Ritual Magic

[LibraryOgre]

Does anyone know why certain spells are rituals and others are not? Like, Commune is a ritual, and so is Speak with Animal, but Speak with Dead is not. Find Familiar is a ritual, and so is Phantom Steed, but neither Animal Friendship nor Find Steed are.

[BRC]

I think it mostly comes down to "Would there be a problem if this spell could be cast 100 times a day"

Find Familiar, familiars are mostly utility, with minimal combat potential. Yeah, you might be able to let your familiar tank a single hit somehow, but whatever.

Meanwhile, a Paladin Steed is a significant combat entity. If you could re-summon a steed freely between every encounter, at the very least that's a pile of free hit points to throw around.

Commune has a built-in chance to make no answer after your first casting.

[DivisibleByZero]

I think it mostly comes down to "Would there be a problem if this spell could be cast 100 times a day"

Precisely.
Rituals are spells that can be useful out of combat, but don't actually impact game play very much, even if you can cast them all day long.

[coolAlias]

Precisely.
Rituals are spells that can be useful out of combat, but don't actually impact game play very much, even if you can cast them all day long.

How is speak with dead useful during combat?

I feel like there are a lot of spells that should have been rituals, but they decided not to do so precisely because they are useful outside of combat and useful enough in the right contexts that they wanted the casting of those spells to be a meaningful use of resources.

So, game balance is the reason, even if it's not entirely clear how they decided which spells always needed a resource cost.

As far as the fiction is concerned, it seems like a case could be made for quite a few spells to have the ritual tag.

[DivisibleByZero]

How is speak with dead useful during combat?

It isn't. But it potentially has HUGE impact on game play, *especially* if you were able to spam it all day resource free.
{{scrubbed}}

[coolAlias]

It isn't. But it potentially has HUGE impact on game play, *especially* if you were able to spam it all day resource free.
{{scrubbed}}

No need to get snarky, though I did just epically fail in reading comprehension. Somehow I read "useful out of combat" as "useful in combat." No, I'm not proud of it, but there it is.