Making Ritual Levels More Useful

You could also put out a scroll that mysteriously has all, ritual succeeds with X additional effects as its backlash/fail options.
 
jpariury said:
Dan Nickname Beshers said:
Ignoring the ritual rules
Who suggested that?

I'd suggest they re-read the rule that says plot may alter the result at their discretion.

It does say somewhere that plot can alter the results of a ritual. I've never done it, but I've also never written a plot that hinged on a ritual that then failed. I have had a request to alter the result of a player-created item that failed, which I denied. That power is reserved for being used for plot, not stuff. If that was the doohickey that would have saved the weekend it would be a different story.

Do I think the rit rules need revision? Yup. Am I going to break the current rules because I don't like them? Nope.
 
We recently actually had a ritual succeed but the end result was that they failed to meet the end goal. They summoned the wrong gorram artifact! In that case, if the ritual had failed via roll I could see plot fudging the result. They needed the artifact to fix things and win the day (*huzzah!*). In this case it was player mistake which caused the icky result and the plot not being solved.
 
doverman said:
We recently actually had a ritual succeed but the end result was that they failed to meet the end goal. They summoned the wrong gorram artifact! In that case, if the ritual had failed via roll I could see plot fudging the result. They needed the artifact to fix things and win the day (*huzzah!*). In this case it was player mistake which caused the icky result and the plot not being solved.

That's precisely what I mean Dave. I'm not going to say "Oops you were supposed to cast X ritual, that's ok we'll pretend it was Y" but if it's the die roll on a plot rit? Yeah... I didn't see that... roll it again will ya?
 
jpariury said:
Ezri said:
That power is reserved for being used for plot, not stuff. If that was the doohickey that would have saved the weekend it would be a different story.
Pretty sure I said that...

Yup you did... just clarifying what I meant in my previous statement.

I've agreed with Doheney and WCJP in one day... what's goin on??? :lol:
 
Groovin', Michelle. Anything to make your world a topsy-turvy land of "left-is-right-and-right-is-wrong-so-left-is-wrong-right?" ;)

As I said, more events need to be written with something for formalists to do. You don't make them "required", per se, but "involved" has a nice ring to it. If that occurred more, the skill would feel more worth its cost in BP. They don't need to do more things, they need to do the things they do more often.
 
Yeah, if you're putting out a plot device scroll, like Dispell Magic, in order to make the plot work for the weekend, change all the flaw/backlashes to read "ritual succeeds, but...." and just make the punishments suitably horriffic while not causing the whole thing to go kablooey in your faces. Then, no need to ignore die rolls, just let em take their punishment along with their victory :twisted: .
 
Though even doing this every event, will leave out the other players with formal levels that didnt cast it that paticular weekend, so unless several rituals where needed every event, and one formalist dosent hog them all, it is really a bad idea to rely on plot to make the skill usefull, or cool, or whatever... Even small chapters will have more than one formalist Id think. Having a skill that you use every four events or so because you are being nice and allowing other formalists to take a turn for the plot formals dosent seem so awsome to me for some reason.
 
Dan Nickname Beshers said:
Basically to back up what others have said: as a plot person in NH since 2003, it's always dangerous to hinge a weekend on a die roll. Certainly you can provide ritual casters with ways to make things easier for the PCs, but if they HAVE to succeed, you're putting a lot of people's weekends down to hoping against a bad die roll. For a LARP, that's really not ever a good thing.

If I wan't perdictability I will watch a movie (I always seem to see things happen before it does, espically in movies); thats the thing with a LARP and the Alliance. If it happened well it happened. You failed the rit even with 100 levels its still a 10% chance (old rules it was 5) to fail. Allowing the pcs to fail and change the plot of the weekend is great and probablly creates more plot, it makes it realistic. In hq we used a DFM on a circle, that failed (didn't touch the target), it caused my team and I to run back and grab another one and we then ran into the wave battle, tons of fun :eek: .

As for using rits to solve IG problems, it can still be done. You can still use that summon art rit and that vision scroll, make sure that plot knows your actions. But to have plot come over to you and say heres the scroll cast it to save the day....kind of lame (I know thats not what you were implying). Once that happend on a reg baises then people just sit back and enjoy the ride. Alliance is more an active sport then a spectator sport.

If people look back at how rits were in the last rulebook I think there would be less complaning. It was 4 build and it was for rits only. No spellcrafting at all, rarely used and required spefic sticks to cast. It was a rarely used/purchased pc skill. Adding in spellcrafting and lowering the build has greatly increased its popularty and use. Minus the increas of failing (from 5% to 10%), I feel that its much better now.

-David-
 
I like the idea of a possiblility of failure, but not from luck. From what I have heared from my start playing, you should be able to succede in alliance if you make smart decisions. So yes, if someone forgets to touch what they want DFMd, they should have thier rit fail, but failing an investiture, when you have 50 formal levels, and loseing all spell levels till next logistics, or getting oblit'ed because of crappy rolls of the dice dosent sound realistic, fun, or cool to me. It just sounds crappy. No other skill in the game has success randomly determined, and IMO it hurts an already sub par skill. I would be in favor of instead of randomly determined sucess, additional requirements could be added to rituals, EX. Say a long specific incantation, or having a paticular item present (not a catalist, but more like a non specific item, like any skull). Messing up would result in a backlash, now that IMHO is interesting, and realistic.
 
Out of curiosity, is there anything else in the game that the player could do everything 100% correct and have the character still fail?

I'm sure there is/was good reason for it, but could someone explain why rits involve a die roll? Or at least why there's always that 1 in 10 chance of failure? It just seems arbitrary and random compared to everything else in the game, which revolves around the character's success depend on the player's actions.
 
Not a Marshall here, but I always considered that the chance to fail was because Formal Magic is DANGEROUS, it involves a mortal attempting to control primal forces that man was not meant to wot of. A die roll seems to me to be the fairest way of simulating this, as no matter how good you are at magic this power is only ever barely under your control. That being said, I would not mind seeing a rule change allowing a re-roll if you have (for instance) double the levels of formal as the difficulty of the rit. (and that would open the possibility of intentionally creating flawed items)
-toddo
 
Tyson said:
Out of curiosity, is there anything else in the game that the player could do everything 100% correct and have the character still fail?

I'm sure there is/was good reason for it, but could someone explain why rits involve a die roll? Or at least why there's always that 1 in 10 chance of failure? It just seems arbitrary and random compared to everything else in the game, which revolves around the character's success depend on the player's actions.

I think its a fair balance for what is really the 'Uber-craft' ability to always have a chance of backlash. While its a unique mechanic of failure chance, its also by far the most sweeping ability in range of effects/potential gain. To remove the chance for failure would tilt the balance significantly.

In all fairness for alot of rituals you can get a no chance to fail, just spellcraft it and accept the lessar duration/effect.
 
I do think it is a little bit wierd as a game mechanic to be the ONLY skill as far as I know that depends on dice and has the sucess randomly determined.
 
Lurin said:
Tyson said:
Out of curiosity, is there anything else in the game that the player could do everything 100% correct and have the character still fail?

I'm sure there is/was good reason for it, but could someone explain why rits involve a die roll? Or at least why there's always that 1 in 10 chance of failure? It just seems arbitrary and random compared to everything else in the game, which revolves around the character's success depend on the player's actions.

I think its a fair balance for what is really the 'Uber-craft' ability to always have a chance of backlash. While its a unique mechanic of failure chance, its also by far the most sweeping ability in range of effects/potential gain. To remove the chance for failure would tilt the balance significantly.

In all fairness for alot of rituals you can get a no chance to fail, just spellcraft it and accept the lessar duration/effect.

It's also the most regulated PC skill in the game, by far. If your treasure guy(gal) chooses to disallow some scrolls, your build is devalued. If they just happen to like putting out pre-cast items, it devalues your build. If the RNG decides this is the Year of the Lore Ritual, it devalues your build. Arguably, every other PC that takes levels in rit is devaluing your build.
 
Dan Nickname Beshers said:
It's also the most regulated PC skill in the game, by far. If your treasure guy(gal) chooses to disallow some scrolls, your build is devalued. If they just happen to like putting out pre-cast items, it devalues your build. If the RNG decides this is the Year of the Lore Ritual, it devalues your build. Arguably, every other PC that takes levels in rit is devaluing your build.

Just a note. Although the magic item database generates scrolls randomly for ease of use, chapters are not required to be random and can change what scrolls are generated.

The few rituals that are limited by policy are done so by catalyst distribution. In theory, you could put out all damage aura scrolls a year (though that would likely suck).

Scott
 
Well, I know that but I don't make them completely arbitrarily. I keep an eye on how the season is progressing. If I randomize for 10 and 5 of the are necro, I'm not gonna keep the results. Or if over the season 10 limited circles have already gone out, I might just switch the next one that pops up to something else.

I would say HQ uses "controlled randomization" so that 75% or so of the scrolls that go out are at least useful on some level. Getting 10 audible projection scrolls isn't all that much fun.

Scott
 
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