D&D 5E What is the most powerful spell?

[Yaarel]

The 5e design team cared about ‘broken’ spells, spells whose effects were too powerful for the spell level that they appeared in. They made an effort to remove all broken spells from the game, mostly by rethinking and redesigning the spell description. As far as I can tell, the 5e design team was successful.

In my own combing thru the spell lists, I am also looking for broken spells that are too good, at the same time as looking for spells that are meh or terrible in comparison to other spells at the same level. I can honestly say, I have not yet found a single broken spell among all of the official spells. Even spells that I assumed would be broken, like Fly, because they are egregious in the other editions of D&D, seem to be no problem in 5e. I had to think about why arent they a problem? In the case of Fly, it seems that the rethinking and redesign that employs the mechanic of ‘concentration’, seems to be working as intended. Fly is powerful, but when concentration forces the caster to cast only one powerful spell at a time, instead of a simultaneous Christmas tree of powerful spells − the spell enjoys safe balance. The caster classes as a whole become more balanced alongside noncaster classes. No doubt there is a problem here or there, one spell might work better if requiring concentration, and an other spell might work better if removing concentration. But it is easy to isolate and fix specific offenders. And so far, none of them involve a case of ‘breaking’ the game.

So the spell list had spells that were too powerful for their level, and the designers fixed them. However. Even a casual glance thru the spell descriptions makes it clear there are also spells that are not powerful enough for their level, and the designers had little interest in fixing any of these.

The assumption that all official spells are in the appropriate spell level is self-evidently false. Some levels have subpar spells that are more suitable for lower spell levels. But it can be said, there are no broken spells that are too much for their spell level.

 

[Caliban]

Eh, you obviously don't care about anyone else's opinion but your own. Have fun.

 

[Yaarel]

Several contributors to this thread have shared their opinions about certain spells. Their critiques have moved the rankings of the spells in the original posts. I appreciate their contributions.

Heh, apparently Caliban gets offended when people disagree with his opinion.

 

[Yaarel]

Re the spell, Irresistible Dance.

The spell effect of Irresistible Dance equates to the Restrained condition.

Restrained
• A restrained creature’s speed becomes 0.
• Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.
• The creature’s attack rolls have disadvantage.
• The creature has disadvantage on Dexterity saves.



The Entangle spell does all this at 1st-level.

Entangle restrains the creature. It allows the creature a save at the time of casting, and if restrained, the target can choose to spend an action to make a Strength check to break free.

Entangle can restrain multiple creatures, all in a 20-foot square. Irresistible Dance can only restrain one creature.

Additionally, Entangle causes the area to become difficult terrain. Thereby even those creatures who did succeed in the save, the terrain slows their speeds without a possibility of a save. 20 feet of difficult terrain blocks the passage of 30 speed.

All at 1st-level.



Irresistible Dance is comparable to 1st-level spells, such as Hideous Laughter and Entangle.

 

[Stalker0]

Taking another look at the list again, my few suggested adjustments:

Magic Mouth (Change to 1st level spell). This is mainly just a fun spell or good for dungeon design. There is nothing wrong with it, but also no need for it to be 2nd level. It would be just fine as a 1st level spell.

Warding Bond: (Change to Good and stays at 2nd level). Nothing wrong with this spell! This spell has a long duration with no concentration, and provides a very rare bonus to both AC and saving throws (those are HARD to find!). The half damage can be both a blessing and a curse...but a cleric casting this should be more than capable of healing themself, and normally its better to spread damage out amongst the party than one character taking the full pain.

Guidance (Change to Excellent). I rank this as among one of the strongest cantrips outside of combat. It is so easy to spam, getting +d4 to the vast majority of skills. Skill bonuses are rare, and this spell can give them out like candy. It is absolutely amazing and is something 20th level characters are still likely to use.

Find Steed (Change to Excellent). Find steed is a tremendous spell. It can provide you a steed in areas where you couldn't have one (due to travel constraints). Mounted Combat gives you advantage on many attacks roll so thats great. It can be a damage sponge, a sentry (with the telepathic control). Its a spell that with a little creativity is simply awesome.

Creation (Make it 5th level not bad). Creation might be a bit steep at its original 5th level but its still a solid spell in the hands of a creative player. Giving that power to 3rd level characters I think is a bit much.

Misty Step (Make it a 3rd level spell). As others have suggested in some threads, teleport available to a 3rd level caster is just really really powerful, and tends to strain the low fantasy aspects of low level play. As a 3rd level spell is still powerful, but to me it is comparable to Fly in its ability to bypass obstacles. Fly is generally more useful, but there are still times when a misty step can bypass things that no other spell can at those levels...I would still consider it good.

Protection from Energy (Change to Good). To me this is one of the adventuring staple spells. Energy damage occurs everywhere in adventuring. Having a spell that can provide resistance, and is flexible enough that you can pick which type you need when you need it...is great. The duration is nice too. I really don't consider this a setup spell. I mean you can, but with a 1 action casting time and the ability to select which energy when you cast....you can cast it right when you it when you see what you are facing.

Vampiric Touch: (Lower to 2nd level not bad). This spell is aweful in general, and I would say even more so for Eldritch's Knights. You are a 13th level character when you cast this spell as a EK. At that level, 3d6 damage is pathetic compared to your own attacks. The healing is also miniscule and unreliable.

Death Ward (Change to Excellent) Again, an adventuring staple. Its a spell every high level adventurer is going to have on their list, no concentration really seals the deal.

Hallow (Change to Not Bad). Hallow is a lair spell, more often used by NPCs than PCs. But....it is very solid for one thing....it can provide the very rare vulnerability effect. The only other spell that can do this is Contagion. For that alone, I think is it completely worth a 5th level slot under the setup spell category.

Dominate Person (Change to Good). Combat Wise...turning brother against brother is amazingly good. It basically adds to your damage and subtracts from your enemies at the same time. Non-combat wise...it is immensively flexible. Doing everything from getting a person to give you the password to secret x, to killing someone for you and taking the blame.

Teleport (Change back to 7th level). The designers made a conscious decision to allow long reaching teleport to be only a very high level ability. Word of Recall at 6th makes sense because of the one direction nature. Teleport is a game changing spell, and is perfectly fine at 7th level.

Delayed Blast Fireball (Change to 6th level). Either this goes down, or firestorm goes back up. FS and DBF have roughly the same base damage, and FS has tremendously better flexibility in how you arrange the blast and how many creatures you can hit. DBF requires concentration, which is always in very short supply at these levels. If the power of DBF is being based on what it looks like "when its power is maxed", then I would argue some other situational setup spells (like symbol) as much stronger than they are currently ranked. Further DBF can actually be used against you! No way this is a good spell for 7th if FS is not.

Conjure Celestial (Drop to 6th level). First, we should rename this spell to Summon Couatl, so new players don't get confused that there is only a 2 monsters you can really conjure at this level, and if you conjuring a pegasus well....I'm sorry. The Couatl is nice don't get me wrong, but its not quite worth a 7th level slot. As a 6th level spell I think its rock solid.

 

[Stalker0]

Re the spell, Irresistible Dance.

The spell effect of Irresistible Dance equates to the Restrained condition.

Restrained
• A restrained creature’s speed becomes 0.
• Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.
• The creature’s attack rolls have disadvantage.
• The creature has disadvantage on Dexterity saves.



The Entangle spell does all this at 1st-level.

Entangle restrains the creature. It allows the creature a save at the time of casting, and if restrained, the target can choose to spend an action to make a Strength check to break free.

Entangle can restrain multiple creatures, all in a 20-foot square. Irresistible Dance can only restrain one creature.

Additionally, Entangle causes the area to become difficult terrain. Thereby even those creatures who did succeed in the save, the terrain slows their speeds without a possibility of a save. 20 feet of difficult terrain blocks the passage of 30 speed.

All at 1st-level.

You might have just made a good case as to why Entangle should actually be 2nd level. For a melee creature, the difficult terrain may effectively take out one of its action just to start...maybe even 2 with enough distance. Throw in the restrained with a strength save (which a lot of things don't get a big bonus to), and you could be taking multiple creatures out of the fight for a lot of rounds.

 

[Yaarel]

You might have just made a good case as to why Entangle should actually be 2nd level. For a melee creature, the difficult terrain may effectively take out one of its action just to start...maybe even 2 with enough distance. Throw in the restrained with a strength save (which a lot of things don't get a big bonus to), and you could be taking multiple creatures out of the fight for a lot of rounds.

You make a number of excellent observations. Let me process them a bit at a time.



You recommend moving the Guidance cantrip to Excellent because it is awesome out of combat. Ok, fair enough.



Conjure Cuatl Celestial 7 to 6th-level. That is helpful. The Cuatl is CR 4 and that seems appropriate for a 6th-level spell slot. (Re Conjure Beasts, a 3rd-level slot conjures CR 2.)



You recommend moving Entangle to 2nd-level.

Funny enough, I was thinking Entangle 1 and Web 2 seem similar.

The benefit of Web is, it remains sticky for the duration. Thus creatures can get stuck in it later, becoming restrained. By contrast, with Entangle, there is only a one-time entanglement. Creatures entering afterward get slowed because of the terrain, but they dont get entangled.

The stickiness of Web is somewhat of a wash, since yes new hostiles can get stuck in it later, but so can team caster.

Hypothetically, a hostile that got stuck in the Web could make a successful check to break free, and then when trying to move thru its difficult terrain fail to exit the Web thus potentially becoming stuck again in it. This would rarely happen because even if they were in the center of it, it is only 10 feet of difficult terrain, which speed 30 can normally escape with 10 feet left to move after exit.

So, it depends on where the Web is. If the caster gets most or all of the area of the Web between oneself and the hostiles, then Web becomes a highly effective barrier. A creature trying to cross the full distance might get repeatedly stuck in it. Many creatures would avoid trying to cross.

Web is a better barrier than Entangle. The terrain of Entangle can eat up a round of movement. Web can do this too while adding an additional threat to restrain.

If most combats only last a few rounds, then eating a round of movement is significant. So Entangle may be almost as effective as Web after all.

With these comparisons in mind, do you still feel Entangle should move to 2nd level near Web?

 

[Stalker0]

With these comparisons in mind, do you still feel Entangle should move to 2nd level near Web?

With that comparison, I would think so. Here's the break down:

1) Range: Entangle 90 vs Web 60 (Winner Entangle)
2) Duration: 1 minute vs 1 hour - both concentration (Winner Web)
3) Area 20 foot vs 20 foot (Draw)
4) Saves: Strength/Strength to break vs Dex/Strength to break (Winner: Hard to say, I would say strength saves are weaker in general, but often you want the beefiest things trapped so the dex save might be better).
5) Location: Anywhere vs Only places with an anchor to hold up the web (Winner: Entangle)
6) Other ways to bypass: None vs use Fire to break it. (Winner: Entangle)
7) Duration of Effect: 1 save vs possibly more saves if you stay in the area (Winner: Web)

So overall they look pretty close to me. Web has a bit of a stronger effect, but Entangle is more flexible in where it can be cast and doesn't offer secondary ways to bypass it. I could see each of them being used for different reasons, but I don't see a level's worth of difference between them.

 

[Yaarel]

@Stalker0

Find Steed 2 to Excellent.
I am moving it from the Setup category to the Eldritch Knight category because of its melee combat advantage, and listing it as Excellent. My campaigns are less often in wide open spaces, yet I find it plausible to *conjure* the steed indoors, such as in a great hall, or in a courtyard or street, making the steed useful often.

Dominate Person 5 to Good.
I agree. Dominate Person seems better than Hold Monster 5. The dominated Humanoid cannot attack the caster because of the Charmed condition. Moreover, the caster can spend actions to completely control the Humanoid, and the Humanoid only gets new saves if actually taking damage.

Hallow 5 to Not Bad.
Hallow has a 24-hour (!) casting. Are you sure you want it as Not Bad for 5th? It seems feasible only in a lair, even if the lair is a campsite for several days.

Actually, one of the features Hallow offers is ‘Extradimensional Interference’ that denies planar travel. I want to see this by itself as a spell even at 2nd-level, so the DM can prevent planar-related spells, if necessary.

Protection From Energy 3 to Good.
I can live with that. It is probably more useful than Magic Circle anyway. Done.

But note, its concentration requirement prevents the casting of other good spells for as long as the energy protection remains in effect. The way concentration interacts with a 1-hour duration is generally problematic. Only very powerful spells like Fly deserve it. Other spells, like Protection From Energy and Magic Weapon, might work better if the caster could repeatedly drop the concentration and later pick it back up when needed, during the 1-hour duration.

 

[Stalker0]

Conjure Cuatl Celestial 7 to 6th-level. That is helpful. The Cuatl is CR 4 and that seems appropriate for a 6th-level spell slot. (Re Conjure Beasts, a 3rd-level slot conjures CR 2.)

I would also then make the Summon CR 5 (aka summon Unicorn) a level 8 effect...though honestly its probably still a bit weak at that level. The unicorn does get a short range teleport, so effectively the cleric and druid can get teleport, but weaker and much shorter range than a wizard one, which I think is fair.

The problem is unlike the Cuatl, the Unicorn is not very durable. Sure it can heal itself at will but compared to the damage of CR 15 type creatures the unicorn will be destroyed long before it can heal itself back up, legendary actions or no. Its spells aren't that sexy either. If it effectively got its lair ability in which all of its heals were maximized....than at least its starting to carry its weight.

Hmm...another option is that the conjured creature starts with a sanctuary spell on it that lasts for the full duration of this spell. It gives these support monsters a bit more chance to be useful without getting snuffed out by a few attacks.