Do you think the Wizard remains the master of battlefield control in 5e, or does another class have an edge over them we might be overlooking?

My party used a wall of force to trap a powerful enemy with a tiefling monk with blindsight who cast darkness on the area. We called it Elm Street.

3:00 "Damage that never happened in the first place doesn't have to be healed up" should be the motto of Battlefield Control Builds.

Do you know what I love about this channel? 1- They go to the point. It is not forced just to be longer. They make a small intro and start talking about what matters. 2- they dont do weird faces that show on the thumbnails. 3- The quantity and quality of humor is just right to this kind of video. 4- they seem to know the game.

Plant Growth for the win. It doesn't require concentration, is permanent, covers a ONE HUNDRED FOOT RADIUS and THERE IS. NO. SAVE. So it doesn't matter if you are a goblin or a Tarrasque, it still gets you. A creature in the area with 30 feet of movement can only cover 6 feet with their move, so you have all day to pick them off. You can even shape the area to leave your allies out of the effect. It actually controls the battlefield, not a monster or two.

Let me tell you a fun story about Tasha's Hideous laughter. So our party was hired to assassinate a guy. We would get paid more if we did it quietly. We shadowed the guy for a while and discovered his routine, 23 hours at his near impenetrable fortress, and about an hour overseeing shipments at the nearby docks. Naturally, we decided to ambush him at the docks, but docks are crowded and have guards. We were confident we could get out of line of sight from most guards / pedestrians, but no one had silence. I had a bit of a grappling build, so I had the idea that we could do a running tackle and get the fight underwater. This ends up being the plan we go with, and within seconds of rolling initiative, splish splash we're in the water. For those of you who haven't had the joy of fighting underwater, let me save you some time. It is awful. Everyone has disadvantage on everything basically. Thankfully, we bypassed this by the bard casting Tasha's Hideous Laughter on the guy once he was underwater. The funny thing about laughing is it isn't possible to hold your breath at the same time. They poor guy passed out and died after 20 or so seconds, didn't have to do a single point of damage to him. And that is the story of how Terri got a Flame-tongue greatsword.

"They're trapped in there with the barbarian!" That invisible wall isn't going to be invisible for much longer then... By round four it will probably be solid red, or whatever other color of blood the critter may have...

Really liking the decision to look at 5th level and lower spells in these "best spell" guides because I've played so many games that die out before even having those higher level spells available. You guys are awesome at what you do.

If you're looking for the TL;DW: 4:12 Tasha's Hideous Laughter 7:51 Web 11:33 Hypnotic Pattern 15:04 Banishment 18:32 Wall of Force 22:09 Honorable Mentions

My favorite use of Force Wall was keeping a cave in from collapsing on the party as we escaped a secret Mind-Flayer base hidden in a cave. As we ran to the door, with out squidly friends on our tail, I dropped the spell and crushed a great deal of them when the rocks fell. Quite literally, Rocks Fall, Everybody dies.

Spike growth can destroy low level melee armies

In my first time ever DMing a 5e game (2nd time ever DMing) my all new players to DnD in their first session were on an airship being attacked by aarakocra bandits like 1,000 feet in the air. One of my players, a Ancient One Warlock, cast Tasha's hideous laughter on one of the bandits still flying over the edge of the ship and he failed the save. The bandit immediately fell out of sight of the players. The rest of the battle played out over the next 3 turns. I kept rolling the save for the bandit as he was falling and he kept failing. After the battle was over my Warlock player asked did that guy who fell out of the sky die. I rolled one last save for him, failed, and died as he hit the ground. I told the player you lose concentration on the spell as the bandit splatters across the ground and the whole table cheered in laughter.

I cracked up over "The Playpen" XD

Whenever I see or use Tasha's hideous laughter I always remember the monty phyton world funniest joke sketch. That spell is essentially a nerfed version of the thing.

"As a spellcaster you're going to have a wide array of spells to choose from" Warlock: Excuse me?

I know you guys weren't going for high level abilities, but a wizard with school of illusion is unmatched for battlefield control. By the 14th level they get illusory reality, which means they can use Silent Image to create cages/walls/whatever and make them real. By the 18th level if they pick Silent Image as one of their spells to cast as a cantrip, they can literally cantrip cages on top of everyone. Not quiet as awesome as wall of force, but the shear re-usability is amazing.

"Trap them in the Wall of Force with the barbarian. We call it the 'playpen.'" I'm dying xD

Been playing a Warlock for a while now. 1st lvl Faerie fire has done so much for my team facing those slightly overpowerd for their chalangerating enemies.

My Sorceress loves Wall of Force. Bubble a Dragon, fight the rest. Thank you, Staff of Power.

“Talk about the killing joke” that. That broke me.

Could we get a video on low level spells that scale well? :o

Just the other day I used Spike Growth to great effect against a band of charging Orcs, our Ranger and other ranged characters could pick off enough to make the fight easy, fun times :)

Probobly unpopular opinion but Sleet storm is one of my favs when it comes to crowd control if you want to have some distiance in combat and if you have a druid that throws entangle on top of that good luck on getting out that . Heard this combo somewhere months ago may eaven have been here idk .

Great list guys! All really good spells. I might like the hold person/monster spells a bit less than you, otherwise, it's pretty much identical to what I would choose. Some other low level battlefield control spells I think are very good: Fog Cloud, Sleet Storm, Fear, Slow, Bigby's Hand and Watery Sphere

4:35 It's Word's funniest joke from monty python. Polimorph + Any kind of earth moving spell to bury them alive. I had great moment with banishment. Mad sorcerer summoned powerful demon(that one was ment to be big boss). I had banishment ready. Boss defeated in one turn.

Good to see Web on here. That spell is seriously under-rated

I love your guy's content so much, very informative without the side effect that some DnD channels get, as in acting like they are god among us who just simply want to learn. It is relieving to learn from someone who does not want you to rip and tear their skull off barbarian rage style.

Sebastian Crowe knows a thing or two about setting webs on fire

Every time a party member has responded to my hypnotic pattern with an area of affect spell I’ve wanted to cry. “Oh cool, you have them all frozen in a group; fireball!” “NOOOOOOOO!!!!”

My list: 5. Scatter (EXTREMELY underrated) 4. Hypnotic Pattern 3. Web 2. Plant Growth 1. Wall of force - Innkeeper Vase Odin

I've been playing Solasta lately to get into D&D, and I've found that Hypnotic Pattern is just awesome. If I can get multiple enemies with it I'll then have the team focus on them one at a time. It can make a hard battle so much easier. Banishing a creature also helps a lot. Even if they do come back you take the enemy force down by one making it a lot easier, and by time they come back (if they do) you'll likely have killed a few enemies and now you can just all gang up on that one

I really like Watery Sphere personally, especially if you can catch another spell caster with it. If they try to cast a spell with a verbal component they will start drowning and be dead next round. I also used it as an air tight vehicle to move the party through some poison gas once.

Wall of force sounds like that spell that I’d use when I inevitably piss the barbarian off

my college of lore bard had all of the 5, plus poly, phantasmal force, and the mandolin that gives disadvantages to ST XD

DM let me cast Dispel Magic on a summoned elemental. As I was casting it during the summoning, and was a 5 lv. Cleric, he dropped the CR from 9th to a 5th lv. elemental.

Thank you for posting the clock reference point for each spell discussed. This helped me go back and relisten to certain sections. You guys rock!

Fantastic breakdown of spells guy, love your style of delivery too. Been watching alot of your vids over the last week or so and not once have I felt spoken down to, which is a rare commodity in D&D content sometimes!

I think that the College of Lore Bard beats out the Wizard as the master of battlefield control in 5e because they can have access to EVERY battlefield control spell (including Wall of Force) and also use Cutting Words as needed for some precision battlefield control in the very moment. What is more, the Bard can use their high charisma + proficiency + expertise in social skills to add an extra element to battlefield control that a wizard just can't compete with.

I love these options, and I personally have fallen in love with the Druid's Entangle and Spike Growth. I understand they are more pointed towards lower level play or things that permanently grounded for that difficult terrain and bonus damage for the smaller foes that only have melee options. I still completely agree with this list, but just wanted to voice my opinion on these great druid spells

While it is a high level spell, antigravity is one of my absolute favorites. It essentially requires magical movement to escape, which at the very least requires a full action, and they still have to leave the area. It gets even better if you have fly speed, or combo it with traps and aoe. I had a major Dragon villian catch all of the melee characters in an antigravity, then had free access to the backline, as few martial classes have any answer to antigravity.

No mention of Slow? I've personally used it to decimate enemy Action Economy in my game. Sure they can repeat the saves at the end of each turn, but if you get 4-6 targets in it for a few rounds it cuts off multiattacks, potentially limits enemy spellcasters, removes the enemies' Attacks of Opportunity and reduces their speed and AC allowing your frontline to carve through them easier.

One of my groups ended a big boss battle before it even began using Polymorph. We had to assault a cultists keep that had an enormous dire drake on top. We were trying to figure out the best way to infiltrate and take out the keep. I knew that we needed to deal with the drake first because it had control of the sky. One of the other players suggested dropping a rock on top of it from the cliff. We discovered that there were no rocks big enough to throw down. Then I remembered that I had Polymorph. I changed into a woolly mammoth and dropped into it. I dealt so much damage from the drop alone, and survived, that not only was the drake taken out, but I then proceeded to trample any cultists that survived the impact. The DM wasn't even able to ask for an initiative roll by the time the keep had been cleared.

I'm new to D&D and this channel had given me so much helpful information. I love it! Great job and can't wait to catch up on all your videos and see what new ones you come up with.

This is one of the reasons why I take 1 damage cantrip, 1 scaling damage spell from each level if there is one, at least 1 control spell from each level, and then everything else is utility with the only exception being if there is a unique damage type that is more rare. I would much rather have utility and control over damage when it comes to my spells due to how few casts of each spell I can get. Where as the cantrip (as long as it scales) is more or less my normal weapon and mundane weapons are only for either RP or for zones of no magic.

Man, I love seeing videos like this because many players would not believe how easy encounters can be made with tactical use of good control spells. So often, we try to build our characters to be the "most powerful," whether we mean to or not. But, trust me, as a veteran adventurer, it's most often the players which find good uses of their resources to shut down the opponents which truly shine in combat. I don't care if you dish out 5 times more damage than the rest of us; if the druid and wizard just found a way to trivialize most combat encounters before they begin, your min-maxed barbarian just became a useless sack of dead weight everybody else must now drag around

Don't forget that Tasha is great against spellcasters. Its can be used to break concentration

Happy New year's! I enjoy these 'best thing for the thing' videos. Is there one for feats for spellcasters?

Great episode. I love the strategic spells.

i honestly think the diviner can do a pretty nice battlefield controller, forcing bad roll to lose saving throw if needed

I’m partial to the control spells that have additional versatility like Levitate, Polymorph, or Bigby’s. I like having options.

I just randomly stumbled upon your channel and I think it’s awesome and you will become one of The big channels one day I hope you get more subs

My favorite D&D channel. Every video you put up is logical and well thought out. It is difficult to catch you mistakes, and for that, I salute you.

Archfey Warlock: Plant Growth + Hunger of Hadar + Forceful Eldritch Blast + Devil’s Sight Average movement of 30 will only be able to move 15 feet even with dash action. 20 foot radius, they go 15 feet out after taking damage, push 10 feet back in, take damage again and move out 15 feet. Point is you can push them back into the damage a lot of times, dealing a good amount of guaranteed damage and more if they fail Dex throws. Best of all Plant Growth means they won’t be going anywhere quickly. If the don’t use dash action, then they can only move 5 feet (7.5 rounded down). My favorite way to use plant growth is to cast it on a wall cutting out areas of its effect to make my patron’s symbol across a giant 100 foot area. Yay, Vandalism in the name of the Archfey deity of Chaos.

Sleep worth honorable mention for level 1 spell - its the king of level 1 at level 1 control spells, and the fact it doesn't give a save means even very high level enemies can be knocked out by a sleep spell - it starts out with 5d8 and gains +2d8 per level.at level 4 you can be dealing 11d8 hp "damage" against an enemy with often high AC, Legendary Resistances, etc. Web - worth noting, you can cast on yourself against melee attackers to prevent them from getting close to you.

Just subbed, love the content and I really admired your unique uses of the spell Phantasmal force, very creative, I'm just about to play a new D&D session and I'm definitely going to attempt to acquire that spell. Thank you for shedding light on these intuitive and fun ideas you guys.

Perfect timing guys! I need to level up my Wizard character this weekend and didn't know which level 2 spells to take. Thank you for the inspiration!

I’ve personally had a lot of success with entangle.

One combination I would like you to take note of is... Maelstrom and Transmute Rock. Usable by a single caster they can take out a large group.

I'm really surprised Grease wasn't mentioned... but otherwise good list.

Great advice, and bonus cool points for the shout-out to Rorschach!

The Druid is horrendously offended at this list. Entangle>Web. It has a longer duration but can be dispelled with a CANTRIP. And is only very slightly easier to get out of. Oh and did I mention that entangle is level one and Web is level two?

Banishment is great, but it's still a runner up to slow at 4th level. You also seem to have a blind spot for spells which mix control with damage, like maelstrom, wrathful smite, and synaptic static.

Im going to be playing a bard thats filled with crowd control spells so im excited so this video will help me

Did an old one shot some years ago. I was playing a blackguard, and my friend was an earth cleric. We were assaulted by a couple of ogre sized demons, and he grew in size (can't remember the name of the spell), then grappled with it, and proceeded to earth glide (I think that is the right name) it into the ground, and left it there. I was blown away by that.

How about Levitate as an alternative to Hold Person? Not only does it leave two enemies flailing helplessly in the air for up to 10 minutes if you twin it, it is also a pretty good versatility spell?

polymorph in general is one of the best spells just for how much you can do with it

LOL... These guys... I've been playing DnD for 20 years, and been DMing for the last 12 on and off and I can't get over how serious these guys are with their explanation of battlefield control. It's like I'm watching an actual combat training video :D

I love your vids guys, it helped reignite my love for dnd. Just one tiny addition to everything you said, if you play a Lore Master Wizard, you can choose what saving throw a creature must make...Sleet Storm as an intelligence saving throw for example devastating. Thanks for all your hard work.

my level 8 arcane trickster uses grease, tasha's hideous laughter, and web for battlefield control.

wall of force with barbarian aka cage match "Bone saw is ready!"

The way you said "....Talk about the killing joke" was SO COOL!

20:30 is the best! "we call it the playpen". I'm dying right now! 🤣

*Hideous Laughter is the new Banishment*

You missed an implication that makes Hideous laughter even better. I’m happy you mentioned the flying creatures going prone. Quick question, can you hold your breath while laughing? Hideous Laughter immediately starts the drowning process! Giving creatures that can’t breathe water a round or two before they drop to 0hp.

An Artificer at level 11 can store a whole bunch of Web spell charges in an item using their spell storing item ability. This can easily be 8 or 10 uses of web cast by another creature. Even their homunculus servant could use the item while flying about.

We call it the playpen LMFAO

Interesting selection, though I guess that it mostly has to do with your definition on a control spell. For me, a control spell is a spell that dictates what you enemies are capable of, and what options you shut off. For first level, my favorite is earth tremor, cause it's non concentration and creates difficult terrain allowing you to control the movement of ground based enemies. As an honorable mention is dissonant whispers because location on the battlefield is huge. For 2nd I fancy arcane lock, to separate enemies and force them to take different routes. For 3rd, if you have setup time, leomands tiny hut creates a bunker that can't be destroyed except by a disintegrate, and people can step out, fire spells and arrows and step back in. If you don't have setup time, sleet storm is phenomenal. Huge aoe, cause saves every round to fall prone, it's difficult terrain so melee units are boned, it's heavily obscured so ranged units can't attack and spellcasters suffer too, AND it forces a con save from no damage for enemy spellcasters to maintain concentration. Invulnerability won't save you now! Yeah, that spell has saved my players so many times when enemy reinforcements start to show up. For 4th I'm partial to wall of fire, cause sure if the enemy really wants to run through it they can, but that requires desperation or some serious gall. For 5th, wall of force is my favorite spell in the game, but don't you dare underestimate the power of Transmute Rock. 4:1 movement, and if they end their turn in the mud they become restrained, and it takes an action for them to pull themselves out... oh, and it's not concentration, and it can destroy battlements such as castle walls.

Will definitely have to try out Wall of Force now.

I love the fantasy behind the spell banishment.😍 It does so much for world building role-playing and Immersion. ☺️

Predictions: Slow, hold person, wall spells (fire, force, light) I only got one right

I had a wizard in my party use Wall of Force to collar an Ancient Black Dragon and keep it grounded. From that point, the fight was just a no-holds-barred beatdown. That poor dragon......

Hey dudes, keep up the great job on the channel! I think one spell that deserves the list is Suggestion. "jump on one leg for 8 hours" or as once at the table my cleric had the big bad fire giant tell our party all he knew about his dragon boss while we killed his minions :)

Guys, some of the best parts of your videos are when you give anecdotes of how a spell can be used creatively. You should do that more often!

Command is definitely my favorite one. While it is limited to one turn if you are creative enough it can go for way more. Flee is the obvious one. They spend all their turn running away so they need another full turn to come back. However, my favorite one is strip. They take of their armor so their ac goes to 0, They need at least one hand to strip so they have to drop their weapon if it is one-handed or drop one of their weapons if they have 2 one-handed weapons. All of this plus the turn wasted is just amazing.

Shouldn't web also be a druid spell? I've been wondering for a while now and I still got no answer.

Circle of the moon druid as an earth elemental + Whirlwind. Cast whirlwind, transform as your bonus action, and sink beneath the earth. You can keep concentration while transformed and the earth elemental having tremorsense allows you to keep the whirlwind on top of your targets as long as they aren't airborne

Your latest spell combo vid made me come back to this. :-)

I know you limited the list to 5th level and down, for usability reasons. But, rituals don't consume slots... Forbiddance, from the Cleric list, is pretty amazing. Obviously, it is defensive in nature. But control is control, and the combination of huge area, long duration, no concentration and no slots has GOT to earn honorable mention.

I killed an adult red dragon with a wall of force... My party was ambushed by a red dragon after the BW and a few rounds in combat it took to the sky so i polymorph into a Red Dragon and give chase meeting him in dragon melee thousands of feet in the sky my party members watching two red specks collide far overhead. But it a real dragon so it tears my fake ass up in 3 runs it's clear im going to lose this fight hp is real low. I drop early falling from the sky reverting to my wizard form and soon find myself at terminal velocity with a POed RD swooping down towards me gaining ground going to catch up in 2 rounds still above 1000 ft. So i ask the DM is it going faster than terminal velocity? To which he said yes what do you do? I cast wall of force about 5 ft. In front of the dragon, with a big ass grin on my face... it took 26d6 damage because terminal velocity is 20d6. Snapped its neck fast. So i float down with Feather fall torn to shreds no sign of the dragon just a speck of red unmoving in the sky. Dismissing that wall as the party starts to move on and allowing the dragon to crash to the ground as the party walks on like bad asses with a dead dragon in a dust cloud in the background epic moment so sweet, until the ranger ruins my epic moment of glory and runs back to "harvest the teeth, ckaws, scales, and head for mounting" grrrrr... just walk away like a bad ass bro but no...

My bard used Plant Growth to lock down the enemy team in a large arena fight and we easily picked them off with our bows as they tried to rush in and close the distance. My character was out of the 60 ft range to be counter-spelled by the enemy spell caster and we picked him off first. Plant Growth uses no concentration and it's permanent so you can't even dispell it. Important to note, it' doesn't create difficult terrain it makes 1 foot of movement cost 4 feet so even rangers are slowed. As a bonus, you can use the 8-hour version of the spell for RP purposes and ask farmers if they would like to double their harvest to either make some money and/or be celebrated as a local hero.

A good, honourable mention, good! Great list.

You made a mistake in this video. Its one that many players make, but is a big one none the less. You described Web as having a radius of 20 ft. This is incorrect. Radius a straight line from the center to the circumference of a circle or sphere. Web is a cube, and therefore doesn't have a radius. This isn't just nitpicking, because spells that say they create a radius of a certain distance actually cover twice that much space. So while Web creates a 20 ft cube and covers 20 ft of space, Darkness creates a 15 ft radius sphere and covers 30 ft. I'm not saying Web isn't good. I'm saying that your Fireballs are probably half as large as they should be.

Divination Wizard + Banishment = bye bye

I'm pretty new to D&D so far and have only played a few games... But my favorite moment thus far was using thunderwave to keep shoving a boss out of their safety circle (they were damaged if outside it) over and over again. It was hilarious

Great content once again! Always look forward to your videos. Have y'all put thought toward doing something like this by level? Like a best/worst 5 level one spells and such? Would love to see you guys weigh in on something like that.

Wall of Force is great but I think you are over estimating how "ultimate" it is in terms of battlefield control....if you are casting 5th level spells for wall of force, it is highly likely an enemy spell caster is casting 6th level spells which means disintegrate. No saving throw needed the wall just disappears. So yes you costed the spell caster 1 turn and a 6th level spell which is good but you lost a turn and a 5th level spell so the exchange isnt that big of one....especially when you compare it to successfully banishing the target, holding them, etc which could last multiple turns and takes lower level spells to do.

Sooo if i am an acrane trickster my dmg and dnf is gonna be so high Hideous laughter i can incaptitate a foe then stab the others so thats nice, and it could be a distration

Hypnotic Pattern is extremely powerful. Good call-out fellas!

This list is so great, I agree with all of them. Wall of force is so adaptable it's amazing.

First my dungeon dudes