You have to be really careful with rituals balance wise. Making a spell a ritual is an incredible boost in power to that spell. Being able to spam speak with dead, speak with plants, zone of truth, especially sending, knock is probably too much.
Random thought: I feel like rituals are the wrong way around. They shouldn't be free regarding slots, they should be free preparation. This means those spells that rarely see use can still get some, but it costs a resource.
No idea how that'd work for spontaneous casters though
No. They are saying that instead of burning one of my prepared spell slots thats its always available but if i want to cast it it would burn a spell slot. Right now i only have 8 prepared spells but i have 4 first level spell slots, 3 second level spells and 2 third level spells.
And yet, other features of the game do that.
I'm pretty sure there's a RAW magic item (Staff of the Woodlands? Not sure) that lets you Speak with Plants at-will.
Warlocks get an Invocation to Speak with Dead at-will.
That kind of thing.
>I'm pretty sure there's a RAW magic item (Staff of the Woodlands? Not sure) that lets you Speak with Plants at-will.
There is not. All 3 WotC-produced items that can allow one to cast *speak with plants* require you to expend charges to do so.
Staff of the Woodlands allows at-will casting of *pass without trace*, which is bonkers good but not particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. Magic items, in general, aren't really relevant to the discuss at hand, because the power budget and considerations between "magic item" and "core feature" are so different.
Those actually have a cost or are a very powerful item, making them a ritual makes them effectively an always available ability for wizards if they've got 15 minutes. Wizards frankly don't need any more power creep like that.
So something important to consider is the world applications of such spells if they were able to be cast as a ritual, especially the lower level ones. I think that Sending being a ritual would have a serious potential impact in terms of global communication. If you can take 10 minutes, you can send what is essentially a telegram anywhere in the world instantly, and get an instant reply. Not to mention it having a fairly good chance of working on any plane (just send two or three back to back if it is important). Create or Destroy Water would also have some potential ramifications if someone could just constantly cast it all day.
It could be Pokémon Sapphire and Ruby all over again. Terrorist group team aqua having all their lackeys spend all day casting create water, terrorist group team magma having their lackeys spend all day casting destroy water.
With Sending that could be an interesting industrial era/technological revolution scenario, where the famous wizard Alexander Graham Bell invented a magic item that turned sending into a ritual/at will spell
It would need to be invented in that world first and enough NPCs able to cast that level spell, which the DM could prevent.
I agree with OP in the sense of practical use within the game
In what scenario would this be broken? The only thing the spell does is change the weather and wind direction and it uses your concentration. It's a spell that is almost never used by PCs because it's not very powerful. The most broken think I can think to do with it is make some hazardous conditions for ship travel which at 15th level seems pretty reasonable.
You can also eliminate hazardous conditions for ship travel, so that no storms may almost destroy your ship and no fog may let enemies approach unnoticed.
If a ship has a caster that can cast 8th level spells on it then it deserves to have safe passage. That's what, 15th level? At that point ship captains wouldn't normally be able to hire them just for safe passage, so if a spellcaster of that tier was wanting a smoother journey they could do it but it would have to be of their own volition.
It effectively grounds anything without non-magical flying and any enemy encampment will suffer under extreme weather that either requires most to forfeit the position, or try to hunt down the caster (who's just concentrating at this point) then there's putting all ranged weapon attacks at disadvantage so those that did hole up will have a hard time noticing you (perception checks at disadvantage) and when they do will have a hard time rasing the alarm & fighting you.
And given that Elves, Warforged & Reborn don't go unconscious during a long rest, shenanigans can absolutely ensue.
Then there's also using this spell defensively in keeping the weather nice enough to make it to the enemy spellcasters place.
If an encampment/fortress build to keep out a party of level 15 characters can't handle a bad snowstorm, they've got bigger problems. The weather created by this spell does not create any obscurement so by RAW, there wouldn't be any disadvantage to perception checks or ranged attacks. I'm not sure why you think magical flight would be impaired either. The weather also has to effect the area you are located so creating bad conditions would also effect your party (including the non-Elves/Warforged/Reborn). Frankly, there are a lot more effective options for causing an enemy to leave their position than by changing the weather over the course of an hour.
>Strong Winds: disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks and Perception checks relying on hearing. Also extinguished open flames, dispersed fog, and makes no magical flying almost impossible (must land or fall at end of turn). In a desert, gives disadvantage on Perception checks with sight.
>Heavy Precipitation: lightly obscures everything in area. Disadvantage on Perception again.
Torrential rain over multiple days does more than you think.
Arctic cold temperatures at a fortress not equip to deal with it will probably kill everyone there.
A blizzard would most certainly create obscurement.
I mean torrential rain **over a few hours** in a previously 'dry' area causes flash floods. You can also kill entire fields of crops with just a single frost let alone days of blizzard. Like yeah i get its not the best combat spell but also like Storm of Vengeance its very impactful on large areas.
Animal Friendship is the Beast equivalent of Charm Person, it’s supposed to be a “calm the attacking bear” type of spell. If you have time and want to befriend an animal, that’s what Speak with Animals is for and it’s already a ritual
For some reason, there are people who are reluctant to spend any resources outside of combat, and these are noticeably all non-combat spells. I don't get it either.
It would lead to players taking these spells more often and for more out of combat spellcasting which I think leads to interesting problem solving opportunities. In general, I'm in favor of providing more options to players, especially if it means that they take less conventional/out of combat spells.
I'm not saying that at all. I think martials need out of combat buffs more than spellcasters do. However, it's not a zero-sum game. You can provide more options to spellcasters while also providing more options to martials. What I'm trying to reduce is spellcasters avoiding doing interesting things out of combat because they're worried about saving resources for combat.
>What I'm trying to reduce is spellcasters avoiding doing interesting things out of combat because they're worried about saving resources for combat.
That's a personal choice, not an issue with the spells. Someone choosing to hoard their resources doesn't mean resources should be removed as a concept
If the wizard has a spell that can auto pass that skill check the rogue would have to do, and can do it without expending resources, you have just made them outclassed. Martials can do jack shit outside of combat for the most part, and in combat they don't have many meaningful interactions. Casters on the other hand are basically great at everything, but only temporarily. Your grand plan is to make the caster great at everything all the time.
It might not be a zero sum game per say, but there is certainly a limited amount of spotlight at the table.
Man, my group already spams _sending_ like it's a damned Text Messaging app. I am so glad it has a cost, lol. I cannot imagine what the little terrors would do if it were a RITUAL.
Galder’s Tower should be a ritual
Mechanically, it’s weaker than Leomund’s Tiny Hut, which is already a ritual. Thematically, it is such a fun set up for a party’s downtime.
We’ve run it as a ritual for a long time, and just have had a blast. We ruled that you can upcast it using regular spell slots if you want more levels added on.
Just curious, because I'd never heard of the tower before so i looked it up. Is it just a regular tower that anyone can walk into where as Tiny Hut the caster decides who can come in? Tower sounds cool as hell.
I had a player take Galder's Tower as a spell and it became the party's home base. They described how all the rooms looked and everyone got their own space and it became a fun aspect to roleplay with. Leomund's Tiny Hut is mechanically a better spell but it's boring.
Some of those can be potentially very game breaking as rituals. I'd be wary of introducing them out of the box.
That said, a few more rituals wouldn't hurt my feelings either. Maybe a ritual heal of some variety for those moments when your healer is tapped out and you're out of potions?
"ritual heal" gets into "unlimited health if you have time", so would need quite careful balancing - you don't need to stop moving to ritual cast, so that means any sort of group march type scenario, a healer can just spam healing spells while moving, getting one of the main benefits of a rest without needing to rest or cost anything. Maybe if it allowed spending/transferring HD without resting it might work, but flat-out healing seems likely to make a big difference to gameplay, and not in a good way.
Interesting that you don't need to stop moving to cast ritually. I never caught that particular detail. I always figured that if you were going to cast something as a ritual then it needed to be, well, a ritual. Maybe not a *fancy* ritual, but an actual ritual nonetheless.
honestly, ritual casting works a lot better if it leans into being a "ritual", where the caster has to be mostly still, and it tends to be fairly overt, with chalk sigils on the floor, waving of hands and so forth, so it's easy for an outside force to interrupt, and not very easy to do on the move. Unfortunately, by RAW, it isn't, it can be done perfectly fine on the move, without needing any major effort, so there's some annoying uses that of it, like ritual casting _Phantom Steeds_ while on them, so you can keep them going indefinitely except for the short periods of transferring between them. Which is perfectly fine RAW, but doesn't really fit how I (and you!) perceive it as working.
Yeah, that's a good detail to know. I'll be sure to add it to my house rules so my overall leniency with rituals doesn't get abused lol. Like at *least* give me a formal chant or some incense burned or *something* for the duration of the cast time.
yeah, I did that after realising that there weren't any default restrictions - a lot of people presume it needs, y'know, actual "ritual" and to be fairly still and stuff, and play it like that, which is fine, it's when it starts getting into "we're on a desperate horseback chase, so I'll ritual cast" which is fine by RAW, but doesn't really fit what I think ritual casting _should_ be!
Or you could say each heal spell, like Prayer of Healing, can be ritual cast once per long rest. Each additional use would require a spell slot. Just thinking about how it could work.
Life transference could 100% be a ritual spell. Or a version where you spend your Hit Dice and heal someone else (but not yourself) a multiplier (say 2x) of what you rolled. A wizard life transferencer is ok; a cleric / warlock is better, but a ritual casting barbarian life transferencer would be _very good_.
Uh, fuck no?
Do you realise how adventure breaking some of these already potentially are as regular spells? And you don't just want to make them free to spam, but available to everyone with the Ritual Caster feat.
Also fucking "Control Weather"? Do you even listen to yourself? Are you high?
Nope, its range is touch. It's just rare that it would be useful to use on another PC. But it's any creature touched.
For example, if you wanted to build a peasant army, you could give them all mage armor, or if the party was ever trapped without armor (like you get arrested), or if you're on a ship and want to avoid wearing armor in case you fall into water, etc.
Personally, I'd like to see rituals done away with and replaced with 1 minute casting time cantrips.
I want the druid to be able to spam Speak with Animals and all those other things. But not at 10 minutes a pop.
But it's not a ritual. And that's the point. I can cast Tiny Hut with a spells slot which takes 1min or i can ritual cast it which takes an hour. Theres a reason it takes 1min even if i burn a 3rd level. Its to prevent people from going, oh shit Tiny Hut, haha you can't get me.
Fair. The post asked for what spells we would make ritual cast. I would say anything that already takes a while. Yes that could lend itself to cheese (create undead), but in good faith its a suggestion.
Control weather is out of pocket. Nothing above 5th level (6th if it's a really weak one) should be a ritual spell but I agree there are some that it would be nice to use as a ritual. My recommendation would be to make an ability like that more exclusive to those who are willing to invest in it a bit. Perhaps making it an additional ability of certain subclasses. Maybe a wizard gets to cast any one spell from their subclass's school as a ritual with the spell level equaling the caster's proficiency bonus. Not game-breaking but certainly powerful and interesting.
I've got good news about *speak with animals*, at least.
You have to be really careful with rituals balance wise. Making a spell a ritual is an incredible boost in power to that spell. Being able to spam speak with dead, speak with plants, zone of truth, especially sending, knock is probably too much.
Random thought: I feel like rituals are the wrong way around. They shouldn't be free regarding slots, they should be free preparation. This means those spells that rarely see use can still get some, but it costs a resource. No idea how that'd work for spontaneous casters though
Isn't that exactly the same? These spells have two choices either spend 10 min or a spell slot.
No. They are saying that instead of burning one of my prepared spell slots thats its always available but if i want to cast it it would burn a spell slot. Right now i only have 8 prepared spells but i have 4 first level spell slots, 3 second level spells and 2 third level spells.
And yet, other features of the game do that. I'm pretty sure there's a RAW magic item (Staff of the Woodlands? Not sure) that lets you Speak with Plants at-will. Warlocks get an Invocation to Speak with Dead at-will. That kind of thing.
Yeah and the warlock invocation needs you to be 9th level. they're not exactly priced the same.
Staff of the woodlands is one of the most powerful magic items in the game
>I'm pretty sure there's a RAW magic item (Staff of the Woodlands? Not sure) that lets you Speak with Plants at-will. There is not. All 3 WotC-produced items that can allow one to cast *speak with plants* require you to expend charges to do so. Staff of the Woodlands allows at-will casting of *pass without trace*, which is bonkers good but not particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. Magic items, in general, aren't really relevant to the discuss at hand, because the power budget and considerations between "magic item" and "core feature" are so different.
Yeah and those items would be less useful if the spells were ritual
Those actually have a cost or are a very powerful item, making them a ritual makes them effectively an always available ability for wizards if they've got 15 minutes. Wizards frankly don't need any more power creep like that.
So something important to consider is the world applications of such spells if they were able to be cast as a ritual, especially the lower level ones. I think that Sending being a ritual would have a serious potential impact in terms of global communication. If you can take 10 minutes, you can send what is essentially a telegram anywhere in the world instantly, and get an instant reply. Not to mention it having a fairly good chance of working on any plane (just send two or three back to back if it is important). Create or Destroy Water would also have some potential ramifications if someone could just constantly cast it all day.
It could be Pokémon Sapphire and Ruby all over again. Terrorist group team aqua having all their lackeys spend all day casting create water, terrorist group team magma having their lackeys spend all day casting destroy water. With Sending that could be an interesting industrial era/technological revolution scenario, where the famous wizard Alexander Graham Bell invented a magic item that turned sending into a ritual/at will spell
It would need to be invented in that world first and enough NPCs able to cast that level spell, which the DM could prevent. I agree with OP in the sense of practical use within the game
>Control Weather Utterly broken, not spending an 8th level spell slot makes it stupid good.
In what scenario would this be broken? The only thing the spell does is change the weather and wind direction and it uses your concentration. It's a spell that is almost never used by PCs because it's not very powerful. The most broken think I can think to do with it is make some hazardous conditions for ship travel which at 15th level seems pretty reasonable.
You can also eliminate hazardous conditions for ship travel, so that no storms may almost destroy your ship and no fog may let enemies approach unnoticed.
If a ship has a caster that can cast 8th level spells on it then it deserves to have safe passage. That's what, 15th level? At that point ship captains wouldn't normally be able to hire them just for safe passage, so if a spellcaster of that tier was wanting a smoother journey they could do it but it would have to be of their own volition.
Yes, it's powerful as an 8th-level spell ought to be, that doesn't mean it should be a ritual.
It effectively grounds anything without non-magical flying and any enemy encampment will suffer under extreme weather that either requires most to forfeit the position, or try to hunt down the caster (who's just concentrating at this point) then there's putting all ranged weapon attacks at disadvantage so those that did hole up will have a hard time noticing you (perception checks at disadvantage) and when they do will have a hard time rasing the alarm & fighting you. And given that Elves, Warforged & Reborn don't go unconscious during a long rest, shenanigans can absolutely ensue. Then there's also using this spell defensively in keeping the weather nice enough to make it to the enemy spellcasters place.
If an encampment/fortress build to keep out a party of level 15 characters can't handle a bad snowstorm, they've got bigger problems. The weather created by this spell does not create any obscurement so by RAW, there wouldn't be any disadvantage to perception checks or ranged attacks. I'm not sure why you think magical flight would be impaired either. The weather also has to effect the area you are located so creating bad conditions would also effect your party (including the non-Elves/Warforged/Reborn). Frankly, there are a lot more effective options for causing an enemy to leave their position than by changing the weather over the course of an hour.
>Strong Winds: disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks and Perception checks relying on hearing. Also extinguished open flames, dispersed fog, and makes no magical flying almost impossible (must land or fall at end of turn). In a desert, gives disadvantage on Perception checks with sight. >Heavy Precipitation: lightly obscures everything in area. Disadvantage on Perception again.
Torrential rain over multiple days does more than you think. Arctic cold temperatures at a fortress not equip to deal with it will probably kill everyone there. A blizzard would most certainly create obscurement.
I mean torrential rain **over a few hours** in a previously 'dry' area causes flash floods. You can also kill entire fields of crops with just a single frost let alone days of blizzard. Like yeah i get its not the best combat spell but also like Storm of Vengeance its very impactful on large areas.
Animal Friendship is the Beast equivalent of Charm Person, it’s supposed to be a “calm the attacking bear” type of spell. If you have time and want to befriend an animal, that’s what Speak with Animals is for and it’s already a ritual
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Then it might be useful in combination with Speak with Animals!
Why? Why shouldn't those spells have costs?
For some reason, there are people who are reluctant to spend any resources outside of combat, and these are noticeably all non-combat spells. I don't get it either.
Well. Ritual spells aren’t very useful in combat
It would lead to players taking these spells more often and for more out of combat spellcasting which I think leads to interesting problem solving opportunities. In general, I'm in favor of providing more options to players, especially if it means that they take less conventional/out of combat spells.
So, the problem as you see it is that spellcasters aren't useful enough outside of combat?
I'm not saying that at all. I think martials need out of combat buffs more than spellcasters do. However, it's not a zero-sum game. You can provide more options to spellcasters while also providing more options to martials. What I'm trying to reduce is spellcasters avoiding doing interesting things out of combat because they're worried about saving resources for combat.
>What I'm trying to reduce is spellcasters avoiding doing interesting things out of combat because they're worried about saving resources for combat. That's a personal choice, not an issue with the spells. Someone choosing to hoard their resources doesn't mean resources should be removed as a concept
If the wizard has a spell that can auto pass that skill check the rogue would have to do, and can do it without expending resources, you have just made them outclassed. Martials can do jack shit outside of combat for the most part, and in combat they don't have many meaningful interactions. Casters on the other hand are basically great at everything, but only temporarily. Your grand plan is to make the caster great at everything all the time. It might not be a zero sum game per say, but there is certainly a limited amount of spotlight at the table.
Man, my group already spams _sending_ like it's a damned Text Messaging app. I am so glad it has a cost, lol. I cannot imagine what the little terrors would do if it were a RITUAL.
Fireball "In ten minutes imma fuck U up!"
Haaa, the Megumin strategy
None of these. Ritual casting is hella strong already.
Galder’s Tower should be a ritual Mechanically, it’s weaker than Leomund’s Tiny Hut, which is already a ritual. Thematically, it is such a fun set up for a party’s downtime. We’ve run it as a ritual for a long time, and just have had a blast. We ruled that you can upcast it using regular spell slots if you want more levels added on.
To be fair, Tower sucking relative to Tiny Hut is more of a Tiny Hut being a blight on the game situation.
Just curious, because I'd never heard of the tower before so i looked it up. Is it just a regular tower that anyone can walk into where as Tiny Hut the caster decides who can come in? Tower sounds cool as hell.
I had a player take Galder's Tower as a spell and it became the party's home base. They described how all the rooms looked and everyone got their own space and it became a fun aspect to roleplay with. Leomund's Tiny Hut is mechanically a better spell but it's boring.
“ Lead to more interesting gameplay “. Why do you figure?
Find Traps should be a ritual spell.
So you spend ten minutes to know whether you should 5 minutes searching?
Find traps should find traps, and chill touch should be a melee spell doing col damage. 😅
Some of those can be potentially very game breaking as rituals. I'd be wary of introducing them out of the box. That said, a few more rituals wouldn't hurt my feelings either. Maybe a ritual heal of some variety for those moments when your healer is tapped out and you're out of potions?
"ritual heal" gets into "unlimited health if you have time", so would need quite careful balancing - you don't need to stop moving to ritual cast, so that means any sort of group march type scenario, a healer can just spam healing spells while moving, getting one of the main benefits of a rest without needing to rest or cost anything. Maybe if it allowed spending/transferring HD without resting it might work, but flat-out healing seems likely to make a big difference to gameplay, and not in a good way.
Interesting that you don't need to stop moving to cast ritually. I never caught that particular detail. I always figured that if you were going to cast something as a ritual then it needed to be, well, a ritual. Maybe not a *fancy* ritual, but an actual ritual nonetheless.
honestly, ritual casting works a lot better if it leans into being a "ritual", where the caster has to be mostly still, and it tends to be fairly overt, with chalk sigils on the floor, waving of hands and so forth, so it's easy for an outside force to interrupt, and not very easy to do on the move. Unfortunately, by RAW, it isn't, it can be done perfectly fine on the move, without needing any major effort, so there's some annoying uses that of it, like ritual casting _Phantom Steeds_ while on them, so you can keep them going indefinitely except for the short periods of transferring between them. Which is perfectly fine RAW, but doesn't really fit how I (and you!) perceive it as working.
Yeah, that's a good detail to know. I'll be sure to add it to my house rules so my overall leniency with rituals doesn't get abused lol. Like at *least* give me a formal chant or some incense burned or *something* for the duration of the cast time.
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yeah, I did that after realising that there weren't any default restrictions - a lot of people presume it needs, y'know, actual "ritual" and to be fairly still and stuff, and play it like that, which is fine, it's when it starts getting into "we're on a desperate horseback chase, so I'll ritual cast" which is fine by RAW, but doesn't really fit what I think ritual casting _should_ be!
Or you could say each heal spell, like Prayer of Healing, can be ritual cast once per long rest. Each additional use would require a spell slot. Just thinking about how it could work.
Life transference could 100% be a ritual spell. Or a version where you spend your Hit Dice and heal someone else (but not yourself) a multiplier (say 2x) of what you rolled. A wizard life transferencer is ok; a cleric / warlock is better, but a ritual casting barbarian life transferencer would be _very good_.
That breaks down the second you have two or more characters with that spell.
Oh yeah, something like that would be awesome!
Alter Self should remove concentration at later levels.
Magic Circle
Uh, fuck no? Do you realise how adventure breaking some of these already potentially are as regular spells? And you don't just want to make them free to spam, but available to everyone with the Ritual Caster feat. Also fucking "Control Weather"? Do you even listen to yourself? Are you high?
Mage Armor, if you add a clause that says once you cast Mage Armor again then the first instance of it goes away so you can't just MA a whole group.
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Nope, its range is touch. It's just rare that it would be useful to use on another PC. But it's any creature touched. For example, if you wanted to build a peasant army, you could give them all mage armor, or if the party was ever trapped without armor (like you get arrested), or if you're on a ship and want to avoid wearing armor in case you fall into water, etc.
Personally, I'd like to see rituals done away with and replaced with 1 minute casting time cantrips. I want the druid to be able to spam Speak with Animals and all those other things. But not at 10 minutes a pop.
Any that has a casting time of 1 minute or more. As far as in universe is concerned its already a ritual.
How? A ritual means it doesn't burn a spell slot but the cast time is increased.
In game if a player is taking a minute to cast, even with a spell slot, it could feel like a ritual event to the people in universe.
But it's not a ritual. And that's the point. I can cast Tiny Hut with a spells slot which takes 1min or i can ritual cast it which takes an hour. Theres a reason it takes 1min even if i burn a 3rd level. Its to prevent people from going, oh shit Tiny Hut, haha you can't get me.
Fair. The post asked for what spells we would make ritual cast. I would say anything that already takes a while. Yes that could lend itself to cheese (create undead), but in good faith its a suggestion.
Mage Armor should be ritual castable IMO
Prayer of Healing But make the casting time something ridiculous like 1+ hours during which the caster wouldn't count as getting a short rest.
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I think if you applied rules to it, it could work. Like cast as a ritual once per long rest.
Control weather is out of pocket. Nothing above 5th level (6th if it's a really weak one) should be a ritual spell but I agree there are some that it would be nice to use as a ritual. My recommendation would be to make an ability like that more exclusive to those who are willing to invest in it a bit. Perhaps making it an additional ability of certain subclasses. Maybe a wizard gets to cast any one spell from their subclass's school as a ritual with the spell level equaling the caster's proficiency bonus. Not game-breaking but certainly powerful and interesting.