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Saturday, 31st October, 2015, 04:51 AM #1
Acolyte (Lvl 2)
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Know Your Rites: A Guide to Ritual Casting (Oraibi)
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Know Your Rites: A Guide to Ritual Casting
Rituals were introduced in 4e D&D as a way of expanding the out-of-combat uses for magic while not requiring the use of in-combat resources.
5th edition expands this by marking certain spells with the ritual tag. If you can cast that spell as a ritual, you can do it without expending spell slots by taking an extra 10 minutes to cast it.
The rules of ritual casting are explained on pages 201-202 of the Player's Handbook, or pages 78-79 of the Player's Basic Rules PDF (page numbers correct as of v 0.2).
Color Coding
Here's what the colors mean.
Terrible choice, probably a trap. Don't pick this.
Purple: Conditional, but usually a bad idea. You'll have to work hard to figure out how to make it useful.
Black: So-so. Not bad, not great.
Blue: A good solid choice.
Sky Blue: A really good choice.
Orange: You'd have to be kind of silly to not take this obvious choice.
Note that all of these ratings are only in the context of being a ritual caster, and not about optimizing your character in general.
Table of Contents
Overview(x)
- Types of Ritual Casting
- Limits of Ritual Casting
- How You Get Ritual Casting Ability
- A List of Ritual Spells
Classes(x)
- Ritual Casting Classes
- Multiclassing
Feats(x)
- The Ritual Caster Feat
- Adding Spells to Your Ritual Book
- The Warlock's Book of Ancient Secrets
- If You're Already A Caster
- Classes that might benefit from this feat
Useful Rituals by Class(x)
- Bard Rituals
- Cleric Rituals
- Druid Rituals
- Sorcerer Rituals
- Warlock Rituals
- Wizard Rituals
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Overview
Types of Ritual Casting
There are three different types of ritual casting available, with slightly different rules for how you accomplish casting a ritual.
- Ritual Book Casting. You have a book (either a ritual book or a spellbook) which contains spells you can cast as rituals. As long as you have that book available, you can cast those ritual spells. They do not cost you any spell slots.
- Prepared Rituals. Your spell list contains spells which can be cast as a ritual. If you have one of those spells prepared, you can cast it as a ritual. It does not cost you any spell slots. Note that you can still use these spells as non-ritual spells with their normal casting time, and spend a spell slot on them.
- Rote Rituals. These are rituals based on spells you can cast but you don't have to prepare them ahead of time. The two examples are the barbarian's rituals and the Pact of the Tome warlock's Book of Ancient Secrets feaure as applied to warlock spells already known by the warlock that have the ritual tag. This is the rarest type of ritual casting.
Of the two, ritual book casting is generally superior since it doesn't require spell preparation. Technically the rules don't require that you have your spellbook physically present, but it's probably a safe assumption that is what was intended.
Limitations of Ritual Casting
There are four primary limitations on your ritual casting:
- First and foremost, just because you have a spell on your spell list with the ritual tag, that doesn't mean you can cast it as a ritual. You must have ritual casting ability to cast a spell as a ritual. There are a number of classes with ritual spells on their spell lists without ritual casting ability, such as rangers, warlocks, sorcerers, arcane tricksters, and eldritch knights.
- Since you don't use a spell slot of any kind, you can't cast a spell using a higher level slot. However, there aren't currently any ritual spells which can be cast at a higher level with the exception of animal messenger, so this won't affect anything -- for now.
- You have to maintain concentration while casting the ritual. If you lose concentration, you just have to start the ritual over again. However, this means that you can't cast a ritual spell while maintaining concentration on another spell, ritual or otherwise.
- You still have to provide the necessary components. Which includes verbal, somatic, and material, although remember that only a few spells in 5th edition require that the material components are consumed by the casting. You probably will want an arcane focus if you can use one; the Ritual Caster feat doesn't give you the ability to use arcane focuses, so you may need to get a component belt.
Casting a ritual requires your action during any round in which you're casting it (for the 10+ minutes it takes to cast) -- note that it doesn't require you to stay in one place, so you can move while casting your spell. Your whole party doesn't have to stop for a break while you cast a ritual -- you can keep walking.
How You Get Ritual Casting Ability
There are three ways to get the ability to cast spells as rituals.
- As a general class feature. Bards, clerics, druids, and wizards get ritual casting as part of their spellcasting class feature, and they can use it with any prepared spells (for prepared rituals) or from their spellbook (for ritual book casting). Wizards get the superior ritual book casting, while everyone else has prepared rituals.
- From the Ritual Caster feat. This gives you the superior ritual book version of ritual casting, and requires you to choose a spellcasting class. See the later feat section for more.
- As a specific class feature. For example, at level 3, a barbarian who has chosen the path of the totem warrior can cast beast sense and speak with animals as rituals, starting at 3rd level. Tome warlocks can take the Book of Ancient Secrets[/orange] feature which is the best ritual casting in the game.
A List of Ritual Spells
Here's a list that was provided by Leugren.
List of Spells That Can Be Cast as Rituals(x)
This will be expanded upon in the rest of this guide.
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Classes
Ritual-Casting Classes
These are the clases that can cast spells as rituals.
- Barbarian. Only Path of the Totem Warrior, and only beast sense (at 3rd level), speak with animals (at 3rd level), and communie with nature (at 10th level).
- Bard. A decent number of rituals to choose from, but prepared rituals only. Bards from the College of Lore can use their Additional Magic Secrets feature to get rituals from other classes, pushing them higher in the rankings than their spell list normally would allow.
- Cleric. Respectable number of ritual spells. Knowledge domain lets you always have identify and augury prepared, both of which can be cast as rituals. Nature domain gives you speak with animals always prepared. The other domains don't affect your ritual casting ability.
- Druid. About as many spells as the cleric. Circle of the Land gives you a few spells that are always prepared which can be useful -- Arctic gives commune with nature; Coast gives water breathing and water walk; Forest gives both divination and commune with nature; Grassland gives divination; Mountain gives meld into stone; Swamp gives water walk. Desert and Underdark don't help your ritual casting at all. Circle of the Moon druids might not find rituals as useful as they can't cast them in wild shape form until level 18.
- Fighter. Fighters aren't ritual casters, not even Eldritch Knights who can cast spells with the ritual tag.
- . Monks aren't ritual casters, even if they have ki powers that let them cast spells with the ritual tag.
- Paladin. Paladins aren't ritual casters, even though they have spells on their spell list with the ritual tag.
- Ranger. Rangers aren't ritual casters, even though they have spells on their spell list with the ritual tag.
- Rogue. Rogues aren't ritual casters, not even Arcane Tricksters who can cast spells with the ritual tag.
- Sorcerer. Sorcerers aren't ritual casters. However, the Ritual Caster feat allows for sorcerer as one of the class options. Unfortunately, there are only four ritual spells on the sorcerer spell list (comprehend languages, detect magic, water breathing, and water walk) so this is a poor choice for Ritual Caster.
- COLOR=purple]lo
- ck. Warlocks aren't naturally ritual casters, with two exceptions: Pact of the Chain warlocks who can cast find familiar as a ritual, and the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation, available only to Pact of the Tome warlocks, allows them to use ritual book casting and poach ritual spells from any spellcasting class. Warlock is also an option for the Ritual Caster feat, but they have only four native ritual spells (comprehend languages, illusory script, unseen servant, and contact other plane) making this not a great choice.
- Wizard. Wizards have a broad list of spells they can choose from and have the generally superior ritual book casting (versus prepared casting).
Multiclassing
It's important to note that for every class with ritual casting as part of the spellcasting feature, the wording specifically limits that feature to spells from that class.
For example, the cleric version reads:
You can cast a cleric spell as a ritual if that spell has the ritual tag and you have the spell prepared.
This means that your eldritch knight can't just pick up a level of cleric in order to the gain ritual caster feature on all your spells -- it will only work for the cleric spells, not the eldritch knight (wizard) spells you can cast.
Likewise, if you are a wizard and multiclass into ranger, you can't cast your ranger spells as rituals, even if they have the ritual tag.
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Feats
The Ritual Caster Feat
When you take the ritual caster feat, you gain ritual book casting -- meaning that you don't have to prepare any spells beforehand, but can instead cast them directly from your spellbook as rituals. You can only do this with the spells that are in your ritual book, even if you can cast them in some other way.
To take the feat, you must have at least a 13 in Intelligence or Wisdom. If both of those are your dump stat, then don't bother. Consider instead multiclassing into warlock or bard, if your Charisma is high enough.
You have to pick a class and choose your spells from that class's spell list; you also use that class's spellcasting ability when you cast the spell. This should be a secondary consideration, though, as most rituals never use your spellcasting ability because nobody is making a saving throw against your ritual, nor are you making a spellcasting attack roll with your ritual.
Instead, the choice of class should be based on the spell list available to you, regardless of the spellcasting ability.
- Bard. A decent set of rituals, capping off at 3rd level spells.
- Cleric. A few less rituals than the bard, but one every level up to 6th. Especially notable for precognition spells.
- Druid. A solid choice of naturey rituals.
- Sorcerer. It's a trap! Don't choose this.
- Warlock. It's also a trap! Don't choose this either.
- Wizard. The biggest spell list with some of the best rituals.
Adding Spells to Your Ritual Book
There are two ways to add ritual spells to your ritual book.
- Copy off a scroll. At this point in time (October 2014), prior to the release of the Dungeon Master's Guide, we don't know how easy it is to create scrolls. If it's not too hard, this could turn out to be a good way to get spells from other PCs or NPCs, or even to add your own spells to your ritual book if there's overlap between your spell list and your chosen class for Ritual Caster. For example, if you're a ranger, you might be able to scribe a scroll of detect poison and disease and then add that to your druid-based ritual book.
- Copy off a wizard's spellbook. You can also copy of someone else's ritual book, although the rules don't actually state this outright, just imply it.
In either case the cost is going to be the same -- 2 hours per spell level, and 50 gp per spell level.
The Warlock's Book of Ancient Secrets
The Book of Ancient Secrets invocation is similar to the Ritual Caster feat -- it costs the same amount of time and money to transcribe a spell, for example -- but it has the advantage that you aren't restricted to any specific spell list. This means a Pact of the Tome warlock can poach any ritual she gets her hands on, which is pretty awesome.
If You're Already A Caster
Nothing in the rules says that you can cast your normal spells as rituals, even if they have the ritual tag, after you take this feat. Just the spells in your ritual book.
You may be able to convince your DM to houserule this in your favor if you're nice, but I wouldn't rely on that.
Classes that might benefit from this feat
Classes that might benefit from this feat
Spoiler:
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Useful Rituals By Class
Bard Rituals
Bard Rituals
Spoiler:
Cleric Rituals
Cleric Rituals
Spoiler:
Druid Rituals
Druid Rituals
Spoiler:
Sorcerer Rituals
Sorcerer Rituals
Spoiler:
Warlock Rituals
Spoiler:
Wizard Rituals
Wizard Rituals
Spoiler:
Originally posted by Oraibi:
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Originally posted by Oraibi:
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Originally posted by Oraibi:
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Originally posted by Oraibi:
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Originally posted by Oraibi:
Woops, time flies when you're having fun. I have to catch a few hours of sleep before D&D today, so I will have to finish this later.
I'm going to be writing up summaries of the various rituals available to each class. Feel free to chime on which ones you think are the most useful.
Originally posted by mellored:
All bards, not just lore bards, can pick up rituals.
Originally posted by ASilva91084:
The Warlock's pact specifically states that you can only cast the cantrips and rituals within it while the book is in your hand.
Originally posted by Polaris:
ASilva91084 wrote:The Warlock's pact specifically states that you can only cast the cantrips and rituals within it while the book is in your hand.
It's not a meaningful limitation.
-Polaris
Originally posted by Timborama:
Polaris wrote:
ASilva91084 wrote:The Warlock's pact specifically states that you can only cast the cantrips and rituals within it while the book is in your hand.
It's not a meaningful limitation.
-Polaris
Now, the question is...will your DM allow you to resummon it as-is, or blank :-x
Originally posted by Polaris:
Timborama wrote:
Polaris wrote:
ASilva91084 wrote:The Warlock's pact specifically states that you can only cast the cantrips and rituals within it while the book is in your hand.
It's not a meaningful limitation.
-Polaris
Now, the question is...will your DM allow you to resummon it as-is, or blank :-x
-Polaris
Originally posted by spanglemaker:
Warlock with Book of Ancient Secrets, is really Sky Blue. It is better than Wizards Ritual Casting, because they can potentially inscribe every ritual. Now Wizards will most probably technically find it easier to get rituals than Warlocks, yet the Warlock will probably be more persuasive, intimidating or deceptive even without Beguiling Influence.
Wizards do get discount on scribing spells from one school of magic.
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Thanks everyone! Will update it soon with those corrections.
Originally posted by demon_idol:
Note that the warlock's book of ancient secrets only allows them to inscribe ritual spells of up to 1/2 their warlock level, rounded up. This means that dipping into warlock to get this invocation is not as useful as one might imagine, but neither is it useless. There are many great 1st and 2nd level ritual spells available to the 3 level warlock dipper.
Originally posted by Bgharcourt:
In my current game, my party raided a fire cult tower, and my tomelock(lvl 5) made out like a bandit. I got the tiny hut, Phantom steed, and identify from their leader's private library(rolled a nat 20 on the investigation check)
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I can't believe I missed this, but Bghargourt bumped the thread, so...
demon_idol wrote:Note that the warlock's book of ancient secrets only allows them to inscribe ritual spells of up to 1/2 their warlock level, rounded up. This means that dipping into warlock to get this invocation is not as useful as one might imagine, but neither is it useless. There are many great 1st and 2nd level ritual spells available to the 3 level warlock dipper.
The first level with an invocation after Pact of the Tome comes online is level 5, at which point you can scribe rituals of level 1-3 (although you only start with two 1st-level rituals, regardless of what level you are when you take Book of Ancient Secrets). In other words, you can't "dip" warlock for rituals, but you can "divert" 5 levels into it for them.
That said, there's quite a lot of versatility in the level 1-3 rituals:
Show
Spoiler:
The only rituals in the game that this doesn't get you are Divination, Commune, Commune with Nature, Contact Other Plane, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Drawmij's Instant Summons, and Forbiddance.
Originally posted by bid:
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:The first level with an invocation after Pact of the Tome comes online is level 5, at which point you can scribe rituals of level 1-3 (although you only start with two 1st-level rituals, regardless of what level you are when you take Book of Ancient Secrets). In other words, you can't "dip" warlock for rituals, but you can "divert" 5 levels into it for them.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
bid wrote:
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:The first level with an invocation after Pact of the Tome comes online is level 5, at which point you can scribe rituals of level 1-3 (although you only start with two 1st-level rituals, regardless of what level you are when you take Book of Ancient Secrets). In other words, you can't "dip" warlock for rituals, but you can "divert" 5 levels into it for them.
Originally posted by bid:
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:Because the same sentence that allows retraining says "that you could learn at that level". You can't swap a level 2 invocation for one you couldn't learn at level 2.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
bid wrote:
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:Because the same sentence that allows retraining says "that you could learn at that level". You can't swap a level 2 invocation for one you couldn't learn at level 2.
However, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the rest of 5e generally assumes trade-ups are still possible; for instance, a level 5 sorcerer can unlearn a level 1 spell and replace it with an extra level 3 spell. However, those cases all have much less ambiguous text, to wit: "which must also be of a level for which you have spell slots"; this makes zero references to your level.
I don't think any of this is a problem, just that it doesn't seem to work from the text, especially when compared to other classes with similar swap text. (Or even the same class, because the same text is used for warlock spell swapping, but not for invocation swapping.)
Originally posted by Slagger_the_Chuul:
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:bid wrote:
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:Because the same sentence that allows retraining says "that you could learn at that level". You can't swap a level 2 invocation for one you couldn't learn at level 2.
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Thursday, 26th January, 2017, 12:32 AM #2
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I wish people wouldn't use hidden spoilers. I don't know what extension they use but I can't open it making the guide useless
Andrea Invernati gave XP for this post
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Tuesday, 17th October, 2017, 02:21 PM #3
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Casting a ritual simply needs a longer casting time (base spell 1 minute + ritual 10 minutes), which only requires Concentration, which can be maintained while moving normally (PHB p. 203). i.e. you can cast a ritual for a replacement Phantom Steed while riding the current steed.
So, this means after the first 11 minute wait, 13 miles every 60 minutes (the last 11 minutes of which you are recasting while riding).
You could even continually cast the spell, spending 11 minutes to create the first, a short gap (approx 1 min), then 4 x 11 minutes + gap to create 4 more, for a total of 5 active steeds, with the first having maybe 12 minutes of the original 1 hour duration left. The whole party could then start riding, with the ritual caster creating a new replacement steed every 11 - 12 minutes.
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Sunday, 5th November, 2017, 07:58 PM #4
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Is this guide going to be updated if there are more rituals in Xanathar's Guide?
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Monday, 6th November, 2017, 01:16 AM #5
Spellbinder (Lvl 16)
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A very important thing to note is that the feat for ritual casting is based off of character level.
Every other method of ritual casting limited by class level.
That means that getting the feat is typically superior to dipping for ritual casting.Greenstone.Walker gave XP for this post
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Monday, 6th November, 2017, 10:59 AM #6
Grandfather of Assassins (Lvl 19)
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Thursday, 9th November, 2017, 03:04 AM #7
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Sunday, 6th May, 2018, 04:46 AM #8
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"Bard. A decent number of rituals to choose from, but prepared rituals only. "
"If you're a bard, you can only cast prepared rituals. That means that you are going to have to weigh the value of each of these spells against other non-ritual spells that you might want to prepare for a given day."
Both wrong. Bards don't prepare spells. They know all their spells inherently and can use any of them in rituals or in spell slots.
Bards are Rote Ritual Casters.
"Rote Rituals. These are rituals based on spells you can cast but you don't have to prepare them ahead of time. The two examples are the barbarian's rituals and the Pact of the Tome warlock's Book of Ancient Secrets feaure as applied to warlock spells already known by the warlock that have the ritual tag. This is the rarest type of ritual casting."
In that sense, Rote Ritual Casters (Bards, Totem Warriors, Bindlocks) are actually more common than Ritual Book Casters (Wizards, Bindlocks)!
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Sunday, 6th May, 2018, 06:17 PM #9
Grandfather of Assassins (Lvl 19)
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If you buy a wagon or a cart Phantom Steed becomes far more useful for the whole party. Also there are creative uses for both Phantom Steed and Unseen Servant, among others rituals that are less then obvious.
Stick your unseen servant into robes and have them bait the enemy into attacking.
Also you can make your Phantom Steed like like whatever you want, although it will still be large with Horse stats, you it's an at will Illusion spell that doesn't require concentration and lasts an hour (or potentially more if it's a sorcerer casting it).
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Saturday, 1st December, 2018, 11:03 PM #10
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For anyone in the future who does not want the whole post to be orange, here it is.
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Know Your Rites: A Guide to Ritual Casting
Rituals were introduced in 4e D&D as a way of expanding the out-of-combat uses for magic while not requiring the use of in-combat resources.
5th edition expands this by marking certain spells with the ritual tag. If you can cast that spell as a ritual, you can do it without expending spell slots by taking an extra 10 minutes to cast it.
The rules of ritual casting are explained on pages 201-202 of the Player's Handbook, or pages 78-79 of the Player's Basic Rules PDF (page numbers correct as of v 0.2).
Color Coding
Here's what the colors mean.
Terrible choice, probably a trap. Don't pick this.
Purple: Conditional, but usually a bad idea. You'll have to work hard to figure out how to make it useful.
Black: So-so. Not bad, not great.
Blue: A good solid choice.
Sky Blue: A really good choice.
Orange: You'd have to be kind of silly to not take this obvious choice.
Note that all of these ratings are only in the context of being a ritual caster, and not about optimizing your character in general.
Table of Contents
Overview(x)
- Types of Ritual Casting
- Limits of Ritual Casting
- How You Get Ritual Casting Ability
- A List of Ritual Spells
Classes(x)
- Ritual Casting Classes
- Multiclassing
Feats(x)
- The Ritual Caster Feat
- Adding Spells to Your Ritual Book
- The Warlock's Book of Ancient Secrets
- If You're Already A Caster
- Classes that might benefit from this feat
Useful Rituals by Class(x)
- Bard Rituals
- Cleric Rituals
- Druid Rituals
- Sorcerer Rituals
- Warlock Rituals
- Wizard Rituals
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Overview
Types of Ritual Casting
There are three different types of ritual casting available, with slightly different rules for how you accomplish casting a ritual.
- Ritual Book Casting. You have a book (either a ritual book or a spellbook) which contains spells you can cast as rituals. As long as you have that book available, you can cast those ritual spells. They do not cost you any spell slots.
- Prepared Rituals. Your spell list contains spells which can be cast as a ritual. If you have one of those spells prepared, you can cast it as a ritual. It does not cost you any spell slots. Note that you can still use these spells as non-ritual spells with their normal casting time, and spend a spell slot on them.
- Rote Rituals. These are rituals based on spells you can cast but you don't have to prepare them ahead of time. The two examples are the barbarian's rituals and the Pact of the Tome warlock's Book of Ancient Secrets feaure as applied to warlock spells already known by the warlock that have the ritual tag. This is the rarest type of ritual casting.
Of the two, ritual book casting is generally superior since it doesn't require spell preparation. Technically the rules don't require that you have your spellbook physically present, but it's probably a safe assumption that is what was intended.
Limitations of Ritual Casting
There are four primary limitations on your ritual casting:
- First and foremost, just because you have a spell on your spell list with the ritual tag, that doesn't mean you can cast it as a ritual. You must have ritual casting ability to cast a spell as a ritual. There are a number of classes with ritual spells on their spell lists without ritual casting ability, such as rangers, warlocks, sorcerers, arcane tricksters, and eldritch knights.
- Since you don't use a spell slot of any kind, you can't cast a spell using a higher level slot. However, there aren't currently any ritual spells which can be cast at a higher level with the exception of animal messenger, so this won't affect anything -- for now.
- You have to maintain concentration while casting the ritual. If you lose concentration, you just have to start the ritual over again. However, this means that you can't cast a ritual spell while maintaining concentration on another spell, ritual or otherwise.
- You still have to provide the necessary components. Which includes verbal, somatic, and material, although remember that only a few spells in 5th edition require that the material components are consumed by the casting. You probably will want an arcane focus if you can use one; the Ritual Caster feat doesn't give you the ability to use arcane focuses, so you may need to get a component belt.
Casting a ritual requires your action during any round in which you're casting it (for the 10+ minutes it takes to cast) -- note that it doesn't require you to stay in one place, so you can move while casting your spell. Your whole party doesn't have to stop for a break while you cast a ritual -- you can keep walking.
How You Get Ritual Casting Ability
There are three ways to get the ability to cast spells as rituals.
- As a general class feature. Bards, clerics, druids, and wizards get ritual casting as part of their spellcasting class feature, and they can use it with any prepared spells (for prepared rituals) or from their spellbook (for ritual book casting). Wizards get the superior ritual book casting, while everyone else has prepared rituals.
- From the Ritual Caster feat. This gives you the superior ritual book version of ritual casting, and requires you to choose a spellcasting class. See the later feat section for more.
- As a specific class feature. For example, at level 3, a barbarian who has chosen the path of the totem warrior can cast beast sense and speak with animals as rituals, starting at 3rd level. Tome warlocks can take the Book of Ancient Secrets feature which is the best ritual casting in the game.[/COLOR]
A List of Ritual Spells
Here's a list that was provided by Leugren.
List of Spells That Can Be Cast as Rituals(x)
This will be expanded upon in the rest of this guide.
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Classes
Ritual-Casting Classes
These are the clases that can cast spells as rituals.
- Barbarian. Only Path of the Totem Warrior, and only beast sense (at 3rd level), speak with animals (at 3rd level), and communie with nature (at 10th level).
- Bard. A decent number of rituals to choose from, but prepared rituals only. Bards from the College of Lore can use their Additional Magic Secrets feature to get rituals from other classes, pushing them higher in the rankings than their spell list normally would allow.
- Cleric. Respectable number of ritual spells. Knowledge domain lets you always have identify and augury prepared, both of which can be cast as rituals. Nature domain gives you speak with animals always prepared. The other domains don't affect your ritual casting ability.
- Druid. About as many spells as the cleric. Circle of the Land gives you a few spells that are always prepared which can be useful -- Arctic gives commune with nature; Coast gives water breathing and water walk; Forest gives both divination and commune with nature; Grassland gives divination; Mountain gives meld into stone; Swamp gives water walk. Desert and Underdark don't help your ritual casting at all. Circle of the Moon druids might not find rituals as useful as they can't cast them in wild shape form until level 18.
- Fighter. Fighters aren't ritual casters, not even Eldritch Knights who can cast spells with the ritual tag.
- . Monks aren't ritual casters, even if they have ki powers that let them cast spells with the ritual tag.
- Paladin. Paladins aren't ritual casters, even though they have spells on their spell list with the ritual tag.
- Ranger. Rangers aren't ritual casters, even though they have spells on their spell list with the ritual tag.
- Rogue. Rogues aren't ritual casters, not even Arcane Tricksters who can cast spells with the ritual tag.
- Sorcerer. Sorcerers aren't ritual casters. However, the Ritual Caster feat allows for sorcerer as one of the class options. Unfortunately, there are only four ritual spells on the sorcerer spell list (comprehend languages, detect magic, water breathing, and water walk) so this is a poor choice for Ritual Caster.
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- ck. Warlocks aren't naturally ritual casters, with two exceptions: Pact of the Chain warlocks who can cast find familiar as a ritual, and the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation, available only to Pact of the Tome warlocks, allows them to use ritual book casting and poach ritual spells from any spellcasting class. Warlock is also an option for the Ritual Caster feat, but they have only four native ritual spells (comprehend languages, illusory script, unseen servant, and contact other plane) making this not a great choice.
- Wizard. Wizards have a broad list of spells they can choose from and have the generally superior ritual book casting (versus prepared casting).
Multiclassing
It's important to note that for every class with ritual casting as part of the spellcasting feature, the wording specifically limits that feature to spells from that class.
For example, the cleric version reads:
This means that your eldritch knight can't just pick up a level of cleric in order to the gain ritual caster feature on all your spells -- it will only work for the cleric spells, not the eldritch knight (wizard) spells you can cast.
Likewise, if you are a wizard and multiclass into ranger, you can't cast your ranger spells as rituals, even if they have the ritual tag.
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Feats
The Ritual Caster Feat
When you take the ritual caster feat, you gain ritual book casting -- meaning that you don't have to prepare any spells beforehand, but can instead cast them directly from your spellbook as rituals. You can only do this with the spells that are in your ritual book, even if you can cast them in some other way.
To take the feat, you must have at least a 13 in Intelligence or Wisdom. If both of those are your dump stat, then don't bother. Consider instead multiclassing into warlock or bard, if your Charisma is high enough.
You have to pick a class and choose your spells from that class's spell list; you also use that class's spellcasting ability when you cast the spell. This should be a secondary consideration, though, as most rituals never use your spellcasting ability because nobody is making a saving throw against your ritual, nor are you making a spellcasting attack roll with your ritual.
Instead, the choice of class should be based on the spell list available to you, regardless of the spellcasting ability.
- Bard. A decent set of rituals, capping off at 3rd level spells.
- Cleric. A few less rituals than the bard, but one every level up to 6th. Especially notable for precognition spells.
- Druid. A solid choice of naturey rituals.
- Sorcerer. It's a trap! Don't choose this.
- Warlock. It's also a trap! Don't choose this either.
- Wizard. The biggest spell list with some of the best rituals.
Adding Spells to Your Ritual Book
There are two ways to add ritual spells to your ritual book.
- Copy off a scroll. At this point in time (October 2014), prior to the release of the Dungeon Master's Guide, we don't know how easy it is to create scrolls. If it's not too hard, this could turn out to be a good way to get spells from other PCs or NPCs, or even to add your own spells to your ritual book if there's overlap between your spell list and your chosen class for Ritual Caster. For example, if you're a ranger, you might be able to scribe a scroll of detect poison and disease and then add that to your druid-based ritual book.
- Copy off a wizard's spellbook. You can also copy of someone else's ritual book, although the rules don't actually state this outright, just imply it.
In either case the cost is going to be the same -- 2 hours per spell level, and 50 gp per spell level.
The Warlock's Book of Ancient Secrets
The Book of Ancient Secrets invocation is similar to the Ritual Caster feat -- it costs the same amount of time and money to transcribe a spell, for example -- but it has the advantage that you aren't restricted to any specific spell list. This means a Pact of the Tome warlock can poach any ritual she gets her hands on, which is pretty awesome.
If You're Already A Caster
Nothing in the rules says that you can cast your normal spells as rituals, even if they have the ritual tag, after you take this feat. Just the spells in your ritual book.
You may be able to convince your DM to houserule this in your favor if you're nice, but I wouldn't rely on that.
Classes that might benefit from this feat
Classes that might benefit from this feat
Spoiler:
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Useful Rituals By Class
Bard Rituals
Bard Rituals
Spoiler:
Cleric Rituals
Cleric Rituals
Spoiler:
Druid Rituals
Druid Rituals
Spoiler:
Sorcerer Rituals
Sorcerer Rituals
Spoiler:
Warlock Rituals
Spoiler:
Wizard Rituals
Wizard Rituals
Spoiler:
Originally posted by Oraibi:
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Originally posted by Oraibi:
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Originally posted by Oraibi:
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Originally posted by Oraibi:
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Originally posted by Oraibi:
Woops, time flies when you're having fun. I have to catch a few hours of sleep before D&D today, so I will have to finish this later.
I'm going to be writing up summaries of the various rituals available to each class. Feel free to chime on which ones you think are the most useful.
Originally posted by mellored:
All bards, not just lore bards, can pick up rituals.
Originally posted by ASilva91084:
The Warlock's pact specifically states that you can only cast the cantrips and rituals within it while the book is in your hand.
Originally posted by Polaris:
Actually it's when the book is on your person (it can be in your pack). Not only that but why wouldn't it be? Even if you lose it, you can get another for no cost after an hour ritual.
It's not a meaningful limitation.
-Polaris
Originally posted by Timborama:
Plus, if you lose it, you can just resummon it!
Now, the question is...will your DM allow you to resummon it as-is, or blank :-x
Originally posted by Polaris:
It would be pretty pointless if it was resummoned blank, and the book is clearly supernatural (disintegrates into ash on warlock's death) so I'd say you get it back as-is.
-Polaris
Originally posted by spanglemaker:
Warlock with Book of Ancient Secrets, is really Sky Blue. It is better than Wizards Ritual Casting, because they can potentially inscribe every ritual. Now Wizards will most probably technically find it easier to get rituals than Warlocks, yet the Warlock will probably be more persuasive, intimidating or deceptive even without Beguiling Influence.
Wizards do get discount on scribing spells from one school of magic.
Originally posted by Oraibi:
Thanks everyone! Will update it soon with those corrections.
Originally posted by demon_idol:
Note that the warlock's book of ancient secrets only allows them to inscribe ritual spells of up to 1/2 their warlock level, rounded up. This means that dipping into warlock to get this invocation is not as useful as one might imagine, but neither is it useless. There are many great 1st and 2nd level ritual spells available to the 3 level warlock dipper.
Originally posted by Bgharcourt:
In my current game, my party raided a fire cult tower, and my tomelock(lvl 5) made out like a bandit. I got the tiny hut, Phantom steed, and identify from their leader's private library(rolled a nat 20 on the investigation check)
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I can't believe I missed this, but Bghargourt bumped the thread, so...
You need Pact of the Tome to take Book of Ancient Secrets. You get two invocations at level 2, which is one level before Pact Boon (Pact of the Tome) happens, so your level 2 invocations cannot include Book of Ancient Secrets.
The first level with an invocation after Pact of the Tome comes online is level 5, at which point you can scribe rituals of level 1-3 (although you only start with two 1st-level rituals, regardless of what level you are when you take Book of Ancient Secrets). In other words, you can't "dip" warlock for rituals, but you can "divert" 5 levels into it for them.
That said, there's quite a lot of versatility in the level 1-3 rituals:
Show
Spoiler:
The only rituals in the game that this doesn't get you are Divination, Commune, Commune with Nature, Contact Other Plane, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Drawmij's Instant Summons, and Forbiddance.
Originally posted by bid:
As soon as you reach level 3, you can swap one for Book of Ancient Secrets. Why would you wait until level 5?
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Because the same sentence that allows retraining says "that you could learn at that level". You can't swap a level 2 invocation for one you couldn't learn at level 2.
Originally posted by bid:
Nope. "when you gain a level ... at that level." When you gain level 3, you learn at level 3.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Huh. I read that as clearly meaning something else ("could...that" in this case referring to what you could have chosen at that level, the level the invocation was taken, instead of reading it as what you "can" take at "this" level).
However, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the rest of 5e generally assumes trade-ups are still possible; for instance, a level 5 sorcerer can unlearn a level 1 spell and replace it with an extra level 3 spell. However, those cases all have much less ambiguous text, to wit: "which must also be of a level for which you have spell slots"; this makes zero references to your level.
I don't think any of this is a problem, just that it doesn't seem to work from the text, especially when compared to other classes with similar swap text. (Or even the same class, because the same text is used for warlock spell swapping, but not for invocation swapping.)
Originally posted by Slagger_the_Chuul:
I read it as being the class level gained since that's the other mention of "level" in the same paragraph to which "that level", makiing it the most likely subject of the reference.
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