Five Overrated Spells in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

the secrets of arcane magic can drive mortal minds insane but there's no point losing your mind over these facts we're talking about five commonly overrated spells in Dungeons and Dragons [Music] greetings my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon beards and today were taking a look at five overrated spells in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition now when we say overrated we don't mean that these spells are bad or even anywhere near that all of the spells were mentioning today are actually some of our favorites the problem with them is that they've been put on a pedestal and a lot of people see them as ruining the game of D&D which in our opinion we actually love these spells and think that you should take them and use them these are spells that have provoked what we feel is an undeserved reaction from the community for being game breakingly powerful and with respect we disagree the common feature behind all of these spells is that in many discussions online the real world circumstances are not fully considered having run several campaigns that have run all the way from first level up to the highest levels of play where these spells have been slung left right and center we've been able to see their impact on actual play and well this is just our own actual play experience we tend to play things pretty close to the rules and we've never really found these spells to be nearly as disruptive or bad for the game as some might claim so let's take a look at five overrated spells in D&D and let's get rolling so the very first spell we're gonna be talking today is a first level evil keishon spell available to clerics druids and bards it is found on page 250 of your players handbook and it is healing word you cast healing word as a bonus action up to a range of 60 feet and it does 1.d4 plus your spell casting ability modifier in healing healing word is the spiritual successor to many of the healing mechanics were found in fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons being able to cast it as a bonus action means that the healer can revive an ally who's been down or get a little bit of healing on somebody and still use their action to pull that Ally out of the sticky situation make an attack or cast a can trip it's one of the ways in which Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition carrying in line with the tradition from fourth edition makes healing less of an onerous duty you don't have to run around the battlefield laying your hands on a creature with cure wounds or lay on hands to bring them back into the fight or to keep them going it means that classes like clerics bards and druids have a very easy and reliable first level means of saving and allies life and potentially bringing them back into the fight this spell is very good and obviously has a lot of uses that are tactically advantageous but is it broken we don't think so some have claimed that healing word is one of the many reasons why player death is relatively rare in fifth edition this is a little surprising to us because in our experienced character death is rare but has happened in both of our campaigns more than once over several campaigns in addition to easing the strain on healers in general the other valuable interaction with healing word is that all hailing and D&D 5th edition starts from 0 there's no negative hit points so in theory receiving 1.d4 plus for hit points is just as good at bringing a player character back into the fight as receiving 70 points of healing from the mighty heal spell or is it if you have your frontline fighter going up against a dragon and he gets dropped down to 0 hit points and you use healing word to bring him back with let's say 7 hit points now 1 attack from that dragon is just going to knock him right back down it would be more advantageous to give that player character more hit points that they could last several more rounds against the dragon before having to worry about getting knocked down to zero again for this reason bringing your frontline fighters back up with healing word is not the best option many monsters in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition have multi attack this allows them to attack more than once per round sometimes two three even four times and I have seen more player characters be slain outright by a raging dragon dropping all of their multi attacks into that one character than any any other cause of death in the game and I think the player characters take for granted the fact that a dungeon master is going to run their monsters in such a way that if a monster makes three attacks and it drops a player on the first attack that monsters gonna move and suddenly start attacking another player character and spread their attacks around to me this is a completely alien and immersion breaking way to run your monsters if I have a dragon and I've got a juicy target in front of me the first attack takes them down I might not even notice that I've ripped that creature to shreds as I'm landing my third and fourth attacks on them and that's the way I run my dragons and many of my creatures that have multi attack particularly those claw claw bites I always have all those tacks go on the same target and they continue to follow through regardless of whether or not that player characters been dropped by the first attack or not in those cases those subsequent attacks become critical hits which does cost two automatic death saving throw failures which means that a monster that has a three attack multi attack drops a player character on the first hit causes two death saves causes two failed death saves on the second and kills the player outright on the third this is why by high-level play healing word is an insufficient way to bring someone back into the fight on the front lines if they're in the back lines sure maybe it's fine but you need a better solution than healing word to bring someone back into the fight in a meaningful way these second spell that we are going to look at today for overrated spells is healing spirit healing spirit is a news well that's been introduced in XANA thar's guide to everything you can find it on page 157 of that book and it is a second level conjuration spell available to druids and rangers incidentally but also a very popular pick for a bard magical secrets when you cast healing spirit a spirit appears in a five-foot space that is within range and any creature that enters that space on their turn for the first time gets 1d6 healing now this spell seems pretty useful in combat as just a quick way of getting some extra healing around it does require concentration to maintain and that lasts for up to one minute but what was very quickly realized within the spell existed is that multiple creatures can move through the healing spirit each turn and that because it lasts for one minute it's really easy to engineer a situation outside of combat where you and your allies are doing some sort of conga line dance through the healing spirit every round for one minute causing everyone in your party to get 10 d6 points of healing or perhaps even more if you cast it using a higher level spell slot in effect healing spirit produces a result that makes it very very easy for only a second level spell slot for every party member to be fully healed to full hit points which seems like a pretty awesome deal but the thing that a lot of people don't take into consideration here is that there are several ways to heal up to full hit points outside of combat namely the short rest which yes it takes one hour but the short rest is designed to very easily replenish all of the hit points to the party members that take it by spending hit dice which is a resource that you have to use during a short rest it doesn't cost you a spell slot at all and a short rest causes all the player characters to regain certain abilities like the fighters action surge the wizard can recover a couple spouse lots the cleric gets some channeled divinity back so you really get this full refresh from a short rest which you don't gain from healing spirit you're just getting hit points one thing to keep in mind here is that this can be a very intense spell that can help the party of a lot if you're looking at six to eight encounters in a given game day the problem is most people don't end up with that many combat encounters usually in our experience you have two to three sometimes maybe four or five combat encounters usually with a short rest somewhere in the middle and then a long rest afterwards using this system you pretty much have everything you need to make sure you are fully healed after one to two combat encounters generally speaking so the idea that healing spirit breaks the game by giving you a way to heal up to full after every combat encounter isn't really in effect if you're playing a game session where you're only gonna have two to three combat encounters and even then healing spirit is amongst many other options like extra healing potions magic items and more which are usually methods to ensure that the party goes into most combat encounters with full hit points anyways without having to spend too many resources so in this way the party is trading a second level spell slot for all that extra healing which is fine as a trade-off but it really isn't changing the capacity of the healing that the party already had access to the only situation that healing spirit really has an advantage in is when the party is really badly beat up but they only have one minute to recover and they don't have an hour to take that full short rest if you're in that dire of a straight where your party really needs the healing badly and you don't have time to take your full rest you've probably already lost a bunch of abilities that you use on a short rest that you need a short rest to get back and without healing word you might have been staring down a player character death or worse even a total party kill I think of the actual play circumstances where healing spirit sweeps in to save the day in a disruptive manner are actually pretty narrow and relatively rare in actual play experience again I can see it being a problem if you're in grind out dungeon crawl where the players have to go through several combat encounters without taking a short rest before they can regain hit points or other abilities but that really doesn't happen that much anymore in modern D&D it tends to be one two or three encounters with a short rest in between and then the long rest I I would even say using the word the times when this spell can be quote-unquote disruptive I don't find it disruptive to stop a total party kill if a player has a spell like this that can stop something like that that is a good use of this spell slot yes it is a low-level spell but if you're in that situation the one time that this is going to come into play as a valid use of the spell outside of combat to gain the party all of their hit points back that was the perfect time to use it and I don't think that's game breaking I think that's just good D&D healing spirit does hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of points of healing potentially but most situations where the party takes that much damage they're gonna be hurting for a shorter long rest anyways the next fell on our list is one of my favorite smells of all time as everybody out there already knows and that is fireball fireball is a great spell it's a third level Eve occasion it's found on page 241 of The Player's Handbook it goes without saying you know what does 86 fire damage and a 20 foot radius it's awesome deck save for half it's great but it's overrated we're not here to talk about if the spell is bad because the spell is fantastic and I love casting fireball I love burning enemies to the ground the thing that gets a lot of people with fireball is that they use it at inopportune moments when other spells would have been a better choice fireball is at its best when each of the targets in the area must make a saving throw or die it's not a fantastic means of softening up an enemy or contributing to the damage race in fact by and large dealing damage with spells to soften up enemies is quite inefficient particularly single target damage dealing spells fireball edges out a lot of spells in this respect and affects a large area but overall I find it's very important to be conservative with damage-dealing spells especially the ones that cost spouse lots fireball does a great amount of damage over a nice area but really if you're just casting fireball after fireball in every encounter there's probably a hundred other things that you could do that would be more useful than casting fireball this is why we think it's an overrated spell is a lot of people spam fireball through every encounter when really just look at your other spells what fireball is great at is busting minions if you have a whole bunch of low-level creatures in front of you fireball is the way to go and that's its prime use yeah also straight up there's a huge number of creatures that resist fireball whether they're immune to fire damage iconic creatures like Devils and Dragons are just completely unaffected by the spell so making it your absolute go-to is probably a recipe for disappointment and I have seen many erstwhile pyromancers load up on fireball and many other direct damage spells such as scorching ray disintegrate chromatic orb chain lightning and more and wind up a little bit disappointed because they ended up in a party with a ranger or a fighter that uses sharpshooter and crossbow expert who is consistently dealing very high amounts of damage round / round the misconception here is that a lot of people set out with their spell casters to be the biggest damage dealers on the table and that's not often the case and fireball is kind of wearing the crown of one of the coolest damage dealing spells out there a better option would be to look at battlefield control spells and how you can use those in combat keep fireball in your back pocket for those moments that it's gonna make the most impact in general when I'm playing a spell caster I'm okay with leaving the big damage dealing to the marshal characters the barbarians the fighters the paladin's the robes and the Rangers they do great dependable reliable damage round / round but my spell slots are a precious resource and I've got better things to do with them then chipping away a couple points of damage there's a time in a place where it's needed to throw down and smell casters can do some really impressive things and if you find the opportunity to take a foe out of the fight by dealing damage to them do it but you might be a little bit disappointed if it's your go-to strategy speaking of dealing damage and particularly archery our next overrated spell goes out to Swift quiver a fifth level transmutation spell available exclusively to Rangers the swift quiver spell allows you to cast it on yourself so that you can take a bonus action to take two shots with your bow this means that while Swift quiver is in effect a character with the extra attack class features such as a ranger can make for ranged attacks per turn which is pretty impressive output as a fifth level spell for a ranger it comes on a little bit late but is a decent spell for its level where people tend to get a little bit overzealous with Swift quiver though is by picking it up as a bard with your magical secrets at level 10 particularly a college of Valor bard that gains the extra attack class feature what's important here is that when the bard takes this spell they have to be 10th level by the time they get it and a lot of people will also multi class into Fighter creating this level 12 or 13 character that finally gets to make 4 attacks on their turn using the Swift quiver spell a lot of people on the internet claim that this is the ultimate Archer we disagree I think the build comes on far too late to be significant by that time a fighter or a ranger who's invested in things like crossbow expert and sharpshooter is a really really effective damage dealer the cool perk here with the bard picking this up as a magical secret is that they get to do all the other cool bard things in between but Swift quiver is a concentration spell so while it's on many of those cool barred spells that have a way bigger impact in my opinion than Swift quiver are basically shut off and not available to you you're now transformed into a martial character so the idea here is that a bard will use their spell slots to cast Swift quiver making them an exceptional Archer if you wanted to play an exceptional Archer there are other options out there if you're playing a bard there are much better ways to use your spell slots then using them to cast Swift quiver even if you wanted to deal damage like you can take animate objects which is on the bard spells you don't even need to burn one of your magical secrets to do it and we've got a whole episode where we sing the praises of how much damage that spell can deal if you're gonna then pick up say crossbow expert and sharpshooter on your way to there as well you're really missing out on some of the other awesome feats or ability score increases that could make your bard more useful as you're getting to that point for me in general this kind of highlights a big problem that I have with the notion of character builds particularly ones that take several levels and require a fair amount of multi classing before they come online you spend so much time playing Dungeons and Dragons to get per level 10 if you have to wait that long to do the thing your characters good at if you've been planning your entire character around that I don't know I I that's just something that I don't think is a good practice I think it's a way over it it's fine for a one-shot but that's not for me I think that that's yeah if I was jumping into to somebody's 1-shot level 12 campaign or something for one night I might make a bard with Swift quiver who is an excellent Archer that might be a fun build but if we're playing in a multi-year campaign and I spend half of that campaign building up this character just so that I'm good at archery I could have been doing a lot of other fun things I'll also point out that if you grab haste crossbow expert and sharpshooter you get the results in a third level spell is it a good spell yes yeah is it the be-all end-all of creating the best archer out of your card no yeah I actually don't even know if it's a good spell I don't even know if I would use it at all I think that a ranger kind of a ranger might but I think you've got a lot of really good options as a high-level ranger yeah your concentration I think that there's a reason why Swift quiver is on the Ranger spell list alone and it is a viable option for a ranger even though it's competing with some other great spells that Rangers have access to the idea here that it should be taken by other classes though doesn't really makes a lot of sense to me we're gonna be very Canadian for a moment and apologize in advance for our next overrated spell the reason why we're picking this spell is because of the reputation it has it is not because either of us think it is a bad spell it is actually both on our lists of some of our favorite spells that can be cast in fact unequivocably it is simultaneously the best spell in Dungeons and Dragons and the most overrated spell in the game its wish it is a ninth level conjuration spell available to sorcerers and wizards it can be cast using only your action and verbal components and it can be used to create almost any effect you can imagine that's pretty powerful any effect that you can imagine does include some DM discretion here on what sort of things you are allowed the most common use of the wish spell is to duplicate the effects of another spell of eighth level or lower this is very good use for the wish spell and will give you access to some spells that take a very long time to cast but allow you to do it instantly and again it allows you to access spells that aren't available to your class so you can have sorcerers create using wish to create a contingency or wizards to wish before the resurrection of a fallen Ally what's really special about wish as well is that it bypasses the need for material components for the spell the casting time and any other requirements so you can do fantastic things like wish for a clone or create a simian Cockrum without needing to supply the expensive material components which can also be used to wish for things outside of the spell list you can undo recent effects you can warp the reality around you you can create objects you can heal your party up to full there's a lot of options presented for how to use the wishbone you might even create any sort of thing that you might want to wish for your imagination is the limit here and that means the spell is pretty limitless except that when you use wish to cast an effect that is not limited to a spell of eight level or lower there's a one in three chance you will never be able to cast the spell again the fact that you have a one in three chance of never being able to cast the wish spell again means that players are really reluctant to use the wish spell in this way this means that wish is basically regulated to reproducing the effects of spells of eight level or lower and well there's some really amazing candidates for this use such as simulacrum clone contingency or casting spells with really really long cast times beyond that it kind of functions like this emergency card that you can use to get whatever you needed in that moment and in that way what I've seen time and time again is players that are high level characters that have this ninth level spells lot they have wish prepared they end up leaving wish on cast because they're waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it that never happens what's the point of having a ninth level spell slot if you're not going to use it the ninth level spell shot is one of the most exciting things to obtain in the game and the ninth level spells are exciting to cast if you're concerned about losing wish forever why did you take that spell it's one of those catch-22s which is kind of an interesting decision but is very much understated in the actual play of wish and it's one that you don't realize until the spell is right there in front of you yes players can go off on a whim and cause all sorts of disruptive things with the spell but I find that when actually confronted with the wish spell most players are just so hesitant to use it that it makes me wish it wasn't on the spell list so they would use one of their other awesome ninth level spells like meteor swarm or true polymorpha or prismatic wall and instead they end up leaving it they're never using their ninth level spell and they might as well multi-class at 16th level and done something else because they never use their ninth level spell they're waiting for the perfect opportunity to use wish and now that Monte has wished for that spell to be removed he can't cast the spell again this has been our look at the five most overrated spells in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition we hope that you keep a clear head when you cast these spells we tried to take a measured and fair look at all these spells but there are a lot of spells in the game that people tend to lose their minds over and think that they're a bigger problem than they actually are if you disagree with us and still think these spells are really big problem especially if you ban them at your table we'd love to hear why in the comments below or if you think there's other spells that are equally overrated tell us about it too and if you want to see us casting a bunch of spells you can check out our live stream dungeons of Drakon Hinde the campaign airs every Tuesday night at 6 p.m. Eastern Time on twitch.tv slash dungeon underscore deeds now with all this talk about spells you may want to brush up on your spells and spell casting which we have a video for right up over here and we've been going through many of the spells and fifth edition D&D and analyzing them in our series over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 380,330

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book, spells, fireball, wish, healing word, healing spirit, swift quiver

Id: sZ52KNFDhT8

Length: 26min 13sec (1573 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 31 2019