Seven Super Effective Spell Combos in D&D 5e

this week's episode of our show has been sponsored by the deck of many and their amazing big bad booklet series this booklet is a monthly release that includes all the information lore imagery and stat blocks that you need to run an epic boss monster in 5th edition available as both a digital print and play and in hard copy this month's release features the god of kings a terrible entity in prison in a stone prison for their attempt to try to take over the divine pantheon every monthly release has a print and play pdf and all the reference cards that you need to role play and run an incredible epic boss battle at your game table so check it out in the description below or head to bigbadbooklet.com to sign up now and now onto this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guides for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are talking about seven super effective spell combinations that your character can use in dungeons and dragons fifth edition these are combinations involving two spells usually one that requires concentration and one that does not that you can use to gain an advantage in any combat or adventuring situation the spell combos we're looking at today are pretty simple to pull off and widely available to a lot of different classes and mostly low level we'll we will be looking at a couple higher level spell combos but mostly they're going to be able to be cast by anybody who's level 10 or lower these spell combinations are excellent to use as a player but they won't give your dungeon master too much of a headache and in fact dms these are some nice tricks to pull over on your players as well there's lots to discuss so let's get rolling the first spell combination that we're looking at which is a spell combination for all you clerics out there and we are calling it ring the bell it is the combination of toll the dead and spiritual weapon this one is a great way for your claire to contribute some extra damage in the midst of a combat while maintaining concentration on whatever their big spell is the combination is pretty simple you use your bonus action to cast spiritual weapon to attack an enemy and then you use your main action to cast the cantrip toll the dead on that same enemy hopefully you got a little bit of damage in on that enemy with spiritual weapon so you can be rolling d12s for toll the dead instead what's great about this combination is that these are two spells that are already widely loved by most cleric players and the best part about spiritual weapon is that it doesn't require your concentration this leaves it open to be paired with something like bless or spirit guardians to amp it up even further but it's a tried and true concept to bring to the battlefield of combining these two spells to amp up the amount of damage that you're doing at the start of combat as a cleric well this combination works really really well as the bread and butter for any cleric wizards are not to be outdone be sure to pack along your dragon kibble this fantastic combination of find familiar and dragon's breath this works very very simply your arcane familiar as a wizard can normally do lots of cool things in combat like take the help action but it can't attack it can still take other actions though and the dragon's breath spell once you cast it on a willing creature they gain the ability to take a special action where they get to exhale or spew a 15 foot cone of draconic fury dealing one of several different elemental damage types to creatures that fail dexterity saving throws you're familiar can use this action so by feeding your familiar some dragon kibble they'll be able to fly in over top of your enemies spew acid on them which end it comes out of is up to you well you merely cast some other cantrips or other spells helping your allies out in battle the other awesome thing here is that this works exceptionally well with flying familiars flying familiars can soar over top of a group of enemies and rain down on them the dragon's breath attack giving them a diameter of 15 feet so it's not the biggest area of effect but it's a nice little touch to add to a familiar that's going to output a bit of extra damage and take care of a group of smaller enemies the range on dragon's breath isn't long it's 15 feet but that's enough to keep your familiar out of arm's reach of any melee attacks that your enemies might have the next combo that we're looking at does require either a nature domain cleric or possibly a bit of multi-classing or the magic initiate feat this is one that we are calling cool whip which is the combination of thorn whip and spirit guardians now spirit guardians is one of our favorite spells to take in general if you have the option to take it it creates a damaging aura around your character creatures that enter the area or start their turn there take 3d8 damage they can make a wisdom saving throw to half that damage but either way they're taking some damage when they get into your area of effect one thing to bear in mind with spirit guardians is that enemies don't take the damage if you move and bring them into the area if they don't take the damage to their start of their turn or unless they enter the area when you move over an enemy and thus put them in the area they don't take damage from that that's where thorn whip comes into play thorn whip allows you when you hit a creature with it to pull it 10 feet towards you the goal here is not to pull the enemies right up to you but instead just into the area of effect of your spirit guardians now they take the damage when you pull them in and they take the damage again at the start of their turns if you're really lucky and you have an ally also around there that now can engage that enemy so that they can't move up to you on your next turn you simply move away and pull them again and you continue this until they die and if they do die you just start it again with another enemy speaking of thorny situations druids and ragers out there might want to consider the combination of using some of their own spike and thorn themed spells particularly the combination of spike growth plus plant growth this is a second level spell and a third level spell and what you may not have noticed about plant growth is that it is a spell that does not require your concentration spike growth however does so the idea here is to create an area of a spike growth and then layer plant growth on top of that now one of the things that might require a little bit of dna interpretation here is that the plants that you conjure with spike growth cannot necessarily be the ones that you magically alter with plant growth so you do need a natural area such as an area of grass or wildlands to execute this combo in but here's the interesting effect from this not only do enemies face the difficult terrain of the spike growth as well as the damage caused from moving through that area plant growth doesn't create difficult terrain it creates an area where one foot of movement costs four feet of movement so a creature's movement is halved by difficult terrain and it is also now facing the additional cost of the extremely slowed movement by the plant growth what it really comes down to here is whether your dungeon master interprets this combination as being additive or multiplicative if it's additive then a creature needs six feet of movement for every one foot they move thus to move a five foot square is going to cost them 30 feet of movement the entirety of a normal creature's movement if it's multiplicative then in this case we can interpret this as one foot requiring eight feet of movement basically immobilizing creatures that are in this area depending on how you interpret it and the whole time they're going to be taking damage pretty brutal area to have to trudge through if you're in the midst of a wilderness encounter the field of thorns as we're calling it is going to stop enemies in their tracks stop them from chasing after you and if they continue to pursue you they're just going to have to trudge through this field of thorns taking damage the entire time and another thing to keep in mind is that there's no saving throw against this so unless the creatures that you're targeting with this area have some form of teleportation or can fly they're stuck there and considering that this is a combo that you can pull off at fifth level it means that there's not a lot of enemies at that level that are going to be able to do much against this it can be a really debilitating combo for all of you rangers out there and finally because the spell doesn't create any sort of obscuring mist or anything that blocks line of sight you can pelt them with ranged attacks the whole time maybe that makes it a little bit less effective against an enemy who also has ranged attacks but considering that they're stuck there and you just get to keep shooting them and there's no there's nothing here like webb where they can roll to break out of anything they're just stuck just like field of thorns uses natural terrain to really make it come to life the next combo that we're looking at also requires a bit of tricky terrain situations as well as careful planning on the caster's part if you're near by a body of water or in an enclosed space that has water in it more specifically you can use what we're calling undertow this is the combination of control water and water breathing the idea here is that you cast water breathing on you and your party before you engage in combat and then when the enemies are in the room and there's a pool of water nearby you cast control water to raise the level of the water thus submerging the entire room drowning your victims and you get to breathe your way to safety this is a startlingly brutal combination that i inflicted on kelly and a few of our other players in one of our recent drackenheim games whereas the dm was using enemies that naturally could breathe underwater in a sewer environment where simply rose the level of the water flooding the entire room and thus the players had to break the concentration on the spellcaster concentrating on control water otherwise they were going to drown so if you know that you were going into an aquatic environment or a dungeon that has flooded elements particularly a sewer dungeon or any sort of underwater environment or just a dungeon in general that has water features to it you can use the flood feature of control water to raise that water level up magically and if you've used the ritual water breathing on your party beforehand and there's no reason not to the water breathing effect lasts for 24 hours after you finish the ritual you basically have a game win on your hands right there the key element to really make this combo work is that you need to have a source of water that is not outdoors if you're outdoors and you raise the water level then your enemies are just going to be swimming around and can go to the surface for air but if you're in an underground environment or somewhere that has a ceiling it becomes much more dangerous that said we've seen control water completely dismantle combat encounters that were happening on boats or on rafts or on bridges so it's definitely one of those unexpected spells that water tends to be a terrain feature that adds a lot of interesting dynamicism and features in many many combat encounters and people don't tend to think about it as something dangerous until the druid busts out control water so we've introduced some fun combos now for clerics wizards and druids but i think it's time for the bar to take center stage and deliver a face melting solo this combination of spells actually takes a couple turns to lay down but i love it and to me the mental image of the bar executing these songs in order kind of strikes my guitar hero vibes the spells in question here are the very low level spell bane the much higher level fifth level spell synaptic static and the bardic standby vicious mockery and the combo works quite simply you lay down your opening riffs with bane debuffing your enemies so that they they have to subtract a d4 roll from their attack rolls and saving throws and then you hit them with the guitar solo in the form of synaptic static which shatters their minds with psychic damage and also causes another d6 penalty to their attack roles and now you hit them while they're down by hitting them with vicious mockery for some more psychic damage and disadvantage on their next attack rolls on subsequent rounds the end result of this is that your enemies will be rolling minus 1 d4 minus 1 d6 on their attack rolls that they're making with disadvantage good night springfield there will be no encore that's a tough act to follow but like any good song this takes a little bit of time to set up you will have to build this over several turns but a bard who's sitting on the back lines constantly debuffing the enemies each step of this is going to help your whole team out so casting bain is going to be removing that d4 which is actually going to help you land synaptic static so even though this is taking three rounds every step of the way is adding a lot to contributing to the battle talk about the perfect harmony of spells the only thing you got to watch out for with this one is that you don't hit a bad note because enemies do get saving throws to shake out a synaptic static and bane the other thing that you might want to watch out for is that wizard with terrible taste in music that shuts you down with counterspell now talking about counterspell it's a spell that i both love and hate i love it when i have counterspell i hate it when my enemies have counterspell and that brings us to our final combo which is the combination of globe invulnerability and counterspell this ends up being the perfect way to automatically win a wizard duel now one of the important notes about counterspell is that it doesn't target the spell itself it targets the caster so if your caster can't be targeted or can't be seen or otherwise counterspell can't be used against them then that's going to create a problem the final point about counterspell is that it has a range of 60 feet so even besides this combo one thing to keep in mind is that a lot of other spells have a much larger range fireball has a range of 150 feet if you're standing 150 feet away you can't get counterspelled but not all combats take place in a wide open area and sometimes you're forced into a position where you are much closer to the other spellcasters if you are worried about overcoming a group of enemy spellcasters who are going to be packing counterspell the ace in your hole is globe of invulnerability global vulnerability is quite simple it's a six level spell that once you cast it spells of a lower level are blocked within the 10-foot radius surrounding you you can't be affected by these spells you simply cast global vulnerability 60 feet away from whoever is able to cast counter spell or before combat and you walk in and start throwing your own spells like a boss because they can't counterspell you now global invulnerability is in place they can't even dispel it either because global invulnerability blocks to spell magic this is the highest level combo that we're looking at today with globe of invulnerability being a six level spell but it is a very underrated spell that pretty much every wizard should take yeah and you can then use counterspell yourself while you are in the global vulnerability to block any other spells or effects that your enemies may want to put into play thus counteracting that classic they counterspelled my counterspell type of thing no you just win that war by laying down globe and vulnerability and making sure that they never get another spell in for the rest of the battle so this has been a look at seven super effective spell combos in dungeons and dragons fifth edition we've been taking a look at a lot of different spell combinations and we have more videos planned but we'd love to hear about your favorite spell combinations in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters from both kelly and i a big thank you to everyone in our patreon community for your continued support in making the work we do here on youtube possible if you enjoy what we do here please consider joining our communities on patreon by following the links in the description below and don't forget to check out our live play shadows of drakenheim which is tuesday nights at 6pm eastern at twitch.tv slash dungeon underscore dudes you can find all the previous episodes of that campaign right up over here and you can hear much more from kelly and i talking about all the awesome spells in dungeons and dragons 5th edition 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: 269,876

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: 2t64EEUeNCc

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020