The Druid Spell List – DND 5th Edition is an ancient spell list organized by level, allowing players to memorize up to 3rd level druid spells and 2nd level sorcerer spells. The list includes optional spells such as Absorb Elements, which is a fantastic defensive option at any level. When accessing 3rd-level spells, players can add powerhouses like call lightning, conjure animals, sleet storm, summon fey, and tidal wave to their arsenal.
Druids don’t learn spells but can pick whichever spells they want to prepare each morning from the complete list of all druid spells. For example, a 3rd-level druid with a 16 Wisdom score could prepare 6 spells each day. However, Circle of the Land Druids can take the Circle of the Land (per Land Type) and Circle of Spores, which give new spells at 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th level.
The list also includes optional spells available from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and Unearthed Arcana. For example, a 3rd-level druid with a 16 Wisdom score could prepare 6 spells each day. Druids can also use Circle of the Land and Circle of Spores to get new spells at different levels.
In summary, the Druid Spell List – DND 5th Edition offers a comprehensive list of spells for players to choose from, including optional options like Absorb Elements, Powerhouses, and Circles.
📹 Druid spells ranked: 3rd level spells
Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 3:15 aura of vitality (green) 4:39 call lightning (orange) 9:32 conjure animals (blue) 14:10 daylight (red) …
How many times can a druid cast a spell?
A player is permitted to cast a maximum of 21 spells per day, inclusive of cantrips, based on the number of spell slots allotted to that particular level. The selection of spells must be made from the list of spells known. It should be noted, however, that JavaScript may be disabled or blocked by an extension, and that the browser in question does not support cookies.
Do druids know all cantrips?
Druids are able to access their entire spell list, which can be prepared by combining their druid level with their wisdom modifier.
When can druids change spells?
Druids are permitted to alter their prepared spells following a period of rest. This entails an additional minute of prayer or meditation for each spell level on the revised list, with the exception of cantrips.
Do cantrips count as spells?
Cantrips are spells that are relatively simple and are listed separately from regular spells. Unlike regular spells, they do not require the use of spell slots or preparation. It is presumed that these spells are accessible to the character in question at any given moment.
What do druids get at level 3?
A 3rd-level druid has four 1st-level and two 2nd-level spell slots, and with a Wisdom of 16, they can prepare six spells of 1st or 2nd level in any combination. Casting a 1st-level spell, Cure Wounds, doesn’t remove it from their list. They can change their list of prepared spells after a long rest, but it requires at least 1 minute of prayer and meditation per spell level for each spell. Wisdom is their spellcasting ability, based on their devotion and attunement to nature. They use Wisdom when a spell refers to their spellcasting ability and when setting the saving throw DC for a druid spell and making an attack roll.
Can a druid turn into a dragon?
The Circle of the Dragon is an unofficial fan content that allows players to transform into dragons with a challenge rating as high as 17 after 100 years of gaining the Druid’s 18th level Timeless Body feature. After 800 years, they can transform into dragons with a challenge rating as high as 24. Art credits are included in bold text on each page to recognize the hard work of the artists. If an artist wishes to remove their piece, they can contact cici. imagineer@gmail. com. The product is not approved or endorsed by Wizards, but portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Do Druids have access to all spells?
Druids are constrained in the number of spells they can prepare on a daily basis. Furthermore, their capacity for spellcasting is contingent upon the number of spells on their spell list, which may be rendered inoperable or obstructed by extensions.
What is the most powerful druid spell?
Druid 201 provides a plethora of spells for druids, encompassing a diverse range of abilities such as lightning, druidcraft, animal conjuration, primal savagery, shapechange, sunbeam, plant transport, and nature’s wrath.
How many spells do druids get when they level up?
The Druid Table Level Proficiency Bonus provides spell slots in accordance with the level of the spell in question. However, it should be noted that JavaScript may be disabled or blocked by an extension or browser that does not support cookies.
How powerful is a level 20 druid?
The Archdruid class feature in Level 20 allows Druids to transform into shapeshifting pranksters, using unlimited Wild Shape. This feature can make Druids nearly unkillable if they know which animal to shapeshift into. Druids can cast spells faster and more easily, as they can ignore verbal, somatic, and material components. The Paladin class feature is particularly interesting, with nine possible Sacred Oaths that make the character nearly invincible. One of the most horrifying is the Invincible Conqueror from Oath of Conquest, which makes the Paladin resistant to all damage, gives an extra attack, and sets the crit roll to 19 and 20.
How many spells can druids prepare at level 5?
A character’s ability to prepare spells is determined by their level and their spellcasting ability score modifier. For instance, a level five Druid with a Wisdom ability score of 18 would have nine prepared spells. However, a character is not required to have a certain number of prepared spells of a certain level. For instance, a level five Druid could have any number of prepared spells be first-level, second-level, or third-level in any combination.
It’s up to the player to choose which spells they want to use. It’s crucial to be aware of the number of spell slots a character has access to, as only preparing high-level spells may not allow them to maximize their lower-level spell slots.
📹 Top 5 Druid 3rd Level Spells – DnD 5e
I stole these keywords from DnD Shorts, apparently it helps in the algorithm. Thanks dude! How to play Dungeons and Dragons …
Honestly, if a player casts Conjure Animals, and bring their own statblocks and has a macro for all their attacks on the ready and they are quick with their turns, Id let them pick their creatures. Because i know they put in the effort to make my job easier. And if its in person, bonus points if they bring their own minis.
2 things about call lightning. One if you get the drop on a group of enemies they might not even realize they’re in combat with you instead of a bad storm until it’s half over. Two is what I like to call the Thunderbird combo. Cast the spell and turn into a giant eagle. Fly up into the cloud, totally obscured. Only dip down to select your lightning spot you can see, and swoop back above the cloud.
You have become one of my favourite youtube creators specific to tabletop gaming. Your insights peppered with pragmaticism and humour are always appreciated. Thank you for your efforts, and please know your future content is eagerly anticipated here! (You’re Canadian, too, which helps with the likeability. I’m in NB!) 😉
Daylight did come up in a homebrew campaign I’m running w/ some friends featuring creatures that are sunlight sensitive. I decided to house rule that daylight would in fact trigger the sensitivity. Needless to say it made the spell a whole lot better than just a magical darkness remover. A little sad they didn’t write it so that it does trigger the sensitivity without begging the DM to house rule it.
we had a sorcerer in our party who took tidal wave, and i have to say from experience with it, the specific shape of tidal wave makes it much easier to avoid friendly fire with than something like a fireball. you can almost always catch multiple enemies in a line even if they’re mixed up in combat with your allies. i’m not sure if that makes it a good spell, but having seen it cast pretty regularly, it’s a much better spell to have when your allies are all clumped up with your enemies than fireball or erupting earth are. well, unless you’re an evocation wizard. but compared to the other blast spells on the druid list i think it does pretty good just cause it’s so much easier to avoid friendly fire with.
Speak With Plants. It can be AMAZING, although highly DM dependent. “Plants might be able to perform other tasks on your behalf…they can freely move tendrils and stalks”. You can potentially have trees attack (awakened tree stat block) vines grapple. Personally I would require a persuasion check and depending on the result the plants may offer to take a more active role in combat by attacking/grappling/etc. If your DM is cool with this kind of thing, speak with plants become a very attractive non-concentration spell in the right circumstances.
I’ve seen speak with plants used really well. The area moves with you as the target is self, allowing you to use the options better than I expected. Lot more plants in an area than animals too, and covers a large area so much better tracking than an animal or 4 could help with. I was really surprised seeing it in use.
I think the point about being able to hand the summoned Fey a magic weapon is important. Eventually something like a +1 shortsword will become trivial. You might even be able to give it a +2 weapon at some point, or even better. On top of that, the chance to hit scales, so the summoned fey will eventually have +12 or better to hit, conjure animals will be stuck on their +4 or +5.
Meld Into Stone has sufficient duration to squeeze a long rest in, protected by being perfectly hidden inside the stone… assuming you have enough time to ritually cast it on each member of your party, and also assuming that’s useful to you. It is pretty fantastic for infiltrations. As part of a “standard adventuring day,” though, it’s hard to use.
The issue with Conjure Animals is that the spell specifically states you summon X beasts of CR 2/X or lower, so there is nothing stopping your DM from choosing X CR 0 beasts. Even if they do pick a CR 2/X beast, there is nothing stopping them from choosing a beast that is utterly useless in the current environment: i.e. a fish above water or any non-aquatic animal below water. This is why I advocate the use of Summon Beast instead. You choose the stat block so your DM doesn’t need to search the monster manual for an appropriate beast, they can’t effectively blank it by picking useless creatures, and you always summon one creature so it can’t slow down combat nearly as much as Conjure Animals.
Plant Growth and difficult terrain do stack, but it doesn’t double the effect (I.e. 1 foot doesn’t cost 8 feet). Difficult terrain has two sets of rules, one under Movement (you move at half speed), and one under the Combat section. Combat is the pertinent section in this scenario: “Combat rarely takes place in bare rooms or on featureless plains. Boulder-strewn caverns, briar- choked forests, treacherous staircases—the setting of a typical fight contains Difficult Terrain. Every foot of Movement in Difficult Terrain costs 1 extra foot. This rule is true even if multiple things in a space count as Difficult Terrain.” So if each foot costs 4 feet because of Plant Growth, and each foot costs 1 additional foot because of Plant Growth, then 1 foot moved costs 5 feet of your movement. Just a point of clarity, as I always see the one get confused.
Wow. Can’t believe you put tidal wave as red. The damage is okay. But the prone condition is very nice. You can knock down flying creature, give advantage to melee attacks, or possibly split up enemies by knocking then prone. The range is also very nice. I almost always prep this on a druid and consistently get good value from it.
26:43 Difficult terrain doesn’t double the penalty, only increases it from 4x to 5x. 29:44 If you arrange the plants like this, the barlguras could ‘squeeze into a smaller space’ to pass between the plants using only 2x movement instead of 4x. Then at the end of their movement, they can decide to just stop squeezing, so their attacks don’t have disadvantage.
Feign Death has a very important application in RAW only groups: extracting venom / poison out of a Warlock familiar. The rules for poison state that you need to have an incapacitated creature (or dead), and the easiest way to do so is to cast Feign Death on it since it lasts 1h and requires neither concentration, nor a spell slot.
Using Druidcraft to set up plant growth is an interesting if niche combo if you need to make an escape and nobody has teleports available. You can make a plant instantly flower so you can carry around a bag of seeds and create your own plant life within the dungeon. Deposing on your DM it could take a while to get enough flowers to make it doable but still, it’s an option
I recently played a game as an aberrant mind sorc, and I gotta say that some difficult terrain (Hunger of Hadar) + tidal wave definitely swung combat in a super satisfying way for the creatures that fell prone. I could see the coordination/combo of Plant Growth + Tidal Wave could make it circumstantially worthwhile to take, maybe bumping TW up to orange. Particularly being able to arrange the wave on the battlefield to avoid allies and screw with enemies is a nice treat, though the damage certainly isn’t incredible for its level. Thanks for the article TM! Great breakdowns to peruse for whenever I build my next druid 😀
I was so excited to use Call Lightning in my campaign’s big City Seige battle at the end. I was playing a moon druid, and had flavoured my druid as a gnome who had swallowed an elemental gem (thus I used exclusively air+lightning themed spells and the elemental form). However, I’d just hit level 11 and my cantrips were doing competitive damage! I had planned to upcast it, but our plan necessitated a lot of divination magic and a conjure elemental for an invisible stalker to track various doppelgangers and enemy captains, and having a heal spell in the wings as the partys only healer. I kept waiting to bust the spell out, but my poor concentration saves just made it a bad option at every level. I was determined to use it! And the campaign ended before I got a chance. Cool to see all the uses for Speak With Plants here in the comments though! Cant wait for my partys ranger to discover it!
Plant growth has single handedly saved my lvl 13 ranger from a group I joined late that tried to pvp and kill me (long story). Due to the plants being non-magical after they manifest and rangers movement not being impeded by non-magical plants, I was able to escape and get reinforcements. They sent a flame elemental after me and ended up being a bad idea for them because it created a massive wildfire with smokescreens. This WAS inside by the way. Mushrooms, lichens, roots, etc. You have to make a survival or nature check to figure that out but once you do, you have to be strategic.
Tidal Wave: it’s tiny, that’s the point. It’s up-to 30’long x 10’wide x 10’high. You can make it as small as a pebble, and it keeps all of its effects. That level of scalable targeting is amazing, even to the point of it not being upcastable. It doesn’t blow your concentration either. Have summons up and party members around? Pow! Drop of water drops the big bad! Got a bit of room to boom? Pow! Double width crappy lightning bolt surges on through! Annoying mob of flying enemies, flapping around being annoying? Prone those mo’foes out of the air with an aerial geyser (nothing says it has to be on the ground, or near water, or anything like that. It’s only the lights-go-out bit that refers to the ground, and even that is 30′ away from the edge of the effect, so feel free to send a surge 10′ upward down a street if there’s multi-storey buildings about). Sometimes the fall damage splats them better than the spell damage! Need the lights to go out? Do you know how many light-sources this can turn off down a street or at a castle entrance or in a cavern or anywhere near non-darkvision members of the party (both upsides and down to this one). Stealth mode on, or tavern brawl escape, your choice! It’s a great spell to have prepared due to its versatility. It should be called Psionic EMP Blast Surge or something. Tidal Wave gives totally the wrong impression of what the spell actually does. Goes down chimneys, through windows, over walls, and around corners in dungeons as well. Can you see through a keyhole with your superb perception?
Tidal wave is easier to position than fireball/lighting bolt. It’s just a line you can rotate, its easier to place without causing friendly fire. Also it prones, and can be cast above the ground (120 ft in the air), which can bring flying creatures to the ground, and make them take fall damage. I wouldn’t call it bad.
Plant Growth is such an underrated battlefield control spell. Conceptualizing a Clockwork Soul Sorcerer now and I would be tempted to multiclass Archfey Warlock since it would put Plant Growth on the Warlock spell list, and it’s a Transmutation spell so it counts for Clockwork Magic… but that’s sadly too much of a sacrifice since the multiclass offers very little compared to the other Warlock subclasses like Hexblade (duh), Genie (Dao – Spike Growth, extra damage) or Undead (Death Ward, frequent frighten). Or even the Order Cleric, which has to be the multiclass of choice for Voice of Authority combined with Careful spell shenanigans.
1. If there are a lot of allied summoned creatures, I lean towards letting the player just split them into 2 groups and attack with advantage. 4 velociraptors can (and arguably would) surround a creature, flank it, and attack. They’re murder turkeys. It’s what they do. They all act on the same initiative, one roll, because I sure as hell am not keeping track of that, or just after the druid to keep it simple. All 4 then hit on a hit, meaning they also all crit on a crit, and miss on a miss. Roll it all as one big hit, add bonus x 4. There is your damage and we don’t all suddenly have time to go cook dinner while the summoner works out their turn and plays their spreadsheets. Saves me (as a DM) having to deal with too many rolls and initiatives to keep track of. Sucks when both groups fail to hit anything, great fun and really memorable if both swarms crit. It’s how I make groups of summons easier and hopefully more fun. 2. As for Tidal Wave, it has one use (I know of) that is quite obsucre and effective. I’m fairly sure it does basically instanly kill fire elementals, because of their damage/gallon of water weakness. 3. Wind Wall could protect you from flying swarms. Not really something I see coming up often, but if you know there will be a lot of flying swarms… might be worth trying? Or if you’re up against something gassy perhaps? Should also maybe keep a vampire trapped in mist form too. Still not a spell I’d prepare unless I just wanted to be weird and try weird stuff for fun.
39:17 im not sure the text there “plant growth” is even referring to the spell Plant Growth. i think it just means regular, dense plant growth that the party might happen to run into. They even specify “such as thickets and undergrowth”, and i think they specified that in order to steer away from the spell Plant Growth. I think if they were referencing the spell Plant Growth, they would’ve written “caused by the spell Plant Growth”.
This was really good. I really liked the examples you used to show the uses of plant growth. I think it would be really useful to do some more articles sometime showing actual examples of the tactical uses of various spells, abilities, etc, that you recommend. That could either be just an example you create to best show off the tactical applications, but I’d really love to see a short article of actual play uses, because those are more dynamic. But anyway, that’s just my thoughts, I’m looking forward to the rest of this series and your ranking series, and anything else you put out.
Druids have 1 3rd Level Blue spell (Conjure Animals) compared to Wizard’s 4 Blue spells (Counterspell, Thunderstep, Tiny Hut, Hypnotic Pattern) Druids have 8 3rd Level Green spells (Aura of Vitality, Dispel Magic, Plant Growth, Revivify, Sleet Storm, Summon Fey, Water Breathing, Water Walk) compared to Wizard’s 7 Green spells (Dispel Magic, Sleet Storm, Fireball, Fear, Animate Dead, Slow, Water Breathing) An easy to see difference is that Druid spells are not the standard spell you would cast to solve certain combat like Hypnotic Pattern, Slow, Fear and Fireball are, plus Thunderstep and Counterspell are powerhouses to help in combat. Druid highly ranked spells are mostly out of combat healing, utility or require circumstance like plant growth or dispel magic. It just leaves Conjure Animals, Summon Fey and Sleet Storm. This is the issue I was having with playing my Druid after I was tired of Conjure Animals and mass summoning then wasn’t really sure what to do while remaining effective, so I am now playing a Wizard.
I’ve found speak with plants to be a fantastic spell, but it is subject to DM fiat. My dm has made it a point that plants are a lot more useful and friendlier than animals. Animals are mischievous and unreliable whereas trees are wise and such. I’ve made the trees dance too in social interactions where people want to see a display of my powers, and finally the most important of all is plants can be in areas where animals aren’t. Like a potted plant in someone’s office. It has helped me gain information that we normally wouldn’t have before.
Summon Fey is amazing. Depending on party make-up, your summon may be the most intelligent or charismatic member of your team. And you can ask it questions or make it talk in your place (assuming you/whoever can speak Sylvan). I recommend having a miniature adventurer’s kit prepared for the little gremlin. “Here’s your +1 magic short sword, your couple of Good Berries, your caltrops, your ball bearings, your net, your backpack, a rope and grappling hook, a lantern, a few tinder twigs, a couple of flasks of oil, a healing potion, and whatever other magical junk that takes an action to use that I’ll never use again (that you can lift). Glad to have you back on the team mate! Do us proud! PS, the Monk is jealous of you”.
The though of rocketing up a snow drift at 60ft a round that just avalanched on you made me chuckle out loud. Thanks. XD Also, I hadn’t known about the summon fey spell. That’s an interesting one, looks like the wrathful one is the best until it can get a full multi-attack with up-casting so it’ll always have advantage on its single attack multi-attack XD, then it’ll be the charmed effect, with the 5ft darkness cube one being the circumstantial one with blocking line of sight on things.
Meld to stone is a ritual.. so that right there gives it a lot more reason to prepare… also if you’re ever isolated from your party, 8 hours for a long!! Got to be creatkve to use this, but in the campaign it can potentially be an always prepared spell Also to note, Errupting Earth when updated can be a pretty good damage spell. Not worth it as a 3rd level slot, but especially with limited spell slots, but it’s either this or tidal wave for non concentrations spells at level 3
Comment on call lightning: As a druid you can druidcraft the weather forecast to see if you’re going to get that tasty thunderstorm. My DM has rewarded this twice so far by giving us combat during a storm that I predicted but he has also had 2 storms go by that did not see combat. We had a bit of back and forth, but the final answer was that the RAW is that I can zap any target under the cloud. Now a storm can be made up of many clouds etc etc but basically I could zap a target miles away on the side of a mountain, IF I managed to see it with a high DC perception check. The end result was that the strike split off 3 of the 7 minions of the group that we were chasing and made them tumble down the side of the mountain. That was really helpful once we caught up and went into actual combat since their numbers where already lower.
Tidal Wave could have a niche use of being able to destroy fire elementals outright. From the fire elemental description : “Water Susceptibility. For every 5 feet the elemental moves in water, or for every gallon of water splashed on it, it takes 1 cold damage.” A Tidal wave could contain up to about 22,440 gallons of water so as a DM I would rule that any fire elemental caught in it’s area would take enough damage to be reduced to 0hp. Thoughts?
About Speak with Plants, the wording is : “You can also turn terrain caused by plant growth (such as thickets and undergrowth) into ordinary terrain”. Note that “plant growth” is not highlighted like “entangle” lower in the text. Therefore, it is not about the spell Plant Growth but actually natural plant growth. Your party is in a forest with thick underbrush that slows your movement. You cast that spell and you can ask the plants to let you go through. I wonder, since the spell’s range is “Self”, if the effect follows you. Which means that your group could move through a thicket of 2500-3000 ft during 10 minutes, which is about half a mile. I mean, it’s Speak with Animals but for plants. It needs an area of effect (30 ft) around you because plants can’t move. Therefore the amount of info you could gather would be very limited if you had to question every plant during ten minutes… But it really should be a ritual and it remains situationnal.
Erupting Earth: I think any DM would be hard-pressed to say that this 20 ft area of “churned earth” doesn’t qualify as “loose earth” for the mold earth cantrip. And because this ground remains this way until cleared, this becomes an out of combat or downtime utility spell along with the mold earth. In areas (or entire underdark campaigns) where mold earth isn’t viable, this helps get additional mileage out of a cantrip selection.
actually speak with plants is quite good if you interpret the 1st line differently. For 10 minutes, you continue to imbue plants within 30ft around you with…. which means this is similar to plant growth but you can carry along with you for 10 minutes. It can be like i am following a trail and i keep asking different plants i meet to show me the way whenever i lose the trail or i am being chased by creatures but i ask all plant i pass by to hinder the ones chasing me. I have had it on my UA CFV ranger and it has been quite useful in circumstances.
I had a DM that banned all summoning (so no conjure animals, no summon beast or fey), AND played Theater of the Mind with it usually skewed in the enemy’s favor so spells like Spike Growth, Plant Growth, or Moonbeam very rarely had any real effect. That was the most miserable experience ever playing a druid.
Plant Growth is extremely powerful if you happen to be outdoors, but it’s even more powerful if you’re a Land Druid. Land Druids (and Rangers) get the Land’s Stride ability which enables them to move freely without obstruction from non-magical plants. That means a Land Druid can cover the whole battlefield in plants that impose a quadruple movement cost on everyone else but which imposes no movement cost on the Land Druid. At that point the battle is basically over if the enemy doesn’t have ranged attacks or can’t fly – he’ll never catch the Druid.
When discussing Speak With Plants you mention turning the difficult terrain of plant growth into ordinary terrain as a way of altering the Plant Growth spell. They’re not actually talking about the spell plant growth here, which is why there’s no link in your DND Beyond the spell Plant Growth. They’re talking about the ordinary growth of plants that happens to create difficult terrain.
In our party we read “Daylight” as a source of sunlight. But our dm is very nice to us, so every comrade trying to attack being next to me rolls with disadvantage and at the time spell was cast – everybody rolled for constitution to not be blinded… So I am not sure, that i would pick conjure animals xd
Moonbeam can be finicky, to do damage twice a target has to be moved into it so you’d have to place the area nearby an enemy and hope an ally knocks them inside but if that forced movement fails the enemy won’t get the damage from moving in or from starting there. It’s risky enough that I wouldn’t count on it most of the time but it depends on the combat environment and enemies. I’d probably prepare Moonbeam on a indoor/underground day, but Call Lightning instead on an outdoors day.
Speak with plants does have a crazy ability to be used without an action, so the difficult terrain thing is actually mega broken since you can turn it on an off without any restrictions or actions, the peak of this is using it in a bush heavy area where you can remove cover on your turn and allies turn, and then bring it back imediately with no restrictions. Honestly they kinda messed up the wording a bit.
The Barlguras could decide to squeeze into the empty 5 ft squares and have their speed only halved in this way. They could all dash and move 40ft in order to close on you. Not very convenient really but at least they are not stuck in place. Squeezing into a Smaller Space: A creature can squeeze through a space that is large enough for a creature one size smaller than it. Thus, a Large creature can squeeze through a passage that’s only 5 feet wide. While squeezing through a space, a creature must spend 1 extra foot for every foot it moves there, and it has disadvantage on attack rolls and Dexterity saving throws. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage while it’s in the smaller space.
Plant Growth isn’t talked about enough and I really think you need to revisit this spell. For example, could a druid bring a potted plant into a dungeon and then use the spell? Would a single plant grow to cover a 100’ radius area? If not, would it only cover 1 square or more? What about a 5’ x 5’ patch of grass? What happens when the spell is cast on an Assassin Vine or some other dangerous plant? Finally, in your example with the Balgura, I just want to point out that they could always squeeze into the spaces between plants for only difficult terrain instead of 4x movement…
what if you go 10 levels of creation bard(with find steed/find greater steed), 2 levels of wildfire druid 3 levels of battle-smith artificer (with homoculous) and 3 levels of beast master ranger. Then cast feign death on yourself so you are incapacitated and all your pets can activate without the need of your bonus action
Ironically Call Lightning is a lot better when used by other classes. Tempest Cleric gets to maximize the damage and push people around with it every turn. A Sorcerer that gets access to the spell somehow (Izzet Engineet background or multiclassing) also makes good use of it by Quickening Call Lightning and then using their action to call lightning again, which makes it 6d10 damage, 33 on average, which is better than Fireball’s 28 average damage.
The fact that it provides sample creatures for Conjure Animals and the fact that it does not explicitly say that the GM gets to choose, only that they HAVE the stat blocks, I would think that the player always gets to choose. The spell is just broken and until there is a reprint that changes the wording of the spell to say the player has ZERO agency in what is summoned it will continue to be run this way, just like Booming/Green-Flame Blade. And before anyone argues, it literally says in the first portion of the spell “Choose one of the following:” and lists what you can pick. Any other spell that says something similar it is the player’s choice. If it said “Choose the challenge rating for the summoned beasts, your GM will decide which beasts are summoned” that would be different.
I think Dispel Magic is supposed to either work that you can either target a magical effect or the magical effects on 1 creature. So you can dispel the Fear spell on the target, along with all the other magic on them, or the entirety of the Fear spell. With Conjure Animals, you are not dispelling the creature, you are dispelling the effect.
Make em list any animals seen giving them only the most common at first so they cant actually summon like a pixie til they see one.but leaves wolves etc.start em with 2 of each cr that might appear. Or my fave. Pick 5 of each cr with one good one like pixie as 20 and stench kow at 16 to 19 then reducing utility and 1 to 5 being like.. useless slug. Then if you get a 20 you roll again for how the rest appear with 1 pixie in the mix. Maybe give em the 8 pixies on a double 20 or if the party needs long range travel as a utility solution. Let it be a jackpot moment and that way its more unique to the situation or local animals. For cr2 do like 20 for giant centipedes, hags, giant apes, whatever. Makes conjure animals and woodland beings fkin sweet but not abusable, not just a break the game free card. Occasionally youll get a free spell or effect occasionally you roll a 1 and get 8 suffocating roctopus or a hostile rat swarm in the sewers.
Flame Arrows is even more useless: Elemental Weapon works on bows and other ranged weapons. This has been confirmed both in Sage Advice and in an errata to the handbooks. So for the same level of spell, you get to turn a nonmagical weapon into a magical weapon, give +1 to the attack, and add 1d4 elemental damage of multiple different types. Theoretically, flame arrow can cause one more damage maximum, but it doesn’t let the arrow’s piercing damage bypass resistances, and in practice, you’re getting an additional ensured point of damage vs a potential 2 points. And there’s no ammo limitation. Flame Arrow only increases the number of arrows you can empower, and only by two, when upcasted, a single upcast to Elemental Weapon far outstrips it.
Plant growth is even better for me because my DM ruled that, even in a dungeon, there’s still some residual plants SOMEWHERE arouns there (moss or small blades of grass or anything) and that, as long as there’s any plant In the radius, it works for the full radius. It’s a bit weird up to interpretation if the affected square needs a plant in it or not so I think this worke?
@Treatmonk You are far more experienced at D&D than I, but I wanted weight in on your confusion with regards to Dispel Magic. I think your confusion stems from Jeremy Crawford’s extremely poor choice of wording. The way I interpreted his ruling is that Dispel Magic targets and “dispels” a magic effect that is on one single target. You are not targeting the spell itself, but rather that spell’s effect on a single target. Hence his ruling of if one spell is affecting multiple targets, one cast of Dispel Magic can only “dispel” one instance of the spell’s effect because you can only target one of that spell’s targets. Basically, as I understand it, Dispel Magic targets the target of a magical effect and “dispels” the effect on that specific target as opposed to the source of the effect. Hence why it can only ever target one effect. I think Jeremy Crawford was trying to “sound smart” with his response, but ended up failing at that, confusing people even more. I think the simplest way to think of Dispel Magic is that it can only target a spell’s effect and not the spell itself and it can only ever target a single effect target. I believe what you were advocating for was for Dispel Magic to “dispel” the spell itself, which it cannot do. Either that or you’re advocating for a Mass Dispel Magic Spell (dispel all effect within X area)? That could be cool, but it might be too strong and that might be why they opted not to make it. Anyway, I hope that all made sense.
Wind Wall: look, ignore all other effects. It’s 3d8 mini-chain-lightning that you can zig-zag to every foe within 50′ of its starting point, while never hitting an ally. The damage is way too low, but it is an absolute blast to target with on a grid. 4 or more enemies? Tickle their tackle with a wind wall, and drop your concentration the moment it could annoy your party. It can go under door gaps too, for blind targeting in rooms you can hear noises from (much like Tidal Wave can slant over walls or go down chimneys or have a starting point and go left around a dungeon corner). I mean, I guess you could block arrows with it too, but that’s not what it’s for. Do you even read spell descriptions that aren’t on the Wizard list these days @treantmonk?
The only reason I’m not preparing call lightning is that all the fights we had so far were outdoors and there was a lot of movement and even though 60 feet radius sounds like a lot, it’s really not. I was struggling to shoot with guiding bolt sometimes at the range of 120 feet so did the warlock with eldritch blast. and the DM (enemies) aren’t stupid, they wont just stay under the cloud
I think Elemental weapon can be used like this Hold an action to cast wild shape as a bonus action release the spell targetting one natural weapon in your stat block Its a lil bit of a boost to wild shape but its super minimum 🙁 I once casted speak with plant to let the plants hide bodies and squeeze them dry XD
I was looking forward for this article to see what non-summoming suggestions you have. Unfortunately, even after perusal this, I still can’t seem to find good options to choose. I like entange and spike growth for 1st and 2nd level, but by third level it seems the only good thing to concentrate on is summoning.
28 minutes in on the Balgura stat block they can jump 40′, thus clearing the plant growth. so possibly a poor choice of large size example monster, but I get it, just being picky! So they move 10″ costing 40′ and then jump as a dash option clearing another 40′, 50′ in total. Oh and a certain irony they can cast Entangle back at ya!
Some of the logic here seems pretty inconsistent. We start with ‘the druid spell list has lots of good spells other than Conjure Animals and here’s a series of ranking articles to demonstrate this’. Then the actual ranking process involves a lot of ‘Elemental Weapon/Erupting Earth are orange because druid doesn’t have Magic Weapon/Fireball’. Given that the weakness of the druid spell list versus other casters is precisely what you’re trying to debunk, surely a red spell should be a red spell?
I feel that (sadly), Plant Growth should be orange (**) or purple (***), because it is not versatile enough : it require plants to be on the battlefield. This will exclude most dungeons (and the game is named D&D for a reason), it will also (DM dependant) exclude most frozen and aquatic environments, maybe even some rocky (mountain) environment. And it will do nothing against flying creature. Finally, it will be much less useful against creatures who have good ranged options. This mean that, while great, it is kind of circumstancial. A good portion of most campaign will have environments which will not allow the use of the spell. I do see that it is so good, just like Dispel Magic, that in the circumstances where it work, it change the game. But there are so many restrictions. It does not change anything on the review of the spell by treantmonk. Just a possible rating change. Thanks for sharing.
Call Lightening is almost good, it really needs two minor changes. Once cast, additional lightening bolts should only need bonus actions. Second, opponents wearing metal armor should have disadvantage on saves. Completely changes the spell. One thing I do like is that natural storms do up the damage. Imagine if Tidal Wave had double the AOE when cast near a body of water, or Cone of Cold did extra damage in the winter.
for Erupting Earth I just read it as if it creates a 20ft cube of earth, like a 20 by 20 by 20 hill is now where you cast the spell. Its so bad otherwise, how could it not be that way. Seriously though, I think it might be meant that way, and the language could be interpreted both ways, it lacks the “if there is no room above then X” clause but alot of 5e effects leave circumstances like that up to the DM. And why else would you have the “1 min to clear by hand” clause if it didn’t cause blockages? There is the 20ft cube area as well, but I don’t know if they are very consistent with their area types in the first place. Now I really don’t know
I simplify all summon spells to work like tashas. They get 1, 2 or 4 of template creature I’ve prepared for conjure animals. They are relatively straightforward creatures with something thematic they can do based on creature type.They all have nearly the same hp etc. Higher for slower creatures, lower hp for flying creatures. As a DM I keep in mind that this could have been a spell like a fireball, but I don’t make sure it does that kinda damage. These deliver meatshields, distractions, scouting or whatever they want to do. 1 HOUR DURATION. Temp HP! Be strategic about this. This spell is insanely good and highly thematic <3
I don’t think you give quite enough weight to druid spells that AREN’T concentration, since so many of the best ones are. You mention it briefly in the Erupting Earth ranking, but then go on to give the spell an orange rating anyways for some reason. Assuming my druid will be concentrating on Conjure Animals or Summon Beast 100% of the time in every combat, what spells should they be casting to supplement that? That is where it gets tough finding other spells that you want to be using, and where I was hoping these articles would give me some good ideas. You seem to be ranking just about every non-concentration spell as red or orange though, which is a bit discouraging.
I’m wondering if Erupting Earth would have good synergy with the Crusher feat. The bludgeoning damage is guaranteed, but you can only use the Crusher move once per turn when you hit a creature. If multiple creatures were hit simultaneously, would it be a plausible call that they are all affected by the 5 foot push? If you do get a mass 5 foot push with difficult terrain, this might be good for pushing all the creatures in towards the center of the 20ft diameter. Then, have a sorcerer friend follow up with an area spell maybe.
Polymorph does not specify in the spell description that you can choose what beast you turn the target into. Yet basically everyone agrees that you can choose what you want your target to be turned into. Why? Because the spell would be basically useless otherwise, and that would suck all the fun out of it. Yet for Conjure Animals, many people argue that the DM decides what appears. This is a double standard, makes no sense, damages fun, and severely nerfs non-combat utility of a spell that many people don’t like to see used in combat, while not usually impacting combat utility that much unless your DM is a jerk that hates fun and should be banished from being a DM. Allow casters to choose their freaking animals. Place limitations if you think it’s overpowered, if you must. But don’t just remove the choice entirely. For (expletive)’s sake, the caster can mitigate the downside of the spell (the amount of time it takes to resolve the animals’ turns) by choosing animals that they already know exactly what to do with.
Stupid Question, but I have seen this debated. If someone has a Raise Dead spell, but doesn’t want to carry the body around and can’t wait the one hour it would take to cast the4 spell, could they animate the body and then raise him later? Probably not the best place to ask this, but your discussion about Revivify brought it to mind.
Oof extreme disagree with the tidal wave rating. The prone effect is extremly good. This is probably the best dragon killing spell in the game. Their dex suck and when they fall prone they fall out of the sky. Against most flying enemies this spell will destroy them. That alone is orange worthy Even without it putting enemies prone means your melee class can hit them easier and restricts movement. The area being small is not nearly as much of an issue as your making it. You can place the line any way you like and enemies don’t tend to be more then 30 feet appart. Not only is it easier to prevent friendly fire but hitting 2-3 enemies is really common with how precise you can place it. This isn’t like a line spell that originates from you. I think you are seriously undervallueing it. If i have to fight anything that flies i would pick this spell over fireball 100% of the time
“It is Plant Growth, so Green is the obvious choice.” ROFLMAO!! However, regarding Speak with Plants, I don’t think the plant growth mentioned in the spell is actually the Plant Growth spell; otherwise it would SAY it was the spell or at least call it Plant Growth (capitalized, as the spell title), and not just “plant growth.” In fact, my read of the spell in the PH says that it can turn only NORMAL plants that create difficult terrain into normal terrain (which makes it even worse than the Red rating you gave it … Infrared, maybe? Black? Black and Blue because it hurts to actually cast it?)
Hold on 2nd, call lighting (serious druid flavor worth half a color?) also Moonbeam only does damage to 1 target, call lighting does damage to any target with in 5 feet of the lighting hit point. So Lighting does AOE damage and Moonbeam does not. Am I right? You add all that up and I think it should rank higher if I am correct.
Nice article! Just to check, not that it makes a significant difference, but you say Call Lightning only affects 4 squares. If I targeted a square with the effect, and each creature within 5 ft had to make a saving through, wouldn’t that affect the square I targeted and each adjacent square – therefor 9 squares? Partially just making sure I’m not doing AoE effects wrong.
I have a small issue with your analysis of Erupting Earth and Tidal Wave .. you compare them to fireballs area, but you measure 2 dimensionally…. 64 squares. Erupting Earth is 4 sq x 4 sq x 4 sq area – also 64 squares and Tidal Wave is actually double the squares for 10′ height… While not totally redeeming the spells, they can at least hit flyers or things on a ceiling… Personally, I think that Tidal wave should have received the call lightning treatment and been meh to okay on it’s own and drastically improved if cast on a body of water… Like the scene from Lord of the Rings where the river rose against the riders.
Question… If I cast let’s say conjure animals and then melt to stone, will my beasts continue fighting or they will take the dodge action, since I no longer give them commands? I feel that my DM is metagaming and target the caster (far away from the combat) even though the attackers have very low intelligence
I read on sage advice that spells that affect a creature when they enter or start their turn in the effect, are only affected once (either upon entering or at start of their turn). The reason was forced movement and moving the effect don’t count as entering the effect since it’s not voluntary. So technically moon beam only hits on the start of a creatures turn if the beam is moved onto them. Does that affect your analysis of call lightning compared to moon beam?
Comparing Tidal wave to Fireball is a bit unfair. This spell is actually more akin to a lightning bolt. The damage of a lightning bolt is leagues above Tidal Wave. But The point of origin and the Total Range are quit even for these two spells. And there are times where lightning bolt is more space efficient that unleashing a fireball in a inside space. Tidal wave actually keeps up quite well with is ability to add a absolutely nasty debuff should they fail that dex save. Falling prone while in close combat with the barbarian or Paladin is a really bad day for any NPC. And it has the added benefit of having the absolutely best damage type of the Entire game. Magical Blugeoning damage, because of the shear amount of creatures in the game that are vulnerable to it. That damage has the most creatures in the entire game vulnerable to it. And for a 3rd lvl spell is fills the roll to tight space blast rather effectively.
Summon Fey is bad because of its extremely costly component. 300g could’ve been an uncommon magic item in some modules, and you’d much rather have an uncommon magic item over this when conjure animals exists. Thats my argument against it. A DM has to give you this component very, VERY early on or the player will never even consider this spell. Same for all the tashia summon spells tbh.
The designers at WotC working on DnD aren’t very good at their jobs and really need to get over to the MtG side to see how to design rules and mechanics (at least for clarity for what the rule/mechanic does). Why in the world would the rule for Conjure Animals allow the DM to decide that he can give creatures with a CR rating LOWER than that listed? Why empower douche bags to give 1, 2, 4, or 8 CR 0 creatures? It’s just dumb. It’s also dumb that they can decide to give you 1 CR 1/4 creature if the player chooses the first option. Why give the option to screw the player in any way? Make the spell do specific things and then playtest it.
I resisted conjure animals for ages because our group is slow enough already and I didn’t want to drag stuff out more than I had to. I gave in recently though and today I cast it for the first time. A bit of bad luck meant that the animals were just ahead of me in the initiative, so had to wait a full round to get a go. More bad luck when I got hit and immediately lost concentration, meaning the spell achieved nothing. I definitely would have been better off with summon fey there 😁