a scroll that lets you burn a surge and take a slightly weakened effect to fast cast (aside from scrolls taking half as long to begin with.) Controllers tend to have less surges, although of course if you're using rituals you probably have Comrades Succor.


Key skill is mostly about components and a decent amount don't have any checks to make. Oddly enough that gets lot of "vending machine" outcry by those appalled that you can just like, make a potion and not have it blow up accidentally.

[Wasteomana]

Making them arcana based and requiring feats for those outside a narrow group is class based, yes. They are also almost as bad as skill challenges for rules support, and don't fulfill their narrative purpose IMO.

So I am altering them to be easier to pick up and use, more egalitarian, and someone wider of purpose. A ritual for finding and taming a wild mount fits well if the knowledge to do so is secret but not necesarily magical, aka esoteric.

Why?

Like... If you want to cast magic rituals, be good at magic and take a feat that lets you cast magic rituals? I don't see how that is onerous at all.

Why do you need a ritual for finding and taming a wild mount? You likely don't have major component cost, if it isn't using magic it probably doesn't need to be cast on something. You can just make a short adventure or skill challenge for it and move on with your life. I don't think Rituals fit very well for that particular niche.

[Tvtyrant]

Why?

Like... If you want to cast magic rituals, be good at magic and take a feat that lets you cast magic rituals? I don't see how that is onerous at all.

Why do you need a ritual for finding and taming a wild mount? You likely don't have major component cost, if it isn't using magic it probably doesn't need to be cast on something. You can just make a short adventure or skill challenge for it and move on with your life. I don't think Rituals fit very well for that particular niche.

It is if it disproportionately effects none-arcane members (see D&Ds 1-5).

It is a genre thing. If you need to find a Unicorn and not get stabbed by it, or a Behir that you don't want to eat you, you need to perform rituals like "have a virgin kiss it under the full moon" or "perform a dance while feeding a psuedodragon to a centipede in the woods." The point is that most of those things require esoteric knowledge, and discovering and using that knowledge as a skill check makes more sense as a ritual. Rituals don't need to be magical, they need to be rituals. Those can be magical or none magical in nature.

[masteraleph]

It is if it disproportionately effects none-arcane members (see D&Ds 1-5).

It is a genre thing. If you need to find a Unicorn and not get stabbed by it, or a Behir that you don't want to eat you, you need to perform rituals like "have a virgin kiss it under the full moon" or "perform a dance while feeding a psuedodragon to a centipede in the woods." The point is that most of those things require esoteric knowledge, and discovering and using that knowledge as a skill check makes more sense as a ritual. Rituals don't need to be magical, they need to be rituals. Those can be magical or none magical in nature.

What you’re using as examples, though, are good skill challenge material. Knowledge about unicorns, asking around about unicorns, persuading the virgin to kiss the unicorn without getting slapped or run out of town, etc.

[Wasteomana]

What you’re using as examples, though, are good skill challenge material. Knowledge about unicorns, asking around about unicorns, persuading the virgin to kiss the unicorn without getting slapped or run out of town, etc.

+1.

I mean, there is a good system in place for it that is more interesting and interactive than rituals. Its a skill challenge.

[ThePurple]

I mean, there is a good system in place for it that is more interesting and interactive than rituals. Its a skill challenge.

First off, this. Some skill challenges (the really impressive ones) *should* be skill challenges rather than single actions (especially if it's supposed to be something with a spectrum of success rather than binary manifestations). One of my house rules is that Raise Dead is a skill challenge (keeping in mind that I use heavily modified skill challenge rules as well as a slew of other changes; Raise Dead only takes 10 mins to do but it can only be performed by PCs immediately after combat; raising someone long dead is basically quest material; furthermore, the fewer successes the party gets during the SC, the fewer HSs the dead person comes back with; if they perform extremely well, they will be brought back with out any HS loss; if the dead person doesn't have the HSs to cover the cost, they're too far gone to revive), as is crafting a magic item (must be done during downtime between adventures, since it requires a long period of work; level of SC is equal to the item's level).

Secondly, I completely changed rituals as well. Rather than having to track individual rituals, their costs/effects/etc, Ritual Casting is used to purchase successes on an SC by spending resources (one HS or an amount of gold depending upon the SC's level). If a player wants to use a ritual, they simply need to have the Ritual Casting feat (which requires they have either Arcana, Religion, or Nature, to represent what "kind" of ritual casting they're using) and then describe the desired ritual (as a GM, I reserve the right to say "no" if it seems too powerful). The assumption is that anyone with training in Ritual Casting would know, as part of that training, a breadth of different non-combat magics that can be applied without there needing find a hyperspecific magical effect from a relatively limited list.

The advantages of this are that it *dramatically* reduces the accounting and other bookkeeping requisite in having a Ritual Caster and it balances the effects out significantly more. The disadvantages, insofar as some people may perceive them as such, is that rituals are no longer as "special" because there isn't a massive list of specific effects that you have to read through and check constantly (some people *enjoy* this element of sifting through copious entries to find esoteric and interesting uses of various things; personally, I don't).

[Beoric]

...Ritual Casting is used to purchase successes on an SC by spending resources ...

Um ... no, never mind, its too much.

[Yakk]

A problem with going with "rituals do whatever you negotiate they do between DM and Player" is that it is DM-may-I.

A list of codified effects means that players are empowered to screw with the DM's plans completely. Which is half the point of RPGs. ;)

[darkbard]

Um ... no, never mind, its too much.

Actually, this is RAW post-DMG (DMG2, RC), as is the advice to allow Daily powers to count as autosuccesses (or erase a failure).

[ThePurple]

A problem with going with "rituals do whatever you negotiate they do between DM and Player" is that it is DM-may-I.

Well, the only 2 questions I ask when determining whether a RC is allowed to buy a success like this is whether the effect seems level appropriate (cross-country teleportation != heroic tier; even then, I run Eberron, where teleportation is new-and-unsure magic monopolized by a single House and generally distrusted by the populace; if they want to do the teleportation to cross the country, I'd probably run *that* as the SC) and whether it would actually help achieve their goals (magically preserving food isn't really going to help your ship survive the terrible storm that is hitting it right now). It's not as much a negotiation as "an additional option that they have in the SC", especially since the cost is standardized (level of the SC is set so the gold cost doesn't vary; 1 HS is always a constant).

[Yakk]

Imagine a system of codified results.

If they had a ritual that would *break* your skill challenge wide open, they could bypass your success metric in an exception based ritual system with narrative drive.

Instead, you scale their ritual potency based on the complexity of the skill challenge. So if the ritual would singled handedly defeat your skill challenge, they aren't allowed to do that ritual effect, because the narrative part of the ritual is dross. You get 1 point of success from describing a plausible in-bounds ritual, no more no less.

Now, the same is true of skill checks in most 4e based skill challenges. The effort consists of being plausible to contribute, and once you've done it you get your point and move on.

You have fixed impact and variable effects.

In comparison, the 4e ritual system has fixed effects and variable impact. You have a bunch of exception based things you can do, and the DM has to interpret the impact of what you did on the game world. If they think what you did solves the problem, they roll up the skill challenge. If they don't, they move it forward as appropriate.

The two are slightly different.

Imagine combat with variable effects but fixed impact. Every at-will power does 1 victory point, encounter 2 and daily 3.

The characters are Fire Wizard and Barbarian Rager. The Barbarian Rager isn't allowed to say she casts a fireball. But the mechanical effects of Fireball and Cleaving Frenzy are identical (3 victory points).

Each combat ends when you have enough victory points to defeat the foes. You lose the combat if they impose enough defeat points on you first.

In a sense, the entire 4e combat engine is noise on top of such a simple abstraction; but in that noise exists the narrative-building game.

[Beoric]

Actually, this is RAW post-DMG (DMG2, RC), as is the advice to allow Daily powers to count as autosuccesses (or erase a failure).

DMG2 p. 86: "A character who performs a relevant ritual or uses a daily power deserves to notch at least 1 success toward the party's goal." [emphasis added]

This is not the same as allowing a character to invent a ritual on the spot, which by default grants a success provided the healing surge of gp cost is paid. You may as well replace the Ritual Caster feat with the following:

Price of Success
Benefit: When you expend one healing surge or 1/25 the cost of a magic item of your level while engaged in a skill challenge, you gain 1 success in the skill challenge.

This is far different from finding a creative use of limited resources (i.e. a limited number of rituals or ritual scrolls.

Essentially, I agree the Yakk. I feel the approach is too much "game" and not enough "roleplaying" - and by "roleplaying" I mean "in-game decisions or actions taken by the character which have in-game consequences". But its not an objective issue, its a subjective one.

So rather than disparage the playstyle, I will just say this. I think the approach is damaging to player agency because the player's in-game decisions have little meaning. The choices, unconstrained by meaningful limits on resources (you can invent any ritual you want), are not meaningful choices. The character's action is nearly irrelevant, since the only decision that matters is the metagame decision to case a ritual, not the in-game choice among limited rituals. The player's creative problem-solving skills become irrelevant.

I am finding, however, that not everyone gives a crap about player agency, including players. So ThePurple can run his game this way, and his players may enjoy it, and I'm not saying its wrong. I'm just pointing out that there is another kind of play experience out there, and if you want it you have to do things differently.

[ThePurple]

This is far different from finding a creative use of limited resources (i.e. a limited number of rituals or ritual scrolls.

My problem is moreso that I have a hard time believing that, in an industrial magic world, the number of rituals would be *that* limited. In a world where there are *hundreds* of types of magical arms, armor, and various widgets, I have a hard time believing that the breadth of non-combat magic is going to be as limited the ritual system requires. I also have a hard time believing that, in a world where "arcane magic is basically science" that *every individual variation* of a given ritual needs to be memorized and researched independently.

As such, I apply a level of abstraction to the ritual magic system that allows players to *actually use it* in a large number of situations without being forced to constantly spend their adventuring gold on obscure rituals just so that they have access to them. Bookkeeping and hyperspecificity are *problems* that I seek to resolve, rather than elements of the game that I seek to encourage.

To me, acquiring rituals in an industrial magic world is about keeping up on the latest magical journals and theories rather than scouring libraries for ancient spells made in the past that require several days and 3000gp in rare components in order to properly transcribe the eldritch runes. Ritual Magic, to me, isn't simply the ability to use a limited number of costly spells with hyperspecific usage; to me, Ritual Magic is the capacity of a character to use magic out of combat to solve problems by spending limited resources.

So rather than disparage the playstyle

Except that's exactly what you're doing, and you're doing it in a manner that makes it seem like anyone that *doesn't* agree with you is somehow inferior, as well, because they just *don't care* like you and your players do.

You're making the explicit claim that my solution somehow reduces player agency because your interpretation of "player agency" requires there to be an antagonistic relationship with the GM in which a player is given the capacity to just tell a GM "nope, there's this thing you forgot about that renders the problem irrelevant for a pittance".

I also think it's important to note that I do not simply require a player to say "I'm using a ritual". I was very specific that the player has to actually come up with an effect that is both level appropriate and actually *useful* for the situation. There have been cases where players have tried to "buy" successes with a ritual but I didn't give it to them because they couldn't come up with something that made sense

Agency, in the manner that we're using it (since it's got numerous other definitions that are useless), is synonymous with "influence". You see the influence a player has needing to be over the GM (or, at the very least, the capacity for a player to use established rules to overrule the GM; influence, in this way, is simply a manifestation of system mastery; I would argue that this directly contradicts "Rule 0"). I see the influence the player has needing to be over the *story* (such that influence is a matter of understanding the world and the story rather than the abstractions that the system makes for the purposes of codifying and simplifying what is, in game, an extremely complex construct) and the ritual system, as it's written, does a terrible job of that.

There are different *types* of player agency and different ways to enable them. Technically, giving players 1000 options, one of which will always cause them to win if they can figure out which one is the winning option, is agency. On the other hand, giving them 5 buttons, none of which give an instant win but most of which provide some degree of contribution towards the end goal, is also agency. This does, of course, get into one of the fundamental limitations of the SC system insofar as one success contributes just as much as another, which I've been working to address in my remake of 4e.

My other goal is also to *balance* Ritual Casting which, in previous discussions, you've shown no real predilection towards caring for, specifically citing occasions where PCs take a single action (oftentimes a ritual) that renders an otherwise complex interaction irrelevant as successes of the system rather than failures (and I can appreciate that view, but I don't consider it to be inferior or denying agency). Ritual Casting, as written, are basically a hyperspecific effect that, if you end up in a situation where that hyperspecific effect is needed, becomes an instant win: they're useless until they're useful, at which point they render everything else basically pointless (which is a *bit* too much like 3.X imo). I would rather smooth the effectiveness curve out a bit so that Rituals can actually be an option in most situations without being OP as hell.

Personally, while I've received a small amount of criticism for my rework of the Ritual Casting system in 4e, I've received *significantly more* compliments about the simplicity, accessibility, and usability of it, and not simply from my own players. My rework of the Ritual Casting system is one of the more common house rules that I see stolen by other groups that read my House Rules because they *like* getting rid of the bookkeeping and enjoy the increased flexibility and balance.

If you don't like it, that's fine. But I take offense at the notion that I'm somehow denying my players something by including it when, in every case that I've spoken to my own (and other) players about it, they tell me that they're now enjoying *more* agency within the story because of it.

[darkbard]

I misunderstood you, Beoric. I thought you were outright dismissing the use of a specific, relevant ritual per RAW for an auto success in an SC, not the proposed variant.

[Beoric]

To me, acquiring rituals in an industrial magic world is about keeping up on the latest magical journals and theories rather than scouring libraries for ancient spells made in the past that require several days and 3000gp in rare components in order to properly transcribe the eldritch runes. Ritual Magic, to me, isn't simply the ability to use a limited number of costly spells with hyperspecific usage; to me, Ritual Magic is the capacity of a character to use magic out of combat to solve problems by spending limited resources.

This is a setting specific discussion I’m not going to get into. Run Eberron however you want. But be aware that these are not the default assumptions of every setting (or even every interpretation of Eberron).

You're making the explicit claim that my solution somehow reduces player agency because your interpretation of "player agency" requires there to be an antagonistic relationship with the GM in which a player is given the capacity to just tell a GM "nope, there's this thing you forgot about that renders the problem irrelevant for a pittance".

Not at all, I do not have an antagonistic relationship with my players, nor do I advocate one. My interpretation of player agency is simply that their choices should be meaningful and have meaningful consequences in-game. I try to adjudicate their choices neutrally, with perhaps a leaning toward giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I also think it's important to note that I do not simply require a player to say "I'm using a ritual". I was very specific that the player has to actually come up with an effect that is both level appropriate and actually *useful* for the situation. There have been cases where players have tried to "buy" successes with a ritual but I didn't give it to them because they couldn't come up with something that made sense

I see this as a bar so low as to be nearly meaningless. Concocting a ritual relevant to a specific check in a skill challenge is trivially easy. Coming up with creative and novel solutions using limited resources is more challenging. This is why I advocate being flexible in interpreting and adjudicating the effects of rituals; I also draw upon almost every edition of the game to houserule new ones, and I provide various opportunities for PCs to acquire more rituals if they so desire. Or even invent them, if they want to; earlier editions have a tradition of researching new spells.

As far as I can see, using your system the only real choice is in the metagame, as to whether to take the risk of a skill check or the certainty of expending gps or a HS. That makes it pretty gameable, with a default strategy of using skills when your highly trained skills apply and you don’t have a lot of failures, and rituals when you suck at the relevant skill or you’re at two failures. Unless the SC takes place over days or when there is little risk of several combat encounters, in which case you only use rituals and give away healing surges like candy.

Where there is a choice between options, and one option is clearly better than the others, the choice is not meaningful. The more obvious it is that there is a single correct choice, the less agency the player has. Having the right to narrate the results of that choice does not make the choice any more meaningful.

Agency, in the manner that we're using it (since it's got numerous other definitions that are useless), is synonymous with "influence". You see the influence a player has needing to be over the GM (or, at the very least, the capacity for a player to use established rules to overrule the GM; influence, in this way, is simply a manifestation of system mastery; I would argue that this directly contradicts "Rule 0"). I see the influence the player has needing to be over the *story* (such that influence is a matter of understanding the world and the story rather than the abstractions that the system makes for the purposes of codifying and simplifying what is, in game, an extremely complex construct) and the ritual system, as it's written, does a terrible job of that.

I have no idea how you concluded that I think players need to have influence/veto power over the GM, but it is not at all what I am saying. The way I am using “agency” has nothing to do with influence. Players make in-character decisions. The impact of those decisions is adjudicated by the GM.

To the extent that the action, or inaction, and consequences thereof, have in impact on the story, I suppose the player has influence over the story, or the player-GM intereaction has influence over the story. But I don’t know what that has to do with the discussion at hand.

Ritual Casting, as written, are basically a hyperspecific effect that, if you end up in a situation where that hyperspecific effect is needed, becomes an instant win: they're useless until they're useful, at which point they render everything else basically pointless (which is a *bit* too much like 3.X imo). I would rather smooth the effectiveness curve out a bit so that Rituals can actually be an option in most situations without being OP as hell.

This is why I advocate a flexible approach to interpreting and adjudicating rituals. Looking at the ritual list in alphabetical order and picking the first heroic tier ritual, let’s use Affect Normal Fire as an example. Not my favourite ritual but here goes. You can use it to put out forest fires or a burning building. You can use it to walk over a burning bridge. You can make a room dark or bright. You can use it to send morse code messages with a signal fire. You can use it to create hazards or get rid of them. You can use it to impress the duke with parlour tricks, or convince the rubes that you are a master of the elements. I believe the 1e version let you alter light without changing heat, so you can use it to conceal your campfire. Or if you rule that heat (and actual fire size) really does change, you can use it to make a fire bigger and set adjacent objects alight. You can use it to distract a guard. Perhaps you can use it to manipulate how fast a candle-clock burns (I think this was allowable in 1e).