D&D 5E ritual casting overpowered?

[Ovinomancer]

Let's put this another way - go look at a dozen or so published (web or official) outdoor/underdark adventures (I did btw) and see how many have major obstacles neutralized just by the exploits I pointed out above.

No, you don't assign me homework. if you have an example set of obstacles you feel are germane, you list them. I'm not going to go find them for you.

 

[Mistwell]

You seem to not be fully thinking this thru. I'll give a few more details, but the point is that it is the unlimited resource aspect that is the issue. These are just a few of the exploits - a min-maxer spending a few hours thinking about it is going to come up w/a much greater number of exploits from something like this.

ambush - we set up camp, ritual guy spends 2 hours ritual casting magic mouth 7 times and leomunds hut once (while another guy cooks food, another sets up tents, etc), anyone steps within 170' and mouth screams.

You spend 2 hours screaming and attracting the attention of everything around, and you also spend 70gp in jade dust, all so that you can prevent a single possible surprise round in the middle of the night, and this is something you think is overpowered?

The games been out about a year and a half now, and literally you're the first person to think rituals are overpowered. I suspect this is a sign you might be overreacting.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I don't get it. How is getting past the obstacles in front of you by using what your character can do not the intended result?

Are you saying that you are expecting that the characters should fail to overcome these obstacles (read: not have a chance to fail assuming a bad choice or a bad roll, but absolutely fail because they have no options to overcome the obstacle)? If yes, I say that is missing the point and letting the adventure come to a halt.

Are you saying that you don't like their being the possibility that by making the right choice for a situation the players can extremely reduce their chance of a particular unwanted circumstance? If that's the case, all I can say is that if players are going through these processes to limit things from happening it is either because they enjoy coming up with "fool proof" solutions, or because they do not enjoy the thing they are avoiding - which means that it is a win-win to let the players get away with, or not need to do, these processes, but it is a lose for the players if they aren't allowed their "fool proof" plans no matter whether it is a win for you or not.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You spend 2 hours screaming and attracting the attention of everything around, and you also spend 70gp in jade dust, all so that you can prevent a single possible surprise round in the middle of the night, and this is something you think is overpowered?

Not to mention the druid you pissed off by leaving essentially permanent screaming mouths all over their forest.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

I think it is working as intended. But it may be a campaign level power jump for certain campaign styles. If you are in that boat and the ritual system doesn't work for you, I would just get rid of rituals in full or only allow it on a limited case by case basis.

 

[shoak1]

Magic mouths don't have a 170' detection range, it's 30 ft. Secondly, if you want them to scream, you have to scream bloody murder when you set the message. That surely won't attract attention. Thirdly, magic mouths have no special detection methods, nor even perception scores. They can only see things clearly seeable, so you can easily sneak by them (like an ambusher might).

Leomund's problem isn't that it's a ritual, it's that Leomund's Hut is one of the more powerful spells in the game. Just straight out casting it is a good use of resources.


Heh, good luck, they eat anything. A metal boot's not even a speedbump to a shark.



How do you know it's coming? Leomund's Secret Weather Satellite(tm)? Heavy seas from storms can often precede storms by days for really powerful storms. I'm guessing you haven't spent much time at sea. 10' swells would wreak havoc on any attempt to walk across a sea, are not uncommon near storms (not even powerful ones, hurricanes can generate sustained swells of 50+' quite far from the storm), and can last for days depending on weather.

Good luck getting your cargo to the bottom. Boxes that are watertight tend to float.

Also, good luck avoiding sharks now that your clever metal boots are underwater.


Firstly, you have a 9th level caster around, and that's how you utlize his time. Okay. But what you have there is that caster spending 10 mins for each group of 8 soldiers. That's an hour for 48 guys, which can then only telepathically speak to each other within their 8 man groups -- not across all the others. Each casting is a separate group. And then you have to start all over again to get keep those same 48 guys in their telepathic 8 man groups. Oh, and they all have to be present for the entire casting, so they can stand guard for like 30-40 minutes in their cool telepathic state before it's time to rotate back to the ritual spot.

Surely the enemy is aware of this, and just hangs out a few days, wasting your 9th level casters time and having a good laugh.

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.

 

[shoak1]

I don't get it. How is getting past the obstacles in front of you by using what your character can do not the intended result?

Are you saying that you are expecting that the characters should fail to overcome these obstacles (read: not have a chance to fail assuming a bad choice or a bad roll, but absolutely fail because they have no options to overcome the obstacle)? If yes, I say that is missing the point and letting the adventure come to a halt.

Are you saying that you don't like their being the possibility that by making the right choice for a situation the players can extremely reduce their chance of a particular unwanted circumstance? If that's the case, all I can say is that if players are going through these processes to limit things from happening it is either because they enjoy coming up with "fool proof" solutions, or because they do not enjoy the thing they are avoiding - which means that it is a win-win to let the players get away with, or not need to do, these processes, but it is a lose for the players if they aren't allowed their "fool proof" plans no matter whether it is a win for you or not.

What I expect is for things to be balanced. I expect that if a party of air-breathing humans want to venture underwater, they should have to expend SOME resources to do so. 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. I would like for ambush to be a serious concern. In short, I expect the full assortment of ritual benefits to be on the same par with features of other classes.

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?

 

[MoutonRustique]

No one can EVER try and justify the "world of D&D" with any sort of logic when you take 9th level magic into account. It's ridiculous to even try. 10 minute rituals are but the tip of the iceberg to the kind of magitechical revolution EVERY D&D world would really have had with the power of magic and peoples and monsters who could live for thousands of years.

You have to handwave it and accept the illogic. Because that's the ONLY way you'd have magic at the power of 9th level spells coupled with "fantasy" societies who are still stuck in the Middle Ages.

Or play in Ebberon

 

[MoutonRustique]

What I expect is for things to be balanced. I expect that if a party of air-breathing humans want to venture underwater, they should have to expend SOME resources to do so. 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. I would like for ambush to be a serious concern. In short, I expect the full assortment of ritual benefits to be on the same par with features of other classes.

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?

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!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What I expect is for things to be balanced. I expect that if a party of air-breathing humans want to venture underwater, they should have to expend SOME resources to do so. 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. I would like for ambush to be a serious concern. In short, I expect the full assortment of ritual benefits to be on the same par with features of other classes.

You are making a lot of assumptions in order to set up your trivialized world. Being able to breathe underwater doesn't have any mundane benefit, because even past the issue of breathing, movement underwater is severely restricted compared to above water; if it's dangerous at all to travel through the wilderness, then it is ten times moreso underwater where everything else has a swim speed and your paladin can't even swing a mace. In the rare situation where the party does have reason to go underwater - to investigate a sunken temple, for example - it benefits the game to not make that too boring or tedious; it's a standard genre trope, and it should be enabled where appropriate. Beyond that one, Detect Magic is only useful for making a second pass through the dungeon after everything else has been cleared; between the Concentration requirement and the 10 minute maximum duration, it's not something that you can just stop and put up whenever you feel like it. I'm not certain that Unseen Servant can even possibly clear traps for you, since that spell isn't available in the basic game, but I'm inclined to believe that it does not work how you think it would work; it probably depends on the nature of the trap.

Your big problem is that you are thinking of these as class features, which they are not. A spell has a ritual tag when it isn't supposed to be a class feature. Rather, it's a party feature that is restricted by level, and it happens to be linked to a class (or feat) because that makes for more consistency within the narrative. Rituals don't expend spell slots because they don't want one character to have to sacrifice personal agency for something that the whole party needs. When you do need to explore that sunken temple, it would be super lame if the wizard couldn't cast any spells that day because all of her spell slots were required in order to let people breathe.