D&D 5E ritual casting overpowered?

[shoak1]

I get where you're coming from - on the other hand :

1 - there are few individuals capable of doing these things
2 - their time is their own (being so powerful, it is very hard to constrain them to a higher authority)
3 - dispel magic is a spell that exists
4 - making yourself reliant upon a fairly fragile system for essential processes is... bad
5 - for PC groups, doing the impossible is an everyday occurrence since the inception of the game
6 - "natural" obstacles of the kind you are talking about are not meant to be significant to characters of all levels
7 - you are assuming a good deal of time where there is no need for any kind of stealth or precautions (often in areas where such would probably be a good idea )

If you must, take the real world as an example of breaking points in such situations as you mention :
helicopters exist, they are fairly affordable (surprisingly so, I've found), there are daily traffic jams that cost over an hour a day to many, many, many people - I'm not seeing a whole lot of helicopter commuters...

I know it's not the best example - but I found it fun to write!

It's all about resource cost - helicopters have a big cost-benefit ratio. So for rituals with shorter durations, I think your point is valid. But for longer duration spells, the ratio of benefit is tremendous compared to cost. Perhaps limiting ritual spell durations to 10% normal durations would solve the problem.

 

[Uchawi]

The only thing I do not like about rituals is it makes casters even more flexible, and that is a thorn that digs into my side ,when they decided not to allow maneuvers for all martial characters. It is just a re-enforcement of magic can do anything, even when considering something basic like flexibility of choice for each class.

Otherwise, remove the spells you find offending, and do not allow the feat.

 

[Scorpio616]

Random encounters balance out rituals. Standing around chanting for 10 minutes is likely to get noticed.

There are reasons why packs of low level foes take up more table time than they are worth XP wise. Rituals are one of them.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Rituals are incredibly powerful. Too Powerful? Maybe. Don't know it all depends on the group and situation.

I do know that a necromancer I DM'd for trivialized a lot of overland travel and danger when he realized that he could ritual phantom steed every few hours and let the party essentially travel 3 times faster than would otherwise be possible, turning a week long excursion into a 2 day trip.

 

[smcmike]

I try not to engage in too much hyperbole, so let's just say I found this argument to be so ridiculous that I signed up to this forum to say so.

Ritual casting is overpowered because people will replace ships with water walking and tenser's disc? Seriously? Three questions for you:

Have you ever walked any significant distance?
Have you ever been on a boat ride?
Which one, would you say, was easier?

Throw in the fact that water walking over open water means walking over little hills that are constantly moving, and I do hope that you see my point. If every person who ever lived knew how to walk on water, we would have still invented boats.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

What I expect is for things to be balanced.

They are.

I expect that if a party of air-breathing humans want to venture underwater, they should have to expend SOME resources to do so.

Choosing to know water breathing instead of knowing another spell is expending some resources to do so. Time is also a resource.

I would like for traps to matter, and for rogues detecting traps to matter, and that it cant all be rendered irrelevant by unseen servants and unlimited scouting by animals.

Traps do matter. As for specifically rogues detecting traps, I'm going to disagree with you on that because I feel that making it so a rogue is necessary to make traps not a foregone conclusion one way or the other is bad for the game (i.e. I want my fighter to detect traps because he is perceptive, a good investigator, and so on). As for being rendered irrelevant by unseen servants and unlimited scouting by animals... again, time is a resource. Also, unseen servants and animals are not actually guaranteed to be setting off all the sorts of traps that exist, so there are plenty of traps that require some other method to deal with - your complaint sounds more like "I don't want to have to actually think about traps in order to make them interesting" than it does anything else to me.

I would like for ambush to be a serious concern.

If you think spending 2 hours setting up an elaborate method to prevent ambush isn't evidence for ambush being a serious concern, I'll have to disagree with you. Especially since there is nothing preventing ambush before or during that ritual-reliant process.

Now, if you want to amend your complaint to the Alert feat preventing surprise, it might actually make any sense at all.

In short, I expect the full assortment of ritual benefits to be on the same par with features of other classes.

They are. Your estimations of cost and benefit are what is off.

Water breathing alone is OP when it is such an unlimited ability, both in creatures affected and duration. I'm actually surprised they didn't throw in unlimited flying as well. Why not eliminate all natural obstacles?

Water breathing is not "avoiding a natural obstacle" so much as it is "enabling a type of adventure that is not possible without it." Sure, someone can use it to make it so they don't have to worry about how many times they will be in how deep of water today... but it's purpose in the game is to allow the DM to run an adventure fully beneath the water even without having all the players choose aquatic races which aren't at all standard to the game.

Flight is an entirely different category of thing.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Am I missing something or is ritual casting incredibly overpowered? It eliminates the aspect of limited resources that is so crucial to the game. A 10 minute cast time effectively precludes their use in combat, but out of combat, you gain virtually unlimited access to a plethora of abilities, some of which are obviously useful and others which are less obvious but also powerful. Many of the ritual spells have durations of 1 hour, 8 hrs, or even the whole day, allowing virtual continuous use.

Here are just a few of the uses we have found in our game:
1) water breathing/water walk - for the party w/a ritual caster, water=land, continiously, at will
2) rary's telepathic bond - permanent telepathy for whole party, continuously
3) beast sense - unlimited safe scouting
4) commune w/nature/speak w/animals - unlimited continuous knowledge of your area
5) detect magic/poison/plants animals - unlimited sense of these everywhere, any time
6) leomunds hut - never worry about shelter again
7) tenser's disc - carrying capacity limitations? nahhh
8) meld into stone - so many uses I cant even count
9) alarm - cast a dozen or so of these in a large radius around your camp, virtually eliminate surprise
10) animal messenger - virtually unlimited communication over vast distances at will
11) magic mouth - how about 1000 of these surrounding your lair? permanent until dispelled
12) unseen servant - forget about traps

Yes I have seen enough ritual spam and agree it is OP. I will be implementing a new houserule next in my primeval thule game (which is also coincidentally a "low magic" setting): rituals take d4 hours to cast.

If they need the spell quickly - they pay the slot price.

Otherwise they can wait, and potentially risk a random encounter.

No more ritual spam, yay!

 

[shoak1]

That's an interesting fix. i had thought about reducing their duration but I think I like your solution better.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Seriously? Did you even read my reply? Do the math re magic mouths, you will see how I arrived at 170' (60'width=75' on curve, 11 castings, 110 minutes=825' circumference=270' diameter=135' radius+30' extension beyond cast point=165'). And if you have already dealt with this problem by allowing creatures to auto-sneak past magic mouths, great job. And yes, I would easily trade screaming 7 times loud enough to hear 170' away at 6PM for the luxury of then being alerted when I sleep if there are intruders.

And speak to any military commander from any century and ask him about the value of even 8 men telepathically linked with their commander. It's such an absolutely decisive advantage that it would fundamentally change the way battles had been fought throughout history.

And while in your world there might be sharks attracted to metal objects just above the sea, in my world and ours they are drawn to prey primarily via smell. I brought up metal boots as a joke to respond to the ridiculous idea that roaming sharks would jump above the water line to eat things that couldn't even smell. And compared to the potential predators on land, I'll take even your specially designed above-the-surface-of-the-water sharks any day. So in 5e the rule of the day is walk over the lake, not around it.

Um, hey, not to be rude, but do you usually have trouble with math? Because that's not anywhere close to how circles work. You can't add the circumference of a bunch of smaller circles together to get a bigger circle. A quick check using area shows that 11 30' radius circles gave a combined area of roughly 31,086 square feet. A single circle of 170' radius has a area of 90, 746 sq ft. You're off by quite a bit and would need another 220 minutes and a bunch more jade dust to achieve your goal. If you'd like, you could maybe manage something like 100' diameter in slightly less than two hours. Also, if I were a smart enemy, I'd trip you furthest mouth off, retreat, circke, hut another perimeter mouth, retreat, and keep doing that all night. Enjoy your sleepytime!

As far as military commander, he's not in each group, he's in one group, so, um, what? A much better tactic would be to cast Rary's once, and only get your lieutenants in it. The common fighting man doesn't benefit from having a direct comm line to the CO, while a command tac net would be actually useful. (Rary's doesn't allow for a hive mind, it's allows for talking mentally to the group, so everyone would hear all the talking. That's a good recipe for confusion on the battlefield.)

And, while sharks do have a keen s sense of smell, they also are sight hunters. Or aren't you aware of kayakers being overturned by sharks hitting their kayak? Again, you don't really have much experience with going to sea, do you?

 

[shoak1]

Yes, ovinmancer, I am proficient in math. think perimeter not area andb you will figure it out. And of course you right, the baddies will only be unable to ambush the party; they will retain their ability to make noise and heckle lol

I think you are caught up w/me now re how easy telepathy makes battle:even giving it to commanders is immense advantage.

And you convinced me re water walk, much safer traveeling thru jungle bor forest, no predators there right.