Seven Deadly Debuff Spells in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

these sinister spells shall SAP the strength from the mightiest monsters and the hardiest heroes today we're looking at seven deadly D buffs for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition [Music] greetings witches and warlocks my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes and today were taking a look at seven deadly debuff spells in Dungeons and Dragons now d buffs are a pretty unique and narrow category of spells in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition they're actually quite rare but there's a few traits that distinguish a debuff spell from say a control spell or a damage dealing spell or a utility spell that we're going to look at in detail today when we talk about debuff spells we're looking at spells that have a numerical decrease to your enemy's ability checks or stats or give you advantage against them or them disadvantage against you in previous editions such as 3rd edition and 4th edition these spells that they're stacking penalties would cause a lot of math and bookkeeping to happen at the table particularly in combat and so they become very rare as a result in addition the concentration mechanic really dials back the number of effects that can be happening at the same time in a combat encounter and may spell casters often have to choose between spells which deal ongoing damage spells which incapacitate or stun or control their foes or create a battlefield control effect and spells which cause debuffs for example a foe incapacitated by hypnotic pattern automatically snaps out the effect if they take any damage on the other hand debuff spells are things that are going to allow you to continue to attack your enemies while giving them a disadvantage or some sort of penalty in that combat this is a great way to reduce the threat a foe represents while you're beating them down or even make it easier to hit or damage that foe in the first place so that further ado this is our list of 7 deadly debuff spells that you can take in your game we haven't ranked these spells in any particular order we're just gonna go through them by their spell level in alphabetical order we've just picked some of our favorites and if you have a different opinion if we've omitted one of your favorites or perhaps you don't think our choices are the best ones let us know in the comments below so with that let's get casting the first spell that we are going to talk about today is Bane Gotham's reckoning Bane is a first level enchantment spell which you can find on page 216 of your players handbook it's available to bards clerics oath of vengeance paladins and warlocks can also pick this up by taking the thief of five fates invocation when you cast Bane you can target up to three enemies and they must make a charisma saving throw if they fail for the next minute and your concentration they have to roll a D for every time that they make an attack role or saving throw and decrease that number from their role now Bane is a first level concentration spell and it's not often a popular choice but we do list it because baby is one of the few ways in the entire game that you can create a penalty to an enemies saving throws and that makes it pretty unique as a debuff spell especially when you need to support the spell casters in your party when your spell casters are dishing out those spells that requires saving throws at your table it actually can be endlessly helpful to have that extra d4 subtracted from your enemies rolls to try to save and can really turn the tides of battle for you it does require a little bit of teamwork to make these things stick and it's no guarantee but if the wizard or sorcerer or druid in your party has a really important spell effect that you need to land having the bard or cleric or paladin cast Bane as a setup can be really really successful one of the other great things about Bane is that the effect lasts as long as your concentration does so there's no way for the creatures to wiggle out of the spell unless they break your concentration or dispel it unfortunately because Bane does require your own concentration and immediately ends if you cast another spell that requires concentration you can't use Bane to impose a penalty for one of your own concentration spells because Bane ends the moment you start casting that spell but you can use it for your other spells like fireball or other one-shot spells that don't require concentration that still require a savings from the next spell that we're gonna talk about today is one of my favorite spells in the whole game actually and that's faerie fire faerie fire is a first level a vocation spell and it's available to bards and druids but also warlocks under the pact of the arch Fae and light domain clerics gain access to it you can find it on page 239 of your players handbook when you cast faerie fire it creates a 20-foot cube and any enemy within that area must make a dexterity saving throw if they fail they're illuminated in light to your choice between blue green or obviously violet which is my go-to choice and those creatures if they were invisible are now visible to you finally any attack role against those creatures has advantage as long as the attacker can see the target now I love faerie fire I like to think of it as a marker light type spell it's a great spell for identifying priority targets and as a first level spell that shuts down invisibility it's an indispensable utility tool and also they don't get additional saving throws against it so the entire time you're concentrating on it they're just illuminated and your whole party can just wail on them with advantage it is one of the easiest and most direct ways to generate party wide advantage on attack roles against a group of enemies it means that the party Bard can lay down the fairy fire well the cleric brings Bane or bless so you get this great teamwork combination happening I find faerie fire to be one of those spells that if I am playing a class that has the option to take it I don't even consider other spells first fairy fire is the first one that I take because for me it's just been so reliable to improve our chances in combat in any situation yeah of course there are gonna be foes with high dexterity saving throws that are gonna pretty easily avoid it but against those slow attackers like fighters and plate mail and Dragons that don't have very good dexterity saving throws but have very high armor class this is an awesome option particularly if you have fighters or Rangers in your party that love using things like sharpshooter and great weapon master they're gonna be your best friend if you cast very fire on their target yeah so if you can take very fire you should take very fire the next spell we're going to talk about is the legendary hex now hex is actually a little bit out of place in this episode because it is more of a personal buff spell for warlocks rather than being a straight-up debuff and it has a component to it that trips up many players because when you hex your target you also get to choose one ability score and you impose disadvantage on ability checks involving that ability score I've seen many players think that you impose disadvantage on saving throws and hex does not do that it's a common mistake and I mean if it did do that that would be it would be much more amazing if it did that yeah but no it's on ability checks but you can still nullify some of the abilities of your enemy by doing this and that can still have a nice impact in battle of course hex is well known for giving your warlock more damage as they pummel that enemy usually with eldritch blast or something like that but the reason why it's making our list of debuff spells is for that little added part where you actually get to give them disadvantage on those ability checks ability checks come up in combat in all sorts of obscure ways they can come up in places such as creatures having to make investigation checks against illusion spells cast by another party you can impose disadvantage on that creatures ability to escape a grapple or a grab or break out of a web spell by giving them disadvantage on their dexterity or strength ability checks in fact if you can get hacks out before the battle starts you might be able to impose disadvantage on an enemy's initiative check because initiative is technically an ability check cool we're gonna throw in a little bonus spell here because we would be remiss not to mention bestow curse stoke curse is a third level necromancy spell and it's available to bards clerics Wizards as well as warlocks via and eldritch invocation as well as both breaker and oath of conquest paladin's you can find it on page 218 if your players can book now unlike hex which is only available to warlocks this one definitely has a much larger range of people who could take it which is why we're mentioning it today and what are the really unique things about bestow curse is that if the target does fail its wisdom savings hero there's a pretty wide list of debuffs that you can impose onto it including like hex disadvantage on ability checks as well as saving throws made with that particular abilities score so if you are looking for your ongoing source of disadvantage on a saving throw the snow curse is going to give it to you but you're gonna have to make it stick in the first place you can also use bestow curse similar to an upgraded hex because it will allow you to do additional damage as well now what are the unique things about bestow curse and why it deserves a special mention in this list is that when bestow curse is cast using a higher-level spell slot its duration is altered from 10 minutes to an hour ultimately getting up to indefinitely if you cast it using a ninth level spell slot what's more when you cast bestow curse using a spell slot a fifth level or higher it no longer requires concentration meaning that bestow curse is a sneaky way to stack debuffs on top of a single target because it does bypass that concentration mechanic when you use a higher level spell slot for it the next spell that we are going to talk about today is heat metal heat metal is a second level transmutation spell which you can find on page 250 of your players handbook it's available to bards druids and Forge domain clerics parts druids and clerics are just bringing those debuffs yeah that's that's really their their big thing and in combat seems to be the buffs and debuffs that's kind of their their role in the party you can cast heat metal using your action and it lasts for up to one minute while requiring your concentration when you cast it you choose one object made of metal that you can see and you cause it to glow red-hot for the duration of the spell any creature in physical contact with that object automatically takes to d8 damage and on consecutive turns you can use a bonus action on your turn to cause this to d8 fire damage to happen again there's no save against that damage that's kind of a big deal here is that if you are wearing if you have an enemy who is wearing plate mail and you heat that metal up unless they're spending the entire combat disrobing they're taking that damage consistently heat metal does include a saving throw to it but it's a little bit tricky in the way that it's implemented and it often works in your favor a creature that's holding the object that you have heated up has to make a constitution saving throw whenever it takes the damage from heat metal or it mustn't drop the object if on the other hand the creature succeeds the saving throw or it doesn't drop the object either because it can't because it's wearing it or because it made the saving throw it then has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks as long as it continues to hold or where that object this is incredible yeah that's a permanent debuff for almost the whole battle in a lot of situations it is a great way to just defang that plate armored fighter that is charging at you because as long as they're wearing that plate now chainmail whatever metal armor they have on its heated up and if they don't take it off and they continue to take damage from heat metal they've got this advantage on attack rolls and ability checks the great thing about heat metal is there's a lot of creative solutions if you have some good players that can work together to add metal into the combat in one instance I was playing a bard who had a crossbow and we were fighting tree ants so on my first turn I fired a bolt into a tree end and on my next turn I cast heat metal on that bolt you could also do things like wrap an enemy in Chains and then cast heat metal on the chains there's so many metal objects lying around in most situations that heat metal can have a lot of creative uses I've also seen instances where players have tried to use heat metal on the fighter sword to get extra fire damage on attacks the spell really isn't set up to use it in that way because the damage happens when you use your bonus action on your turn but throwing that sword into somebody stabbing it into them or even finding some other metal piece on the creature for example heat metal can work on magical objects so if an enemy is wearing a magic ring or a magical amulet that could be the target in which case now that enemy might have a very difficult choice are you gonna throw off your magic ring which is giving you a defensive benefit take off that magical amulet because that's going to continue to cause you damage even though it's very easy to take those objects off really useful spell really creative spell excellent option the next spell that we're gonna talk about today is slow slow is a third-level transmutation spell available to sorcerers wizards order domain clerics as well as circle of the land druids associated with the arctic regions and you can find it on page 277 of your players handbook I believe it's also available to warlocks via the meijer the mind invocation slow has a 120 foot range targets a cube within the range and then within that cube you choose six creatures that have to make wisdom saving throws so it's a very easy to target spell because your allies can be in that area but then you just omit them from the 60 that's also a really good range 120 foot range and a 40-foot cube that's an excellent amount of range on that spell you can you can target anywhere on the battlefield most of the time the creatures make a wisdom saving throw or they are affected by the slow spell for the duration all they do get to repeat the saving throw at the end of each of their turns escaping the effect on a successful saving throw so there are a whole bunch of things that come into play when a creature is affected by slow first of all its movement speed is cut in half and it gets a - - - it's a C and its dexterity saving throws one of the few spells that has a flat - penalty - anything including again a rare penalty - saving throws I also think the - - - AC is super helpful for Jim yeah hitting heavy armies are the only spells in the game with just a flat numerical penalty - a C and saving throws on top of that you can't take reactions and you can either do an action or a bonus action on your turn but not both in addition even if you have spells or abilities or magic items that allow you to make more than one attack as your action you can only ever make one so that five-headed Hydra or the demon with eight arms one attack regardless of all those extra limbs it also has a really big effect on spell casters doesn't it it does because if a spell caster is afflicted by slow when they cast a spell they have to roll a d20 on an 11 or higher the spell doesn't take effect that turn and instead the spell caster must use their action on their next turn to finish casting the spell and if they don't do that the spell is just completely wasted that's a lot of stuff that can really help you out in combat the flat - to the the limited actions that they can take affecting spell caster so that it sometimes takes them two rounds to cast a spell when all of your enemies are moving in slow motion you can run circles around them and just stab them as much as you want while they're trying to slowly move into a position to try to fight back slow is an amazing spell the conditions that it imposes are completely debilitating for those that are suffering under its effects the only saving grace for them is that they do get an opportunity to escape from it at the end of each turn with another wisdom saving throw and wisdom saving throws tend to be a pretty strong one for the creatures that have good ones but a pretty weak one for the creatures that have bad ones so it can be a little swinging in that respect the hardest part for slow is that it is a third-level spell and in my opinion my third-level spell slots are the hardest for me to choose because there are so many good third-level spells so slow does have a bit of a problem here we're choosing it over some of your other options can be a little tough this is because while slow imposes a penalty to virtually everything a creature wants to do in third level spells there are alternatives that will basically stop the creatures from doing that thing entirely you might be able to debilitate a caster from getting a spell off with slow but you could also just counter spell them you might be able to prevent a creature from making five multi attacks but it can't make any attacks at all if it's been incapacitated by hypnotic patterning which is also a wisdom saving throw the key decision point on whether you're going to use counter spell or hypnotic pattern or slow is really going to come down to whether you need to reduce the amount of threat that a monster imposes while you're trying to kill them or whether you want to take them out of the fight entirely with another third level spell overall I'm a little biased I generally gravitate towards hypnotic pattern over slow again they both require concentration so it's difficult to combine them at the same time the other thing is that slow because of its wisdom saving throws even though it's an amazing debuff you're never gonna get slow to work against the boss or a legendary monster because they're definitely gonna use their legendary resistance against the spell it's just too much of a debuff to endure if you are the big bad evil guy there they're almost certainly gonna have a get-out-of-jail-free card for that I think slow is the clearest example of the difficult decision that the concentration mechanic gives you it's a tough choice yeah yeah slow is just a tough choice it's one of those spells that offers such an amazing and butyl effect but because of the concentration mechanic and the fact that they get the wisdom saving throw to escape the effect and ultimately because none of the effects actually completely shut down the creature you have to gauge really carefully whether or not it is the best choice for the encounter the next pal we're gonna be talking about is synaptic static which was introduced in Zanna thar's guide to everything you can find it on page 167 of that book and it's available to bards Wizards warlocks and sorcerers I love this spell so much one thing I love about a lot of the spells in Zanna thar's is it targets intelligence they added a lot of spells that target intelligence and I think that that is something that was missing and synaptic static is kind of the first one that's stuck out to me it's a good spell to target intelligence we like to call synaptic static this psychic fireball although it has a slightly shorter range than the true fireball spell it still affects the same area a 20 foot radius sphere and it does the same amount of damage as fireball but it's 8 D 6 psychic damage it is a fifth level enchantment spell so your damage for the spell slot is not as good but the combination of the psychic damage over fire damage the intelligent saving throw and the extra nasty debuff they get as a parting gift makes this a truly awesome spell targets who fail they're saving throw take all the damage and take a 1 D 6 penalty to their attack rolls their ability checks and Constitution saving throws to maintain concentration on spouts they can make an intelligent saving Carol at the end of their turns to remove the debuff but synaptic static doesn't require your concentration to maintain this means that meaning that each individual enemy has to track whether or not they're still brain scrambled by the synaptic static or not this is just such a Swiss Army knife of the spell you've got awesome damage a concentration free debuff and a wide range of classes that can access it including bards and warlocks no no but psychic damage versus the fireball fire damage like psychic damage is one of the least resisted damages that you can have so you're gonna mess people up with a spell I've seen this spell and combat encounters against groups of lower-level creatures yeah it's just it messes them up and then they're useless if they survive the damage they're pretty useless afterwards and even against higher-level creatures where fire resistance becomes really really common that fifth level fireball spell isn't doing anything to a red dragon but synaptic static is really gonna give them a bad day the last spell we're gonna be talking about today is contagion which did have an errata released for it which kind of changes the way it works a little bit and we're gonna talk about that yeah you can find contagion on page 227 of your players handbook but if you have an earlier printing of the players handbook you pretty much need to disregard most of what it says and go to the errata on the Wizards of the coast website and reread how it's changed because it's really different now contagion is a fifth level necromancy spell it's available to clerics druids warlocks of the undying patron as well as Oathbreaker paladins when you cast contagion you make a melee spell attack against a target within your reach and if you hit the target is now poisoned at the end of each of their turns the target can make a constitution saving throw if they're successful you mark it off and if they fail you also mark it off if the target succeeds they're saving throw three times the spell ends but if they fail three times they're then afflicted with a much worse disease that now lasts for a duration of seven days whether or not the target is afflicted with the disease is actually completely inconsequential to what makes contagion a great spell now what's awesome about this is even if they succeed on those three saving throws this still means that they are instantly poisoned for at least three rounds and while they're poisoned they have disadvantage on attack roles and ability checks poison is a pretty commonly resistant condition it's not gonna work against undead creatures and many creatures like Devils but against everything else contagion offers a pretty inescapable source of disadvantage to creatures attack roles yes so really if you're casting contagion with the hopes of giving them this horrible disease that shouldn't be where your focus is you're looking at three to six rounds of disadvantage on attack roles that you're just throwing at that enemy yeah if you have a legendary monster in front of you giving them that disadvantage and forcing them to maybe blow their legendary resistances to try to get out of the horrible effects that will happen if they fail their roles against contagion this is a great use of this spell against a legendary creature furthermore it doesn't require concentration again giving it that really keen eesh of a debuff spell that will last a long time it this debuff will stick around even against a legendary creature or a big bad with awesome saving throws because all you have to do is land that initial hit and landing an attack role is way easier than getting a saving throw to stick because in general monsters have so many ways to boost up their saving throws to automatically resist spells but they don't have a lot of ways to increase their AC or avoid an attack that hits so contagion this is that for perfect opportunity to use your luck point get your advantage on the attack role get that big bonus stick it and now that dragon is gonna be really way less dangerous because blanket disadvantage on all your attack roles for an entire combat encounter that's because most combat is gonna last three to six rounds anyways even if they have legendary resistance it doesn't go away it stays which makes it great so this has been a look at seven deadly debuff spells in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition if you have some favorite debuff spells that we didn't talk about in this episode let us know about that in the comments below and if you're enjoying our show and want to learn how you can support the channel consider becoming a patron of our work you can find out how by following the links in the description below if you want to see Monty and myself playing D&D you can check out our live play dungeons of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Twitch if you want to catch up with previous episodes we have a playlist of those right up over here and we've got a whole playlist of all the other episodes where we've been discussing the spells and 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons right up 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: 334,931

Rating: 4.9329667 out of 5

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

Id: OCAXGSm4KzE

Length: 27min 26sec (1646 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019