Radiant damage is a unique type of spell in 5e Dungeons and Dragons, used by holy warriors and otherworldly wizards to attack undead. There are 20 radiant spells in DnD 5e, with the most powerful spells being Clerics, Wizards, Paladins, and Sorcerers. Melee Attack Roll: Bonus equals your spell attack modifier, reach 5 ft. Hit: 1d8 plus the spell’s level of Radiant (Celestial), Psychic (Fey), or Necrotic (Fiend) damage.
Almost every spellcaster can access some kind of radiant damage, except bards and rangers. Some spells can meter out Radiant Damage, some require a Constitution-based saving throw on the part of the target, and some work if the caster merely attacks with a weapon or the spell is cast. Spells that Deal Radiant Damage are expansive and powerful, with at least one good spell at almost every level. Standouts include Spirit Guardians, Sickening, Wall of Light, Moonbeam, Sunbeam, Sunburst, and Crown of Stars.
Radiat damage typically deals damage from a direct burst of light, but certain spells can blind targets or cause daylight. Spirit Guardians, a 3rd level Cleric spell, deals radiant damage repeatedly if your Cleric can maintain concentration. A Sorcadin like a Paladin 2/Divine Soul Sorcerer X has access to Paladin Smites which do Radiant damage, many more spell slots, and higher level spells.
Resistance to radiant damage is possible, and when casting a spell that deals radiant or fire damage, you can add your Charisma modifier to one.
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What Cantrips do radiant damage?
Word of Radiance is the only cantrip that can cause radiant damage, but it has a limited range of 5 feet, a Constitution saving throw, and a 1d6 damage base. It allows for a Constitution saving throw and allows for choice of attack targets. To cause radiant damage, a Cleric or Paladin class is required, but other classes at higher levels have options. If a radiant damage spell saves a party in combat, it should be a last stand spell.
Which spells do radiant damage?
Divine Sorcerers have access to all spells on the Cleric’s spell list, including Dawn from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, a movable shaft of sunlight that causes radiant damage, and Destructive Wave, a spell for a Paladin surrounded. Dawn from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is a movable shaft of sunlight that Strahd would hate. Destructive Wave can cause thunder, radiant or necrotic damage, and knock opponents prone.
Which classes do radiant damage?
In order to cause radiant damage, it is necessary for the character in question to belong to the Cleric or Paladin class. However, there are alternative options available for characters belonging to higher-level classes. Should a radiant damage spell prove instrumental in saving your party during combat, we would be grateful if you could share your experience in the comments section below.
What is better necrotic or radiant damage?
The energy known as Radiant has the capacity to transform a multitude of creatures, including demons, devils, and undead beings, into more resilient and immune forms.
What spells are radiant damage in BG3?
Baldur’s Gate 3 presents a multitude of radiant damage sources, including Sacred Flame, Guided Bolt, Branding Smite, Weapon Range, Moonbeam, and Spell/Armor. A tooltip is provided for each item, offering information on the item’s duration, properties, and other useful details. To illustrate, a flame-like radiance inflicts 1d8 radiant damage, whereas a beam of light inflicts 4d6 radiant damage and bestows advantage on the subsequent attack roll.
Is radiant damage holy damage?
Radiant, a magic school that combines Holy and Fire, offers multi-school abilities with bonuses that affect any of their schools, the lowest resistance value among their schools, and can be used even when one or more of their schools have been locked with an interrupt effect. Spells like Light’s Wrath, Purge the Wicked, and Wake of Ashes are Discipline priest talents. This information was removed from World of Warcraft in patch 8. 0. 1.
Is Strahd weak to radiant damage?
Strahd is a character with a sunlight hypersensitivity, which results in 20 radiant damage at the start of his turn. He can transform into a tiny bat, Medium wolf, or a medium cloud of mist if not in sunlight or running water. His stats remain unchanged, and he reverts to his true form if he dies. In mist form, Strahd has ADV on STR, DEX, and CON saving throws and is immune to all nonmagical damage except sunlight.
What deals radiant damage in BG3?
The category “Sources of Radiant Damage” comprises 33 pages and includes a variety of examples, such as Blinding Smite, Bolt of Celestial Light, Branding Smite, Dawnburst Strike, Destructive Wave, Deva Mace, Devotee’s Mace, Divine Favor, and Divine Smite. These sources of radiant damage have the potential to inflict considerable damage.
What is radiant damage effective against?
The term “radiant damage” is used to describe a specific type of power that causes harm to targets through the use of beams of light and dazzling colors. The Astral Fire and Font of Radiance feats provide bonuses to powers that are designated with the “radiant” keyword. Undead are typically susceptible to radiant damage, resulting in additional damage or the deactivation of their abilities. This article is a preliminary draft, and community contributions are available under the CC-BY-SA license.
Why is radiant damage good?
The deployment of luminous orb mechanics in conjunction with a cleric can prove to be an effective strategy for combat, particularly when utilized against undead adversaries. The infliction of radiant damage is a favorable approach in such encounters. The radiant damage inflicted by Shadowheart in Act 2 is a significant contributing factor to its overall effectiveness.
What classes deal radiant damage?
In order to inflict radiant damage, it is necessary to be a Cleric or Paladin, although there are alternative options for those belonging to higher-level classes.
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Fun fact with Sunbeam. Most spells that persist and let you activate them while they do so either require your bonus action, let you use your action on a subsequent turn, or don’t deal damage until the enemy starts/ends their turn in an area or moves there 1/turn. Sunbeam, however, activates on your action, but doesn’t say “on subsequent turns”. When you combine that with the fact that the initial beam is part of the casting, that means if you cast the spell as a bonus action by quickening it, you can use your action to immediately use another beam. Thus, on round 1, a sorcerer can make 2 beams. Round 2 and beyond are as you say, where you can quicken spells like fireball and still get a beam.
Another fun Sorcerer Sunbeam interaction: You can Quicken Sunbeam the turn you cast it to deal the initial damage with your bonus action, then use your main action to reactivate it, letting you burst out two beams the first round, making it a solid burst option that still gives reliable sustained damage afterward.
Greatly informative! BTW my take, Anti undead/ abberation party? Crystal ( for radiant breath )and Topaz ( for the necrotic resistance )dragonborns with cleric/paladin/ sorcerer draconic bloodline setup. Heck, dip into Ranger lvl 3 for drake warden, adding a ( kinda homebrewed, yet sems to be easly slot in ) Chromatic, Gem drake by your side for support 😁 the undead will shiver and you are decent vs nasty abberations too since Gems are adept at psychic stuff.
Spirit Shroud has a really powerful pairing with Fighters Action Surge if you take something like Fighter / Radiant Caster (cleric, divine soul, paladin etc). Because you can cast Spirit Shroud which adds 1d8 to every attack, and action surge to cast Scorching Ray twice which sends 3+ rays of fire at an enemy each counting as a separate attack and each doing 2d6 dmg now plus the 1d8 so in total 12d6 + 6d8 for one turn. If you have a spiritual weapon you can squeeze out even more damage on your bonus action too. Makes for a nice nova.
Not a bad list, except for the travesty that guiding bolt is on the opposite side of the list it should be. It’s maybe the second or third best single target spell at that level, scales decently into tier 2 and even low tier 3, and is on spell lists where most of the good spells are all concentration. Access to it is honestly a third of the reason to go into star druid, because of how starved that class is for good offensive non concentration spells. On the fact cantrips catch up in damage? That’s also just flat out wrong except for eldritch blast (which is basically a weapon rather than a cantrip) if you consider that it deserves 25% of the damage of whatever big follow up attack follows it up. Hitting a side enemy with a rogue means they don’t have to worry about an adjacent ally for example, and sharpshooter/great weapon master feat users will appreciate cancelling out the attack penalty.
Real order: 1. Guardians (always pick) 2. Shroud (part of the core of every gish and full caster nova) 3. Crown (late, could easily lose its position to bolt, but extremely efficient supplemental damage for non-metamagic or BA geared casters that id keep it here as leve 1 slots have other options and in T4 bolt is mostly replaced by cantrip use) 4. Bolt (D&D divine caster equivalent of what MST was in the early CyDra era of yugioh) 5. Microwave (any enemy with int of 15+ should understand that placing a box or block or other object blocks path of effect due to spell area rules, but good combo piece for early T3 enemies) Rest dont matter much.
The Draconic Spirit stat block has all of the resistances to Spirit Shroud, but they don’t overlap; gem is resistant to radiant and necrotic, whereas metallic and chromatic are resistant to cold. I don’t think there are any enemy monsters that have all three resistances, but to be semantic: Zariel is resistant to cold and radiant, but immune to necrotic. There are no other creatures above CR10 (which is where I looked) with resistance and/or immunity to all three damage types. I find it highly unlikely that something CR10 or lower would have it when a CR26 is the only one to have them all somewhere. I’m sure the DMG math on defensive CR backs me up on that. Notably, plenty seemed to have two of them, especially fiends (demons and devils), undead, and oddly enough the “new” gem dragons from Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons.
I’m playing a bard in Curse of Strahd, and I’ve been doing some mean things with moonbeam, just last session I had a sending intercepted by him, so I interrupted his response with another sending, calling him a bitch. About 30 minutes later he tried to fly in as a cloud of mist to sneak up on the party. Unfortunately for him my passive perception is super high, so once he was in range I dropped a moonbeam on him, he failed the save and was forced to turn back and fall out of the sky. And honestly I love playing a bard.
I wouldn’t be so disappointed in Flame Strike if it weren’t constantly put on expanded spell lists, often alongside Fireball, only making the comparison between the two inevitable when it never should have been. Which sucks, because it’s the best it’s been in all editions and stays pretty consistent with all of them, but it’s still worse since Fireball doesn’t have drawbacks it used to that might make someone prefer a controlled area like Flame Strike. I’d honestly fix it by boosting the range to 120ft, the radius to 15ft, the height to 60ft (just so it beats Fireball in one dimension), and BOTH damage types scale by 1d6/level instead of just one, making it closer to Circle of Death. Might even get rid of the Radiant damage aspect entirely (even if the whole concept is that half of the Fire damage can’t be resisted) and just say the whole 8d6 Fire damage ignores both damage resistance and immunity, and the damage cannot be reduced (so it gets around niche things like Iron Golem having both immunity and the Fire Absorption trait).
Why is Simulacrum always a pick for 7th level spells and seen as a “better” spell? It’s casting time is 12 HOURS. That’s not something you do on any random adventuring day, it’s something you do in your downtime when there is no risk or need to use your other 7th level spells. Sure, nothing against having Simulacrum in your spell book, but it’s not a spell I’d ever prepare for an average adventuring day. By the time you can cast this spell I wouldn’t even worry about picking for a spell book because you can probably buy it or find it in some spell books you pick up along the way.
I feel like you really should have mentioned Mage Hand for the Arcane Trickster Rogue. Mage Hand Legerdemain offers so much more utility with being able to pick locks or similar tasks from a distance. Plus, with just two levels in Artificer for the Replicate Magic Item: Bag of Holding infusion, you can basically one-shot any enemy at level 5, up to and including the tarrasque
For me the answer is Misty Step, but in my point of view for a Vengeance or Ancients Paladin. I played Curse of Strahd as a Paladin that started as Vengeance and ended up being Ancients later on. Half-Wood Elf with the 35ft Walking Speed, plus Misty Step was insanely useful in increasing my Paladins mobility. Still one of my favorite moments in DnD ever was when my party was fighting Strahd as the destined final battle in the castle. My DM had Strahd essentially trying to run far enough away from my Paladin and our Samurai Fighter. I had said in the previous round that I used my last 2nd level spell slot. Strahd was 65ft away when it came to my turn, we were out of almost everything. But I had saved a 3rd level spell slot for an emergency Revivify. I started my turn by saying “I’m using my last 3rd level spell slot to-” and my DM going “damnit you’re gonna Misty Step aren’t you” with horrified realisation. I cast Misty Step to get in his face. We played Paladin in the way that I couldn’t cast a BA spell and Smite on the same turn. Didn’t matter, I brought him down too far for him to make it out alive, and it was awesome.
Id give honorable mention to Ambition cleric getting Mirror Image. As it is, you get a perfect duplicate that you can cast spells from, then adding the 4 illusions non-concentration on top of any other spells you wanna add can make you insanely hard to hit just from there being so many of you on the field at once
One fun combo that wouldn’t make your list, since the spell is granted by race and not subclass, is Armor of Agathys from mark of warding dwarf and abjuration wizard. Armor of Agathys is a warlock spell and is also available on some race options. Mark of Warding dwarves turn their racial spells into class spells, meaning you can use your normal spell slots to cast the spell. Abjuration wizards generate a protective shield whenever they cast an abjuration spell, which armor of agathys is. When you are hit by an attack your protective shield takes damage first, leaving your temp hit points intact, but since you technically took damage, the attacker still takes the damage from armor of agathys. Later on, armor of agathys can become a signature spell, giving you unlimited casting of the spell up to a certain level.
A wizard can get the rune shaper feat which gives them access to armor of agathys. As an Abjuration wizard, you have arcane ward which can stack with the temp hp. Say you’re at level 10 with +4 int mod, that’s 24 hp on the ward. AoA can be upcasted at level 4 which would give you 20 additional temp hp and cause 20 frost damage on a melee hit against you. So 44 hp you have before you take damage on your natural hp and 20 damage for every melee attack that hits you while you still have the temp hp. And arcane ward takes damage before temp hp.