The Gaming Den

Nice sentiment, guys, but this was supposed to be the thing that pacified the people who would complain that anything not related to combat or dungeon exploration would be excised from the game--and nothing doing.

1- The whole point of doing rituals was to make it so that certain characters wouldn't hog all of the spotlight when it came to constructing fortresses or getting to the cloud giant's house. Well, you fucked up. Rituals now require pretty strict skill check rules so we still have the same problem of clerics and wizards hogging the out-of-combat spotlight.

2- Rituals take way too fucking long. Spending an hour raising the dead body of a friend is retarded, but acceptable. Spending 10 minutes creating a floaty disc or opening a locked door... idiotic.

3- Probably the most damning one, rituals cost too much fucking money. Would you like to spend thousands of gold pieces just changing the weather for one day? What if I told you that character in 4th Edition don't get a lot of money either?

They explicitly designed rituals so that they're not useful at all in combat, but then made rituals use the same resources that combat did and WORST OF ALL explicitly made combat the most important part of the game. Fucking Jesuscocks, how did they fuck this up so bad.

If I was going to fix it, I would do a few things:

A) Rituals should be role-specific, not power-source specific. This way you don't run into the problem of an all-martial or all-primal party being unable to raise one of their own from the fucking dead or teleport across the country without a massive detour in character design.

B) Most rituals should be a lot shorter. Controlling the weather or causing a vineyard to spring up in a desert is really interesting, but if it takes longer than a minute for effects like this then no one should give a care. Now, some characters like Eneru or Ursula actually take some time to use their powers to concoct their evil plans. The difference is that the excitement of that comes from stopping them. For characters whom actually need to get their big-time mojo on to start the next adventure spending 10 minutes to get into gear kills the mood. Storm is a great X-Men character to watch solve problems with but no one wants to see a ONE HOUR LATER panel while she tries to conjure a sandstorm. Goku's ridiculous power-up sequences are inserted as money-saving padding, not because Toriyama thought it would be cool to spend three episodes watching him charge up a Spirit Bomb.

C) Either rituals should be free of any cost but you can only choose and use a finite number of them, or they should have some currency or use-restriction independent of other game effects. No one wants to see a montage of Sir Kay selling his house and moving in with Lancelot so he can turn into a giant and wrestle with cloud giants.

Fucking Jesuscocks, how did they fuck this up so bad.

Groupthink?

But Lago, you can't ROLEPLAY if you don't devote MECHANICAL RESOURCES to it. Look at my CHEF! He's a great roleplayer, he has Skill Focus: Cooking which makes the King love him!

Roy wrote:But Lago, you can't ROLEPLAY if you don't devote MECHANICAL RESOURCES to it. Look at my CHEF! He's a great roleplayer, he has Skill Focus: Cooking which makes the King love him!

You got it all backwards Roy! You can roleplay anything independent of what your character can do! So that all Primal party can take the Raise Dead Ritual and fail 7 times blowing seven times as much cash but still pretend the succeeded the first time and talk about how they are masters of life and death!

Kaelik wrote:

Roy wrote:But Lago, you can't ROLEPLAY if you don't devote MECHANICAL RESOURCES to it. Look at my CHEF! He's a great roleplayer, he has Skill Focus: Cooking which makes the King love him!

You got it all backwards Roy! You can roleplay anything independent of what your character can do! So that all Primal party can take the Raise Dead Ritual and fail 7 times blowing seven times as much cash but still pretend the succeeded the first time and talk about how they are masters of life and death!

I'm not familiar with your Fail. Mine is a reference to the latest of the ROLEplayer tards.

Back to the lulz:

Oh my god! You killed my character because he put his resources into being a civilian! How could you do that? Why would you let me die on a battlefield?

Roy, I believe that Kaelik is referring to the fact that rituals are a skill check and when you fail you have to spend the cash again to make it work.

Raise Dead doesn't require a skill check, though. As long as you have the ritual and the phat ca$h, it always works. Which is just another problem of the ritual system in general; a lot of people don't like the revolving door process of death and illness. Well, I think the complaint is stupid and that we need a revolving door for death and illness if we're going to play 3rd or 4th edition D&D--but this just highlights just how much fail the ritual system is. Not even the 'ROLEplay not ROLLplay' crowd likes it.

The time delay is fine for shit like raise dead, it's okay to take 10 minutes or even an hour doing that. But if you want adventuring spells like knock to be rituals, they need to be a lot faster. Spending 10 minutes outside a door to unlock it is fucking stupid.

RC2 wrote:The time delay is fine for shit like raise dead, it's okay to take 10 minutes or even an hour doing that.

The time delay for Raise Dead is essentially meaningless because the story can't continue in a non-stupid way unless the player of the dead character can participate again. The plot just comes to a halt for however long it takes to complete the ritual, so from a gameplay perspective as long as it's not castable in combat it doesn't matter. The casting time is equally meaningless whether it takes 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day, or one month.

The only difference between the spell taking a short time to cast and a long time to cast is that it increases the chance of the DM getting to be an asshole. 'Oh, while you were performing the ritual, enemy ninjas are about to sacrifice the princess to perform the Blot Out The Sun ritual! But it looks like Dave's barbarian still isn't raised yet. Hmm. Looks like you're going to have to sit this one out, Dave. Go play Smash Bros. for awhile.'

Raise dead shouldn't take more time than a minute or five.

I don't think the skill requirements are too bad - the skills are available for a number of classes, can be aquired with a feat (and let's face it, 4E feats are weak enough that using one for Skill Training isn't that bad), and many of the rituals don't need skill checks, or the skill check is only a secondary factor in the effectiveness.

On the other point though - yeah. If the time and cost factors were divided by 10, they might be about right. Although Knock might still fail compared to the alternate ritual "Smash Door" which is free and usually takes about 1-5 rounds.

And then there's bard rituals. Why does the Bard get special exclusive rituals, when no other class does? Good question. I guess raising the dead is something anyone can do with training, but singing? You need a class for that.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: The only difference between the spell taking a short time to cast and a long time to cast is that it increases the chance of the DM getting to be an asshole. 'Oh, while you were performing the ritual, enemy ninjas are about to sacrifice the princess to perform the Blot Out The Sun ritual! But it looks like Dave's barbarian still isn't raised yet. Hmm. Looks like you're going to have to sit this one out, Dave. Go play Smash Bros. for awhile.'

Raise dead shouldn't take more time than a minute or five.

Well, I'm actually okay with death being major and people who die having to sit out a bit. One of my biggest problems with 4E in fact is that it's like almost too suited to everyone staying alive. Healing is too easy as it is and making it so that everyone always comes back with only minor complications just annoys me.

Given its so hard to die in 4E, I'm okay with the game just saying "you're dead, roll a new character" and getting rid of raise dead entirely. Because it's almost impossible to die in 4E anyway, unless your DM just has all the enemies purely focus fire and CdG.

The time and money spent are the only things preventing Rituals from completely eclipsing Skills. Halving the time is a common sentiment among many 4E players, as it does seem very excessive; however, if you drastically reduce the cost on Knock, why would anyone take the Thievery Skill? You could instead take Ritual Caster, get a Ritual equal (or better) to said Skill, and you'd then also have access to all the other Rituals, which (with drastically reduced prices) replace all the other Skills you could ever need, as well!

It would simply result in 3.5's Skills vs. Spells ridiculousness all over again. :S

Well, I'm actually okay with death being major and people who die having to sit out a bit. One of my biggest problems with 4E in fact is that it's like almost too suited to everyone staying alive. Healing is too easy as it is and making it so that everyone always comes back with only minor complications just annoys me.

Given its so hard to die in 4E, I'm okay with the game just saying "you're dead, roll a new character" and getting rid of raise dead entirely. Because it's almost impossible to die in 4E anyway, unless your DM just has all the enemies purely focus fire and CdG.

I don't mind on principle doing things Shadowrun or 1E D&D style where if you die you roll up a new character and no one really notices or cares. The modern D&D fan likes holding onto characters for the entirety of their career so I don't think this is going to work. But at least it's fair.

But I really do hate the design principle of forcing people to sit things out because they were unlucky or made a wrong decision. Really, about the maximum amount of time under any circumstance someone at the table should not be affecting the plot should be about 20-25 minutes. Anything more than that and all you've done is encouraged people to go 'I'm going to go play Smash Bros., tell me when I can play again'. Which is unacceptable for a social game like D&D.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I don't mind on principle doing things Shadowrun or 1E D&D style where if you die you roll up a new character and no one really notices or cares. The modern D&D fan likes holding onto characters for the entirety of their career so I don't think this is going to work. But at least it's fair.

Well, I suggest making death rare. Main characters shouldn't die often, but death should be something major when it happens. It shouldn't be Final Fantasy pheonix down bullshit.

4E actually does a good job of making death rare. But really I'd like ti to be something irreversible if it happens.

But I really do hate the design principle of forcing people to sit things out because they were unlucky or made a wrong decision. Really, about the maximum amount of time under any circumstance someone at the table should not be affecting the plot should be about 20-25 minutes. Anything more than that and all you've done is encouraged people to go 'I'm going to go play Smash Bros., tell me when I can play again'. Which is unacceptable for a social game like D&D.

Well presumably the dead PC would be creating his new character while everyone else plays.

Crimson Lancer wrote:The time and money spent are the only things preventing Rituals from completely eclipsing Skills. Halving the time is a common sentiment among many 4E players, as it does seem very excessive; however, if you drastically reduce the cost on Knock, why would anyone take the Thievery Skill? You could instead take Ritual Caster, get a Ritual equal (or better) to said Skill, and you'd then also have access to all the other Rituals, which (with drastically reduced prices) replace all the other Skills you could ever need, as well!

1) The problem with this line of reasoning is that the cost is 35 gp plus one healing surge. First of all, the cost of a healing surge is completely stupid so let's pretend like it didn't exist.

Money increases quadratically in 4th Edition, so ritual costs eventually reach a point of 'who gives a fuck?' We STILL have your stated problem of a mage being better at picking locks than a thief, it just brings the adventure to the halt and requires players to keep track of bullshit amounts of money for no reason. They become cheap-as-free anyway, so why can't they just be free and save us the hassel?

2) Skills are generally worth jack shit in 4th Edition anyway, so who cares about them being obsolete? I don't even know what Diplomacy is supposed to do; I'm literally rolling a number here and waiting for my DM to go 'ehn, good enough'. The static DCs aren't worth donkey dick and skill challenges are intentionally designed to make your skills worth about the same they did at 1st level as they do at 3rd level.

3) The 'a wizard is a better lockpicker than a thief' problem only exists because 4E is still holding onto that retarded convention of certain mandatory tasks being done better by characters who have the correct special effects while combining it with the idea that the special effects don't have to be logical for the person initiating it! If instead of making rituals the bullshit legacy mechanics they are now they actually, you know, assigned certain rituals by class/role/ability score modifier no one would give a fuck about Knock being better than the thievery skill, because only thievery-type characters could fucking use Knock!

It would simply result in 3.5's Skills vs. Spells ridiculousness all over again. :S

Guess what? The problem still exists in 4E, but they chose the worst of both worlds. The spells are still mandatory but they have the additional problem of being uninteresting. That's fucking horseshit.

Well presumably the dead PC would be creating his new character while everyone else plays.

That's not how it works in modern D&D. Modern D&D encourages you to stick with your character until they can get raised. So the amount of time a player sits out should be short or they should just be allowed to snag a new character.

For the record, I find the trope of 'Dick Sergeant arrives out of nowhere despite not being alluded to at any point in the past and conveniently has the skillset that Sergeant Dick's death has left uncovered' just as retarded and immersion-breaking as revolving door heaven. It's largely a matter of personal choice which one is less stupid.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:1) The problem with this line of reasoning is that the cost is 35 gp plus one healing surge. First of all, the cost of a healing surge is completely stupid so let's pretend like it didn't exist.

Money increases quadratically in 4th Edition, so ritual costs eventually reach a point of 'who gives a fuck?' We STILL have your stated problem of a mage being better at picking locks than a thief, it just brings the adventure to the halt and requires players to keep track of bullshit amounts of money for no reason. They become cheap-as-free anyway, so why can't they just be free and save us the hassel?

The Ritual sucks up a Healing Surge, IE, some of the Caster's innate inner energy. That alone makes it less useful if you have an expert at the task on hand to begin with, but still useful if you don't have one, but need something opened.

I definitely agree that the "GP-per-casting" thing is crap, and the length of casting is...well, obscene, really. :S

2) Skills are generally worth jack shit in 4th Edition anyway, so who cares about them being obsolete? I don't even know what Diplomacy is supposed to do; I'm literally rolling a number here and waiting for my DM to go 'ehn, good enough'. The static DCs aren't worth donkey dick and skill challenges are intentionally designed to make your skills worth about the same they did at 1st level as they do at 3rd level.

IMHO, you're approaching the entire Skill System from the wrong direction. Try to do something outside (or inside!) of combat, then roll for whatever Skill your DM deems appropriate, and then only to see if your Character screws it up or not.

3) The 'a wizard is a better lockpicker than a thief' problem only exists because 4E is still holding onto that retarded convention of certain mandatory tasks being done better by characters who have the correct special effects while combining it with the idea that the special effects don't have to be logical for the person initiating it! If instead of making rituals the bullshit legacy mechanics they are now they actually, you know, assigned certain rituals by class/role/ability score modifier no one would give a fuck about Knock being better than the thievery skill, because only thievery-type characters could fucking use Knock!

That would be pointless. Why does my Rogue need Knock? I'm sorry, I think I'm totally misunderstanding you here.

Guess what? The problem still exists in 4E, but they chose the worst of both worlds. The spells are still mandatory but they have the additional problem of being uninteresting. That's fucking horseshit.

My apologies for being so blunt, but what's the point of you cursing all the time? That's really the main reason I avoided this place when P_R originally invited me; how can one possibly achieve mature conversation when a common response in any disagreement is, "Your opinion sucks donkeycock"? That's incredibly immature, and results in utter failure when used in any reasonable discourse.

And no, the problems don't exist, because the costs are much higher (sometimes far too high) in 4E. New problems exist, and they are annoying. The disparity of 3.5, however, isn't quite there anymore.[/b]

Crimson Lancer wrote:The Ritual sucks up a Healing Surge, IE, some of the Caster's innate inner energy. That alone makes it less useful if you have an expert at the task on hand to begin with, but still useful if you don't have one, but need something opened.

Knock is (inexplicably) one of the few rituals that uses up a healing surge in the first place, so who gives a care? For the most part rituals don't solve the problem of obsoleting other characters in certain areas and now they have the added disadvantage of needing extra bookkeeping.

IMHO, you're approaching the entire Skill System from the wrong direction. Try to do something outside (or inside!) of combat, then roll for whatever Skill your DM deems appropriate, and then only to see if your Character screws it up or not.

... like... what? Where is this killer application for skills that I am not seeing?

Non-combat applications of skills have intentionally had their difficulty put into a flux by the rules in 4th Edition thanks to that stupid skill challenge system. I really don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do with them.

That would be pointless. Why does my Rogue need Knock? I'm sorry, I think I'm totally misunderstanding you here.

He doesn't, but that's because Knock doesn't do anything important or interesting. But even if it did, the WRONG character has this game effect! The person who should be picking impossible locks that not even Loki can get into shouldn't be the wizard, it should be the rogue!

My apologies for being so blunt, but what's the point of you cursing all the time? That's really the main reason I avoided this place when P_R originally invited me; how can one possibly achieve mature conversation when a common response in any disagreement is, "Your opinion sucks donkeycock"? That's incredibly immature, and results in utter failure when used in any reasonable discourse.

I always use as vulgar language as I can because I'm immature and love toilet humor. It doesn't have anything to do with disrespecting you or telling you to GTFO or even to put any particular on my point; to me, saying that something is worth a pile of dog vomit is the same thing as saying something is poorly thought out and doesn't do what it's advertised to do.

I just like swearing like a sailor.

And no, the problems don't exist, because the costs are much higher (sometimes far too high) in 4E. New problems exist, and they are annoying. The disparity of 3.5, however, isn't quite there anymore.[/b]

I agree that in theory the ritual system is supposed to be fair because the entry requirements are fairly mild (two feats at the most) and there are various ways to cheese yourself a level-appropriate ritual check. They're certainly more fair than in 3E where the barbarian had to suck shrivelled wizard cock to get his magic sword.

But rituals don't do anything interesting in 4E and that's what I'm bitching about. That's the basic damn problem of the system. The fact that rituals eat into the fund you're supposed to be used for killing monsters, cause the plot to slow to a crawl, and are distributed by special effects instead of by need just makes the problem even worse. But the basic problem is that I don't give a care about what they actually do because nearly every ritual printed so far is a fucken snoozefest.

The saddest thing about them is that rituals are actually pretty easy to fix. Just chop the duration by a 10th, make them tap into some non-monster fighting resource, and make the spread more fair. But the game designers aren't interested in fixing them so you'll hear me all butthurt about it.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: That's not how it works in modern D&D. Modern D&D encourages you to stick with your character until they can get raised. So the amount of time a player sits out should be short or they should just be allowed to snag a new character.

For the record, I find the trope of 'Dick Sergeant arrives out of nowhere despite not being alluded to at any point in the past and conveniently has the skillset that Sergeant Dick's death has left uncovered' just as retarded and immersion-breaking as revolving door heaven. It's largely a matter of personal choice which one is less stupid.

Well it depends on the game your'e playing. If you're playing a casual game, then pretty much your'e going to go with the Dick Sergeant approach or revolving door afterlife. At that point you're not really worried about simulating a world or telling a great story, you just want to kill some monsters and have fun.

On the other hand if you're interested in telling a story, that may mean that you've got to tell a PC that he can't come in just yet because the plotline wouldn't make sense. And if PCs are in a game that cares about telling a good story then they generally understand.

That being said, there's still lots of ways to introduce new PCs in a campaign that also fit the story in some way:

-The PC is a prisoner in the dungeon that they find, and his items are somewhere nearby.
-The PC approaches them in town and wants to travel with the party.
-The PC was part of the enemy group but decides to defect to the PC side for some reason.

And many many other choices.

On the other hand if you're interested in telling a story, that may mean that you've got to tell a PC that he can't come in just yet because the plotline wouldn't amke sense.

This should not even be considered an option for a social game. This literally will ruin someone's night. Seriously, this just just as bad as snatching up a player's dice and telling them to sit in the kiddie corner until you call on them again. Intentionally boring and alienating a player because of the 'story' is one of the worst decisions a game can make.

I don't think the revolving door afterlife or the Sergeant York approach is superior to one or the other. But either of these are better than telling someone to go play Smash Bros. for an hour until you can write them back in. That's just cruel.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: This should not even be considered an option for a social game. This literally will ruin someone's night. Seriously, this just just as bad as snatching up a player's dice and telling them to sit in the kiddie corner until you call on them again. Intentionally boring and alienating a player because of the 'story' is one of the worst decisions a game can make.

If you're trying to tell a good story, then sacrifices have to sometimes be made. I guess I don't consider that such an egregious offense since I've played games of Vampire which often have split up PC parties, so your character wouldn't necessarily be in every scene anyway. And people lived with that and were okay with it, because it was necessarily to tell a believable story. Being dead simply is another way of saying that they're not in that scene.

If you're trying to tell a good story, then sacrifices have to sometimes be made.

Why does your story have to rely on taking away the dice of a player in the first place, anyway? Why can't it be rewritten or be allowed to make a detour to include poor Dave, who is just sitting at the table watching a cutscene he can't interact with for 30 to 45 minutes?

I guess I don't consider that such an egregious offense since I've played games of Vampire which often have split up PC parties, so your character wouldn't necessarily be in every scene anyway.

Well, there's your problem. Vampire sold you fried horse diarrhea in a bowl and called it chocolate ice cream. The fact that you had fun in this situation is a testament of your patience and the skills of your group, not because of the game.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:... like... what? Where is this killer application for skills that I am not seeing?

Non-combat applications of skills have intentionally had their difficulty put into a flux by the rules in 4th Edition thanks to that stupid skill challenge system. I really don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do with them.

I dunno, think of anything you'd usually RP if there was no Skill System, explain it to the DM, then roll based on your character's Skill check.

Jump over the Orc to get to the Shaman Orc: Athletics

Untie an enemy's pants mid-grapple: Thievery

Talk a Guard down when he asks for your paperwork: Intimidate

::shrug::

He doesn't, but that's because Knock doesn't do anything important or interesting. But even if it did, the WRONG character has this game effect! The person who should be picking impossible locks that not even Loki can get into shouldn't be the wizard, it should be the rogue!

Ahh, I see. Agreed. There are a few items that might help out a Party with no Thievery expert, but the Skill should always remain useful (or even essential at times).

I always use as vulgar language as I can because I'm immature and love toilet humor. It doesn't have anything to do with disrespecting you or telling you to GTFO or even to put any particular on my point; to me, saying that something is worth a pile of dog vomit is the same thing as saying something is poorly thought out and doesn't do what it's advertised to do.

I just like swearing like a sailor.

I have noticed you successfully manage to completely avoid ad Hominem attacks, even with such colorful expressions. That's actually just fucking impressive, really.

But rituals don't do anything interesting in 4E and that's what I'm bitching about. That's the basic damn problem of the system. The fact that rituals eat into the fund you're supposed to be used for killing monsters, cause the plot to slow to a crawl, and are distributed by special effects instead of by need just makes the problem even worse. But the basic problem is that I don't give a care about what they actually do because nearly every ritual printed so far is a fucken snoozefest.

The saddest thing about them is that rituals are actually pretty easy to fix. Just chop the duration by a 10th, make them tap into some non-monster fighting resource, and make the spread more fair. But the game designers aren't interested in fixing them so you'll hear me all butthurt about it.

Though I'm not a Ritual kind of guy (in any Edition), please mail a letter containing these two paragraphs to WotC so the entire System can improve based on such excellent ideas.

CL, maybe, I dunno, but your post doesn't really seem related to the topic nor a solution.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Why does your story have to rely on taking away the dice of a player in the first place, anyway? Why can't it be rewritten or be allowed to make a detour to include poor Dave, who is just sitting at the table watching a cutscene he can't interact with for 30 to 45 minutes?

Well, you try to include him if possible, but sometimes it just can't realistically be done. Like I said, there are a lot of reasons you can make up to include a new character. Though sometimes you can't think of a good one.

The fact that you had fun in this situation is a testament of your patience and the skills of your group, not because of the game.

Nah, vampire was a good game. It was just a different sort of game, because people were undertaking their own endeavors from time to time, and that meant that they occasionally had to separate. Like with any movie, not every character is present in every scene.

And like I said, it was just something that you accepted because the story would suck if the PCs acted like they were glued together. And you could at least be entertained listening to what was happening to the other PCs even if your character wasn't doing anything.