The 5th edition of Wizards of the Coasts' beloved tabletop RPG Dungeons and Dragons is nearly eight years old now, and it's still receiving expansions, which isn't surprising. Dungeons and Dragons has soared in popularity in the last few years, thanks to streamers popularizing the game and the overall accessibility of DnD 5e's streamlined rules. At the same time, Dungeons and Dragons is undergoing some major change. In recent years, Wizards of the Coast has started updating DnD 5e by introducing new optional class features, as well as reworking playable races to remove harmful, stereotypical concepts about race, ultimately making each race more flexible mechanically in the process.
DnD 5e is so successful that Wizards of the Coast has no reason to replace it with a 6th edition, but as race reworks and new class features suggest, there's still plenty of Dungeons and Dragons facets that could stand to be improved. If DnD 5e's oldest races and classes can get a second pass from WotC, then spells should too. Plenty of 5e's original spells have either aged out of usefulness or were never very good to begin with, so it's time for a new DnD expansion that introduces buffered and reworked versions of certain spells.
Dungeons and Dragons' Struggling Spells
The Player's Handbook comes with hundreds of spells, so it's only natural that a few of them wouldn't turn out to be particularly useful in the long run. For instance, True Strike is a famously weak cantrip in DnD 5e, since the player has to spend their entire action to gain advantage on a single attack during their next turn; 5e offers much better ways to get advantage on attacks. Another faulty cantrip is Blade Ward. Getting temporary damage resistances is great, but any endangered wizard or sorcerer would rather Disengage or cast Misty Step to actually escape an enemy, rather than spending an action casting Blade Ward and hoping for the best.
These cantrips, alongside other weak spells like Find Traps, Mordekainen's Sword, and Witch Bolt, might prove useful in rare cases, but even then they're not particularly consistent. Even niche utility spells like Illusory Script or Skywrite can accomplish their highly specific purpose with ease, even if they never come up in some campaigns. Blade Ward ultimately does little to protect spellcasters with low Hit Point totals, and True Strike is almost never better than simply making more attacks. Since Dungeons and Dragons 5e is still getting expansions, and will probably keep growing for the foreseeable future, Wizards of the Coast ought to revisit spells like these sooner rather than later.
Dungeons and Dragons' Continued Growth
Now is a great time to rework some faulty spells because Wizards of the Coast has gained so much more experience in developing and balancing spells for Dungeons and Dragons 5e. In the last several years, expansions like Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Fizban's Treasury of Dragons have added new batches of spells to 5e, and they've showcased growing consistency in spell development from Wizards of the Coast. Now that DnD's developer has so many years of 5e experience under its belt, it's well-equipped to make some new versions of 5e's weakest spells.
A broad spell update would be particularly valuable in the context of DnD's other major changes. Players are getting much better options in 5e right now, thanks to every race becoming practical for any class, while each class gets new features that can mix up playstyles. Reworking a few of DnD's weakest spells will offer players even more options and could inspire great new builds, which overall keeps players excited about DnD. 5e looks like it's bound to undergo more change in the coming years, which sounds like the perfect way to keep DnD hype alive.
Dungeons and Dragons 5e is available now.