D&D: Five Combat Cantrips That Keep On Giving
Cantrips are a spellcaster’s truest, constant companions. And these combat cantrips will keep you in the fight when all else is spent.
Cantrips are always a good time in D&D. They cost you nothing but your action – they’re useful whenever you’re out of spell slots, or if you’re playing a little more risk-averse with them, because you know your DM is just waiting for you to run out of spells before introducing the main villain of this arc of your campaign.
And in 5.5E, many cantrips got a bit of an upgrade. There are even some new ones that have exciting new wrinkles. Especially when it comes to combat. Here are five combat capable cantrips that won’t steer you wrong.
True Strike
Let’s start with one of the most glown up cantrips out there in 5.5E. True Strike has gone from being a waste of an action/cantrip selection to being strong enough to build a whole character around.
True Strike lets you make an attack with a weapon as you cast the spell. Only instead of attacking as normal, you can attack with your spellcasting stat instead of Strength or Dexterity, and can deal Radiant damage. At higher levels, you can even deal bonus damage instead. This is especially good if you combo it with a high damage weapon—at 5th level, someone with True Strike and a Greatsword will be doing 3d6 + Spellcasting mod on a single hit, outdamaging most other cantrips.
Especially since you can stack in many of the weapon boosting feats or magic weapon properties to increase the damage of your True Strike. It combos well with something like Shillelagh, too. Speaking of which…
Shillelagh
Shillelagh is good again! Not that it ever was really all that bad. But Shillelagh gets a big boost in power from two things: first of all the damage scales. Your club and/or quarterstaff will eventually do a d10, a d12, and then 2d6 damage per hit, meaning you might keep reaching for this spell.
And secondly, the way weapons are handled in 5.5E gives this a few stealth upgrades in the form of weapon mastery properties. Clubs, especially, play well with Shillelagh—they get to do good damage and offer Slow and Light as weapon mastery properties. Meaning you can dual wield with a shillelagh and another weapon with nick so you can make extra force damage attacks.
Or use the quarterstaff to topple your foes and do polearm shenanigans.
Sorcerous Burst
Sorcerours Burst is the 5.5E Sorcerer’s new toy, as the name suggests. And it condenses everything fun about D&D damage spell into a nice little package. Here’s what I mean: at its core, D&D is a game about rolling dice and celebrating when you get the biggest number. Nothing quite feels like rolling that natural 20.
But a close second is rolling a die that explodes. Which is what Sorcerous Burst does. First, you get to pick what kind of elemental damage you’re doing with your bust. Second, when your target takes their 1d8 or more damage if you roll an 8 on any of the dice you get to roll an extra d8, which also explodes.
It will feel oh so good when you are rolling 8d8 on a crit and they just keep exploding. Sure, there’s a limit, you can only ever add up to your spellcasting ability modifier in extra d8s, but that’s still more than enough to feel amazing.
Mind Sliver
D&D needs more cantrips that set you up for success. There’s a lot of focus on doing big bursts of damage, but much less on setting up teamwork combos—though those elements do exist. Take Mind Sliver.
This cantrip, if it’s successful, not only damages your foe, it also makes them subtract 1d4 from the next saving throw they roll before the end of your next turn. Meaning you or an ally can benefit from a weakened target. AND you still damage them.
Blade Ward
Finally one of the few defensive cantrips. But what a defense. Blade Ward can turn a hit into a miss. Any creature that attacks you while you’re concentrating on this spell has to subtract 1d4 from their attack roll. All that’s without your Reaction, so you can still use Shield or if you’re a Fighter do a Riposte or something wild like that.
And because it’s just a cantrip, there’s no need to fret about wasting the spell if you lose Concentration on it, or want to drop it to cast another spell to Concentrate on.
What are some of your favorite combat cantrips?
