Even the most rabid edition warrior has to look at 4e D&D and realize that there are some interesting ideas in there. This might sound like an apologetic, and some small part of it is, but 4e’s greatest flaw is to push forward some really sound RPG design but do so in ways that really didn’t seem like D&D from time to time.
You have to realize, when you work on a brand like D&D, working on a new edition is a once-a-career event. You get to shape the future of D&D. You get to make it more fun. But that’s the problem. The disorganizing principle of D&D necessitates that you seek as much market knowledge and fan desire you can. If you go just by the contents of your own head, you’re going to miss the boat.
For instance, there was this idea that if you could make D&D speak less jargoned, that new people would have an easier time learning it. It’s basic user interface—intuitive is better. Contrary to the common wisdom, sometimes less intuitive is better. It’s all about the market…your market…your potential customers. While I have no solid research on the subject, I’m willing to bet that some kid who grew up reading Harry Potter novels and playing console RPGs doesn’t need to be glad-handed with less jargon, they need to be inspired. They need to find a new world to explore. They know the jargon game. Some of them love the jargon game.
Summoning a creature to do your bidding for some short time is probably the most iconic use of ritual in fiction and myth. It’s a shame the ritual rules have a very hard time making this interesting and fun for the game.
Last week I said that an RPG group is structured like a terrorist cell. Maybe RPGs are like mystery religions. They have their own language, their own rituals, and their own initiations. Sure, a fraction of gamers started by reading the rules only, but some of those guys end up writing a-boy-and-his-dragon fiction in some picturesque desolation. The rest of us were called by the clattering of polyhedrals, the stomp of lead figures on dining room tables, as well as the laughter and overacting of those already in the throes of the Homeric rite.
And you thought it was just Doritos, Mountain Dew, and being your own imaginary friend.
I remember, while working on 4e, there was a lot of talk about the story of D&D. But to many that story went away or it got changed in strange ways. Magic missile doesn’t auto hit (it still doesn’t now, it just effects with damage, yippee for clarity!), a succubus is a devil, lamia are swarm girls, gray elves or high elves are eladrin, ettercap kept their big butts but gained some appendages, and the gods and the devils live in space. Bring this to the temple, and all the sudden it looks like you stumbled into the wrong ritual. The initiated had to rethink everything before they could possibly initiate.
Some of them just said fuck it, splintered, and Pathfinder (or the Cult of Iuz, as I like to call it) was born.
But I typically wonder what would happen if we could take some of the good things about 4e and put them squarely within the story of D&D. So what the hell is the story of D&D? I don’t think it has to do with the Nine Hells being a planet. Hey, but that’s just me.
So in 4e we get rituals. I like rituals. I think rituals are a sorely needed part of the game. I can’t say that I’m 100% happy with how rituals turned out. Here is why I like rituals. There are basically two speeds in D&D. There is combat and story. Sure, they can intersect some times, but each one is a different mode of play. Rituals are, or at least rituals are supposed to be, the powers (to use a 4e-ism that should have been scrubbed out of the core rulebooks) of story. There should have been feats of story too…but we will get to that. You can see the remnants of that in the initial list of rituals—there are rituals to find stuff out, there are rituals to make things, there are travel rituals, and rituals to get out of jams. But during the process of their design, rituals took some wrong turns.
Residuum is the Midi-chlorians of D&D, and unnecessary kludge where none is needed because we already had one. Okay, maybe I’m overstating the point, but you know mean. You could have called it just components and given examples with each ritual, and that would have felt like D&D. Most groups will ignore that level of detail, going for the simple rules (I buy 50 gp components and keep them in my component case), but the DM could riff on the detail if he enter a plot twist. (“You go to bind the demon and find that you are missing the opals needed for the ritual. Maybe it was that damn quasit.”)
Also, gold (erm, I mean ritual components) should not be the only resource that a ritual can consume. In mythology, rituals take both expensive components and fortitude of the caster. In history, expensive materials were probably sold by con-men performing rituals after the ritual was done. Only sometimes did you need just one or the other. Ritual casters should be able to convert healing surges into component cost. Now because of the all-over-the-place nature of ritual component costs, this is hard to retrofit. But just as a starting place you could have a spent healing surge worth 10 X caster level gp of components. At 1st level a healing surge would be enough to cast Comprehend Languages, and at 25th level it would be enough to cast Remove Affliction. When you start out you can cast rituals of your level solely with healing surges, but later on you can cast any heroic-level ritual for a healing surge. For rituals of your level, you will have to gather those components or channel the healing surges of others. I think this feels like “high magic.”
When channeling healing surges from others, you do so for a lower rate of exchange. Non-ritual casters contributed 5 X their level in gp worth of components for each surge when they assist a ritual. There could be feats that allow ritual casters to get more component cost from non-ritual casters, and other ritual caster feats.
You could ask what you do about disenchants, but I’ll get to that next time.
In many ways healing surges take the place f the XP spent for item creation in 3e, but it is a less debilitating cost. Sometimes it will be a no-brainer to use rituals, sometimes it will be an interesting choice, but at least rituals get used. They will become part of the game, part of the abilities of the character, rather than this strange subsystem that people ignore either because they can’t wrap their heads around, have a hard time gaming, or can’t afford.
You should be able to take short cuts with rituals, either by way of cutting down time it takes to cast them, or by not providing the right amount of life or component cost. But when you do, the ritual’s effect becomes highly unpredictable. Some of the skill checks in rituals tried to play with that idea, but the results are too sanitized for anything approaching fun and danger. I’m thinking random charts. This is a good place for random charts.
Some of them should be used in combat…but in contingent ways. Here’s one. One I think folks will want, especially during big fights.
Glyph of Life
Placing the glyph of life on the forehead of your companions, and reciting an ancient prayer, you can bring one of them back to life with a mere touch.
Here is the actual glyph of life, straight from the old Guide to the World of Greyhawk. My grog is showing, and I’m obviously happy about it. Yippee!
Level: 12 Component Cost: 500 gp
Category: Restoration Market Price: 2,600 gp
Time: 10 minutes and special (see below) Key Skill: Heal (no check)
Duration: Until end of next extended rest or until discharged
You perform this ritual at the end of an extended rest or during a short rest. When you do, you place the glyph of life on the forehead of each ally that you touch. The glyph has no effect on the creature touched during casting, but if he or she dies, you can bring her back to life, as if you had cast the Raise Dead ritual. Doing so is a standard action with a range of melee: touch on the dead ally you want to raise. Using this action discharges the ritual.
And now you can make rituals in-combat buffs, but with interesting game play and reasonable effects. All the sudden they start feeling part of D&D. They engage the story, they allow the team to pitch in when needed, and individuals to shine when they want. Ritual use becomes part of problem solving and world interaction not just automatic assumption shunted out of the game.
They act like the spells that you wish you finally had an instance to cast, but you were never going to replace blade barrier. Now you have the chance.
I like the idea of using healing surges or components measured in gp rather than residuum. Like you said, residuum is a kludge. It is just converted gp. Why create a new medium of exchange when you already have one that works fine. If you are going to get rid of specific components for spells, just say Xgp worth of components.
As for healing surges, if you want to be able to use surges to cast rituals, the wizard needs more healing surges. Perhaps in the regular rules he (or she) might have enough, but in your home rules, you cut back on them (at least for the wizard).
using surges as a commodity for more than just healing is a fantastic idea. After playing a session with Rich Baker, he used them to allow you to turn a miss by 1 into a hit. Since my group is famous for leaving monsters at 1 hit point (seriously, it is pathetic how often we have that happen), when it is badly wounded we are allowed to spend a surge for an extra point or two of damage to drop it. Now working in the overcharge mechanic and spending them as currency for rituals, they are really rather an awesome gaming concept. And really makes feats that give you more surges something to consider for more than just front line fighters.
Sarah, one of the crazy things is how we end up assuming a game has to play a certain way. On the LFR lists, it is furious discussion time over how many magic items our precious PCs get to keep when the living campaign adopts magic item rarity rules. Yet, in my Dark Sun home campaign there is hardly any magic and players are fine with it. I have a number of house rules which would cause pandemonium (I miss pandemonium) if you added it into the game officially. The game is very flexible and gamers too (they just don’t know it).
That said, game components have subtle influences. Players do react to the differences and the way they react can be surprising. I doubt WotC expected so many gamers to do so little with rituals. They are practically nonexistent in LFR play, with just a handful of uses across hundreds of tables of which I have been a part. WotC did awaken to the fact, which is why you haven’t seen articles that spend real time on rituals in DDi in many ages.
My theory, and it may be ill-informed, is that the reason why rituals don’t give much love in 4e is because for so many groups, most things that happen out of combat don’t get love. DMs hand wave a lot of story elements because the pay off for playing it out doesn’t compare to the cost in terms of lost time. They or their players would rather fight a battle or deal with one small important scene. I feel that few people keep track of the time of day in the game world and I’m not sure how many people know how long the streetwise check is supposed to take. This may be a side effect of the high percentage of the rules that deal with combat, seemingly giving that part of the game better weight but I wonder if it’s just as likely that it’s a preference shift among players as the core audience gets older and has less time to play. I just really don’t know.
The other problem with rituals is that the DM needs to create a situation in which they can occur. If the characters are always reacting instead of being proactive, they won’t have time to cast a ritual. If the DM speeds through the non-combat scenes, the characters won’t have an opportunity to find a use for a ritual. If they are exploring the wilderness or a dungeon for weeks at a time, they might not have a chance to buy a needed ritual, making them subject to the DMs whims on ritual use.
> The other problem with rituals is that the DM needs to create a situation in which they can occur.
Rituals really should have just been called spells, and given to spell casters and treated like pre-4 spells were. You can prepare X per day, and be done with it. You want to cast a “ritual”? Fine, you cast it. It has a normal casting time, something that can be used in combat or out. Maybe material components for things more powerful (spell components, no mere cost). And that’s it. Suddenly rituals can find additional use. Players will get a chance to see where they can use rituals in combat and come up with creative uses for them. Being able to cast comprehend languages in the middle of combat to hear what the demon leader is shouting about now might actually be a good thing.
The fundamental problem with rituals is that they force the use of gold to do something you don’t need to do. Any of the “find things” or “manipulate things” rituals are a good example. You are traveling from A to B. You can spend gold on a ritual, or just do without it – the DM would not have written so you fail without a ritual, because that would be unfair. Now you have more gold in your pocket. Maybe a ritual makes things easier, but will the DM really take the time to write something that really makes it worth the cost? Doubtful. Now, rituals can be fun, but it requires the right kind of a campaign and DM where the story will really change because you used one.
In 3E we would cast spells all the time that had ritual-like effects, but we did that gladly. It showcased what made us a spellcaster. It was part of the big fun of the game and the cost (usually negligible if any) was perfect for the occasion. You also had a lot of toolkit spells (Mass Fly) that could shine outside of combat. Making them rituals and expensive to even own makes them undesirable.
I like your idea regarding healing surges. I could see a system whereby you spend a healing surge to cast a ritual and can’t gain it until the next extended rest. You might have some additional sliding scale, perhaps looking at your level and/or the ritual’s level. A really cool ritual might cost more surges. That could be an economy that adds danger and prevent cheese, but still encourages their use.
Rituals in their current form leave me sad. Very sad. I put them up there with MM1 minions and traps on my list of things that did not go well. I recall how I read the PH and was salivating to get to the ritual chapter. My warlord was going to multiclass wizard just to use them. Then I read the chapter. It was a down ending.
Spot on. When I read the 4e PH, I said to my wife and son, “It looks like a pretty good game, as long as you don’t think of it as D&D.”
I like where you are going with rituals. I don’t know why they got rid of stuff like Bull’s Strength or Shield of Faith.
I have been advocating this and or other changes to the ritual system for as long as I have been playing 4th edition. I wrote most of my home rules for rituals here http://bit.ly/clPKjF A lot of our ideas a similar. I hope lots of people in the right places read your article and take note.
I think the overcharge mechanic from Gamma World could be massaged to provide a framework for the shortcut method. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to use it for “flawed” magic items but we have a similar story going on here too. What I like about it is that unlike longer random tables, I know what might happen (it’s really just a random table of 2 items). I know that’s a pretty personal desire and not all players feel the same way, but it’s how I feel.
As an aside, on the topic of player comfort, I’ve found that as I become more comfortable with the game, I’m also more comfortable with an increasing amount of randomness and negative consequences. One of the hard parts of introducing new players into the game is that existing players desire a level of complexity and atmosphere that can be, well, scary to newbies. For instance, I was in a game once where the DM had a critical miss deck. In my mind, I thought, “Wait, you have me playing a game without save points and you want me to risk losing my weapon, in combat, because I roll a 1?” I feel that the veterans out there might snicker or remark on how players today are wimps, but that’s what went through my mind. Listening to their stories, I’m pretty sure when they started playing, many of them wouldn’t have liked being without their weapon either.
Really interesting on at least two levels. I always wondered about using healing surges instead of ritual components as well — rituals can clearly cost healing surges sometimes, so why not use them up front?
The glyph of life ritual reminds me of something one used to be able to do with the contingency spell. Perhaps there’s the fear that if rituals were used in such a capacity, they could imbalance the game?