Introduction
The Eldritch Knight Fighter’s spellcasting is limited, but still very powerful. Alongside the Eldritch Knight’s class and subclass features, limited access to the Wizard’s spell list gives the Fighter a lot of options.
Eldritch Knights can only replace a single prepared spell each time that you gain a Fighter level, and you can prepare a maximum of 13 spells at level 20. This means that choosing effective spells is crucial, especially late in your career when you’ll have little time to correct a poor choice. War Magic and Improved War Magic also significantly impact your decisions. Remember: you are a Fighter first, not a Wizard.
This article primarily caters to Eldritch Knight Fighters, but other martial characters with the Magic Initiate feat may also find it helpful.
Table of Contents
Disclaimer
RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.
The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.
Shillelagh and Why It’s Important
While it’s not on the Wizard’s spell list, Shillelagh is available as an Intelligence-based spell via the Magic Initiate feat. Since it’s available from level 1, you can build around Shillelagh immediately. This does limit you to the Slow and Topple Weapon Masteries, but, once you gain Tactical Master at level 9, that becomes less of an issue since you can use Push, Sap, and Slow regardless of weapon.
This has a huge impact on the Eldritch Knight’s spell selection. At the cost of limiting yourself to exactly two weapon choices, you can build around Intelligence almost entirely. This makes your spell attacks and save DCs comparable to those of a Wizard or any other full spellcaster, which is why it features heavily in our example build.
At the same time, you have enough spell options that you could dump Intelligence and still do just fine. If you want to use other weapons, you can still be very effective. But, between Shillelagh’s scaling damage and simplifying your ability score needs, Shillelagh is objectively easier than relying on Strength or Dexterity.
Eldritch Knight Fighter Spells
Eldritch Knight Fighter Cantrips
The Eldritch Knight’s level 7 feature, War Magic, makes your cantrips
extremely impactful. Unfortunately, you’ll never get more than 3 unless you
get them from somewhere else (species, Magic Initiatie, multiclass). You
likely don’t have room for utility cantrips.</p >
- (PHB): Great for handling groups of enemies, especially if you can force them into a small area with a Shove weapon. Unfortunately, you need to be built around Intelligence to use this reliably, which means Shillelagh, and Shillelagh doesn’t support any weapons with the Shove Weapon Mastery.
- (PHB): Excellent for any melee build. -1d4 to attacks against you is a significant AC boost. It does require Concentration, so you can’t combine it with many other useful buffs, but, once you have War Magic this is an easy choice in almost any encounter.
- (SCAG / TCoE): The go-to attack cantrip for melee builds, Booming Blade is a defining tactical option for the Eldritch Knight. Combining this with the Push mastery allows you to knock enemies out of reach and leave them to take the secondary damage if they want to get back into melee with you.
- (PHB): Preventing healing is rarely impactful. See True Strike, below.
- :
- :
- (PHB): You don’t have space for utility.
- (PHB): You don’t have space for utility.
- :
- (PHB): Intelligence-focused builds should use True Strike with a Longbow or a thrown weapon, and other builds shouldn’t rely on spell attacks. Fire Bolt’s damage will eventually outpace True Strike, but it won’t benefit from feats that you’re using to improve your attacks with weapons.
- (PHB): You don’t have space for utility, though this is a tempting way to imrpove the Fighter’s meager social capabilities.
- (XGtE): Use a Sap weapon.
- (SCAG / TCoE): Booming Blade is more useful for the Eldritch Knight’s role as a
front-line tank, and you only get a total of 3 cantrips over your entire
career, so it’s hard to justify taking both. The ability to damage two
enemies with one attack is really enticing, but, if you need that
functionality, you can either attack twice or cast Sword Burst.
Note that Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything published an updated version of Green-Flame Blade.
- (EEPC): Use a Push weapon.
- (XGtE): Use a Push weapon.
- (PHB): You don’t have space for utility.
- (SCAG / TCoE): Despite the 15-foot range, this can be a great option for melee Eldritch Knights. Against enemies with poor Strength (like many enemy spellcasters), you can use this to drag them into melee with you and force them to teleport or Disengage in order to get away from you unharmed. If you’re flying, you may even be able to pull enemies into the air to cause a small amount of falling damage. Since it only has Verbal components, you can easily use this without juggling your weapon. The save is Strength, so you’ll only be successful with this against physically weak foes.
- (PHB): You don’t have space for utility.
- (PHB): You don’t have space for utility.
- (PHB): You don’t have space for utility.
- (PHB): Even if you’re not building around Intelligence, Mind Sliver is fantastic. Intelligence saves are consistently the lowest save on average, so the damage and the debuff are reliable even if your save DC is mediocre. You could use this before hitting an enemy with an Unarmed Strike to grapple/shove them, or before you hit them with a Topple weapon, or you might just use it to support your allies.
- (PHB): You don’t have space for utility.
- (EEPC): You don’t have space for utility.
- (PHB): Excellent damage, but only appealing for the big damage dice, which aren’t enough. See True Strike, below.
- (PHB): You don’t have space for utility.
- (PHB): 2024 DnD’s character options offer numerous ways to forcibly move enemies and to reduce their speed. Combining this with the Slasher feat can allow you to reduce a creature’s speed by 20 feet. If you can do this and then move out of reach, many enemies will be totally unable to get back into melee with you, effectively preventing them from fighting. I wouldn’t take this on its own, but if your party is capitalizing on forced movement and speel debuffs, it’s a good choice.
- (EEPC): You don’t have space for utility.
- (PHB): Preventing Opportunity Attacks could mean getting out of melee unimpeded, but you’re almost certainly built to endure an Opportunity Attack in a rare circumstance where you’re in melee against your will.
- (SCAG / TCoE): Eldritch Knights are typically in melee, and Sword Burst is a great way to handle crowds of multiple enemies.
- (PHB): Cast Sword Burst. It’s a better damage type on a more reliable save.
- (PHB): Good damage, decent range, and a good damage type, but True Strike will still be a better choice in the vast majority of cases.
- (PHB): True Strike is uniquely powerful in a way that defines your other cantrip
options. Because it works both in melee and at range, you can use it as a
go-to attack cantrip regardless of your choice of weaponry. For an
Intelligence-based build, it’s perfect. It doesn’t provide the tactical
utility that Booming Blade does, but it remains equally effective both at
range and in melee.
If you’re building around Strength or Dexterity, True Strike is largely useless. You must use your spellcasting ability with True Strike, which means significantly worse accuracy and damage. Use Booming Blade instead.
Level 1 Eldritch Knight Fighter Spells
- (XGtE): You get spellcasting later and slower than anyone else, so you have very
few options for protecting yourself from non-weapon damage. This will handle
that issue, but it will eat your spell slots quickly, so be sure to
eliminate the source of the elemental damage as quickly as possible so that
you don’t run through your spell slots too quickly.
The biggest challenge for Absorb Elements is that it has Somatic components, which require a free hand. By default, this means that two-weapon fighting builds and sword-and-board builds will be unable to use this unless you’re diligent about drawing and stowing your weapon, which both makes opportunity attacks hard. Unfortunately, the only ways around this are War Caster or Subtle Spell.
- (PHB): Not consistently useful enough to justify. If you need this, take Ritual Caster.
- (PHB): The damage is good for a 1st-level spell if you can hit multiple foes in the AOE.
- (EEPC): The damage isn’t worth the spell slot by the time you get it.
- (PHB): Helpful in social situations, but Advantage on Charisma checks is only minimally helpful when you have 8 Charisma and no social skills.
- (PHB): Obsolete by the time you get it.
- (PHB): Bad.
- (PHB): Only situationally useful. Consider taking Ritual Caster if you want this.
- (PHB): Essential, but hopefully someone else in the party can cast it. Consider Ritual Caster if you really need it.
- (PHB): Only situationally useful. You won’t get enough use out of this to justify having it permanently prepared.
- (AI): Too situational.
- (EEPC / XGtE): Not nearly enough damage, and being prone isn’t enough of a problem in 5e. The difficult terrain effect is the real draw. It only works on “loose earth or stone”, which may be a problematic limitation. Unfortunately, it also affects you, so be careful not to trap yourself among enemies.
- (PHB): Nice mobility for melee builds, but Jump is a better choice so that you can also move vertically.
- (PHB): A little bit of extra durability, but probably not worth the spell slot.
- (PHB): Essential in any party, but wait to take it until you have enough combat spells to get through the day.
- (PHB): Get an owl and have it use Flyby and Help to give you Advantage before you try to hit an enemy with Booming Blade or another spell attack.
- (PHB): Decent area control. If you have Fighting Style (Blind Fighting), this can be a go-to tactic.
- (RotF): Bad damage on a bad save.
- (PHB): Decent area control, but not a big AOE. Consider using a Push weapon to repeatedly force enemies into the are to make them reattempt the saving throw.
- (PHB): Poor damage with too many points of failure.
- (PHB): Only situationally useful. Consider Ritual Caster if you absolutely need this.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- : Usually no better than Magic Missile, but very powerful oncey you have both get Spirit Shroud and Improved War Magic.
- (PHB): A great boost to your mobility with a Bonus Action casting time. You can’t afford to use this in every encounter, but it’s great if you need to get past obstacles or hazards.
- (PHB): A great buff for melee builds.
- (PHB): If you’re Dexterity-based, this is the only way to match the base AC provided by plate armor. The 8-hour duration is especially nice since you get so few spell slots to throw around.
- (PHB): Obsolete by the time you get it.
- (PHB): A fantastic defensive buff against a wide variety of enemies. Once you get Improved War Magic at level 18, it’s easy to cast this in combat.
- (PHB): Poison resistance/immunity is common. For most of your career you can’t justify spending an Action to cast this, and by the time you get Improved War Magic your other options are much more impactful.
- (PHB): A fantastic defense, but you have very few spell slots, so you need to be
very cautious about using it too frequently. If you’re in melee and use this
a lot, consider the Defensive Duelist feat.
The biggest challenge for Shield is that is has Somatic components, which require a free hand. By default, this means that two-weapon fighting builds and sword-and-board builds will be unable to use this unless you’re diligent about drawing and stowing your weapon, which both makes opportunity attacks hard and only allows Absorb Elements every other round. Unfortunately, the only way around this is War Caster.
- (PHB): A fantastic utility, but you probably can’t afford space for it in your limited number of prepared spells.
- (SCoC): Extremely powerful, but also very complicated. See my blog post on Silvery Barbs for details on the numerous abuse cases which the spell allows. Unfortunately, it’s outside of the Eldritch Knight’s school limitations.
- (PHB): A good save-or-suck at any level. Incapacitated effectively robs the target of their turn, and it also breaks Concentration.
- (XGtE): Good for setting a trap, or if you’re resting somewhere dangerous with a convenient choke point like a narrow hallway. Targets are restrained for at least one round, which is hopefully enough for you to fight your way out of your bedroll and grab a weapon.
- (TCoE): The damage is too low by the time you can cast this.
- (PHB): Use a Push weapon.
- (PHB): Too situational. Consider Ritual Caster if you really want this.
- (PHB): The secondary damage on a Bonus Action is tempting in extended fights, but casting this as an Action will rarely be worth how much damage you give up by casting this instead of attacking. When you get Improved War Magic at level 18, the Bonus Action damage is irrelevant.
Level 2 Eldritch Knight Fighter Spells
- (XGtE): I’ve never been a fan of line AOEs. It’s too difficult to line up more than two creatures at a time, so you’ll probably never hit more than two creatures unless you have a long hallway handy.
- : Too situational.
- (PHB): Only situationally useful.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- (PHB): This is what Second Wind is for.
- (PHB): One of my favorite divinations, but not useful enough for an Eldritch Knight to prepare it permanently.
- (PHB): A great debuff, but Con saves are hard, especially if you’re not built around Intelligence.
- (PHB): A great defensive buff.
- : Combined with Tactical Knowledge, this is a great way to cover skills that your party can’t already handle.
- (PHB): Cast Create Bonfire.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- (PHB): Without the ability to see in magical darkness, Fog Cloud provides the same benefit.
- (PHB): Great if you don’t already have Darkvision, but very expensive with your limited resources. Get Goggles of Night if you can.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- : Your attacks will do more damage than spending your Action to use the breath weapon. This may be appealing if you can cast it on a familiar.
- (EEPC): Use a Push weapon.
- : Throw a trident.
- (PHB): A fantastic utility outside of combat.
- (PHB): The increased reach and the damage boost can be useful.
- (PHB): You could use this as a sort of area control combined with Push and/or Slow weapons in order to hold enemies in place adjacent to the sphere to force additional damage. But by the time you can cast this, Create Bonfire will do as much damage and can be cast as part of your Attack thanks to War Magic.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- (AI): YOu are not a Face.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- (PHB): Only works against humanoids, who will be rare enemies by the time that you can cast this.
- (PHB): Excellent. A Dexterity-based build may be a very effective scout if you can also cast Invisibility.
- : If you can cast this before enemies notice you, it can put your party at a huge advantage. But you can’t always expect that to be an option.
- (SCoC): Great mobility, but not significantly more useful than Jump.
- (PHB): Very useful, but your party needs to be able to handle locks long before you can cast this.
- (PHB): Constitution saves are hard, but lifting an enemy off the ground makes many enemies much less dangerous, often totally removing them from a fight.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): A fantastic offensive buff. It’s great at this level, and you can upcast it to increase the bonus to +2.
- (EEPC): A great way to restrain small nimble enemies and weak spellcasters, both of which are likely to look for ways to run away from you.
- (PHB): Poor damage.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- (PHB): An excellent defensive buff, especially once you have Improved War Magic.
- (PHB): Absolutely fantastic. Eventually you’ll want to trade it out once you get Arcane Charge, but that’s not until 15th level.
- (FToD): Unpredictable and weak.
- (PHB): Only situationally useful. Masking yourself as a construct makes you immune to many dangerous spells, but enemies rarely cast those spells.
- (PHB): An excellent sav-eor-suck at any level, especially since it targets Intelligence saves.
- (EEPC): The effects are weak and the required setup is annoying.
- (PHB): Con saves are the least reliable save, and the creatures that suffer from this spell will also have high Constitution saves.
- (PHB): Useful, but I really hope that someone else in your party can cast this.
- (PHB): Rarely a good idea, but, once you have Improved War Magic, you can combine this with Conjure Minor Elementals to deal a ton of damage very quickly.
- (PHB): Probably your only counter to invisible enemies unless you can get a magic item like a Lantern of Revealing. Maybe skip this if your party has other options like Faerie Fire.
- (XGtE): Compared to a rapier, the Shadow Blade adds 1d8 damage per attack, it changes to psychic damage (which is resisted by very few creatures), and it adds the Thrown property for some reason. Since it gives you Advantage to attack creatures in dim light or darkness it will offset Disadvantage for attacking creatures when it’s too dark for you to see. If you’re not built around Intelligence, this is a great boost to your damage output, and gives Strength-based and Dexterity-based builds an easy ranged option. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have Weapon Mastery because it was published under the 2014 rules.
- (PHB): Decent damage with a good AOE and Thunder damage. You’ll rarely use it in combat unless there is an extremely dense group of enemies.
- (EEPC): Too situational
- (XGtE): Shatter but with less damage and worse damage type.
- (PHB): The next best thing to flight. Very appealing for fighting at range.
- (BOmT): The damage is poor, but temporarily blinding a creature on a Dexterity save is potentially powerful against Strength-based enemies, who typically have awful Dexterity saves.
- (PHB): Fantastically versatile and extremely powerful.
The 2024 version of the spell is insanely abusable because of how permissive it is. RAW you can tell a creature to suffocate themselves to death. I recommend using the 2014 version of the spell to avoid Suggestion derailing your game.
- (TCoE): Not a lot of damage, but it’s on an Intelligence save, and it severely limits your target’s action options, making this a powerful offensive option at any level.
- (SCoC): Very good, but you probably can’t afford to cast this often. It may be useful once you have Improved War Magic so that you can reposition and ally at reduced action cost.
- (XGtE): A moving sphere of difficult terrain centered on you. This makes it easy for you to keep enemies close (especially if you use the Slow Weapon Mastery to further reduce their speed), and the 10-minute duration can get you through multiple fights.
- (PHB): Fantastic area control at any level even if your Intelligence is relatively poor.
Level 3 Eldritch Knight Fighter Spells
- (PHB): You don’t have enough spell slots to keep your undead under control.
- (BoMT): Attacking stuff is your job. This will rarely do more damage than your own attacks.
- (FToD): Bonus action casting time, and the damage doesn’t allow a save. This is a tempting spell for gish builds, but, by the time you can cast it, the damage is negligible. This is great for builds with better spellcasting than the Eldritch Knight, but for the Eldritch Knight you should look elsewhere.
- (PHB): A powerful debuff, but against msot creatures you’ll get better results from just killing them.
- (PHB): An interesting defensive option which doesn’t require Concentration, but, as a Fighter, you’re durable enough to stand up to enemy attacks. Removing yourself from the board half of the time means that you’re not there to take attacks in place of your weaker allies.
- (XGtE): Only situationally useful, and you should not be the one to cast it.
- (PHB): A great scouting option, but very expensive with the Eldritch Knight’s limited spellcasting.
- (PHB): Helpful, but only situationally useful, and you almost certainly don’t have the room to prepare this on a daily basis without major sacrifices.
- (PHB): If your party doesn’t have someone else who can cast Dispel Magic by the time it’s an option for you, you’re probably all dead.
- (XgtE): Astoundingly few enemies have good Intelligence saves, especially big scary melee monsters. Throw this on something tanky and horrifying that’s there to protect squishy enemies from you and your friends, and watch it freak out and kill its buddies for you. The duration is only a minute, and obviously this only works in an encounter with multiple enemies, but that doesn’t make the spell less awesome.
- (EEPC / XGtE): Not enough damage to compete with Fireball, and not enough difficult terrain to justify the spell slot. If you need to slow down enemies, go stand in their way.
- (AI): You won’t use this enough to justify one of your extremely limited preparation slots. Cast Suggestion instead.
- (PHB): A great way to disable groups of opponents, but fear immunity is common.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- (PHB): At 8d6 damage, Fireball hitting multiple enemies will likely exceed the amount of damage you can do to a single creature until you get four attacks at 20th level.
- (XGtE): Tempting for a fighter to boost your damage output, but it’s not good enough to consume one of your few spells known that go beyond your school limitations.
- (PHB): Flight is a defining tactical advantage over creatures who can’t fly, especially if those creatures don’t have effective ranged options. Even though this is beyond the Eldritch Knight’s school limitations it’s a must-have option. If you don’t have easy access to flight by other means (an allied spellcaster, an item, a flying mount, etc.), you need this.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): Depending on how your DM handles it, this is either a situationally useful defensive measure or a reality-bending way to break the game from the comfort of your own home. See our Practical Guide to Glyph of Warding.
- (PHB): An excellent buff at any level. Haste is very specific about what you can use the additional Action for, so you can’t use it for War Magic.
- (PHB): Take a group of creatures out of a fight for a full minute on only one save. Targets don’t get another save, and the effect doesn’t end until the spell does or someone breaks targets out of the effect. This means that you can focus on enemies which pass the initial save, then gradually eliminate the remaining targets one at a time. This doesn’t scale with spell level, but it really doesn’t need to. A 30-foot cube is enough to hit several creatures, and so long as your Spell Save DC is decent you’ll do fine. Even if enemies spend an Action to break their allies out of the spell, you’ve spent one Action to incapacitate them and they’re spending more than that just to fix it without actually harming you or your allies.
- (TCoE): Technically situational, but an absolutely spectacular defense against enemies which rely on spells or common effects like charm and fear effects. Unlike racial traits like the Gnome’s Cunning or the Satyr and Yuan-Ti Pureblood’s Magic Resistance, this applies to all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws, providing broad and effective protection against many of the most dangerous save-or-suck effects in the game. You also get resistance to psychic damage, which is nice if you’re fighting mind flayers, aboleths, or bards who enjoy Vicious Mockery. With a 1-hour duration, the Concentration requirement can be problematic, but it also means that you can carry this through multiple encounters at low cost, so in situations where you need this it’s not going to eat all of your spell slots.
- (PHB): Perhaps an odd choice for the Eldritch Knight, but Tiny Hut is a great place to rest, and you can cast it as a ritual. If you have time to set it up it’s a great defensive position.
- (PHB): As much damage as fireball, but it’s much harder to hit multiple creatures with a line.
- (PHB): Excellent, but too situational to consume one your limited number of prepared spells.
- (PHB): Powerful and versatile, but an Eldritch Knight likely won’t use it often enough to prepare permanently.
- (EEPC / XGtE): I love that you can use this to turn your bonus action into damage output, but with your poor save DC this deals too little damage to waste a 3rd-level spell slot.
- (PHB): Only situationally useful, and you typically cast this as a precaution at the beginning of an adventuring day. You may not be able to afford to spend a spell slot on this every day.
- (PHB): A wonderful utility, but you probably don’t want to prepare it permanently. Hopefully someone else in the party can cast this.
- (PHB): An excellent defensive option, but you may be doing alright with Absorb Elements.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): Not useful enough to make it more appealing than Fireball or Hypnotic Pattern.
- (PHB): A good debuff, but not good enough to compare with other level 3 options when you get so few spells.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (TCoE): A 1-minute combat buff which adds 1d8 damage and a 10 ft. speed reduction to each of your numerous attacks. Combined with Action Surge, you can deal a huge amount of damage very quickly. This can be very powerful on a Defender build, and it’s easy to combine with the Slow Weapon Mastery to prevent enemies from getting away from you.
- (PHB): While this can rob targets of their Action if they fail the save, the area is small and easy to escape.
- (PHB): Decent summons at this spell level, especially compared to Summon Lesser
Demons, but upgrade to a better summon spell as soon as you can.
For more help, see our Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.
- (XGtE): You can’t control the demons, and they’re probably not strong enough to
win an encounter on their own. The material component may also be problem
since it has a 24 freshness timer.
For more help, see our Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.
- (PHB):
For more help, see our Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.
- (PHB): Several excellent combat options, and the ghostly option can fly around
and do stuff for you. The Skeletal option is an effective ranged attacker,
and it can easily outdamage any of your other spell options if you can fit
multiple encounters into the 1-hour duration.
For more help, see our Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.
- (XGtE): You can get most of the same teleportation function from Arcane Charge.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): The healing is really cool, but spending your entire Action to use it is hard to justify.
- (EEPC / XGtE): Decent area control, and, since it restricts movement, you may be able to use to to keep enemies from fleeing.
- (EEPC / XGtE): This makes it hard for you to to engage enemies. Wall of Sand is more useful.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
Level 4 Eldritch Knight Fighter Spells
- (PHB): An absolutely fantastic scouting option, but not worth your only level 4 spell slot.
- (PHB): Fantastic save-or-suck.
- (PHB): Bad.
- (PHB): Helpful in social situations, but not consistently useful enough for you to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): Unpredictable and unreliable.
- (PHB): Excellent, but you may have better results with Spirit Shroud. Spirit Shroud cast at level 4 provides the same damage boost, and it’s cast as a Bonus Action. Conjure Minor Elementals is cast as an Action, but has a 10-minute duration compared to Spirit Shroud’s 1-minute duration, plus Conjure Minor Elementals has a 15-foot radius compared to Spirit Shroud’s 10-foot radius. Pick whichever works for you.
- (PHB): Too situational.
- (PHB): Use Arcane Charge.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): One of the Fighter’s primary roles is Defender. Your job is to stand in the front and get attacked by scary monsters. Throw up Fire Shield and enjoy a bunch of extra damage output for being in the right place and doing your job. Just be sure that enemies still have a good reason to attack you instead of your allies.
- (PHB): Invisibility is an absolutely spectacular buff, but part of the Fighter’s primary role in the party is to draw attention away from less durable allies. If you’re invisible, you can’t do that.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): Terrible. Bad damage, and the difficult terrain doesn’t last long enough.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (PHB): Decent for defending a specific point, but not useful enough to be your only level 4 spell each day.
- (PHB): You get one level 4 spell slot every day. Do you really want to spend it on a place to sleep?
- (PHB): Single-target save-or-suck. A good way to take a target out of a fight until you’re ready to handle them.
- (PHB): A good single-target save-or-suck, but fear immunity is common, and the damage won’t be as impressive by this level.
- (PHB): With an hour-long duration, this is a great use of your single 4th-level spell slot. See our Practical Guide to Polymorph for more information.
- (PHB): Too situational to prepare permanently.
- (XGtE): This spell is very easy to overlook. The effects are complicated, and the
4d10 damage looks underwhelming, but don’t let that deter you. This is a
great spell to cast into a room then shut the door, but even if that’s not
an option it’s a fantastic way to handle crowds. With a 30-foot radius you
can hit a huge number of targets, and with a 10-minute duration you can
easily kill anything stuck in the area for an extended period. The 4d10
damage is fine, and negating invisibility is great, but the real appeal is
the levels of Exhaustion.
One level makes targets less able to resist grappling or other crowd control spells like Maximilian’s Earthen Grasp or Web which your allies could cast to keep enemies in the area. Two levels halves targets’ speed, making it harder for them to move out of the area. Three levels imposes Disadvantage on saves so their condition will deteriorate even faster. If targets somehow survive until 5 levels of exhaustion (they’ll have taken 20d10 radiant damage by now, which is a lot), their speed drops to 0 so you no longer need to do anything to prevent escape. Just wait for them to hit 6 levels of Exhaustion, which results in death if a total of 24d10 radiant damage somehow hasn’t killed them. Just be warned: this spell affects allies, too, and if the spell ends the levels of Exhaustion are removed instantly.
- (BoMT): Summon Undead is arguably better, but this is still a good summon.
For more help, see our Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.
- (PHB): Fantastic utility, but probably not worth your only level 4 spell slot each day.
- (PHB): An excellent defensive buff.
- (EEPC / XGtE): Passable area control for an extended fight, but the damage is poor, and 1 minute of this probably isn’t enough for your single level 4 spell slot. Sickening Radiance is much better.
- (PHB): Three diverse and effective combat options.
For more help, see our Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.
- (PHB): Not as effective offensively as Summon Aberration, but all three summoned
constructs are unusually durable for creatures summoned by similar spells.
For more help, see our Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.
- (PHB): Summon Aberration is better offensively, and Summon Construct provides a
more durable summon. Summon Elemental’s biggest advantage is that you can
summon a creature that can fight effectively underwater, but even then it’s
not a great summon.
For more help, see our Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.
- (PHB): Just upcast Fireball.
- (PHB): A great area control option.
- (EEPC / XGtE): Weak damage. Cast Fireball.
- (EEPC / XGtE): Without a maxed out spell save DC this spell isn’t reliable enough to waste your only 4th-level spell slot.
