D&D: Five of the Best 8th-Level Spells
The best 8th-level spells in D&D are where you start bordering on demigod like abilities. You can seal people, places, and things!
8th-level spells can be absolutely devastating in the right circumstances. These are the spells that have stepped outside of the mortal realm, just a hair. You can start doing things that feel a little bit more mythical. Whether that’s shutting down all the magic in an area, or banishing someone to wander an extraplanar maze of your own making, there’s plenty of power to wield with an 8th-level spell.
And the best 8th-level spells can dramatically change any encounter or even a campaign.
Antimagic Field
In Dune, we learn that whoever can destroy a thing controls it. And Antimagic Field lets you destroy magic. Well. Suppress it enough that your party can get in there and destroy the thing that is reliant on magic.
You shut down all magic short of artifacts with a single spell, creating a 10-foot radius sphere within which magic will not work. Take this spell against a powerful enemy like a lich or a mummy lord or the like, and you can suppress all but the most basic of their abilities to fight back. Suddenly instead of an immortal undead wizard, you have a corpse that can’t even deliver necrotic energy damage. And your Fighter can get in there and grapple it so that it stays in place.
Maze
Maze is another spell that, like Forcecage, just works. No saving throws, thank you for playing, you just immediately get banished into a labyrinthine dimension of your own creation. The target stays in the maze for up to 10 minutes unless it can escape via a DC 20 Intelligence check.
But that’s a check, not a saving throw. No skill bonuses, no proficiency bonuses. And Legendary Resistance is useless here. Even a powerful spellcaster will have less than a 50% chance of escaping every turn.
And while it’s gone, your party can prepare to kill the thing. Or handle the rest of the fight. It’s a power move of the second-highest order.
Animal Shapes
Animal Shapes is one of the best 8th-level spells because it changes the way you interact with the world. Suddenly your hapless NPCs become surprisingly resilient beasts fighting with magical might.
Transform a bunch of local farmers into unstoppable giant scorpions or polar bears and watch them go to town. All for the cost of an action. For a spell that lasts 24 hours, no less.
So you can get your local yokels transformed, have them fight on your behalf, and when they fall to 0 hit points, they return to their normal form. Until you transform them again with a simple action, once again regaining full hit points.
This is the kind of spell that ends campaigns, let alone encounters.
Demiplane
Why not create your own reality while we’re at it? This is one of the best 8th-level spells because you can just start doing real Wizard business with it. You create a magical demiplane, a pocket dimension of your own design. Each casting of the spell allows you to create a 30-foot room that you can then kit out.
But when you cast the spell, you aren’t just creating a demiplane. You’re also creating a shadowy door that connects to it. Meaning each time you cast the spell, you can connect to a space you’ve created before, or create a new one.
You can also connect to a demiplane you know the “nature and contents” of. Meaning it’s not just for long rests, but for shifting the narrative of your campaign too.
Antipathy/Sympathy
Finally, we get to the best sleeper hit 8th-level spell. This spell might not seem like much at first glance. You name a category of creatures like vampires or red dragons, then create an aura that either attracts or repels creatures of those types.
If a target is repelled by one of these auras, it must save or become frightened. And while frightened, it must use its movement to move away from the source of its fear, meaning it will provoke an attack of opportunity from anyone it moves past. Or catch it with a Spike Growth spell and watch it flee to death.
But the real kicker is that this spell lasts 10 days. And it doesn’t take your concentration, meaning you can cast it on your whole party. Give everyone an anti-vampire aura then go kick in Strahd’s door and watch what happens.
What are your picks for the best 8th-level spell?
