Yep when I first saw bless on this old list, I immediately stopped reading. Anyone who thinks Bless is anything but one of the best spells in teh game has no business making guides on cruddy spells.
D&D 5E Guide to cruddy spells (v1.01)
You should look at why it's listed. Many of 5e's spells suffer from a similar problem where they were designed for the hurdles PCs face in past editions & are still trying to target those hurdles even when 5e has removed both the hurdle and part of the track that kept the hurdle meaningful
"The effect is pretty decent as one of the rare multitarget buffs, but as a 1 minute concentration spell the short duration alongside concentration leaves the effect somewhat lacking as both are things that should raise the payload of a buff. Arguments could & have been made for it being pretty good, but they generally require knowing what is coming up in the near immediate future & not having the opponents react to the party or the VSM buff. Simply being frequently ranked as a good first level spell does not change the fact that 5e has monster AC tuned to almost certain hits making the actual impact of this spell very small under most conditions"
humble minion
Legend
Nah, that's still not selling the argument for me. Quite aside from the fact that +1d4 to hit is a very big deal when you're taking -5 from Sharpshooter or Great Weapon Master, and also quite aside that +1d4 to hit remains very relevant in the first 5-8 levels before big proficiency bonuses and magic weapons with lots of pluses come along (the level range where most actual real-life play happens), the OP seems to ignore that Bless is more than that. In an edition where non-proficient saves don't increase automatically with level (UNLIKE 3e etc), that +1d4 to saving throws that Bless also gives you is a big deal.
Even though as you gain level you get make more attacks and therefore are increasingly likely to roll at least one low one that Bless might help convert to a hit, I'd definitely argue that the save bonus becomes the major benefit of this spell as you gain in level.
Oh I did read the reason....and the reason is absolute bumpkiss. Its one of the best buff spells in the game. It does not require having knowledge of what's coming, because its still just that good that a cleric using that for their first action is totally worth doing.
Also this idea that monster AC are so low you can't miss, complete bumpkiss. Maybe at high levels on occasion with highly optimized players, but at "normal levels", absolutely not. And besides the attack bonus is only a part of the action, its the saving throw bonus that's the real meat.
And I'm not talking white room, I have seen bless in several of my campaigns, over and over and over again.
Notice how the borked design that you cite in support of the spell is lacking from one d&d? Pointing at the multilayered problem 5e hurls at gm's to solve for wotc actually underscores tge problem
humble minion
Legend
I haven't read the OneD&D playtests, so no. I'm assuming you're referring to the GWM and Sharpshooter things here?
Regardless of that, +1d4 on all saves at any level is not to be sneezed at.
1d4 added to every attack and saving throw for three party members can't be considered a bad spell in any version. And it's a good spell forever. +1 is good at any level, +4 is stellar at any level.
+1d4 to hit has a 12.5% chance of converting a miss into a hit (assuming you miss on a 1 2 3 4 or worse). If they are using attack rolls that is.
On 3 PCs, that is 0.375 extra actions worth of hits (with 100% accuracy, no crits). Over 3 rounds that is 1.125 100% accuracy (no crits) actions earned.
Optimization by stuff like SS/GWM makes it even better.
On top of this the bonus to saves is decent.
Unless you lose concentration very fast, or are more effective than the allies you buff, it boosts your kill rate significantly.
On 3 PCs, that is 0.375 extra actions worth of hits (with 100% accuracy, no crits). Over 3 rounds that is 1.125 100% accuracy (no crits) actions earned.
Optimization by stuff like SS/GWM makes it even better.
On top of this the bonus to saves is decent.
Unless you lose concentration very fast, or are more effective than the allies you buff, it boosts your kill rate significantly.
Cost/benefit matters. Concentration is a high cost but 5e is designed so the benefit of that spell are not needed and failure on a roll doesn’t really matter. Sure it looks good on pwper, but so does the mpg results of hypermiling & both are beyond the point of being meaningful benefits for the cost... That's why it's listed.
humble minion
Legend
You must be playing your games very differently to me.
Recent example. My level 11 paladin (+12 to hit) was fighting a mixed group of enemies. We knew there were some sort of shadow demon things among them, and the group planned for my PC to focus on them because they were vulnerable to radiant damage from smites. From previous combats, we knew that the demons weren't difficult to hit, so i was using Great Weapon Master. We didn't have sufficient prep time before combat for me to cast Bless as i would have, in an optimal situation.
My dice deserted me. I rolled low single figures three times in four attacks over the first two rounds of combat. This was a big deal in the context of the combat. Not only did the demon I targeted survive to get an action off (and drop an AoE on us all, causing loads of damage, some of which might have been avoided if we'd had that +1d4 on saving throws...), but that meant i had to spent the next turn finishing it off, which meant an assassin got through to our archer who then had to stop shooting and defend herself in melee, which in turn meant she couldn't shoot the mind flayer off the cleric. A Bless, and I would have one-rounded the demon, and been in place to smack the assassin down before it got into our squishier characters.
I'm aware that 5e maths is designed so that PCs hit significantly more often than they miss. But 'hit significantly more' is NOT the same as 'never miss'. I only had a ~20% chance of missing that demon. That's not large, but 20% chances do happen. Repeatedly, in some cases. Turning that 20% into 10% is a big deal. The first failure didn't really matter, but combined with the subsequent ones it sure did.
Plus, in the specific case of a paladin, I'd argue that the cost of using your Concentration is not really very high. You often want to be saving your spell slots for smites, so casting a spell once and then getting lasting benefit from it is good resource use. Plus, Bless is only level 1, so you can save higher level slots for bigger smites, which can have a major impact especially if you land a crit on something.
