D&D: Five Amazing Abjuration Spells
When you need to protect yourself with magic, you’ll want to reach for an Abjuration. And these five abjuration spells will shield you.
Of all the schools of magic, in D&D, abjuration is probably the safest one. This is the spell school dedicated to protecting yourself and possibly others. And in 5.5E, it also has an unlikely new addition: healing spells.
That’s right, Cure Wounds and Healing Word now number among the abjuration spells in D&D. Which makes a kind of sense—after all, if you want to protect yourself, one of the best ways to keep yourself safe is by staying alive. And one of the best ways to stay alive is to not run out of hit points.
So with all that in mind, here are five great abjuration spells that are perfect for your own protection. Or a friend’s!
Shield
Shield was always a little bit overtuned in D&D 5E, and the same holds true in 5.5E. It can, depending on how high your AC is at a baseline, cancel out a whole round’s worth of attacks. It costs you your Reaction, but in exchange, you get a +5 to your Armor Class that lasts until the start of your next turn. And all in exchange for a 1st-level spell slot.
It’s an extremely good deal. There’s a reason Shield tops the lists of defensive spells in D&D. And when it comes to abjuration advice? It’d be hard to recommend against this spell, even on a good day.
Glyph of Warding
This spell allows you to get up to all sorts of weird magical mischief. Nominally, it’s there to keep an item or a location safe. But if you’ve played Baldur’s Gate 3, you know the power of cramming a bunch of potentially explosive items together.
And Glyph of Warding allows you to do exactly that. With it, you can store a spell of level 3 or lower in a glyph that can be inscribed on a surface or within an item. You determine a trigger, like someone approaching within a certain distance, or disturbing the item, and the glyph goes off. If you don’t want to store a spell, you can also inscribe an explosive run, which will deal 5d8 damage of an energy type of your choosing,.
And sure, it costs you 200 gold pieces each time you want to cast this spell. But it’s worth it for someone to open what they think is the secret treasure chest containing your most prized possession/soul jar/secret diary—only to find you’ve inscribed an explosive rune on every single square inch of the inside of the treasure chest.
Armor of Agathys
Now a little abjurative love for the Warlock-inclined out there. This abjuration spell coats you in a rime of frost that gives you temporary hit points and deals 5 points of damage per spell level to anyone striking you. Which is pretty cool, and all. But it gets even better when you have the ability to add more temporary hit points.
There are a number of ways you can do this—but as long as you don’t run out of temporary hit points from any source at any one given time, this spell will last. And it will keep punishing foes who dare to hit you.
Sacntuary
In many ways, Sanctuary is the ultimate abjuration spell. It protects you from harm—enemies can’t directly target you with attacks or spells unless they first pass a Wisdom saving throw. Until they do, they can’t decide to try and hurt you, as long as you don’t also try to hurt them.
This is a great way to keep someone safe who needs protecting. Or to let someone who needs to cast more buff spells or healing spells do so without worrying about getting hit by most enemies.
Healing Word
Speaking of healing, though, Healing Word remains one of the most convenient healing spells in D&D. And now that Healing Word is an abjuration spell, it’s right up there with Shield and Armor of Agathys. This spell lets you cheat death many times over.
You can be at 0 hit points, with two failed death saves, but a Healing Word has a 60 foot range and only takes a Bonus Action to get you right back into the fight. And all this is just a sampling of what abjuration spells can do for you.
What are some of your favorite abjurations?
