Tier Ranking Cantrips in D&D 5e (Part 2)

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 D including advice for players and guides for GMS we upload new videos on Tuesdays and Thursdays so please like this video subscribe to the channel and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode and a big thank you to all of our patreon supporters for making the work we do here on YouTube possible but for today we are diving back into our tier ranking every cantrip in d d 5e and we're picking up where we left off with infestation and continuing all the way to resistance today if you look up on the screen right now you're going to see the criteria that we use to rank the cantrips in short an S tier can trip is one that everybody who has access to it should take and some classes might even consider picking up the magic initiate feat to grab it an eight-tier can trip is one that everybody who has access to it should take and a b tier can trip is one that might be good for certain builds well a sea tier care trip might be good in Niche situation and a d-tier can trip probably shouldn't be on your radar this is part two of three for our catch up to your ranking videos and at the end of the third video we're going to show the complete list of how everything's stacked up there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so picking things up is a damage dealing cantrip that is available for Druids Sorcerers warlocks and wizards you pick a Target within 30 feet they have to make Constitution saving throw if they fail they take 1d6 poison damage and get moved in a random Direction and if they're blocked they don't move and they don't provoke good opportunity attacks from this movement I like the flavor of this can trip but generally I think it's pretty weak first of all poison is a pretty well resisted damage type 1d6 is not the most damage you can get out of a can trip the movement is random which actually means that although there is a somewhat Battlefield control element to this you're not really in control of where the target moves so you can't do cool things like push them into an area of effect or off a cliff you're kind of looking at a chance that that might happen so I also don't like that it doesn't provoke opportunity attacks that would actually make it more interesting if they moved away from your fighter and your fighter got to hit them with a sword while they ran around screaming because bugs were on them that would be neat but it doesn't do that so I actually think that there are a lot of negatives on this cantrip and I'm not overly impressed although I love the idea of it I wish that it performed better and I want to give this a c ranking completely agreed you roll a D4 to determine what direction the target Moves In which means that if your target is directly beside a wall of fire or a pit or the thing that you want them to fall into there's at best a 25 chance that they're going to end up in that assuming they fail their saving throw so the chances of them actually ending up where you wanted them to be are pretty low con save is one of the most highest saving throws for so it's really not what we're looking for in a cantrip and once again poison damage is so commonly resisted as well all these things combine I think this is borderline d t here it's just not good like it's just every possible way that it could have been good it doesn't have honestly if it allowed opportunity attacks I would I would raise it up a rank if it allowed opportunity attacks it would be amazing um because then you'd have a much higher chance of that going off depending on the positioning but even then um but even then it might be too strong then which would be weird it's for me it's C minus borderline D the next cancer that we have is light this cantrip is pretty straightforward you can touch an object and make it light up and it sheds bright light for 20 feet and dim light for an additional 20 feet it lasts an hour it uses an action and if you do Target a creature who doesn't want to light up then they get to make a dexterity saving throw generally speaking though I don't use this on targets I guess it could be cool if you happen to see an invisible Target and you can cause them to Glow but generally speaking this is the Wizard's torch rather than carrying torches around you have the light can trip you're good to go this is Gandalf in the minds of Moria lighting up his staff and flashlighting them through I think it's an extremely useful can trip I think that the utility is great if you don't have dark vision and you need a cantrip to help you see in all the places that are hard to see take light it'll be good for you if you happen to be playing a character that doesn't have dark vision light is worth taking and so for that I give it a b um it does have some interesting other uses in the fact that you can basically use it like a torch you can light up an object and then drop it to illuminate a distance you can use it as some kind of marker or signal flare if you are creative with how it works there's a lot that you can do creatively with the light spell because it is a heatless flameless light source it does mean that of course anything that you do with the spell you could potentially do with a lit torch or a lantern in some way shape or form so it doesn't really offer you anything that you couldn't do anyways aside from the fact that yeah you don't have to carry that torch to get its light around so I think it's B um it's one of those ones that it's like it's like a really like fifth pick B you know what I mean like yeah they're take it because you need it or you're just gonna leave it to be that I don't I've got like six cantrips I guess I could take light I I will agree with the BR ranking I will say though that the light cancer can do things that torches can't do like go in water and I do think that there are a lot of creative uses for this so although it isn't my first second or third pick for a cantrip I think that there are a lot of useful applications here and uh I I do think that it's worth looking at far from useless have dark vision already and maybe you've also brought some torches so you can kind of hope that the dark vision and the Torches kind of carry the Gap the next character we have is lightning lure this is available for the sorcerer warlock Wizard and artificer it is a evocation cantrip that allows you to Target a creature within 15 feet of you you lash out with a rope of lightning and pull them towards you they have to make a strength saving throw if they end up five feet away from you then they take damage the damage for this is 1d8 it goes up as you level up uh personally I think that this is not going to be a primary pick for a lot of the sorcerer's warlocks Wizards and artificers out there however it might be useful for blade singers or hex blade warlocks who want to damage a Target pull them in towards them and now they're in melee range but even then you are using your action to pull them towards you when you also could have used your movement to run up to them and then hit them with your primary attack if you have an area of effect that you're in it could be useful but then again that's not a very that's that's a pretty Niche thing I think that if you were a cleric with Spirit Guardians and you pulled them in that would be cool but this isn't available to the clerics who have Spirit Guardians so for those reasons I'm on the fence on whether this is C or D tier I think that there are some redeeming qualities there are some mildly useful possibilities here so I want to say C what do you think I think it's almost a d as well um this is an example of a cantrip that has a very similar competitor available to a different range of classes in that lightning lure is very similar to Thorn whip however lightning lure has a much shorter range it relies on a saving throw as opposed to an attack roll and it's really only going to be situationally useful for those very few characters like hex blades and blade singers and certain artifice or builds that it's not even about the movement thing you use lightning lure because you used your movement for the turn you didn't end up adjacent to an enemy but you want to pull that enemy adjacent to you so that they can't get away from you and then you can hopefully make an opportunity attack against them or hopefully you were able to use it to pull them into that damaging AOE that's surrounding you but once again it's hard to get those kind of combos happening with the right classes it's it's weird because I love Thorn Whip and this spell is very similar to Thorn whip but it just has enough deficiencies to it that I don't like it as much I think you could do similar things with it but for me it's a it's basically a d I think that um I'm gonna final I'll say C because I think that you could build a character that makes it work but you're really really scraping the bottom of the barrel here I feel that and I do think that if um if you didn't have to end with the target adjacent to you in order to deliver damage if it just did the damage yeah I think that there would be a better plays here because then you could lightning lure them into area of effects yeah I think I've seen something along the lines of trying to use cloud of daggers and using cloud of daggers to lightning lure someone into the cloud of daggers and I guess maybe there's the a build there that makes that work that's the only case but it it's not this is not going to redeem that cantrip it's convoluted yeah so next up we come to magehand this is an awesome little Kendra magehand creates a spectral floating hand that is going to go out and let you tell it kinetically sort of manipulate things magehand offers so much utility and so many varying applications largely in part because oftentimes dungeon Masters can be very permissive with what they allow magehand to do and so well I want to give magehand a very high ranking and I'm going to I want to give it the caveat that magehand is not like having a remotely operated version of your own physical hand at a distance and so there are things that the Mage hand cannot do most notably the hand can't attack and a lot of people often get confused over magehand because they Wonder oh could the Mage hand grab somebody could the magehand tie someone's shoelaces could the Mage hand hurt someone in some sort of creative way and my response to that is if you weren't using magehand and you were just doing that as your character would that be an attack and if the answer is yes I can't do that it gets into a tricky situation I've even used magehand to drop a torch on a troll didn't do any damage but it had fire and we ruled that yes sure that's allowed um but those are the tricky situations that you can get into with magehand the magehand can't lift push or pull anything more than 10 pounds so it can't hold open a closing gate or anything of that sort it can't hurt anybody that being said though this is one of the most creative can trips out there and I think that is s tier if you have the option of taking magehand this is one of the primary picks absolutely the ability to just manipulate an object at range whether that is pushing a door closed or trapping a lever or grabbing that potion across the room or snatching the MacGuffin out of anything or pressing a button all those things that your hand can do at range a lot of them it can do you just have to draw the line at anything that you would count as an attack if a character would do it and obviously it can't activate magic items either so Machan is an S to your cantrip just don't let it be above s tier by letting it be too much more than that that's where people get into trouble with it because oftentimes you get you get you know those ridiculous scenarios of like can I use magehand to grab someone's heart through their body or can I use magehand to um again you do get into that area of like what happens if the magehand drops a 10 pound object from a very great height well its range is only 30 feet so again think about those things carefully I will say though if you're trying to decide between find traps or magehand magehand is better at discovering traps than any other spell out there if you're worried that a lever is going to trigger something or you're worried about sticking your hand in a hole Mage hand next up we've got Magic Stone this is a little bit of a weird spell in that it basically turns regular stones into magical sling bullets that you can then throw at people or shoot with them um in a weird way it's kind of like the Shiley of ranged attacks and for that reason it's pretty decent because when you attack with the magic stones and other people can pick them up and attack with them it uses your spell casting ability modifier instead of whatever the basic modifier was I actually think that this is an underrated cantrip it's by no means the best can't trip but nobody really talks about it and there's two things that I like a lot here first of all I love a thematic spell and this has a lot of thematic elements to it but I love a thematic spell that delivers on that theme and actually performs at the table and this does that I picture that there's a lot of halflings out there with slings who this would be a great spell to have your little rocks and you whip them at your enemies as your primary attack it doesn't do as much damage as Eldritch blast no but slinging little rocks around I mean if we imagine that the Ewoks in Star Wars had magical rocks that explains how one hit on the head killed a stormtrooper but that's that's kind of a theme there's always the little creatures throwing rocks at their enemies and this actually gives a means to have throwing rocks at your enemies actually do enough damage to take them out this is actually surprising as a counter because it does 1d6 damage plus your spell casting ability modifier so that little 1d6 gets a bonus to it which is unique amongst many cantrips that which you don't often get the bonus as well and one of the other cool things about this is that it's available to Druids warlocks and artificers which means that you can basically get any spell casting ability modifier you want with it so you could in a really weird way I'm actually imagining a Arcane trickster Rogue that grabs the spell through magic initiate that whips rocks and sneak attacks with them as a halfling like there's actually a a thing there that could work I also want to point out that this cantrip is a bonus action and you imbue three rocks with it as a bonus action so you don't even need to use the cantrip every turn to use your attack you can stockpile a few rounds and then use your sling as your main action to hurl rocks I I actually I want to say that this is an a to your cantrip I actually think it's surprisingly good um I gotta give it a b myself because I do think it does depend but it's a pretty decent pick for a druid that wants a range alternative to sheleighly and a lot of Druids love shillelagh already so if you don't want to have to run up and hit someone with your stick and would rather throw rocks at them which once again just conjures wonderful mental images uh consider taking Magic Stone instead of shell Lily next up we have mending which is a can trip available to almost everybody and this allows you to take a small break or tear in an object and fix it can be more than one foot in any Dimension and it can't fix magical items but generally speaking if something's broken you can probably fix it bear in mind that it does have a one minute casting time and it will only repair tears it can't replace missing components of a broken object you still need all those pieces there to put them back together again if you have half of a broken key you can't mend it to fix it but if you have both halves of the broken key you can put it back together again I do think that this is a really useful can trip although somewhat Niche not the most niche but once again it falls into that oh I wish I could take mending um it's it's also one of those cantrips that in real life this would be an S tier can trip yes I could make millions by just having The Mending can trip one minute to fix the screen of your phone yeah yeah yeah one minute to just fix that annoying little screw that got stripped or any other problem in life it's s tier in real life but in D it just it feels like one of those things that doesn't come up an adventuring situations I want to give this a b tier and here's why it gets a b tier for me it doesn't come up a lot in DND campaigns but it can actually break entire encounters it can break settings like when you actually think about about the implications for a spell like mending existing or in a world like think of just things like shoe repair you start thinking about all of those things in life that would be would change if you could just wave your hand for a minute and something gets fixed so it's it's weird because it's one of those spells that it's innocuous player characters don't often take it but then it actually causes weird questions if you think about if it's super common in the world I also want to say that in an adventuring day you could run into cases where the DM did not consider that the player has mending there could be like yes the example of you find the key but it's broken in half while I cast mending oh guess you can open the door well you come to a rope bridge but one of the ropes has snapped and the bridge hangs Loosely you pick up that rope You Mend and now you can cross the bridge there aren't times that the DM may not account for how much of an impact a spell like mending can have and that's why it gets the beat here I agree continue on the theme of spee-tier spells that are cool I wish I could take them more often but often don't message is another really cool little spell that essentially allows you to whisper to somebody at a distance so you pointed a Target you send them a message and they can reply in kind interestingly enough this spell actually doesn't specify how long the message is supposed to be but I imagine that like sending it should be about 25 words or less and interestingly you can send it through walls as long as you know the target is exactly on the other side so it's not quite telepathy because it's an action but it's useful this this again falls into that b tier category I think that we're in the same boat as mending where is this going to be useful all the time no is it relatively Niche yes but is it Niche enough that it's a bad idea to take it no is it possibly going to come up are there going to be moments in your campaign where you realize oh man if I had message right now this would solve a lot of problems the answer is yes so it's not really anybody's first choice but a wizard who has this packed in their Arsenal uh can solve a lot of problems that you don't expect one of the biggest things that happens in d and d and a lot of DMS might not account for this or depending on how the DM runs things at their table communication during battle trying to relay plans when you're being stealthy how does the DM play that out well you guys are talking and the guards are in the Next Room so they hear you talking some DMS rule it that way some don't but if you do have a DM that's ruling it that way message fixes communication while you're trying to be stealthy well you're on the battlefield trying to relay messages 120 feet at any point if you have two people on either end of the castle and you're going to scale the walls to Ambush the enemies inside we've done and delicious before where it would be really helpful to be able to communicate 120 feet to all the people who are in place for the sandwich the one action casting time does make it a little bit difficult to use in combat but it does help with coordination for things like ambushes and it's interesting to use it in a social situation as well how many times have you been in a social encounter with the dungeon Masters core NPC and the players are trying to say things to each other but they can't without the NPC hearing messages a cool way around that although the pointing at each other might raise a little bit suspicion I think that message would be way more useful if it was a bonus action I also think that it would be way more useful if it wasn't as pointed and it would be way more useful if there weren't so many ways to get telepathy now so it's it's stock has really decreased but it still does a cool thing next up we have mind sliver this is a relatively new cantrip that was introduced in Tasha's cauldron of everything it has a range of 60 feet it requires an intelligent saving throw from the Target and if they fail they take one D6 psychic damage and the next time they have to make a saving throw they subtract 1d4 from that saving throw it's available for sorceress warlocks and wizards I especially like this for the sorcerer because there is a great use of using mind sliver and then quickening a spell that requires a saving throw by doing so you've now set yourself up with your own one-two punch so that you can subtract 1d4 from whatever saving throw you're about to drop on them and you got a little bit of extra damage in there generally I think it's a great pickup for anybody but especially Sorcerers yeah I think it's also really cool to use mindsliver for a concentration spell that requires a saving throw to escape so for example if you're able to ensnare a Target within a hold person or a hold monster spell on subsequent turns you can just blast them with mind sliver and as long as they continue failing their intelligent saving throws you're going to be debuffing that much more important saving throw that they have to make against escaping the effect it's not perfectly reliable but intelligent saving throws are generally some of monsters worse saves across the board at least or at least if they're not the spell castery type and even then uh they might not be so you can usually reliably count on a monster's intelligence saving throw being not great 1d4 is a pretty reasonable thing I think it works best with the sorcerer that can Quicken it and then combine it with other metamagic to get even more out of it but I do think that it is a really great cantrip for any character that's going to focus on Battlefield control and the fact that it's available to sorcerer's warlocks and wizards who all enjoy that Battlefield control play style I think makes it a great pick I think I'm going to give it an A plus I don't think it's s tier because it does require some setup and some thought but it's really good I I agree it's definitely an eight-tier can trip everybody who has access to it should consider it it's not one that you might go very far out of your way to get but definitely worth looking at next up we come to the classic Illusionist cantrip minor illusion this spell allows you to create an auditory or a visual illusion your choice when you cast the spell as a sound it can be anything from a scream to a whisper however if you create an image it can be no larger than a five foot Cube and it must be in a mobile object furthermore there are no stipulations in minor illusion that allow you to modify or change or move the image once it's created and furthermore it can't be an illusion of a creature so while you cannot use it to make distraction halflings you can use it for a variety of really really interesting applications such as masking a five foot pit or creating a little box for you or a set of bushes for you to hide in or creating an image of the villain that you are trying to hunt down to show what the the local Town spoke what the bad guy looks like or anything else that you can imagine it's a very flexible illusion spell it just has some very specific limitations I think that this falls into a similar category to magehand where I'm going to give this s here I think that minor illusion is one of the best and most creative cantrips out there but similarly to magehand pay attention to the limitations some DMS will allow you to get away with more than what this cantrip is capable of which pushes it above s tier but even with the limitations there's a million creative ways that you can use this cancer and taking it allows you to think on the spot that if you need to conjure up an image of something if there's some way that a five foot image is going to save the day and this actually does come up quite a bit then you have a tool to to use it for and really the sky is the limit on how far you can go with this can't trip under the limitations but using your imagination a five foot by five foot box is actually a pretty big space and you can do a lot with that there are some doorways mind you they're pretty small doorways but I mean if you're in a goblin cave or something you can probably conceal an entrance uh concealing pets concealing items the most common mishap that I see with minor illusion is usually a player character trying to create the illusion of a living creature to be some kind of distraction for their enemies to Aid stealth And all I'll say that is you don't need to make a living bait person to bait another creature you can create something that looks like a piece of treasure or a bunch of coins or a really delicious looking pie or perhaps even the MacGuffin that you're that the villains are after or even you could just make the floating words you are a jerk floating in the air and that's going to distract and confuse people to some extent go wild with the messages that you can write in graffiti with minor illusion they might distract somebody um so in in any case as long as you're not making things that move and you're not making things that look like creatures you're pretty much in the clear with minor illusion next up we have mold Earth we've already talked about similar cantrips with gust and control flame this is the one that targets Earth similarly it has a list of options that you can do to the Earth in front of you it needs to be loose Earth or Rubble but you can move the Earth or Rubble five feet creating a bit of a ditch you can create shapes or words in the stone or dirt and you can make non-diffical terrain into difficult terrain or difficult terrain into non-diffical Terrain in a five foot square this one does fall into in my opinion the useful category more useful than control Flames maybe not as good as gust but I do think that mold Earth has a lot of really valuable applications the ability to just create a difficult terrain area is pretty cool but I actually really like the ability to create shapes and words on the stone or the earth I have this can trip in our campaign and I've used that in place of the way you might use message where during a battle I'm able to twiddle my fingers and make words appear in front of my Ally who the enemy has their back to to send a message on what's going on I have also used the excavation piece to get us out of situations dig our way through a tunnel or through a blocked door there's a lot of times that Earth being in the way uh can be solved very easily if you have this cancer getting under a wall or uh even if you're trying to infiltrate a castle with enough time if nobody's paying attention Excavating just a little tunnel underneath the wall is possible with this catcher as long as you're not going to hit solid rock or clay in the process because it can only excavate loose Earth which if you're asking me I would Define as basically soil and so by the time you're not going to use this to replace Dwarven Mining and Engineering by any stretch as soon as you're hitting something that for for me is as soon as you hit clay I think that that's when it's no longer loose Earth and that might not be very deep at all um I think you know if you think about if you've ever dug a hole or a pit or Worse um you hit clay pretty quick um depending on where you are and what you're what you're digging out so and obviously you're not going to use it to dig through constructed Stone objects or the foundations of buildings so you might not be able to get into the castle because you might hit the stone foundation that you can't dig through this isn't pass wall yes exactly yeah and so as long as once again as long as you're cognizant of the limitations of the spell it's awesome I think it's a solid beat I give it a B plus next up we have poison spray this uh you spray poison in the face of somebody who's within 10 feet of you it does one D12 damage versus a con save so again we run into a situation where uh this I actually have some good things to say and some not good things to say first of all one D12 damage thumbs up love it but again we're dealing with poison and con saves these are tricky elements to be playing with and the 10 foot range really really hurts with this one I want the spell to be so much better if it was a 30 foot range if it had an attack roll or anything else it might be one of the best damage dealing cantrips in the game there's just too many limitations and too many things counting against it I think it's a C I'm gonna give it a c as well next up we come to press the digitation this is the bread and butter of any light conjurer or any wannabe wizard uh conjure of cheap tricks yes this is the conjure of cheap tricks uh prestidigitation has a pretty long list of applications essentially you can do all sorts of things like create little tiny fires not damaging fires little fires you can create sensory effects or little light shows or make something clean or make something dirty or flavor your food that's that's the great application oh no I have to eat this gruel well now it tastes like delicious ice cream or ice cream so there are a lot of fun role play applications I screamed that tastes like gruel that tastes like ice cream would have a weird mouth feel it like I think I think that's the one thing is that you can change the flavor of something but I don't know about you but like mouth feel the mouth feel is still there well that's why I would make my girl taste like a stew a delicious stew because then then you gotta match the palette the the texture but how weird like I I guess there are things that like taste like ice cream like oh that tastes like ice cream but like that doesn't feel like ice cream is weird yes yeah so pressed a digitation is the spell to make everything taste like ice cream um this is a tricky one because I actually think that it's a great pickup but the applications are all somewhat Niche it's got a lot of Niche applications which actually makes it less Niche because the answer to so many little things that might pop up is Preston digitation let's say this it's s tier for role-playing It's s tier in real life probably a beat here in adventuring situations in adventuring situations I do think that this is a b tier can trip but I I can't argue against anybody who says that this is a must have that's that's the tricky part it's like the applications are all very useless in most applications it's just too fun it's like I think the fun factor is an interesting thing like it's just it's too enjoyable I usually take it with characters that can get prestidigitation and I feel bad when I don't take it I don't have it and I feel weird about it with my character but I did take magehand and minor illusion and that is saying something that those those are better can't trips than press the digitation and that is the one thing is that between Mage hand and minor illusion you feel like you've got a lot of the things what you don't get is you don't get to flavor things you don't get to clean things and I think the cleaning things is a weird one like that's the one I see all the time now is like I see like player characters get covered in my they are covered in blood and refuse and totally gross an adventure a shower it's so funny how often it comes up that it's like oh we just crawled out of the sewers and now we need to go talk to the king yeah well prestidigitation is going to fix all that now we smell like roses as we go to talk to some royalty it's it's weird how it comes up so often and for that I'm gonna give it an a now technically you can only clean an object with precedure prestidigitation you can't clean a creature a lot of my friends use me as an object so next up we have Primal savagery this is a cantrip that was introduced in xanathar's Guide to Everything it is available for Druids it allows you to grow your fingernails or fangs and make a corrosive attack against a Target within five feet of you you make a melee spell attack and immediately after making the attack your fingernails or fangs retract back to normal the imagery of this cantrip is pretty cool and dealing acid damage 1d10 acid damage is pretty cool but in essence there's a lot of other options out there that are probably better than doing this and that's that's kind of the tricky part is Druids also have sheleighly they generally are carrying some form of a staff or weapon that could probably do the same really the only thing that I'm thinking here that might be redeemable is if the target is resistant to other types of damage but not acid damage than than maybe but shillelagh creates a magical bludgeoning weapon that you can smash people in the face with yeah and your other cantrips are going to deal damage as well and most cantrips you're not really worried about being disarmed because most cantrips don't have a material requirement to them they just have somatic or verbal and so you don't need an object to channel the camera through to deal damage with it I really don't know what this cantrip is supposed to be doing because it really just is 1D 10 acid damage as a melee attack um I I think it's I feel like I'm missing something with it uh I give it a thumbs up for theme and that's what this has going for it but I I don't even know if I would take it if it fit the theme of my character no this is a DK like you can't combine it with other things either like you you read this can trip and you think oh this is going to be a cancer for a moon Druid or this is going to be a cantrip that I could combine with a monk or some sort of unarmed fighter no no no no no you just get to as part of the cantrip like have the acid attack you can't combine it with your weapons you can't combine it with your natural weapons or your bites or anything like that so it it's a spell that you'd think oh there's creativity here and there just isn't G2 next up we have produce flame this cantrip uh is available for Druids it allows you to create a magical flame that doesn't harm you or your armor or anything you're wearing you can use the flame to shed bright light in 10 feet dim light for an additional 10 feet and you can also hurl the flame at an enemy within 30 feet and deal 1d8 fire damage that that damage does escalate as you level up so really this is kind of like the Druid gets the light can trip and the Firebolt can trip but less range not quite as good as either but you do get both um I mean only Druids get this spell I think it's C even for them you're re like as a druid to take this spell you gotta pass up shillelagh you gotta pass up Thorn whip you gotta pass up uh Druid craft you gotta pass up a lot of spells before you get to this one I just think with produce Flame it's just not good enough to make the cut in my books I want to give it a b I'm going to be optimistic about it I think that there is value in you kind of get the you kind of get the discount version of two can trips for the for the cost of one can trip and that actually does have value uh so I think that it is a beat here I also think the Wildfire Druid loves this can't trip thematically I know that I I love thematic things but if I was playing a wildfire Druid I'd probably take this cantrip as my go-to attack can't trip next up we come to one of the classics of DnD Ray of frost available to Sorcerers Wizards and artificers incidentally um which Ray of frost really really simply put you make an attack within a Target against 60 feet of you does d8 cold damage on hit reduces the target speed by 10 feet I love rare Frost as a little Battlefield control spell because that speed reduction can pay dividends in so many ways whether you are trying to make it more difficult for an enemy to get out of an area that you've created with another spell or you are trying to just make sure that they're not going to be able to use their movement to get up to attack you on their next turn or you just want something reliable that does cold damage Ray Frost is your ticket um and I really like that it has that speed penalty with no saving throw attached to it you hit someone you're slowing them down I don't think Ray of frost is s tier by any stretch but I think it is a solid a minus I'm gonna give it I'm I'm just going to give it an a uh I think that Ray of frost is one of the better attack can trips I love the cantrips that deal damage and do something extra we talked about this with Chill Touch that had other things that it can do besides just dealing damage what's great is that Ray of frost happens every time I what's interesting is we gave Chill Touch s tier I might actually want to give this s tier because let's be real Chill Touch we gave s here because it deals damage and has another thing that it can do but that other thing that it can do happens in specific situations Raya Frost affects everybody yes but it might not be the circumstances where that speed penalty matters sometimes it doesn't matter that you reduce the target speed by 10 feet and sometimes it makes all the difference in the world I have cost enemies their turns because they were slowed down by 10 feet I have seen enemies that were not able to get out of uh the damaging AOE that was going to kill them because their speed was reduced by 10 feet so there are applications but sometimes the enemy is already up in your grill and they're not going anywhere you're not going anywhere and that speed penalty doesn't matter fine I'll I'll stick with a but I do think that this is one of the best can trips if you want to combine damage dealing in Battlefield control agreed agreed so finally we come to resistance it is a one action casting time and a one minute concentration duration but you touch a creature and they add 1d4 to the next saving throw that they make during the Spells duration and then the spell ends this is fine you have to really be thinking in advance to get the most out of it so it's a very difficult spell to use but we have seen a new version of it in the one DND play tests that is a reaction speed version that doesn't require concentration anymore that version is s tier this version is c yeah yeah it's not the worst spell and there are Niche cases where this is very useful the ability to just have that at your disposal can be useful in Niche situations which is why it's not a d tier I do think that there are several people who could take this and make use of it and it be a game changer for them it's just hard to plan when you're going to need to make a saving throw and so a spell that you have to cast in advance concentrate on it and then only applies once you don't really know whether or not that's going to matter or not and so it's hard to use it in combat you can kind of use it in scenarios where you know hey this lever is coated in Poison no one could disarm it so I'm going to cast resistance on you so you can try to just resist the poison or something like that or you can use it when characters have to make ongoing saving throws against a disease or or persistent poison or some sort of other effect that they need to shake off so in those cases where you know that it's coming it's really really useful to get that extra D4 but it's hard to use it in a situation where yeah now you need to make a saving throw against Fireball so that's a look at part two of our cantrip tier ranking if you haven't checked out part one you can do so right up over there and we will also be doing part three where we will finish off the list of all the cantrips available in DND 5e and at the end of that video we will include the full list of all of the cantrips that got s tier all the cantrips that got eight here so forth and so on we'll have the complete lists up at the end of video number three if you have used any of these cantrips or have differing opinions on how well they work in your games please let us know about it in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible because the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the videos that we do here on YouTube please consider becoming a patron of our show by following links in the description below and if you want to see a bunch of spellcasters using cool can trips you can check out our live play in the worlds of drakenheim which is Tuesday evenings on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we got plenty more great guides on all the Spells and tier rankings for DND 5e they're all right up over here please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode thanks so much for watching we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 226,550

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: Wp251trJLe4

Length: 44min 33sec (2673 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 05 2023