Rituals were introduced in 4e D&D as a way of expanding the out-of-combat uses for magic while not requiring the use of in-combat resources.
5th edition expands this by marking certain spells with the ritual tag. If you can cast that spell as a ritual, you can do it without expending spell slots by taking an extra 10 minutes to cast it.
The rules of ritual casting are explained on pages 201-202 of the Player's Handbook, or pages 78-79 of the Player's Basic Rules PDF (page numbers correct as of v 0.2).
Here's what the colors mean.
Terrible choice, probably a trap. Don't pick this.
Purple: Conditional, but usually a bad idea. You'll have to work hard to figure out how to make it useful.
Black: So-so. Not bad, not great.
Blue: A good solid choice.
Sky Blue: A really good choice.
Orange: You'd have to be kind of silly to not take this obvious choice.
Note that all of these ratings are only in the context of being a ritual caster, and not about optimizing your character in general.
There are three different types of ritual casting available, with slightly different rules for how you accomplish casting a ritual.
Ritual Book Casting. You have a book (either a ritual book or a spellbook) which contains spells you can cast as rituals. As long as you have that book available, you can cast those ritual spells. They do not cost you any spell slots.
Prepared Rituals. Your spell list contains spells which can be cast as a ritual. If you have one of those spells prepared, you can cast it as a ritual. It does not cost you any spell slots. Note that you can still use these spells as non-ritual spells with their normal casting time, and spend a spell slot on them.
Rote Rituals. These are rituals based on spells you can cast but you don't have to prepare them ahead of time. The two examples are the barbarian's rituals and the Pact of the Tome warlock's Book of Ancient Secrets feaure as applied to warlock spells already known by the warlock that have the ritual tag. This is the rarest type of ritual casting.
Of the two, ritual book casting is generally superior since it doesn't require spell preparation. Technically the rules don't require that you have your spellbook physically present, but it's probably a safe assumption that is what was intended.
First and foremost, just because you have a spell on your spell list with the ritual tag, that doesn't mean you can cast it as a ritual. You must have ritual casting ability to cast a spell as a ritual. There are a number of classes with ritual spells on their spell lists without ritual casting ability, such as rangers, warlocks, sorcerers, arcane tricksters, and eldritch knights.
Since you don't use a spell slot of any kind, you can't cast a spell using a higher level slot. However, there aren't currently any ritual spells which can be cast at a higher level with the exception of animal messenger, so this won't affect anything -- for now.
You have to maintain concentration while casting the ritual. If you lose concentration, you just have to start the ritual over again. However, this means that you can't cast a ritual spell while maintaining concentration on another spell, ritual or otherwise.
You still have to provide the necessary components. Which includes verbal, somatic, and material, although remember that only a few spells in 5th edition require that the material components are consumed by the casting. You probably will want an arcane focus if you can use one; the Ritual Caster feat doesn't give you the ability to use arcane focuses, so you may need to get a component belt.
Casting a ritual requires your action during any round in which you're casting it (for the 10+ minutes it takes to cast) -- note that it doesn't require you to stay in one place, so you can move while casting your spell. Your whole party doesn't have to stop for a break while you cast a ritual -- you can keep walking.
There are three ways to get the ability to cast spells as rituals.
As a general class feature. Bards, clerics, druids, and wizards get ritual casting as part of their spellcasting class feature, and they can use it with any prepared spells (for prepared rituals) or from their spellbook (for ritual book casting). Wizards get the superior ritual book casting, while everyone else has prepared rituals.
From the Ritual Caster feat. This gives you the superior ritual book version of ritual casting, and requires you to choose a spellcasting class. See the later feat section for more.
As a specific class feature. For example, at level 3, a barbarian who has chosen the path of the totem warrior can cast beast sense and speak with animals as rituals, starting at 3rd level. Tome warlocks can take the Book of Ancient Secrets[/orange] feature which is the best ritual casting in the game.
Here's a list that was provided by Leugren.
This will be expanded upon in the rest of this guide.
These are the clases that can cast spells as rituals.
Barbarian. Only Path of the Totem Warrior, and only beast sense (at 3rd level), speak with animals (at 3rd level), and communie with nature (at 10th level).
Bard. A decent number of rituals to choose from, but prepared rituals only. Bards from the College of Lore can use their Additional Magic Secrets feature to get rituals from other classes, pushing them higher in the rankings than their spell list normally would allow.
Cleric. Respectable number of ritual spells. Knowledge domain lets you always have identify and augury prepared, both of which can be cast as rituals. Nature domain gives you speak with animals always prepared. The other domains don't affect your ritual casting ability.
Druid. About as many spells as the cleric. Circle of the Land gives you a few spells that are always prepared which can be useful -- Arctic gives commune with nature; Coast gives water breathing and water walk; Forest gives both divination and commune with nature; Grassland gives divination; Mountain gives meld into stone; Swamp gives water walk. Desert and Underdark don't help your ritual casting at all. Circle of the Moon druids might not find rituals as useful as they can't cast them in wild shape form until level 18.
Fighter. Fighters aren't ritual casters, not even Eldritch Knights who can cast spells with the ritual tag.
. Monks aren't ritual casters, even if they have ki powers that let them cast spells with the ritual tag.
Paladin. Paladins aren't ritual casters, even though they have spells on their spell list with the ritual tag.
Ranger. Rangers aren't ritual casters, even though they have spells on their spell list with the ritual tag.
Rogue. Rogues aren't ritual casters, not even Arcane Tricksters who can cast spells with the ritual tag.
Sorcerer. Sorcerers aren't ritual casters. However, the Ritual Caster feat allows for sorcerer as one of the class options. Unfortunately, there are only four ritual spells on the sorcerer spell list (comprehend languages, detect magic, water breathing, and water walk) so this is a poor choice for Ritual Caster.
ck. Warlocks aren't naturally ritual casters, with two exceptions: Pact of the Chain warlocks who can cast find familiar as a ritual, and the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation, available only to Pact of the Tome warlocks, allows them to use ritual book casting and poach ritual spells from any spellcasting class. Warlock is also an option for the Ritual Caster feat, but they have only four native ritual spells (comprehend languages, illusory script, unseen servant, and contact other plane) making this not a great choice.
Wizard. Wizards have a broad list of spells they can choose from and have the generally superior ritual book casting (versus prepared casting).
It's important to note that for every class with ritual casting as part of the spellcasting feature, the wording specifically limits that feature to spells from that class.
This means that your eldritch knight can't just pick up a level of cleric in order to the gain ritual caster feature on all your spells -- it will only work for the cleric spells, not the eldritch knight (wizard) spells you can cast.
Likewise, if you are a wizard and multiclass into ranger, you can't cast your ranger spells as rituals, even if they have the ritual tag.
When you take the ritual caster feat, you gain ritual book casting -- meaning that you don't have to prepare any spells beforehand, but can instead cast them directly from your spellbook as rituals. You can only do this with the spells that are in your ritual book, even if you can cast them in some other way.
To take the feat, you must have at least a 13 in Intelligence or Wisdom. If both of those are your dump stat, then don't bother. Consider instead multiclassing into warlock or bard, if your Charisma is high enough.
You have to pick a class and choose your spells from that class's spell list; you also use that class's spellcasting ability when you cast the spell. This should be a secondary consideration, though, as most rituals never use your spellcasting ability because nobody is making a saving throw against your ritual, nor are you making a spellcasting attack roll with your ritual.
Instead, the choice of class should be based on the spell list available to you, regardless of the spellcasting ability.
Bard. A decent set of rituals, capping off at 3rd level spells.
Cleric. A few less rituals than the bard, but one every level up to 6th. Especially notable for precognition spells.
Druid. A solid choice of naturey rituals.
Sorcerer. It's a trap! Don't choose this.
Warlock. It's also a trap! Don't choose this either.
Wizard. The biggest spell list with some of the best rituals.
There are two ways to add ritual spells to your ritual book.
Copy off a scroll. At this point in time (October 2014), prior to the release of the Dungeon Master's Guide, we don't know how easy it is to create scrolls. If it's not too hard, this could turn out to be a good way to get spells from other PCs or NPCs, or even to add your own spells to your ritual book if there's overlap between your spell list and your chosen class for Ritual Caster. For example, if you're a ranger, you might be able to scribe a scroll of detect poison and disease and then add that to your druid-based ritual book.
Copy off a wizard's spellbook. You can also copy of someone else's ritual book, although the rules don't actually state this outright, just imply it.
In either case the cost is going to be the same -- 2 hours per spell level, and 50 gp per spell level.
The Book of Ancient Secrets invocation is similar to the Ritual Caster feat -- it costs the same amount of time and money to transcribe a spell, for example -- but it has the advantage that you aren't restricted to any specific spell list. This means a Pact of the Tome warlock can poach any ritual she gets her hands on, which is pretty awesome.
Nothing in the rules says that you can cast your normal spells as rituals, even if they have the ritual tag, after you take this feat. Just the spells in your ritual book.
You may be able to convince your DM to houserule this in your favor if you're nice, but I wouldn't rely on that.
Barbarian. Probably not, since you almost certainly won't have the Wisdom or Intelligence requirement to qualify. If you do somehow have a high Wisdom or whatever, the druid list is probably thematically appropriate.
Bard. It's not worth it. You already get ritual casting, and this would slightly expand your ritual spell list if you have high enough Intelligence and choose wizard, but nah. Take Magic Initiate if you want to cast find familiar.
Cleric. It's not worth it. You could choose the druid spell list with your high Wisdom, but why?
Druid. It's not worth it. You could choose the cleric spell list with your high Wisdom, but why? Woah, deja vu.
. If you're an Eldritch Knight, you should have enough Intelligence to qualify, so it's not a bad choice and probably thematic. You probably want the wizard spell list. Otherwise, it's not for fighters.
Monk. This is an interesting one -- you may have the Wisdom to qualify for the feat. The wizard spell list is probably your best choice here.
[b]/b]Paladin. With the MAD you've got going, you probably won't qualify based on your Wisdom or Intelligence.
Ranger. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability, so you should be able to qualify. If you just want to be thematic, choose the druid list, but the wizard list is also worth a look just for find familiar so you have an extra pet.
ue. Arcane Tricksters will qualify based on Intelligence, and other rogues may qualify with high enough Intelligence or Wisdom. You likely want the bard or cleric list for sile​nce.
Sorcerer. Neither Intelligence nor Wisdom are likely to be high ability scores for you. The only thing even remotely interesting is that your Metamagic feature isn't limited to just your sorcerer spells, so you could use Extended Spell, Subtle Spell, or Twinned Spell with your rituals. Enh.
Warlock. Why would you take this feat, when you can take Book of Ancient Secrets which is better? Also you probably don't even qualify for this feat.
Wizard. You've got everything this feat offers already; the only possible benefit you'd get is a slightly broader list of rituals (I would take druid or cleric spell list over bard), but is that is worth a feat? I don't think so.
If you're a bard, you can only cast prepared rituals. That means that you are going to have to weigh the value of each of these spells against other non-ritual spells that you might want to prepare for a given day. Also keep in mind that if you are a College of Lore bard, you might want to use your Additional Magical Secrets feature at level 6 to learn rituals from other classes.
If you're using this spell list thanks to the Ritual Caster feat, you don't have to worry about that.
Comprehend languages. Less useful if your party knows a lot of languages or your DM just doesn't throw in a lot of things to read or people to listen to. More useful for ritual book casters.
Detect magic. Useful, but might not be worth the spell slot. Definitely more useful for ritual book casters.
Identify. Someone needs to identify those magic items you found, and if you don't have a wizard, it's gotta be you. Takes 11 minutes to cast, and if you really are curious you can identify the spells affecting a creature instead of identifying an object. More useful for ritual book casters.
Illusory script. This seems more like a plot device for the DM than something you'll get much use out of. If you're some kind of spy, it could possibly be useful. Lasts ten days.
Speak with animals. Potentially useful, depending how smart your DM thinks animals are and if she's willing to let them give you useful information. More useful for ritual book casters.
Unseen servant. If you're really lazy, this is the ritual for you. The only somewhat interesting thing is if "interact with an object" includes things like using a healer's kit to stabilize the fighter, as a minor action.
Locate animals or plants. Could be more useful if you're trying to locate animals to use with the animal messenger spell.
Silence. This is nice if you can figure out the right place to cast it. Unfortunately, you might not have the time to prepare with a ten minute ritual, and also it's a concentration spell.
Feign death. It's hard to come up with a situation in which you'd need to use this spell, ever.
Leomund's tiny hut. Not so great as a spell choice in general, but great for ritual book casters.
If you're a cleric, you can only cast prepared rituals. That means that you are going to have to weigh the value of each of these spells against other non-ritual spells that you might want to prepare for a given day.
Detect poison and disease. Very situational. You're only likely to be casting the ritual if you already suspect there's poison or disease anyway, right?
Identify. (Knowledge domain only.) Someone needs to identify those magic items you found, and if you don't have a wizard, it's gotta be you. Takes 11 minutes to cast, and if you really are curious you can identify the spells affecting a creature instead of identifying an object. Since it's a domain spell, you automatically prepare it, so it's not competing with your other spells.
Purify food and drink. Again, super situational. How often are D&D games about spoiled food? Better choice for a ritual book caster.
Speak with animals. Since it's a domain spell, you automatically prepare it, so it's not competing with your other spells. Only problem is, a lot of animals are really poor conversationalists.
Augury. The first of the cleric's precognitive spells -- a divination spell that forces the DM to tell you what's coming up. You'll need to buy some divination tokens for 25 gp. Note that like all the precognition spells, if you cast this more than once before taking a long rest, you've got an increasing chance of a bad result. So you probably don't want to spam it. This makes it about as useful for both a cleric and a ritual book caster alike, but if you're Knowledge domain you get this anyway without competing with your other spells.
Gentle repose. Kinda useful I guess, but at low levels it doesn't play well with your 3rd level revivify due to the extra casting time for a ritual, so you'd end up blowing a spell slot anyway.
Meld into stone. It lasts for eight hours, so his is how you can get out of taking a watch at night. Just duck into the nearest rock wall and take a nap.
Water walk. Lasts for an hour and affects your whole party with a 10 minute casting; pretty good, when you need it. But you may not need it that often, so better for ritual book casters.
Divination. Your second precognitive ritual. You'll need to have 25 gp in components to cast it. Like augury, it's got diminishing returns, so you can't spam it. It works up to 7 days in advance though, so each morning you can wake up and plan out your week.
Commune. And your third precognitive spell, where you call up your deity and ask three questions. If you're clever you could also use the questions to pass along a message of some kind to your god, if you've got that kind of working relationship. As with divination and augury, diminishing returns. But asking three questions of a deity every day can't help but be useful.
Forbiddance. It's got a high cost material component, but fortunately the 1,000 gp in ruby dust isn't consumed each time you cast it. With a 20 minute casting, you ward a fairly large location for a day -- use it when holding off demonic invaders or to protect your command base. Spam the spell a couple times to protect a larger area; a couple hours and you can cover most of a castle. If you cast it 30 times in a row, you'll lose that ruby dust but make it a permanent effect -- not too shabby.
If you're a druid, you can only cast prepared rituals. That means that you are going to have to weigh the value of each of these spells against other non-ritual spells that you might want to prepare for a given day.
Speak with animals. Potentially useful, depending how smart your DM thinks animals are and if she's willing to let them give you useful information. At least it's thematically appropriate for druids. More useful for ritual book casters.
Beast sense. Might be useful if the party has a ranger with an animal companion, or if you have some other way to get the "willing animal" to behave. Note that it's a concentration spell.
Meld into stone. It lasts for eight hours, so his is how you can get out of taking a watch at night. Just duck into the nearest rock wall and take a nap. Since Mountain land druids get it for free, they can just sleep in walls all the time.
Water breathing. Lasts 24 hours and affects your whole group with one casting, or a small army if you spend a few hours getting ready. Very conditional, as you probably won't be breathing water all that often, but [color=skyblue]great[/skyblue] when you need it. A better choice for ritual book users and Coast land druids who always have it prepared.
Water walk. Lasts for an hour and affects your whole party with a 10 minute casting; pretty good, when you need it. But you may not need it that often, so better for ritual book casters and Coast or Swamp land druids who always have it prepared.
Divination. (Forest and Grassland circle of the land only.) You'll need to have 25 gp in components to cast it, and it's got diminishing returns, so you can't spam it. It works up to 7 days in advance though, so each morning you can wake up and plan out your week.
Commune with nature. Great for exploration-based games as long as you're in the wilderness -- it explicitly doesn't work in dungeons, which makes it less useful in some campaigns. Better for ritual book users or Arctic and Forest druids who always have the spell prepared.
About the only way that this spell list ever matters is if you choose it for the Ritual Caster feat, and then it's a trap. Don't do that!
The warlock's ritual spell list is a trap for the Ritual Casting feat.
However, if you take the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation as a Pact of the Tome warlock, you can cast these spells as rituals if you know them (but why would you ever?), and you can go and steal all the best rituals from any other class. So go looking at those classes for rituals that look good! Stop looking here!
languages. If you know this spell and you have BoAS, you can cast it a bunch of times as a ritual. I guess that's something. You probably have better choices for your spells.
Contact other plane. See comprehend languages; also, casting this a bunch of times can make you take damage and go insane. Why would you want to cast this a bunch of times?
If you're a wizard or if you're using this spell list thanks to the Ritual Caster feat, you don't have to worry about preparing these spells -- just having them in your spellbook. That means that you don't have to weigh these spells against any others that you might be able to prepare.
Alarm. If you have this, you'll cast it every night before going to bed -- probably multiple times, one per entrance to wherever you're camping. It'll take 11 minutes to cast, so that's about an hour to do five castings. Then you can go to sleep and tell the party not to wake you up for watch. This spell is a [color=orange]must-have[/spell] for Abjuration wizards, since you can use it to continually replenish your arcane ward between encounters without spending a spell slot.
Comprehend languages. Less useful if your party knows a lot of languages or your DM just doesn't throw in a lot of things to read or people to listen to.
Detect magic. You don't feel like a wizard if you can't cast this. Note that it's a Concentration spell with a duration of 10 minutes maximum.
Find familiar. Someone else described find familiar as a class feature disguised as a spell. Familiars are cool and do cool things, so you probably want this. It might be the only reason you took the Ritual Casting feat (but if it is, consider Magic Initiate instead). You're going to need to spend 10 gp worth of components each time you cast this -- which you'll do after your familiar gets killed -- and it's unclear if you need to get a brass brazier from somewhere. The casting time is normally an hour, so as a ritual it takes you an hour and ten minutes.
Identify. Someone needs to identify those magic items you found. Takes 11 minutes to cast, and if you really are curious you can identify the spells affecting a creature instead of identifying an object.
Tenser's floating disk. It only has a duration of an hour, but I suppose you could keep re-casting it. You can't ride it, but someone else could.
Gentle repose. Enh. Make the cleric worry about this. By the way, technically you probably have to have 2 cp to cast this ritual.
Leomund's tiny hut. Great for making camp; you'll use this every night.
Phantom steed. This is best if you're alone -- if you're trying to cast this for a whole party, the 1 hour duration on the first casting may have run out by the time you get to the last casting. By yourself, it lets you move 13 miles every 70 minutes with recastings, which is cool, but watch out for damage to your mount.
Water breathing. Lasts 24 hours and affects your whole group with one casting, or a small army if you spend a few hours getting ready. Very conditional, as you probably won't be breathing water all that often, but great when you need it.
Contact other plane. This is one to be careful with. You can easily damage yourself or go insane. Fortunately, your Intelligence save is your best one, and so a 15 DC isn't that hard to hit. You'll probably only use this as a last resort if you can't find the knowledge out any other way, though -- even with a +8 save (18 Int, +4 proficiency), that's still a 30% chance to take yourself out for the rest of the day.
Rary's telepathic bond. Really useful for inter-party communication; note that it's got no range once cast. Lasts an hour, takes just one casting to affect 8 people. Probably worth keeping this up all the time when you've got it.
Drawmij's instant summons. Ouch, this one's pricey at 1,000 gp per casting -- and it's a single use too. Doesn't seem worth it in most situations, unless you have something you know you've got to get back, like your spellbook. Assuming the thieves don't also steal that 1,000 gp sapphire you've got, too!
Woops, time flies when you're having fun. I have to catch a few hours of sleep before D&D today, so I will have to finish this later.
I'm going to be writing up summaries of the various rituals available to each class. Feel free to chime on which ones you think are the most useful.
All bards, not just lore bards, can pick up rituals.
The Warlock's pact specifically states that you can only cast the cantrips and rituals within it while the book is in your hand.
ASilva91084 wrote:The Warlock's pact specifically states that you can only cast the cantrips and rituals within it while the book is in your hand.
Actually it's when the book is on your person (it can be in your pack). Not only that but why wouldn't it be? Even if you lose it, you can get another for no cost after an hour ritual.
It's not a meaningful limitation.
Plus, if you lose it, you can just resummon it!
It would be pretty pointless if it was resummoned blank, and the book is clearly supernatural (disintegrates into ash on warlock's death) so I'd say you get it back as-is.
Warlock with Book of Ancient Secrets, is really Sky Blue. It is better than Wizards Ritual Casting, because they can potentially inscribe every ritual. Now Wizards will most probably technically find it easier to get rituals than Warlocks, yet the Warlock will probably be more persuasive, intimidating or deceptive even without Beguiling Influence.
Wizards do get discount on scribing spells from one school of magic.
Thanks everyone! Will update it soon with those corrections.
Note that the warlock's book of ancient secrets only allows them to inscribe ritual spells of up to 1/2 their warlock level, rounded up. This means that dipping into warlock to get this invocation is not as useful as one might imagine, but neither is it useless. There are many great 1st and 2nd level ritual spells available to the 3 level warlock dipper.
demon_idol wrote:Note that the warlock's book of ancient secrets only allows them to inscribe ritual spells of up to 1/2 their warlock level, rounded up. This means that dipping into warlock to get this invocation is not as useful as one might imagine, but neither is it useless. There are many great 1st and 2nd level ritual spells available to the 3 level warlock dipper.
You need Pact of the Tome to take Book of Ancient Secrets. You get two invocations at level 2, which is one level before Pact Boon (Pact of the Tome) happens, so your level 2 invocations cannot include Book of Ancient Secrets.
The first level with an invocation after Pact of the Tome comes online is level 5, at which point you can scribe rituals of level 1-3 (although you only start with two 1st-level rituals, regardless of what level you are when you take Book of Ancient Secrets). In other words, you can't "dip" warlock for rituals, but you can "divert" 5 levels into it for them.
All of that's available for a 5 level diversion into warlock (significant, but on par with what martial classes need to get Extra Attack - and it comes with upgrading your two spell slots to 3rd level, as well!).
The only rituals in the game that this doesn't get you are Divination, Commune, Commune with Nature, Contact Other Plane, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Drawmij's Instant Summons, and Forbiddance.
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:The first level with an invocation after Pact of the Tome comes online is level 5, at which point you can scribe rituals of level 1-3 (although you only start with two 1st-level rituals, regardless of what level you are when you take Book of Ancient Secrets). In other words, you can't "dip" warlock for rituals, but you can "divert" 5 levels into it for them.
As soon as you reach level 3, you can swap one for Book of Ancient Secrets. Why would you wait until level 5?
Because the same sentence that allows retraining says "that you could learn at that level". You can't swap a level 2 invocation for one you couldn't learn at level 2.
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:Because the same sentence that allows retraining says "that you could learn at that level". You can't swap a level 2 invocation for one you couldn't learn at level 2.
Nope. "when you gain a level ... at that level." When you gain level 3, you learn at level 3.
Huh. I read that as clearly meaning something else ("could...that" in this case referring to what you could have chosen at that level, the level the invocation was taken, instead of reading it as what you "can" take at "this" level).
However, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the rest of 5e generally assumes trade-ups are still possible; for instance, a level 5 sorcerer can unlearn a level 1 spell and replace it with an extra level 3 spell. However, those cases all have much less ambiguous text, to wit: "which must also be of a level for which you have spell slots"; this makes zero references to your level.
I read it as being the class level gained since that's the other mention of "level" in the same paragraph to which "that level", makiing it the most likely subject of the reference.
Casting a ritual simply needs a longer casting time (base spell 1 minute + ritual 10 minutes), which only requires Concentration, which can be maintained while moving normally (PHB p. 203). i.e. you can cast a ritual for a replacement Phantom Steed while riding the current steed.
So, this means after the first 11 minute wait, 13 miles every 60 minutes (the last 11 minutes of which you are recasting while riding).
You could even continually cast the spell, spending 11 minutes to create the first, a short gap (approx 1 min), then 4 x 11 minutes + gap to create 4 more, for a total of 5 active steeds, with the first having maybe 12 minutes of the original 1 hour duration left. The whole party could then start riding, with the ritual caster creating a new replacement steed every 11 - 12 minutes.
Is this guide going to be updated if there are more rituals in Xanathar's Guide?
A very important thing to note is that the feat for ritual casting is based off of character level.
Every other method of ritual casting limited by class level.
That means that getting the feat is typically superior to dipping for ritual casting.
Weirdly enough, I am more concerned about whether the editing error that has resulted in a huge portion of text in yellow will ever be fixed.
Hopefully a mod notices this thread and fixes it.
"Bard. A decent number of rituals to choose from, but prepared rituals only. "
"If you're a bard, you can only cast prepared rituals. That means that you are going to have to weigh the value of each of these spells against other non-ritual spells that you might want to prepare for a given day."
Both wrong. Bards don't prepare spells. They know all their spells inherently and can use any of them in rituals or in spell slots.
Bards are Rote Ritual Casters.
"Rote Rituals. These are rituals based on spells you can cast but you don't have to prepare them ahead of time. The two examples are the barbarian's rituals and the Pact of the Tome warlock's Book of Ancient Secrets feaure as applied to warlock spells already known by the warlock that have the ritual tag. This is the rarest type of ritual casting."
In that sense, Rote Ritual Casters (Bards, Totem Warriors, Bindlocks) are actually more common than Ritual Book Casters (Wizards, Bindlocks)!
If you buy a wagon or a cart Phantom Steed becomes far more useful for the whole party. Also there are creative uses for both Phantom Steed and Unseen Servant, among others rituals that are less then obvious.
Stick your unseen servant into robes and have them bait the enemy into attacking.
Also you can make your Phantom Steed like like whatever you want, although it will still be large with Horse stats, you it's an at will Illusion spell that doesn't require concentration and lasts an hour (or potentially more if it's a sorcerer casting it).
For anyone in the future who does not want the whole post to be orange, here it is.
Alchemy instead of Ritual Casting.