Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
So if anyone else has backed Humblewood I'm curious to know and I can't find on their page (even though its probably obvious) but are the minis they're offering as add-ons kickstarter exclusive?
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
Tonight I'm running a 5e game to introduce some of my friends to D&D. Group of five who haven't played before but are really interested in checking it out. I'm super excited for it! The game will be a short adventure I built for one or two sessions, loosely ripped off from Alien and XCOM's Newfoundland mission.
A whaling vessel docked in the city's maritime district holds a whale carcass that is host to thousands of larval aberrations, and those aberrations have been making their way into the city's fish markets and causing havoc. The players open at a tavern, where their meal will be rudely interrupted when their server gets chest-burstered and turns spikey. They'll defeat that creature and the zombified patrons it creates, then follow a network of clues to the docks and the whaling vessel via the fish market, where they'll evade or defeat the thugs impersonating the boat's crew, discover the carcass, and figure out a way to incinerate it or otherwise neutralize it. While in the ship's hold, they'll find the cast-off molt casing of a much larger aberration which appears to have escaped into the city during the fighting on deck, for future games if they decide they'd like to keep going with it.
Chronicler - bard hired by the company to record their feats and spread their fame.
Kindly priest - a lifetime of service as a healer (perhaps as penance? ), friar tuck as a combat medic. Always there at at the end of a fight to patch up his comrades. Stable and reliable.
The prisoner - rescued by one of the party members, feels indebted and shadows them in gratitude
At one point I actually had to take off my glasses, press my fingers into my temple, and just murmur 'jesus fucking christ'
we'd just discovered that some 500 or something acre farm was covered with a grid of braided rope. Except the rope was made out of cotton, human hair and a type of leather that I have a bad feeling is made from human skin.
Tuxedo Mask style friend that showdows the party from a distance. Will occasionally gives enemies disadvantage via distracting arrow cover fire. Sometimes leaves gifts for the party with cryptic encouraging notes.
I'm dealing with back story over IM at the moment, improvising/stealing criminal contact names (Porky Shinwell, Twos-Up Scallion, Stevedore Steve, Gentleman Jim, Picket Willie, Bigger Than Medium Dave But Smaller Than Big Dave Dave), and I describe the player's investigation plan as "like asking around about the IRA in pubs in Derry in the 90s"
I'm super unimpressed with Lesser and Greater Restoration.
I had some misleading memory of the spells being able to cure and restore all kinds of flavor stuff.
It's actual spell effects are just to deal with battle conditions and stats.
Sometimes the combat and stat focus of just about everything in D&D is incredibly boring.
I'm super unimpressed with Lesser and Greater Restoration.
I had some misleading memory of the spells being able to cure and restore all kinds of flavor stuff.
It's actual spell effects are just to deal with battle conditions and stats.
Sometimes the combat and stat focus of just about everything in D&D is incredibly boring.
If you are playing in modules, they tend to have different things specific to them that are only cured by Lesser and Greater Restoration. At the very least, both Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation do.
Rules for non-combat stuff often ends up feeling weird to me anyway, honestly
Defining the ruleset by the combat system makes sense to me in a way that applying mechanics to social interactions often doesn't
I tend to like systems that have rules for both.
I like that a courtier in L5R has just as many rules for manipulating people in court as a warrior does for manipulating a fight.
Both combat and social interactions get weird when you break them down into dice and turns and things like that, but I like when a game doesn’t prioritize one form of problem resolution over another.
+1
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I'm fine with a game only having combat mechanics. I'll just... only engage in combat.
It's just an issue for me because I suck at coming up with ideas and rp stuff off the top of my head at-will so having mechanics to facilitate roleplaying help me a lot.
I'm super unimpressed with Lesser and Greater Restoration.
I had some misleading memory of the spells being able to cure and restore all kinds of flavor stuff.
It's actual spell effects are just to deal with battle conditions and stats.
Sometimes the combat and stat focus of just about everything in D&D is incredibly boring.
If you are playing in modules, they tend to have different things specific to them that are only cured by Lesser and Greater Restoration. At the very least, both Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation do.
That's good to know. Thanks for solving that puzzle on my memory.
Social moves are great little reminders for people who tend to be quiet.
In a homebrew game I had someone want to be a spy master, but they were a shy person, so I made them a move that had the trigger ‘when you return to the city, your little birdies will reveal to you a secret’. There was like a high roll, ask three things, low ask one sort of deal I remember.
This got them their own NPCs they felt safe with, and gave them fuel to butt in when the party were chatting with other important NPCs.
Later on I gave them ‘when you get someone alone, ask them a yes or no question, and you’ll know if they’re lying.
It helped get them talking while also giving them class appropriate abilities.
At the minute I’m running a game with a guy that can get a move that will allow them to sway an audience to rebellious action, but with the caveat that a mid roll might send them the wrong way and a low roll will have them turn their back on you.
Endless_Serpents on
+12
Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Honestly I house ruled remove curse to not exist in CoS. Cursing people adds chances for people to go on adventures to cure things and actually deal with things like a curse continuing. Remove curse is too low level and removes a lot of the tension that is needed in the game
Honestly I house ruled remove curse to not exist in CoS. Cursing people adds chances for people to go on adventures to cure things and actually deal with things like a curse continuing. Remove curse is too low level and removes a lot of the tension that is needed in the game
Maybe replace with "remove minor curse" and tier off curses so things like combat debuffs are 'minor', while the sorts of things that could leave a character able to adventure yet have a compelling narrative reason to quest for a cure are 'major'?
yeah this is usually my route
let the players do an easy arcana or religion check "oh damn, this curse seems to be extremely potent or unusual, you think your usual abilities to remove curses won't be effective enough without something to help them, or a much more powerful spellcaster to perform the spell"
+1
Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
hey, a question to anyone out there who plays 5e vampire: The Keening. Is it still a thing? I pretty much assumed that in previous editions it was an in fiction excuse not to have to explain vampires in the middle east, but since the Ashirra are such a major potential component of 5e I wonder if its continued existence in the oWoD has been touched on at all
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Thinking on it, don't dislike social mechanics, I guess I just generally dislike the way D&D and it's derivatives (Pathfinder etc) has attempted them in the past
Because I enjoy the way they work in stuff like PbtA games broadly speaking
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Hard social mechanics (as opposed to the softer social mechanics of like PbtA and others) feel more unnatural because we haven't had the idea of social hit points pounded into us for the entire history of playing RPGs
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
At least in 3.5/Pathfinder you had sorcerers for spontaneous casting. Except for some reason they couldn't learn all the things a wizard too. I get the balance reasons why, but I am trying to think of any lore ever that has wizards prepare spells the way D&D does. It's, IMO, a completely pointless lever.
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
At least in 3.5/Pathfinder you had sorcerers for spontaneous casting. Except for some reason they couldn't learn all the things a wizard too. I get the balance reasons why, but I am trying to think of any lore ever that has wizards prepare spells the way D&D does. It's, IMO, a completely pointless lever.
Yeah. Materials are a thing, sure. Preparing a more complicated spell happens, but that's usually at time of casting (or it's some kind of trinket being charged up for later). Fireballs are invariably spontaneous events. Wizards usually play by some kind of MP rule (personal stamina, mana in environment, etc)
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
5E does some good work towards alleviating the spell prep problem, I think. It's not perfect, and I still essentially hate Vancian magic (and honestly probably just all high fantasy magic), but it's definitely an improvement.
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
D&D 4E moved all (most?) of the non-combat stuff to Rituals for exactly that reason, but a lot of (some?) people complained about how that made spellcasters less ... something, and it was bad for ... reasons.
Nah, vancian is the worst. Spell slots generally are a silly idea imo - they serve some mechanical purpose but don't really make any sense from a fluff standpoint.
Really what's needed is some kind of distinction between spells you can cast on a moments notice and spells that you need to double check your notes for (and not as a once daily thing). So fireballs are spontaneous, but some specific social effect you may need to spend five minutes double checking your spellbook. But these groups should be more set at level up than as a daily choice.
Spells you can cast by following the directions versus spells you've practiced and mastered, basically.
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
D&D 4E moved all (most?) of the non-combat stuff to Rituals for exactly that reason, but a lot of (some?) people complained about how that made spellcasters less ... something, and it was bad for ... reasons.
Ritual magic was so good and I'm so angry about it being gone.
Especially once the idea of rituals started expanding outside of explicitly wizard and cleric shit, and you had rituals for like, rangers preparing a good meal and rogues running surveillance and whatever else.
There's so much fantasy RPG magic that feels like it should be difficult and long rituals to perform, or should only be performed by non-player characters (this is my personal preference - I don't like wizards or clerics as PCs). It makes the magic more magical to have to draw sigils and perform chants and make sacrifices.
Yeah, rituals are good. But then you run into the issue of a divination ritual you spend an hour on be one less fireball for the day and it's like... why? Shouldn't it be more effort to fling the fireball than scry something with an elaborate ritual?
Rituals being discounted, or splitting difficulty to use and difficulty to learn (read: MP) would help with that opportunity cost issue.
Although I suppose the intent is that casters are going all hand wavy and runes and shit even for fireballs.
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
D&D 4E moved all (most?) of the non-combat stuff to Rituals for exactly that reason, but a lot of (some?) people complained about how that made spellcasters less ... something, and it was bad for ... reasons.
Ritual magic was so good and I'm so angry about it being gone.
Especially once the idea of rituals started expanding outside of explicitly wizard and cleric shit, and you had rituals for like, rangers preparing a good meal and rogues running surveillance and whatever else.
There's so much fantasy RPG magic that feels like it should be difficult and long rituals to perform, or should only be performed by non-player characters (this is my personal preference - I don't like wizards or clerics as PCs). It makes the magic more magical to have to draw sigils and perform chants and make sacrifices.
I mean 5e has rituals in it.
Also I have my players doing crazy expanded rituals all the time. Spells and magical constructions that only function as a narrative device and skill challenge that create desired effects that are not even remotely described in the books, but I'll admit, that's definitely just me making up my own shit and finding the system has no problem supporting it.
+1
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
5E doesn't have rituals as a separate class than spells, does it?
Like, the whole value of rituals is that they weren't just spells with longer casting times, they were a completely different class of thing you could do.
I have no ritual spells except find familiar. Any noncombat shenanigans I want to do have to be weighted against me maybe needing that slot for a fight we have later that same ingame day. I have grown to hate being a spellcaster in 5th ed.
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
D&D 4E moved all (most?) of the non-combat stuff to Rituals for exactly that reason, but a lot of (some?) people complained about how that made spellcasters less ... something, and it was bad for ... reasons.
Ritual magic was so good and I'm so angry about it being gone.
Especially once the idea of rituals started expanding outside of explicitly wizard and cleric shit, and you had rituals for like, rangers preparing a good meal and rogues running surveillance and whatever else.
There's so much fantasy RPG magic that feels like it should be difficult and long rituals to perform, or should only be performed by non-player characters (this is my personal preference - I don't like wizards or clerics as PCs). It makes the magic more magical to have to draw sigils and perform chants and make sacrifices.
I mean 5e has rituals in it.
Also I have my players doing crazy expanded rituals all the time. Spells and magical constructions that only function as a narrative device and skill challenge that create desired effects that are not even remotely described in the books, but I'll admit, that's definitely just me making up my own shit and finding the system has no problem supporting it.
5E rituals still require you to prepare the spell ahead of time (except wizards, who only need it in their spellbook), meaning you're not preparing something else.
It is really easy to expand on the concept, and I definitely think 5E is a better game when you start to actually bring in some RP-focused rules to it. That's one thing I've grown to like about 5E. You can just bolt on a bunch of other stuff and it doesn't really break anything because the game is so loosey-goosey to begin with. Sucks for all the people playing organized D&D that can't benefit from that though.
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
D&D 4E moved all (most?) of the non-combat stuff to Rituals for exactly that reason, but a lot of (some?) people complained about how that made spellcasters less ... something, and it was bad for ... reasons.
Ritual magic was so good and I'm so angry about it being gone.
Especially once the idea of rituals started expanding outside of explicitly wizard and cleric shit, and you had rituals for like, rangers preparing a good meal and rogues running surveillance and whatever else.
There's so much fantasy RPG magic that feels like it should be difficult and long rituals to perform, or should only be performed by non-player characters (this is my personal preference - I don't like wizards or clerics as PCs). It makes the magic more magical to have to draw sigils and perform chants and make sacrifices.
Or, like, you know, be able to do some stuff in advance that maybe not everybody can do.
I'll use the Dresden Files as a reference. Everybody can do some very basic things if they know how/are taught; like making a magic circle. Anybody can make draw a circle and use it to keep outside magic out: simply draw a circle, stand in it, and use some of your blood and think about the circle being an invisible barrier. Waldo Butters, completely human non-magical person can do this.
A wizard or somebody else that has some ephemeral magic quality starts out this exact same way, but they can make the circle without using a pinprick of blood. With practice and training they can simply imagine the circle in their head, it's harder and requires focus, so most use the prop of an actual circle when they can, because why spend effort on things that cost so little? Waldo Butters cannot do this.
Wizards can spew out other magics spontaneously too, provided they have done the work to practice and learn and etc etc. But preparation is still a thing: Dresden is powerful and can shoot fire on a whim provided he isn't exhausted, but he's lousy at controlling it. He has a special focus prepared with sigils and rituals ahead of time that allows him to use less focus and energy and allow for greater control. Sometimes he doesn't have his special focus, either he didn't bring it or it's been lost/stolen/destroyed, and wants to shoot fire; it's just a bit more costly and more out of control. Waldo Butters can't do fire, can't learn to do fire, and even if he tried to make a special focus (or used Dresden's) nothing would happen.
The Dresden world keeps the idea of a well-prepared wizard being a terror in that wizards spend a lot of time on the prep work, and if they know what they're getting into ahead of time, they can bring the proper focii they spent hours-weeks preparing (for each) could maybe also prepare some potions if they have the time, or research weaknesses, etc. Drop a wizard into a sudden situation without those focii, and they're still smart and know a lot of things and are generally not to be taken lightly, but success isn't as guaranteed.
Also rituals exist in the universe too, but it's more of a thing where a more powerful being or entity gives a procedure to people who may be completely un-magical, like Waldo Butters, and they follow the steps to borrow the power of the more powerful being.
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
Session 1 with my 5e new-players group was a success! The players finished making their characters and had some good concepts for them, we got a simple combat under our belts, everyone had fun, and somehow I managed to successfully teach everyone the difference between Ability Score and Ability Modifier. Wooo!
+5
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
In some ways, that would be my ideal for magic. Every person can cast any spell that they can find, but most spells (as in, anything above a cantrip) have all sorts of ridiculous requirements to cast them. Being a wizard becomes all about finding shortcuts and ways to get around all of those requirements, and as you become a higher level wizard you can remove more and more requirements from the spells that you know (or find ways to make the spells that you know more powerful, while still retaining the need for material components or a spell focus or a dozen devoted followers chanting the words along with you).
And I can kind of rationalize the spell level system being a simplification of this. Fireball is just Fire Bolt that's been made a lot bigger, essentially. And for a game like D&D, the sort of free-wheeling ideas that I want for magic don't really work.
But it does limit things a bit, and gets rid of the crazy stuff like spells that require multiple people to cast (until you learn to eliminate that cost). Which you can still do with non-player characters, so its probably more or less fine.
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
D&D 4E moved all (most?) of the non-combat stuff to Rituals for exactly that reason, but a lot of (some?) people complained about how that made spellcasters less ... something, and it was bad for ... reasons.
it was different and wasn't a simulation of d&d, which is the purpose of d&d
see also: people not liking at-wills so they renamed them cantrips and gave them just to spell casters so they're good now
I hate how spell prep and slots work in dnd. You can either prepare and use abilities for combat OR rp. Can't use that spell slot for something cool or you might get screwed later
D&D 4E moved all (most?) of the non-combat stuff to Rituals for exactly that reason, but a lot of (some?) people complained about how that made spellcasters less ... something, and it was bad for ... reasons.
Ritual magic was so good and I'm so angry about it being gone.
Especially once the idea of rituals started expanding outside of explicitly wizard and cleric shit, and you had rituals for like, rangers preparing a good meal and rogues running surveillance and whatever else.
There's so much fantasy RPG magic that feels like it should be difficult and long rituals to perform, or should only be performed by non-player characters (this is my personal preference - I don't like wizards or clerics as PCs). It makes the magic more magical to have to draw sigils and perform chants and make sacrifices.
Or, like, you know, be able to do some stuff in advance that maybe not everybody can do.
I'll use the Dresden Files as a reference. Everybody can do some very basic things if they know how/are taught; like making a magic circle. Anybody can make draw a circle and use it to keep outside magic out: simply draw a circle, stand in it, and use some of your blood and think about the circle being an invisible barrier. Waldo Butters, completely human non-magical person can do this.
A wizard or somebody else that has some ephemeral magic quality starts out this exact same way, but they can make the circle without using a pinprick of blood. With practice and training they can simply imagine the circle in their head, it's harder and requires focus, so most use the prop of an actual circle when they can, because why spend effort on things that cost so little? Waldo Butters cannot do this.
Wizards can spew out other magics spontaneously too, provided they have done the work to practice and learn and etc etc. But preparation is still a thing: Dresden is powerful and can shoot fire on a whim provided he isn't exhausted, but he's lousy at controlling it. He has a special focus prepared with sigils and rituals ahead of time that allows him to use less focus and energy and allow for greater control. Sometimes he doesn't have his special focus, either he didn't bring it or it's been lost/stolen/destroyed, and wants to shoot fire; it's just a bit more costly and more out of control. Waldo Butters can't do fire, can't learn to do fire, and even if he tried to make a special focus (or used Dresden's) nothing would happen.
The Dresden world keeps the idea of a well-prepared wizard being a terror in that wizards spend a lot of time on the prep work, and if they know what they're getting into ahead of time, they can bring the proper focii they spent hours-weeks preparing (for each) could maybe also prepare some potions if they have the time, or research weaknesses, etc. Drop a wizard into a sudden situation without those focii, and they're still smart and know a lot of things and are generally not to be taken lightly, but success isn't as guaranteed.
Also rituals exist in the universe too, but it's more of a thing where a more powerful being or entity gives a procedure to people who may be completely un-magical, like Waldo Butters, and they follow the steps to borrow the power of the more powerful being.
Dresden does a good job at it, yes. Also of note is that it hews to material components of things - He still needs something to draw circles to anchor wards, he needs bits of something to follow it (and something to enchant) or do other mean things to them, etc. Though he never really hits things like 100g of gemstones stuff. Anything consumable is cheap, anything expensive is a durable tool he can reuse.
Posts
A whaling vessel docked in the city's maritime district holds a whale carcass that is host to thousands of larval aberrations, and those aberrations have been making their way into the city's fish markets and causing havoc. The players open at a tavern, where their meal will be rudely interrupted when their server gets chest-burstered and turns spikey. They'll defeat that creature and the zombified patrons it creates, then follow a network of clues to the docks and the whaling vessel via the fish market, where they'll evade or defeat the thugs impersonating the boat's crew, discover the carcass, and figure out a way to incinerate it or otherwise neutralize it. While in the ship's hold, they'll find the cast-off molt casing of a much larger aberration which appears to have escaped into the city during the fighting on deck, for future games if they decide they'd like to keep going with it.
It did not live to see its turn
Chronicler - bard hired by the company to record their feats and spread their fame.
Kindly priest - a lifetime of service as a healer (perhaps as penance? ), friar tuck as a combat medic. Always there at at the end of a fight to patch up his comrades. Stable and reliable.
The prisoner - rescued by one of the party members, feels indebted and shadows them in gratitude
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
At one point I actually had to take off my glasses, press my fingers into my temple, and just murmur 'jesus fucking christ'
we'd just discovered that some 500 or something acre farm was covered with a grid of braided rope. Except the rope was made out of cotton, human hair and a type of leather that I have a bad feeling is made from human skin.
the book is already sold out on Amazon, came out a few hours ago
Now I'm having to explain what that means
Bloody young people
I had some misleading memory of the spells being able to cure and restore all kinds of flavor stuff.
It's actual spell effects are just to deal with battle conditions and stats.
Sometimes the combat and stat focus of just about everything in D&D is incredibly boring.
If you are playing in modules, they tend to have different things specific to them that are only cured by Lesser and Greater Restoration. At the very least, both Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation do.
Defining the ruleset by the combat system makes sense to me in a way that applying mechanics to social interactions often doesn't
I tend to like systems that have rules for both.
I like that a courtier in L5R has just as many rules for manipulating people in court as a warrior does for manipulating a fight.
Both combat and social interactions get weird when you break them down into dice and turns and things like that, but I like when a game doesn’t prioritize one form of problem resolution over another.
That's good to know. Thanks for solving that puzzle on my memory.
In a homebrew game I had someone want to be a spy master, but they were a shy person, so I made them a move that had the trigger ‘when you return to the city, your little birdies will reveal to you a secret’. There was like a high roll, ask three things, low ask one sort of deal I remember.
This got them their own NPCs they felt safe with, and gave them fuel to butt in when the party were chatting with other important NPCs.
Later on I gave them ‘when you get someone alone, ask them a yes or no question, and you’ll know if they’re lying.
It helped get them talking while also giving them class appropriate abilities.
At the minute I’m running a game with a guy that can get a move that will allow them to sway an audience to rebellious action, but with the caveat that a mid roll might send them the wrong way and a low roll will have them turn their back on you.
Satans..... hints.....
yeah this is usually my route
let the players do an easy arcana or religion check "oh damn, this curse seems to be extremely potent or unusual, you think your usual abilities to remove curses won't be effective enough without something to help them, or a much more powerful spellcaster to perform the spell"
Because I enjoy the way they work in stuff like PbtA games broadly speaking
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
At least in 3.5/Pathfinder you had sorcerers for spontaneous casting. Except for some reason they couldn't learn all the things a wizard too. I get the balance reasons why, but I am trying to think of any lore ever that has wizards prepare spells the way D&D does. It's, IMO, a completely pointless lever.
Yeah. Materials are a thing, sure. Preparing a more complicated spell happens, but that's usually at time of casting (or it's some kind of trinket being charged up for later). Fireballs are invariably spontaneous events. Wizards usually play by some kind of MP rule (personal stamina, mana in environment, etc)
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
D&D 4E moved all (most?) of the non-combat stuff to Rituals for exactly that reason, but a lot of (some?) people complained about how that made spellcasters less ... something, and it was bad for ... reasons.
Really what's needed is some kind of distinction between spells you can cast on a moments notice and spells that you need to double check your notes for (and not as a once daily thing). So fireballs are spontaneous, but some specific social effect you may need to spend five minutes double checking your spellbook. But these groups should be more set at level up than as a daily choice.
Spells you can cast by following the directions versus spells you've practiced and mastered, basically.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Ritual magic was so good and I'm so angry about it being gone.
Especially once the idea of rituals started expanding outside of explicitly wizard and cleric shit, and you had rituals for like, rangers preparing a good meal and rogues running surveillance and whatever else.
There's so much fantasy RPG magic that feels like it should be difficult and long rituals to perform, or should only be performed by non-player characters (this is my personal preference - I don't like wizards or clerics as PCs). It makes the magic more magical to have to draw sigils and perform chants and make sacrifices.
Rituals being discounted, or splitting difficulty to use and difficulty to learn (read: MP) would help with that opportunity cost issue.
Although I suppose the intent is that casters are going all hand wavy and runes and shit even for fireballs.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I mean 5e has rituals in it.
Also I have my players doing crazy expanded rituals all the time. Spells and magical constructions that only function as a narrative device and skill challenge that create desired effects that are not even remotely described in the books, but I'll admit, that's definitely just me making up my own shit and finding the system has no problem supporting it.
Like, the whole value of rituals is that they weren't just spells with longer casting times, they were a completely different class of thing you could do.
5E rituals still require you to prepare the spell ahead of time (except wizards, who only need it in their spellbook), meaning you're not preparing something else.
It is really easy to expand on the concept, and I definitely think 5E is a better game when you start to actually bring in some RP-focused rules to it. That's one thing I've grown to like about 5E. You can just bolt on a bunch of other stuff and it doesn't really break anything because the game is so loosey-goosey to begin with. Sucks for all the people playing organized D&D that can't benefit from that though.
Or, like, you know, be able to do some stuff in advance that maybe not everybody can do.
I'll use the Dresden Files as a reference. Everybody can do some very basic things if they know how/are taught; like making a magic circle. Anybody can make draw a circle and use it to keep outside magic out: simply draw a circle, stand in it, and use some of your blood and think about the circle being an invisible barrier. Waldo Butters, completely human non-magical person can do this.
A wizard or somebody else that has some ephemeral magic quality starts out this exact same way, but they can make the circle without using a pinprick of blood. With practice and training they can simply imagine the circle in their head, it's harder and requires focus, so most use the prop of an actual circle when they can, because why spend effort on things that cost so little? Waldo Butters cannot do this.
Wizards can spew out other magics spontaneously too, provided they have done the work to practice and learn and etc etc. But preparation is still a thing: Dresden is powerful and can shoot fire on a whim provided he isn't exhausted, but he's lousy at controlling it. He has a special focus prepared with sigils and rituals ahead of time that allows him to use less focus and energy and allow for greater control. Sometimes he doesn't have his special focus, either he didn't bring it or it's been lost/stolen/destroyed, and wants to shoot fire; it's just a bit more costly and more out of control. Waldo Butters can't do fire, can't learn to do fire, and even if he tried to make a special focus (or used Dresden's) nothing would happen.
The Dresden world keeps the idea of a well-prepared wizard being a terror in that wizards spend a lot of time on the prep work, and if they know what they're getting into ahead of time, they can bring the proper focii they spent hours-weeks preparing (for each) could maybe also prepare some potions if they have the time, or research weaknesses, etc. Drop a wizard into a sudden situation without those focii, and they're still smart and know a lot of things and are generally not to be taken lightly, but success isn't as guaranteed.
Also rituals exist in the universe too, but it's more of a thing where a more powerful being or entity gives a procedure to people who may be completely un-magical, like Waldo Butters, and they follow the steps to borrow the power of the more powerful being.
And I can kind of rationalize the spell level system being a simplification of this. Fireball is just Fire Bolt that's been made a lot bigger, essentially. And for a game like D&D, the sort of free-wheeling ideas that I want for magic don't really work.
But it does limit things a bit, and gets rid of the crazy stuff like spells that require multiple people to cast (until you learn to eliminate that cost). Which you can still do with non-player characters, so its probably more or less fine.
it was different and wasn't a simulation of d&d, which is the purpose of d&d
see also: people not liking at-wills so they renamed them cantrips and gave them just to spell casters so they're good now
Dresden does a good job at it, yes. Also of note is that it hews to material components of things - He still needs something to draw circles to anchor wards, he needs bits of something to follow it (and something to enchant) or do other mean things to them, etc. Though he never really hits things like 100g of gemstones stuff. Anything consumable is cheap, anything expensive is a durable tool he can reuse.
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