4th Edition Quirks

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

I think you have it backwards. The point is that rituals take a lot longer to cast compared to 3.x spells. Therefore you will be interrupted much more often. See, being vulnerable to attack while casting a level appropriate ritual, which costs 10% of your wealth, is a feature.

That is one of the funniest things I've read all day.

[Angry_Pessimist]

That just makes me laugh.

I think they actually had their hate-on for small people.

I always thought that they hated the "Savage, Evil Races" and have them gimped stats so that nobody would play them.

[Bigode]

I think you have it backwards. The point is that rituals take a lot longer to cast compared to 3.x spells. Therefore you will be interrupted much more often. See, being vulnerable to attack while casting a level appropriate ritual, which costs 10% of your wealth, is a feature.

That is one of the funniest things I've read all day.

Just to make sure we're in the same page: while the 10% health is ________, is someone complaining that interruptible rituals are a feature (I mean in the sense of making people think where and when they're gonna use them)?

[Kaelik]

Just to make sure we're in the same page: while the 10% health is ________, is someone complaining that interruptible rituals are a feature (I mean in the sense of making people think where and when they're gonna use them)?

I don't know which side you are on, but the point is that rituals aren't just interruptible, spells with a 1 round casting time in 3.5 were interruptible, rituals literally take at a minimum of 100 rounds.

You could be perfectly safe as far as you know, barricaded inside a room, with both doors barred, and someone could literally hear you, come over to investigate, chop down the doors, and then interrupt you. And that's the short duration rituals. You pretty much can't use them in dungeons, and even better you physically can't actually do them at all, because they all require chanting for ten minutes straight without stop.

You don't think about when to use them, you just ask yourself the following question, "Is their anyone who doesn't want me to complete the ritual within 1000ft of me, or otherwise able to hear me chanting, or within line of sight?" If the answer is yes, you don't cast.

[Maxus]

I was checking the progress of the Pinball Murder thread on EN WOrld, and noticed this...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=236190

[Koumei]

I always thought that they hated the "Savage, Evil Races" and have them gimped stats so that nobody would play them.

Oh, they do. That is very true (half orc, hobgoblin, tiefling etc.)

[Voss]

The 4e bugbear is actually a decent fighter (or two blade ranger). A power that does something in combat, 2 stats you care about and oversized weapon.

Goblins are decent replacements for halflings and dopplegangers [or rather Eberron Changelings, since thats what they are apparently are now] are just fun and make tieflings cry when it comes to make fey warlocks.

What bugs me as the 'monsters as pcs' section of the MM, is its largely the same damn stat bonuses over and over again. Plus, you know, a couple fewer abilities for most of them.

I'm also not sure why Mearls thinks kobolds are broken. They might not actively suck (unlike, say, orcs), but shifty doesn't make me cry.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Put this in the category of possible future quirks: All they need is to introduce one cool Channel Divinity power that doesn't use Wisdom, and you'll be able to make an effective battle cleric build that dumps Wisdom.

[josephbt]

Latest update changed Blade Cascade, skill challenges and diseases. Now people can survive diseases, skill challenges are somewhat passable and Blade Cascade lets you make 5 attacks at most.

[josephbt]

Latest update changed Blade Cascade, skill challenges and diseases. Now people can survive diseases, skill challenges are somewhat passable and Blade Cascade lets you make 5 attacks at most.

[Bigode]

You don't think about when to use them, you just ask yourself the following question, "Is their anyone who doesn't want me to complete the ritual within 1000ft of me, or otherwise able to hear me chanting, or within line of sight?" If the answer is yes, you don't cast.

And I happen to think that some stuff (not all that 4E made so) should be just like that - thinking about whether to forget it, clear the area, go home (if the ritual's target is mobile), etc.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

Latest update changed Blade Cascade, skill challenges and diseases. Now people can survive diseases, skill challenges are somewhat passable and Blade Cascade lets you make 5 attacks at most.

I'm actually pretty 'happy' about that change.

Now Blade Cascade is the most damaging stand-alone power in the game. Good.

[Kaelik]

You don't think about when to use them, you just ask yourself the following question, "Is their anyone who doesn't want me to complete the ritual within 1000ft of me, or otherwise able to hear me chanting, or within line of sight?" If the answer is yes, you don't cast.

And I happen to think that some stuff (not all that 4E made so) should be just like that - thinking about whether to forget it, clear the area, go home (if the ritual's target is mobile), etc.

Except even if the area is cleared, you'll still get interrupted from something that just happens to wander by before you ever get it off.

But that's still a stupid thing to say that they did it right, since they did the same thing in 3.5, and 2e. Raise Dead has always had a long casting time. Hell even Restoration has.

The only things that they could have possibly done right were things that used to be short, but now are long, such as detect secret doors.

The fact that the Detect Secret doors ritual's primary use is to lure the monsters behind the secret door out to fight is sad.

The fact that breaking down a door is going to be faster then casting knock every single time is retarded.

The fact that the level 30 DemiGod Cleric of Helm the all seeing eye could choose to watch as much as possible of one willing subjects life, and that as much as possible is seriously 11 minutes a day, spaced out in 5 round segments is retarded.

Not to mention that seriously costs 30,000gp for those 11 minutes.

Casting Teleport shouldn't require you to stand around for ten minutes chanting, because some random monster will walk up and punch you in the face every single time, even if you are inside your own damn castle.

Yes, some spells are too good for one standard action if you hate powerful or cool characters. All of those spells you want to be interruptible are all about 10 times better at a 1 minute casting time, or a five round casting time, then they are at 10 minutes. You should only have to worry about things that already know about your existence.

If something a mile and a half away that doesn't even know you exist is a plausible threat of interruption, your ritual is ass.

And that's the big secret, All Rituals are ass. Every single one. WotC seriously decided that you should not be allowed to do certain things, so instead of removing them, they shoved them in the "iconic to D&D, but we hate them so let's make them so incredibly crappy that no one will ever ever use them" pile. And they called it rituals.

Then they added the only rituals anyone will ever use, the item transfer powers.

[MartinHarper]

The fact that breaking down a door is going to be faster then casting knock every single time is retarded.

Why shouldn't breaking down a door be faster than casting knock? Knock can open more doors than either brute force or nimble fingers. The trade-off is that it takes longer.

Casting Teleport shouldn't require you to stand around for ten minutes chanting, because some random monster will walk up and punch you in the face every single time, even if you are inside your own damn castle.

Get a better DM?

[Kaelik]

Why shouldn't breaking down a door be faster than casting knock? Knock can open more doors than either brute force or nimble fingers. The trade-off is that it takes longer.

No it doesn't, Breaking down a door has a 100% success rate. You can't find a door anywhere in the game that can't be broken down, and they can all be broken down in less then 10 minutes for a cost of 0 gold and approximately the same level of noise.

And best of all, if someone shows up to bother you, you can seriously break off, kill them, and then go back to chopping the door without losing all your progress.

Chopping doors is better in just about every single way then casting knock. The only way knock is at all advantageousis that it doesn't give you a door to lock afterward.

Get a better DM?

Get some more sense? Seriously this has nothing to do with DMs. Yes the DM can decide that the Goblins don't attack you for some reason, but if he makes listen checks, they are seriously going to hear you chanting from half a mile away, and then come over to you, and then attack you, and all you can do is hope that your party can seriously beat them without you, because if you ever want to teleport, you have to keep chanting for the whole fight, and the next five, which is sad, cause these are 4E fights, and already too long.

That means you have roughly 2 hours of when it gets to you saying, "I keep chanting." And god forbid the DM actually has you get attacked (even by area attacks) because then you get to make Concentration checks that you can't make.

[RandomCasualty2]

I don't have any problem with long term teleport. If you want to get across the world with a spell, I have no problem having it require some time. I think you *should* be able to get ambushed while trying to teleport, otherwise teleport is too good. This is a game where a 6 hour rest can heal you to full. Being able to warp back to town should be difficult.

Long term detect secret doors and knock is stupid though. I might be ok wtih knock if it disabled the traps on the door or something, but right now all it does is open it, which is way slow and only marginally less noisy than just smashing it down with an axe.

[Talisman]

Get some more sense? Seriously this has nothing to do with DMs. Yes the DM can decide that the Goblins don't attack you for some reason, but if he makes listen checks, they are seriously going to hear you chanting from half a mile away, and then come over to you, and then attack you, and all you can do is hope that your party can seriously beat them without you, because if you ever want to teleport, you have to keep chanting for the whole fight, and the next five, which is sad, cause these are 4E fights, and already too long.

That means you have roughly 2 hours of when it gets to you saying, "I keep chanting." And god forbid the DM actually has you get attacked (even by area attacks) because then you get to make Concentration checks that you can't make.

If you, as a hardened adventurer, can't find a way to hole up somewhere where random wandering goblins can't get at you for 10 lousy minutes, then you deserve whatever you get. If you're in a situation where you *know* goblins will come wandering by in the next few minutes, maybe you should be using a different strategy.

If the GM insists on inturrupting every damn ritual you attempt to perform by making a Perception check for the monsters every round and having them "coincidentally" be in the area, hear you, come to investigate and decide to attack...then, yes: you should get a new GM.

[Manxome]

Get some more sense? Seriously this has nothing to do with DMs. Yes the DM can decide that the Goblins don't attack you for some reason, but if he makes listen checks, they are seriously going to hear you chanting from half a mile away, and then come over to you, and then attack you

This does seem a bit incongruous to me. I haven't read 4e rules, but is casting a ritual really such an amazing monster-attractor that you think you can find places in the world enough that are safe enough to eat, sleep, conduct trade, and build civilizations, but are not safe enough to chant for 10 minutes without being attacked?

It sounds like it's designed to be hard to teleport during combat, or if you're in a monster lair, and that's probably intentional. But according to you, you can't even perform this ritual safely "in your own castle." If you really can't get 10 minutes' safety, ever, even in your own castle, the suggestion that you need a better DM doesn't strike me as absurd.

Is there some reason that performing a teleport ritual will make you detectable by monsters at a substantially greater range than normal day-to-day activities (talking, eating, traveling overland), and/or motivate a monster to attack you that wouldn't bother if you were just sitting there? Unless there's some detail I'm unaware of, "chanting" doesn't sound more easily-detectable than talking, and attempting to teleport away doesn't sound like a particularly threatening gesture.

[Kaelik]

If you, as a hardened adventurer, can't find a way to hole up somewhere where random wandering goblins can't get at you for 10 lousy minutes, then you deserve whatever you get. If you're in a situation where you *know* goblins will come wandering by in the next few minutes, maybe you should be using a different strategy.

If the GM insists on inturrupting every damn ritual you attempt to perform by making a Perception check for the monsters every round and having them "coincidentally" be in the area, hear you, come to investigate and decide to attack...then, yes: you should get a new GM.

Once again, chopping through steel doors takes less then ten minutes, so you can't really be someplace where the goblin won't be able to reach you.

My GM doesn't insist on interrupting every damn ritual, because I don't play 4E, but if someone tried to cast a 10 minute cast time spell with a verbal component in a dungeon, or out in the woods, or whatever, then yes someone or something would hear them, come to see it, and probably disturb the ritual to prevent it's completion.

Monsters are always coincidentally in the same area as you, because it isn't a coincidence that things live in the forest, and other things in the swamp, and other things in the desert, and a great many of those things are hungry and the rest want your stuff.

You know all those things you run into in the forest that attack you? Yeah, they all hear you chanting. Or do they just have stats for Direbears so that later Druids can have a pet after they balance pets?

[RandomCasualty2]

Monsters are always coincidentally in the same area as you, because it isn't a coincidence that things live in the forest, and other things in the swamp, and other things in the desert, and a great many of those things are hungry and the rest want your stuff.

You know all those things you run into in the forest that attack you? Yeah, they all hear you chanting. Or do they just have stats for Direbears so that later Druids can have a pet after they balance pets?

So this forest is so packed with monsters that they automatically come when they hear you chanting?

Damn... I hate to see what happens to the guy wearing full plate and carrying a tower shield, or hell starting a battle. Both of those are louder than chanting and therefore should bring every monster for miles toward you with your philosophy.

I'm more with Talisman on this one, if you can't cast a spell in the woods without getting interrupted, that's probably either the adventurers being stupid or the DM being a jerk. Starting a fight is louder than chanting, so if getting into a battle doesn't cause monsters to come in droves, then neither should chanting (which is no louder than regular talking).

[Talisman]

I take it, then, that every town is located a minimum of 16 hours walk from every other town? Because clearly, if you try to sleep out of a walled town, you will be set upon by vast hordes of long-leggity beasties.

Maybe it takes less than 10 minutes to hack through a steel door, but why do you assume that all wandering monsters are kill-crazy abominations? 99&% of wild animals would rather stay the hell away from you; I don't see why this should be any less true for griffons, dire bears, or whatever-the-hell 4e monsters there are these days. the intelligent ones may try to eat you...or they may just be glad you're not currently introducing their spleens to your weaponry and give you a wide berth.

I stand by my statement. if you can't find a place to hole up for 10 lousy minutes, either (1) give up as an adventurer, (2) find a new GM, or (3) ask yourself why you're trying to cast this ritual in the middle of the inhabited goblin warrens.

[Kaelik]

This does seem a bit incongruous to me. I haven't read 4e rules, but is casting a ritual really such an amazing monster-attractor that you think you can find places in the world enough that are safe enough to eat, sleep, conduct trade, and build civilizations, but are not safe enough to chant for 10 minutes without being attacked?

It sounds like it's designed to be hard to teleport during combat, or if you're in a monster lair, and that's probably intentional. But according to you, you can't even perform this ritual safely "in your own castle." If you really can't get 10 minutes' safety, ever, even in your own castle, the suggestion that you need a better DM doesn't strike me as absurd.

Is there some reason that performing a teleport ritual will make you detectable by monsters at a substantially greater range than normal day-to-day activities (talking, eating, traveling overland), and/or motivate a monster to attack you that wouldn't bother if you were just sitting there? Unless there's some detail I'm unaware of, "chanting" doesn't sound more easily-detectable than talking, and attempting to teleport away doesn't sound like a particularly threatening gesture.

1) Excuse me, how dare I exaggerate. I should be shot for my crime.

2) Yes, chanting for 10 minutes straight is more attracting then talking, unless you seriously talk for 10 minutes straight in your average romp through the woods. For starters, it means that every monster gets an automatic take 20, since you make the same noise for 20 rounds straight.

Secondly, for those creatures intelligent enough to tell, yes, chanting a ritual that looks like you are calling out to magical power in the middle of their forest is more likely to start something, or at least cause them to try to stop you, then talking.

I mean, just because in the only magic they know summoning forth fire to kill everyone takes 1/100th of the time as making a pretty little magic image.

3) Yes you can cast Teleport inside your own castle, and from there you can teleport to someone else's castle. But you might as well have them just be teleportation circles, because a short list of places you will probably get interrupted goes:

1) Combat in a Dungeon
2) After you've finished Combat
3) After you've Cleared the entire Dungeon
4) When you walk outside
5) The whole way back to your castle.

There is no reason to teleport anywhere, because you will be interrupted unless you are inside your castle.

[Talisman]

1) Combat in a Dungeon

You shouldn't be casting 10-minute rituals in mid-combat.

2) After you've finished Combat

...and after you've secured the room, made sure there's nothing unfriendly in the next room, scanned for traps, barred the door, expended healing surges, and made sure the warriors are ready to go. Shouldn't be a problem.

3) After you've Cleared the entire Dungeon

...At which point everything in it that's not you should be dead. Unless you're playing Gauntlet and you forgot that damn monster generator.

4) When you walk outside

...Because every nasty within 20 miles will be piled up outside the dungeon waiting for you. Wait; what?

5) The whole way back to your castle.

Shouldn't be casting rituals whle walking. But, yes; assuming there's some sort of road (as opposed to a game trail), I think it safe to assume that you can step off the road and recite poetry for 10 minutes without the local illithid community plane shifting in to eat your brain.

Seriously, it seems as if no one should ever be able to perform any task that takes 10 minutes or more, lest they be set upon by monsters. Eating dinner? Nope. Setting camp? Forget it. Sleeping? Hah! Mending a tear in your cloak? Don't even think about it. Reorganizing your travel gear? Uh-uh. Armoring up? Shouldn't have taken it off.

[RandomCasualty2]

There is no reason to teleport anywhere, because you will be interrupted unless you are inside your castle.

All I can say is.

Get a new DM

Yours sounds like he likes to be a jerk for no reason. Casting a ritual produces no more noise than regular talking. Do you seriously face a random encounter every 10 minutes while journeying? If so, I wonder how your party manages to get anywhere.

[MartinHarper]

No it doesn't, Breaking down a door has a 100% success rate. You can't find a door anywhere in the game that can't be broken down, and they can all be broken down in less then 10 minutes for a cost of 0 gold and approximately the same level of noise.

You can certainly attack a door till it hits 0hp. Depending on the DM, and the door, and what you're attacking it with, that either means it falls over in a pleasing pile of sticks, or it means that the door is jammed shut, or it means that you broke the door handle on this side. The 4e object damage rules are completely dependant on DM rulings like that. Which is part of why they suck. But it is also why Knock doesn't suck quite as much as you think.

On the other hand, this is very true:

...all you can do is hope that your party can seriously beat them without you, because if you ever want to teleport, you have to keep chanting for the whole fight...