Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 jetzine Oct 09, 2009 10:03:46	I'm starting this thread to answer two questions that are on my mind: 1. How would we go about incorporating the concept of 'Martial Rituals' into the game? 2. What constitutes a daily martial exploit? This all comes from a homebrew system I've been working on with a friend.  We started by modding the wizard pretty heavily, as we had many problems with it.  One problem we wanted to fix was to remove the arbitrated functionality imposed by at-will --> encounter --> daily --> utility --> ritual.  We wanted to close the gap between rituals and powers.  This was our solution. 1. Remove the utility category.  Utility has to do with function, whereas at-will, encounter, and daily all have to do with frequency of use.  In our system there are at-will, encounter, and daily utilities and attacks. 2. All daily spells are now rituals.  All rituals are now daily spells.  Rituals are now prepared in your daily slot.  A ritual prepared in your daily slot takes a standard (possibly full round) action to cast. Obviously, this doesn't work for every ritual, but for the ones where it does, we start to get a process that makes sense.  You learn a ritual or technique that takes time to master and execute, and if you want to use it in combat, you prepare it for quicker execution.  You can't prepare one ritual twice, because as we all know, that's pretty wack. So anyway, I like this system, and want to apply it to all characters, or at least see if it works, but I'm stumped on one thing.  Whenever I start to think of Martial Rituals, the more I realize that they don't exactly work in the way that spells do.  This is fine.  I don't think that fact alone should stop anyone from trying to create Martial Rituals.  In fact, they SHOULD be different to spells.  But I always end up at the second question. What constitutes a daily martial exploit?  In other words, what action or technique could you possibly learn that you would only be able to execute once in a day?  Most martial exploits logically would be usable at-will.  The techniques that are either ineffective once your opponent has already seen them, or require a substantial amount of energy fall nicely into the encounter category, although I feel recharges should be allowed.  What justifies a once-per-day use of something that you know how to do?  I can understand spells being daily for the sake of preparation, memorization (vancian), and expenditure of energy.  I like the idea of daily powers, but I don't want to make anything daily that doesn't have to be daily or make sense as being used only once in a day. So I'm opening these questions up for discussion.  Give me your thoughts.  I know a lot of people are interested in the idea of martial rituals.  The allow for things like practice routines, combos, maneuvers, and special techniques (the categories I'm thinking under, at least), and like all rituals, provide amazing quest potential.  Let me know what you think up! -J.
#2 Tony_Vargas Oct 09, 2009 17:28:36	Aparently there was a preview of an upcoming system of ritual-equivalent 'martial practices' in a recent Dragon.  If you subscribe, you'll be able to see it on-line.  It's slated to be published later, (PH 3, maybe?). As far as the variant you're working up, it seems like you're trying to undo one of the design goals of 4e, and give it a more classic flavor.  In past editions, casters would have to choose between memorizing potent combat spells and useful non-combat spells in the same slot.  4d put combat spells in as attack powers, combat-useful non-attack spells in as 'utilities,' and other non-combat spells in as 'rituals.'  That way, your caster is 100% at both combat and non-combat, no trading off. Said 'trading off,' of course, being a resource management issue, and one of the challenges of playing oldschool casters.  (IMX, if you could, the best thing to do was load up on frequently-used combat spells, and put the less-often-needed non-combat ones on scrolls.  Which is a lot like the way rituals work - you don't use 'em often, having them doesn't detract from you combat options, but they cost you money.) Trading out your daily slots for immediately useable (presumably no-cost) rituals would get back to that feel.  But the option of 'slow casting' such rituals or making scrolls should still be there, for those who want to concentrate on combat.
#3 jetzine Oct 09, 2009 19:39:57	Aparently there was a preview of an upcoming system of ritual-equivalent 'martial practices' in a recent Dragon.  If you subscribe, you'll be able to see it on-line.  It's slated to be published later, (PH 3, maybe?). It was all a matter of time I suppose.  I'm interested to see what they've come up with. As far as the variant you're working up, it seems like you're trying to undo one of the design goals of 4e, and give it a more classic flavor. Yup.  It's more than flavor though.  It's about really reflecting the anthropological and mythological roots of these abilities in their function (aka how a character learns and gains them, how they are accessed, what abilities they involve, and the processes required to execute them). In past editions, casters would have to choose between memorizing potent combat spells and useful non-combat spells in the same slot.  4d put combat spells in as attack powers, combat-useful non-attack spells in as 'utilities,' and other non-combat spells in as 'rituals.'  That way, your caster is 100% at both combat and non-combat, no trading off. I don't think it's the system's job to define what situation a character uses an ability in, or how he chooses his aptitudes.  Dividing things up between combat and non-combat is arbitrary.  It forces a certain kind of gameplay and a predisposes players towards a certain kind of character construction.  I actually think that it is this predisposition that creates power-gamers.  Combat and non-combat options do not detract from each other, they only compete for a player's interest, as is subject to his goals.  A character in our system can be as high a percentage of either category as he or she wants.  You can be %30 non-combat and %70 combat, or %50/%50, or anything between.  You could be almost entirely passive if you wanted to be.  It's up to the DM and the gaming group how to play around with these decisions.  It's not a struggle or a trade-off to balance combat and non-combat, simply a choice. Trading out your daily slots for immediately useable (presumably no-cost) rituals would get back to that feel.  But the option of 'slow casting' such rituals or making scrolls should still be there, for those who want to concentrate on combat. Yeah, this is what we're going for.  The 'slow casting' definitely stays.  We worked it out today.  You get a daily slot at 1st level, and one more at 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th, and 30th.  You learn one of the rituals you know in that slot and it stays there, now usable as a short burst once per day.  The rituals themselves will have their casting times cut drastically so that some of them are just barely usable in combat, but require the risk of dealing with the consequences of the stall that it puts on your actions.  These are for more dramatic risk-reward situations, such as summoning a meteor swarm (definitely a ritual) to obliterate a battlefield, but only if your party can fend off the surrounding demon horde for long enough. We're writing up our routines, techniques, and maneuvers tonight.  The goal is to actually have the whole system drafted by tonight.  Can't wait to post!