Prerequisite: Pact of the Tome feature
You can now inscribe magical rituals in your Book of Shadows. Choose two 1st-level spells that have the ritual tag from any class's spell list (the two needn't be from the same list). The spells appear in the book and don't count against the number of spells you know. With your Book of Shadows in hand, you can cast the chosen spells as rituals. You can't cast the spells except as rituals, unless you've learned them by some other means. You can also cast a warlock spell you know as a ritual if it has the ritual tag.
On your adventures, you can add other ritual spells to your Book of Shadows. When you find such a spell, you can add it to the book if the spell's level is equal to or less than half your warlock level (rounded up) and if you can spare the time to transcribe the spell. For each level of the spell, the transcription process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp for the rare inks needed to inscribe it.
Book of Ancient Secrets: Knowledge is Power
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Ritual casting, to me, is one of 5e’s revolutionary ideas. It takes underwhelming spells that always felt kind of bad to have to spend spell slots on and made them “free” so long as you had a bit of downtime. Then they went and shafted paladins, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks by not including it in their spellcasting sections. What the hell, Wizards of the Coast?
This makes Book of Ancient Secrets a must have to me for the Pact of the Tome warlock builds. It’s one of the major reasons I consider Pact of the Tome over Chain with their fun familiars; with Book of Ancient Secrets, I can get access to Find Familiar and all the cantrips Pact of the Tome offers, plus one more ritual spell from any classes spell list. If you like Beast Speech, you can get Speak with Animals here. If you like Eldritch Sight, you can get Detect Magic here. Ritual spells are just really convenient to have; they feel like features in their own right, and Book of Ancient Secrets gives you any two of your choice for an invocation slot.
In addition, you can now add any level invocations to your book, so long as their level is half your Warlock level or lower. By 12th level, that's functionally access to any ritual spell printed should you get access to them. Consider that at a magical library with access to all the rituals, if you want all the 1st level options, it’ll cost you just 600 gold. That’s less than half the price of plate armor for EVERY 1st level ritual spell in the game. Want all the 2nd level options? 900 gold more. For the price of one piece of platemail, you could buy access to every 2nd and 1st level ritual spell in Dungeons and Dragons. Let's be honest; you probably don’t need every one of these, but with Book of Ancient Secrets, it's a real option you now have. Few other invocations open up this many possibilities to you, and can really deliver on the full-caster warlock experience.
If you like ritual casting and the slower, information gathering abilities, this is great. If you picked Pact of the Tome but still want a familiar, Book of Ancient Secrets can get you one, plus another invocation at will spell like Speak with Animals or Detect Magic. Book of Ancient Secrets is one of the biggest reasons to take Pact of the Tome. If you’re interested, try it out. It's very good.
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