D&D 5E What's the worst spell?

Greenstone.Walker said:

Find traps.

"There's a trap somewhere. You don't know where it is, or how to trigger it, but you know it has something to do with fire damage."

Wow.

Click to expand...

I'd support the removal of the spell, since as you say, it's garbage in its current form and if it's too accurate it risks supplanting characters built around trap detection.

For my money though it's probably True Strike. It just has too many conditionals and costs associated with it, the target has to be within 30ft, it takes an action, and it takes concentration, all for just advantage? Worthless. I can't imagine a character I'd play ever using it.

Drawmij's Instant Summons is pretty bad. It's not useless (you can cast it on your spellbook) but it costs a lot, and it doesn't do very much compared to what you would expect a 1000 gp 6th level spell to do. In many of the cases where you'd actually want the spell to work (someone took your spellbook and you want it back), it in fact does nothing except let you know who's got your stuff and sort of where.

My rationale for bad spells like this is to assume that some wizard needed the spell and just slapped it together by throwing resources (gp and spell slots) at it to reduce the research time. If you're only going to cast the spell once, and you already happen to have 6th level spell slots and a bunch of sapphires, you have no motivation to spend extra time optimizing the spell once you've got something that basically works.

As others have said, Witch Bolt, Mordenkainen's Sword, and True Strike are also pretty bad. True Strike is notable for the fact that almost every time you think you've found an actual use for the spell, a closer read of the spell reveals that there is some kind of restriction preventing it from being useful in the scenario you're imagining. In fact, the ONLY scenario I can think of where it's useful is when an mid-level Eldritch Knight is trying to cancel disadvantage against something with high AC and no other easy way of cancelling disadvantage, like an ancient red dragon with both Darkness or Blur up and the ability to cast Shield. In that scenario, one attack without disadvantage could actually be more valuable than three attacks at disadvantage.

Of course the EK in that scenario is going to die either way--you can't kill an ancient red spellcasting dragon with one puny attack per round--except in the even more niche scenario where he's got some kind of super nasty poison on his weapon and the dragon has used up its legendary resistances.

So yeah, True Strike is probably the worst spell in the PHB.

Dualazi said:

For my money though it's probably True Strike. It just has too many conditionals and costs associated with it, the target has to be within 30ft, it takes an action, and it takes concentration, all for just advantage? Worthless. I can't imagine a character I'd play ever using it.

Click to expand...

Don't forget the fact that it doesn't even kick in until "your next turn." Even if you manage to cast True Strike as a bonus action, you STILL have to hold concentration on it for a full round before benefits kick in.

It's really bad.

Almost all damage spells cast at a higher level than their default level.

Scaling is horrible.

Oh noes, not another thread where people start defending Witchbolt...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-the-Bad-and-the-Downright-Orcish-Grandmother

Difference between "defending" a spell and arguing that it's not the absolute worst in the game.

My wizard was fortunate in that, during the campaign, we rescued a powerful NPC that was adept at making runes. She was able to tattoo a rune onto my wizard's hand that let him cast Witch Bolt as a cantrip as long as he had it prepared.

I houseruled that witchbolt gets half the extra dice on following rounds when cast higher level. Party sorcerer's been using 3rd level slots for, say, a twinned witchbolt, and it is pretty solid.

Witchbolt can be great, until your target rounds a corner and it drops completely. It also does half the intended damage for a spell of it's level (2d12 for 1st level), which is fine for auto-damage, but not for the initial.
Now if it didn't require a whole action to repeat and/or halved the target's speed (so they can't simply move out of range (without dashing))...

EDIT: Here we go:

Witch Bolt
1st-level evocation
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Components: S
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

A beam of crackling, blue energy lances out toward a creature within range, forming a sustained arc of lightning between you and the target. Make a ranged spell attack against that creature. On a hit, the target takes 2d6 lightning damage, and on each of your turns for the duration, you can use your action to deal 1d6 lightning damage to the target automatically. The target's speed is halved for the duration of the spell. The spell ends if you use your action to do anything else. The spell also ends if the target is ever outside the spell’s range or if it has total cover from you.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the damage it deals increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 1st.

Ath-kethin said:

Wish, but only because it's such a pale, thin shadow of its former greatness.

Click to expand...

I think Wish is now a great utility spell. For a 9th level slot - or, more interestingly, a Ring of Three Wishes - you can get any save-my-bacon spell you want. It makes the Ring the sort of thing that I think would be fun to give to a party at level 2; they'll always have that ace up their sleeves, and you can watch them be inventive with something that powerful so early, without it undermining the whole campaign since they need to be really careful with it. Just a thought.