Introduction
Camp Casting is the act of rotating companions and/or hirelings into the party in order to have them cast long-duration buff spells or healing spells on the party. It is borderline cheating, but it’s also a massive power boost that may be hard to pass up.
Characters not actively in your party still benefit when you rest, allowing them to recover hit points and spell slots. You can then add a character to your party, have them cast spells or use other features, then remove them from your party.
Like our other optimization content, if you’re going to follow this guide, I encourage you to play on Tactical difficulty for fear of trivializing the game’s challenges. This article contains one spoiler for very early in the first act.
Table of Contents
The Importance of Hirelings
The Companions don’t cover every class, and since they’re interesting characters, you likely want to bring several of them along with you while adventuring. This creates some gaps in your Camp Casting capabilities.
Withers provides access to a roster of Hirelings at a pittance of 100gp each. These Hirelings are largely bereft of personality, but they are full characters and keep pace with your own level like the Companions do.
There is one companion for each class. I recommend the bard, cleric, druid, and wizard. Optionally, you can bring in the paladin, ranger, warlock, and sorcerer for a larger pool of healing and spell slots if you want them.
It can be hard to get all intended targets into the area of effect of AOE spells like Aid and Prayer of Healing, but you can remove your intended party members from the party, then use an instrument to play music to cause everyone in camp to congregate. While the musician plays, cast Aid to catch everyone in the area of effect. Alternatively, rotate in the buff caster and leave camp, causing everyone to gather wherever your party disappeared from. Then, once buffs are cast, go back to camp and dismiss them.
You can have exactly three hirelings.
Healing
Between short rests and spell slots, your party has a finite pool of hit point recovery per day. Rotating in a character who can heal you with spells or Lay on Hands allows you to quickly heal your party before jumping back into the adventure.
This isn’t limited to hit points, either. Spells like Lesser Restoration and Revivify can be cast the same way.
Buffs
Buffs which last until your next long rest can be used via camp casting, and their effects persist when rearranging your party. The exception here is buffs which require Concentration. Characters lose Concentration when you remove them from the party.
One minor warning: If you talk to Withers to change your class, you’ll lose any ongoing spell effects on that character. Make build changes before camp casting.
Buff Spells by Class
Paladins and Rangers are omitted from the list below because the buffs they can cast use the cleric and druid spell lists, respectively. Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights are also omitted. Use the Wizard spell list for such characters. Warlocks are omitted because they don’t have any applicable buff spells.
Spells which can only target the caster are omitted. If a spell level is omitted, there are no applicable buffs at that level for that class.
Bard
Just use a wizard.
1st-Level
- Longstrider: +10 ft. of movement all day long. On top of the tactical benefits, it makes moving through the world considerably faster.
4th-Level
- Freedom of Movement: Ignore difficult terrain, can’t be Paralyzed (such as by Hold Person) or Restrained, making your target immune to many crowd control effects.
Cleric
2nd-Level
- Aid: A massive boost to your party’s durability. Upcast this as much as possible to maximize the benefit. Short rests will still heal half of your improved hit point maximum (more with effects like Song of Rest). Note that it also affects any additional beings like familiars, animal companions, or summons, which can be a great way to extend their usefulness.
- Protection from Poison: Poison is a common threat, and this is a massive protection against it.
- Warding Bond: Be extremely careful with this spell. Your companion back at camp will still take the damage, and without you there to monitor their health and heal them when needed, you’re likely to return to camp and find your spellcaster extremely dead.
3rd-Level
- Daylight: Get Darkvision.
4th-Level
- Death Ward: Prevent target from being knocked out once per day. It doesn’t sound exciting, but it will absolutely save your life.
- Freedom of Movement: Ignore difficult terrain, can’t be Paralyzed (such as by Hold Person) or Restrained, making your target immune to many crowd control effects.
6th-level
- Heroes’ Feast: Very powerful defensive buff that covers a variety of problems.
Druid
1st-Level
- Goodberry: A portable source of small amounts of healing. Liquidate any remaining spell slots into Goodberry after you finish casting other buffs, then pass the berries to your main character. The berries don’t heal much per berry, but they can be eaten as a Bonus Action, they count as rations when resting, and you can collect enough of them at once to meet your healing needs for a full adventuring day. Note that the Life Domain Cleric’s Disciple of Life feature only applies to the original caster when used with Goodberry, so you can’t buff Goodberry by multiclassing like you can in the tabletop rules.
- Longstrider: +10 ft. of movement all day long. On top of the tactical benefits, it makes moving through the world considerably faster.
2nd-Level
- Darkvision: Darkvision on your race is suddenly not an issue. Put down the torches, make sure no one in the party bothered to learn Light, and get back to adventuring.
- Protection from Poison: Poison is a common threat, and this is a massive protection against it.
3rd-Level
- Daylight: Get Darkvision.
4th-Level
- Freedom of Movement: Ignore difficult terrain, can’t be Paralyzed (such as by Hold Person) or Restrained, making your target immune to many crowd control effects.
6th-level
- Heroes’ Feast: Very powerful defensive buff that covers a variety of problems.
- Wind Walk: I’m honestly not sure if this is a good idea. Needs more testing.
Sorcerer
Font of Magic is nice, but the Wizard’s access to Lonstrider makes them a better choice once you have enough spell slots to cover your party.
1st-Level
- Mage Armor: 13+Dex AC for characters not wearing armor. Much better than non-magic light armor options, so for lightly-armored characters like rogues and many spellcasters, this is a big improvement to AC. Targets can wear a shield, but cannot wear a helmet. Donning armor (which inlcues helmet and some boots and gauntlets) suppresses the effect, but doesn’t end it.
2nd-Level
- Darkvision: Darkvision on your race is suddenly not an issue. Put down the torches, make sure no one in the party bothered to learn Light, and get back to adventuring.
3rd-Level
- Daylight: Get Darkvision.
Wizard
Don’t forget to use Arcane Recovery to get extra 1st-level spell slots. I strongly recommend Transmutation School so that your camp caster can do crafting and for Transmuter’s Stone.
1st-Level
- Longstrider: +10 ft. of movement all day long. On top of the tactical benefits, it makes moving through the world considerably faster.
- Mage Armor: 13+Dex AC for characters not wearing armor. Much better than non-magic light armor options, so for lightly-armored characters like rogues and many spellcasters, this is a big improvement to AC. Targets can wear a shield, but cannot wear a helmet. Donning armor or a helmet suppresses the effect, but doesn’t end it.
2nd-Level
- Darkvision: Darkvision on your race is suddenly not an issue. Put down the torches, make sure no one in the party bothered to learn Light, and get back to adventuring.
Other Options
While spellcasters are your go-to here, there are also options from other party members which may prove useful in the same vein as Camp Casting.
- Bard: The “Song of Rest” feature allows your whole party to take an additional short rest. If you have a bard of at least 3rd level, you can get an extra short rest between long rests, even if that means visiting camp to briefly rotate them into the party. Of course, long rests trigger fun events and food is both abundant and inexpensive (especially once you can spam Goodberry for free rations), so there’s not much incentive to stretch the time between rests.
- Magic Initiate (Druid): Goodberry is a great source of portable healing, but Magic Initiate doesn’t work very well. You can only cast the leveled spell once per long rest, and even though your spellcasting screen says that it’s always prepared, you can’t re-cast if even if you’re a druid. This is likely a bug, but it’s such a minor option that it’s not worth waiting for a fix.
- Transmutation School Wizard: Transmuter’s Stone can be moved between characters and doesn’t disappear until your next long rest, allowing a transmuter to create the stone then return to camp.
Camp Caster Builds
You can have three hirelings, and let’s be honest: You’re not bringing them adventuring unless you somehow didn’t collect enough Companions to fill your party. Building your three hirelings as camp casters can maximize their contributions.
- Cleric: A single-class cleric is essential. The Cleric gets good camp casting spells through the entire level range, so one of your hirelings is locked in here.
- Transmutation School Wizard 6 / Rogue 1 / Druid 1 / more wizard: 6 levels to get Transmuter’s Stone is excellent, and wizards can provide Longstrider and Mage Armor to buff your party’s animated dead and day-long summon spells. Be sure to take proficiency in Medicine, max Wisdom (weird for a wizard, I know), then take a level of Rogue to get Expertise in Medicine. This makes your wizard the perfect crafter thanks to Experimental Alchemy. You might do this as early as level 3, but the longer you horde ingredients, the more items you can churn out. Be sure to cast Guidance and Enhance Ability (Wisdom) to further improve your odds of success on the DC 15 check.
- Druid 1 / Transmutation School Wizard 6: 1 level to get Goodberry, then switch to wizard to work toward another Trasmuter’s stone. You might go to Druid 3 to get Protection from Poison and Darkvision, especially in the early game when your other camp casters are still short on spell slots. If you want to convert spare Companions, this is the easiest option to repeat.
