Question: Why are "Hallow" & "Guards and Wards" not ritual spells?

[Crypkid]

I've been looking at the spells in the PHB and other sources, and I noticed for the third time that several spells that seem like they should be rituals aren't. How come spells like Hallow, Guards and Wards, Druid Grove, and others that have areas of effect that can become permanent not castable as rituals? Forbiddance is the only spell like this I could find that is castable as a ritual?

The same goes for spells that similar effects to Find Familiar. Why can't Find (Greater) Steed, Create Homunculus, and others be cast as rituals.

Please explain, I'm just confused. Is there a mechanical reason for this that I'm unaware of? Or is it just a fluke?

[suplee215]

I am unsure if it will be broken or not but at the very least on Druid Grove it is to avoid the party's druid or wizard (there's a wizard version) from getting such a huge benefit without having to devote a spell slot daily. Those are supposed to be hard to create and require a large amount of down time that implies a type of power or status that only the highest levels can get.

[OvisCaedo]

Well, Find Steed at the least is exclusive to a class that doesn't even get ritual casting. Bards can steal it, but I think it would be silly for it to have a ritual tag just so that it can be even better when bards steal it from the actual class it belongs to.

[PhantomSoul]

Hallow already has a casting time of 24 hours, so its spell slot usage probably already doesn't normally matter.

For Guards and Wards, well, that's already a pretty potent spell if you have the time for it...

[Chronos]

Find Familiar is designed such that you can pop in or pop out the familiar any time you like. The only times you need to recast it are when your familiar dies or you want to change its form. But on the other hand, recasting it costs you a bit of material components (10 GP worth, IIRC).

Find Steed, on the other hand, does not have free re-appearing of the steed. You can still dismiss it, but to get it back, you need to re-cast the spell. And it's designed with that as a balancing factor. So making it a ritual would make it significantly more powerful.

For the other spells you mention, making them rituals wouldn't just spare the spell slot usage. It'd also make them available to anyone with the Ritual Caster feat, which is apparently something they decided they didn't want.

[OverLordOcelot]

Why do you think they 'should be' rituals? Existing rituals are lower-level spells that have an out of combat effect and don't cause a problem if they're spammed. Spell slots of 6th level and higher are extremely valuable, you only get a limited number and effects that give back spell slots can't usually give them back. Making a 6th level spell like guards and wards ritual cast gives you unlimited castings per day, which is a huge difference. Guards and wards is not supposed to be a 'spend a few minutes and get it for free' effect, using it is supposed to drain resources. It's also a spell that gives combat advantage, and throwing it around in multiple places routinely causes problems.

[Man_Over_Game]

Why do you think they 'should be' rituals? Existing rituals are lower-level spells that have an out of combat effect and don't cause a problem if they're spammed. Spell slots of 6th level and higher are extremely valuable, you only get a limited number and effects that give back spell slots can't usually give them back. Making a 6th level spell like guards and wards ritual cast gives you unlimited castings per day, which is a huge difference. Guards and wards is not supposed to be a 'spend a few minutes and get it for free' effect, using it is supposed to drain resources. It's also a spell that gives combat advantage, and throwing it around in multiple places routinely causes problems.

Well said! Stole most of the things I was going to say.

Rituals are good for non-combat scenarios, but the majority of benefits that those spells provide are related to forcing a massive combat advantage in your favor, which is against how almost all other rituals behave.

The closest thing I can think of when someone wants a combat-related ritual is MAYBE something like Alarm or Find Familiar.

[Fable Wright]

It's so that one Ritual Caster: Wizard can't maintain twenty four Guards and Wards for an eight hour workday. As it is, a Guards and Wards is one Wizard's work, and he put a LOT into it. Essentially, it de-industrializes the spell and its impact on the world.

[SLOTHRPG95]

It's so that one Ritual Caster: Wizard can't maintain twenty four Guards and Wards for an eight hour workday. As it is, a Guards and Wards is one Wizard's work, and he put a LOT into it. Essentially, it de-industrializes the spell and its impact on the world.

Sure, the 11th-level character who took Ritual Caster: Wizard or has a Book of Ancient Secrets can do this, but making it a ritual wouldn't make them any better at this than an actual Wizard able to cast the spell. All three would be able to ritual cast it. With that said, even if you're not playing with feats, and access to a spell scroll for a given 6th level spell for the Tomelock is a shaky at best, you'd still have an impact on the world from all the regular-old Wizards able to spam it many times per day. But either you're playing in a campaign where spellcasters of that level are rather rare, in which case it's not really an issue, or you're playing in a campaign where they're common, in which case things will already get classically Ebberon-esque really fast. So actually, upon thinking while typing, I'm going to have to go with the world impact not being the big factor, and the expanded access being more the issue. Because as it stands, sure a Wizard or Bard can't spam the spell, but more importantly, nobody else can cast it.

[Capac Amaru]

If a player approached me, id allow it, but make tge cast times as rituals more difficult.

Sure, you can summon a steed, or create a grove, thst will take 24 hours.

Hope you arent needed anywhere soon.

[OverLordOcelot]

With that said, even if you're not playing with feats, and access to a spell scroll for a given 6th level spell for the Tomelock is a shaky at best, you'd still have an impact on the world from all the regular-old Wizards able to spam it many times per day.

Wizards can't spam 6th+ level spells all day if they want to act like high level wizards, they need their spell slots for something other than multiple guards and wards casts. With it taking a slot you get at most 5 casts of it per day, and that's if you give up big spells like wish, foresight, plane shift, and the like.

[Man_Over_Game]

It's important to note that there is a power separation from level 5 spells to level 6 spells. Warlocks cease to regenerate higher level spell slots at that point. 1/2 casters don't get 6th level slots. Many features don't interact with 6th level magic.

6th level magic indicates the "super-fantastical" levels of magic. The stuff that only legends speak of. Allowing level 6+ spells to be cast as rituals will cheapen them and make them more mundane than they should be.

[SLOTHRPG95]

Wizards can't spam 6th+ level spells all day if they want to act like high level wizards, they need their spell slots for something other than multiple guards and wards casts. With it taking a slot you get at most 5 casts of it per day, and that's if you give up big spells like wish, foresight, plane shift, and the like.

Pardon the previous sleep-deprived rambling. The point hidden in there about spamming Guards & Wards is that if it were a ritual, Wizards could spam it just as well as any other ritual caster with access to it. Someone else mentioned non-Wizards spamming it, and I merely wanted to point out that there was no need for the "non-Wizard" qualifier in this hypothetical. I didn't mean to suggest that as things currently stand, Wizards can spam it. After all, that's not particularly accurate, for the reasons you point out.


It's important to note that there is a power separation from level 5 spells to level 6 spells. Warlocks cease to regenerate higher level spell slots at that point. 1/2 casters don't get 6th level slots. Many features don't interact with 6th level magic.

6th level magic indicates the "super-fantastical" levels of magic. The stuff that only legends speak of. Allowing level 6+ spells to be cast as rituals will cheapen them and make them more mundane than they should be.

5e really, really wants there to be a big bump from 5th level spells to 6th level spells, but I'm not convinced that there actually is one, if one just considers the spells themselves and not the moving bits that interact with them. After all, the fact that fewer nice things interact with 6th-level spells makes them less powerful than they'd otherwise be. Sure, Heal is in-combat healing actually worth an Action, but it's not as novel as getting Raise Dead with your last level of spells. For blasting, Chain Lightning only deals 1d8 more than an upcast Cone of Cold, and the latter can hit more targets. In battlefield control, Wall of Ice and Wall of Thorns are both good, but not so much better than Wall of Force or an upcast Wall of Fire at dividing the battlefield that they'd deserve to be called a sea change. There are a few standout game-changers like True Seeing, but it's not enough for 6th level spells to deserve the hype that the mechanics imply they should have.