Most Broken Spells in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

few things are better in a game of dungeons and dragons than casting a big powerful game-changing spell i mean seriously what's more satisfying than beating a big scary monster or slaying a dragon in d5e with the smart powerful spell looking down at your sheet and seeing that perfect answer to get you and your party out of a tight spot in that moment of anticipation after you announce what spell you're casting waiting with baited breath to see if the dungeon master says the save has been failed or not it's exciting and spell casting has never been a more integral part of the game of dungeons and dragons as it has been with 5th edition but not all spells are created equal no matter how much the game designers try to balance out everything with different options by giving them different spell levels and play testing over and over some spells are just better some might even be considered overpowered spells or broken spells busted spells etc and that's what i wanted to take a look at today just a few spells in dungeons and dragons 5e that are the most broken the spells that when you compare them to the others in the game they just seem almost too good and for all you players out there get ready to take notes and for all you dungeon masters out there sorry not sorry oh and as a final note these aren't in any particular order these are just very good busted spells they're not exactly ranked from five down to the best one so there's that first up we have one of my favorite spells in d5e but one that i've only had a chance to see implemented a handful of times due to its high level and that's the seventh level spell reverse gravity from the player's handbook this spell is so ridiculously broken and to be honest kind of hilarious when used and when i say broken i mean broken you get to just upheave gravity in a 50 foot radius that's 100 foot diameter or 100 feet across for those of you playing at home and there is get this absolutely zero your opponents can do about it there isn't a save i mean technically there's a save but let me explain the deck save to not be yeted 100 feet straight up into the air is if and only if a creature in the area of effect has something anchored to the ground to attempt to even grab onto if they don't yeah they get heated do not pass go do not collect 200 and they slam into however high the ceiling is taking fall damage in reverse when the spell ends they fall back to the earth taking that fall damage again but we're not done it gets even more broken rules as written why did i say written instead of just like written anyways here's the deal if you cast this and say a field a mountain pass at the beach maybe basically outdoors the spell has an additional line that a lot of people overlook quote if an object or creature reaches the top of the area without striking anything it remains there oscillating slightly for the duration end quote what does that mean it means you can kill the tarasque with it rules as written albeit slowly it means that whatever gets hung up at the top is just stuck there no save can't fall back down until the spell ends or concentration is broken and you and your party can just shoot whatever you catch in your gravity trap until it dies but wait it gets even worse now i'll say what i'm about to say is rules is written the i should my players actually pull this would 100 rule differently than strictly rules is written but as we look at that line again you'll notice something it doesn't mention anything about flying that's right it doesn't say well if a creature flying through magical means like on a broom of flying or something or if it has wings or if it flies or anything like that that it can well oh well then it'll make a whatever whatever check to try to orient itself in the new gravitational pull and try to fly upside down or in reverse or whatever the spell is simply an if then statement if a creature is in the area check if it can't grab something quote anchored to the ground end quote and if it quote reaches the top of the area without striking anything end quote then it quote remains there oscillating slightly for the duration so yes rules as written if you see a big bad scary ancient cr-23 dragon flying right at you in your party you can totally hate that bad boy and laugh as you just fire bolt it to death reverse gravity is totally broken yeah now i just want to see somebody use this on like a a huge group of guards and just eat like 50 dudes instantly into the air and then just drop them back down for 10 d6 each and be like uh yeah i'm the king now you all work for me next up we have a spell that is outright busted with tasha's mind whip from tasha's cauldron of everything tasha's mind whip is so deviously good it has single-handedly changed how dungeon masters have to build encounters now when their players take this spell this spell can turn even the biggest scariest fight against a sprawling terrifying monster into a cakewalk as this spell attacks not the monster's hit point pool but something far more fragile their action economy we've talked about it before action economy is king in dungeons and dragons 5th edition and this spell at just a meager level 2 can and will dominate fights in 5e by smothering npcs in a crushing manner stealing from them the one thing that they are already starved of i mean let's look at the incredible and dangerous cr-8 hydra a fifth level party staring down at a five-headed monster something that is actually capable of killing a party member due to its number of attacks able and willing to pile in automatic crit fails on death saves when it drops somebody isn't worried in the least if they have this spell why would they be i mean all they have to do is cast it a few turns back to back and laugh as the barbarian and the rest of the party take turns moving up recklessly attacking and extra attacking and then moving back more than 10 feet and what can you do as the dungeon master you get no reactions so you can't opportunity attack them back when they move back you get only one action or bonus or move so you have to move back up to the barbarians so you might be able to attack them next turn the wizard casts mind whip again and the barbarian recklessly attacks once again and then moves back 10 feet a few casts of this level 2 spell and the fight won't even be close tasha's mind whip is an absolute bomb and can and often will 100 shut down any encounter against a single deadly enemy if you can force a dragon to choose between flying around and using its breath weapon because it can only do one that's incredibly powerful and any single enemy that can be kited like a stunned mmo mob will get crushed by the party easily making this spell well deserving of the title broken op and almost too good to even be in the game and by the way i have two wizards in my party right now that take turns casting the spell i'm not mad at them or anything but when i take my dm hat off and look at this with my game design hat on i just laugh at how unbelievably broken it is all right guys real quick before we jump into the next spell i just want to give a little shout out to the taking 20 discord community uh if you guys are looking for more people that want to talk about gaming dm advice find a group we have some looking for group channels and looking for player channels uh i highly recommend you jump in the taking 20 discord link is in the description to this video so yeah come hang out with us that's it next spell next up on our list we have dominate person or as i like to affectionately call it the d d imperius curse it's always funny to me to compare different fantasy worlds and how they each perceive magic compared to dungeons and dragons in the world of harry potter they only have three unforgivable curses the killing curse pretty self-explanatory the cruciatus curse also known as the torture curse and then out of all the things that people can do with magic starting fire throwing fireball transmogrifying animals and presumably people into flatware and on and on but no the last unforgivable go straight to jail curse in that world is a spell in which you completely control someone and their actions aka the fifth level d d spell dominate person just for the record and to get ahead of those comments who are are ready to try and and correct me here dominique person is not charm person or suggestion okay dominate person absolutely allows you to have your target just kill themselves if you simply make them they will only try and preserve themselves when you are not directly controlling them so for the 100 or so people out there who didn't realize that this does actually work differently than those other spells and are ready to tell me it doesn't work that way now you know put it lightly this spell is busted the amount of things that you can have someone do with it are infinite some fun and horrific ideas might be to have a guard walk over and hand his sword to the prisoners while kneeling and laying perfectly still for them or the next time a monarch comes out to their balcony to give a speech to their subjects they might you know just throw themselves to their death oh yeah it's a sorcerer spell and it's absolutely meta magic capable like distant spell that wasn't a very good sentence you can use metamagics on it that was the point or speaking of metamagics here's one even worse the next time you see an archer and a fighter humanoid pair like you know maybe a pair of drow assassins or something whatever who cares you can just twin the spell and then have the archer turn and hold out their hands for the fighter to just hack off and on and on and you get this spell at level nine that's not even halfway through a full 20 level campaign although those are rare the damage you could inflict on literally any civilization is hard to fathom did i mention this spell is not a touch spell that's the part i really can't wrap my head around like do you know how scary that would be in real life literally anyone in a crowd that got too close could make any politician do or say anything they wanted is your target more than 60 feet away no problem just mind control any guard seriously just any guard and have them walk the extra 25 feet to your target and catch them by surprise dead and the last thing on this spell that i'll say is this i might emphasis on might be willing to use these ridiculous busted spells on my players via an npc like the spell reverse gravity but dominate is so busted that doing that would just fall clearly into the realm of off limits in my opinion i mean can you imagine how a smart villain would use this against a party cast second level invisibility sneak up to their camp while one party members on watch move 60 feet away cast dominate person on the fighter and have said fighter cudrass the cleric by slicing their throat maybe the other party members wake up but if not you know rinse and repeat have the target willingly fail to save on a recast if they didn't do it fast enough then off themselves because hey they've read a few books before and leaving survivors particularly big powerful strong adventures is you know really dumb so just wipe the whole party yeah do that to your party and see how eager they are to roll up new characters for your next campaign if the dm using a single spell that isn't even six level against a group of players is enough to both end the campaign immediately and the friendship between said dm and players the spell is probably busted all right the fourth spell on our list of broken spells is it's healing word i've talked about healing word uh controversially in the past and years later not a thing has changed healing world this word is still unbelievably broken due to how the death and dying mechanics in d5e are written simply put by giving players a hard cap of zero when they take huge amounts of damage and allowing players or npcs for that matter to be completely effective at one hit point makes the range and flexibility of healing word simply so much better than literally any other type of low level healing and honestly often times better than even high level healing yeah and i want to say i did see a lot of people arguing that well healing word didn't do enough healing and that players would just drop right over again right but who cares there's no penalty to future death saves if the player is back on the ground and bleeding out all they need is that single point of healing and they can stand up and attack again additionally that particular point of contention doesn't take into account the alternative choices for healing with a level 1 spell slot compared to healing words is cure wounds really going to prevent that player from dropping again where healing word would fail no but now the cleric can still cast sacred flame the druid can still cast firebolt and the bard can still inspire someone shoot two arrows or viciously mock to give disadvantage to that opponent oh and one thing that really made me laugh the last time we talked about healing word was the sheer volume of people that said oh well just attack the downed players before they save cody uh which to say is oversimplifying the solution to counter this spell's raw strength would be an understatement there's no context of how hurt the npcs or npc might be by the time that they actually get to drop a barbarian how many attacks they have left the fact that they most likely used at least one of their attacks to drop the pc in the first place or the fact that the party with healing work could definitely go between the npc and the down players death saves not to mention if the party had more than one member with healing word how high the odds then become that they could get off a bonus action heel from a safe distance while still attacking the probably quite injured monster or npc the bottom line is the healing word is so incredibly efficient for preventing player death at a party with three members capable of casting it will always always outlive their counterparts that do not now if you are running any form of home rules with exhaustion levels when you drop or death saves that linger or whatever okay fine suddenly now healing word becomes much much worse but if you're playing rules as written healing word is simply a bomb and by the time you reach fifth level the cost of a level one spell slot to immediately save a party member's life towards the end of a combat is already beginning to feel a little free and by level 10 you're not really doing anything with those level 1 spell slots anyway so it really begins to feel easy to oh a level 1 spell slot that's nothing healing word in a rules as written game is easily one of the most broken spells in dungeons and dragons fifth edition seven years later nothing's changed and finally the last spell on our list of the best dungeons and dragon spells that are broken busted and overpowered is slow as we come full circle with more focus on action economy there are a lot of incredible spells that you might argue deserve this last spot in the top five like counterspell wish banishment teleport mental prison or even levitate yes levitate when used offensively is busted for sure but slow is just too good once it comes online as an option to take as a level 3 spell this spell would still be considered good great even excellent as a level 6 or level 7 spell but at just level 3 it easily slides into one of the most broken and overpowered spells in the game it's one and only drawback is something that you can still easily work around and that's the slow has an area effect of a 40 foot cube even that's quite large but it's not just an aoe effect it's an aoe effect that lets you hand pick your targets and it gets better it doesn't even let you exclude up to three or four creatures it just straight up lets you include up to six creatures in the cube when you cast this spell and for those targets what does it do well it halves their speed gives them a minus two to ac which if you flipped it would almost be like a blessed to every member in your party not just three it penalizes their deck saves like a bane spell would and eliminates their reactions immediately like a shocking grasp effect that lasts one minute potentially it steals an action or bonus action every turn and regardless of how many attacks the target normally takes now they only get one so even the mighty hydra that we talked about earlier we go from five six or seven attacks down to just one oh and if the target tries to cast a spell or something there is a 50 50 chance that the spell now takes two turns to cast and if the target can't cast a spell on both turns it fails i mean wow i get that there is a save every turn i understand that but even so this spell particularly because of its aoe size and the ability to cast it in the middle of your party's fighter rogue barbarian or paladin and not worry about them getting hit in the aoe is candidly busted action economy is king in 5e and if you start taking away three to five attacks off the board per round while simultaneously lowering your opponent's ac making them easier follower for your fellow party members is going to win fights that might otherwise be deadly encounters for your party slow just wins combat and when you see how cheap and efficient it is to cast its value never wanes as the campaign progresses into the upper echelon of levels in fact it does the opposite because monsters with multi-attack with three or even four attacks are more and more prevalent in higher level cr monsters the spell actually becomes more efficient as the campaign continues there isn't even a way to upcast it because there's no need to you just get the full six creatures right away with this level three spell there is no doubt that slow is absolutely deserving of being included as one of the most overpowered spells in all of dungeons and dragons fifth edition okay so now i'm gonna pass it over to you guys in the community what did i miss here what got left off this list that deserved to be included in these top five i'll tell you i personally narrowed the list down to 13 and then cut that 13 down to five and there was some really good stuff that got left off counterspell wish i mentioned those earlier haste isn't on this list and there were a few more that i think were kind of really good even excellent but nothing that i thought oh man that's so much better than everything else so i'm curious to see what you guys think i missed here i want to give a huge shout out to all of the incredible patrons over at welcomeadventures.com guys thank you so much for all of your wonderful support it's because of you that i get to continue doing this so for that i am incredibly grateful if you guys like what i do here you want to support more content like this and snag some rewards for yourself welcome adventures.com is a great way to help to help out the channel i say that right to help out the channel if this is your first time here and you love role playing games as much as i do or maybe you're learning to love role playing games as much as i do i'd love to have you subscribe i put out videos on gm tips player tips tutorials and more so if that sounds like something you might be interested in hit that subscribe button down below and come join us thank you guys so much for watching my name is cody and may your games be filled with awesome memories and even better friends i'll catch you guys next time you

Channel: Taking20

Views: 153,038

Keywords: Taking20, Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Dungeons and Dragons 5e, Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons 5e, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, DnD, DnD 5e, D&D, D&D 5th Edition, D&D 5e, Dungeons Master Tips, Best Dungeons and Dragons, Best D&D Spells, Best Spells in Dungeons and Dragons, Best Spells, Best 5th edition spells, Underrated spells, Most broken Spells 5e, Best D&D spells, Best dnd spells, best dnd wizard spells, best spells in 5e, bard spells

Id: V0-bcj8w370

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021