How powerful would you rate ritual caster feat?

[CyberThread]

So am looking at it hard, if someone picks ritual caster, it really lightens the load for spell choices for other casters in the group, or gives half caster/noncaster something interesting to do as most of the spells are utility ones.


What do you folks think on how good or bad the feat is?

[mabriss lethe]

While I wouldn't call it "powerful" I would call it "darned useful". It's the sort of thing that someone in the party should probably have, but won't be missed if the party ignores it.

[Serafina]

It's definitely worth it if you don't already have a spellcaster covering it. You effectively get the ability to cast 11-16 out-of-combat spells, depending on the class you pick, for a single feat. You don't really need to worry about the spellcasting ability for almost all rituals since most of them don't require any saves anyway, nor do they have other variables that depend on it.



Alarm
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[MeeposFire]

At the start of 4e ritual caster was an interesting feat for any character that had the right skills (either from class, race, or multiclass feat) since it could give you some interesting stuff. As the game matured it quickly fell out of favor for general characters since by then there were more feats that you wanted than feat slots by far and the increased versatility was no longer as needed. Also when the game first came out people thought that rituals would be more necessary than it ended up in many games in the end.

[MinaBee]

Does every spellcasting class have ritual caster as a class feature?

[Yuki Akuma]

Nope. Eldritch Knights, Paladins, Rangers, Arcane Tricksters, Sorcerers and Warlocks (other than Pact of the Tome Warlocks) all lack Ritual Casting.

[Serafina]

No, only Bards, Clerics, Druids and Wizards get it by default - if they have access to a spell, they can also cast it as a ritual.
Warlocks can take the Pact of the Tome and corresponding Book of Ancient Secrets invocation to get access to ALL rituals in the game.
Everyone with Wisdom or Intelligence 13 can take the Ritual Caster feat to get access to the rituals of one class, using the casting stat of that class (but casting stats are almost completely irrelevant for rituals), being able to cast rituals with a spell level of 1/2 your character level.

[Serafina]

Nope. Eldritch Knights, Paladins, Rangers, Arcane Tricksters, Sorcerers and Warlocks all lack Ritual Casting.Warlocks really don't - if they take the Tome Pact and the Book of Ancient invocation, they actually get access to all rituals - since the invocation doesn't mention anything about being restricted to rituals from one class.

It also makes the other two pacts near-obsolete.
If you are willing to fight with a one-handed weapon, using Shillelagh (gained via Tome Pact) is better than the features of Blade Pact (using charisma for both hit and damage) - you don't get a second attack though.
You can easily take the Find Familiar ritual - you can't get the special features warlocks can get for familiars (making it attack, telepathy, special forms) but its still a familiar.

[Medival Wombat]

I was wondering... There is no prerequisite for the feat to be able to cast spells. It only needs a minimum intelligence/wisdom. It gives you the ability to know some spells as rituals.

In the description of rituals, the only rrerequisite for casting a ritual is that you "know" (as in prepared) the spell, and that you cant cat it at a higher spellslot, due to it not needing a spellslot to cast.

Does that mean, that a mundane character, like a fighter with intelligence or wisdom of 13or more could take the ritual caster feat and be able to cast ritual spells in out-of-combat situations?


because if that is the case, the feat would be awesome!

[Beelzebubba]

Does that mean, that a mundane character, like a fighter with intelligence or wisdom of 13or more could take the ritual caster feat and be able to cast ritual spells in out-of-combat situations?

because if that is the case, the feat would be awesome!

That's exactly what it means.

10 minute casting time, start with 2 spells, then have to find more spells during the game and scribe them.

[Deathtongue]

At the start of 4e ritual caster was an interesting feat for any character that had the right skills (either from class, race, or multiclass feat) since it could give you some interesting stuff. As the game matured it quickly fell out of favor for general characters since by then there were more feats that you wanted than feat slots by far and the increased versatility was no longer as needed. Also when the game first came out people thought that rituals would be more necessary than it ended up in many games in the end.

A big reason why 4E D&D rituals never amounted to much of anything was that each time you cast a ritual it cost a not-insignificant amount of money. Imagine if in 5E D&D each time you cast a ritual cost you [Spell Level / 3, round up]% of your experience. They would be used much more rarely.