D&D 5E As a DM - Your Top 3 Most Hated Spells

[Nebulous]

But how could you circumvent the banishment thing if you wanted to? One solution would be to have the balor already been in action and gating in some more devils, I think he could do that. Then his support troops would agro the most helpless population. Everyone not first stopping them (waisting the banishment divinations) is in for an alignment change.

I would go a step further. If your big baddie is extraplanar and you KNOW the PCs are going to try to banish it and end the fight, I would give it some hokey magic item that absorbs/deflects/redirects the banishment spell and only the banishment spell. The wizard getting banished by his own stupid spell would be pretty sweet

 

[jayoungr]

I will say that my players once made clever, if somewhat cheesy, use of banishment. They were fighting a miniboss devil in Mount Celestia, and the PCs were pretty torn up. So the cleric cast banishment. The devil shrugged: "You want to send me home? Sure, fine. Bye." They left him banished for 59 seconds while they healed up. The the cleric canceled the spell and brought the devil back so they could finish killing him.

 

[Oofta]

I would go a step further. If your big baddie is extraplanar and you KNOW the PCs are going to try to banish it and end the fight, I would give it some hokey magic item that absorbs/deflects/redirects the banishment spell and only the banishment spell. The wizard getting banished by his own stupid spell would be pretty sweet

Personally, if I'm not going to nerf an ability with plot armor I'll just ban the spell. Which is what I decided to do.

 

[CleverNickName]

Tiny Hut
Rope Trick
Magnificent Mansion

Basically anything that lets the party ignore or auto-reset their resources without fear of consequence.

 

[David Howery]

back in 2E days.... stoneskin. Gawd, I hated that spell. Primarily because in 2E, there were no restrictions on who could receive it. So every PC had it. In response, I had NPCs loaded with them too. Which led to loooong combats as each side fruitlessly hammered on each other, waiting to see which one would lose their spell first. Eventually, I came up with things like very common insect swarms (ruling that each insect's attack was a single attack vs. the spell), special potions and spells to take them down, etc. Finally, we had a group discussion about the problem and all agreed to a restriction that only the casting mage could receive the benefit of the spell. Which was fine, because mages really did need the protection.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I am against removing/stealth-nerfing spells during the game. The player who chose to play a wizard expecting to have some choices open to him, spending potentially some resource to learn the spell, and them having the GM deciding that talisman against banishment are the new fad and everyone has them. If I wanted to ban a spell (for balance or story reason), I'd do it openly and before the start of the game. Or plan the campaign to end before they reach the dreaded level. In my view, D&D tries to emulate a progression from farmboy to superman: at the higher end of the level scale, a trip is no longer a threat. It's quite hard to find... worthy challenge.

 

[Stalker0]

I will actually add to my list with the mention of Revivify. I had forgotten it because I actually removed all raise dead type spells from my campaigns long ago. Revivify is actually 9th level in my game and is the only form of raise short of a full miracle.

5e players are already ridiculous hard to kill once they get to 5thish level, I couldn't imagine adding this one on top.

 

[Arilyn]

Surprised by all the dislike of the hut/mansion spells. If players spend a slot on this, they probably don't like encounters while resting. No big deal, surely?
However, having said this, maybe these spells could open portals to another dimension, so no guarantee that hut/mansion will only house players. Other things could get in. Your mansion might be haunted, or have strange creatures scuttling about. That could open up an interesting night for players.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There are really just a few categories of spells that are problematic:

Spells that obviate otherwise meaningful challenges.
Spells that are so overpowered they need to be 'balanced' by ineffectual/un-fun methods, like limited-uses/rest or concentration.
Spells that force saving throws.

Aside from that, they're all fine.

 

[Stalker0]

Surprised by all the dislike of the hut/mansion spells. If players spend a slot on this, they probably don't like encounters while resting. No big deal, surely?

The thing is...Tiny hut is a ritual...it doesn't really cost spell slots. Heck, a wizard doesn't even have to prepare it because of their ritual casting feature, its basically a permanent class feature of theirs.