Glyph of Warding is a spell that allows you to cast spells without requiring concentration. It does not require concentration and allows you to create as many glyphs as you want. However, it cannot make objects invisible or make the glyphs almost invisible. The spell effect only lasts for the duration once the Glyph is triggered.
Limiting spell glyphs to using range and line of effect measured from the center of the glyph solves the issue of AOEs like lines and cones while preventing numerous abuse cases. When casting a spell with a casting time longer than a single action or reaction, you must spend your action each turn casting the spell and maintain your concentration.
When inscribed a glyph that later unleashes a magical effect, the area is centered on that creature. If the spell summons hostile creatures or creates harmful objects or traps, they appear as close as possible to the glyph. The glyph is nearly imperceptible and requires a successful Wisdom (Perception) check against your spell save DC to notice.
Glyph of Warding can bypass the Concentration requirement for some spells. To best use this, cast a Glyph (Spell) right before a long rest and have the trigger be a secret word that you say when you wake up. If a spell requires concentration, it lasts until the end of its full duration.
A glyph of warding can cast spells without requiring concentration, making the concentration system irrelevant. You can only concentrate on one spell and when triggered, the spell won’t require the spellcaster’s concentration and will automatically last for its entire duration.
📹 GLYPH OF WARDING | Ignore Concentration – Spell A Day D&D 5E +1
Alrighty day 160! Today is Glyph of Warding. The spell economy is in shambles. Oh boy, just getting this next one out of the way.
📹 3rd Level Spell #28: Glyph of Warding (DnD 5E Spell)
Level: 3rd Casting Time: 1 Hour Range/Area: Touch Components: V, S, M * Duration: Until Dispelled or Triggered School: …
Here is something else, too: this was touched upon by another commenter in a past article, but when you use a spell scroll, YOU ARE CASTING THE SPELL. This means you can store spells from spell scrolls inside those Glyphs as well. Spell scrolls themselves are good, in my humble opinion. If you can make them, you can basically pay gold to get more spell slots. And nothing in Glyph of Warding prevents you from storing a 9th LVL spell inside of one, but the main reason why you can’t do that is because casting a Glyph of Warding at 9th LVL would, logically, consume your 9th LVL Slot. …. Oh hey, Order of Scribes. They are very good at making spell scrolls. They make them so fast, and at such a cheap price. 12,500 GP for a 9th LVL Spell Scroll. Yeah sure, lets just store Wish-cast Simulacrum, Invulnerability, and Foresight into a few Glyphs and call it good, eh chief? (Without this tech, Glyph is a easy 10/10. With this tech… Fuck it, 20/10.)
This is the god tier prep spell for higher levels. Throwing down 30 of these in a demiplane with buff spells is god tier, but whats even funnier is that you can banish someone to a demi plane using the plane shift spell. Using a ton of concentration spells that deal damage you can have a kill box that will just about instantly annihilate anything you banish there. 10/10 no problem.
the restriction for the overcoming concentration is the level of preparation required. when you’re adventuring you’re typically on the offense, rather than defense, and don’t get to pick and prep the location. That being said, once you get access to demiplane, this completely breaks. for an 8th level spellslot, you can get access to all of your glyphs. when i play at high tiers, all clerics and wizards have at least 3 demiplanes: their bank, their kill-room, and their buff room. when they need someone dead they create a demiplane with a book with a fuck ton of line spells and just cast cone of cold and lightning bolt an arbitrary number of times, and wen they need multiple people dead, they open the buff room and exit with every sinlge buff spell in the game. for a lvl 17 wizard you can even bypass the cost at the expense of time using wish.
I think the “certain circumstances or physical characteristics” part allows to define a specific trigger such as the target is identified by something that you yourself point at and speak a command word. This effectively allows you to have controllable lair actions. Think of worldbuilding implications, the home of any wealthy spellcaster that has access to this can be full of glyphs. As for the player characters, just like with many other spells that trap or prep an area, usefulness will greatly depend on what your party is doing in the world. If you are usually the ones who goes about and hunts stuff down, and not the other way around, this spell is of limited use. In high level games, Demiplane breaks this spell so much it is not to be used without conversation between DM and the players about implications and expectations.
Imagine a spell book, that everyday if I had extra spells, I would cast a “password” ward on one of these. now Image I did that every day from lvl 5 to lvl 17, and then enemy decides to steal my spell book to use against me. Oh, the fireworks, the hold spells, the summons, and a contingency spell to summon my back-up spell book to me!.
luxuriant sigh Concentration CHEESE! LOVE this spell! So we were cleaning out a dungeon of Giants. The hallway we set up the ambush was 20 feet across so only 2 Large size creature can stand side by side. We had that pigment where you can paint stuff into reality plus there was a side room that the casters could pop out cast and then hide back in with full cover. We painted wings that the crit fisher Barb/Fighter and me (Dwarf War Cleric with tough) could hide behind to get out of the way of thrown boulders. We had like 5 different concentration spells active. Most of them adding weapon damage but also some healing spells. With that bottle neck and the extra concentration spells we were able to handle like 35-40 or so giants.
One classic way of storing your glyphs is pages in a book chained to a lectern. A thing from the Order of the Stick webcomic, earlier edition based back when Explosive Runes was the entirety of the spell, was that the words inscribed were “I prepared explosive runes.” People read it out loud, and then explode.
What was it that a doll read just before vanilla ice killed him? Something like “if the person reading this turns around, they will die”? Imagine that as the trigger and there’s just like, 5 glyphs on pebbles right behind them or something. Better yet, use magic mouth as the trigger for even more complicated triggers
So… wanna explode the sky? Heck yeah! This spell is 10.000 times more busted in the original than in the german cover. In the german cover it states that the trigger has to be inside the 10 ft radius of the spell. This text is missing in the english text. So what the fuck stops you to cast earthbind on a bunch of glyphs and set the trigger to when someone enters your domain? Watch as the entire army of dragons falls to the ground at your command. So yeah this is definitely not RAI. With this out the way and the obvious bag of holding fireball book that you set the trigger to something along the line: „If I touch the book with my right hand any hostile none friendly creature becomes the traget of the spell.”, you can do a lot of other garbage with this spell. For example you can transfer the spell via divinesoul sorcerer or a spellstoring ring to a sorcerer. The spell you cast into the glyph is affected by your metamagic. I wonder where a extended geas or similar bullshit lead but man I don’t wanna be a part of it. The fact that you can get the spell via a race option (Drawf Mark of Warding) is just icing on the cake. The only downside is that you might forget where you put a glyph (Keen mind counters that) and that you need to resolve the spell (fireball in your own home is bad). But man! The goldcost hardly even matters since at higher lvls you can use the limbo to get infinite resources via fabricate or true polymorph. So the plan for the most op char is as follows: Race: Drawf Mark of Warding Class: Clockwork Sorcerer 18/ Order of Scribes Wizard 2 The outcome: 16 Glyphs per day of spell lvl 6th and lower with metamagic.
Be a Pact of the Genie Warlock and reach level 10. Genie Warlocks can enter their patron vessel and at level 10 can also bring friends with them, the inside acts as a extradimensional space. Enter with your party wizard and Paladin and start making some Glyphs. Next time the party is fighting a big dangerous creature, warlock and Paladin vanish into the vessel, and next turn both emerge with the Paladin wreathed in EVERY flavor of Smite.
All you gotta do is make the glyph cast an other glyph of warding if it’s moved more than 9 feet for infinite range. Then tell it to put a different spell inside the next glyph and the trigger will be you saying a word. Then you have a spell scroll that you can take with you for however far you want. This does not count as ‘you’ storing multiple spells into the glyph because the glyph is storing the spell. For example, store the spell ‘glyph of warding’ inside the glyph of warding. Then set the trigger to be if you are moved 9 feet or I say the name of any other spell, trigger the glyph of warding stored in you. If you moved 9 feet, prepare the next glyph to be triggered with this trigger. If I said the name of any other spell, store that spell and set the trigger to be instantaneously.
So I recently had an epiphany Theres no limit on how specific you can make your triggers, or what they can be RAW, this thing can detect alignment I’d argue it can detect anything But there’s also nothing saying that whatever the trigger is, it has to be within a certain distance of the glyph, or even on the same plane You could have a glyph’s trigger be “this specific piece of paper is torn in half” and take that piece of paper wherever you want Instant spell scroll that anybody in the party can use, doesn’t cost an action to use, will never fail, and bypasses concentration Or Your trigger could be “the bbeg is alive” Even literally saying “the bbeg” This spell will figure it out You don’t have to know where the BBEG is You don’t have to know what they look like You don’t have to know their true name And the BBEG could be hiding in their demiplane Arguably they could even be in leomund’s tiny hut And you can cast whatever spell you want on them What is this spell!
This is such a phenomonal spell. Breaking the concentration requirement is bonkers, and I love it. While the gold costs will keep players from breaking the world with it the moment they can get it as they level up even a party on “Active” hunting/world travel can and will find amazing uses for this spell even before Demiplane, i.e. find a Portable Hole and let the shenanigans begin!
NGL i saw. Cleric and said dam this looks cool to play. then i look at the spell list. concentration Concentraon coNceNtRaTIon CONCENTRATION. Like why are all the cool spells concentration. the only thing you can do with the class after casting one concentration spell is heal and most likely some one else or swing a hammer. I immediately thought of this. I wonder if you can store spells from another class using the spell maybe every character doesnt need their own glyph of warding maybe only 1 person needs to take it and everyone else can line up and let that guy store the spells.
My favorite use of this Spell. Is to use it on my dagger. Then when me and the party are in a hairy situation and out numbered. I can draw my dagger. Toss it at the bad guys. Make the condition for the glyph, If it’s unsheathed and within Five feet of a Being hostile to me. With that twenty foot blast radius. It fucks them up
Ready for the ultimate cheese? A handy haversack is an extradimensional space that can be accessed wherever you take the bag. Anything you put into the bag that has a glyph of warding on it is not moving more than 10 feet no matter how far you carry it. A stack of 50 copper coins, each containing a glyph of warding on their surface, stored in the accessories pouch of a handy haversack and triggered to pop after 6 seconds of being flipped onto the ground, makes a fun present for the party’s thief.
If the spell effect is targeted on a triggering creature, does that mean you can overcome Range too? What if it was read by someone through a spyglass? Like if I put such a glyph on the roof of my keep, and I wanted to fry spies. It doesn’t SEEM to put a limit on range, and instead manifests the spell effect on the triggering target no matter where it is (unless “the stored spell is cast” implies the range)
Now hear me out. 1. Learn this spell 2. Buy a bag of Ball Bearings 3. Every day, cast this spell with fireball on a ball bearing. 4. Make the requirement for activation “when dropped on the ground and the word ‘kaboom’ is said within 100 feet.” 5. Own several dozen free fireballs ready to throw at anyone who is unlucky enough to call you a meanie. 6. Profit
Casting time one hour. What is this breaking exactly? It means you have one spell to use when you need to prepare a scenario for a fight. No action economy is being broken here, action economy happens in combat and in combat only, where your action is limited. You can’t use glyph of warding in combat at all. What am i missing here? Which is also why the spells components are expansive, this is suppose to be used either when the party is trying to set up a trap or in a base of operations of sorts. Imagine having to keep concentration on glyph of warding? Your static trap, in place somewhere you want to keep safe, now all of a sudden keeps your most important action in check: Concentration.
There’s a villain in my campaign that uses this. King Atticus wants to be adored by his people. He’s willing to do just about anything to hear praises from anyone. One day, he decides to visit the orphanage to donate toys to the children in person. In the orphanage are three unique children, one of which being Rune. His father was a powerful wizard who taught him how to study magic. However, he was executed once it was discovered that he would take innocent lives for the purpose of his studies. Rune, along with his two foster brothers, devised a plan to seize the crown. Once he heard that the king was visiting the orphanage, he put his plan into action — he’d convince the king to adopt them. He rigged the door knob with a Glyph of Warding. Once the door was opened by the king, it’d set off a Suggestion spell. Charmed by the spell, King Atticus walked into the orphanage with a wagon full of toys and left with three children who would lead to his family’s death.
DM Pro-tip: use this as a reward for players, not as a trap. For example if you have diseases in your dungeon and want some way to halt the disease other than an NPC, you could have a Glyph Of Warding cast a spell that removes disease. You can also have a glyph of warding trigger a teleportation circle.
In preparation for a big fight I’ll put two glyphs of warding on my Spellbook with haste and melfs minute meteors and have it so when triggered it casts them on me. And a magic mouth on my clothes that triggers when I cast a particular spell. So now when the fight starts I can throw around attack spells and throw up a concentration spell of my own while I’m hasted running around the battlefield super fast and throwing small meteors as a bonus action and then using my hasted action to use whatever items I want such as potions. A bit expensive and it could go wrong but if you know you’re gonna be coming up against a super big fight and you have prep time and money I’d try to pull something like this
I once had a group who had a base in an abandoned diamond mine. Since they got the material component very easily, they got creative with the glyph. Some of my favourites: -triggers halfway through casting dispell magic -fills a room that already contains glyphs of warding with an illusion of a grid of identical glyphs of warding (used that in 3 dungeons since) -triggers when you cast detect magic What are interesting triggers you have used?
So I play a Divination Wizard. I have my own tower. I paid a huge sum of money for a lock (DC21) to be put on this door. Once the lock was installed, I placed a Glyph on the door (on the inside). The trigger: If the lock is about to be successfully opened w/o a password being said, Arcane Lock the door. If someone gets by this anyway, on the door frame, inside the tower, I have 14 Glyphs (cast at level 7) around the room. Each one is reliant on the previous. Glyph 1: If anyone enters the tower without saying a password, Hold Person. Being a Divination Wizard, my DM allowed me to use my Portent roll from that day (he did rule I wouldn’t be able to use either for the rest of the day) to be placed into it as well. Once Glyph 1 is triggered, Glyph 2 is now triggered. With Disintegrate. If the creature is still alive, Glyph 3 is triggered. With Disintegrate. And so on and so on. 1 Hold Person Glyph (with a very low Portent roll – which cannot be affected by any outside Feature, such as Halfling Racial, Lucky, etc). and 13 Disintegrates. Each of which target a living creature if the prior Glyph has been triggered. I also have a Vault. The only way into this room is via some kind of teleportation (ie Dimension Door). The room is 60Lx60Wx30H. The Walls, Floor, and Ceiling are all 6ft thick with a thin sheet of lead in the middle. Inside is a 20x20x20 Vault. Similar to the tower door and it’s Password setup, I have Hold Person & Disintegrate Glyphs inside the Vault itself. The difference?
Well hello Chance. Welcome back sir. It’s been a minute. How are ya doing? Oh the uses of this spell. Stacking the wards. Does say you cant. Ward 1. Wall of Force 10ft diameter around from the center of the ward. With a quarter inch hole at the top (dome from the spell effect) or just around sealing itself to the floor and ceiling. Ward 2. Create water Look Ma! I made a aquarium!
Cast Glyph of Warding Put Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, Reduce, Hold Person, or some other non-damaging but noticeable spell into it Have it activate if 1. If it is touching a creature other then you and you say “Lawful Good” & the creature is Lawful Good it activates 2. If it is touching a creature other then you and you say “Neutral Good” & the creature is Neutral Good it activates 3. If it is touching a creature other then you and you say “Chaotic Good” & the creature is Chaotic Good it activates 4. If it is touching a creature other then you and you say “Lawful Neutral” & the creature is Lawful Neutral it activates 5. If it is touching a creature other then you and you say “Ture Neutral” & the creature is Ture Neutral it activates 6. If it is touching a creature other then you and you say “Chaotic Neutral” & the creature is Chaotic Neutral it activates 7. If it is touching a creature other then you and you say “Lawful Evil” & the creature is Lawful Evil it activates 8. If it is touching a creature other then you and you say “Neutral Evil” & the creature is Neutral Evil it activates 9. If it is touching a creature other then you and you say “Chaotic Evil” & the creature is Chaotic Evil it activates If you want it to be known only to you then have it cast Alarm and have it be a mental alarm.
I like the idea of using this in puzzles or special dungeons. For example, there are 10 books, 9 of which have explosive glyphs and 1 has a teleport spell (to the next stage of the dungeon) and you give the players a riddle or something to figure out which book it is. Alternatively, fill the 9 wrong ones with fun, non-lethal spells, like polymorph or even silent image of a dunce hat, etc.
Probably my favorite spell in the game Also my most hated spell description in the game As you said, its long But it’s also self contradictory and vague We start with the oddly restrictive locations you can cast it. It honestly seems like those aren’t meant to be restrictions, but rather, suggestions Because.. why can I put this glyph on the floor, but if I put it on a piece of paper, it has to be folded? What? Probably just some poor word choice The English language is complicated, and we can’t expect game designers to be able to use it adequately (actually, it’s probably the number one thing in the job description) Moving on The glyph is nearly invisible? So.. it just.. has to be nearly invisible. You can’t choose to have it be visible? I mean, fine, I can just draw over it with regular paint if i want it to be visible, but why not put a “may” in there? Now, on to the actual problems Triggers They list a whole bunch of ideas out there, all very physical things like touching it, or even reading it And then they say you can refine the shit out of it, to the point where it can detect alignment You know what, sure Ok This spell’s trigger could be literally as specific as I want it to be then, forget that “password” bullshit If it can detect alignment, I can say “never be triggered by anyone I wouldn’t want it to trigger on” and it should be able to detect that I could also set up a glyph to cast a healing spell if I drop below 0 hp And I can set up a glyph to cast a healing spell if I drop to zero hp and the first glyph is triggered Presumably, this detection even works across planes, there’s no limitations, even implied limitations, on what the triggering requirements could be It also has no limit on the range that the glyph can target targets, just “The spell must target a single creature or an area” and “If the spell has a target, it targets the creature that triggered the glyph.
Be a genie warlock, multiclass to receive glyph ( divine sorcerer), go into your vessel, which is in another dimension and doesn’t move itself, stack buffs with glyph of warding, concentration is automatically hold, you’re jacked up and ready to kill the big bad boss Possible spells (shield faith, enhance ability, armor of Agathys and many more, enjoy :3
If I paint the glyph on a ship and it moves (usually more than 10 feet), the glyph is broken according to the rulebook without being triggered. In Eberron, however, there are now these things regularly on airships without being broken. How is that possible? And as for the “magic mouth” computer: does this magical echo of the School of Illusion have class levels as a magic-working class that has “Glyph of Warding” on its spell list ? No ? Then the question of the glyph-creating glyph computer has just been settled. You can’t sit down an orc with no magic levels and have him draw those things because he lacks the ability to cast them. In addition to that: “Magic Mouth” cannot cast spells – not even those that have only verbal components – because this ability is not in its description.
Asked by dm if I could go inside my bad of holding, to bypass the movment restrictions, and inscribe a revivify into a glyph of warding that activates when a dead creature/ corpse of a certain size (my characters size) enters its radius. Id just need one of the party members to shove my corpse into the bag and then crawl in with my character and move my body to the glyph. We’ll see what he says.
So my only question is how it interacts with Permanency? Glyph of Warding is one of the spells you can make permanent with this spell. Since the glyph is technically already ‘permanent’ until it gets used up when activated or moved 10ft, does that mean Permanency would prevent one or both of these effects? If so, then you could make some crazy ‘enchanted’ items with it. Spear/Arrow/Thowable item + Spell Glyph with Disintegrate set to activate on impact or when in range of enemy. You could activate it as many times as necessary without cost. Or maybe Melee Weapon + Spell Glyph with some sort of damage spell and suddenly your barbarian is creating explosions and lightning bolts with every strike.
Because of the movement limit on the spell, if you wanted to use it for self buffing, ive read you could get a portable hole item and in it you could prep the spell and since your pocket demention isnt moving just the enstrance is, you can come back to that spell when ever. If youre dm doesnt like that then maybe a helm of teleportation and set the spells back at home. Ive seen some silly ideas for this spell but the computer one is new, ill have to look into that. Idk how id work it if my players wanted to do that but sure as a heck as a dm i can do it.
Dnd bad idea. Cast glyph of warding on your armor (or on clothing/self if your DM is lenient enough) with the highest charge you can Now the trigger is “when HP drops to zero or is knocked 9 ft away unwillingly from the casting point and not near any allies or the trigger word is said by caster” because like the spell said “you can decide the triggers” so you can have multiple triggers if you set desire.
I don’t think it can be used to effectively cast charm style spells because the spell caster isn’t around to give the suggestion or command after the spell was cast. Nothing says you can preprogram more words into the glyph. Just the spell. And a magic mouth shouldn’t work because it didn’t cast the spell.
So I was a bard at a bar playing music for an hour what the crowd thought I was doing was just playing but what I was actually doing was casting the spell on my flask with the safe world was “bottoms up” so you say the safe word before you twist off the cap if not it will detonate. The DM forgot about it and after quit some time I took a sip then put the cap back on and handed it to an enemy the enemy opened it with out saying the safe word and exploded. Also me and the dm didn’t notice the can’t move 10 feet rule cus I carried that flask bomb for a long time before I used it
I use it in combination with magic mouth. There are two glyphes and one mouth. The mouth says a riddle. Giving a wrong answer triggers one glyph, giving the right answer triggers the other. One lead to failure, one to success. To answer they need to say answer, and then what they think. To hear the riddle again they can say Repeat.
Idea: two coins with glyph of warding on your person: the first one has Revifiy that triggers when you die and the other has Cure wounds (upcast to third level) meaning that when you die you are brought back with 1+3d8+spellcasting modifer HP, easily putting you back into the fight. assuming a spellcasting modifer of five you would be brought back with about 19HP.
I have a question in my players handbook and my friends players handbook the rule for moving a glyph 10 feet is only applied If the glyph is inside item But it doesn’t say that if the surface moves more than 10 feet it disappears also Roll20 says nothing about if the surface moves 10 feet away, it just state the same thing that my handbook states, where does the surface move 10ft and disappearing glyph ruling come from?
Glyph of warding is potentially insanely good as a way to grant buff spells. If you ever have the home field advantage like you have 3 days to defend a base, use all your spell slots casting glyph of warding with spells like Aid to buff HP, Dispel magic to remove harmful effects, or just fun things like polymorph Giant Ape if someone wants to tank. Have the trigger be something like “a creatures with the alignment and race of your party member steps on it” or have it be a password that if someone starts singing Skimbleshanks the railway cat they turn into a tiger. It’s basically a static contingency that auto concentrates for you, it has so much potential. Bam, wall of force. Bam summoned creatures. Bam you are mind-blanked for a day.
I used this to get my friends to say a prayer to lolth every time we entered or left our base. It wasn’t until one player died and made a second character that also spoke abyssal that they learned what the password actually was. Moral of the story either bother to learn who your cleric is a priestess of or just don’t let the cleric set up your security system