D&D 5E Expanding Ritual Spells?

[Mort]

Fundamentally, increasing the number of rituals increases the flexibility of casters (especially Wizards) as the spells that can be cast without using a spell slot increases. It also increases the capability of the caster in combat as the caster no longer has to hold back a spell slot for those utility spells that became rituals.

So the upshot is expect more magic cast in non-combat situations where newly ritualised spells provide value and expect more magic to be cast in combat.

Last I checked, 5e didn't suffer from granting casters too little flexibility.

This has been my concern with expanding rituals.

I've been toying with a house rule of expanding rituals (letting more spells be cast as rituals) BUT having rituals cost 1 or more points of exhaustion to the caster. Exhaustion is no joke in 5e!

 

[Laurefindel]

How would allowing many more spells to be cast as Rituals affect the game? In particular I'm looking at spells like Raise Dead, Reincarnate, and the like but really any spell that doesn't have to be hurried, like Scrying.

I'm thinking the Gray Mouser in the case of arcane magic, and paladins for divine magic.

Raise Dead is not so much an issue insofar as the 5th level spell slot is not what's preventing the spell from being spammed; it's the casting time of 1 hour and the 500gp components. Allowing raise dead to be cast as a ritual will probably save the adventurer a day or two (perhaps a bit more depending on the number of people they have to raise), but the players would have had retreated and taken a day off anyways. Same with spells with expensive material components like heroes feast.

I would have more issues with scrying, since unlike raise dead, this spell is often used on adventuring days. Ditto for spells like teleport circle, or sending.

I guess some players could abuse of the fabricate spell, or constantly have a faithful hound or mind blank spell active at no resource costs. Other spells like higher level illusions and greater invisibility also become cheap, even if they require concentration.

Restricting the expanded list of rituals to 5th level spells or lower already takes care of the worse shenanigans. Restricting to 3rd level or less would even be better, as the worse offenders seem to be 4th and 5th level.