Bard Spell Guide for D&D 2024 (5.5e)

Inspiring you with all the best bard spells.

Considerations

First off, this article is only tackling spells on the bard spell list, not all spells available from the cleric, druid and wizard spell lists through magical secrets. While magical secrets kicks in at level 10 and you should absolutely consider grabbing spells from other class lists, that’s a lot to sift through. Instead, I’ll work on a separate article specifically for magical secrets and which options you should consider.

You’ll also want to consider your subclass quite heavily in your spell choices. For example, Valor and dance bards are melee specialists while glamour bards are enchantment and illusion specialists so you may want to lean into different types of spells for these subclasses. Lore bards tend to focus more heavily on a broader spectrum of spellcasting.

Valor bards are especially interesting as they can replace one of their attacks with a cantrip making your cantrip choices particularly important.

Glamour bards also have an interesting interaction with their spells through beguiling magic, allowing them to attempt to make a creature charmed or frightened when they cast an illusion or enchantment spell. Because of this, college of glamour bards will want to ensure they have a few spells from these schools of magic prepared and may want to cast them more often. To help this subclass with their spell choices, I’ve indicated if a spell is from the enchantment or illusion schools of magic and highlighted them in red below.

Last of all, you’ll want to think about your action economy. Bards generally have a lot of options of things they can do. Bardic inspiration is often a good way to use a bonus action, but balancing this between spells means some careful consideration.

Cantrips

• Blade ward (2/5) – The problem with this is you’re wasting an action and need to use your concentration to be hit maybe a little bit less. If it required a bonus action, I’d consider it a worthy investment for a melee bard, but the drain on action and concentration is just a bit too much for me unless you expect to have to be the party tank for a while against a lot of foes (but you should definitely be avoiding that situation).
• Dancing lights (3/5) ^Illusion – Decent enough way to tackle darkness if characters in the party lack darkvision.
• Friends (2/5) ^Enchantment – If you’re up against a lot of social situations, this can make them a fair bit easier (and as a bard, you should be the party face). Unfortunately, it’s limited to a minute and only to non-hostile humanoids and you’ve got a minute before it ends making its scope a bit tricky to make work beyond that very short time frame.
• Light (3/5) – Put down a weapon, cast light on it, then pick it up. Now you’ve got a torch without having to use a spare hand. Good for those without darkvision. Sadly you can’t just touch an invisible creature’s armor they’re wearing and cast this to reveal them, that would be a bit powerful for a cantrip.
• Mage hand (4/5) – Great utility spell. Grab or manipulate things that are out of reach. It’s also great for setting off traps while you stand at a safe distance.
• Mending (2/5) ^{Transmutation} – This one can be really useful, or not useful at all. It’s just too situational to be reliably of worth.
• Message (3/5) ^{Transmutation} – The range is a bit limiting, but if you’re split up and need to communicate, this is a good way to do it. No spell slots needed.
• Mind sliver (4/5) – You can either use this to make enemies worse at saving throws, or make yourself more reliable at hitting them with your next attack as this requires a saving throw. Most creatures have poor intelligence so this should land more often than most spells.
• Minor illusion (4/5) ^Illusion – Top utility spell. Great for creating distractions while you sneak around. The more cunning you are, the more useful this spell will be.
• Prestidigitation (3/5) ^{Transmutation} – I don’t think I’m as enamoured with this spell as many others, but it can be a useful utility spell if you’re creative enough. I’d prefer minor illusion and/or mage hand, but this can be handy too.
• Starry wisp (4/5) – Decent damage and tackles quite a problematic issue in the form of invisibility. With the hide action also causing the invisibile condition, you’ll want a way to tackle this early on and this is the cheapest way to do that when it comes to spell slots.
• Thunderclap (4/5) – If you plan on getting in the middle of the action (which Valor and dance bards may want to do), then this is your earliest way off tackling crowds with some AoE damage. You’ve got to throw yourself in danger to make it work, but it can be quite effective if you do.
• True strike (4/5) – This is your best option for pure damage dealing at most levels, especially as at level 6 when you gain extra attack, you can replace one of those attacks with a casting of true strike. This will do more damage than 2 standard attacks and means you can benefit from the properties of magical weapons for example.
• Vicious mockery (4/5) ^Enchantment – A solid alternative to mind sliver that will inflict disadvantage on the creature’s next attack roll. Handy against martials just at a sacrifice to damage and using wisdom rather than intelligence (which is often higher in creatures).

Level 1 spells

• Animal friendship (3/5) ^Enchantment – Reasonably useful for wilderness adventures. Convince an animal to scout for you, provide directions or other useful things. You might even be able to convince things like bears to fight for you.
• Bane (3/5) ^Enchantment – Generally considered inferior to bless which has the opposite kind of buff because this only works on a failed saving throw (bless works automatically). More saving throws are required in the 2024 rules from things like weapon mastery properties and grapples meaning this gets a subtle upgrade in the revision. It remains a solid option, even if bless remains better.
• Charm person (3/5) ^Enchantment – A decent spell for helping you handle social situations. It scales with your level too. Mainly, this is for convincing someone to be friendly that wouldn’t have been otherwise which should help with persuasion checks and similar things.
• Color spray (2/5) ^Illusion – Blinding multiple enemies with a single spell is decent, but it’s only for one turn.
• Command (3/5) ^Enchantment – Decent for high charisma bards, you essentially nullify an enemy for a turn. You also gain some situational benefit too like dropping the enemy prone or moving it where you want it.
• Comprehend languages (2/5) – It’s rare that not understanding a language would be a blocker to your game progression. And if it is, your DM probably needs to come up with better puzzles.
• Cure wounds (3/5) – Decent healing spell but it requires an action. I’d prefer healing word for emergencies, but if you want to lean more into a proper healer, this is decent enough.
• Detect magic (4/5) – Someone needs this in the party and as it can be cast as a ritual, so you don’t need to eat into precious spell slots.
• Disguise self (4/5) ^Illusion – Great option for a charisma focused character. If you intend to attempt some impersonations or similar things, this is much easier than gathering the uniforms of guards.
• Dissonant whispers (4/5) ^Enchantment – It’s a relatively low damage spell, but the potential utility is interesting. Get enemies away from the places you don’t want them and combining with something like push might get you to knock them off a ledge or something similar. Because the creature uses it’s reaction to move away from you, this counts for opportunity attacks meaning an easy source of these for Valor or dance bards (and your allies). Alternatively, cast it on someone engaged in combat with a rogue for big sneak attack damage from an opportunity attack. Good spell with the right setup.
• Faerie fire (5/5) – A good source of handling invisibility and a source of advantage on attacks too. This is a big buff even when not tackling invisibility and it’s a great option when someone is invisible.
• Feather fall (4/5) – Really situational, but really useful if you ever do need it.
• Healing word (5/5) – Healing with a bonus action is really handy. The amount healed is small, but this is mainly for reviving allies reduced to 0hp and this is one of the best ways to tackle that. You should have a few characters that can revive fallen allies and you should be one of them.
• Heroism (3/5) ^Enchantment – The frightened conditions is one of the more common conditions so it’s good to have someone that can handle those things. It probably remains a bit too situational for my liking, but constantly regenerating temporary hit points is decent, even if it’s only a likely 3-5hp per round. The main problem is this does occupy your concentration.
• Identify (1/5) – You can usually work out what a magic item is without using a spell slot.
• Illusory script (1/5) ^Illusion – It’ll be rare to find a use for this. At least it can be cast as a ritual, but feels like a big waste of a prepared spell.
• Longstrider (2/5) – Jump is better for a speed increase but bards don’t have that. You can cast this ahead of combat without concentration but it’s only 10ft extra speed for a spell slot which feels like too little.
• Silent image (4/5) ^Illusion – A better version of minor illusion, but at the cost of a spell slot.
• Sleep (4/5) ^Enchantment – It’s a small AoE, but if you can catch multiple enemies in this, the odds of success increase a lot and can be fairly substantial. It’s one of the only ways to nullify multiple enemies from 1st level. And if the enemy fails their saving throw twice, they don’t get other chances to wake up (though an ally could kick them).
• Speak with animals (3/5) – The usefulness of this spell will largely depend on your DM, what creatures they put in your path and how useful they determine them to be. It can be cast as a ritual at least to save your spell slots.
• Tasha’s Hideous Laughter (3/5) ^Enchantment – Great way to incapacitate enemies but not quite as good as sleep because of the multiple targets and only 2 saving throws sleep has.
• Thunderwave (4/5) – Decent AoE option for melee bards. Push enemies away for some crowd control too.
• Unseen servant (3/5) – Like an enhanced mage hand, and because it can be cast as a ritual, doesn’t need to take up spell slots either. You’ll mainly want this for out of combat utility like triggering traps or fetching things unseen.

Level 2 spells

• Aid (4/5) – Not only can you spread an extra 15 hit points around your party for a fairly long duration, but these are not temporary hit points so are stackable (with temporary hit points).
• Animal messenger (1/5) ^Enchantment – This can have it’s uses, but I suspect those are a little too few and far between.
• Blindness/deafness (4/5) – Solid enough saving throw spell with the benefit of not requiring concentration elevating it a point.
• Calm emotions (3/5) ^Enchantment – For giving immunity to the charmed and frightened conditions, this is decent as it affects multiple creatures and these are common conditions. For altering attitudes, this is tricky. It might work for one or 2 enemies, but any more and you’re likely going to see this end by damaging an enemy. Between the 2 functions, I think this is a decent enough option.
• Cloud of daggers (1/5) – Unless you can block a 5ft wide corridor with this, it’s just a waste of a spell slot and you should have just cast starry wisps to save the spell slot.
• Crown of madness (2/5) ^Enchantment – The challenge with this is you’ll need to maintain it using your action to continue its effects. This is an acceptable sacrifice if you come across someone powerful. You essentially nullify their effectiveness while using their attacks against your enemies. You’ll also need to engineer that they start their turn next to one of your enemies which can be tricky, but easier now there’s a lot of weapon mastery abilities knocking around.
• Detect thoughts (3/5) – There are interesting ways to use this for both stealth and social situations, but taking advantage of it is a bit situational, depends on your DM’s generosity and can go wrong with that wisdom saving throw.
• Enhance ability (4/5) – Great for tackling high stakes skills checks like those involving stealth or social encounters. You’re capable at both, but could also be used on another.
• Enlarge/reduce (3/5) – Decent buff or debuff. Works nicely on grapplers like monks so they can grapple larger things and do more damage (at the same time if they have the grappler feat). Or cast it against a high level enemy your party grappler wants to grapple.
• Enthrall (1/5) ^Enchantment – This is a stealth spell that will hopefully stop guards spotting you as you sneak past. The problem is it’s basically the opposite of pass without trace, but pass without trace will help your party for an hour, this will only help you overcome a single moment of stealth. Basically, pass without trace makes this redundant. Although bards don’t get pass without trace as standard, playing a Wood Elf or asking a friendly druid or ranger can get you this spell.
• Heat metal – (3/5) – Continuous damage and you can impose disadvantage on attack rolls the next turn which is big. Cast it on an enemy wearing plate mail and watch it squirm as that stuff can’t just be dropped. It does take a bonus action to maintain and is reliant on mostly humanoids that actually use metal making it a bit situational.
• Hold person (3/5) ^Enchantment – Decent save or suck spell. Just be aware that less creatures are now classified as humanoids in the 2024 Monster Manual. Things like Goblins and Goth are now Fey and Aberrations so this won’t work on them. Personally, I’d favour Tasha’s Hideous Laughter or sleep at level 1 for this kind of effect which is less limited by creature type and can also nullify enemies.
• Invisibility (5/5) ^Illusion – Excellent stealth spell and will help you for a round of combat too.
• Knock (2/5) – If you don’t have a rogue, I’d say just invest in thieves’ tools proficiency and sleight of hand with your background instead.
• Lesser restoration (4/5) – You won’t always need this, but when you do, it can be indispensable. Ending these types of conditions is usually very important and it only requires a bonus action so you can keep attacking when you use this too.
• Locate animals or plants (1/5) – The problem you have here is it’s just too situational. And even if you did need to find an animal or plant, your DM should have presented a way for you to work this out independent of the spell. I’d invest in other spells.
• Locate object (2/5) – It’s possible for this to be very useful in investigations, but it can easily go unused for a long time too. Could make a great tracking beacon if you want to do some subterfuge. It’s not bad, just situational so don’t be afraid to take this if you feel you can engineer situations where this is going to be handy.
• Magic mouth (1/5) ^Illusion – This can have it’s uses, but is also highly situational and relies on fairly uncommon circumstances to be useful.
• Mirror image (3/5) ^Illusion – The protection it gives is likely greater than the damage you could have done with your action so could be worthwhile for a melee bard.
• Phantasmal force (3/5) ^Illusion – If you’re creative, you can do a lot of interesting things with this spell. False bridges, fake ground or holes are all possibilities as well as scary creatures.
• See invisibility (4/5) – At least someone in the party needs a way to deal with invisibility and this is probably one of the better, low level options. This is even more handy now that the hide action grants the invisible condition.
• Shatter (4/5) – Probably the best pre-level 3 AoE damage dealer. One of your best options at this level for dealing with crowds.
• Silence (4/5) ^Illusion – Great for tackling enemy spellcasters. Have someone restrain or grapple them in the area to keep their mouths shut.
• Suggestion (4/5) ^Enchantment – Time for some jedi mind tricks! It’s inferior to hold person at incapacitating enemies, but sometimes you need to have someone do something for you (like to grab the key to the jail cell you’re in). You’ll need to be careful at wording your instructions.
• Zone of truth (2/5) ^Enchantment – Mainly for interrogations, which is very much a bard specialty. Remember though, that this isn’t “zone of learn everything someone knows”, and an enemy can be clever, or quiet and not really give you any information at all, potentially making this useless.

Level 3 spells

• Bestow curse (2/5) – None of these effects are particularly strong. Yes, some of them will work continuously without future saving throws, but I’d still prefer blindness or sleep.
• Clairvoyance (4/5) – There’s quite a lot of potential for information gathering with this spell, especially if you want to be privy to conversations not meant for your ears! It’s a bit situational though so you may not get loads of use out of it (then again, you could end up using it a lot depending on the campaign).
• Dispel magic (5/5) – Really useful for ending nasty spell effects.
• Fear (4/5) ^Illusion – Strong way to take a bunch of enemies out of the combat simultaneously, especially if you’re fighting large groups. You do have to get fairly close to the enemy for this one, but melee bards shouldn’t have a problem with that. I still prefer hypnotic pattern though, which essentially does the same thing.
• Feign death (1/5) – It’s hard to understand under what niche circumstances this spell would be useful… Perhaps if you need to infiltrate a morgue…
• Glyph of warding (3/5) – This is a tricky one to rate. With preparation time, it’s a really great way to cause damage to an enemy without using up your action in combat. I believe there’s an exploit here, as concentration spells just last for the duration, without consuming your concentration it seems. So you could cast hold person using the glyph and then still have space to concentrate on hypnotic pattern or something similar. However, this spell is fairly situational as it relies on prep time and knowing an enemy is coming.
• Hypnotic pattern (5/5) ^Illusion – I’d probably prefer this over fear as it’s got better range but effectively removes a group of enemies from the combat.
• Leomund’s tiny hut (3/5) – Basically a safe place to rest each night. You could also use it as a safety measure if you have preparation time for a combat. Essentially you set up the hut and then hop in and out of it, keeping you safe and giving you a place to hide. Just be aware of level 4+ spells that can penetrate the walls.
• Major image (4/5) ^Illusion – If you’re really creative, this can be amazing! Use it to distract and deceive enemies. And once you get 4th level spells, you can cast this without using concentration and can make the illusion permanent.
• Mass healing word (2/5) – I’m not sure about this one. While it can affect a lot of creatures, an average of 5hp healed is only really good for reviving downed allies, but things have to have gone really wrong to get to that point. Think I’d have liked to have seen healing double for this to be really effective. I’d just take healing word and save your precious 3rd level spell slots on more effective things.
• Nondetection (2/5) – This is way too situational to be of much use! It’s really for DMs to keep locations of important things extra secret. Yes, you could prevent your invisibility from being revealed, but it’s not common enough to face enemy spellcasters to make this regularly useful.
• Plant growth (4/5) – It’s overgrowth that will likely yield the best results here. Making enemies move a quarter of their usual movement could be powerful, and the area of effect is huge! It will probably affect your party as well, but you can create clear pockets too. There’s no save for movement so a clever bard can do a lot with this spell, especially against melee enemies.
• Sending (3/5) – A little too situational for regular usage. You only get one message too so it can be used for one piece of communication with others. But communicating over long distances and even to creatures that don’t understand your language can be very useful.
• Slow (4/5) – I prefer hypnotic pattern over this which completely nullifies an enemy rather than severely debilitating them. But this is still very good and has a larger area it can cover.
• Speak with dead (4/5) – Really useful information gathering spell. How well it works partially depends on your DM. I find many players are quite trigger happy in killing rather than knocking unconscious enemies, this is some kind of insurance against that behaviour.
• Speak with plants (3/5) – I think the wording of this implies you’re more likely to get a better answer out of the plants you speak to than from speak with animals. Plants tend to be more plentiful, especially in certain places.
• Stinking cloud (3/5) – Good control spell. Works best in confined spaces and for getting enemies in the places you want them to be. Poisoned is nastier with this spell, but only lasts a turn. Consider combining it with something that restricts movement like sleet storm, grease or web to really get enemies stuck.
• Tongues (2/5) – It’s unlikely that this will be useful very often so not usually worth taking.

Level 4 spells

• Charm monster (2/5) ^Enchantment – I find this tough to recommend. You’re not necessarily gaining an ally for combat, even then, it’ll only hang around for an hour before knowing you magically influenced it. It could be a way to tackle a creature without violence, but you’re best doing this before combat erupts.
• Compulsion (3/5) ^Enchantment – With less range and more saving throw opportunities to get out of this than hypnotic pattern, I prefer hypnotic pattern over this, even if you can move enemies around. I don’t think the benefits out weight the extra spells level cast, especially as moving enemies requires a bonus action. It’s still a solid spell, but I’d lean towards hypnotic pattern.
• Confusion (3/5) ^Enchantment – This is like an unreliable hypnotic pattern. I prefer hypnotic pattern with it’s larger area of effect and greater reliability, but if you like chaos, this can sometimes cause enemies to attack each other.
• Dimension door (3/5) – Good for getting out of dungeons quickly or getting the jump on far away enemies. You may need to be a little creative, but as long as you can see, have seen or can precisely determine distance of the location, you can get there safely.
• Fount of moonlight (3/5) – I really like this for the right build, but those builds are very few. Essentially you need to be a melee bard with multiple attacks (which excludes the colleges of glamor and lore). Ideally you’ll want to be dual wielding too, preferably with the dual wielder and weapon mastery (nick) feats for maximum damage. This essentially means using it on a Valor bard. If you go down that route, the extra damage per turn is substantial plus you can blind enemies. It lasts 10 minutes so you can cast ahead of combat too. Essentially, it’s a top spell for a very specific build. It’s only OK or poor for other builds.
• Freedom of movement (2/5) – While technically situational, it is possible to contrive useful situations for using this. For example, using plant growth to create difficult terrain that only you or an ally can easily move through makes that kind of spell extra useful. You can even cast this ahead of combat if you know that this will be your strategy. The other situations for using this may be situational, but are common enough together that it can just about be worth having, but you can also go without this spell.
• Greater invisibility (5/5) ^Illusion – Disappear in combat and attack with advantage and be attacked with disadvantage.
• Hallucinatory terrain (1/5) ^Illusion – This feels like it could be loads of fun, but I find that working out the practical use cases for this really challenging. Maybe I’m just not creative enough, but you’ve not got enough prepared spells to waste on such a rarely useful spell.
• Locate creature (2/5) – This one’s difficult to rate as it depends a lot on your DM and the kind of things you can expect to do. If there’s going to be a lot of investigating, this could well be very useful. But you could also end up never using it at all… For me, it’s usually going to be too situational to bother with much.
• Phantasmal killer (4/5) ^Illusion – Solid continuous damage for the duration and disadvantage on attack rolls is nice. Just keep finding ways to debuff the target’s saving throws to keep this going.
• Polymorph (5/5) – Effectively nullify an enemy, enhance an ally or gain some kind of utility benefit like flight. This is a really versatile spell!

Level 5 spells

• Animate objects (4/5) – This is a tricky one to judge. If you have a high charisma (20 ideally), you can average 34 damage per turn with a huge and a large animate object (other combinations deal less damage). But that relies on hits and these constructs staying alive long enough to deal damage on subsequent turns. Even without that, they are at least extra targets for enemies to go after. If you can hit with most attacks and have these last for 2-3 turns, the damage output should be worth the spell slot.
• Awaken (1/5) – If you are going to use this, don’t awaken a shrub, the stats are rubbish! Even the awakened tree is pretty poor compared to the constructs you get from animate objects. I don’t think this is intended for combat. The only other thing I can think they’re intended for though, is stealth (as they can appear like normal trees) but you could just use invisibility for that. I just can’t seem to see the point of using a 5th level spell for this!
• Dominate person (2/5) – If you can get this to work, it can be quite powerful, but with just a 1 minute duration and the need to cast it against someone that isn’t an aggressor (at least if you want a decent chance of this working), this becomes hard to contrive into something that will often work. Add to this the fact that less creatures are now classed as humanoid and this spell has diminished even further in usefulness.
• Dream (2/5) ^Illusion – If you’re really creative, you could do some interesting things with this, but it’s tricky to make this regularly useful.
• Geas (2/5) ^Enchantment – This can be solid, but quite difficult to engineer into something practical. Getting a captured enemy to do your bidding is probably the main use here, which can be hugely useful, or just hard to engineer, which is why it only gets a 2.
• Greater restoration (3/5) – You likely won’t need this a lot, but when you do, you’ll really appreciate having this spell available.
• Hold monster (3/5) ^Enchantment – Incapacitate a monster for a while is decent. Hold person is a much lower spell slot, but monsters tend to be tougher and more common enemies, especially with the recent monster manual changes making more creatures non-humanoids.
• Legend lore (2/5) – Largely, the value of this spell will be determined by your DM’s willingness to impart information and how much they know about the famous thing. Situational at best, potential to be pretty useless though.
• Mass cure wounds (4/5) – An average of about 26-28hp per character (with up to 6 potential targets) is some pretty substantial healing with one action. Well worth the spell slot when the party’s looking worse for wear.
• Mislead (2/5) ^Illusion – This feels more impressive than it really is. Its main purpose is as an escape route, but it practically does the same thing as invisibility but maybe adds in a distraction. You might as well just use invisibility or greater invisibility.
• Modify memory (3/5) ^Enchantment – There’s potential to do some really unique and useful things with this spell, but it’s quite awkward to find the right circumstances to make them truly useful. When it’s good, it’s really good, but you easily go a long time without needing this spell at all.
• Planar binding (2/5) – Really great if you can make it work, but you’ll have to work hard to do so. Find an appropriate creature that’s powerful enough to bother binding, cast magic circle to contain it, then cast this to get an ally. It’s too contrived for me and uses multiple of your spell slots.
• Raise dead (3/5) – Ideally, you shouldn’t have allies dying (heal them a little with healing word once they start taking death saving throws). That’s not always possible though, and when it isn’t, you’ll be glad you have this. Useful for sorting out dead NPCs you didn’t want dead too.
• Rary’s telepathic bond (4/5) – Telepathic communication over long distances can be very useful. This spell is only limited by being on the same plane as the other participants, otherwise, the range is unlimited. You shouldn’t normally split the party, but when you do, you might want this. Cast it as a ritual to avoid wasting spells slots, and you could just keep casting it for always on telepathy.
• Scrying (4/5) – Decent information gathering spell. You can always just try this before every rest when you’ve got a spare spell slot and see what you can find out about the BBEG or other people.
• Seeming (4/5) ^Illusion – Basically an illusion for the whole party to look like someone else. Really useful for party’s that want to do more sneaking than killing.
• Synaptic static (4/5) ^Enchantment – Essentially a fireball that weakens it’s victims. A great option for big damage and debuffing without needing to maintain concentration.
• Teleportation circle (2/5) – More of a practical spell than anything else. It sort of can become necessary if you need to easily jump around places but it’s useless if you don’t need to go to the same few locations repeatedly.
• Yolande’s regal presence (4/5) ^Enchantment – An emanation that does damage, knocks prone and pushes. It does a fair bit and is a pretty good option for melee bards in particular.

Level 6 spells

• Eyebite (4/5) – Continuously nullify enemies for the rest of the combat. Poisoned may feel less consequential, but there’s no saving throw required so it will always succeed. That includes against big bosses that have legendary resistance!
• Find the path (2/5) – Useful if you don’t know where you’re going, it saves stumbling around exploring places, but you’d hope there would normally be another way to find your destination like a map or a guide.
• Guards and wards (3/5) – This is a spell for protecting a base that you know is going to be attacked. If that happens, it can be really useful and there’s loads of great effects you can set off here. Alternatively, if you can enter a dungeon and have an hour undisturbed, you could use this spell to fool enemies. I suspect most dungeons won’t leave a bard long enough to cast this, but if you can, it’s great. Because it’s very situational, I’d prefer it for a wizard with loads of spells known and can easily swap it in when they need the spell.
• Heroes’ feast (4/5) – Fantastic buff! Poison resistance, immunity to he frightened and poisoned conditions and 2d10 added to your maximum hit points for the duration for the whole party (and more) is a lot. And those hits points can stack with temporary hit points! Just be aware that it costs 1000gp for each casting which is pricey! Unless you have more gold than you know what to do with, you don’t want to be casting this spell everyday.
• Mass suggestion (5/5) ^Enchantment – 12 creatures is a lot of targets and you can choose whoever you want within 60ft. You essentially incapacitate them and create another effect if you want making this a very powerful option. This even has out of combat utility. The duration is really long and lasts 24hrs too, without concentration!
• Otto’s irresistible dance (2/5) ^Enchantment – This essentially nullifies an enemy, but many lower level spells can accomplish the same thing. Yes, this does something on a failed save, but this is a high level spell slot doing what hold person or hold monster can do much earlier.
• Programmed illusion (4/5) ^Illusion – About as good as your creativity can make it. You can scare off potential enemies, pretend you’re associated with someone of great importance or some other function you can think of. The effects are really flexible for this illusion and don’t even need you to be there to activate.
• True seeing (3/5) – The best way to see things that aren’t there. While see invisibility can foil the invisible condition, this will capture more things in its remit. Can be pointless at many times, but essential at others.

Level 7 spells

• Etherealness (4/5) – This is a really good spell in the sense that you can get places and explore things you wouldn’t normally be able to explore. Gaseous form and invisibility can accomplish the same kind of effect, but you don’t get gaseous form as standard (though could grab it with magical secrets).
• Forcecage (5/5) – Really powerful way to separate enemies in combat or to trap something for interrogation. There’s no save for this either which is amazing! Just be careful of teleporting creatures or creatures too large for the cage.
• Mirage arcane (2/5) ^Illusion – This can be very good in certain situations, but those situations are very rare and difficult to engineer.
• Mordenkainen’s magnificent mansion (2/5) – This is really just an enhanced tiny hut or private sanctum. Yes it has some extra uses and it is better, but 3-4 extra spell levels is a very high slot for what is mostly just flavour.
• Mordenkainen’s sword (2/5) – The damage is OK, but relies on maintaining concentration over a sustained period to make it more worthwhile than other spells. For example, it takes 3 turns to outperform finger of death on damage which is 3 turns using up your bonus action and maintaining concentration. If you think you can get 3 turns or more of damage from this, then it could be worth the effort, but you could just cast finger of death and use a better concentration spell (maybe one that nullifies like hypnotic pattern or mass suggestion).
• Power word fortify (4/5) ^Enchantment – This is a lot of temporary hit points and will really keep your party going for a decent bit extra. Do this at the beginning of the day to have ready whenever you need them or ahead of a big battle to preserve your action economy.
• Prismatic spray (4/5) – This has a big area of effect and some pretty juicy effects. It’s a little random, but essentially you’ll either damage a foe or incapacitate them a bit (or even a lot).
• Project image (3/5) ^Illusion – This can be really useful if you’re clever with it. Send it somewhere you need to be to communicate with someone or send it in for a dangerous negotiation with a dragon (you’re safe if it decides to eat you instead). This is an extremely versatile illusion.
• Regenerate (2/5) – I think mass cure wounds is more versatile as it can heal the whole party. This will heal one person by a substantial amount, but also takes a while to do so. It’s rare you’ll have to regrow limbs.
• Resurrection (3/5) – Like raise dead, you shouldn’t need to use this so much to resurrect allies as you shouldn’t be letting them die in the first place. But if you do need to, this is a powerful way to do so. I think its bigger use might be for bringing back NPCs which can be interesting and fun, but also a bit situational.
• Symbol (3/5) – First off, the effects of this spell are very flexible and very powerful. Note that any conditions caused by this spell work for the duration with no subsequent saving throws after the first one, affecting creatures in a large area. However, there are a couple of limitations to consider. First is the expense. 1000gp at this level may not be a big deal, but it could soon add up with multiple castings. Second, you need to prepare this spell and anticipate enemies coming to you, not always easy to engineer, but common enough with some work to be handy often enough.
• Teleport (4/5) – This is your most flexible form of teleportation allowing multiple creatures to teleport with you to basically anywhere on this plane of existence. It’s success is limited by your familiarity with the location though.

Level 8 spells

• Antipathy/sympathy (2/5) ^Enchantment – This feels like the kind of spell a DM places on an artefact or holy site to create strange goings on where village folk worship an idol or are terrified of some unknown entity from the ruins of a temple. For adventurers, practically speaking, this is difficult to contrive and the effects, while long lasting, are not as powerful as something like symbol. Personally, I’d leave this spell and pick up symbol instead.
• Befuddlement (4/5) ^Enchantment – Similar damage to finger of death, but this can be particularly great for nullifying a spellcaster (like a cleric or sorcerer). It’s less powerful against non-spellcasters though, but still useful enough.
• Dominate monster (5/5) ^Enchantment – Powerful if you can get a monster unawares with this. You should regularly be able to use this by sneaking before a combat, casting it and catching the creature unawares, and now it will help with your combat. It can work on some really tough creatures too.
• Glibness (5/5) ^Enchantment – A bard with proficiency in face skills (which you probably should have) can easily just automatically get 25s for all face skill checks, so you can easily just smooth talk your way through even the most deadly situations. The implications of this could be incredible and watch your DM attempt to find the limits of your limitless charisma.
• Mind blank (2/5) – This feels like a spell specifically designed for tackling mind flayers and similar psychic beings. The usefulness is obvious for those braving a mind flayer hive, but at other times, the scope of this spell is just too small making it too situational to be worth one of your permanently prepared spells unless you happen to be taking a trip to Bluetspur (domain of a mad elder brain).
• Power word stun (1/5) ^Enchantment – I struggle to understand why you wouldn’t just cast hold person or hold monster. They don’t even have hit point restrictions and can be upcast to affect more creatures. The only advantage this has is that it will at least reduce speed to 0 for a turn on a fail and works automatically on most creatures, but that’s almost nothing at the cost of a level 8 spell!

Level 9 spells

• Foresight (5/5) – Turn an ally into something of an untouchable superhuman (that’s maybe a little dramatic, but they do become very hard to hit). At 8hrs and without concentration, this can be a highly effective buff.
• Power word heal (4/5) ^Enchantment – More effective than regeneration as the effects are instantaneous and heal from conditions too. Really solid option and one you can expect to need on a fairly regular basis.
• Power word kill (4/5) ^Enchantment – High damage spell that hits automatically or completely kills the target. The difference in average damage dealt and actually killing something with 100 hit points is 22 so not that different from the damage you’d likely do anyway, so not necessarily worth saving till the big boss is bloodied.
• Prismatic wall (5/5) – This is an extremely problematic control spell (for your enemies). Removing the wall is extremely challenging, as is getting through it, and even just being near it can give the blinded condition. On top of this, you and allies can pass through the wall without receiving harm, so you can just hop through, hit some enemies, then hop out again.
• True polymorph (5/5) – Grant the target a potential ton of hit points and give it the powers of a high challenge rating creature. Great for making someone super tanky. Alternatively, completely nullify an enemy by making them something harmless, but that’s less reliable.

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Do you have any favourite bard spells? Or think I’ve been harsh on your favourite spell. Let me know in the comments below.

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