Treantmonk's Guide to Wizards: 3rd level spells

hey optim answers so it is time for our third level Wizard guide and we're going to begin with our usual recap I will be listing the spells for third level for wizard I'm going to be listing a reference so that you can find them in your players handbook Laura's an authority I'd and I'm going to be rating them and the ratings are going to be read if it's not a good spell or I don't think it does what it should do then I will raid it Orange if I think it is a spell that could be good in the right circumstance but it's too circumstantial and then I will raid it purple if I think it's an okay spell or decent spell for you to take I will rate it green if I think it's a good spell and I'm recommending it and I will rate it blue if I think it's kind of a must-have spell a great spell and next week we'll be talking about our fourth level spells and I'm being asked a couple times now about doing wizard builds and if you look at my initial tree amongst guide the Wizards introduction video I list the order in which the videos will appear and after we're done going over the mechanics of the Wizards I am going to be doing a build video for every subclass of wizards so there are lots and lots of wizard builds coming and for third level spouses is when things get really amazing for a Wizards because we all know that when you get to third level spells that's when the spells become really powerful so let's get started [Music] so as always I will be listing the wizard school and I'm going to rank the spells in order from my most to least favorite for each school so we will start out with our aberration school and my favorite spell the aberration school this shouldn't be surprise to anyone it's counter spell counter spell is a spell that really separates our wizards and our sorcerers from say our clerics and our druids because now if there was ever a spell duel between them the wizard can simply shut down the cleric or the druid using counter spell so counter spell uses your reaction and when you see somebody else casting a spell you cast counter spell and it can prevent them from casting the spell now if the spell is third level or lower it automatically works so somebody's gonna cast a fireball at you and you counter spell it that's it it's done now technically speaking a counter spell can be counter spell so another caster could counter your counter spell and things can become complex that way but everyone only has one reaction per turn so there is gonna be an end result at some point now if the spell is 4th level or higher that your counter spelling then either you have to cast counter spell at the higher spell level to automatically dispel it or you're gonna have to make an ability check based on the levels spell that you're defeating now at tenth level and observes gonna get a bonus to that check and that bonus is going to be equal to your proficiency bonus speaking of observes we should note that of course all these spells as well as being effective are also restoring your arcane ward but at fifth level no one's getting a bonus the only way to really assure of it working is maybe if you are a diviner and you're willing to use one of your important it's one of your higher roles to ensure your counter spell works now there are other ways to boost ability checks but again you don't necessarily know when you're going to be casting counter spell so I wouldn't worry too much about boosting your ability check so most of the time when you use this at fifth level or six level you're going to be counter spelling spells that are there's nothing in lower and then the spells that are higher level you will always have the option to use a higher level spell slot if your higher level if not you'll be making the ability check it's not all that hard to make it's a DC of 10 plus the spell level and then you get an intelligence check to to make that role so if you have an intelligence of say 18 you've got like a plus 4 on that role already so even if you say roll an 11 you can counter spell a fifth level spell but there is definitely a chance of failure and speaking of making ability checks to dispel spells my next favorite aberration spell at this level is dispel magic so dispel magic is an action to cast and it's something you're gonna cast on your turn so you're not using it to cancel out things like a fireball but if an enemy maybe has some buffs on themselves or debuff on you or your allies that's a perfect time to use a dispel magic because then it can remove that effect one nice thing about dispel magic over say something like counter spell is you can remove more than one magical effect so if say an enemy has multiple buffs on them you could remove all those buffs with one dispel magic spell like with counter spell if you are dispelling a spell of 4th level or higher you'll be making an ability check it's exactly the same and also again if you're an observer and your 10th level or higher you will get a bonus on that check my next favourite observation spell at this level is non detection now non detection is cast on either a creature an object or location and then it is protected from all divination magic for 8 hours with no concentration from you now this is still a fairly circumstantial ability but because it doesn't use concentration and has a great duration it's a good spell for a buff especially if you're a higher level caster and you can afford those third level spell slots now it only protects you from divination magic so there are other ways to detect invisible things like blind sense and those will still work still because it doesn't use concentration because it lasts a long time I think it's an OK spell to take as a buff and this is a spell that is going to scale well it's going to continue as you move up in levels as a decent spell to take my next favorite observation spell at this level is glyph of warding now cliff of warding most traditionally we find it as a trap against player so you find a spell book and you open and it explodes and people take damage another thing clip of warding can do though is deliver a spell and one of the things that can be done is you can use glyph of warding as a buff for yourself so you cast a glyph of warding with a buff spell on it and then you activate the glyph of warding and then that buff spells cast on you and most importantly you don't have to concentrate on it now glyphs of warding cannot be moved far from their original location or they go off so this isn't something that you can do before an adventure and then take the glyphs with you but what you could do at high levels is do something like say a demi plain and then you could have a glyph of warding and a demi plain and then you could access it through that touch a buncha glyphs of ward and get a bunch of buffs up and then come out and then you're all buffed up still this costs 100 gold pieces to do and I think the uses of it are very limited at high levels there's ways to exploit it but for its intended purpose I think it's a very circumstantial spell my next favorite spell for this level is protection from energy now protection from energy I think is basically a worse spell than absorb elements because it requires your action to cast so you need to know beforehand what you're going to be facing you have to pick the energy type when you cast it and it most importantly it requires your concentration and because it only requires resistance there's only two things that can happen either one you're not targeted with that energy type in which case you didn't need to cast this spell at all or you are targeted with this energy type and you will take damage from that energy type which means that anytime this spells useful you will automatically have to make a concentration safe so that is a risk I don't particularly like and the concentration then conflicts with other concentration spells so when we're talking about protecting ourselves from energy I far prefer just taking absorb elements and relying on that those are the limitations there - I mean it's using your reaction it's only lasting for one round but still I think it is of superior form of protection now we could have protection from energy and still use absorb elements to protect ourselves from other kinds of energy we might be facing if we're expecting to be multiple kinds of energy damage there are certain circumstances where protection from energy is going to be useful you know what you're facing you're going to be facing a red dragon the fighter needs some kind of protection you can cast protection from energy on the fighter and then if the fighter takes the damage from the energy and you can avoid that an energy damage then in that case you don't have to make a concentration safe but as a self buff I think it has some problems I will say though the one hour duration is pretty good my next favorite observation spell this level is remove curse and remove curse is obviously going to be a circumstantial spell because it's only useful if you or one of your party members gets cursed so it'll remove the curse from a party member or yourself or if a party member has come in contact with a cursed item you can use it to remove the connection between the PC and the cursed item though it doesn't remove the curse from the item itself obviously a really useful spell when you need it but you don't always know when you're gonna need it in general we have other classes that can access remove curse and paladin's and clerics are automatically gonna have it as a spell known which means they can just take 24 hours and then put it on their spell list so if you have a paladin in the party who's a high enough level to cast this or you have a cleric in the party then maybe I wouldn't take this spell because they can access that spell for you my least favorite AB duration spell at this level is Magic Circle so magic circle number one it's a minute casting which means you're not using it in combat and it is a stationary effect which means you can't take it with you so unless you know where a combat is going to occur and you're preparing for it beforehand it's gonna have no value for you if you do know where the battle is going to occur and you're preparing beforehand then you are still paying a costly material component and it's only useful against certain kinds of creatures really the only reason to take this spell that I can see is if you're doing something like a planar binding and then it means this spell to work properly otherwise I just wouldn't bother taking this spell so let's move into our conjuration spells my favorite conjuration spell at third level is thunder step so thunder step is a lot like Dimension Door because we can take an ally with us when we use it now as I've mentioned before I mentioned in the race's video if you are a small-sized caster you can only take other small size or smaller allies so if you're say a gnome wizard and you're trying to move a human you can't do it now someone mentioned to me that you could cast enlarge reduce on that human and then you could do it but that's a lot of setup that tends not to be a viable option in the cases where we want to move an ally we generally want to move an ally if they are in trouble and then we get them out of trouble and I have talked about that in my tactics videos but thunder step allows us early access because with when we originally had the players hand but the first spell that did that was the mentioned door which is a fourth level spell now we have a third level option now thunder step does not give you the range of Dimension Door and you need to see where you're going so there are limitations there but still it gives you that early access to that style of play where you're protecting your allies or just teleporting yourself now thunder step has an additional effect where the area that you left there's an explosion and there's some damage that can be a good thing that can be a bad thing friendly fire is a possibility so that one's kind of a wash for me but the big thing is it's a little bit like Dimension Door but we get it sooner now would I prepare Thunder step and Dimension Door never I'm going to prepare one or the other because they are very redundant if we're going to take them both my next favorite conjuration spell at third level is sleet storm and I talked about sleet storm quite a bit in my mid-level tactics video and so I won't go over all those things again but I will just point out that sleep storm covers a massive area and so then it is useful in cases where we have a big battle field now it does have friendly fire but it doesn't do damage what the main purpose of a sleet storm is is you cast it on your enemies they can't see you a lot of them are going to fall down they are moving through difficult terrain so they're going to come out in waves instead of all at once so it's the classic divide-and-conquer thing that we talked about in our last video with web but sleep storm is a better spell than web it is so much bigger so huge area divide your enemies can be used as a fog cloud overall very good spell is going to use your concentration is sleet storm really effective at higher levels no I don't think it scales all that well because there are better spells that come along there's even better spells here at 3rd level but I do think it is a good choice for third level spell and I would probably continue preparing it until I had some kind of similar effect that could replace it my next favorite conjuration spell this level is thinking cloud now stinking cloud is actually going to fill a similar role to sleet storm in that we're using it to divide and conquer our enemies make a constitution saving throw against poison so those are two bad things right there Constitution saving throw isn't the say if we want to target and poison is not the kind of effect we want to use because a lot of things are immune to poison but when we don't have creatures that are immune to poison that is if they fail the Constitution savings throw they can't do anything so they're stuck in the effect some of the creatures come out and you get the divide and conquer think I just find that stinging cloud is going to be less reliable because of those two factors that I mentioned my next favorite conjuration spell at this level is tidal wave so tidal wave creates an effect that covers an area it's 30 feet wide and 10 feet thick so it's not a huge area actually for the level but creatures in that area they take 48 damage an hour knock prone if they fail a saving throw and if they make their saving throw they take half damage and they're not now prone now the savings throw is dexterity which is fine and big thing I have with this spell is that knocking prone is not a big deal it can be useful we can maybe attack with advantage maybe that's going to affect their movement that they were planning to take the next round if they were going to move at all so there are chances that being not prone could help us but it's not a guarantee I mean if those creatures don't have to move a lot the next turn and then they go after you then they just get up right so knocking prone isn't a big deal the damage of 48 isn't a big amount of damage combining them together makes this an okay spell but not a great spell and my least favorite conjuration spell at this level is summon lesser demons because summon lesser demons it's the same level as the conjure animal spell but it is so much worse in so many ways number one with the conjurer animal spell you pick how many creatures are going to arrive and their challenge rating not with the spell of this Bell you roll randomly and then DM picks the creature so you really have no control over how many or what kinds of creature you're gonna get except that they're going to be demons the other thing is is the demons are hostile to you ideally what you would do is you cast a spell and then you would place the demons on the other side of an enemy so on the back side so they would have to fight through the enemy to get to you and that would be okay but again generally with these summoning spells I would hope to be able to use it for more than a single combat but we can't here because if the enemy is defeated then the demons are going to turn on us and then we're going to have to defeat them which then makes this one hour duration kind of pointless now you can put a protective circle around yourself that prevents the demons from being able to attack you but assuming you're not adventuring by yourself there's going to be other pcs in your party so you kind of screw in the rest of your party over because once the enemies are defeated now they've got to defeat a new enemy that you can judge for them now let's talk about divination spells and my favorite divination spell at this level is clairvoyance and clairvoyance is our first kind of classical divination spell it's the spell that you cast and then you can see somewhere else now that ability uses if there's level slot it has a costly component and it is not something that you would be doing in combat so this is gonna be a circumstantial spell we can't move the effect so we can't use it to explore a dungeon like we could maybe with an arcane eye so it is gonna be circumstantial but in the right circumstances it is our first classic divination spell that's going to allow us to see what's in that room that we can't get into or that kind of thing determine if there's traps sometimes but using a third level spell slot to get that information is often not worth it sometimes it is so I would say that this is a circumstantially useful spell my next favourite divination spell at this level is tongues now ideally we probably already have comprehend languages so there's automatically going to be a bit of redundancy here because we've already gained the ability to understand other languages we've already gained the ability to read other languages all we don't have is the ability to communicate the other direction tongues is the spell that allows us to do that but it's not a ritual and it is using the third level spell slot so that's a big investment for what we have covered most of already but still if you want to be able to communicate with somebody tongues is the best way to do it so I got to say it's circumstantially useful but I find it largely redundant for a wizard that brings us into our enchantment spells my favorite enchantment spell at this level is enemies abound and enemies about is a similar spell to say crown of madness that we saw last level but it is a better spell in a number of ways the most important to me is they don't have to be a humanoid anymore so now the circumstantial 'ti of crown of madness is gone the second thing is that it's going to use an intelligent saving throw an intelligence tends to be a pretty good saving throw to target we often fight creatures that we know have a low intelligence and they're not gonna have any special bonus usually to an intelligent save so we hit them with an enemy's about and it's probably going to work now the problems with this spell are that is once a creature fails that saving throw we don't pick who it attacks it is going to attack randomly anything that it can attack with its regular attack so it may be closest to a PC so it's going to attack the PC or it randomly rolls you so it's going to attack you so there's unpredictability here that I don't particularly like and it is single target and if they say if nothing happens and it is using your concentration and the durations not all that long it's one minute so there are problems with this spell but overall I think it's an OK spell being able to target intelligence is a good thing and it does make it when you are doing single target spells where if they say if nothing happens then intelligence is this if you want to target so overall okay spell my least favorite enchantment spell at this level is cat nap what cat nap does is you take ten minutes to get a short rest and you use a third-level spell slot to do so and it doesn't mean that 10 minutes is safe it's not like a rope trick where you cast a rope trick and then you can have a safe short rest know those 10 minutes better be safe so here's the problem with this number one you're using a third-level spell slot that's a big investment but mainly if you have 10 minutes that's safe you often have the hour that's a if it's seldom a case where a DM is gonna go you know you can rest for 10 minutes but not for an hour it's usually you either can't rest at all or you can rest the hour now maybe there are times when you only have 10 minutes and you don't have an hour times of the essence but you usually have times of the essence you don't have that 10 minutes either it's one of those things where it's just not a big enough difference if you can stay 10 minutes safe somewhere and that's not going to be a problem for adventure goals then usually the hour is good enough and then you can save yourself at their level slide your best rest for wizard there rope trick at second level and laymen's tiny hide at third level this just isn't in their league and speaking of which let's move to e vocation and our number one selection free vacation of course is Lehman's tiny hut Lehman's tiny Hut is a one-minute cast but it can be casted as ritual and I would imagine you would normally cast it as a ritual so you're gonna use 10 minutes create a Lehman's tiny Hut and it is impenetrable you just go in it with your party and then the party can come and go as they please and it's opaque so nobody can see in but you can see out and they can't get in by the way if the enemies are hanging around the outside of the dome waiting for it to come down shoot them with some arrows because you can shoot arrows at them they can't shoot back at you so it is just kind of broken how good this is as a way to ensure a long rest though you can use it for short rest - you want your safe short rest and you can only get 10 minutes safety because of that weird circumstance that I talked about with katnappe dual emits tiny hot and then you can just rest in the Lehman's tiny hut as long as you want you take a short rest you take a long rest easily one of the best Wizards spells in the game and because it's a ritual you're not even using resources for it really a spell that I think is a must-have for a wizard so let's move from what I think is potentially one of the most effective spells in the game to one of the spells that is the most iconic in the game fireball and I like fireball fireball is a good spell I just think it's overrated because people go crazy over and I don't think it's worth going crazy over it's not a must-have for wizards I think it's a good spell to half eight d6 damage at this level is decent damage and the range is good and the area of effect is good and it's not using up your concentration so there's all kinds of good stuff here put it all together and you have a solid blast spell one of the best blast spells in the game but let's not overestimate the damage the average damage on this spell is 28 but they get half if they save so between 14 and 28 and just think about how much damage some characters can do at this level is that damage really all that special then it is if you can hit enough creatures with it and that's the secret of fireball you want to use fireball on large numbers of creatures if you use it on a single target it's not very effective at all and it's a waste of your third level slot but against large numbers of creatures fireball does a lot of damage because you're doing that between 14 to 28 damage to so many different creatures another thing I like about fireball is it's something you can do while you're concentrating on something else so overall a good spell I don't always take it with my wizards I don't think it's needed to be taken with your wizard and I think the damage can be overestimated but I do think it's an effective and good spell so let's move on my next favorite a vacation spell at this level is sending and sending it's kind of odd that it's an e vacation spell you would think it would maybe be a divination spell but basically sending is the standard for long range communication in the game and it's probably your best method of long range communication in the game until you get into level spells or powerful magic items now is this something I'm going to be doing in combat of course not it is totally an out of combat kind of thing and often when an off time kind of thing but in terms of campaigns there are times when you will want to communicate with somebody who's halfway around the world and sending is the most efficient way to do it so it is an okay spell it's not something I'm going to jump on right away but it's certainly something that is useful to have in most campaigns and I would not prepare it but I would use it instead on off time and we would assume we prepare it in that off time to use my next favorite vacation spell at this level is Mel's minute meteors and I have a lot of problems with this spell but there are certain circumstances where it's a decent spell basically it uses your concentration and you get six mini fireballs they kind of circle over your head and then each round you can use your bonus action to fire off two of those mini fireballs each one does two to six damage that's potentially 46 damage per round areas not great but over three rounds that would add up to 12 t6 damage the main reason why I think this isn't a bad spell is if you are a blaster wizard so you are playing in the volcker and you're focusing on blast spells then you can combine this with the ability to cast a fireball so you set up your mouths minute meteors and then on your turn you fire fireball and then use the role couple melts minute meteors in there as well and some of your increasing your 8 d 6 damage - 10 - 6 - 12 - 6 each round for three rounds but number one this uses an action to cast so you have to prepare it beforehand and the duration isn't all that long so you better know you're going to go into combat number two it uses your concentration this is the big one it uses your concentration that concentration can be broken and then you can lose this effect and number three remember although we think 12 d6 damage remember it's really 46 damage around that's what this is doing 46 damage around for three rounds - a small area of effect so none of those things are great but cause it can be combined with something like fireball I think it's okay if you are a blaster wizard if you're not a blaster wizard I wouldn't recommend it my next favorite vacations about this level is lightning bolt and lightning bolt I think is just straight worse than fireball now the damage is the same and it does lightning damage instead of doing fire damage which might be okay but you have to originate the spell from yourself so it essentially has no range beyond the actual area of effect and the area of effect isn't good it is skinny so unless you are firing down a hallway or your enemies are all lined up for you you're just gonna get less creatures in general than you would with a fireball so it's gonna do less damage so less damage no range so it's just straight worse if you want to take a spell to do damage at this level take fireball don't take lightning bolt my next favorite a vacation spell this level is wall of water and I don't really like wall of water it's gonna give disadvantage on attacks against you that arranged it's gonna have the damage from fire spells that come through but this is a defensive spell that is requiring your concentration and it's doing things like disadvantage which we could have achieved at lower levels and really the only thing I think this spell has going for it is there is this effect where if it's hit with cold damage it might freeze and then you might get kind of a wall of ice effect but those areas are small I think that's kind of hard to set up but with some teamwork it could potentially be done and you could potentially actually get a solid wall with a level 3 spell so I'm not gonna give it a red rating but I got to tell you that in general I probably avoid this spell unless we've made plans to make use of that ability of it my least favorite vacation spell though is wall of sand wall of sandbox site which we could do with a first-level spell we can even do it with a can trip and then it slows the movement through the wall effect but of course the wall is only ten feet thick so this isn't a huge obstacle to overcome but creatures can move right through it there's no damage it's really mainly about blocking line-of-sight and slowing things down and we have methods to do that using lower level spells so the only I could ever see taking this is because you want that 10 feet of slowing effect plus the blocked vision effect and those two together is something special for you and you want to get it up in in action but in general just stay away from this I don't think it does nearly enough for the level of smell it is so let's get into our illusion spells and one of my favorite 3rd level spells in the game and one of my favorite spells in the game is here too and that is hypnotic pattern hypnotic pattern is an area of effect spell it gives the enemies one saving throw versus wisdom and if they fail that saving throw and then they are incapacitated for the duration of the spell unless they take damage or an ally uses an action to shake them awake and that means that this is one of the very few spells that's Mass Effect that doesn't provide a second saving throw and that's why this is kind of special and it completely takes enemies out of the fight there's a lot of spells that are single target spells that if they save nothing happens and if they don't save they're screwed that this kind of is as good as but it affects multiple creatures now I've had some people mention that when they play the creatures that made their save go and immediately shake everyone else awake and maybe that's the way your DM plays I don't think that's the common thing I mean certainly some kind of creatures know what a hypnotic pattern is they know how to defeat it they know that their allies could be shaken too and the effect but I think a lot of creatures won't know that especially creatures that aren't intelligent it would be really odd for me if a DM is playing and they have you know the tiger go and shake its ally awake it doesn't make a lot of sense to me DM can do what they want to do but I think in most tables you're gonna find that the shaking of allies away can happen but it's not something that happens a lot and it's not something that prevents the spell from being an extremely effective spell my next favorite illusion spell at this level is fear and fear is actually going to fill a similar role to what hypnotic pattern does you create a 30-foot cone so hopefully we're hitting lots of enemies and they're going to make a saving throw and if they don't make that saving throw they have to run away and again they don't get another saving throw unless they get to a point where they don't see you anymore so they have to run in some cases a long way away so what we're doing is we're dividing our enemies half our enemies run away the other half we can deal with the reasons why I don't like fear as much as say hypnotic pattern is number one when creatures run away they're a little harder to deal with then if they're staying in one spot but the main difference for me is about placement of the spell because cone spells must originate from you so that really limits where you can place this spell it is harder to place you can't place it at range it can only be placed near you and that cone shape can be hard fit remember we don't want to be hitting our allies with this either so getting that fear in the right position to get lots of enemies isn't as easy as something like if not a pattern so don't like it as much but I still think it's a very good spell for the reasons I stated my next favorite illusion spell at this level is major image and major image is kind of your classic illusion spell you can create a creature or an object and it affects vision you can make noise it can have smells it can generate warmth all kinds of things so it really can appear real and it can occupy up in your space and illusions are hard to give you a lot of examples because every example is super super circumstantial except maybe the making of a wall to block vision but you know we have other methods of doing that remember that illusionist can use malleable illusions to change the nature of this illusion so you could have an illusion of one thing and then you might change it to an illusion of another thing now the one thing about this spell that's kind of interesting is that if you cast it with a six level slot it's permanent so if you are an illusionist and then you cast this spell using a six level slot you have a permanent illusion that you can change at need now can you move the illusion well technically speaking no I mean it is cast in the area that is in the spell description of the spell and can't change that with malleable illusions so if we are say in the city and we cast a spell on Seafarer street then that illusions going to need to stay in Seafarer Street even with valuable illusions and the question is it can you cast the spell on something that moves like on the back of a wagon and that will depend on your DA and if you can then if you are an illusionist you can make a lot of use of malleable illusions it really comes quite impressive but for most characters this is just an illusion spell you need to be creative with it has combat uses has out of combat uses it's the best kind of straight illusion spell in the game and certainly better than silent image before that and minor image below before that but it is using your concentration so keep that in mind and my least favorite illusion spell but still a decent illusion spell is phantom steed and phantom steed is a ritual spell which means we can cast it without using a spouse lot or preparing it and what it does is it gives us a steed which is a horse and it has a movement speed of a hundred otherwise it's basically a horse so you can use phantom steed and then you can mount it and then you have increased movement and that's basically what it does you get a little bit of extra movement and that can be useful I mean even in combat you can be on a mount and then you have movement now that phantom steed can die pretty easy so you may find that in a combat you might have it for the first round or two and then you lose it and then you have to walk around again not a big deal overall in terms of travelling this is hard to use because the rituals take so long so then creating mounts for your entire party will depend on your DMS opinion on whether you can cast that ritual while you're riding on a beast at a hundred feet of movement around and some DMS aren't going to play with that so in terms of a travel spell it's okay it's mainly about just some increased maneuverability and for that it is okay so this brings us to our next fella my favorite necromancy spell at third level is animate dead and you know what animate does you cast it you get skelton or he get his aam be it last for 24 hours at which point the magic leaves it now having a skeleton or zombie is a useful thing but it is important to note it requires your bonus action on your turn to command the skeleton or zombie so that is a bit of a limitation that you just need to keep in mind still having an extra companion along that can open doors for you to tech traps for you often by setting them off maybe be another target in combat fire arrows all those kinds of things and I did a useful spell to half now necromancer's are especially good with animate dead and if you are a necromancer this is a must half this would be a blue rating spell for you if you're playing a necromancer this is the reason you play the necromancer is because you can enhanced the creatures that you get with animate dead and you get more of them so there's no reason not to take this spell if you're a necromancer and you might even want to carry a backpack full of bones so you can have skeletons at need because you are going to be using this spell regularly for everybody else who's not a necromancer it's an OK spell I think it is useful enough of the time to make it worthwhile having a creature just helps with the action economy and I made a paladin spell video before where I talked about Crusaders mantle and having additional creatures that you could use if you are a necromancer and you can get a bunch of skeletons and you can get bows for all those skeletons and then a pile then hits him with a Crusaders mantle that would be pretty effective just bringing that up so let's go way way down to my next favorite necromancy spell this level which is life transference and what life transference does is you cause yourself 48 necrotic damage and then an ally can get double that amount healed so it is a healing option for wizards and that's reasonably rare but healing option where you have to do damage to yourself which means it's not a good healing spell are there cases where you would want it sure if you are in a party and there's very few healing options in the party it at least gives you a healing option but I do not like spells that do damage to yourself means you can't really even use it if you're concentrating on the spell because it's gonna trigger a concentration safe so it has big limitations there I'm much much rather at just deliver 48 healing than 88 healing and then you take 48 damage that isn't such a good trade for me the rest of the necromancy spells aren't very good because for some reason the designers don't like necromancy I've mentioned that before and we're gonna see the examples here the first one I'll talk about is bestow curse I guess it's my favorite of my least favorites bestow curse has a range of touch it provides a saving throw and if they fail that saving throw the effects aren't nearly as effective as we get with area of effect spells that can affect multiple enemies so I'm not sure what they were thinking about that and delivering it by touch oh and it's gonna require your concentration to maintain I just don't see any values here now if we cast it with a higher level slot we can do it without concentration in that case this is an OK spell it still has the problems that the effects are not dramatic and you have to deliver by touch and it's providing a savings so there's still lots of limitations but being able to do without concentration does add some value to this spell and I might rate it Orange if we cast it with a fifth level slot but even then I don't think it's great because the effect just isn't all that dramatic for me and if we're investing a fifth level slot we would expect a big payoff my second least favorite necromancy spell at this level is fiend death so cast fiend death and you can pretend you're dead for an hour or now I can pretend they're dead for an hour that's it that's what it does now you can cast this as a ritual but then you need 10 minutes how often does that come up almost never I can't even think of a single example in 40 years of role-playing where I've had that situation come up maybe it has there's been a lot I've forgotten so I just don't even see spending the hundred and fifty gold pieces to copy this into my spell book even if I found it because if it's never ever going to come up then why do I want to spend 150 gold pieces strangely enough the worst spell at this level so my least-favorite necromancy spell for this level and really one of the worst necromancy spells there is is vampiric touch a vampiric touch is an awful awful spell what you do is you cast it it's going to use your concentration then you need to go up to an enemy and touch them and you know what you do 3d six necrotic damage so like ten or eleven points of damage on average that's how much damage this does the damage you would expect from a first level spell except to an area I mean burning hands does this damage and you can hit multiple enemies with it but we're going to use a third level spell slot to do that damage and then you regain half that amount of hit points yourself so if you're not wounded that doesn't do anything but if you are wounded then you can heal a tiny amount by putting yourself in the massive danger of going into touch range with the enemies as a combat spell just a terrible spell now it's using your concentration and this is almost kind of a trap you can do it round after round while you concentrate on this ability so it's gonna give you a terrible terrible thing to do with your action every round for a minute now I guess out of combat maybe if you've take prisoners and you are a sadist then you could use vampiric touch to kill your enemies and heal yourself still not the most effective out of combat healing in the game so again even then I don't see this being an overly effective spell it's just garbage as a combat spell and I would recommend you to stay far far away from it so this brings us into our transmutation spells and my favorite transmutation spell at third level is slow and slow in general is not going to have the same effect as a hypnotic pattern or a fear spell if we hit the same number of creatures with it the advantage of slow is that we can cast it in a chaotic melee and I talked about that in my mid-level tactics video but when we have that chaotic melee slow is one of the best choices because we can just choose our enemies there's no friendly fire and we can affect multiple enemies with this they may the wisdom saving throw if they fail there's all kinds of bad effects for them they lose any multiple attacks they had in the round they can only take an action or a bonus action on their turn they're losing their reactions when it's not their turn so this has all kinds of bad effects on a creature it really debuffs them heavily now they still technically can fight so they can still technically attack that can still technically cast spells it's just all reduced so it is a good way to take up to six enemies and then just make them worse and it gives to your party that mechanical advantage over them in the combat now they get a saving throw every round so this is something that once we get to the point where we're only affecting one or two creatures I'm probably not going to maintain my concentration on this spell anymore I'm going to drop it and at higher levels I'm not sure this is a spell that's worth a preparation slot this is a really good mid-level spell my second favorite transmutation spell at this level is water breathing and that might be a surprise to some people especially considering that in my guide I didn't rate it nearly that high but as I've played I've just found that being able to use the ritual at the beginning of the day to make every single PC in the party as well as any other allies nearby able to breathe water for the entire day without concentration without any other resources we don't even have to prepare it it's just useful I mean I don't always need to go underwater but you just cast this at the beginning of the day and then you don't have to worry about it right we don't have to prepare we don't have to know with water's coming up which is there every day for free and giving everybody in your party the ability to breathe water all the time it's just a pretty good thing to be able to do at no resource cost my next favourite transmutation spell this level is blink and blink is one of those spells that we can layer on ourselves when we are layering our defenses it uses an action to cast so again it's something you want to cast if you know that you're going into combat but if you do know you're going into combat blink doesn't use your concentration so we can layer it up with our mirror images and then we can go into combat and we're harder than ever to hit what blink does is if it's not your turn basically 50/50 percent chance that you enter the ethereal plane to the beginning of your next turn then when you reappear you can teleport up to ten feet or appear in a space unoccupied within ten feet of where you originated and then you've reappear on your turn keep in mind though that blink could interfere with some things like for example enemies spellcasters no longer have to worry about you counter spelling them if you are under a blanket act so there are some downsides to think about but in terms of your own defense it absolutely does beef them up without using concentration it does use a third-level spell slot though which is a fairly hefty cost so I don't love this spell but I think it's okay as a spell to layer defense it's with my next favorite transmutation spell at this level is fly and you know what fly does the speed is 60 feet around which is pretty good for a fly a lot of fly abilities allow you to move your regular movement speed or a 30 foot movement speed so being able to move that 60 is good using your concentration is not the fact that it uses your concentration heavily limits this spell what it's really going to be used for as transportation to an area that you'd normally couldn't get to or because you're in a combat and you have a melee character that can deliver lots of damage that needs to be able to fly to hit an enemy then you use it as a buff and those are really the two main uses of the fly's spell but in terms of what it does you know what it does but it's single target but you can up cast it to affect multiple creatures and that is fairly useful to do when you're a higher level so the fly is a spell I might keep as I move up in levels because I can affect multiple creatures then my next favorite transmutation spell at this level is haste haste I think is an okay buff it's single target it uses your concentration usually it's about giving them one additional attack around now for the right character that might be a lot of damage and for other characters it might not be so much so haste overall it's an okay buff I don't think it's a great buff but we only have a limited number of decent buff options and the reason why I want to have some buff spells is because sometimes creatures are resistant magic or may they're resistant to the type of damage I do and I don't have a lot of useful things I can do by the buff always works right you cast a buff on your ally now they're better and so you are contributing my next favorite spell for transportation at this level is tiny servant and tiny servant is actually going to do a similar thing for you then animate Deadwood except this time you're creating a tiny servant which is basically like a construct it's not nearly as effective as a skeleton or a zombie but it does have a number of condition immunities and we can throw things on it like a dragon's breath and then it can deliver that kind of thing in combat but keep in mind this one also just like anime dead uses your bonus action to be able to command it on your route so we can't combine it with an animate dead it's one or the other and in general I think the animate dead is a little bit better and it has a better duration this one only lasts for eight hours but as an alternative to animate dead because maybe you think anime dead is a little too evil for your character then tiny serpent is an okay substitute my next favorite transmutation spell at this level is gaseous form and gaseous form of course does what you think it does it turns you into a cloud of gas and then you can move through cracks and you can fly but it also doesn't do some things you would think it would do non magical weapons can still hurt you you have resistance to them but somebody stabs you with a sword you still take damage magical weapons do full damage too you also can still be affected by magic you get it advantage on a couple different kinds of saving throws but lots of magic spells will still work on you so you're not getting any kind of immunity here and the movement is really slow ten feet around so as an escape spell this doesn't really work it's more about maneuverability through those cracks and things like that which we might be able to do with teleport spells later on but maybe at fifth level we don't have access to that kind of spell smells like thunder step we have to be able to see where we're going so gaseous form might allow us a little bit of maneuverability that we didn't otherwise have and that's really about it so it's super circumstantial and so generally I wouldn't recommend for most characters the next transportation that spell I want to talk about is flame arrows so you cast flame arrows on a quiver full of arrows then every time that an arrow is drawn it becomes a flame arrow and it does an additional 1 d6 fire damage if it hits and then once 12 pieces of ammunition are drawn it ceases to work so basically this is like giving somebody a hunter's mark or giving somebody a hacks except the duration sucks this is also going to use your concentration so it's not like we're getting around any kind of mechanic there either now woods don't have hex or hundreds mark and those spells can't be given to somebody else so there are some advantages here we can use this as a buff on another character also they don't have to worry about using their bonus actions to switch targets or anything like that so there's a little bit of flexibility here that those spells don't have but 12 pieces of ammunition you could go through that really fast right think about this let's say you have a fighter and their 5th level so they're firing twice around but maybe they also have crossbow experts so now they're firing three times around and then they use their action surge so now they're attacking five times and around they've gone through half that ammunition in one round so the duration here is a problem for me and the one day six damage per arrow isn't enough damage unless they're firing a lot right if they're only firing once or twice around then we're only adding one or two d6 damage around and we're using a concentration we could be concentrating on a flaming sphere and be doing more damage than that with a lower level spell so then why would we cast this spell and concentrate on it only because we have an ally that can deliver lots of arrows in a single round in that case it'll deliver a decent amount of damage but the duration is not good at all my least favorite transmutation spell at third level is erupting earth and what erupting earth is is it's a crappy blast spell 20-foot cube so it's a tiny area of effect does 3d 12 damage so although it's a better blast spell than something like a vampiric touch it's still bad damage for this level if we can fireball fireball does a much bigger area and much more damage so why am i casting this well I get a small area of difficult terrain that's what I get and difficult terrain is not a big deal so expect this spell to deliver about 20 points of damage for creatures that fail they're safe about half that for creatures that make their save in a 20 foot cube just doesn't stack up to the other area of effect spells we've seen at this level now there is a trap portion of this spell for you to be aware of and a lot of people talk about this a lot is that you can up cast this spell and it adds a d12 of damage every level except instead of say the d6 of damage you would get from fireball and they'll point out that fairly quickly if we're up casting fireball and erupting earth a roughing earth will bypass fireball for damage now I don't know if it really bypasses fireball for damage if five passes fireball for a single target damage but if we're hitting three times as many creatures with the fireballs as an erupting earth erupting earth will never catch fireball for damage but secondly up cast fireballs are awful don't up cast your fireballs fireball is a spell that we're going to be using a fifth level and sixth level and maybe at seventh level as a third level slot don't use your fourth level slots don't use your fifth level slots on fireball fireball doesn't scale well most blast spells don't scale well and the reason is because you're adding one die of damage for up casting now if that one dies a d12 yeah that's better than adding a d6 but it's not enough if we're going to scale blast spells effectively they need to be doing round by round damage so if I up cast say a flaming sphere it adds 1 d6 damage but if I use that flaming sphere 10 times then it's adding 10 d6 damage for one level of scaling and that's a lot better than adding one d12 so don't up cast your fireballs don't have cast your erupting Earth's in fact don't even put erupting earth in your spell book and I think you'll be better off for it and that is all the third level spells so next week we'll be talking about the 4th level spells and then we're going to get into polymorph won't that be cool but for today I'm gonna sit back and I'm gonna relax and I'm gonna have some fun because D&D is for everyone thanks off Tim answers I'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

Views: 79,094

Keywords: Wizard, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, DnD, Guide, Treantmonk, Analysis, Spells, Feats, Races, Diviner, Bladesinger, Abjurer, Conjurer, Necromancer, Transmuter, Enchanter, Evoker, Charop, level 1, fireball

Id: xhwtg8AIL5E

Length: 53min 10sec (3190 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2019