How to track ritual spells (vs prepared)?

[Maetco]

Hi,

I'm new user for FG (in fact we are mainly still just testing it). I haven't found any threads about how to track ritual spells in FG, nor have we figured a good way to do it ourselves. How do you, more experienced FG users do it? The difficulty is in separating normally prepared spells and ritual spells which aren't prepared but still accessable using ritual casting.

[Ckorik]

Isn't the wizard the only one who can cast ritual spells without having them prepped? But they still need to be in the spellbook right? - And the Wizard has to have all the spellbook spells 'in the spell list' - and then using the 'prep' function - chooses what is prepped for the day - thus - the ritual spells would still be 'in the spellbook - but not (necessarily) prepped'.

Assuming you aren't happy with how this works - you could create a new casting class called 'rituals' and drag any spells used for rituals to that? They can be duplicates (click the 'eraser' at the bottom of the action tab - change the word 'spells' on the ritual you want - to 'ritual' - click in any other field and it will move the spell to a new group called rituals - you can then drag and drop spells there as needed, click the eraser again when done.

[Zacchaeus]

Hi Maetco welcome to FG. Ritual spells use all the normal rules of spellcasting so they would use a spell slot just like any cast. So just tick off a spell slot as normal. Since most ritual spells are cast (in my experience) out of combat I don't usually bother since the PC will get the slot back at the end of a rest anyway.

[sturtus]

Hi Maetco welcome to FG. Ritual spells use all the normal rules of spellcasting so they would use a spell slot just like any cast. So just tick off a spell slot as normal. Since most ritual spells are cast (in my experience) out of combat I don't usually bother since the PC will get the slot back at the end of a rest anyway.

Just here to point out that ritual spells do not expend a spell slot.

[Zacchaeus]

Just here to point out that ritual spells do not expend a spell slot.

Haha. excellent. I just read the first paragraph of the PHB and didn't move on to the second paragraph. My bad.

[BDaniel]

Isn't the wizard the only one who can cast ritual spells without having them prepped? But they still need to be in the spellbook right? - And the Wizard has to have all the spellbook spells 'in the spell list' - and then using the 'prep' function - chooses what is prepped for the day - thus - the ritual spells would still be 'in the spellbook - but not (necessarily) prepped'.

Assuming you aren't happy with how this works - you could create a new casting class called 'rituals' and drag any spells used for rituals to that? They can be duplicates (click the 'eraser' at the bottom of the action tab - change the word 'spells' on the ritual you want - to 'ritual' - click in any other field and it will move the spell to a new group called rituals - you can then drag and drop spells there as needed, click the eraser again when done.

Ckorik,
A Pact of the Tome Warlock , that has the Book of Secrets invocation can also cast Rituals without having them prepared as long as they are in his/her's Book of Secrets.

[lostsanityreturned]

As can someone with the ritual caster trait.

That aside.

I create a group "book of shadows" rather than "spells" for all the warlock spells.

Wizard spells don't need it as there isn't a divide. You just swap to standard display and cast the spells with the ritual tag.

Personally I like to lable ritual spells with (R) at the end of the name and concentration spells with (C)

E.G. Leomunds Tiny Hut (R) or Elemental Weapon (C)

Oh and remember that all ritual casting requires concentration (as does any spell that's casting time is 10minutes or longer)

[GavinRuneblade]

Adding to the list, some barbarians can cast rituals, and clerics too, then there are the people with dragonmarks, plus a boatload of non-WOTC-created classes you can find on DMSGuild.

In a practical sense, what I do is on the actions tab of a charactersheet add a category for rituals, then drag/drop the spells into it. As they don't use spell slots it doesn't matter what spell level the ritual is so they can all be lumped together in one place. The player can click the bar of the power to toggle it open/closed so it doesn't occupy any space if they don't want it to.

26574 and 26575.

[Ckorik]

Gotcha - I'm relatively new to 5e - but the principle remains the same in FG - if you want to make a new group of spells (for whatever reason - in this case to denote them as rituals) you certainly can. The two biggest obstacles to really using FG (in my opinion) is embracing the 'drag and drop' as a 'try it first' method - and the second is to run a player instance so you can kind of understand the difference between what players see and what you see as a GM.

When running a game I keep a player instance open *just* so I can get an idea of what they are seeing before I tell them to click on the button that they don't have :)

But the drag and drop - when you get used to it - it changes the entire usefulness of the program.

[i3ullseye]

I am not sure Rituals need any special coding or consideration. If the spell you want has disappeared from your Actions tab, because they were already cast.... toggle the view button at the bottom so you can still see it. Just click on any necessary effects. You don't have to have a spell slot to cast it, as the spell slot is a manual thing you track anyway. Maybe put an R or the word Ritual somewhere for your own reference if you don't want to open the description and read it each time.

You can add a second instance of the spell to your list, and group that under Ritual spells as others have described. But I find that Rituals just kind of don't really need any specific considerations to work just fine.

[Maetco]

Thanks a lot for all the replies.


Adding to the list, some barbarians can cast rituals, and clerics too, then there are the people with dragonmarks, plus a boatload of non-WOTC-created classes you can find on DMSGuild.

In a practical sense, what I do is on the actions tab of a charactersheet add a category for rituals, then drag/drop the spells into it. As they don't use spell slots it doesn't matter what spell level the ritual is so they can all be lumped together in one place. The player can click the bar of the power to toggle it open/closed so it doesn't occupy any space if they don't want it to.

26574 and 26575.

This sounds like a good solution. We will put it to the test.