Post by Jeff on Jun 23, 2009 20:42:16 GMT -4
This thread is to help teach you how rituals work in 4E. I'd really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes and read through this.
Rituals are pretty cool and they're going to be useful for you in all your Dark Echelon investigations and quests. Trust me. Plus, bad guys are going to use them, so it's in your interest to understand them.
So what are rituals?
Essentially, rituals are "spells" that (1) are cast outside of combat and (2) can technically be cast by anyone. So Grafth, who has no training in magic, can use a ritual, and so can regular magic-user like Belarin.
Rituals are something anyone can do, provided they:
• Have the instructions. Which is either a ritual book containing the ritual's "directions," or a scroll of the same.
• Have the materials. That is, a specified amount of components of a designated gold piece value.
• The time. All rituals take time to carry out, from just a few minutes to hours. This is why rituals are not combat things (although their results can help in combat.)
• Are of high enough level. So if you're 3rd level, you can't cast level 4 rituals or higher.
So far only Streko has been capable of performing rituals, because he's a cleric and clerics automatically have the feat called Ritual Caster. But all that means is he's got a ritual book and can "copy" ritual scrolls he comes across and can master them, adding them to his book. (We started 4E rules during a dungeoncrawl phase of the game, so Streko never really had the opportunity to try a ritual anyway.) Everyone else who doesn't have the Ritual Caster feat can still perform rituals, but only as one-offs. If Grafth picks up a ritual scroll and examines he, he can perform the ritual if he's got the materials he needs, but when he's done with it the scroll is gone and he can't perform the ritual again.
So how does a ritual work? I'll give you a sample ritual, one that Streko has already in his ritual book for being a cleric and which he can perform any time he wants. The text in pink are my explanations.
Comprehend Language
As you finish the ritual, the guttural language of the creatures before you clarifies into something you understand. This is just flavor text that gives you the basics of what the ritual does.[/size]
Level: 1 What level you have to be to perform the ritual.[/size]
Category: Exploration Just a way of grouping different rituals. Exploration is sort of a catch-all category.[/size]
Time: 10 minutes How long it takes to carry out before the effect takes places. If you use a scroll, it's half this time.[/size]
Duration: 24 hours How long the effects last.[/size]
Component Cost: 10 gp The amount in materials you have to spend.[/size]
Market Price: 50 gp How much it costs to buy a ritual (for performing or for copying), should you find a seller.[/size]
Key Skill: Arcana The skill that you roll a check for when performing the ritual. Some skills don't actually require a roll, though.[/size]
When beginning the ritual, choose a language you have heard or a piece of writing you have seen within the past 24 hours.
Using this ritual on a language you have heard allows you to understand it when spoken for the next 24 hours and, if your Arcana check result is 35 or higher, to speak the language fluently for the duration. Using this ritual on a language you have seen as a piece of writing allows you to read the language for the next 24 hours and, if your Arcana check result is 35 or higher, to write the language in its native script or in any other script you know for the duration.
Using this ritual on a language you have both heard and seen as a piece of writing within the past 24 hours allows you to understand it in both forms for the next 24 hours, and an Arcana check result of 35 or higher allows you to speak and write the language.
So basically if someone walks up to Streko and says something in, say, the Sylvan language. He can then perform the Comprehend Languages ritual, which takes 10 minutes to do and uses up 10gp worth of materials. What type of materials that is depends on the Key Skill. (In the case of Arcana, the materials are alchemical reagents. We don't have to specify any more than that. When he's in a city or town of sufficient resource, he can spend as much gold acquiring as much materials as he wants.) Then Streko would be able to understand the Sylvan language for 24 hours, even if he rolled a "1" on the Arcana check. On the other hand, if he rolled an exceptionally high Arcana check, he might be able to also speak Sylvan for 24 hours. And so on.
Any questions on any of that?
You might be asking yourself, "Self, that's all well and good. I'm not Streko, though. Should I just stand by like a dope and do nothing while all these magic-types speak their mumbo jumbo?"
Well, you can help, even if you're not the one performing the ritual. Unless a given ritual says otherwise, up to four people can help the ritual caster with his ritual. They basically just all stand close by and cooperate with whatever the ritual caster asks them to do. These assistants can offer to expend any healing surges on behalf of the caster (should any be called for) or they can assist with the skill check to help the ritual caster get a higher result.
In most cases, performing a ritual is a "skip ahead and you've performed it" kind of scenario, but we may have instances where it's useful to roleplay a portion of it.
So Streko's already got a few rituals available to him in his ritual book (think of it as his holy book, in a way). But now with the 4E rules Kal, too, is going to start right away knowing one ritual: Bearing the Mark of Sentinel, of House Deneith, grants him automatic master over three rituals. But of the three, he's only of sufficient level to master and perform only one of them for now: Eye of Alarm. (And in fact I'm going to say he possesses a ritual book.)
He doesn't have the Ritual Caster feat, so he hasn't mastered any other rituals, nor can he master any others (except the three that come with the Mark of Sentinel) unless he someday chooses the Ritual Caster feat. Any of you can choose the Ritual Caster feat in the future, if you want it, but you do have to have training in either Arcana or Religion first.
Rituals are pretty cool and they're going to be useful for you in all your Dark Echelon investigations and quests. Trust me. Plus, bad guys are going to use them, so it's in your interest to understand them.
So what are rituals?
Essentially, rituals are "spells" that (1) are cast outside of combat and (2) can technically be cast by anyone. So Grafth, who has no training in magic, can use a ritual, and so can regular magic-user like Belarin.
Rituals are something anyone can do, provided they:
• Have the instructions. Which is either a ritual book containing the ritual's "directions," or a scroll of the same.
• Have the materials. That is, a specified amount of components of a designated gold piece value.
• The time. All rituals take time to carry out, from just a few minutes to hours. This is why rituals are not combat things (although their results can help in combat.)
• Are of high enough level. So if you're 3rd level, you can't cast level 4 rituals or higher.
So far only Streko has been capable of performing rituals, because he's a cleric and clerics automatically have the feat called Ritual Caster. But all that means is he's got a ritual book and can "copy" ritual scrolls he comes across and can master them, adding them to his book. (We started 4E rules during a dungeoncrawl phase of the game, so Streko never really had the opportunity to try a ritual anyway.) Everyone else who doesn't have the Ritual Caster feat can still perform rituals, but only as one-offs. If Grafth picks up a ritual scroll and examines he, he can perform the ritual if he's got the materials he needs, but when he's done with it the scroll is gone and he can't perform the ritual again.
So how does a ritual work? I'll give you a sample ritual, one that Streko has already in his ritual book for being a cleric and which he can perform any time he wants. The text in pink are my explanations.
Comprehend Language
As you finish the ritual, the guttural language of the creatures before you clarifies into something you understand. This is just flavor text that gives you the basics of what the ritual does.[/size]
Level: 1 What level you have to be to perform the ritual.[/size]
Category: Exploration Just a way of grouping different rituals. Exploration is sort of a catch-all category.[/size]
Time: 10 minutes How long it takes to carry out before the effect takes places. If you use a scroll, it's half this time.[/size]
Duration: 24 hours How long the effects last.[/size]
Component Cost: 10 gp The amount in materials you have to spend.[/size]
Market Price: 50 gp How much it costs to buy a ritual (for performing or for copying), should you find a seller.[/size]
Key Skill: Arcana The skill that you roll a check for when performing the ritual. Some skills don't actually require a roll, though.[/size]
When beginning the ritual, choose a language you have heard or a piece of writing you have seen within the past 24 hours.
Using this ritual on a language you have heard allows you to understand it when spoken for the next 24 hours and, if your Arcana check result is 35 or higher, to speak the language fluently for the duration. Using this ritual on a language you have seen as a piece of writing allows you to read the language for the next 24 hours and, if your Arcana check result is 35 or higher, to write the language in its native script or in any other script you know for the duration.
Using this ritual on a language you have both heard and seen as a piece of writing within the past 24 hours allows you to understand it in both forms for the next 24 hours, and an Arcana check result of 35 or higher allows you to speak and write the language.
So basically if someone walks up to Streko and says something in, say, the Sylvan language. He can then perform the Comprehend Languages ritual, which takes 10 minutes to do and uses up 10gp worth of materials. What type of materials that is depends on the Key Skill. (In the case of Arcana, the materials are alchemical reagents. We don't have to specify any more than that. When he's in a city or town of sufficient resource, he can spend as much gold acquiring as much materials as he wants.) Then Streko would be able to understand the Sylvan language for 24 hours, even if he rolled a "1" on the Arcana check. On the other hand, if he rolled an exceptionally high Arcana check, he might be able to also speak Sylvan for 24 hours. And so on.
Any questions on any of that?
You might be asking yourself, "Self, that's all well and good. I'm not Streko, though. Should I just stand by like a dope and do nothing while all these magic-types speak their mumbo jumbo?"
Well, you can help, even if you're not the one performing the ritual. Unless a given ritual says otherwise, up to four people can help the ritual caster with his ritual. They basically just all stand close by and cooperate with whatever the ritual caster asks them to do. These assistants can offer to expend any healing surges on behalf of the caster (should any be called for) or they can assist with the skill check to help the ritual caster get a higher result.
In most cases, performing a ritual is a "skip ahead and you've performed it" kind of scenario, but we may have instances where it's useful to roleplay a portion of it.
So Streko's already got a few rituals available to him in his ritual book (think of it as his holy book, in a way). But now with the 4E rules Kal, too, is going to start right away knowing one ritual: Bearing the Mark of Sentinel, of House Deneith, grants him automatic master over three rituals. But of the three, he's only of sufficient level to master and perform only one of them for now: Eye of Alarm. (And in fact I'm going to say he possesses a ritual book.)
He doesn't have the Ritual Caster feat, so he hasn't mastered any other rituals, nor can he master any others (except the three that come with the Mark of Sentinel) unless he someday chooses the Ritual Caster feat. Any of you can choose the Ritual Caster feat in the future, if you want it, but you do have to have training in either Arcana or Religion first.