Top 5 Most Broken Low Level Spells In D&D

here are the top five game-breaking low-level spells in d and d okay so glyph of warding is a third level spell and just fyi every spell on this list is going to be third level or lower it takes an hour to cast and lets you inscribe a glyph on a surface that stores a magical effect either a spell or an explosion example you cast glyph of warding on the door to your base and then you set the trigger to be whenever anyone that isn't you walks through that door then a rogue arachrus stumbles in triggers the glyph casts fireball and everyone gets pre-cooked kfc for dinner you can set the trigger to your glyph to be as vague or as specific as you like and the spell will go off when that trigger is met if the spell has a target it targets the person who triggered it if the spell is concentration it simply lasts the full duration of the spell without needing to uh concentrate on it downside when you cast glyph of warding on an object that objects can't be moved more than 10 feet otherwise the glyph breaks and the spell disappears without doing anything also it costs 200 golds worth of powdered diamonds every time you cast it so you know it's pricey but damn it is worth it because this thing is busted the real power of glyph of warding is to set up multiple concentration effects at the same time if you can prep an area where you know there is going to be a fight batman style you can set up insane advantages and traps so far so good you can booby trap an area to give yourself some simultaneous effects that's good but it's not broken until you take one level in warlock so genie warlocks get this thing called bottled respite where they have their own little demi plane inside a tiny object and they can enter it as an action and leave as a bonus action it's cool but here's the important part inside that object exists an extra dimensional space it exists outside the material plane the object is just the gateway that means any glyphs of warding you cast inside your genie vessel will not be destroyed if the vessel moves more than 10 feet the glyphs don't move they're staying exactly where you left them inside that separate dimension and this also works with a bag of holding boom you now have a way to carry around glyphs of warding you can set up a ton of insane buff spells like haste bark skin enlarge reduce and invisibility and set them to trigger on a command word that you speak while inside your vessel then whenever a fight kicks off you can vanish inside your vessel speak the command word and get more juiced up than lance armstrong with simultaneous buff effects this is completely insane there is a reason why you can only concentrate on one spell at a time balance there are also a ton of cool combos you can set up with this combining a bunch of interesting effects like every single type of paladin smite together at once for the ultimate god slap however it does cost a lot of gold to use this and once you use it once all your glyphs are burned and you need to start again from scratch still unlimited simultaneous concentration effects is crazy and easily breakable at any point in the game glyph of warding is definitely a reason dms need to be careful about handing out too much money to the players let's shift to something a little more subtle but equally game breaking suggestion is a second level concentration spell that lets you suggest a course of activity limited to a sentence or two to another creature who can hear and understand you creatures that can't be charmed are immune now you have to suggest something in a manner that sounds reasonable so telling a creature to stab itself or otherwise harm itself will break the spell then they make a wisdom save and on a fail they pursue that course of action to the best of their ability until the spell ends or one of your allies attack them alright so there are two main things that are busted about this firstly the suggestion does not need to be a good idea it just needs to sound reasonable the example the spell gives is that you suggest to a knight that she gives her horse to the first beggar she meets now that is not a good idea considering a war horse in d d costs 400 gold pieces this is kind of like saying to a policeman go and give your car to the next homeless person you see 400 gold is a year's salary in this game and if give your 400 gold war horse to the next beggar you meet is a reasonable suggestion then why not just give your 400 gold war horse to me instead i mean it's the same difference right it's just this time you're the guy who ends up with the war horse this is a scammer's wet dream of a spell and it could very quickly generate massive income but it's not only a path to massive wealth in d d it's also amazing in combat too you can just eliminate an enemy with this effect run away so we don't kill you is an excellent suggestion one failed wisdom save and that ability is on the first train out of here honestly this spell is a better banishment one of the best fourth level spells because it removes someone from combat for eight hours rather than just one minute it also pairs incredibly well with the tongues spell a buff effect that lets you communicate with anyone regardless of language barriers so we have a ridiculously powerful suck or save effect that lasts 8 hours and we can generate a ton of money already broken but it gets worse according to jeremy crawford the rules as intended for this spell say that your suggestion only needs to sound reasonable at the time of casting so you could taking jc at his word suggest to someone that they stand perfectly still for eight hours and then set about building a contraption that will drop a giant rock on their head even though it is obviously a terrible idea to just stand there as long as you don't deal any damage to them until you kill them they will not move because the suggestion was totally reasonable at the time of casting now i do think that's a bit crazy i think that's taking it way too far but i wanted to mention it because according to the sage advice and rules is written it is allowed so dms you do need to be ready to communicate exactly what suggestion can and can't do when your players take it even without that though suggestion is insane and arguably the most breakable second level spell in d because let's be real it's basically free mind control from level three also the old version of the unt could cast it for free at level one because game balance is for cowards apparently gentlemen thank you for coming i have a confession i have a problem getting wood excuse me what but i will have wood again putting the wood back in my worm with wormwood purveyors of high-end wooden gaming accessories for dungeons and dragons oh i thought you were talking about like erections and stuff as well you might for when i first laid eyes on the wormwood dice vault with room for 10 polyhedral dice held together with four rare earth magnets i did indeed feel aroused for the first time in seven long years stop stop talking stop saying things why one word even made the custom dm screen for matthew mercer of clitoral whole critical role exactly one word for the greatest gaming accessories in d d use code d d shorts for free dice link in description okay let's talk about conjure animals the spell's so nice it breaks dnd twice one it is ridiculously strong to the point of being broken and two it literally causes the game to break down let's talk country animals is a third level concentration spell that lets you summon face spirits in the form of beasts you can get between one to eight creatures when you cast it at third level and the more creatures you get the less powerful each one is individually look as anyone who knows anything about action economy will tell you the more allies you have on the board the better things are going to be for that reason it is always best to summon eight creatures with conjure animals rules as written you decide the challenge rating of the beasts that appear and your dm is the one who actually picks them a lot of players don't realize this but yeah you don't get to choose that's already kind of a problem because if your dm doesn't want to frustrate or upset you which they hopefully don't they're under a lot of pressure to give you something good because you know what sucks using your only third level spell slots and guessing eight goldfish wolves velociraptors giant owls these are the good choices and many dms will just let you pick rather than potentially upset their players that's totally understandable but it leads to the spell being completely overpowered now i don't gotta tell you why summoning eight wolves next to an enemy each one attacking ad advantage thanks to pack tactics is completely insane but aside from the damage and the action economy just putting a lot of bodies on the field really gums up the map drawing fire away from you and onto your spirits it's almost like stunning an enemy without a saving throw if they have to use an entire turn battering through your beasts and the d and d designers know this is a problem they never publish these multi-summon spells anymore all the new spells are single creature summons because multiple creature summon spells are just way too strong and also really boring this is the other side to conjure animals it can slow the game down so much that it just breaks let's say your druid summons eight giant owls i mean that's cool that is what the spell is supposed to do but you've just added eight creatures to the game in a complicated fight with loads of different things going on it's not unreasonable that each owl would need to do something different then the druid has gone from taking one turn per round to taking nine which could honestly take half an hour and then the dm has to track the hit points of all the summons individually and if you're a circle of the shepherds druid they've got to track all the various buff effects on them as well honestly it gets boring even for the druid it gets boring and the game just falls apart there are solutions to this limiting the amount of summons or my personal favorites giving every player two of the eight beasts to control on their turn can really spread the fun around and keep things moving but if you don't know about these fixes and some new players tried conjure animals it wouldn't be their fault or the dm's fault if the game just fell apart an encounter or even an entire session can be completely derailed just because this spell is kind of badly designed use with extreme caution alright so here's the newest spell on this list silvery barbs is a first level reaction spell which you take when a creature you can see within range succeeds on an attack roll ability check or saving throw basically you force them to re-roll and use the lower roll potentially causing a success to fail then you can target another creature within range including yourself and give them advantage on their next attack roll ability check or saving throw within the next minute okay a few things first one this does not beat legendary resistances if a creature uses their legendary resistance to succeed on an effect silvery barbs will not change that whatever they roll they automatically succeed two you can't use this on an ally who fails a save to try and give them advantage it only works when someone succeeds on something and you try and make them fail so how strong is this spell well for a start no one is ever getting crit any time a creature scores a critical hit against anyone in the party you can just force them to re-roll reducing the chances of a crit from a 1 in 20 to a 1 in 400 sure it can still happen but it is extremely rare but also silvery barbs negates any advantage a creature might have example an enemy rogue uses steady aim to give themselves advantage on the next arrow they fire and they hit you but if you silvery barbs you essentially cancel out that advantage forcing them to roll one more d20 and taking the lower of the final rolls silvery barge doesn't care about any amount of effort you put into getting advantage it just ignores it it's also quite handy for juicing up skill checks if a party member is attempting something really important you can just make an unarmed attack against them dealing one damage and silvery barbs yourself to try and force a miss then you can just pass along the advantage part of the spell to that party member if the help action isn't really feasible for this skill check this is a solid use of silvery barbs but the real power is in pushing through suck or save effects let's say you cast a dominate person if this baby lands on an enemy the fight is basically over if they succeed initially you just hit them with silvery barbs retroactively giving them disadvantage so this is a better version of the sorcerer's heightened spell metamagic that one costs three sorcery points to force disadvantage but you need to use it before you cast the spell that means if you cast a heightened spell dominate person and they fail on their first roll you've essentially wasted those three sorcery points because they would have failed anyway however silvery barbs lets you wait until after they've succeeded before you expend any resources to try and make them fail and of course heightened spell costs three sorcery points but an aberrant mine sorcerer can use silvery barbs for just one finally there is no limit on how many times a roll can be silvery barbs so if you have a bunch of spellcasters in the party you can all take turns repeatedly forcing a creature to re-roll that crucial save until they eventually inevitably fail also re-rolling dice constantly slows the game down i run a pretty fast game of d d and i'm usually halfway through the next sentence describing what happens before someone remembers to cast silvery barbs and we all have to go back and start again silvery barbs also further tilts the balance of power in d towards spellcasters and away from martial characters when hold monster or banishment can just end a fight instantly and silvery barbs makes them super reliable it leads to a further unbalancing of these already powerful spells how can a fighter really compete when a wizard can force through dominate person so often and so easily honestly i think silvery barbs should be a second level spell that way it's not quite as abusable and you can't pick it up nearly as easily through the magic initiate or fey touched feats before we get to the next entry i just want to throw a shout out to magic mouth it's not inherently that powerful it lets you store a message inside an object kind of like glyph of warding but instead of storing a spell you store words however when optimized by a big brain artificer this spell can be used to create a functioning information relay network this spell can make the internet i've linked the original thread on giant in the playground where someone came up with this down below if you want to give it a read it's incredible and obviously being able to create twitter in a medieval fantasy setting is completely insane okay time for the hot spicy take of the video find familiar is broken i know i know what you're thinking but please hear me out and i will try and explain just because everyone takes fine familiar and most of the time it's completely fine doesn't mean that it can't be completely broken if you use it optimally to start find familiar is the cornerstone of a ton of other broken combos the bag of holding bomb that can one shot a tarask at level 2 is only possible thanks to find familia dimension warp murder kitten imp airlines skeleton hand grenade dimension fortress all these ridiculous combos linked below if you want more information need find familiar but how about another combo how about instant regeneration from death at level three a pact of the chain warlock can summon an imp who can turn invisible and anything it is carrying is also invisible now just give it a standing order to pour a potion of healing down your throat any time you get knocked down all an enemy will see is you getting knocked down coughing swallowing something and then standing up again with a few hit points over and over that is badass and incredibly hard to stop as long as you have potions in your backpack your imp can just keep doing this but there's so much more combo find familiar with the chronology wizards arcane ambience now your familiar can hold concentration on a spell for you letting you hit two concentration effects at once that's an ability reserved for the cr-26 niv misit and nobody else because it's completely broken basically any combat encounter is trivialized if you can throw up a wall of force and sickening radiance all the enemies trapped inside this simple combo one shots any creatures without teleportation or dispel magic and then of course at the very least your familiar gives you advantage on your first melee attack of the turn every turn for the entire game what fighter or rogue wouldn't want this your owl familiar can fly down take the help action to give you advantage and fly off without provoking opportunity attacks then it also scouts gives advantage on skill checks can use magic items can deal damage with spells like dragon's breath it just goes on and on now sure familiars don't have that much hp and your enemies will target it and kill it if you play it aggressively but still this is one spell that can do all the things we've just talked about and it doesn't even cost a spell slot you start the game with this it's available at level 1 to any class via the magic initiate or ritual cast of feats find familiar is the most powerful spell in the game when you factor in its strengths versus its cost it is extremely breakable when used optimally and also one of the most fun spells in the game in fact hell it is my favorite spell in the game okay so i'm not telling you to break these spells and i'm not telling you to ban them either these are all really good spells but knowing their potential as a player and knowing when to slam the brakes on as a dm can only lead to more healthy and creative and exciting games of d i've also made a video where i go through a bunch of old busted combos and talk about improving them which is out now on patreon for all subscribers if you want more powerful combo ideas you can check out the patreon by clicking the link up here or down there however if you really can't afford to support right now but you really want to see the video just float me a dm on discord and i will make sure i get it to you but of course if you can support there's a bunch of other awesome things on patreon including other bonus videos aside from that remember to like and subscribe check out other videos on the channel and i'll see you next time

Channel: DnD Shorts

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Id: zRGxJTdSNSw

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2022