Warlock Spell Guide For D&D 5e 2024

Identifying all the best warlock spells available.

Warlocks Are unusual in the way they cast spells. They generally have less spells prepared and less spell slots than other dedicated casters making their decisions for what spells to take particularly important.

The good news for warlocks is their pact spell slots (those up to level 5) are recovered each short rest, so on a longer adventuring day, you may find you can outcast a sorcerer or bard (certainly for mid-high level spells). You can also cast your pact spells with the highest spell slot you have available (up to level 5) meaning that when you do cast spells, they can often be more powerful than those of your counterparts.

Still, that spell list can be overwhelming and you’ll need to choose carefully, so below, I’ve rated each spell from the warlock spell list by how good I think they are and given advice on how to best use it. Hopefully, this will help you narrow down your spell choices.

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Cantrips

warlocks fight an eldritch evil — Warlock fighting eldritch beings: Wizards of the Coast

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. It’s too much of a drain for what you get in return.
Chill touch (2/5) – It’s not bad as such, but if you need to make melee attacks, you’re better off going for pact of the blade. There is a niche where this is useful for non-melee dedicated warlocks that don’t want to invest in blade invocations and their occasional melee attacks, but it’s not enough for me
Eldritch blast (5/5) – On a warlock, this is the best cantrip in the game. Because you make separate attack rolls for each beam, you’ve not only got multiple chances to hit a target, you can also target multiple foes. But the best part is that agonising blast provides bonus damage to each beam you fire making this your highest damage standard attack.
Friends (2/5) – If you’re up against a lot of social situations, this can make them a fair bit easier. 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.
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.
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 hit more often than most attacks.
Minor illusion (4/5) – Top utility spell. Great for creating distractions while you sneak around. The more cunning you are, the more useful this spell will be.
Poison spray (3/5) – If you take agonising blast (which you absolutely should), eldritch blast will quickly outperform this for damage from level 5 onwards. At lower levels though, this is slightly better. Just be aware that poison is one of the most commonly resisted damage types in the game.
Prestidigitation (2/5) – I’ll be honest, I don’t get all the hype about this spell. It does stuff you can easily do yourself and might occasionally surprise an NPC (but magic is everywhere in D&D so it can’t be THAT surprising). And sadly, with only 2-4 cantrips known, there just isn’t room for prestidigitation.
Thunderclap (4/5) – If you plan on getting in the middle of the action (which is a little dangerous for a warlock, but workable), then this can deal even more damage than eldritch blast, especially when you apply the extra damage from agonising blast. You can see my workings out in my guide to eldritch invocations. It’s harder to make work than eldritch blast though, and you’re reliant on crowds of enemies so it only gets a 4.
Toll the dead (3/5) – A better damage type than poison spray and longer range, but technically slightly worse damage. It’s a saving throw though, which might work better than attack rolls in certain circumstances (like against high AC enemies).
True strike (2/5) – While this spell can be good, it’s a bit wasted on a warlock. If you need to make melee attacks, chill touch or blade pacts will outperform this and use alternative damage types. It’s good on other classes, just not on a warlock.

Level 1 spells

Armor of Agathys (4/5) – For melee warlocks, this is really easy to chuck into your repertoire of regular combat spells. There’s no concentration needed, it lasts an hour (so can be cast ahead of combat) and can be cast as a bonus action (useful if combat is unexpected). It also stacks with levels which is great for a warlock. Just be aware that it ends once you’ve run out of temporary hit points, but those temporary hit points don’t need to come from the spell so you could always top them up from some other source (you could use step of the fey and the refreshing step from an Archfey Warlock for instance). At worst, it’ll discourage enemies from attacking you us much.
Arms of Hadar (2/5) – It’s not better enough than thunderclap to make it worth the spell slot cost (especially if using agonising blast with your thunderclap) and even as you gain spell levels, this will easily be outstripped in power by better AoE spells. Preventing reactions isn’t strong enough to really justify this one.
Bane (3/5) – Solid debuff that can affect up to 7 creatures once you hit level 9. It does mean sacrificing your concentration though which can be a big sacrifice.
Charm person (3/5) – An OK spell for helping you handle social situations. It scales with your level too.
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.
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.
Expeditious retreat (2/5) – Retreating is rare, and having to be consistently faster than your enemy is even rarer.
Hellish rebuke (3/5) – From an action economy perspective, this spell is great as it uses your reaction. But you’ve got so few spells slots that you may find yourself out of slots in the first round or 2 with this. It’s a better spell on more prolific spellcasters.
Hex (5/5) – Slightly better than hunter’s mark and a great way to enhance your multiple attacks. As a warlock, you can get more attack rolls a turn than a ranger (eldritch blast will eventually get you 4, blade warlocks can eventually get 3). Make sure you coordinate with allies on what saving throws to target.
Illusory script (1/5) – 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.
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.
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 (4/5) – Great way to incapacitate enemies. It won’t take you long to be able to target multiple foes with this too.
Unseen servant (4/5) – Like an enhanced mage hand, and because it can be cast as a ritual, doesn’t need to take up spell slots either.
Witch bolt (2/5) – This is a tricky one. On the one hand, it’s a spell with sustained damage and it scales with your level (at least the initial damage does) making it less burdensome on your spell slots. The problem is it requires your concentration, the ongoing damage is fairly small and it will end if your target dies or leaves your area. The easiest way to compare this is with something like hex which will give an ongoing 1d6 damage to each hit against the target with less drain on your action economy and can last an entire combat. Particularly from level 5, the continuous damage from hex will be slightly better, though the initial damage from this will remain better, but you could just use eldritch blast with your action alongside hex. I’d definitely favour hex over this.

Level 2 spells

Cloud of daggers (1/5) – Unless you can block a 5ft wide corridor with this, it’s just a waste of a spells lot and you should have just cast eldritch blast and saved yourself the spell slot.
Crown of madness (3/5) – 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, but lacking in the wisdom department, but it could also completely fail. It’s a high reward strategy, but comes at a price.
Darkness (4/5) – A strong control option and really good if you have something like devil’s sight and can see through magical darkness. I’d tackle this by casting it on an object not being held, then pick that item up. Now you’ve got a shroud of darkness that stays with you. Of course this only works with devil’s sight.
Enthrall (1/5) – 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.
Hold person (4/5) – Great save or suck spell and by level 9, you can simultaneously target up to 4 enemies with this.
Invisibility (4/5) – Great stealth spell and will help you for a round of combat too.
Mind spike (1/5) – The problem with this is the damage is low and you have to be able to see the creature to hit it and then nullify future invisibility attempts. Problem is, you often don’t know you’re going to face something that can turn invisible until it turns invisible. There are better ways to tackle invisibility.
Mirror image (3/5) – The protection it gives is likely greater than the damage you could have done with your action so could be worthwhile for a melee warlock. Armor of Agathys will scale better though.
Misty step (4/5) – Great safety spell. It’ll get you out of sticky situations like grapples and crowds. Can also get you to hard to reach places and make you travel further if needs be.
Ray of enfeeblement (1/5) – The best enemies to cast this on (strong, melee brawlers) are likely the best at resisting this (constitution saving throw) making this a tad tricky. It still does something on a failure, but the issue you have is hold person will completely disable an opponent, this only partially does so, and you can upcast hold person for more targets so it’s tough to recommend this over hold person.
Spider climb (2/5) – This can be useful sometimes, but I’d probably just go for the ascendent step eldritch invocation and cast levitate whenever I need to get some height.
Suggestion (4/5) – 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.

Level 3 spells

Elf sorcerer casting a spell — Elf warlock casting a spell: Wizards of the Coast

Counterspell (4/5) – Preventing a nasty spell is great, but you don’t have a lot of spells slots so be selective in your use of this. If you’ve got a wizard in the party, they may be a better option for this kind of spells as they’ll have more slots to use. Just be aware that while you might waste the caster’s action with this, the 2024 changes mean that the spell slot isn’t wasted so they could just cast the nasty spell again the next turn.
Dispel magic (4/5) – Really useful for ending nasty spell effects.
Fear (4/5) – 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 warlocks are one of the best options to do this.
Fly (5/5) – Really useful utility spell. Can keep you safe (ish) in combat and helps you access hard to reach locations. By level 9, you’ll be able to cast this on 3 characters simultaneously too.
Gaseous form (4/5) – Strong exploration spell. Will get you places you might not ordinarily be able to get.
Hunger of Hadar (5/5) – This spell kind of does it all. It damages, blinds, blocks and slows. It’s best used in small spaces like corridors to give you breathing space between enemies.
Hypnotic pattern (5/5) – I’d probably prefer this over fear as it’s got better range but effectively removes a group of enemies from the combat.
Magic circle (2/5) – This is generally quite challenging to use as it requires a 1 minute casting time. It also requires certain types of creatures making it far too situational.
Major image (4/5) – 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.
Remove curse (2/5) – Sometimes useful, but you could just be a bit more cautious about what magic items you use, or find a friendly cleric to help you. You’re too low on spells known to waste on this.
Summon fey (4/5) – Decent damage and you’ll get a 5th level version of this by level 9. It’s got some cool tricks up it’s sleeve too like darkness which combines nicely with the devil’s sight eldritch invocations.
Summon undead (3/5) – Not as good as summon fey which has a few more options to help you out and does more damage. Decent enough though.
Tongues (2/5) – It’s unlikely that this will be useful very often so not worth taking.
Vampiric touch (2/5) – This can be easily outperformed by a cantrip like eldritch blast, especially with the right eldritch invocations. The healing isn’t enough to justify this, plus you can’t use your concentration on anything else.

Level 4 spells

Backlash (4/5) HoF – Solid damage reduction and retaliation. For comparison, hellish rebuke will deal 5d10 damage if upcast to this level (average 27.5 damage). Backlash will protect from an average of 14 damage and deal 14 damage back (with a better damage type). So I think they’re comparable in power. Just depends whether you want to be more protective and have the flexibility of casting at lower levels.
Banishment (5/5) – Take an enemy or 2 out of combat for the duration while you deal with it’s friends. Hold person accomplishes a similar thing but this is better as there aren’t any repeat throws and many creatures have poor charisma.
Blight (2/5) – Not enough damage for a single target damage spell to be better than other things and the ability to destroy plants isn’t particularly useful all that often.
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 has some niche application, but it’s not useful often enough.
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.
Doomtide (3/5) HoF – The initial effects can be useful, but it will take effort to keep creatures being affected by this. It’s 5d6 damage for each creature so it only needs 2 turns of damage on creatures to exceed a fireball’s power plus the darkness effect and you’ve got a great big slowly moving obstacle for enemies to navigate around. A little tricky to get those 2 turns of damage though, I imagine most enemies will just avoid it, making it a potentially less good fireball.
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 you’ve not got enough prepared spells to waste on such a rarely useful spells.
Summon aberration (3/5) – It’s pretty decent, but with casting at higher levels, I’d still say summon fey is better.

Level 5 spells

Contact other plane (4/5) – Strong information finding spell for warlocks. You can cast it once for free each day (so you might as well use it) and pass automatically to contact their patron so the best option for this spell.
Dream (2/5) – If you’re really creative, you could do a lot with this, but it’s tricky to make this regularly useful.
Hold monster (3/5) – Incapacitate a monster for a while is decent. Hold person will let you do this to more enemies, but usually monsters are tougher than humanoids.
Jallarzi’s storm of radiance (3/5) – Automatic blinded and deafened, plus damage. The trick is keeping enemies in the area making this best for small spaces. You might find martials with the push weapon mastery can help get enemies in the area of this spell.
Mislead (2/5) – This feels more impressive than it really is. It’s 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 (if you can get it).
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 (or summon one), cast magic circle to contain it, then cast this to get an ally. It’s too contrived for me and uses multiple of your precious spell slots. You can always short rest afterwards to get your spell slots back I suppose.
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.
Synaptic static (4/5) – 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.

Level 6 spells

Dragonborn warlock DnD 2024 — Dragonborn warlock: Wizards of the Coast

Arcane gate (2/5) – I think the use case for this is to unexpectedly appear before enemies, attack them, and then run back through the portal where your allies have laid a trap. It’s got it’s uses but it’s too situational, relying on a fairly long line of sight for instance. If you just want to teleport, dimension door can do that.
Circle of death (4/5) – Basically a huge and more powerful fireball. Straightforward, strong option. Just try and avoid hitting your allies.
Create undead (3/5) – Semi-permanent undead servants is quite useful, but be aware that ghouls aren’t that tough at the level you’ll be casting this. Still, they make a decent enough meat shield and can be used to go first into dungeons to trigger traps and similar nasties.
Eyebite (4/5) – Continuously nullify enemies for the rest of the combat. Although the effects may seem like those you can inflict with lower level spells, the advantage of eye bite is that you can attempt to afflict someone each turn and the target can’t take saving throws on subsequent turns so they’re a bit more stuck with these effects (poisoned being the hardest to remove, but also the least debilitating).
Summon fiend (3/5) – It’s a bit tougher than summon fey, but perhaps lacks quite as much utility. If you’ve got devils sight, you could coordinate with it in magical darkness.
Tasha’s bubbling cauldron (3/5) – Good source of regular healing potions (or other niceties). Just be aware you’ll need to invest 500gp in components, but once you’ve cast this 3 times, you should have made up for the cost in potions.
True seeing (2/5) – The best way to see things that aren’t there other than getting the witch sight eldritch invocation. You might not need it for a long time, but when you do, you’ll be very glad you have something like this. The problem is it eats up your only 6th level spell for something that may rarely come up. Od leave it for a more prolific spellcaster like a wizard.

Level 7 spells

Etherealness (2/5) – This is a decent spell in the sense that you can get places and explore things you wouldn’t normally be able to explore. But I rate it lower as a level 7 spell slot is quite a high cost for this type of thing when you can accomplish something similar (though not as good) with gaseous form at level 3 (and maybe a level 2 invisibility spell if you need to be more subtle).
Finger of death (4/5) – An average of 61.5 damage on a failed save or half on a pass is strong. It will be outperformed by AoE spells like circle of death in a crowd, but it depends on whether you need to/can hit multiple targets, otherwise, this is stronger.
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.
Plane shift (2/5) – This is a tough one. It certainly can be useful, but if you need to traverse the planes, your DM will ensure there’s a way to do so. With only the one level 7 prepared spell, does a warlock really want to be wasting it knowing this spell?

Level 8 spells

Befuddlement (4/5) – 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.
Demiplane (2/5) – A secret hideout for when the battle has been tough or you need somewhere to rest can be quite useful. But an 8th level spell (your only one) is a high price to pay for some safety when sleeping.
Dominate monster (5/5) – 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) – A warlock with proficiency in face skills 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.
Power word stun (1/5) – 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

Astral projection (2/5) – Like with plane shift, this is a very situational spell requiring a need to enter the astral plane making it hard to recommend when you get one level 9 spell choice.
Blade of disaster (4/5) HoF – Average damage from this is only slightly less than power word kill per turn. Power word kill is automatic damage, but this is probably higher over 2 turns and almost certainly higher over 3+ turns. On top of that, it only requires bonus actions to use. This feels really devastating, especially if you can use it over multiple rounds.
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.
Gate (3/5) – If you like to initiate a bit of chaos, then this is a wonderful spell. Summon a powerful planar being and hope that they don’t crush you. A creative player and DM could have a lot of fun with this spell. A cruel DM might just bring you an irritated demon lord though…
Imprisonment (2/5) – This one is somewhat impractical, but devastating if successful. The problem you’ll have is the beings worth casting this on likely have legendary resistance. Oh, and it takes a minute to cast so mostly occupies you during an entire combat encounter. Use it to really punish enemies you’ve already defeated. Banishment will be easier to use in actual combat.
Power word kill (4/5) – 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.
True polymorph (5/5) – Grant the target a potential tonne 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.
Weird (4/5) – You can deal a lot of damage with this just in the initial blast. Subsequent turns will lead to more damage, plus frightening enemies reduces their effectiveness.