Sanctuary completely invalidated a hostage scenario once in our game. Just put sanctuary on the hostage and watch the face of the DM forgetting that spell existed. Still a tough fight, but that definitely took out quite a bit of urgency.
So here's my top 10 abjuration spells of level 4 or below. 5 isn't enough: 1. armor of agathys 2. absorb elements 3. shield 4. aid 5. pass without trace 6. counterspell 7. death ward 8. banishment 9. warding bond 10. shield of faith abjuration is such a great school that even when i excluded half of the spells, there's still 10+ good spells. most of these become default picks for any caster.
Not saying this one doesn’t get enough glory, but no must have abjuration spell list is complete without a mention of Shield. That temporary +5 AC has saved many a spellcaster.
@@slywolfe I wouldn’t say untouchable, but it is a good stack. I’ve known DMs that took that kind of thing as a challenge and would throw a marut at the party to teach them a lesson about AC.
@@jb123581 that sounds like my DM lol Banishment is handy as well. My favorite overall spells are probably mind whip & vortex warp, & mind sliver helps get them to land. When in doubt, just use booming blade. I am having a lot of fun playing bladesinger, but my DM is frustrated by that AC lol
Hi Lee! Hey new vid! why isn't it a banana packing a punch? 😅Mostly great picks, here's my thoughts on each: 1. beacon of hope- not a fan of this spell if i want a concen spell focused on healing, i'd rather have aura of vitality. if i want something that boosted saves, i'd rather have circle of power. 2. banishment- agreed here. this is arguably the most powerful niche spell in the game. What people often forget once they banish an enemy, is the incap condition, which means any concen spell that enemy was maintaining is broken. 3. armor of agathys- agreed here again. this is a great build around spell, especially for those who want to play tanks. works best with transmute spell to circumvent resistance. 4. sanctuary- agreed here again. this is a great defensive spell for tanks, especially summons who are just grapple dodging. and yes if that tank is dodging, this is effectively like super disadvantage. 5. counterspell/greater restoration- agreed here again. these are just good defensive/healing spells. Greater restoration also is part of the cocaine-lock combo. I'll share my must have abjuration spells in a separate comment since there are so many.
Beacon of hope depends a bit on the group composition. In our group 3/5 have healing potential via spells (and everyone always has healing potions on hand) getting reliably the most out of these sources saved our skin on multiple occasions. The spell only gets more powerful by the healing potential of the group as it changes potential to reliable healing For the 1 designated healer set up, I'd agree
@@glarak9819 I think you're coming from the pov that healing is good in combat. if you noticed via my alternative pick, i view healing in combat as bad. imo, ideally people only heal to pop allies back up and topping up hp should be done out of combat. only exception to this would be polymorphing an ally low on hp. in combat, the best healing imo is prevention. i'd focus on spending my action either killing enemies or controlling to prevent them from dealing dmg (and thus have less to nothing to heal). another alternative is layering defenses (ac, saves, obscurement,etc) to avoid getting damaged. aura of vitality is my pick for a healing spell as it's a good out of combat healing spell, especially when extended. i don't plan to use it for my concen in combat. i'd rather concen on banishment, hypnotic pattern, etc. i bet in your group if those healers all were controllers who casted appropriate control spells, you wouldn't be in that sticky situation to begin with.
@@TheRobversion1 Well, we have an artificer and a bard so these are controllers with healing potential. Of course out of combat healing is more valuable than in combat healing because damage output is usually way higher than healing input. But only healing when someone is unconscious leads to quite a risk. For example if a phase spider downs you, you're kinda out of luck just popping back up Same goes if you are unlucky with initiative and the DM having no problem attacking downed party members Or even counterspell a healing spell We still heal out of combat obviously, but if we didn't heal mid combat a lot, we'd already have TPKd on multiple occasions. Healing enough so a party member can withstand another attack of the multi attack can easily make the difference between "only" 2 failed death saves and instand death. (Before anyone attack my DM for playing the enemies very deadly, our group knew that beforehand and is on board with it)
@@glarak9819 i understand what you mean when it comes to situationally healing when someone's about to drop. we sometimes heal in those situations too. but unlike you, we won't drop a concen spell we're already concentrating on (unless we use polymorph) to heal that ally. we'd just use something like healing word/cure wounds. dropping a control spell that's rendering certain enemies ineffective is just asking for more dmg. going with beacon of hope as a core tactic of being a healer on round 1 is also just asking for more dmg when you could've casted hypnotic pattern, fear, web, etc. our dm is like yours. we do very deadly by default and he has no problems attacking downed party members. he never pulls punches which makes victories satisfying. this is why we subscribe to the alpha strike philosophy of character/party building. initiative is important to us. we like going 1st and either controlling or burst striking a threat to death/near death. when someone plays a watcher paladin, everyone is happy. yes our dm counterspells healing spells. this is why sorcs are common at our table (or other casters typically pick up metamagic adept). when a critical spell needs to happen, it's usually cast by the sorc. we don't heal mid-combat alot but we typically avoid tpks by using alot of control or very large amounts of burst dmg (1st turn kills). to give you an idea of a typical combat at our table: for a party of 4 level 10 pcs, we'd typically face 3-4 CR 10 monsters like 3-4 aboleths or 3-4 young red dragons or 3-4 death slaads. this is the level of dmg we face. relying on healing will get us killed fast. so it's either people have to play controllers who can disable those threats/render them ineffective or play strong burst strikers like gloomstalker who can open up with 100+ dmg on turn 1 at level 10 that can possibly kill one of those enemies/almost kill one so that another party member can just mop up on their turn.
THE BANANA IS COMING 1. I knew this was coming lol. Healing is not technically "efficient" true but I feel like its important to have a range of spells in these videos. I almost included Aura of vitality instead but decided to go with the the death saves, gaurenteed max heals, and range. That being said I love both Aura of Vitality and Circle of Power lol. 2. Ageed! This video was really tough because there are so many damn good Abjuration spells its insane. And your 100% right no one ever remembers the incap hahaha 3. I love Armor of Agathys. It just strikes me as so efficient in terms of everything it does. But I think this is coming from my years as an MMO player lol. 4. I hate this spell and I don't want to talk about it >:( 5. Nothing to say here so I will uses #5 to talk about this. Abjuration magic has soooooo many damn good spells I really reallly reallly struggled deciding on 5. I missed Shield, Aid, Death Ward, Dispel Magic, Pass without trace. I felt really bad narrowing it down but in the end I decided to add some variety and throw in some spells that haven't gotten attention on my channel before that are definitley worthy of being in this video!
honestly, Beacon of Hope can be so clutch if you have multiple characters capable of using healing spells, or just making sure to use healing potions I am going to be the guy to put a peg in your example though, seeing as Beacon of Hope only has a 1 minute duration, while Prayer of Healing has a 10 minute cast time, they wouldn't work together, unless you have a 2nd cleric to cast Beacon of Hope right before the chanting for Prayer of Healing goes off. other than just the example of Prayer of Healing, I agree with your reasonings for the spells. on a side note, with the new wording of feats like Feytouched, Magic Initiate and etc. letting you cast the borrowed spell with the level of any spell slot you have avaible, i dread seeing scenarios where a Heavy Armor Master has upcasted Armor of Agathys and fighting hordes of weaker enemies. Modern bugcatcher personified.
that AOA build is something that's already being done now. another content creator just posted an AOA build that uses that combo recently. i don't dread those scenarios either as i find optimization fun. personally though i wouldn't combine AOA with heavy armor master as i'm particular with proper combat RP and tactics. my default combat tactics for any monster/villain is always go after the caster/ranged attackers and ignore tougher looking enemies/melee characters. Same for the other DMs at our table. An AOA user wants to get hit. if they wear heavy armor, they're more likely to get ignored unless the monster doesn't see them wearing heavy armor and attacks blindly. for beacon of hope, i find it a bad use of concen of in combat. you could've prevented the dmg you needed to heal in the 1st place by using a concen control spell instead. if it was non-concen i'd consider it.
100% And good call out on the prayer of healing. On a side note that heavy armor master armor of agathys is probabley going to be my next character hahaha
@@ThisCrits cool. We'll see another character build from you after some time. Solid foundation as armor of agathys is a good build around spell/core tactic.
@@ThisCrits surprised with incite greed too as not only is it a meh spell (it's at the level you get similar but better spells in hypnotic pattern, fast friends, fear, etc) but also a spell that's commonly excluded at a lot of tables (setting specific content). phantom steed though is an excellent spell and i concur with that one.
@@TheRobversion1 Incite greed is amazing. I played it for a long time on a wizard that could put it to use with a high initiative Incite greed also can target ->any number of targets
@@Sewiefortune I'd still disagree. not disagreeing that incite greed as your fave as that's a matter of personal taste but with the assertion that it's amazing when there are multiple better spells in same spell level or lower. i do agree though that control spells are put to better use with high initiative. in fact anything in the game really aside from healing is better with higher initiative. if dealing with mobs as a wizard: 1. web can get you almost the same result with lower spell level used. 2. hypnotic pattern has a better effect and has no EOTS. 3. fear is similar to #2 with just a different aoe and extra lost turns even if you drop concen. 4. fireball can just wipe those minions out. no need to concen. 5. sleet storm has a gigantic area and again would provide almost the same result while also dropping any concen enemies in the area may have while also having no EOTS. in terms of what i value as well, i dont place much stock either in spells that are good against minions (those aren't threats). i tend to value more spells that shutdown threats (bbegs) that could possibly have magic resistance/legendary resistance.
@@ThisCrits oh didn't bother to check the spell lists. was so disheartened with the changes to rogue and ranger. it's like we're moving backwards rather than forwards.
Sanctuary completely invalidated a hostage scenario once in our game. Just put sanctuary on the hostage and watch the face of the DM forgetting that spell existed. Still a tough fight, but that definitely took out quite a bit of urgency.
I cannot tell you how much I hate that spell hahahah But that sounds like a perfect scenario to use it in!
@@ThisCrits It's an amazing spell to have, and a pain to have to deal with
So here's my top 10 abjuration spells of level 4 or below. 5 isn't enough:
1. armor of agathys
2. absorb elements
3. shield
4. aid
5. pass without trace
6. counterspell
7. death ward
8. banishment
9. warding bond
10. shield of faith
abjuration is such a great school that even when i excluded half of the spells, there's still 10+ good spells. most of these become default picks for any caster.
Like I mentioned in the other reply, Abjuration has sooooo many good spells I 100% agree with all of these lol
Not saying this one doesn’t get enough glory, but no must have abjuration spell list is complete without a mention of Shield. That temporary +5 AC has saved many a spellcaster.
Agreed here. this spell is arguably the best 1st level spell if not the 2nd best.
I was going to put shield on here but its so simple that talking about it for more than 30 seconds was proving to be difficult lol
My bladesinger + shield spell + bait & switch (feat) + magic studded leather + absorb elements + silvery barbs + misty step + mobile feat = I am untouchable 👌
@@slywolfe I wouldn’t say untouchable, but it is a good stack.
I’ve known DMs that took that kind of thing as a challenge and would throw a marut at the party to teach them a lesson about AC.
@@jb123581 that sounds like my DM lol
Banishment is handy as well. My favorite overall spells are probably mind whip & vortex warp, & mind sliver helps get them to land. When in doubt, just use booming blade. I am having a lot of fun playing bladesinger, but my DM is frustrated by that AC lol
Hi Lee! Hey new vid! why isn't it a banana packing a punch? 😅Mostly great picks, here's my thoughts on each:
1. beacon of hope- not a fan of this spell if i want a concen spell focused on healing, i'd rather have aura of vitality. if i want something that boosted saves, i'd rather have circle of power.
2. banishment- agreed here. this is arguably the most powerful niche spell in the game. What people often forget once they banish an enemy, is the incap condition, which means any concen spell that enemy was maintaining is broken.
3. armor of agathys- agreed here again. this is a great build around spell, especially for those who want to play tanks. works best with transmute spell to circumvent resistance.
4. sanctuary- agreed here again. this is a great defensive spell for tanks, especially summons who are just grapple dodging. and yes if that tank is dodging, this is effectively like super disadvantage.
5. counterspell/greater restoration- agreed here again. these are just good defensive/healing spells. Greater restoration also is part of the cocaine-lock combo.
I'll share my must have abjuration spells in a separate comment since there are so many.
Beacon of hope depends a bit on the group composition.
In our group 3/5 have healing potential via spells (and everyone always has healing potions on hand) getting reliably the most out of these sources saved our skin on multiple occasions. The spell only gets more powerful by the healing potential of the group as it changes potential to reliable healing
For the 1 designated healer set up, I'd agree
@@glarak9819 I think you're coming from the pov that healing is good in combat. if you noticed via my alternative pick, i view healing in combat as bad. imo, ideally people only heal to pop allies back up and topping up hp should be done out of combat. only exception to this would be polymorphing an ally low on hp. in combat, the best healing imo is prevention. i'd focus on spending my action either killing enemies or controlling to prevent them from dealing dmg (and thus have less to nothing to heal). another alternative is layering defenses (ac, saves, obscurement,etc) to avoid getting damaged.
aura of vitality is my pick for a healing spell as it's a good out of combat healing spell, especially when extended. i don't plan to use it for my concen in combat. i'd rather concen on banishment, hypnotic pattern, etc.
i bet in your group if those healers all were controllers who casted appropriate control spells, you wouldn't be in that sticky situation to begin with.
@@TheRobversion1 Well, we have an artificer and a bard so these are controllers with healing potential.
Of course out of combat healing is more valuable than in combat healing because damage output is usually way higher than healing input. But only healing when someone is unconscious leads to quite a risk.
For example if a phase spider downs you, you're kinda out of luck just popping back up
Same goes if you are unlucky with initiative and the DM having no problem attacking downed party members
Or even counterspell a healing spell
We still heal out of combat obviously, but if we didn't heal mid combat a lot, we'd already have TPKd on multiple occasions.
Healing enough so a party member can withstand another attack of the multi attack can easily make the difference between "only" 2 failed death saves and instand death.
(Before anyone attack my DM for playing the enemies very deadly, our group knew that beforehand and is on board with it)
@@glarak9819 i understand what you mean when it comes to situationally healing when someone's about to drop. we sometimes heal in those situations too. but unlike you, we won't drop a concen spell we're already concentrating on (unless we use polymorph) to heal that ally. we'd just use something like healing word/cure wounds. dropping a control spell that's rendering certain enemies ineffective is just asking for more dmg.
going with beacon of hope as a core tactic of being a healer on round 1 is also just asking for more dmg when you could've casted hypnotic pattern, fear, web, etc.
our dm is like yours. we do very deadly by default and he has no problems attacking downed party members. he never pulls punches which makes victories satisfying. this is why we subscribe to the alpha strike philosophy of character/party building. initiative is important to us. we like going 1st and either controlling or burst striking a threat to death/near death. when someone plays a watcher paladin, everyone is happy.
yes our dm counterspells healing spells. this is why sorcs are common at our table (or other casters typically pick up metamagic adept). when a critical spell needs to happen, it's usually cast by the sorc.
we don't heal mid-combat alot but we typically avoid tpks by using alot of control or very large amounts of burst dmg (1st turn kills). to give you an idea of a typical combat at our table: for a party of 4 level 10 pcs, we'd typically face 3-4 CR 10 monsters like 3-4 aboleths or 3-4 young red dragons or 3-4 death slaads. this is the level of dmg we face. relying on healing will get us killed fast. so it's either people have to play controllers who can disable those threats/render them ineffective or play strong burst strikers like gloomstalker who can open up with 100+ dmg on turn 1 at level 10 that can possibly kill one of those enemies/almost kill one so that another party member can just mop up on their turn.
THE BANANA IS COMING
1. I knew this was coming lol. Healing is not technically "efficient" true but I feel like its important to have a range of spells in these videos. I almost included Aura of vitality instead but decided to go with the the death saves, gaurenteed max heals, and range. That being said I love both Aura of Vitality and Circle of Power lol.
2. Ageed! This video was really tough because there are so many damn good Abjuration spells its insane. And your 100% right no one ever remembers the incap hahaha
3. I love Armor of Agathys. It just strikes me as so efficient in terms of everything it does. But I think this is coming from my years as an MMO player lol.
4. I hate this spell and I don't want to talk about it >:(
5. Nothing to say here so I will uses #5 to talk about this. Abjuration magic has soooooo many damn good spells I really reallly reallly struggled deciding on 5. I missed Shield, Aid, Death Ward, Dispel Magic, Pass without trace. I felt really bad narrowing it down but in the end I decided to add some variety and throw in some spells that haven't gotten attention on my channel before that are definitley worthy of being in this video!
honestly, Beacon of Hope can be so clutch if you have multiple characters capable of using healing spells, or just making sure to use healing potions
I am going to be the guy to put a peg in your example though, seeing as Beacon of Hope only has a 1 minute duration, while Prayer of Healing has a 10 minute cast time, they wouldn't work together, unless you have a 2nd cleric to cast Beacon of Hope right before the chanting for Prayer of Healing goes off.
other than just the example of Prayer of Healing, I agree with your reasonings for the spells.
on a side note, with the new wording of feats like Feytouched, Magic Initiate and etc. letting you cast the borrowed spell with the level of any spell slot you have avaible, i dread seeing scenarios where a Heavy Armor Master has upcasted Armor of Agathys and fighting hordes of weaker enemies. Modern bugcatcher personified.
that AOA build is something that's already being done now. another content creator just posted an AOA build that uses that combo recently. i don't dread those scenarios either as i find optimization fun. personally though i wouldn't combine AOA with heavy armor master as i'm particular with proper combat RP and tactics. my default combat tactics for any monster/villain is always go after the caster/ranged attackers and ignore tougher looking enemies/melee characters. Same for the other DMs at our table. An AOA user wants to get hit. if they wear heavy armor, they're more likely to get ignored unless the monster doesn't see them wearing heavy armor and attacks blindly.
for beacon of hope, i find it a bad use of concen of in combat. you could've prevented the dmg you needed to heal in the 1st place by using a concen control spell instead. if it was non-concen i'd consider it.
100% And good call out on the prayer of healing.
On a side note that heavy armor master armor of agathys is probabley going to be my next character hahaha
@@ThisCrits cool. We'll see another character build from you after some time. Solid foundation as armor of agathys is a good build around spell/core tactic.
summon steed
and
incite greed
my favorite spells playing wiz
Those are both great spells! I'm surprised to hear incite greed is a favorite as I have rarely seen it used lol
you mean phantom steed?
@@ThisCrits surprised with incite greed too as not only is it a meh spell (it's at the level you get similar but better spells in hypnotic pattern, fast friends, fear, etc) but also a spell that's commonly excluded at a lot of tables (setting specific content). phantom steed though is an excellent spell and i concur with that one.
@@TheRobversion1 Incite greed is amazing. I played it for a long time on a wizard that could put it to use with a high initiative
Incite greed also can target ->any number of targets
@@Sewiefortune I'd still disagree. not disagreeing that incite greed as your fave as that's a matter of personal taste but with the assertion that it's amazing when there are multiple better spells in same spell level or lower. i do agree though that control spells are put to better use with high initiative. in fact anything in the game really aside from healing is better with higher initiative.
if dealing with mobs as a wizard:
1. web can get you almost the same result with lower spell level used.
2. hypnotic pattern has a better effect and has no EOTS.
3. fear is similar to #2 with just a different aoe and extra lost turns even if you drop concen.
4. fireball can just wipe those minions out. no need to concen.
5. sleet storm has a gigantic area and again would provide almost the same result while also dropping any concen enemies in the area may have while also having no EOTS.
in terms of what i value as well, i dont place much stock either in spells that are good against minions (those aren't threats). i tend to value more spells that shutdown threats (bbegs) that could possibly have magic resistance/legendary resistance.
Cure wounds, as of today
which isn't an abjuration spell. haha.
In One D&D it now is lol
This video went live literally 4 days before one d&d announced those changes hahah
@@ThisCrits oh didn't bother to check the spell lists. was so disheartened with the changes to rogue and ranger. it's like we're moving backwards rather than forwards.