The Five Best Battlefield Control Spells in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

the battlefield is a scene of constant chaos and the winner will be the one who controls that chaos both his own and the enemies we're looking at the five best battlefield control spells in benjamin dragon's fifth edition [Music] welcome my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes and today we're taking a look at the five best battlefield control spells in dungeons and dragons fifth edition these are my favorite kind of spells because a single one of them might be all you need to carry the day in battle now as a spellcaster you're going to have a wide array of spells to choose from but with only a few spell slots and possibly only a few spells known you want to make sure to pick the right ones choosing a flexible range of spells that are widely applicable to a huge range of situations is often more efficient and makes your character more unique because you've got more room to choose those really situational spells that help you survive the crazy situations that your character might come come to face when it comes to battlefield control there are a handful of truly powerful and potent options available to you choosing just a few of these frees up your options for more flexible and diverse choices so that you can respond to a wide range of situations in the chaos of battle so first things first what is battlefield control well for the most part battlefield control is really about dictating where when and how the terms of engagement are met in the middle of a combat encounter when you and your allies take tactical advantage of the battlefield the battle is much more easily won battlefield control spells are ones that hamper your enemy they might block off areas of the battlefield prevent enemies from effectively attacking or maybe even prevent them from taking any action at all battlefield control spells promote effective teamwork once you have the upper hand in battle it's time to take out your enemies one by one many battlefield control spells also require careful use of positioning and a good understanding of target priority this is why using them very effectively in that theoretically potent way requires having a good conversation with your allies that you can figure out the best opportunity to deploy them once you've secured a tactical advantage with battlefield control spells it's often just a matter of mopping up whatever's left and that way the rogue the fighter or the ranger can leverage their great damage dealing capabilities without fear of reprisal and to help out that cleric or paladin in your party sometimes battlefield control can be more effective than healing damage that never happened in the first place doesn't need to be healed up and thus doesn't take out any of your cleric or paladin's valuable healing resources so with battlefield control being one of the most important aspects of any combat encounter we're going to take a look at our five top choices for battlefield control spells it's really important to narrow down a few top choices because one of the things that virtually all of the best battlefield control spells have in common is that almost all of them require concentration this means that only one of them can be in effect at any one time per spellcaster so it's very difficult to combine several of them together if you can because you've got more than one spellcaster you can get some really amazing results so for our list we've restricted ourselves to spells of fifth level and lower and we've chosen one from each levels one through five the reason for this is that the very high level battlefield control spells can only really be deployed once per adventuring day because the very limited nature of the high level spell slots we really roll on to focus in on those lower level options that are available earlier in your adventuring career and that you can use across multiple combat encounters so let's get rolling the first spell we're going to be looking at today is tasha's hideous laughter it is a first level enchantment and it's available to bards wizards and warlocks of the great old one you can find the full spell description on page 280 of your player's handbook and this spell is a weaponized joke when you cast it you choose one target that you can see within 60 feet and they must make a wisdom saving throw or fall prone and incapacitated laughing their butt off what's amazing about this spell is not only um is it great for just flavor text of causing an enemy to roll on the floor laughing but it completely takes that enemy out of the battle the only thing they can do is crawl while they're laughing under the effects of the spell they can't stand up and they're incapacitated so they can't take any actions they get a saving throw to escape the spell at the end of each of their turns where they can repeat the wisdom saving throw or if they take any damage they can make the saving throw again with advantage however because tasha's hideous laughter is a first level spell it is as good at level one as it is at level 20 at taking a foe out of the fight as long as that foe has an intelligence score of 5 or higher they can be affected by it which is could be a lot of enemies what is amazing about this is that a lot of spells lose their potency as you level up and your first level spell slots become less and less useful at higher levels but if you have tash's hideous laughter in your roster it means that you have a great use for your first level spell slots all the way through your game tasha's hideous laughter is the gold standard by which every other single target incapacitating spell must be measured this includes spells like hold person hold monster polymorph autos irresistible dance power word stun tasha's hideous laughter can punch far above its weight class and competes with all of these spells in terms of its ability to take an opponent out of the fight yes higher level spells might enable you to beat up that enemy while they're still incapacitated but if all you want to do is get someone out of the way while you beat up their friends tasha's hideous laughter should probably be your first one that you consider keep in mind that the spell does require concentration and if you're going for a stealthy approach it's maybe not the best option because having your enemy rolling on the floor laughing is going to alert everybody else to that shenanigans on the flip side because they're not prone by the spell and can't stand up it means that your allies have advantage on melee attacks made against their foes so the spell does generate advantage it can knock a flying enemy out of the sky potentially even killing them talk about the killing joke because the creature can't stand up while it's under the effects of tasha's hideous laughter they're still left prone once they've made their savings throw meaning you've got lots of opportunities to take advantage of the prone condition and get those attacks in that are going to finish them off ultimately tasha's hideous laughter is best used at any level of play for taking a single foe out of the fight and then leaving them in a vulnerable position when you need to finish them off if they're still laughing their butt off after all their allies have been dealt with you can capture them you can finish them off anything you need to do you've won the day the second spell that we are looking at today is webb which is a second level conjuration available to sorcerers wizards and underdark land druids when you cast web you conjure a thick mass of sticky spider-like webs that fill a 20-foot radius cube within the range of the spell they need something to be anchored onto otherwise they collapse but the whole area is difficult terrain for the duration of the spell and is a lightly obscured area creatures that start their turn in the area of the web must make a dexterity saving throw or are restrained and restrained means that they will make their attacks with disadvantage and that their speed is reduced to zero and any attacks against them have advantage so this is a very potent way to take out a small group of enemies from the battlefield and make it a lot easier to attack them and kill them an enemy that relies entirely on melee attacks to deal damage or threaten your party will be entirely neutered by this spell but even a foe that relies on ranged attacks or has effective ranged attacks is going to be at a disadvantage when attacking with them so it's a worthwhile spell to use in either case it just has its best effect against melee oriented enemies in order to escape the web an enemy must use an action on its turn to make a strength check note that this is not a strength save which means that they will not benefit from any proficiency bonuses or anything else affecting their strength save bonus this is pretty important because many strong creatures such as ogres and dragons although they are mighty their strength modifiers are often only plus four plus five or plus six it's really not until you get into really large creatures like giants that the strength modifiers get really impressive this means that against a wizard with a spell saving throw dc of 14 or 15 which is pretty low to average for low-level characters that ogre only has a 50-50 shot of breaking out of the webs and they've consumed their action to do so once they're out they still have to trudge through the difficult ground that the web has created and they've used their action for the turn meaning they've been effectively taken out for at least one turn afterwards you'll be able to use other abilities like the shove attack or thunder wave spells or forceful eldritch blasts or all the ways that you can knock creatures around to throw them back into the area of webs and regardless they'll have to contend with that area of difficult ground for the rest of the battle if you're looking for a nice tactic to end that battle and you have a few wounded enemies stuck in those webs keep in mind that those webs are flammable which can be a lot of fun to set them ablaze and watch all of those enemies cook we're always looking for good ways to start a fire on the battlefield and web is some excellent kindling for that reason just remember that if you are going to be attacking a foe that is stuck in the webs your firebolts might ignite it so you might want to stick to attacks like eldritch blast or frostbite instead so that you can keep them in place while you pepper them with arrows and magical attacks although webb requires concentration it compares really well with spells of much higher levels making it hit well above its weight class compare webb to higher level spells that prevent enemies from moving and impose disadvantage on their attacks such as auto's irresistible dance or evard's black tentacles it's pretty similar maybe not quite as good as little spells but considering that web is only a second level spell it's great and it's well worth keeping in your arsenal especially compared to those higher level spells which you might want to use other spells with those spell slots and keep web instead next up we have hypnotic pattern which is a third level illusion spell available to bards sorcerers wizards warlocks and oath of redemption paladins you can find it on page 252 of your player's handbook and man oh man is this one of my favorite spells i know that you talk about this spell a lot with it being a battle ending spell and one of your all-time favorites why is that when you cast hypnotic pattern it affects creatures within a 30-foot cube who can see the pattern that it creates for just a moment they have to make a wisdom-saving throw and those that fail are incapacitated and their speed is reduced to zero for the duration of the spell this is a great mesmerizing effect that will take them out of the battle because hypnotic pattern unlike many other battlefield control spells does not allow them to make a wisdom saving throw on subsequent turns to escape the effect they are sitting there drooling for the duration of the spell the only way they can escape the effect is if they take damage or another creature uses their action to shake them out of the stupor this means that with good teamwork and coordination hypnotic pattern will render a group of enemies completely ineffective for the duration of the battle the tactics here are easy as long as everybody in your party understands them if you hit a group of characters with hypnotic pattern whatever enemies succeed on their saving throw or are not hit by it should be the priority targets otherwise they're going to spend their actions waking up their allies but even if they do that's still their entire action giving you a lot of opportunities to take them out once that's done your party can go one by one through the enemies that have been affected by hypnotic pattern attacking them all at once either killing them in one go or if they don't still managing to have a several people your whole party versus one target at a time which is a much easier battle even if you don't plan on killing all your enemies it's a great way to capture them or end the situation non-violently as well be aware though there's a few limitations to hypnotic pattern which prevent it from being the ultimate battlefield control spell first it does impose the charmed condition and a relatively large number of creatures in the monster manual are either immune to this condition outright or they might be elves with the fey ancestry trait that give them advantage on their saving throw against the spell furthermore because hypnotic pattern relies on the momentary creation of a visual illusion creatures with true sight automatically succeed their saving throws and it's possible that in certain certain situations the creatures might not be able to see the pattern and thus not have to make the savings throw at all so just be aware of those few limitations of the spell keep in mind that this is an amazing option for bards who have an instrument of the bards which means that all enemies will have disadvantage on their saving throws against your hypnotic pattern ultimately this spell has everything we're looking for in a great spell to lock down the battlefield creatures get no chance to escape unless your teammates are idiots and then in that case you might have a bad time with this spell but for a well-coordinated party that is using their resources effectively and knows how to work together as a team hypnotic pattern is an encounter ending spell the next spell we're going to look at is banishment which is a fourth level ab duration spell available for sorcerers wizards warlocks paladins and clerics you can find banishment on page 217 of your player's handbook and when you cast the spell you nominate one creature and you send it away to another plane of existence it has to make a charisma saving throw to resist the the effect which is a very very powerful type of saving throughout a target not the wheat lisa which because many monsters have horrible charisma scores if it's native to the plane of existence that you're currently on it's banished to a harmless demi-plane where it is incapacitated it returns at the end of the duration of the spell but like hypnotic pattern it gets no subsequent saving throw to try to return to your plane in existence however the spell gets a really unique effect when it's used against a fiend an elemental a fake creature or a celestial such creatures instead of being sent to a harmless enemy plane are returned to their plane of origin and if they are sent there for the full duration of the spell they stay there and they don't come back if one of the main elements of battlefield control is taking an enemy out of the battlefield banishment literally sends them out of the battlefield and sometimes they cannot return that's pretty awesome yeah they get no savings throw to try to come back so if you manage to concentrate on the spell for the entire duration you just took that enemy out of the fight outright granted creatures like celestials and fiends often do have pretty good charisma saving throws but the chance to remove these enemies from the battlefield entirely and permanently is invaluable the widespread availability of the spell to several different classes makes it very very valuable indeed with banishment you can upcast it to target more than one creature and also keep in mind that there are some high-level creatures that maybe don't have good resistances against this i've seen banishment take out a kraken or a purple worm on my table and it was a battle-ending spell even though it only removes such enemies for one minute that's long enough to run away or escape from them as long as you can maintain your concentration on the effect nothing can return that foe to the battlefield they don't get a subsequent saving throw there's no chance to dispel it they're gone in this respect it's a very high risk high reward spell so i do prefer to keep it to those instances where it's going to remove the enemy permanently from the fight ultimately because a creature that's going to come back after it's been banished you're still gonna have to deal with it in some way yeah so when you banish a high-level foe because you've got a minute to then get away get to the next room or escape you've got plenty of opportunities just end the fight outright the one thing that this spell has over hypnotic pattern is that it is idiot proof your party cannot screw this one up yeah because the enemy is taken out of the fight it doesn't have the disadvantages of tasha's hideous laughter or hypnotic pattern in that your barbarian isn't going to come up to smack this foe before the rest of the party members are ready to deal with that enemy you can stop concentrating on it and then let the barbarian have their their fun but in in the innovating period unless your concentration is broken and or interrupted that foe is going to stay away and there's nothing else your party members are going to do to mess it up the last spell we're going to look at today is wall of force which is a fifth level evocation spell available for wizards and oath of redemption paladins while the force is found on page 285 of the player's handbook though many have doubted the supremacy of the wizard in fifth edition dungeons and dragons saying that they might not be as good as the sorcerer or the warlock let none doubt the fact that the exclusivity of this spell to the wizard cements their place as the unquestioned masters of battlefield control in fifth edition d and d some spells allow saving throws some spells give targets the opportunities to escape wall of force doesn't care when you cast this spell an invisible wall of force springs into existence at up to 120 feet away from you nothing can pass through the wall it's immune to all damage and it can't be dispelled the wall can appear in any orientation you choose it can float in space it consists by up to 10 continuous 10 foot by 10 foot panels which you can shape in any way or you can form it into a 10 foot radius sphere or hemisphere this is the coolest use of this spell because trapping people in an invisible force bubble is probably the most devastating thing you can possibly do to them because they have no way of getting out save of teleportation it's also big enough that it can capture a large or huge creature in its area the wall of force blocks ethereal travel meaning that the only way to escape from it is through teleportation or hitting it with a disintegration spell which is absolutely bonkers one of my favorite strategies is to team up with another spellcaster who can create a damaging area of effect such as wall of fire or cloud kill and then trap the enemies in the wall of force with the damaging effect slowly choking them to death or if you don't have another spellcaster just trap them in there with the barbarian we call it the playpen the barbarian's not trapped in there with them they're trapped in there with barbarian now of course while the force has a few other creative applications you can use it to create a bridge but it's also literally a force field if you're being attacked from above by several aerial enemies protect your whole party within the wall of force and use that time to formulate a viable counter strategy you can also use it to split the battlefield dealing with a smaller number of enemies first before having to deal with another group because you can shape the wall of force into 10 by 10 panels as long as they're continuous you might not always need the sphere version of the spell for example if you're in a dungeon you can use it to split the room in half or trap enemies in against another wall that's natural in the space that you're in if you're in a situation where you're in a room that has a trap such as a room that will flood or fill with toxic gas you can use wall of force to use that to your advantage against the enemies while protecting yourself yeah perhaps you've got a bomb that's going to explode and the rogue needs to disarm it well a great security measure might be to just create the wall of force over top of the bomb and the rogue so that if the rogue messes up only the rogue's going to explode or just put the wall of force over the bomb and let the bomb explode and it will just be contained in the wall of force wall of force is an example of one of those great spells that does more than what it just says in the spell description it slices and dices dividing your foes so that you can conquer them battlefield control 101 if you have the option to take wall of force you definitely should well those spells constitute our top five we do have a few honorable mentions that we would like to throw in as well our first honorable mention is sleep a very good spell for incapacitating your enemies but it doesn't really scale well as you get to higher levels sleep is great for low level play but hypnotic pattern is a pretty clear upgrade our next honorable mention goes out to hold person and it's bigger brother hold monster both of these spells are excellent but your enemy does get a chance to save against it every turn because of this whole person and hold monster are less effective at taking foes out of the fight rather they're better at paralyzing a monster so that you can get those free critical hits against them and prevent them from acting while you're trying to kill them but if you want to take your enemy just out of the fight the other spells that we looked at are better options this brings us to the next spell that we want to give an honorable mention to and that's polymorph polymorph is one of the best spells in the game if you can take it you absolutely should and in a pinch polymorph can be used as battlefield control however that's not the best use of your spell slot for the fourth level spell and not the best use of polymorph if you don't have access to one of the other options we discussed in this video polymorph is a great substitute for something like banishment or tasha's hideous laughter but if you can banish or use tasha's against that target those are better spells to use compared to polymorph our last honorable mention is force cage it's everything you like about wall of force and more but it is a seventh level spell in exchange for your seventh level spell slot you gain a concentration free version of wall of force that lasts for one hour and imposes additional restrictions on foes that try to teleport out of it it is a truly amazing spell but there's many circumstances where while the force would do just a good job with only a fifth level spell slot well i love force cage and i always take it the question of do i need to cast force cage in this situation or will wallow force do the job is always one that's on my mind whenever i have the spell in conclusion you may notice that all of these spells are on the wizard spell list making the wizard the best battlefield controller out there bar none if you're interested in this style of play you really need look no further than the wizard and probably these five spells are all you need to prepare with your wizard to really feel like the ultimate battlefield controller and then you can load up on all those fun and creative spells like polymorph dimension door fly and a couple blast spells like fireball and animate objects and you're gonna do really well if there's any battlefield control spells that you truly love that we didn't mention or if you have great stories about how you've turned the tides of battle using magic tell us about them in the comments below as always these were just our opinions so if you disagree with us we'd love to hear what your top five picks are let us know in the comments below so this has been our top five battlefield control spells for dudge of the dragon's fifth edition we hope that this helps you assume direct control of the battlefield and of course you can see some of these spells in action including some really awesome use of the web spell in our actual play campaign dungeons of drakenheim it airs tuesdays at 6pm on twitch.tv dungeon underscored dudes you can find prior episodes of the campaign here on youtube and the latest episode drops every friday we mentioned a lot of different classes in our episode today so if you want to take a look at our class guides we have them right up over here and if you want a primer on why these spells are so important to battlefield tactics we've got our primer on combat tactics 101 right 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: 498,318

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: U5T6TBuXCoM

Length: 26min 12sec (1572 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 03 2019