D&D: Five Spells I Sure Hope They Fix in the New Edition
Now that D&D 5.5E is coming out in about a month, here’s hoping they finally fixed these broken spells.
Magic is a big part of D&D. From Wizards to Clerics to a Warlock/Sorcerer/Paladin that mostly uses them for smites but will occasionally cast Smite Spell before they smite, almost everyone can get in on the magic spell action.
But not every spell is worth the paper it was printed on. There are some famously bad ones in there. So bad that you’d have to wonder why you’d cast them (or how they made it to print in their current state back in 2014). And there’s reason to be hopeful! We saw a new version of True Strike, the worst Cantrip in the game that you might actually want to cast.
So maybe some of those infamously bad spells will get fixed! After all, they’ve had a decade. Here are five spells I hope get fixed in the new edition.
Find Traps
Find traps is one of the most infamous spells in D&D 5th Edition. It straight up just doesn’t do what it says it does, which is actually find traps. It can detect that traps are present, but it won’t tell you where they are, what they are, how to avoid them, or, once again, where they are.
So it doesn’t really find traps, which feels like a horrible thing for a spell called Find Traps to not do. Here’s hoping that in the new edition it does.
Enervation
Enervation is one of those classic 3rd Edition spells that was just absolutely dominant. It could ruin someone’s entire day. And in 5th Edition it’s not only a shadow of what it was (a spell that used to drain levels, and could potentially do it permanently, a great weapon against casters even if you had to look up rules for level drain and spells), but it’s also kind of a bad spell.
It’s basically a leveled up version of Witch Bolt. It’s a 5th level spell that can potentially let you use a spell slot and your action each round to deal 4d8 points of damage to a target if they fail a save, but more often than not, it will just do less damage than if you had just cast a damaging cantrip each round. Here’s hoping this maybe gets fixed.
Contagion
You might not even know this spell exists. It’s one of those weird, corner-case spells that’s maybe more intended for DMs than Players (although WotC says this a lot, and then they never actually put those spells on a spellcasting NPC stat block because they know how bad they are, and WotC goes out of their way to give this to specific Subclasses on their spell lists, so I don’t buy that argument for this one). This is a touch spell that inflicts the poisoned condition. The target has to make a Constitution save each round, if they fail three saves, they become afflicted with a disease for seven days. And they’re bad, anywhere from inconvenient to devastating in combat. But by the time a creature actually suffers one of those effects, the fight is gonna be over.
Barkskin
This spell is pretty awful. It gives you an AC of 16, but it only lasts an hour (compared to Mage Armor which lasts 8, and is lower level), and worse yet it takes your Concentration. Given that this is a Druid and Ranger spell, I would be hard pressed to see either of them casting it if this spell isn’t given some love.
Mordenkainen’s Sword
Finally we have Mordenkainen’s Sword, which is a strictly worse version of Spiritual Weapon. Even upcasting Spiritual Weapon to the same level as Mordenkainen’s Sword (7th level) will do more damage and won’t take concentration.
So hopefully this spell gets some attention.
What spells are YOU hoping get fixed in the new edition?
