Druid spells ranked: Cantrips

hey upton answers chris here i've done a couple of videos lately where i've discussed the druid spellist and i've mentioned it has a lot of pretty good options in it as i've mentioned in the past i've had a few conversations with people who've basically simplified down the druid spell list to describe the value of druid spell casting as conjure animals conjure animals conjure animals and without conjure animals the druid is a substandard caster i think those players are missing a tremendous amount of amazing spells through all levels and i kind of equate this thinking very similarly to the thinking that wizards are all about fireballs and like with wizards and fireballs i think a druid has a deep enough spell list to be a great spellcaster without touching conjure animals at all so this series is dedicated to those players if you would like to support this content please check the link in the video description for my patreon patrons of this channel see these videos early and non-monetized and my top level patrons can join me to play some d d every month today i'd like to recognize these top level patrons scott j smith sig stephen edmondson t-u-m tasel thomas pereiro thomas van lursel tristan and tristan bello thank you all so much for your support let's get started [Music] today we're going to start to go through the druid spell list i'm going to be ranking every spell using my standard rating system here's how that works if i rank a spell as red i think it's a bad spell and i wouldn't recommend it for preparation on basically any druid if i rank a spell as orange i think it's a very circumstantial spell this is a spell i wouldn't recommend to prepare normally but there are situations where it will come in handy and if we know those situations are likely to present themselves in those cases these spells can be very effective if i rank a spell as purple i think the spell is okay they're likely not the first spells i'm personally going to prepare or at least as my primary selections but i do think you can get reasonable value from them if you do prepare them if i rank a spell is green i think it's a good spell this is the kind of spell i would consider very strongly when choosing my spell preparations this isn't necessarily a must-have but if you do prepare it you're likely going to get the chance to use it and you should get good value from it if i rank as well as blue then i think it's a fantastic spell i would have a hard time passing up the chance to prepare a blue spell these bells are the best of the best if you're color blind i'll be adding stars to the end of each rating one for red two for orange three for purple four for green and five for blue so it should be easy to discern the color ranking and if you're just listening no problem i'll be announcing each rating as well and i'm just going to go through these in alphabetical order today we are discussing can trips the first cantrip is control flames this is a utility cantrip that has a number of uses you can cause non-magical fires to spread in the direction you choose extinguish a non-magical fire up to a five foot cube at a time double or half the light cast by non-magical flames for an hour or create simple images and shapes within a non-magical flame again lasting an hour although we can cast this kantrip over and over we're limited to having three of any of the one hour effects active at one time that's actually more than other cantrips that have a similar kind of effect we'll talk about those later and you can use an action to dismiss any of those effects the effect i find that will come up the most often is doubling the light of a flame because you can do this to a lantern or a torch and then you get this huge radius of light if you're not relying on dark vision there should be more than enough light to ensure no enemies are you know hanging out beyond the edge of the light and using their own dark vision to get advantage on attacks or disadvantage on your attacks the other features are far more circumstantial but i wouldn't say any of them are useless i just wouldn't count on any of them to come up a lot so i do think this spell ranks orange it may be useful here and there i think it's going to be a lot more useful in a party that doesn't rely on dark vision but i wouldn't count on it being something that comes up a lot our second cantrip is create bonfire to a large extent this is just a save or take damage cantrip and as with most save or take damage cantrips we're looking at 60 feet of range the damage is fairly average at 1d8 fire damage and it has a standard kantrip scaling and uses a dexterity safe where this spell differs is that the bonfire remains in the spot you cast it and it requires your concentration to cast what i find is that the concentration requirement is going to be a bigger and bigger downside as you increase in level and you're more and more likely to be concentrating on something else also the druid spellist is not light on concentration spells the bonfire remaining though does mean you might be able to damage with it more than once especially if you can either force enemy movement or prevent enemy movement despite this however it's still just doing tantric damage and even then only if they fail their save and because the druid spell list is so heavily geared towards using your concentration i expect that conflict is just going to come up a little too often to recommend a kandra that uses concentration as well so for that reason i am going to marginally give this a red rating i think there is an argument to be made that it might be orange but i am leaning towards the red side druid craft is a druid utility kantrip and this is one of those more flexible and generic cantrips along the same line as thomaturgy or presta digitation in this case we can use this cantrip to predict the weather cause plants to blossom or bloom create a small and harmless sensory effect that is nature related so maybe the sound of an animal the smell of a flower or the sound of a breeze for example and finally we could use it to light or snuff out a small fire some of this honestly is just not going to be useful causing flowers to bloom is certainly thematic for a druid but let's be honest it's not going to have a significant mechanical effect in gameplay creating a sensory effect might though just an example goblins who hear the sounds of wolves howling outside their lair are unlikely to ignore that so there are useful aspects of this spell but i don't think they're coming up a lot so this one for me is orange frostbite is our next cantrip and this is another save or take damage cantrip as normal we have a 60 foot range and in this case the damage type is cold and the enemy is getting a constitution save to ignore the effect we have a secondary effect with this cantrip that if the enemy fails their saving throw they also have disadvantage on their next weapon attack on their turn the base damage and save of this are not very good constitution is the last saving throw we generally want to target and a d6 is below average for cantrips so if we take frostbite we're probably taking it for the secondary effect which honestly is never terrible but it's definitely better at earlier levels when most creatures are only attacking once on their turn overall this one is okay it's a below average spell in regards to damage and saving throw but the secondary effect is pretty decent frostbite for me gets a purple rating and a modest recommendation our next cantrip is guidance which is a touch spell that provides a target a d4 bonus on the ability check of their choice while the spell lasts the spell lasts for up to 1 minute and requires your concentration this is usually a utility spell that is used outside of combat meaning it is less likely to interfere with other concentration spells though sometimes druids are concentrating on spells outside of combat as well and the use of this comes up all the time whether searching or investigating you could be checking for traps picking locks using stealth climbing swimming jumping using social skills it's pretty much endless the number of times this kandra could come up and that's why i think it's potentially the best kendrip in the game we're at worst one of the best so this is the blue cantrip on the druid spell list this is going to be my first cantrip selection on most druids i make next kantrip is gust which is a utility and combat control cantrip that allows us some control over air within 30 feet of us we can use it for three different effects the first is to force a medium or smaller creature to make a strength saving throw or be pushed five feet away from us second is pushing an object of no more than five pounds up to ten feet away from us and the third is to create an appropriate sensory effect such as rustling of leaves or causing clothing to blow in the breeze if all these effects seem pretty small and ineffectual to you well you have my agreement there this just doesn't have enough and i just can't recommend it it has to have a red rank for me next scan trip is infestation this is an attack save or take damage cantrip couple notable things here is that instead of the standard 60 foot range for these kinds of spells we get only 30 feet for some reason and this does poison damage which is notorious as the least reliable damage type in the game add on it targets the worst save to target constitution and does less than average damage for kanships of this type at a d6 with a standard candidate scaling and it's looking just awful if it fails its saving throw it does move fivefit as well but the direction is random and it doesn't provoke opportunity attacks so the tactical applications for this become far more limited this one i would say is just straight bad i imagine most of you will agree this deserves nothing but a red ranking magic stone is our next cantrip this one is a little harder to rank this is one of the rare bonus action cantrips when we cast it we enchant up to three pebbles and they can be thrown or hurled with a sling as a ranged spell attack for a d6 damage plus our wisdom modifier whomever throws them uses our spell casting modifier to their spell attack role rather than their own ability score the enchantment lasts for one minute and if you cast it again any previous enchantment ends so i find this cantrip gets a lot of discussion because it doesn't specify any limits on who might throw those stones and you can use your bonus action and cast this and then have you know a tiny servant that the wizard might have conjured which is what i hear about most commonly or three other minor creatures of any type throwing these stones that's three attacks from three creatures that normally might not attack at all so in essence that could be three attacks as a bonus action now this spell doesn't confer any special ability to the thrower to throw rocks if it normally couldn't or at least it doesn't say it does so i suspect you need to at least have a creature that could reasonably throw rocks to begin with secondly it's important to remember that they're not using your spell attack modifier they use their own proficiency bonus plus your casting modifier so if you use this strategy remember that may mean their chance to hit may not be as high as if you threw the stones also i think there are a lot of assumptions especially combining this with the tiny servant spell about the complexity of general ongoing commands that can be given to a creature with an intelligence score of two so i don't think you should count on this strategy working at all at least before a conversation with your dm but let's say you know you have some commoners following your party for example i think very clearly they could throw the stones for you now we're looking at two plus your wisdom modifier to hit four 1d6 plus your wisdom modifier and damage three times per turn and you're just using your bonus action that's pretty darn good for a cantrip but you also just turn those commoners into targets and they're pretty easy kills so keep that in mind as well as for using this kantrip as a straight attack hand drip as in you use your bonus action to create the stones then your next three actions to throw them then i think you'll find levels one through four this actually does decent damage but it doesn't scale like other attack hand trips so as other cantrips are doubling tripling and finally quadrupling base damage this is only scaling with the increase in your wisdom score and not by much so other than early levels the use of magic stone is pretty crappy actually so this cantrip can be effective if you happen to have the right situation and or you can get dm by in for creating that situation for yourself but barring that then it's still okay at low levels but not so good as we level up i mean we're not really using our bonus action that often at those low levels and a d6 plus with some damage is still more than we would get with a standard d8 or even a d10 cantrip but after level five then unless we have a way to have something else with available actions throw those stones it's not worth it as a personal attack hand trip but with tashas we can select a cantrip for low levels and then we can switch it out when we get a building score increase like we do at level four so since i think we do better damage than most cantrips with this at low levels and because we can either switch it out or find a way to use it effectively afterwards i'm inclined towards a purple ranking but again think about whether you want to keep it when level four comes up and as i said this one's hard to rank because there are certainly situations where i think it's better than purple and there are certainly situations where i think it's worse than purple purple is kind of where i'm averaging it out mending is our next cantrip this one is pure utility with one minute casting time the mending kantrip repairs a single break or tear in an object as long as that breaker tear is no larger than one foot in any direction i find this cancer comes up reasonably often object gets damaged and then the spell can repair that damage or we find a damaged object and the spell can repair it the most common misconception i find about this spell is that mending cannot fix any kind of damage just by casting it multiple times if you have a break or tear over one foot in dimensions this spell does nothing and if the damage isn't a break or tear again this kantrip does nothing no matter how many times you cast it still as simple utility i find it comes up and it's okay and so i think it's purple but it is kind of on the orange border depending how often the situations come up where this is useful and i think you could reasonably argue it's an orange cantrip but based on my own experience i find it comes up often enough to give it a purple this video is sponsored by describe describe is a service that provides you box text for monsters spells items characters and other observations for the dm to read to the players great box text can really add to the mood and immersion of a scene and describe as a team of writers with credits including the works of wizards of the coast fantasy flight games green ronin chaosium microsoft studios dragon magazine bungie and other reputable publishers describe offers a service that is constantly expanding with thousands of options at your fingertips with more being added constantly how many more well when i was first contacted by describe regarding video sponsorship less than a month ago there were over 2 700 selections available now there's over 3 thousand check out these interactive maps this one is of a roadside carnival as we float our cursor over different features the box text appears that describe the scene to players whether they're inspecting the main tent or the wood pile the roadside well or 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into difficult terrain or turn difficult terrain of earth or stone into normal terrain this change also lasts for one hour if you cast this multiple times you can only have two of the one hour effects active at one time and you dismiss them using your action so this is pretty minor stuff except for the big one which we hear about all the time excavating a five-foot pit and creating a five-foot pile of cover as an action the big question is what counts as loose earth does pack dirt still count as loose earth well according to jeremy crawford by loose earth they meant dirt not stone so you can excavate dirt whether it's packed or not the way i interpret it is if you could reasonably excavate it with a shovel you can probably excavate it with the mold earth spell only much faster so how often do we have a combat where we're standing on dirt well if we're inside almost never most floors are not dirt floors if we're in a cave or the underdark we're probably standing on stone if we're outside though then there should be a reasonable chance not all the time mind you but a reasonable chance and when this does come up it's pretty good especially for a can trip creating five feet of cover with an action is often going to be an action well spent especially at lower levels and i think it really is campaign dependent some campaigns have combats outdoors a lot others not at all so this one i'm gonna give it orange it is quite good in the right circumstance but i think that's largely a campaign-dependent circumstance and there is some chance that circumstance will never come up so i can't justify any more than orange our next cantrip is poison spray this one is a save or take damage attack cantrip the range here is unusually terrible for this kind of spell usually these kinds of spells are giving us 60 feet in range this one is 10 feet that is bad secondly we're doing poison damage which is the least reliable damage type and thirdly we're targeting the last save we want to target constitution the one and only saving grace of this kantrip is the damages as high as we could hope for a d12 that has kantrip scaling so when we are in range and if a creature does fail their save and if they aren't resistant or immune to poison then d12 scaling is high damage for a can trip is that enough to make up for the downsides not in my opinion so as far as i'm concerned this is still red our next cantrip is primal savagery which is our first melee attack hand drip primal savagery does acid damage and does a d10 damage with a standard kant of scaling one thing that i find disappointing here is there is no secondary effect so it's just do the damage and that's it still the damage is decent for an attack hand trip and acid isn't a poor damage type and in my experience you can land attack roll candrips more commonly than save or take damage can trips so i think this one is passable no more than that but it does fair damage as far as cancers are concerned so i think it merits a purple rank our next cantrip is produce flame this is kind of a ranged attack hand trip and kind of a utility cantrip it's honestly a bit weird so first off you can use this to create light you need a free hand to hold that light and the range of the light is pretty terrible actually 10 foot bright light 10 foot dim light that's half of a torch also we can't use control flame to increase that since this is magical fire the flame can then be thrown either with the same action used to create it or an action on a later turn if you do so the range is bad i mean 30 foot range so really bad so bad that we will actually be comparing this to a melee attack hand trip that has the same range except no disadvantage if we're actually in melee and it does a d8 fire damage that has a standard kind of scaling so that's middle of the road the only secondary effect for throwing the flame is you just lost your light source so if that's what you were using it for that's pretty bad so i'm no fan of this kantrip i think it's pretty cool to have a flame you're holding in your hand that you can later throw and there are things they could have done to make it worthwhile but you know this needed to replace itself immediately after you threw it so you didn't lose your light source and it probably should do a d10 damage and it probably should have had a 90 or 120 foot range so this comes up short in my view on a few fronts so i have to give it a red resistance is our next cantrip in a lot of ways this is actually very similar to guidance except instead of boosting ability checks we're boosting saving throws so you target one creature when you cast a spell which lasts up to a minute with your concentration and that creature can apply a d4 to one saving throw of their choice before the spell ends now saving throws are often very high stakes more so than ability checks i would say at least most of the time so why all the love for guidance and not so much for resistance and that comes down to how often it's coming up guidance comes up constantly and we often know when we're going to be making an ability check and we often have a chance to prepare for that ability check beforehand but with saving throws that's just normally not the case now in combat just like with guidance i think the concentration requirement here makes this a substandard choice for druids so instead what we're left with is guessing when outside of combat we might be making a saving throw and that tends to lead to a whole lot of guesswork and regardless it just comes up way less often so this is orange because a saving throw can be really important and a d4 is actually a very decent bonus on a saving throw but it just isn't something we can predict easily and it doesn't come up often enough to provide a higher rating shape water is our next cantrip this has similarities to gust control flames and mold earth but this time we're manipulating up to a five foot cube of water we can move or change the flow of water we target up to five feet in any direction we can do the standard shapes that can be seen in the water this lasts for one hour and the one thing a little different here is that the images we create can move we can also change the color or opacity of the water for up to an hour and we can freeze the targeted water again up to an hour as with the other similar spells if we are creating effects with the duration we can only have two of them active at one time and we can dismiss the effects with an action so first let's talk utility minor use of creating images of course just like all the other cantrips that create images and as you can see there are quite a lot of them freezing cubes of water might allow you to move slowly over water creating new cubes of ice as you move along the surface changing the flow of water might allow a small boat to move upstream easier and there's some possible combat uses as well a frozen cube of water might give you full cover as an action so that's quite useful opaque water might provide obscurement the main drawback here is of course only in water do d d challenges sometimes involve water yes do d d combats ever take place in water yes are either of these common no so this is orange it's occasionally quite useful but occasionally generally speaking if i knew the campaign would be largely in or on the water maybe a seafaring campaign i'd be inclined to choose this over mold earth otherwise i'd be inclined to choose mold earth over this our next cantrip is shalely this is one of those rare bonus action cantrips and with the casting of this spell we transform a club or quarter staff into a magical weapon that does d8 based damage and uses our wisdom modifier instead of strength for attack and damage roles there are some unmistakable similarities of this cantrip to magic stone such as neither benefiting from the standard cancer of damage scaling and taking the bonus action to set up there are some important differences too first off you can't hand this off to someone else this is for you to use alone secondly if you were to have additional attacks say through extra tac or polar master or whatever you could use them with shilli now the thing is i wouldn't expect most druids to have extra tax through anything now chilelli like magic stone will probably do more damage than other kantrips at very low levels but once cantrip starts scaling unless you have some unusual feats or are heavily multi-classed this probably isn't a great investment for your druid like with magic stone i think before tasha's when we couldn't switch off cantrips this probably wasn't a good investment for the standard run-of-the-mill druid because level 5 is coming but because we could switch it off at level 4 i think it's not a bad selection for those lower levels so it's purple but unless you have a build that is built around making this work beyond level 5 purple for those lower levels only thorn whip is up next this is a melee attack can trip but it is a melee in which we can make a melee spell attack not because of range because we can actually attack with this up to 30 feet away meaning this has a maximum range equal to our produced flame which is a so-called ranged cantrip this kandrip does magical piercing damage so really reliable and does a d6 with a standard cant of scaling so that's a bit below average thing that stands out for thorn whip really though is the secondary effect if you hit a creature of large size or smaller you can also pull it up to 10 feet towards you the up to 10 feet is important because that means you really have three options you could not move them at all move them five feet or move them 10 feet and unlike with the infestation cantrip we know exactly what direction they'll be moving and there is no saving throw against this movement now with a druid force movement is really nice druids are excellent battlefield controllers they also have several spells that can do extra damage when we move creatures into or through their effects now without combining it with something else thornwhip is so so but thornwhip plus druid spells i think is quite good this one ranks green in my book that brings us to our final cantrip thunderclap is a save or take damage cantrip and it's the only one of these cantrips that a druid can get that can affect multiple creatures assuming those creatures are in multiple spaces you cast a kandrip and every creature within five feet of you so friendly fire is possible makes a constitution saving throw so not good or takes d6 thunder damage so not great damage damage scales with the standard canvas scaling there are a few other similar cantrips in the game the sword burst cantrip for wizards warlocks artificers and sorcerers is really similar except for doing force damage and targeting dexterity the word of radiance cancer for clerics is also similar except in that case it does radiant damage and you choose the targets so there's no friendly flare now not any of these three cantrips are amazing and thunderclap is likely the worst of the lot still there are cases where you're surrounded by a lot of creatures or even have more of them in your own space and when you do then thunderclap is a decent option so i do think this does rank orange because generally i don't think it's very good but there are occasions where it is and that's our cantrip list lots of orange ranks and that's not surprising can trips especially utility cantrips tend to be circumstantial by nature that's part of the reason they're cantrips being able to cast a useful utility spell over and over as an action when that utility is coming up all the time is really amazing thus the blue ranking for guidance next week i'll be releasing my video ranking of druid first level spells and at that time we'll talk a bit about druid preparations and how best to approach them so i hope you'll join me for that otherwise until next time i'm going to sit back relax and have some fun d d is for everyone thanks everybody and i'll talk to you soon you

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

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Keywords: dnd, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Optimization, Guide, Wizard, Wizards, charop, ultimate, best, most powerful, druid spells, druid spells ranked, best druid spells, ranking druid spells, druid cantrips, best druid cantrips 5e, best druid spells 5e

Id: N21aRT-NjLI

Length: 32min 8sec (1928 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021