Five Must-Have Ritual Spells in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

magic works in subtle and mysterious ways and although not all spells can be as flashy as a fireball sometimes the magic that takes a little bit more thought preparation and time can really change the game ritual spell casting is one of the most versatile and strategic assets at the disposal of an adventuring party but often times there's a very valuable resource goes unused by many groups because they can't use these spells in combat effectively many easily underestimate just how much of an impact ritual spells can have on your adventures even influencing your battles and explorations and today we're gonna look at five ritual spells that you definitely should not ignore my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything Dungeons & Dragons including advice for Dungeon Master's and guides for players we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe so that you never miss an episode today we're gonna take an in-depth look at five key ritual spells that are sure to have a huge impact in your next adventure out of hundreds of spells there's only 37 ritual spells and each class might only get access to some of them so we're going to talk about the best ones so let's get casting before we get into the list let's do a quick recap of how ritual spells work in D&D Fivey it's pretty straightforward many spells have the ritual tag applied to them as kelly said earlier there's about 37 of them in the players handbook these spells can be cast as normal using a spell slot however if you have a class feature that allows you to cast spells as a ritual you can cast these spells without using a spell slot by spending 10 extra minutes on top of the regular casting time to create the spell effect bards druids clerics and wizards all have the ability to cast ritual spells right out the gate but some of the other classes can pick up abilities or subclasses that allow them to have access to ritual casting and anybody can take the ritual caster feet which will allow you to cast ritual spells as well the most prominent of this is the pact the tome warlock who takes the book of ancient secrets invocation which allows them to learn any ritual in the game whereas every other class is limited to the spells on their class spell list and when you choose the ritual caster feat you have to choose a class spell list that you want to be associated with the other spell casting classes like rangers paladins sorcerers may have ritual spells on their class spell list but they can't pass these spells as rituals because they don't gain the ability to do so from their class they have to have something else that gains them that ability first incidentally it turns out that all ritual spells are six level or lower so you will have access to them pretty early on in the game and for the most part you do either need to choose one of the ritual spells as your spell known or have it prepared in order to cast it as a ritual unless you're a wizard warlock with the book of ancient secrets or you take the ritual castra fee in which case you just need to have that ritual in your book in order to cast it before we jump into our list of top five ritual spells in Dungeons & Dragons there is one spell that we have decided to omit on purpose and that is the fine familiar spell when we originally started this list we had fine familiar as our top must-have ritual and we ended up talking so much about fine familiar because it's such a complex and detailed spell that we decided to spin that out into its own dedicated video you can find the links for that right in the description below to check out all the details for how that spell works it basically goes without saying from here on out that it is an absolute must-have but just with how much detail there is behind the spell we've decided to take it out for this video so we can focus on the other awesome rituals today detect magic is the first ritual we're looking at today and it is a first level divination spell detect magic is available to a huge range of classes all of the ritual casters can access it including bards clerics druids and wizards and the fact the spell is found on the class lists for paladins rangers and warlocks can access it through eldritch sight so it's pretty easy spell to end up in your party it's very likely you're gonna have access to it and you're gonna want it because Dungeons & Dragons is a world filled with magic and it's useful to be able to determine whether or not the hallway you're walking down is filled with abjuration spells or that sword that you just found has a magical aura to it or whether or not you should drink that strange glowing red liquid the amount of times that this has come up in play where we have come across something magical and somebody asks hey do we know what kind of magic this is and unless you have to tech magic it's really hard to determine that sort of things some DMS might allow an Arkana check to see if it's something that you personally know about but a lot of times spell casters are still gonna be dealing and finding magic that it's outside of their realm of knowledge and using the spell to try to figure out what that is can be very helpful when you cast a tech magic you can then continue to concentrate on it for up to 10 minutes for the duration you can sense the presence of magic within 30 feet of you and then while the spell is in effect you can focus your special sense to see the magical auras illuminating around any object or creature that you can see you can then continue to focus this effect to determine which school of magic if any it is associated with and just being able to know whether or not magical auras are there whether they're close and then get that information about what school of magic the effect is associated with can give you a lot of really reliable information on what kind of effect you're dealing with it's actually surprising how much info you can get out of the one-word description of the school of magic if you're looking at a door and you detect illusion magic you have something very different that you're dealing with than if you detect either keishon magic indeed now one important caveat with the Technic is that it only registers auras around things that you can already see so in fact the tech magic cannot be used to detect invisible creatures and objects because the aura only surrounds a visible creature or object you might be able to detect the presence of illusion magic in the area but the ability to pinpoint an invisible creature or object is something that you'll need a different spell like see invisibility for the tech magic won't quite get you that far it is important to note that when you're using detect magic if something is blocked by one foot of stone one inch of steel or a piece of lead you won't be able to detect the magic beyond that so you cannot detect through most walls and as well there is a very sneaky spell called miss tools magic aura which can alter hide or change magical auras that are picked up by the spell so if you are detecting magic around a very dangerous dungeon and come up with nothing and then all of a sudden a fireball goes off in the room your dungeon master might have been being very very tricky with you so it is possible for magic to be concealed from the tech magic so while it is a very important tool in your arsenal a particularly crafty villain will find ways around it unseen servant is our next ritual it is a first level conjuration spell available to bards warlocks and wizards unseen servant conjures up an invisible shapeless force that perform services for you for one hour until the spell ends the unseen servant occupies a space has an AC of ten feeble strength of two and only one hit point and it can't attack but while it's under your services you can command it as a bonus action to move 15 feet and interact with an object just like any other human servant might be able to do essentially it's your super weak Butler it can't move more than 60 feet during its duration but it could do a lot of really cool things the unseen servant doesn't actually fly it does walk around on the ground but you can command it to do all sorts of amazing things even in the midst of combat an unseen servant could take an object that is in the room like a potion or a weapon that the fighter is knocked out of someone's hands and simply pull it away the unseen servant could flip switches levers and basically act like a second mage hand in the midst of a combatant our the spell doesn't require concentration meaning that you can have it and mage Han going at the same time as well as a concentration spell yeah which is a lot of things happening and that's a lot of extra hands to be tactical in combat if there are doors that are open or closed with levers you can actually change the battlefield with your unseen servant walking around flipping switches there's a lot of times that maybe your unseen servant is exactly who you want to send into a dangerous situation to try interacting with an object that might be trapped yeah if you've got a button 60 feet away from you setting that unseen servant forward to flip that switch press that button or interact with that scary-looking object unseen servant is a better trap finding spell than find traps now of course the unseen servant is weightless and formless so there might be many types of traps that it won't be able to trigger for example there might be a pressure plate that requires a hundred pounds to walk across it in order for it to go off or the sensor might be able to have to see something in order for it to be triggered but of course there's just so many awful dangerous things in dungeons that can hurt people and having your unseen servant get Iced or damaged instead of you is just so much more valuable and easier than that and of course it only lasts for one hour but it costs nothing so a lot of the things that unseen servant is really good for are a lot of those downsides that people talk about you know you don't want to spend the gold cost of re summoning a familiar so those particularly stupid and suicidal things that you'd send your familiar to go do just have your unseen servant go do that not to know what you in depth find familiar but part of what makes unseen servant cool is that you can combine mage Han unseen servant and the familiar and you get this whole like posse of helpers that you have to manipulate objects all over the place in a dungeon and in fact you can command all of those things in the midst of a combat encounter to really move things around so if I find familiar an unseen servant I can conjure up my familiar and get my unseen servant to care for it and take care of it and give it pets yes with your mage hand as well with my mage hand gets to be extra petting yeah so you can have your familiar cat and have your unseen servant hold it while your mage hand gives it scratches but then I don't get to scratch the cat and then I feel like I'm missing it back pad is gonna be a spoiled cat mage hand unseen servant and me all giving it scratch scratches Lehman's tiny Hut is a third level Eve ocation spell available to bards and wizards when you cast lemons tiny Hut a 10-foot radius don't a force springs into existence and lasts for eight hours when you cast this spell you can nominate up to nine other creatures including yourself that can pass through this dome of force freely all other creatures are barred from passing through the barriers and spells and other effects cannot go through it either it's almost as strong as a wall of force although it's completely opaque and the inside of the dome is comfortable and dry because this lasts for eight hours Leland's tiny Hut is the perfect way to spend your long rest this fella effectively lets you take a long rest in the middle of possible dangerous territories if you're out in the wild or in the middle of a dungeon and you think you're cleared to have a rest but you don't want to risk running into any unknown problems this spell will save the day now Lehman's tiny Hut does provide a very secure shelter and protective area that really unless your foe has some way of dispelling it they're not gonna be able to get inside there to attack you so you've got a safe haven wherever you happen to be resting do you think lumens tiny Hut could have any tactical use for combat if you can prepare the battlefield because the interesting thing about lumens tiny Hut is that it's opaque from the outside but it's transparent from the inside and while it does block spells and other magical effects from passing through it the creatures that you nominate can still move into and out of the hut at will so if you are in a location where you have to defend an area you could set up your limits honey Hut and because you can see out of it but enemies can't see into it during a battle you can stand in the hut walk out of it on your turn cast spells shoot make of attacks and other effects and then walk back into the hut because you can break up your movement on your turn so when you had the opportunity to prepare the battlefield in advance Lehman's Hut is kind of a nice impenetrable fortress again an enemy could come along and dispel it and that would suck but unless they have that tool in their arsenal there's really not much your foes can do the next ritual we're going to talk about is actually a tie between three different spells Commun contact other plane and divination these spells are the classical information-gathering divination spells all of these spells work on a very similar premise you contact some sort of entity whether that's your deity or a divine agent a long-dead sage or other magical entity and you get to ask it some questions in the case of divination you can actually ask it about future events but in the case of contact other plane and commune you're talking to your deity or a sage and you might be able to ask them questions about the current state of events each of these spells has some restrictions on the types of answers that the dungeon master can give you and if you cast them multiple times in the same day you might not get a reliable answer after that but beyond that the scope is really quite large for what you can do with these divination spells and with such a vast scope really it's up to your imagination to make the best use of this spell there's a lot of cool things that you can gather intel on just by asking the right question it also takes a pretty crafty DM and I do recommend that as a DM if you have people taking the spell at your table come up with some interesting ways to answer questions that might be asked through these spells these spells divination commune and contact other plane have one really big problem with them and that's the DM because they do ask your dungeon master to be prepared to think about how these entities might answer the questions that you ask of them and the biggest thing that I like to remind myself as both a player and a dungeon master is that in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons these entities that you contact may not be a mission tour omnipotent so they might not know the full scope and truth of the events and they might not be able to always provide you with all the answers that you're looking for but you could still get a lot of them especially if you're casting these spells every day which once you have access to them why would you do that you get tons of valuable information going forward and who knows what the scope of it is I also think that as a DM it is important to keep in mind ways to answer the question that maybe don't give up all of your secrets mm-hmm so if a question is asked like who's my main enemy or something like that I like to kind of have a list of potential clue like answers or riddle like answers that could lead to some truths but maybe not the whole truth yeah and the thing you remember with all these spells is that the default answer for these spells is always kind of like a magic 8-ball sort of answer so often they're one-word or short sentences or cryptic messages so you as a dungeon master have a lot of control over the answers that you give and you can always reply to the question with it is uncertain or it is unknown or unknowable if it truly is one of the really creative things with these spells that you can do as a dungeon master and as a player is to recognize the ways that these spells can actually create more adventure hooks and even side quests because as a player one of my favorite questions to ask a dungeon master when I get this is where can I find a robe of the Archmage where is the staff of power where are the certain magic items or artifacts where can I find allies to help me on my quest these are all really great questions to ask that will open up new adventure opportunities that don't necessarily solve the campaign like what is the answer to the great riddle that is at the heart of the campaign you're probably not going to get that answer but using these spells to find allies to find magic items to find resources I think is a particularly strong way to use them that creates adventures rather than shut them down that way you're not d railing the campaign you're using this as a way to actually amplify and push it forward the last ritual that we're taking a look at today is rare E's telepathic bond which is a fifth level divination spell rare is telepathic bond creates a telepathic line of communication between up to eight willing creatures who are able to now communicate at the speed of thought regardless of distance as long as they are all on the same plane of existence the spell only lasts for one hour but one hour can be a lot of communication between people who are nowhere close to each other and can have a huge impact the first thing that I love about rare is telepathic bond is you just cast it amongst your party and now all your party members have a complete in universe justification for all that out of character chatter that happens when they're trying to negotiate with a key NPC how many times have you had that role-playing scene where the players are just trying to decide the course of action they're having a debate in front of each other but they're literally standing in front of the king or in front of the NPC that they're trying to negotiate with in Drakon ahem I always say can we have a moment and then we do a team huddle which I always picture is hilarious well the enemy or whatever is standing there tapping their foot and we're just like okay guys what are we doing but it does make way more sense to be able to do a telepathic bond so that you're all communicating with each other telepathically more like the scene in Lord of the Rings with Galadriel telepathically communicating with each one of them well having a different conversation mm-hmm overtop I think that that's a really cool visual of this you're saying one thing but you're telepathically communicating with the other people around you about what you're actually thinking if you need another justification for why this spell is useful thinking how useful it is during a heist or any of those movies that feature like a SWAT team using radio communication to coordinate with each other as they invade a specific environment and so well splitting the party isn't always a good idea if you have to do it Ares telepathic bond is gonna mean that you could also communicate with each other and I find that it's really useful for those heist type scenarios where you actually gain a lot by splitting the party into smaller groups because you're all approaching the attack from a different direction and ultimately you're all working together for the same goal even though you're all in different positions and you can't talk to each other in the midst of whatever that heist is or encounter is that you're doing I also feel that rare is telepathic bond is endlessly useful for strategy and in large-scale combat absolutely if all of the leaders in generals and the party members even if it's up to eight people right so even if you have a lot of commanders in generals if one person in the party who's going to be with the rest of the party casts it and also hits the key commanders now you can all telepathically plan attacks and strategies it's amazing like sending messages to each other in large-scale battles was a huge problem in ancient classical and medieval warfare really up until the advent of personal radios communicating with each other on the battlefield especially in a large-scale engagement was such a massive problem for human beings because you never knew when that line of communication was going to get cut when the messenger was going to get killed halfway across the battle and rare ease telepathic bond just gives you the strategic advantage and really like doesn't every campaign at some point have a massive epic battle that involves allies in some way yeah everyone that I've played on yeah and having rare ease telepathic bond lets those allies be an interesting part of it I think of all those instances in classic dogfighting movies or Star Wars movies where all the pilots are going into each other and they're all doing their own objectives but they're all having that awesome banter with each other they all have like missions and they're going back and forth like we've got more enemies over here I'm right on your tail I'll be there in a second or like yeah but like that's that's just with rares telepathic bond you actually can open up this whole playground during an epic battle of a commander who's on the other side of the battlefield just being like we're being flanked we need help over here and suddenly the party gets to bounce around to all of these cool places so it actually not only is a really really useful and helpful spell but I actually see it as a tool that the DM can use yeah now implement the NPC's to add context to those large-scale battles yeah and it might be even more useful in a situation where you and your allies need to teleport somewhere but you still need to communicate with somebody from where your teleporting from so if you're gonna go into a teleportation circle or a portal but you still need to talk to the king back at the castle while you're executing the mission you only have an hour worth of that communication but sometimes that is what you need to get the message out what other important thing to mention with with ritual spells is that these are spells that are rituals but there's a lot of spells in D&D fiv that have casting times of one hour or 10 minutes but there's still not rituals so this includes spells like teleportation circle and raise dead which you might think on paper that they're a ritual and they don't cost a spell slot but in fact they actually do it has to have the ritual tag associated with it in order to be a ritual spell otherwise you do have to use a spouse yeah I think there's so many other fantastic rituals that are out there that have amazing strategic impacts two of the ones that we didn't really go into detail here were silence and water breathing I always talk about how water breathing is such a useful spell but the thing that made it not make our top 5 was that it depends on the campaign yes I was thinking about it in Drakon hime and there's been no instance where water's been an issue for us it might come up but if it does come up it's gonna come up once mm-hmm but if you're if you just grabbed ghosts of saltmarsh and you're planning on running a seafaring campaign taking water breathing and being able to cast that as a ritual and it lasts 24 hours you've negated all drowning potential yeah yeah so there's I think it's really important that spell casters pay close attention to not just the rituals that we talked about today but all the other 37 ritual spells it's a really good activity to go up on D&D beyond or another filter and just look at what the ritual spells available to your class are because their spells that you could always leverage they don't count against your spells per day they don't cost you a spell slot you still might have to prepare them or learn them if you're a barter cleric or druid but they really should be spells that are in your arsenal that you're always thinking about an opportunity to bring them into the game so this has been a look at five must-have ritual spells in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition if we miss some of your favorites make sure to tell us which ones they are in the comments below and of course if you're enjoying the show please consider supporting us on patreon follow the links in the description below to find out how you can contribute to the channel and don't forget to check out our live play dungeons of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got many more top 5 lists on spell's and dungeons the dragon's 5th edition rate up over kit please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 424,127

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book, rituals, spells, detect magic, tiny hut, wizard, cleric, bard, ritual caster, druid, warlock

Id: iYFoafHKGPc

Length: 25min 23sec (1523 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 04 2019