Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Ritual Spells

So, again, as I was writing the Afflicted story, I realized that BG3 does not include Ritual spells. So, for example, my druid should be able to use Speak with Animals while in the Druid's Grove without having to use a spell slot because Speak with Animals is a ritual spell that can be done without using a spell slot outside of combat.

My suggestion is that we need ritual spells in BG3 so that things like this can be done without having to use spell slots.

Also, why don't we have Identify as a spell for Wizards? It is also a Ritual spell and should be used to identify magic items. Magic items should not be able to be used unless a person identifies them first, either via the spell or by going to a vendor. In this way, if someone does equip a magic item without having first identified it, they might equip a cursed item and thus wind up messing themselves over. Foolish fools equipping an item they don't know what it is suffer from their own foolishness. That's part of the point of the spell and such.

I would love ritual spells to be in the game. It would definitely be an improvement of BG3's spellslot system outside combats.

About identify...
I love how it works in Solasta/BG1-2 for my immersion in the setting but is it really interresting ?

Magical item found = Click ritual/Identify = discover his properties.

Am I ok with this ? Definitely yes.
That's how things works in DnD and everything that would increase the poor immersion of BG3 in it's setting/world would be welcome.

But is that fun and interresting ? Not really IMO.

I agree, the rituals need to be in the game, they are part of D&D.

I also agree with your comment on Solasta and how they do it. They seemed to have captured the essence of D&D better than Larian at this point, even just using the SRD. I am baffled on the fact that BG3 is supposed to be a D&D based game with full licensing from WotC, yet seems to miss several core elements of D&D.

So Solasta was odd in that it diverted from the RAW 5e rules in that you could not change your spell slots without a long rest. In 5E you can do so outside of a long rest it just takes some time. This had the effect of making it so that you had to choose the identify spell slot in order to cast it as a ritual - so you are at least sacrificing a spell slot. Then the ritual takes 10 minutes per cast which they made happen in game time. That system works fine.

BG3 is in a different situation where ritual spells may not really work. Since you can switch spells at will but there is no time sacrifice for those changes. Then having a ritual spell would not have the same impact since spells slots can just be altered back and forth. On top of that there is no time mechanic where you can take x minutes to cast the ritual spell. You would just be creating a mechanic that may feel "out of place" or creates work for the sake of trying to make something fit. In essence you may as well make all ritual spells behave like cantrips (which they seem to do with Find Familiar) or you try to remove the need for the ritual spell (remove identify as a mechanic).

I am NOT saying either way is better. I am just pointing out that for BG3 ritual spells don't make a lot of sense.

Where did you see that you can change your prepared spells outside long rest in DnD ? I never read that.
The wizard can use ritual spells even if they are not prepared. Other classes that prepare spells have to do it first.

Anyway I really can't see your point at all.

Why should we care that it takes no time ? Is the "10min later" screen in Solasta add something interresting ? Maybe you could add a suggestion to this thread to ask one ?
And even if we consider that the broken system to prepare spell is intended... Why would it be a problem to have (or not) to prepare the spell first ? This is a detail that doesn't add or remove anything meaningfull.

The only thing that could eventually makes ritual spell "useless" is to consider that the broken rest system is here to stay... But using spellslots over and over again and resting over and over again to cast spells that have the ritual tag in DnD is definitely boring in BG3.
What would be the problem to cast those spells "like cantrips outside combats" ? It may not be interresting but at least it solve something tedious and as much uninterresting.

There are tons of animals and dead you can talk with in BG3 and that's definitely very cool. But honnestly that's something I never get deep into because of the tedious spellslot/rest management needed to fully enjoy it.
Not sure only druids should have this quality of life (at least with animals) and that's exactly what rituals are for.

This is inaccurate. In 5e, you only have the opportunity to change which spells you have prepared after a long rest - and then it takes some time. Solasta did this close to correctly (I don't think they have you spend the extra few minutes actually preparing - they just limit the opportunity to the end of long rests.

As for ritual casting, different classes interact with it differently. Clerics and Druids must have the spell prepared in order to ritual cast. Wizards only have to have it in their spellbook. Bards have to know the spell (they just know things or don't - there is no preparation). I don't think any other classes are able to cast as rituals. Anyway, Solasta did this correctly as well - wizards could ritual cast spells that were their spellbook that weren't memorized. I believe the clerics could only ritual cast spells that they had prepared (I didn't do any cleric ritual casting, so might be wrong here).

The biggest reason that ritual spells don't really matter in BG3 is because you can long rest whenever you want with no consequences. The biggest benefit of casting a spell as a ritual is that you are preserving a spell slot in exchange for extra casting time. Since you don't really ritual cast during a battle (you can, but it's generally impractical) and you can get spell slots back whenever you want while not in battle, there's not really much point to having it in BG3 right now.

My bad, I misread the 5E rules. The way its worded is kind of odd - Solasta handled it RAW - its BG3 that full on diverts. Also in BG3 obviously we have a problem where 1)time has no meaning and 2) you can switch your spells at any time. They have not said whether that will change.

Solasta does not have Druids, Bards, or Sorcerers, but I get what you mean by them doing it correctly.

However if time doesn't mean anything then I am not sure ritual casting can work. The challenge Larian has right now is that with Multiplayer Ritual Casting is a difficult (impossible) thing to implement. If time constraints are impossible then how do you ritual cast. Do we all wait around for ten minutes? Do we fast forward ten minutes?

Any false time constraint just doesn't work in multiplayer.

See I hear this a lot but in truth you can pretty much rest as much as you want in Solasta as well with no consequences. Its not like you can only use a rest area once, or can't leave a map and rest by travelling. There are a scant few situations where you are stuck in a string of combats with limited rest potential but I can count them on 1 hand. Solasta didn't create a solution for this unless you implement single use rest areas or false time constraints its impossible.

Again, ritual spells don't work in bg3 because time doesn't exist and it doesn't fit with multiplayer. Solasta, not having multiplayer, can do whatever it wants. Its not a sandbox game.


And you know, the funny thing is its a problem with D&D itself - the rest mechanic has always been this problem that never really got solved. Or well, its been solved but D&D never caught on to the solution...yet...

Sounds great to have Speak with Animals and similar spells not cost a spell slot!

So one thing I'll put forward here on Larian's side (sort of):

In their game currently, where time itself has no meaning, they have the opportunity to simply treat ritual spells like they treat long casting time spells - such as prayer of healing. In BG3 currently, Prayer of healing doesn't take a long time to cast; just an action like most other spells - instead, they constrained it so that it can only be cast out of combat.

They could easily implement this for ritual spells, but would need to make a choice as to whether they want ritual spells to be ritual *only*, or whether they want to add play choice on whether to ritual cast or not. The 'ritual' version would be out of combat only, like PoH, and would not take a spell slot; it would be available to wizards as long as they know it, but only available to non spell-book classes if prepared, etc.

doing it this way would be the easiest, simplest, path-of-least-work method of putting ritual spells in the game, so you can bet with fair certainty that if we ever do see them, that this will be how it is managed.

Personally, "Doesn't take any time, but only out of combat" is a "Change-For-Video-Games" tweak that I actually support and accept as a good compromise.

Simple. Out of Turn-Based mode, if spell is able to be used as a Ritual, no spell slot used. If in Turn-Based mode, spell slot required.

This, of course, would mean that you can't be Out of Turn-Based if you are engaged in combat... or if any of your allies are engaged.

There are some spells that I think are only cast as a ritual? So it would fit for out of combat for rituals IF the caster has ritual casting.

BG3 is still a party based game and chances are it is not the ritual caster that may need an item identified (in an instance of identify the magic of an item), so I don't think the rest of the party would mind a brief pause to have the ritual done. It can be done as easy as it is in Solasta with a cut scene (Larian has the money & resources to make a pretty cool animation out of it), Minecraft or Valheim multiplayer (sleeping in a bed) or any other similar game. It's not like they need to reinvent the wheel to make it work, there are examples out there to use.

A cutscene would be cool if skipable for after you've seen it a few times or just turn it off as an option.

Either way, makes wizards more valuable.

But it wouldn't it be meaningless since time is meaningless?

Also would everyone have to agree to the ritual cast and the (perception of) a ten minute wait? Wouldn't you just be creating an additional thing everyone has to do together with no meaning?

Currently in multiplayer there are these group conversations that are annoying as hell. Everyone has to make a selection, and if one person is screwing around then you just wait there until they return. Its basically a "confirmation point" - which are the biggest annoyances in multiplayer especially when they deal with events that don't matter.

Currently, the only rule for a ritual cast spell is that it be done out of Combat. As Niara suggested that feels like a good compromise to me. They should never be castable in combat - as 10 minutes is 100 rounds - it would be pointless.

Thankfully the Ritual Spell list is relatively small and we are not likely to see too many ritual spells.

OOOwww, wtf. A bit out of topic but super surprised by this. I absolutely loved the way they solved dialogues. When you play in coop it makes no sense to discuss every line but it's cool to know what your friends would say. So a quick voting system makes it way better. Now if you have problems with people who play with you " screwing around " I guess... find other people to play with ?-\0/- Like you know. You agree on a 1 hour sessions, small break, and let's go again. No screwing around. There. Fixed.

I mean, I am in discord with them so I would just ask them on what direction we want to go or what they think. Having dialogue like that in multiplayer is redundant.


Sometimes people get up to get some water and don't say anything. Or go to the bathroom. "Screwing around" was not a good way to put it. Life happens, its not too big a deal.

It's not very difficult to rest in Solasta, but it feels very different than it does in BG3. The notion of resting in a game, in general is a little tricky, because there's some circular logic at work - you can only long-rest once per day and a long-rest marks the end of a day (the latter isn't present in 5e, but it does seem to come up often in video games). It's easily resolved in a tabletop game, because you have a DM to say "it has only been two hours since you woke up this morning, you can't go back to sleep yet".

In a video game, it's harder to do this because there's no DM to use their judgement about what fits into a day (and what fits into a day is very important, because 5e's mechanics are all about resource depletion over said day). What Solasta does is it spaces long resting campfires out throughout each map, possibly about a day's worth of content apart from each other (I don't have a strong opinion about how well they did). This gives the player some expectation of about how much stuff they should be trying to get through between long rests - it establishes a challenge for them to try to meet. And if you get yourself stuck, you can usually retrace your steps back to the last campfire - it's not too onerous, but you definitely get the sense that you could do better. And even if it doesn't mean that much, they show time passing. This helps to provide at least a little verisimilitude. Solasta also does a very good job of explaining what things are happening during short/long rests and making sure that the player has the option to be involved in those things.

BG3, on the other hand, does nothing at all to communicate what is a reasonable amount of stuff to try to do between rests. I want a goal that I should be aiming for, but I'm not given one or even enough information to come up with my own (which is why "don't use it if you don't want to" falls on its face). They barely even communicate what rests are for. Right now, there's a free-HP button (short rest) and a free-get-restored-to-perfect-health-with-all-of-your-spell-slots button (long rest). Mechanics that are designed to interact with short/long rests (e.g. spell preparation and Arcane Recovery) have had that interaction removed. There is nothing that gives the player a sense of how long a day should be, so you're basically adrift. The kicker is that this storyline really suggests that there should be some urgency. Whatever your opinion about what you'd like to do with the tadpole, most folks are really going to want to get that thing in their head dealt with ASAP. But ASAP doesn't mean anything in BG3.

Sure, Solasta doesn't have a silver bullet for making the resting system perfect, but they put some effort in and it's decent.

This is where some sensible home brew could come into play. If a 10-minute ritual doesn't work well in multiplayer, make it cost something else. You're saving a spell slot - if you can just cast it instantly with no cost, it's just a free spell. Maybe the ritual version of a spell requires expensive components that get consumed when you cast it, so there's a gold/item cost. Maybe the player has to actually learn the ritual and there's some kind of mini-game to perform it correctly (with potential consequences for failure). I'm sure there are plenty of good ways to make casting a ritual spell feel unique and interesting, that would also work in multi-player.

I'm not sure what you're saying is a problem. I've rarely had issues with resting or ritual spells in the numerous tabletop games I've played.

You really focus on something that doesn't matter at all.

Can you explain the problem with ritual spells not consuming any time ? How does it create any problem if it's only possible outside of combats to use them for free ?

Those spells with the ritual tag are usually usefull outside combats so it won't have any consequences on them. Just QoL for outside combats interractions.

And eventually a new exploit Larian will love ! 3 characters engaged while the last cast "silence" on ennemies as a ritual while everyone else is frozen ! So funny !

Honestly, in practice most people don't care too much about how much time a ritual casting takes UNLESS it is in a situation where a hostile entity could interrupt. If it will take 10 minutes for the caster to cast detect magic before entering the room so they can spot any magical traps, then the party waits ten minutes and yada yadas it. Functionally, for a videogame, just making ritual casting an out of combat thing will not functionally change how it functions that much in comparison to tabletop because time in the videogame matters very little (I am aware that there are countless situations where it does matter, but in my experience, 9 times out of 10, the group just moves along to the finishing of the casting).

essentially, i don't see ritual casting having any problem for multiplayer. And in fact it should help fix many player's issue with the wizard because they feel like the wizard can not cast enough, with ritual casting the wizard will be able to cast utility things constantly.