I made notes on specific spells below:
Less Useful
Message 0 --Message is pretty solid, its a great utility cantrip.
Excellent
Guidance 0 --I think Guidance deserves its own tier. If you play a campaign with any decently heavy skill use, this spell is so good.
1st-Level Spells
−less useful
Passwall 5 – I think it’s a 2nd or 3rd level spell. It’s not as useful in general as fly at 3rd, but does give the party ways to bypass key obstacles, which is definitely stronger than 1st.
Eldritch Knight − Very Close Range, Weapon Attacks
−less useful
Divine Favor 1 – I would say at least not bad. Its still +2.5 damage
Not Bad
Protection From Evil And Good 1 – Upgrade to Good. While more situational than other protection spells, when you know your finding a dungeon of undead the protection is exceptionally strong…better than shield of faith or barkskin certainty.
Absorb Elements 1xg – This should be excellent. It is incredibly good and scales very well at higher levels.
2nd-Level Spells
−good
Instant Summons 6 –Considering the incredible material cost, I think this should be dumped into the bottom of the barrel.
−excellent
Prayer Of Healing 2
Not Bad
Enhance Ability 2 – Having seen this one in play, I would upgrade it to good. Again, for skill heavy games its very useful.
Good
Pass Without Trace 2 –Should be excellent, maybe even higher level. No other spell breaks bounded accuracy quite so much. It makes the druid the stealthy member of the party.
4th-Level Spells
Not Bad
Banishment – This spell to me is equal footing with polymorph because of its charisma save, which is an Achilles hill of the vast majority of monsters. It’s a completely gamechanger.
7th-Level Spells
−not bad
Demiplane 8 – This isn’t really any better than Magnificent Mansion, in some ways its worse. I would put it at the same level as that.
8th-Level Spells
Less Useful
Horrid Wilting 8xg –8th is too high for this. I think 7th is reasonable.
[MENTION=5889]Stalker0[/MENTION], your comments, and your format are helpful.
In the second post of this thread, I tentatively made the following updates.
Message 0. Its rank moves down (improves) to the Not Bad section. It is particular good for situations where the party splits up. One doesnt want to split up too often, but it can be lifesaving when the party does. The truth is, metagaming where the players consult each other tends to obsolete the value of Message. In games where players are strict about only saying what the characters say, and only if the characters are in earshot of each other, Message can be useful. And in any case, Message 0 can be useful in stealth situations.
Guidance 0 is already in the Excellent section. I agree, the cantrip is highly useful in a campaign where players do whatever they want, and the ability (skill) checks are a normal way for the DM to adjudicate their various stunts. In Post 2, I nudged it down a bit in the Excellent section.
Divine Favor 1 was on the cusp, and it now nudges down into Not Bad.
Protection From Evil And Good 1. Ok, so your argument is, this spell is situational, but most of the time, it is obvious if characters are going to be in this situation (fighting undead, or fey, or so on), and these situations are common enough. Fair enough. It moves down into Good, past Barkskin.
Absorb Elements 1xg. Cool, this is a spell from Xanathars Guide / Elemental Evil. I moved it down into the Excellent section. Note, Hideous Laughter 1, Irresistible Dance 6, and Entangle 1 are a kind of set of comparable effects that are on the cusp of Excellent. So Absorb Elements 1xg moves past these.
‘Instant Summons 6 –Considering the incredible material cost, I think this should be dumped into the bottom of the barrel.’ Done. Note, my own game ignores the costly material component of spells and disallows spamming them. But yeah, rules as written, the usefulness of the spell is Minor.
Prayer Of Healing 2. Note, this spell is already Excellent. It is in the special Setup section, in the sense that characters cannot cast this on fly. In this case, they have to cast it during a rest. The Setup section has its own rankings of Not Bad, Good, and Excellent, considered separately from the other spells. Similarly, the Eldritch Knight is its own subsection, which most non-melee Wizards need to avoid, but is considered separately for those mages that are competent in melee.
‘Enhance Ability 2 – Having seen this one in play, I would upgrade it to good. Again, for skill heavy games its very useful.’ Done.
Pass Without Trace 2. Now Excellent. Others have also praised this spell in play. It is one of the few ways to ensure the entire party is stealthy.
‘Banishment – This spell to me is equal footing with polymorph because of its charisma save, which is an Achilles hill of the vast majority of monsters. It’s a completely gamechanger.’ Cool. Thinking about it, I moved Banishment to the Excellent section of the Setup spells. Banishment has a ‘significant prerequisite’ in the sense that the opponent must be extraplanar.
‘Demiplane 8 – This isn’t really any better than Magnificent Mansion, in some ways its worse.’ Done. In other editions of D&D, this was such a powerful spell, often broken. 5e hit it with the nerf hammer a bit too hard.
