Druid Spell Guide for DnD 5E

Author: Xenken

The Druid’s spell list is the core of their ability to influence the world, and its importance cannot be overstated. Not only is it just a strong and well rounded spell list with a large number of unique and powerful spells, but Druids can and should use their spells prepared to pick niche options in response to circumstances that come up, an ability that makes a ton of spells better than they would be otherwise, especially at low levels.

Spell Goals

Any spell has two main goals: Action Manipulation and Utility.

Utility encompasses every spell effect that doesn’t directly contribute to the action economy, from information gathering interacting with NPCs to transport. You’ll need these spells, not only because there are many problems that only they can solve, but also because solving them can lend indirect advantages in combat. (For example, divining the presence and size of a future encounter can help you spend resources more efficiently when facing it.)

Once initiative is rolled, Action Manipulation is the sum total of everything a spell you’d cast can do, because in combat the side with the higher quantity × quality of actions will win, and the side that can take no meaningful actions has already lost regardless of what other resources they have. Therefore, despite the fact that spells often do vastly different things, the combat prowess of any spell can and should be evaluated in terms of how it affects actions. Healing spells, for example, are useful only insofar as they overcome enemy damage to prevent loss of actions from allies, and damage spells are useful only insofar as they prevent enemy actions by killing enemies at low enough health, or by enabling other damage to do the same. Debuffing and battlefield control spells like entangle and spike growth are often valuable for their ability to reduce the action quality of multiple enemies without caring about how much health they have.

Other points to look out for include spells that take only a bonus action or reaction, spells with long durations that can leave your first turn’s action available by being cast before battle even starts, and spells that aren’t concentration which can increase the overall quality of your actions by letting you follow up a powerful concentration spell with something beyond a cantrip.

Concentration

While every class has concentration on the lion’s share of its most powerful spells, this is especially true for the Druid spell list, with non-concentration spells as a relative weak area. This makes the act of keeping up concentration in combat even more important than it normally is, including incidentally increasing the power of spells that effectively help protect themselves by reducing enemy damage or being effective at a longer range.

Relatedly, Druid’s non concentration combat spells get a lot of their value from being able to be used alongside other spells, and thus vary in power based on how many resources you have. This makes them notably better when you’re higher level with more spell slots to go around, as well as when you’re in a campaign with a low number of encounters per day.

Areas of Effect

Druid has a lot of spells with non-circular areas of effect (cubes/lines/squares/etc) and strictly speaking they should be a fair bit bigger than one would expect, given that you can place them at odd angles. The DMG rule on circular areas of effect only affecting half covered squares doesn’t apply, after all, and while you can align them to the grid, you don’t have to.

So take tidal wave‘s 30 by 10 by 10 foot cube, for example. Do we judge it assuming you can angle it and it can poke into squares? Or assume that it can only line up and thus only have two orientations?

It’s especially important for create bonfire, since as a 5ft cube it goes from hitting 1 square to hitting 4 or more. This makes it not only capable of hitting multiple people, but also increases the number of squares it can control, turning the spell from mediocre to genuinely really impressive at low levels.

That one exception aside, the difference is never enough to move a spell a whole star rating, so it won’t come up again in this guide if your table plays one way or another. Just note that this is a thing to look out for.

Rest Casting

Spells that can give you effects in the days after you cast them are always going to be at least a little useful, just by virtue of the fact that having a buffer you can transfer when the day proves to be easy is good, and being able to carry some power from downtime days is good. Druid already has several spells that last 24 hours or longer and thus do this naturally, but whenever the term “rest cast” is used it refers specifically to casting spells during a long rest (a technique elaborated on in our article here) in order to also get this benefit from spells that last 8 hours.

Spell Ratings

Druid Spell Tech

Some spells have the potential to become more powerful if certain interactions are considered appropriate at your table. Since it’s hard to weigh these interactions with regards to a spell rating, and they may not be considered appropriate at every table, we have listed these specific interactions separately.

Twitter

Facebook

Reddit

Pinterest

Tumblr

Email