Rituals That Were Missed

[Sparky McDibben]

So question: What spells that do not currently have the ritual tag would you give the ritual tag if you had your druthers?

Please explain your reasoning, and any additional rules you would include in the spell if you did.

For example, here are my picks:
Aid - I would make this castable only at 1st level as a ritual.
Animal Friendship - If you can get a bear to sit still for 10 minutes while you do the spell, you deserve it.
Animate Dead - just because this seems thematic and already has controls in place to prevent you from animating infinite corpses.
Arcane Lock - I mean, c'mon, why not?
Clairvoyance - The casting time is already 10 minutes.
Clone - Like we're casting this out of combat anyway?
Continual Flame - This is a worldbuilding spell. Just treat it like one.
Create Food & Water - Again, non-combat and all it does is nerf starvation/dehydration
Create Undead - See animate dead, above.
Darkvision - This requiring a spell slot seems like those hotels that ask if you want your linens laundered. It just seems stingy.
Death Ward - I could see this being a ritual if you require certain things to be present, like only on hallowed ground.
Detect Evil and Good - Why is this not a ritual while detect magic and detect poison and disease are?
Dream - While this can potentially deal damage, it's very low damage and is really better for recon, diplomacy, etc. Don't see a reason for this not to be a ritual.
Fabricate - See clairvoyance
Find Traps - to make this a slightly less terrible spell
Glyph of Warding - If you have 10 minutes to fortify a temporary position, go ahead and drop a magical trap! If you're fortifying a base, you probably are casting this during downtime and it doesn't matter as much.
Guards and Wards - Casting time is already 10 minutes; to prevent the players cheesing this in a dungeon, just specify that in order to cast it as a ritual you need to drip the umber hulk blood along the warded area (and that this does not apply in three dimensions).
Hallow - It takes 24 hours to cast. How is this not a ritual?
Hallucinatory Terrain - Already takes 10 minutes to cast.
Legend Lore - See above
Mirage Arcana - See above (and you're probably casting this once every ten days, so the spell slot isn't that big of a deal)
Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum - "Stop people I don't like from spying on me" sounds like a great ritual! After all, just under half of the divination spells are rituals, so this somewhat evens the odds.
Nondetection - See above
Nystul's Magic Aura - See above
Planar Ally - The real cost here isn't in spell slots, but in gold and/or services. And the casting time is 10 minutes long.
Planar Binding - It takes an hour to cast, just make the damned thing a ritual and have done with it.
Plant Growth - the 8 hour casting time variant specifically ought to be a ritual.
Prayer of Healing - Just because I want to give you all an aneurysm after the healing spirit conversation. :)
Reincarnate - It takes an hour to cast. There's effectively zero cost to adding 10 minutes to that.
Resurrection - See reincarnate, above.
Scrying - It takes 10 minutes, it's a non-combat information-gathering spell, and it fits thematically.
Speak With Dead - See scrying, above.
Speak With Plants - This is essentially combining entangle and speak with animals. I feel like it would be fine as a ritual.
Stone Shape - This is a solid utility spell, but its limited by the 5' cube space requirement. I would probably add language saying that you cannot cast ritually and take a rest at the same time.
Symbol - This is an upcast glyph of warding. I included it for the same reasons as glyph of warding.
Teleportation Circle - This could be very useful for players that need to go a lot of places very quickly.
Tongues - why is this not a ritual when comprehend languages is?
True Resurrection - This is the only 9th-level spell on this list because I see the primary resource constraint is a matter of gold, not spell slots (because you're probably not casting anything else that day)
Wall of Stone - Give this to a player and an hour later boom! Instant castle. I kind of love it.
Warding Bond - I see this as an out-of-combat spell that gives benefits in combat, like darkvision. For the same reason, I added it here.
Zone of Truth - Again, I see no reason not to have it castable as a ritual.

With one exception (see prayer of healing) I'm not trying to troll you guys. I think ritual casting is a fun and underused mechanic, and I think it ought to be more widely applicable, if restricted to a small group of casters.

What are your thoughts?

[Garfunion]

I personally believe that ritual casting should of been a separate system, similar to 4th edition.
I also agree with you that more spells should be rituals.

[Contrast]

Without getting too deep into your list the premise appears to be 'if it takes a while to cast or doesn't have an immediate effect/have a longer term ongoing effect it should be a ritual'.

While I don't disagree with some of them, I guess my question is why should combat be the only pillar of gameplay which consumes resources?

There are also potential setting implications from making many spells rituals - Create Food and Water substantially increases the carrying capacity of a single cleric for example.

Edit - Just to expand on that slightly. They were clearly cautious of rituals ability to let casters have more powerful abilities with no resource expenditure (note particularly the lack of higher level rituals). Nothing to stop a DM filling that gap in a bit though because they'll be there at the table to address things if they go awry.

[LordEntrails]

Rituals don't use resources. So expanding what you can do with them is dangerous. Put a real cost to them so they do not become unlimited and you are good.

[Trustypeaches]

I think many of these spells are too powerful to forgo the spell slot cost.

Even something like Stone Shape can become very disruptive if you remove the spell slot limitation.

[47Ace]

What controls are in place to stop animating infinite undead?

[Wildarm]

What controls are in place to stop animating infinite undead?

Those goody two-shoes adventurers. Always showing up just when you're in the middle of starting the undead apocalypse!

[Chronos]

There's a limit to how many undead you can control with Animate Dead. But there's no limit to the number you can create. So if all you want them for is to fill up a dungeon or a cave you never go to, or to ravage the countryside, you can make all you want and just leave them uncontrolled.

[Vogie]

I think many of these spells are too powerful to forgo the spell slot cost.

Even something like Stone Shape can become very disruptive if you remove the spell slot limitation.

Yeah, just because something has a long cast time doesn't mean it should automatically be a ritual. Sure, someone could make the point that if you cast Awaken three times, they're going to need a Long rest... because it's been 24 hours. But being able to do that twice, then cast 3 other 5th level spells is absurdly powerful.

[Talionis]

Clone is a perfect example. What difference is it if it’s free or not. It’s a spell only cast during down time or off Wish. It takes an hour to cast. If it’s ritual time was 8 hours, people would cast it if it ate all their spell slots.

One balancing issue is this would give Tome Warlocks and ritual Feat Casters access to even more utility. But I would argue Clone should’ve been on the Warlock spell list.

[Sigreid]

I'm sure part of it is to keep you from picking up access to those spells for the low, low price of a ritual caster feat.

[strangebloke]

Uh, arcane lock, I guess?

Out of combat challenges should still require the casters to expend resources to trivialize them.

[Coffee_Dragon]

What are your thoughts?

Wizards don't need more power relative to sorcerers (or pretty much anyone else).

[DrKerosene]

I feel that being able to ritual cast healing spells seems like it would be better handled by a short rest healing you to full without expending Hit Dice, or some other variant healing system that’s the opposite of Gritty Realism. Instead of rolling a bunch of dice and marking off 10 minute chunks of time. Though I would he willing to be a Player with such a house-rule, so it’s not like I think it’s bad.

I do think Exploration and such should be using up some spell slots, like Scrying, so I figure I would have a shorter list than you, if I was going to implement additional Ritual tags at my table. I agree the Ritual Caster feat probably doesn’t need to be any stronger (for Wizard, Cleric, or Druid spells at least).

[Bjarkmundur]

Your mentality of "why shouldn't it be a ritual" really needs someone to come and say, "why SHOULD it be a ritual".

I know a few players who would right away look at a ritual that they can spend six days doing continously to achieve a broken effect. I don't want those Shenanigans to even be an option.

I also like effects where "only one can be active at a time".

Aid
Animal Friendship
Animate Dead
Arcane Lock
Clairvoyance (only because it uses concentration)
Clone - Level 6+ spells are in a league of their own. Don't make them less special.
Continual Flame - You can have unlimited number of these active at a time. I'm okay with it if a material cost were added.
Create Food & Water - It's too impactful for certain survival genres.
Create Undead
Darkvision - Also too impactful for certain genres.
Death Ward - You can have multiple active, hence, not a good ritual.
Detect Evil and Good
Dream
Fabricate - This is veeeery setting dependant, and would create a horrible tippy verse. Am I wrong? Maybe in wrong.
Find Traps
Glyph of Warding - You're right about the downtime part.
Guards and Wards
Hallow

.... My ADHD got the better of me at this point. An interesting discussion, to say the least.

[Bjarkmundur]

But yeah if one of my players asked if he could cast one of these as a ritual, I'd say yes in most cases

[Sparky McDibben]

What controls are in place to stop animating infinite undead?

I actually thought they had a Hit Dice control like in 3rd edition, but it turns out that actually refers to the Wand of Orcus. Never post when you're away from your books, kids. Good catch, 47Ace - thanks!

I would argue that if you were to make this a ritual you would want to impose a restriction like you could not issue commands to more than [4 + your HD] undead in a 24-hour period period using this spell.

[Sparky McDibben]

I'm sure part of it is to keep you from picking up access to those spells for the low, low price of a ritual caster feat.

Yep, but I'd still argue they were too restrictive. And since Ritual Caster requires you to pick a spell list, there's some restriction already built in. Besides, how much fun would it be to get your big stupid fighter access to clone?

[Sparky McDibben]

Uh, arcane lock, I guess?

Out of combat challenges should still require the casters to expend resources to trivialize them.

Sure! But if you're casting them out of combat, I would argue it's trivially easy to recover those resources. There's no difference between casting Nystul's magic aura and recovering the slot on a short rest with Arcane Recovery and just casting it as a ritual. You have the exact same number of spell slots you did at the start as you do at the end.

[Sigreid]

To me this seems mostly a way to try to remove barriers between classes and limits on resources, which I dont see as necessary or good.

If your a DM and this speaks to you though, go for it. No harm in seeing how it works.

[Sparky McDibben]

Your mentality of "why shouldn't it be a ritual" really needs someone to come and say, "why SHOULD it be a ritual".

I know a few players who would right away look at a ritual that they can spend six days doing continously to achieve a broken effect. I don't want those Shenanigans to even be an option.

I also like effects where "only one can be active at a time".

Aid
Animal Friendship
Animate Dead
Arcane Lock
Clairvoyance (only because it uses concentration)
Clone - Level 6+ spells are in a league of their own. Don't make them less special.
Continual Flame - You can have unlimited number of these active at a time. I'm okay with it if a material cost were added.
Create Food & Water - It's too impactful for certain survival genres.
Create Undead
Darkvision - Also too impactful for certain genres.
Death Ward - You can have multiple active, hence, not a good ritual.
Detect Evil and Good
Dream
Fabricate - This is veeeery setting dependant, and would create a horrible tippy verse. Am I wrong? Maybe in wrong.
Find Traps
Glyph of Warding - You're right about the downtime part.
Guards and Wards
Hallow

.... My ADHD got the better of me at this point. An interesting discussion, to say the least.

:) I'm kind of amazed someone actually went down part of the list.

I think you could add expanded ritual casting as an option in campaigns with broad magic, like Eberron. You cannot cast the same ritual more than once per day, unless the ritual targets an object (like identify), cannot have the same effect active at any given time, and cannot upcast a ritual using a higher-level spell slot. And no spell over 6th level can be cast as a ritual.

Thoughts?

[Sigreid]

I have actually been considering creating rituals for big magic. These rituals wouldn't duplicate spells but take extensive preparation, resources and possibly sacrafice and produce effects that could last for millennia.

[solidork]

Unlimited Scrying is absolutely bananas. In our current high level game, giving us downtime in which to scry 3-4 times per day already makes things hellishly complicated.

[Bjarkmundur]

You cannot cast the same ritual more than once per day.
You cannot have the two instances of the same effect active at any given time.
You cannot upcast a ritual using a higher-level spell slot.
Spells over 6th level can be cast as a ritual.


By these rules, I'd pretty much allow anything to be a ritual.

"Ritual Caster: You can choose two spells from your spell list at a level which you can cast, with a duration of 1 minute or more, to be cast as rituals. When casting a spell as a ritual...."

Meaning you Add the ritual tag to spells, and spells with the ritual tag are always in your ritual book, even if it's not on your list of known or Prepared spells.

I'd have the number of rituals known is equal to half your proficiency bonus, rounded up, just for some scaling.

Edit: as attempt to prevent contempt by not being adept at the ritual caster rules, I decided to look them up (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?471722-Know-Your-Rites-A-Guide-to-Ritual-Casting-(Oraibi)). I quickly realised that I honestly have no idea how rituals work....

Wait, some classes can just cast any ritual from their spell list at any time, while others have to specifically have the spell known/prepared?

[Trustypeaches]

So
For example, here are my picks:
Aid - I would make this castable only at 1st level as a ritual.
Animal Friendship - If you can get a bear to sit still for 10 minutes while you do the spell, you deserve it.
Continual Flame - This is a worldbuilding spell. Just treat it like one.
Darkvision - This requiring a spell slot seems like those hotels that ask if you want your linens laundered. It just seems stingy.
Find Traps - to make this a slightly less terrible spell
Nondetection - See above
Nystul's Magic Aura - See
above
Speak With Plants - This is essentially combining entangle and speak with animals. I feel like it would be fine as a ritual.
Tongues - why is this not a ritual when comprehend languages is?These ones I think are mostly fine due to their negligible effects and the fact that, for most of these, they still require using a spell choice for so there is opportunity cost. Nondetection and Continual Flame also require mildly expensive material components.


Animate Dead - just because this seems thematic and already has controls in place to prevent you from animating infinite corpses.
Arcane Lock - I mean, c'mon, why not?
Clairvoyance - The casting time is already 10 minutes.
Clone - Like we're casting this out of combat anyway?
Create Food & Water - Again, non-combat and all it does is nerf starvation/dehydration
Create Undead - See animate dead, above.
Death Ward - I could see this being a ritual if you require certain things to be present, like only on hallowed ground.
Detect Evil and Good - Why is this not a ritual while detect magic and detect poison and disease are?
Dream - While this can potentially deal damage, it's very low damage and is really better for recon, diplomacy, etc. Don't see a reason for this not to be a ritual.
Fabricate - See clairvoyance
Glyph of Warding - If you have 10 minutes to fortify a temporary position, go ahead and drop a magical trap! If you're fortifying a base, you probably are casting this during downtime and it doesn't matter as much.
Guards and Wards - Casting time is already 10 minutes; to prevent the players cheesing this in a dungeon, just specify that in order to cast it as a ritual you need to drip the umber hulk blood along the warded area (and that this does not apply in three dimensions).
Hallow - It takes 24 hours to cast. How is this not a ritual?
Hallucinatory Terrain - Already takes 10 minutes to cast.
Legend Lore - See above
Mirage Arcana - See above (and you're probably casting this once every ten days, so the spell slot isn't that big of a deal)
Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum - "Stop people I don't like from spying on me" sounds like a great ritual! After all, just under half of the divination spells are rituals, so this somewhat evens the odds.
Planar Ally - The real cost here isn't in spell slots, but in gold and/or services. And the casting time is 10 minutes long.
Planar Binding - It takes an hour to cast, just make the damned thing a ritual and have done with it.
Plant Growth - the 8 hour casting time variant specifically ought to be a ritual.
Reincarnate - It takes an hour to cast. There's effectively zero cost to adding 10 minutes to that.
Resurrection - See reincarnate, above.
Scrying - It takes 10 minutes, it's a non-combat information-gathering spell, and it fits thematically.
Speak With Dead - See scrying, above.
Stone Shape - This is a solid utility spell, but its limited by the 5' cube space requirement. I would probably add language saying that you cannot cast ritually and take a rest at the same time.
Symbol - This is an upcast glyph of warding. I included it for the same reasons as glyph of warding.
Teleportation Circle - This could be very useful for players that need to go a lot of places very quickly.
True Resurrection - This is the only 9th-level spell on this list because I see the primary resource constraint is a matter of gold, not spell slots (because you're probably not casting anything else that day)
Wall of Stone - Give this to a player and an hour later boom! Instant castle. I kind of love it.
Warding Bond - I see this as an out-of-combat spell that gives benefits in combat, like darkvision. For the same reason, I added it here.
Zone of Truth - Again, I see no reason not to have it castable as a ritual.
None of these should be rituals, mechanically.

Just because a spell has a long cast time or isn’t intended for use during combat does not mean that they shouldn’t cost a spell slot. You seem to regard recovering spell slots as trivial, but that simply isn’t true of many, many DMs games, including mine. Spell slots are another resource that players need to carefully manage.

Many of the spells you suggest are really really useful and deserve a cost-benefit analysis.

Speak with Dead, Zone of Truth, Clairvoyance and Scrying are both incredible information-gathering tools.
Hallucinatory Terrain and (especially) Mirage Arcana are some of the most potent illusions in the game. Mirage Arcana creates real, tactile terrain.
Wall of Stone and Stone Shape are both excellent tools, and removing the cost leads to some silly shenanigans that should not be possible at level 9.
Create Undead and Animate Dead become silly with no limitation, as you mentioned.
Create Food and Water would destroy all survival as a ritual while also having a crazy effect on worldbuilding
Arcane Lock is a lot stronger than you give it credit for

Now I sympathize with the intent behind this: rituals are really cool in flavor and narrative. But a spell doesn’t need the ritual tag to be a “ritual”, narratively speaking.

5e’s ritual casting isn’t really appropriate for powerful and world-changing magical effects, IMO.

[Bjarkmundur]

I wonder what the original design goal and philosophy was used for selecting which spells got the ritual tag and which didn't.

[Renvir]

The cost for many ritual spells is just time. In some campaigns/adventures time is plentiful but in others it is not. If I were to expand the list of ritual spells I would add a monetary cost to every ritual spell except those that already have them. What those costs would need to be I don't know but it would put a soft cap on how often you can cast rituals.

[Sigreid]

I wonder what the original design goal and philosophy was used for selecting which spells got the ritual tag and which didn't.

I would guess they're mostly spells that can be useful to the party but situational and dont affect combat stats unless shinnanigans.