Spirit Seeker - What is the point?

[Escribblings]

Spirit Seeker
Yours is a path that seeks attunement with the natural world, giving you a kinship with beasts. At 3rd level when you adopt this path, you gain the ability to cast the beast sense and speak with animals spells, but only as rituals, as described in chapter 10.

Firstly, I'm assuming there is no limit on the number of times these rituals can be undertaken between short and long rests (excepting, of course, the limit imposed by the time it takes to cast them).

However, as rituals, how can these be any use?


RITUALS
The ritual version of a spell takes 10 minutes longer to cast than normal. It also doesn't expend a spell slot, which means the ritual version of a spell can't be cast at a higher level.

So a ritual takes 10 minutes AND 6 seconds to cast (Action PLUS 10 minutes), or 101 rounds at 6 seconds a round/action.

Taking into account that Beast Sense is a concentration spell, and only lasts 1 hour and Speak With Animals only lasts 10 minutes - you would need to have prior warning that they would be needed AND the time to cast them.

Can this ever truly be implemented? Or are they simply fluff!?

[hymer]

Can this ever truly be implemented? Or are they simply fluff!?

If you can get the animals to stay near you long enough, they can be great. I had a druid who had a conversation with the horses in a pasture while waiting for the horse trader. I got the (correct) impression that he was a decent sort of person by the way he treated his animals.
A player of mine recently asked the birds in the area if there was anything peculiar about the kobolds using the ruins as an outpost, and was warned that they had a spellcaster among them.

If you have animals following the party, like a dog, these abilities can be extremely useful for scouting.

So I don't think this is purely ribbon stuff, though it isn't far off.

[Matticusrex]

realistically it's just fluff.

[Tanarii]

Depends on what kind of game your run/play. In a bog-standard Combat-as-sport game, it's probably not going to get a lot of use. For a more Combat-as-war game they're incredibly useful during scouting. Especially if you've a friendly animal at hand, like a trained Mastiff. As noted above, Speak with Animals is also useful for researching an area where domestic animals are around, or if you know there are wild animals about that you'll be able to talk to during the duration. And sometimes it's useful to be able to talk to the party horses and let them know the plan before assaulting the enemy (or whatever).

[Lombra]

Definately an out of combat ability, less useful in a dungeon crawl campaign, might be invalueable in a campaign that significantly roleplays downtime.

[Hrugner]

Spirit Seeker does seem a bit awkward. It's about the same as Ranger's primeval awareness ability, but broken up into spell casting rituals rather than a flexible at will ability. I don't think it would hurt to just replace Spirit Seeker with Primeval Awareness and treat the barbarian's chosen enemy as beast.

[Tanarii]

Or are they simply fluff!?
It's worth noting that they're definitely not 'fluff'. They're a mechanical ability. Did you mean a 'ribbon' ability?

[Escribblings]

It's worth noting that they're definitely not 'fluff'. They're a mechanical ability. Did you mean a 'ribbon' ability?
Probably.

and the comments above on heavily roleplaying downtime does make sense.

So not useless, but campaign specific.

[Ziegander]

I mean, it depends a little on the campaign, I guess, but it also depends a lot on the player and their willingness to think outside of the box and pay attention to their non-combat utility abilities.

I do think just changing the Speak with Animals thing to either casting the spell, as a spell, at-will, or just granting its benefits as a constant effect is cleaner and more useful. Spending 10 minutes to then spend another 10 minutes (probably actually 1 minute or less) talking to an animal is just awkward - though not useless by any stretch.

Beyond scouting, I'd argue the greatest use for Speak with Animals is gathering intel about a wild or dungeon area. What dungeon doesn't have at least rats or bugs?