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

Helping you choose the best spells for your druid.

Considerations

Druids have a couple of interesting spell interactions to be aware of.

The first is the effects of your wildshape which kicks in at level 2. You can’t cast spells while in wildshape form (at most levels), but you can maintain concentration on a spell while in wildshape and can continue to use the effects of a spell already cast while in this form. This might affect something like moonbeam which requires your action to move each turn. If you cast it before entering your wildshape form, you can continue to use your action to move it around.

This changes at level 18 when you are able to cast spells while in your wildshape form as long as the spell doesn’t have a material component with a cost specified or requires the consuming of the material component. You might want to consider this interaction with potential spellcasting at level 15 which considerably increases your cantrip range allowing you to take flight in wildshape and blast cantrips from the skies. Phenomenally, this includes the likes of thorn whip which could be an interesting option.

Cantrips

• Druidcraft (1/5) – Essentially pointless, this spell does so little of value that it’s just not worth having. Maybe quickly putting out a fire is handy very rarely.
• Elementalism (1/5) – Maybe there are cool effects others can work out that this spell can do, but to me, it all just seems like showmanship.
• Guidance (4/5) – Essentially a skill buff you can use at most times to help your bard, rogue or designated skills monkey. Really handy for unpicking locks, spotting traps and the like. You may struggle to always use it for quiet things like stealth or social interactions, but in theory, you can keep casting it every minute to help your rogue spot those traps.
• Mending (2/5) – This one can be really useful, or not useful at all. It’s just too situational to be reliably of worth.
• Message (3/5) – 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.
• Poison spray (3/5) – Your highest damage for a ranged spell attack. Just be aware that the damage type is also one of the most highly resisted and a lot of creatures now have poison damage immunity.
• Produce flame (3/5) – Kind of the light and fire bolt spells rolled up into one. It’s not as powerful as firebolt, but if you need light, this is a decent option. Not the best for damage dealing though, but OK.
• Resistance (1/5) – This is too limiting to be useful. You have to pick a damage type, use your action, use concentration and only reduce the damage by 1d4. And it only works once per turn. The reduction is too small and it’s not worth your concentration.
• Shillelagh (3/5) – Much better on a more melee focused class. The point is to be able to go sword and shield, but with weapon damage dice that normally go with two handed weapons and that deals force damage to bypass resistances. It also allows you to bypass strength and dexterity as you can use your spellcasting ability for attack rolls instead. This is a good spell, but you’ll need a very specific kind of build to make it work well. Preferably one that pairs shillelagh with true strike. As it happens, this spell works better for non-druids (like fighters) by grabbing it through the magic initiate feat. Basically this can be pointless, average or great depending on your build so it averages a middling score for the less melee-oriented druid.
• Spare the dying (2/5) – Healing word and similar healing abilities are not hard to come by. If you want to sort out someone that’s been dropped to 0hp, it’s a much more effective solution.
• Starry wisp (4/5) – Decent damage and tackles quite a problematic issue in the form of invisibility. With the hide action also causing the invisible 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.
• Thorn whip (3/5) – Most druids don’t want enemies closer to them, but there are exceptions. Circle of the moon likely will, but won’t get wildshape spellcasting until level 18 so difficult to manufacture for them. The circle of the sea can make decent use of this, pulling enemies into their wrath of the sea emanation and then thrusting them away again. You might also consider pulling enemies into the path of your martials tor AoE spells too.
• Thunderclap (4/5) – If you plan on getting in the middle of the action, 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. Works best for the circle of the sea, but be careful with this one, druids aren’t the most durable.

Level 1 spells

• Animal friendship (3/5) – 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.
• Charm person (3/5) – 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.
• Create or destroy water (3/5) – There’s some decent versatility here. Mainly for out of combat situations, but could be useful.
• 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 being 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, you don’t need to eat into precious spell slots.
• Detect poison and disease (1/5) – Really situational spell. I’m yet to come across a situation where this would have been useful. At least you can cast it as a ritual I suppose.
• Entangle (5/5) – Great control spell with a decent area that causes restrained and difficult terrain so great for really slowing enemies down.
• 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.
• Fog cloud (3/5) – Lots of uses for heavily obscuring an area with fog, including making a quick escape and handling invisible enemies (making the attacks more even).
• Goodberry (4/5) – Essentially for recovering allies from falling to 0hp. It’s great for this as you can even hand them out to allies so everyone in the party has a way to recover allies. While it has a casting time of an action, I’d just cast at the beginning of the day and then administer them with the bonus action they require.
• 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.
• Ice knife (2/5) – The damage on this is pretty poor. There are cantrips nearly as effective as this by level 5.
• Jump (3/5) – An extra 20ft of movement each turn of combat with no concentration required is decent. Or you can use it to jump across long distances or up buildings. Can be useful, especially at low levels when flight is harder to come by.
• Longstrider (2/5) – Jump is better for a speed increase. 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.
• Protection from evil and good (4/5) – A little situational, but there’s a wide range of creatures that this protects you from so you’re bound to come across them at some point.
• Purify food and drink (1/5) – Situations where you might need this rarely come up. Far too situational.
• 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.
• Thunderwave (4/5) – Decent AoE option, especially for something like the circle of the sea. Push enemies away for some crowd control too.

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 from other sources.
• Animal messenger (1/5) – This can have it’s uses, but I suspect those are a little too few and far between.
• Augury (4/5) – With this being a ritual, you could really use it a lot, like at every important decision you make. The usefulness of this though is primarily on how generous your DM is feeling. It’s still a potentially powerful tool though.
• Barkskin (3/5) – Decent if your dexterity is less than 20. You can essentially ensure you have 17AC. You can cast this ahead of combat too so it doesn’t eat into your bonus action. Main problem is it can easily eat into your spell slots.
• Beast sense (1/5) – This feels like it could have been useful combined with the wild companion feature and the familiar you can summon with that. But that would be wasted as you can already use your familiar’s senses. I guess it could be cast on another beast, but if you want to do some scouting, you should just send your familiar. Basically pointless for a druid, and not that great for other classes either.
• Continual flame (1/5) – There are other ways to create light without using a 2nd level spell slot. Yes I know it lasts forever, no that doesn’t change my opinion.
• Darkvision (3/5) – The best way to see in the dark if you don’t already have darkvision.
• Enhance ability (4/5) – Great for tackling high stakes skills checks like those involving stealth or social encounters.
• Enlarge/reduce (3/5) – Decent buff or debuff. Works nicely on grapplers like monks so they can grapple larger things and do more damage (and at the same time if they have the grappler feat). Or cast it against a high level enemy your party grappler wants to grapple.
• Find traps (1/5) – This can be useful, but knowing when to cast it is the tricky part, and at the expense of a 2nd level spell slot, is quite a lot. I’d say you’re better off having someone in the part invest in investigation.
• Flame blade (2/5) – The damage on this is pretty weak. 3d6 + about 4 will average 14.5 damage. Compare that to something like scorching ray (also a 2nd level spell) which does 6d6 damage (averaging 21 damage) and it’s got range and doesn’t require your bonus action as well on the initial turn. Yes this damage will last multiple turns so it’s a more efficient spell slot, but I think the damage is quite weak for what it does and will limit your damage output on subsequent turns as something like poison spray could do similar damage by level 5.
• Flaming sphere (2/5) – Like a slightly better version of cloud of daggers. It has a larger radius, affects creatures within 5ft on the first turn and can be moved with a bonus action instead of an action. The damage is a little lower though and it has to be rolled rather than teleported. Despite being better, it’s too low damage to consistently invest in.
• Gust of wind (1/5) – Decent for corridors, poor for enclosed or large spaces. This makes it too situational to be regularly useful.
• 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 mostly only works on humanoids that actually use metal making it a bit situational.
• Hold person (3/5) – 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 Gith 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. This does have the advantage of being upcast to affect multiple foes though.
• 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.
• Moonbeam (4/5) – The first turn of damage is a tad low on this, especially if you can only target a single enemy, but subsequent turns can do a lot more damage with you being able to move the moonbeam up to 60ft and damage anyone caught in its beam. This all consumes your action each turn (and your concentration), but if there’s a lot of enemies around, it can deal a lot of damage and still avoid allies. One big advantage of this spell for the druid is it can be cast, you can then wildshape and you can continue to use it in your wildshape form.
• Pass without trace (5/5) – Excellent stealth spell and it helps the whole party so everyone can sneak along with you. Including the clunky paladin!
• Protection from poison (2/5) – Great against poisonous creatures, but too situational to be commonly used. I’d stick with lesser restoration as it will aid you with multiple conditions (including poisoned), even if it doesn’t give long term protection.
• Spike growth (5/5) – Slow enemies down and hurt them in the process. There are no saving throws here either, this all works automatically. Best cast ahead of combat if you can (as enemies won’t naturally see the growth) and in narrow areas where they can’t bypass the spikes.
• Summon beast (3/5) – For a moon druid, this can work quite nicely as you can summon the beast, then wildshape and fight alongside it. With wild companion, I think it’s redundant as an exploration spell and the damage isn’t high, but pack tactics at least makes it reliable and it can add up over the course of a combat.

Level 3 spells

• Aura of vitality (3/5) – Decent continuous healing spell if your allies are getting a bit of a beating and you don’t want to keep using actions on healing.
• Call lightning (3/5) – This can be decent damage per turn, especially if enemies are close together. However, moonbeam will allow you to hit more enemies and can be upcast to deal the same damage so I’d just favour that. It has the same advantage as moonbeam as both can be cast, you can then wildshape and continue to use the spell in your wildshape form which elevates it a point for a druid, but I’d still just take moonbeam.
• Conjure animals (5/5) – Against a bunch of enemies and over the course of a combat, you can deal some serious damage with this spell. This is especially the case if you can move it around a lot. The advantage of this over something like moonbeam is it doesn’t require your action to move, freeing this up for other spells or wildshape attacks (particularly if you’re the circle of the moon).
• Daylight (2/5) – While this has its uses for tackling things like the darkness spell and creatures that hate sunlight, it’s far too situational to recommend under normal circumstances.
• Dispel magic (5/5) – Really useful for ending nasty spell effects.
• Elemental weapon (2/5) – The extra damage and boost to attack rolls isn’t really justified for a druid with their single attack. If you want weapon attacks that deal damage other than normal weapon damage, you’ve got shillelagh, spells or if you’re a circle of the moon druids, there’s also your wild shape attacks. It’s alright on someone else, but there are better spells to concentrate on.
• 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…
• Meld into stone (1/5) – It’s possible to do interesting things with this under very unusual circumstances, but these feel very rare. The lack of sight is a major issue for the limited uses you might have made with this spell anyway.
• 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 druid can do a lot with this spell, especially against melee enemies.
• Protection from energy (2/5) – A single resistance can be bypassed easily (by using a different damage type or targeting another character). The options of damage types are quite limited too. Situationally useful against certain creatures but that’s all.
• Revivify (3/5) – This is a weird one as in most situations you should avoid having allies dying anyway by using something like healing word when they start taking death saving throws. But if you do ever need it, you’ll really hope you have it.
• Sleet storm (3/5) – A more problematic version of fog cloud. Good for controlling the battlefield and nullifying enemy spellcasters a bit. It’s best in more confined spaces where enemies may be forced to travel through it.
• 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.
• Summon fey (3/5) – Solid summon with decent damage and utility. No need to use a bonus action to command it so this is preserved. This can also be maintained during wildshape too.
• Water breathing (2/5) – You’ve got wildshape to solve problems like this. It will help your allies, but is very situational and pointless for you.
• Water walk (1/5) – Wildshape makes this mostly redundant. It’s situational regardless of this.
• Wind wall (2/5) – Solid control spells that can be useful for separating enemies and protecting pockets of allies. Good for frustrating enemy archers, but can also be awkward for you too so positioning is key. Be aware of enemy spellcasters though as they’ll be able to easily cast spells through this wall. You’ll likely also find this quite situational too.

Level 4 spells

• Blight (2/5) – If you just want to cause a decent pile of damage to one enemy, then this is one of your best options. I’d argue though that spells like moonbeam, conjure animals and the like are going to be far more effective damage dealers at this level.
• Charm monster (2/5) – 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.
• Confusion (3/5) – 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.
• Conjure minor elementals (2/5) – This is very powerful in the hands of some spellcasters (especially the likes of wizards). Naturally though, druids don’t have the right spell combinations to make this abusable or even that nasty. You don’t have multi-target spell attacks (like scorching ray) or extra attacks to beef this up which makes the damage a little low on the druid. Maybe your best bet is taking a level in warlock for eldritch blast and its multiple spell attacks at higher levels or using the circle of the moon wildshape to get multiple attacks. While I’m only giving this a 2 for the druid, it’s worth being aware that it’s hugely powerful on other classes and I’d generally recommend that DMs homebrew a method to prevent this becoming overpowered.
• Conjure woodland beings (5/5) – I’d say this is slightly better than an upcast conjure animals. The damage is almost the same and conjure animals has more flexibility in how it can be moved, but easily disengaging is normally better than improved strength saving throws. This demands a wisdom saving throw as opposed to dexterity. Dexterity tends to be better than wisdom on enemies making this the more likely to deal damage. Like with conjure animals, there’s serious potential for big damage with this spell over the course of a combat.
• Control water (2/5) – You can do some fun, creative stuff with this spell, but your opportunities to do so are pretty rare so ends up too situational.
• Divination (3/5) – Can be a very useful information gathering spell and isn’t particularly situational. But it’s mileage depends on the generosity of your DM.
• Dominate beast (2/5) – This can be a powerful spell, if circumstances align. The problem is you need to cast it on a beast (and there’s no guarantee the beasts you meet are good ones to charm). It only lasts a minute so you either have to use it during combat or to get the beast to do something that only takes a minute. If you’re fighting the beast, it’s harder to make work. For me, this is too hard to contrive into a useful, 4th level spell.
• Fire shield (4/5) – Can be a great option on a martial druids who should be prone to getting attacked a lot. Of course, tactically, enemies may just shift focus or start launching projectiles at you, but this could cause some problems if you’re getting in their face. The chill shield is better as it protects from fire damage which is more common than cold, while dealing cold damage which is resisted less often than fire damage. I’d favour this on a moon druid. You can cast it ahead of combat, use your first turn for a concentration spell like conjure animals, then take on your wildshape form and get in your enemy’s face. I think this works well for the sea druid too.
• Fount of moonlight (3/5) – This is decent enough on a moon druid as it can work alongside your wildshape attacks. But getting in enough attacks to make this really good is challenging. The chance to blind attackers is nice though.
• 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.
• Giant insect (3/5) – Decent damage, decent hit points and instant speed to 0 on a hit is very handy (if you go for the spider)! You could also go the poisoned route with a centipede which also works quite nicely as a bit of a debuff specialist. Plus it’s another thing to distract enemies in combat.
• Grasping vine (4/5) – Restricting an enemy and making solid damage against them is decent, especially for powerful enemies. You can even drag enemies into nasty AoE spells too. There don’t seem to be any mechanics for damaging the vine so the way to get away is spending an action trying to escape.
• Hallucinatory terrain (1/5) – 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 I wouldn’t waste your prepared spells on this.
• Ice storm (2/5) – The damage here isn’t particularly high and difficult terrain for a single turn isn’t that great either.
• 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.
• 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!
• Stone shape (3/5) – This is quite situational, but also, potentially quite useful. Bypass natural walls in a dungeon by simply shaping the stone and passing through them. Of course, you could just watch your DM have many 6ft thick walls in their dungeon, but that would be cruel to ingenuity.
• Stoneskin (3/5) – Solid protection spell, but be aware, this consumes your concentration and as enemies get more magical attacks and less standard weapon damage, this becomes increasingly redundant.
• Summon elemental (3/5) – Slightly better than giant insect for hp and damage as well as having better damage type options, but it doesn’t have the debuffs that giant insect has. Personally, I’d usually prefer giant insect unless you know you’ll be up against enemies with resistances to standard weapon damage types.
• Wall of fire (4/5) – Really useful way to control the battlefield, separating, slowing and/or damaging your enemies.

Level 5 spells

• Antilife shell (2/5) – No good for melee druids (like the moon druid) but could be good for staying safe from melee creatures. The problem is, you either just attract ranged attacks (and there’s more of those in D&D 2024 from monsters) or your party get targeted instead. I’m not convinced this is worth your concentration, especially as better positioning might keep you nearly as safe.
• 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. 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!
• Commune with nature (2/5) – While potentially useful, I find that normally, if the information you could gain from a spell like this is important, there are other ways to discover it.
• Cone of cold (4/5) – Very similar damage to an upcast fireball, but the disadvantage here is you have to get close to enemies and ahead of your allies to land it against enemies, fireball can be shot a long way away. Unfortunately, druids don’t get fireball so you may have to settle for cone of cold instead, it is a very big cone though.
• Conjure elemental (2/5) – This deals more damage than grasping vine and deals the restrained condition instead of grappled which is more powerful. The problem is the range. With only a 5ft range and no way to move the elemental, this really limits its impact if it fails to restrain its initial target.
• Contagion (4/5) – Nasty debuff and a fair bit of single target damage. If you can get the enemy to fail the first saving throw, then they’re probably stuck poisoned for most of the combat. Great against tough enemies.
• Geas (2/5) – 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 make happen, which is why it only gets a 2.
• Greater restoration (4/5) – You likely won’t need this a lot, but when you do, you’ll really appreciate having this spell available.
• Insect plague (3/5) – Nice to have a constantly damage area of effect for a combat. With more ways to push enemies around, you could keep knocking them into this area. Of course, the natural reaction of most enemies will be to avoid the area. The problem is, it’ll take 2 turns of damage to deal the same amount a cone of cold would have and I don’t see enemies sticking around long enough to let you get enough damage for them all to take 3 rounds of damage. So I’d just go for cone of cold, it’s more instantaneous and easier to engineer.
• 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.
• Planar binding (1/5) – 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 (although you’ll need a friendly spellcaster to do this as druids don’t get this as standard), then cast this to get an ally. It’s too contrived for me and uses multiple of spell slots.
• Reincarnate (2/5) – Revivify is a level 3 spell that you should normally be able to use instead of this (and is much cheaper). The real appeal of this spell is being able to change someone’s species. Fine if they’re keen on that, but in most cases, you should avoid letting your allies die in the first place, let alone messing with their build.
• 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.
• Tree stride (2/5) – Interesting option if you want to jump in and out of safe spots during combat. The action required to cast limits what you can do for a turn, but that can be a worthy sacrifice for a longer or tougher combat. Just be aware this will only work in certain places, so it is situational.
• Wall of stone (4/5) – Strong battlefield control spell. Isolate and split up enemies to make things a bit easier to handle.

Level 6 spells

• Conjure fey (2/5) – Damage is OK and it becomes a constant source of fear though I’d prefer giant insect upcast to level 6. It’ll do more damage and can either stop an enemy in place or apply the poisoned condition.
• 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.
• Flesh to stone (2/5) – Nasty save or suck spell, but you probably won’t petrify an enemy until combat has finished or is ending. Still, it can maintain restraint and there may be other reasons you want an enemy petrified.
• Heal (5/5) – Really big healing and the removal of a few common conditions is pretty good. Basically a new lease of life for a nearly downed barbarian.
• 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 1,000gp 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.
• Move earth (1/5) – This certainly isn’t a combat spell and it’s a little lacking in the versatility department too, but the effects can be large. You could dig down into a creature’s burrow perhaps or create traps and natural terrain to protect your party from an attack. But these are all very situational and take a lot of time making this spell difficult to recommend.
• Sunbeam (3/5) – This is an efficient use of spell slots, and the damage is decent if you can line enemies up, but that’s often not possible. This is great in corridors and less great in most other places.
• Transport via plants (1/5) – This is a bit too situational, having to have visited a certain plant for it to work or be useful (and only a large one at that). This is really for druids to easily get back to their grove and maybe not a lot else.
• Wall of thorns (3/5) – Solid control spells capable of separating enemies from the action and causing damage initially and when trying to pass through.
• Wind walk (3/5) – Flight for the whole party is excellent, but it’s purpose built to prevent you using it effectively in combat. Great for exploration, poor for combat.

Level 7 spells

• Fire storm (4/5) – Big damage spell that’s great for dealing with loads of enemies at once. The fact you can split up the damage zones makes it easier to avoid allies too.
• Mirage arcane (2/5) – This can be very good in certain situations, but those situations are very rare and difficult to engineer.
• Plane shift (2/5) – This is a difficult one as plane hopping with a spell is far more convenient than alternate forms of planar travel, but it’s use and necessity is primarily down to your DM. Either they’ll want you on other planes and will provide a method for getting there, or they won’t and this could become challenging to keep players in the right place.
• Regenerate (2/5) – You’ll get better healing from heal at a lower level and recover from conditions. Losing limbs is so rare this just isn’t worth bothering with.
• Reverse gravity (4/5) – This is not only very useful, it’s also loads of fun. Great for tackling nasty melee enemies or getting to awkward locations. There’s no saving throws on this so enjoy making a tarrasque hover somehow!
• 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. 1, 000gp 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.

Level 8 spells

• Animal shapes (4/5) – I think this is more of a utility spell than a combat spell. Make the whole party into creatures that can fly or swim. Having said that, becoming a hippopotamus will give everyone a big stack of temporary hit points! Not bad if you need to take a beating.
• Antipathy/sympathy (2/5) – 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) – Similar damage to finger of death, but this can be particularly great for nullifying a spellcaster. It’s less powerful against non-spellcasters though, but still useful enough.
• Control weather (2/5) – While there can be a purpose to changing the weather (perhaps to obscure your approach or calm conditions imposed by the DM), the actual impact on the game is likely to be quite inconsequential unless your DM wants to make it a natural disaster which is difficult to orchestrate.
• Earthquake (2/5) – Prone and getting rid of concentration is alright. Fall damage from fissures likely won’t be huge (average of 17-21 hp per affected creature). However, the damage and prone from falling structures can be quite substantial. Problem is, you need buildings around to make that happen, and even then, need creatures close to buildings to be affected. It is a huge area of effect though, but that also makes it easy for allies to get caught in the mix. This is a desperate measure for druids that want to sow some chaos, but it’s far too difficult to reliably do what you want for a spell of this level.
• Incendiary cloud (4/5) – Sort of like a lingering, more powerful fireball that is hard to see through. If you can get enemies to keep getting caught by the cloud’s effects, it can be really powerful. Consider having allies push enemies into it or uses grappling and restraining spells to keep them in its area. It’ll take work and coordination to make the most of this spell though, meaning it might also only be really effective on the first turn.
• Sunburst (4/5) – Not as high damage as incendiary cloud and not long lasting either, but the effects of blinded are much easier to inflict and make last and the radius is much larger so you can catch more enemies in its effects.
• Tsunami (2/5) – This spell has the chance to really decimate a large number of enemies, especially if they can’t escape it’s effects. The issue you’ve got is the one minute casting time. The idea is that you cast this ahead of combat against a big outdoor encampment of enemies and then wade in to finish off the survivors. Problem is, you’ve got to have preparation time and this won’t really work indoors (unless you’re in a huge cavern perhaps) so becomes quite situational.

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.
• Shapechange (5/5) – Very powerful shapeshifting ability letting you transform into almost any monsters (that you’ve seen). If nothing else, the extra hit points will be a big boost and note that you can alter the form you’ve shifted into. You can also continue to cast spells in your new form too. The spell is worded in a way that your temporary hit points become whatever are the new form’s hit points and because this spell lets you use a magic action to change form, this sounds like you can nearly deplete the temporary hit points in one form, change shape and gain a new set of temporary hit points from your new form. I’m not sure that’s intentional, and personally, I’d rule against it, but it seems to be what’s acceptable by the rules of the spell…
• Storm of vengeance (1/5) – I have a couple of major issues with this spell. The first is that it’s very hard to avoid allies. Yes the worst effects can be targeted at enemies, but you’ll almost certainly have to accept collateral damage here. The next is it takes multiple turns before you can do anything significant with this spell. That’s multiple turns concentrating on something that doesn’t do a huge amount and combat may have ended or victory near by the time your best spell can contribute to it. Personally, I’m not convinced on this one.
• True resurrection (2/5) – This is obviously exceptionally powerful, but mostly an unnecessary use of a 9th level spell for you. Allies can be revivified or resurrected for much less and the spell costs 25,000 gold! That’s a huge amount. There are niche applications to this spell like if you need a long dead hero or creature to aid you in battle or something similar, but mainly, I think this is a tool for the DM to bring back enemies somehow. I just wouldn’t usually bother with it for an adventuring party.

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Do you have any favourite druid spells? Let me know about them in the comments below.

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