Top 5 Spells That Deal Damage in D&D 5E

Author: Xenken

Welcome to our very first post beyond the Core Tenets! Here, we will look at what we at Tabletop Builds believe are some of the best spells that deal damage in the game, breaking down each option by notable synergies and rating each spell by utility, control, and ease of use. Let’s deal some damage!

Action cast, 150 ft range. 8d6+1d6/SL fire damage in a 20 ft radius sphere, Dex save for ½ damage.
3rd level, Sorcerer, Wizard, Artillerist Artificer, Fiend Warlock, Genie Warlock (Efreeti), Light Domain Cleric

Notable Synergies: Subclasses and feats that boost fire damage or shape areas of effect.

Utility: ★☆☆☆☆
Sometimes you need to burn flammable objects, but almost universally you have lower cost options. 

Control: ★☆☆☆☆
While “dead” is the best condition to inflict in the game, that’s all we can do here.

Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Not much to it besides “actually aim”, “don’t hit your friends” and “don’t catch the forest on fire”, though those can be surprisingly hard to do sometimes.

THE ORIGINAL, ASS KICKING, MEME INDUCING, DEMON SLAYING—actually every 5E demon is resistant to fire. Whatever.

If you’ve managed to dive deep enough into 5E to read this, then we probably don’t need to talk to you about how and why fireball is good. Wizards and Sorcerers have dozens of other instant blast spells and you won’t use any of them because you will use this. Good range, big Area of Effect, and a nice chunk of dice in the hand. What doesn’t get mentioned as often is that it has some privileged feat, class, and subclass support. School of Evocation Wizard, Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer, maybe even the Elemental Affinity feat or Transmuted Spell metamagic if you truly wish to give it the title of demon slaying. 

Still, worrying about hitting all your buddies isn’t great. Fire needing active support in order to pull it from being a bad damage type isn’t great either, and there’s not much your party can do to improve fireball beyond the base you make for it. 

Fireball also tends to “tunnel vision” people into seeing fireball as a solution to all combats, which we’ll count as a downside, especially for the great spell lists of Wizard/Sorcerer. You have other things to cast! Get busy with web or sleet storm once in a while. Still, fireball always seems to work, at least well enough.

Honorable mention to synaptic static for being a psychic fireball that targets Intelligence saves and also debuffs.

Action cast, range of self, 10 minute (concentration) duration. 3d8 + 1d8/SL radiant or necrotic damage when targets get within 15 feet or start their turn there, Wis save for ½ damage. Halves speed in the area.
3rd level, Cleric, Oath of the Crown Paladin, Divine Soul Sorcerer

Notable Synergies: Pulling effects and further movement reductions.

Utility: ★☆☆☆☆
If one of your party members that was around when you cast the spell is replaced by a Doppelganger, they will get zapped.  

Control: ★★★★☆
Slowing down enemies can deny whole rounds to slower melee combatants, and limits the tactical options of anyone exposed to it.

Ease of Use: ★★★★★
You literally just run at people and turn it on.

If we’re being honest, spirit guardians being criminally underrated was basically the reason this article was written. Quoting from a Cleric guide elsewhere: “5th level marks a major increase in power for you, since you gain access to 3rd-level spells. Unfortunately, most 3rd-level cleric spells are defensive or support-focused. You’ll have to rely on your domain spells for offensive power here.”

How many spells you have in a category isn’t nearly as important as how good your best ones are! Look at all the fireball-like spells on the Wizard there that are all totally useless. Clerics having less inferior options just gives them less overlap and waste. Cleric fans reading this article might already know this, but…

What if we told you spirit guardians was a better damage spell than fireball?

There’s a good argument! Radiant is a much better damage type, for one thing. If a creature spends 2 rounds inside spirit guardians, it’ll take 27 damage to fireball’s 28. This spell also makes allies immune to the friendly fire, and fights typically last even longer than two rounds. It needs concentration, but so what? It’s your best concentration spell, so it’s not competing with much. 

To end the spirit guardians caster’s concentration, enemies have to attack a target with good armor, a shield, and who is probably using the Dodge action because they don’t need to cast damage cantrips. Because spirit guardians already does all the damage they need. Since it lasts 10 minutes, while most combats last less than 30 seconds, it’s not rare to end up casting spirit guardians in one combat and ending it in a different one. Finally, it upcasts well, which is great considering the Cleric’s higher level spell list.

Plus, instead of build restrictive subclasses or feats, spirit guardians synergy comes mostly from other party members doing things they were already good at. The damage triggers on creatures entering as well as staying, so your Barbarian friend can grapple people across the edge, your Druid could pull them with thorn whip, or your wizard can use Telekinetic, effectively doubling this spells damage on that target each time they succeed.

The static half max speed effect can be useless when chasing down fast opponents, since their speed returns to normal as soon as they leave the area and thus they can just spend the rest of their movement immediately, but you can stack it with other slowing/difficult terrain spells to entirely prevent such an escape, and on the flip-side it can potentially lock approaching melee out of the game, as they’re effectively forced to pay double even for movement taken outside the zone that they needed to get inside.

This is not to say there aren’t any weaknesses. Dealing damage all at once is still better than over time, exposing yourself in melee is still innately risky, and not EVERY 5E monster is a melee brute, although too many of them are, so sometimes you can’t use spirit guardians properly because of distance. Still though, we think more “I just wanna do ALL the damage” type players should consider that maybe Cleric (or Divine Soul Sorcerer) is the class for them. 

An honorable mention to this list is the underrated cousin spike growth, which really doubles down on punishing movement to great effect.

Action cast, 60 ft range, 1 hour (concentration) duration. Summons a number of beasts that obey your commands.
3rd level, Druid, Ranger, Mark of Handling Human

Above: Tables for the expected damage of various CR ¼ creatures, accounting for accuracy.

Notable Synergies: Anything that gives advantage, or temporary hit points, or blocks line of sight (and more).

Utility: ★★★★★
(Flying or swimming) mounts, special senses, scouting.

Control: ★★★★☆
Inflicting conditions, clogging up the battlefield.

Ease of Use: ★☆☆☆☆
You have to trust your DM, and they have to trust you back. You also need to be a good bookkeeper and turn pre-planner. Many tables play with the Sage Advice ruling that makes the DM choose which beasts answer the call, and it could be severely impaired at the wrong table. If you are playing online, absolutely have those macros ready to roll.

Damn, this spell is something else.

This is an article about damage, so let’s start with that. Let’s consider wolves. Does the lack of an area of effect really matter when wolves (vs AC 15) do 46 damage to fireball’s 28? With no save? Dealing damage in these smaller chunks is just inherently better too, since you can always apply just enough to take out a target instead of having it survive at low health. It lasts even longer than spirit guardians, upcasts even better, uses a damage type that’s only mildly worse at the levels people play at (that is still better than fire) and trying to hit the caster out of it has all the same problems, except this time it’s at 90’ range (possibly in addition to an animal’s move speed) so the caster could be behind a wall. Or be a Druid in Wild Shape badger form beneath the dirt.

So as a DM, you think “the beasts have health! I could just kill them.” Well they have 88 health between them, so that’s sponging a lot of attacks that could’ve gone to the party while they continue to do damage. Maybe you can use the area of effect that you probably don’t have to kill them all at once, but they’re surrounding 1 or 2 enemies and the party’s possibly on a totally different part of the map, so you have to fireball your monsters instead of the party, and that’s assuming the group doesn’t have a Glamour Bard/Shepherd Druid/Twilight Cleric to make animals stop dying and start not-dying with a fountain of temporary hit points.

And that’s all just one beast that we picked for being simple and also in the Player’s Handbook. Your Warlock has darkness up? There’s a beast for that. Your forever-fireball Wizard cast web for once so enemies can’t move? There’s a beast for that. Flying, swimming, grappling, whatever it is, there’s probably a beast for that (even when not fighting at all!)

And…that’s kind of the problem. You need to know what said beasts do, you need to actually have them allowed in your game, and you need to be able to reference them quickly, or else risk being incredibly wasteful with the real life time of several people. If your DM chooses the monsters, you need to be prepared for exponentially more possibilities. Everyone playing online these days helps with beast referencing, and it’ll also help that now you can just type in all the attack and damage dice at once, or download a macro, or use a D&D Beyond extension. Be warned though: if you don’t learn to plan your turn before it happens, no amount of tech in the world will save you.

Still though, if raw power is what you want, your DM is not the type to give you 8 quippers on land out of spite, and good table sense is what you have, then conjure animals is the spell to beat.

Honorable mention to animate dead, which goes on an entirely different axis of low ease of use to give a roughly similar frame with less flexibility.

Action cast, 60 ft range. 3d6 + 1d6/SL psychic damage, Wis save for ½ damage, on a failure triggers reaction to move away.
1st level, Bard, Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, Great Old One Warlock  

Notable Synergies: Reaction attacks, spells that punish willing movement. 

Utility: ★☆☆☆☆
Needing to move someone out of combat isn’t impossible, merely very unlikely. 

Control: ★★★★☆
Hefty chunk of forced movement, could force a Dash.

Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
You’re really relying on other party members here, and you risk forcing them out of plays which might be better.

So far up till now, all of our entries have been 3rd level spells. Although level 5 is a common point for campaigns to reach and cross, it’s worth also considering the even more common tier 1 (character levels 1-4), before you unlock their world-rending power. Or maybe even after you have them, but in a combat where you want to pace yourself or one where you’ve cast one already. So how can small spells deal big damage?

The answer, for dissonant whispers, comes not in raw power but in synergy. Say you’re level 3, and when you cast it there are 2 bog-standard shield+Dueling sword Fighters next to your target, who has AC 15. If they both get reaction attacks in, that’s more than 11 damage on top of your existing 10.5. Oh, one of the Fighters is actually a Rogue? Make that 16. That’s the obvious boost, but there are plenty of others. Battle Smith or Beast Master + pet, Paladin looking for a critical hit, greataxe Barbarian, Arcana Cleric with booming blade, or maybe just those 8 wolves from conjure animals. (51 total damage? From a 1st level spell slot??) There are some downright unreasonable returns here. Bonus: if the target is melee only, is behind in initiative compared to your selected goon squad, and runs their full speed, said squad could just…move 5 or 10 feet away to hit something else and bam, the target’s turn is wasted on having to Dash back even if they live.

But the greatest strength of dissonant whispers is leveraging of others, is also its greatest weakness. You might just…not have a party where it can get good value. Worse, still, is the possibility that the party who can reap value is just worse than the party that can’t. Being melee is inherently riskier than being at range, (occasionally missing chances to attack due to distance, exposing yourself to the heavy damage of monster melee,) and most of the rest of the system doesn’t really reward it enough to be worth it, and it’s not great if you’re the one pushing others into that mix-up. When the Rogue waiting for your dissonant whispers, for example, could have Disengaged and moved to a better position instead if you weren’t casting it. Ways to get opportunity attacks without actually being in melee exist, like Echo Knight Fighter and summons like conjure animals and animate objects, but they’re uncommon.

You should think of dissonant whispers, more than anything, as an opportunity. It won’t make up for the inherent riskiness of stationary melee or martial combat by itself, but if some people are already committing to that, as it usually goes, then don’t miss the chance to cash out while the time is right. 

As an honorable mention, be sure to check out command. While it does no damage on its own and the language component is annoying for a combat spell, it can waste 2 turns instead of 1, upcasts to great benefit, and has out of combat utility. 

They also cover each other’s weaknesses pretty well, so…maybe take both?

Action cast, 120 ft range. 1d10 force damage on a hit, scaling at level 5, 11, and 17.
Cantrip, Warlock

Notable Synergies: Purpose built Eldritch Invocations, as well as more generic spells and features that add on hit damage. Effects that boost cantrips. Slow effects.

Utility: ★☆☆☆☆
You can use eldritch blast to identify creatures disguised as objects. 

Control: ★★★☆☆
Smaller, but still hefty, chunks of forced movement.

Ease of Use: ★★★★★
You literally just stand still and turn it on, and you don’t even have to worry about spell slot management. 

Let’s start with weaknesses this time. 1d10 with no area of effect is pretty mediocre damage, and even 1d10+Charisma is only starting to approach good weapon builds. And that’s the weakness. That’s the only one. Eldritch blast is an absolute workhorse, the infinite pistol of the Spellcasting world.

It’s reliable, for one. 120ft is a great range, force is basically a perfect damage type, and multiple attack rolls offer the kind of consistency no other cantrip can match, closer to what you’d expect from a leveled save for half spell.

It’s compact, too. Eldritch blast and the Agonizing Blast that gives it good damage costs less than half of the stuff you get from 2 levels of Warlock, and it naturally scales as cantrips do, so you basically end up trading 2 levels of Warlock for 20 levels of (featless) Fighter. Just making that trade and then spending the rest of those levels on goodstuff can net you a very good and well rounded damage dealer.

Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t invest in it. Eldritch blast‘s synergy game is on point. From Warlock itself there are tons of other invocations to pimp your blast, two of the best being Devil’s Sight, (turning darkness into equally reliable setup) and Repelling Blast opening up this spell’s potential for control. The Genie and Hexblade patrons pile on extra damage, and spells like hex and the aforementioned darkness can all contribute to make eldritch blast actually pack quite a punch. We still only have 2, maximum 3 warlock levels for this, and the rest of the 4-20 can still be basically whatever we want, assuming we keep Charisma up to snuff.  

Alternatively, many more features in 5E interact with offensive attack rolls compared to saves, and this spell’s cantrip status combined with its high damage per shot when invested in enables maximal use of other features that interact with cantrips, such as Quicken Spell, Eldritch Knight Fighter’s War Magic, and Bladesinger’s Extra Attack. This is in addition to increasing the efficiency of features that interact with spells in general, like the War Caster feat. Combine this with eldritch blast‘s level compactness and one of its subclasses also giving proficiency in medium armor (at level 1) and you have a package that makes optimizers foam at the mouth. Dip Hexblade Warlock 2 on Sorcerer, Paladin, Bard, Druid, anything. It doesn’t matter! Eldritch blast will continue to be a complete machine, and will somehow always find a way to get even stronger from the multiclass out.

One of the drivers of eldritch blast’s adaptability is the surprisingly good control. Repelling Blast is simply very strong. A repeatable 10ft push is enough to Disengage your allies for free and have crushing consequences when combined with slowing effects or difficult terrain. Take note that these effects only get stronger with multiple beams, so consider maybe waiting to take Repelling Blast until 5 when eldritch blast upgrades to a second attack, and also consider teaming up with a friend and blasting together! 

---

We hope this article gave you some ideas for spell selection, and we wish you luck on your future characters.
Have fun, and happy blasting!