Ritual Casting 5e
Ritual Casting in Dungeons and Dragons is a powerful tool to save resources and spell slots. Casting spells as a ritual allows spellcasters to take some extra time while casting their spell. This way no resources and no spell slot are used. However, time is a valuable source in D&D. Maybe someone prepares an ambush at the adventuring party. Maybe enemies use the extra time to escape from the group. Also, story paths can become unavailable when the group takes too much time.
In this guide by dungeon-heaven.com we tell you everything you need to know about “Ritual Casting 5e”.
Definition: Ritual Casting 5e
Ritual Casting allows a character to cast a spell without expending a spell slot at the cost of spending additional ten minutes to cast that spell.
This means that the old spellcasting time remains and an extra ten minutes must be added. If for example, your spell takes one hour to cast, casting it as a ritual takes one hour and ten minutes. This makes casting a spell as a ritual perfect for divination magic or spells that must be prepared preemptively for a given task. Let’s say you know that you are going to dive into the water. You can cast Water Breathing beforehand and keep your resources and the spell slot.
How does ritual casting work in 5e?
Like the definition says, ritual casting takes an extra 10 minutes to cast but doesn’t use a spell slot or resources. The spell you want to cast must have a ritual-casting tag. This is a small “R” or the word ritual in brackets.
As you can see only Find Familiar has a ritual tag. So only this spell can be cast as a ritual.
You also need the ritual casting feature. These two conditions allow you to take an extra ten minutes to cast your spell. You find various spells in books like the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and the Monster Manual.
Who can cast a spell as a ritual?
Wizards
Wizards are a bit of a rulebreaker when it comes to ritual casting in Dungeons and Dragons 5e. They can always cast a spell as a ritual without having the spell prepared. This allows them to effectively expand their prepared spell list if they are resourceful enough. Imagine the party learns about a hidden treasure deep in the sea. The party wants to get this treasure the next morning. Their wizard can now prepare their spells. They don’t need to prepare Breathe Water as they can cast this spell as a ritual. The spell slot can be used otherwise.
This is a powerful tool for wizards. If you are playing a wizard you should always keep an eye out for spells that can be cast as a ritual.
Clerics and Druids
With Clerics and Druids, it is a bit more complicated. They need to have the spell prepared. So take the example from above. Although the cleric or the druid knows they will need to cast Breathe Water they still need to prepare it. This slot is taken and no other spell can be prepared otherwise.
Artificers
This class comes from Eberron: Rising from the Last War. They can use spells as a ritual just like Clerics and Druids. Artificers need to have the spell prepared. If the spell is prepared and can be cast as a ritual, artificers can cast them as a ritual.
Bards
Bards also need to prepare the spell they want to cast. This allows more flexibility for your Bard. You can either cast a spell like Mass Healing Word in ten minutes as a ritual or in one action. This is depending the circumstances.
Some Warlocks
Warlocks don’t have ritual casting as a class feature. However, they can pick up ritual casting as a feature. This allows them to cast spells as a ritual. Not all Warlocks are able to pick up this feature.
Pack of the Chain Warlocks can cast Find Familiar as a ritual. This way they can save one of their few spell slots. The spell doesn’t count against the limited number of spells known. Although Find Familiar isn’t the best spell of all Dungeons and Dragons it is still very helpful given the right circumstances.
Pact of the Tome Warlocks also get a more robust version of ritual casting. They need to pick up the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation. With this book, Warlocks learn two new 1st-level spells with the ritual tag from any class’s spell list. They also gain a book with spells and they can add new spells to the book. From now on any spell with the ritual tag can now be cast as a ritual by warlocks if they have them in their book. This is a real caster warlocks.
Anyone with Ritual Caster
If a player character is able to take the Ritual Caster feat they can cast spells as rituals. Therefore they need at least 13 Wisdom.
Players will need to expend an Ability Score Improvement to obtain the Ritual Caster feat. This works similarly to the Pact of Tome Warlock’s Book of Ancient Secrets. Taking this feat you obtain a book that contains two 1st-level spells with ritual tags. From now on the player character can cast two spells as a ritual.
The spell needs to come from the same class list and you must use the spellcasting ability when casting the spells. So for example the player must use Charisma if the player chooses the bard’s list. The player can also pick up new spells if they find scrolls or spell books that contain spells for the class they chose. Bard, Sorcerer, and Warlock are three of the spell list options for the feat. This is like a mini version of Multiclassing. Let’s say you are playing a wizard and want to cast Bardic Inspiration. With this feat, this would be possible. There is no need to multiclass with a Bard if you only want this feat.
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