Summary
- There are many spells across Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks that are best used by Dungeon Masters!
- For instance, Heat Metal is a great spell for DMs to use in combat encounters, as it can surprise and challenge players wearing metal armor or carrying metal weapons.
- Scrying is also a useful spell for DMs to keep their villains updated on the players' activities, although the saving throw can make it difficult to keep it a surprise.
Being a dungeon master involves hours of preparation and planning. It's tough to always stay ahead of the curve, and your plans can be derailed at a moment's notice by errant players. Luckily, the game is full of spells that are great for giving your players more challenges.
No Dungeons & Dragons Spell Is Truly 'Bad'
Some spells are far more v𓄧iable in combat in Dungeons & Dragons, but with a creative party or a DM who wields mꦗagic, each one has a use
The Player's Handbook for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons is full of spells that both the dungeon master and players can use. That being said, there are plenty of spells that are more useful in the hands of a DM. If you don't 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:feel like homebrewing, we've got you covered.
10 Dream
Fifth Level Illusion
- Source: Player's Handbook
- Works best for: Conveying plot information to players
- Caveats: Few to none
Dream is one of the best ways to relay important lore to your players, as this spell allows the caster to influence another creature's dreams. The only limitations are that the creature must be known to the caster and on the same plane of existence.
This spell can be used at the beginning of a campaign to motivate player characters to accept the call to adventure, and it can be used as an adventure hook, with the NPC caster trying to manipulate the player characters into the next quest. It's a seriously underrated spell that can be used by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a variety of different🌠 spellcaster NPCs.
9 Heat Metal 🧜
Second Level Transmutation
- Source: Player's Handbook
- Works best for: Sucker punching your players during combat encounters
- Caveats: Requires detailed knowledge of player characters' clothes and equipment
Heat Metal is a spell that's useful to both DMs and players, as your NPC bards and druids have a nasty trick up their sleeves, so why not use it? Most fighters and paladins will be wearing some form of armor, but any character wearing metal jewelry or carrying a metal weapon is susceptible to the damage of this spell.
This is one of the best ways to keep your players on their toes during a combat encounter. Word of advice: keep track of what your players' characters are wearing, because asking them right before you cast this spell is a dead giveaway as to your intentions.
8 Scrying
Fifth Level Divination
- Source: Player's Handbook
- Works best for: Keeping your villains up to date on the players' activities
- Caveats: The saving throw makes it difficult to keep this a surprise
If your campaign's villain knows there's a ragtag gang of adventurers on their tail, they're probably going to want to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:know what's going on. Even non-villainous NPCs may have reason to want to keep tabs on your players depending on circumstances, and fortunately, there's a spell for that.
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Scrying allows the caster to spy on a chosen target through a reflective surface, and the only downside is that the target must make a Wisdom saving throw for it to work. While it's easy to stack the odds in your favor, asking for this save from your players gives away your intentions, so if you want to prevent this, it's better to have your caster target an NPC that travels with the party, such as a pet or hireling.
7 Zone of Truth ཧ
Second Level Enchantment
- Source: Player's Handbook
- Works best for: Tense social encounters such as trials and inquisitions
- Caveats: It's a save or suck
While Dungeons & Dragons is more known for dungeon crawls than it is for social intrigue, that doesn't mean that the game lacks a social aspect entirely. Sooner or later, your players will try to lie their way out of a sticky situation, so this spell makes these situations more challenging than a simple dice roll.
If your players' misadventures have brought them before a court of law, this spell will almost certainly be used, as authority figures may also 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:have a cleric cast Zone of Tܫruth to test your players. Finally, clever NPCs can also w🌊illingly cast these spells on themselves to appear more trustworthy, as a show of good faith.
6 Drea🀅m of the Blue Veꦜil
Seventh Level Conjuration
- Source: Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
- Works best for: Dimension-hopping adventures
- Caveats: You need a magic item or a living character from your destination to cast this spell
Maybe there's a Macguffin you want your campaign's villain to hide in another world, or you're running a less serious campaign and want a crossover arc with your group's favorite fandoms. Or maybe you just want a fish-out-of-water scenario with medieval fantasy adventurers thrust into the real world, all of these are possible with Dream of the Blue Veil.
This spell allows up to nine creatures to fall asleep, waking up later in another world on the Material Plane, so it's the perfect way to shift to another campaign setting, such as Barovia. You could even have your players end up in the modern world for all the time travel shenanigans you want, and there are no limitations, other than your own imagination.
5 Seeming
Fifth Level Illusion
- Source: Player's Handbook
- Works best for: Staging roleplay and story-focused combat encounters
- Caveats: Illusions don't hold up to touch
Seeming is a spell that acts like a souped-up Disguise Self. Although the illusions don't hold up to touch, the caster can give any number of creatures they can see an illusory disguise, so the possibilities are endless, and it's a great way to spring surprises on your players.
There are a number of encounters you can run with this spell, you can make an evil adventuring party disguise itself as a traveling carnival, or perhaps 💟an entire village wants to hide the fact that everyone there𝓀 is undead, so the possibilities are endless.
4 🐼Divine Word
Seventh Level Evocation
- Source: Xanathar's Guide to Everything
- Works best for: Killing your players' characters in fun ways
- Caveats: Can be downright unfair for low-level parties
Divine Word is a spell that punches above its weight class, and on a failed Charisma save, the target experiences a nasty consequence that depends on their current number of hit points. This can range from being blinded or deafened to instant death, so it's definitely a spell to give a high-level divine-casting NPC.
Charisma isn't a common save proficiency, which makes this spell particularly brutal in a high-level boss fight, as it can also be combined with other spells such as Polymorph, to make an encounter more deadly. Yes, the rules as written allow you to Polymorph a character into a duck before using this spell to kill them.
3 Nystul's Magic Aura
Second Level Illusion
- Source: Player's Handbook
- Works best for: Keeping surprise magical effects a surprise
- Caveats: Only lasts for a day
Most DMs 🍰will use enchanted items or magically disguised NPCs quite liberally throughout their campaigns, and plenty of groups have the foresight to cast Detect Magic in every new area they explore. And plenty of paladins are quick to use their Divine Sense the moment an NPC seems suspicious.
Enter Nystul's Magic Aura, a spell that allows the caster to mask magical information about a person or object, making it much easier to avoid sequence breaking and accidental spoilers. The spell lasts for twenty-four hours, so if you want to spring any magical surprises on your players, be mindful of how you time this spell.
2 Glyph of Warding ☂
Second Level Abjuration
- Source: Player's Handbook
- Works best for: Setting traps and designing dungeons
- Caveats: Very few, as long as its presence makes narrative sense
Glyph of Warding is a spell that's absolutely indispensable to a DM, as it allows you to place magical sigils on a variety of different objects, imbuing them with different effects that activate on a trigger you set. This should be one of the first traps you add to your dungeon-building toolkit.
Your first instinct would be to use this spell in dungeons, but Glyph of Warding is a very versatile spell. It can be used on vehicles that you don't want your players to easily gain control of, and traveling spellcaster NPCs can also use it to protect their possessions.
1 Hallucinatory Terrain 🅷
Fourth Level Illusion
- Source: Player's Handbook
- Works best for: Staging boss encounters
- Caveats: Illusions don't hold up to touch
Want to disguise a boss lair? Look no further than Hallucinatory Terrain, a spell that's available to a wide range of classes. While it doesn't work on man-made structures, this spell can make any natural terrain within its radius seem like any other natural terrain.
There are a few limitations to the spell, beginning with the fact that its radius covers 150 feet. The second is that while the illusion works on the senses of sight, sound, and smell𒅌, the disguised terrain is still unaffected by touch, so enemies that can use this spell, such as the Oblex, will need to keep this in mind.
