D&D: Five Spells That Make Circle Magic Look Absolutely Busted
One of the most exciting new rules in Heroes of the Forgotten Realms is Circle Magic. Why? Because people love the possibilities.
In the new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting books, WotC introduces the idea of “Circle Magic” to D&D in the current edition. This is, in a nutshell, the idea that you and a bunch of spellcasters might all team up to cast a single spell for great effect. And indeed, it seems the power of friendship, or at least teamwork, might be the most powerful magic.
Why? Because when you have friends, even just one other Spellcaster, you can enhance your spells, allowing you to either increase a spell’s range by up to a mile, letting you rain destruction on foes from far away, make it so that Concentration isn’t as much of a burden, or, as is the case with most of the spells here, extend the duration to an absurd length. Especially when you consider the following spells with Circle Magic.
Delayed Blast Fireball
This is probably the biggest one you’ll see people talking about. If you’ve seen people talk about magic spells doing thousands of points of damage, it’s almost certainly because of Delayed Blast Fireball. It all relies on the Prolong effect of Circle Magic, which lets you extend a spell’s duration by an hour or more.
That matters especially for DBF because for every round you concentrate on it, the spell’s damage increases by 1d6, starting from 12d6. Meaning that if you increased the spell by even the smallest amount (1 hour), you’re still doing 600 rounds of concentration, for a minimum of 612d6, or an average damage of 2142. And it gets even crazier if you are able to extend the spell to 8 hours or a full 24. Is it super practical? No. Does it kill anything with hit points? Almost certainly (unless they’re immune to fireball).
Greater Invisibility
But while the splashy damage of a Delayed Blast Fireball might be hard to ignore, the real strength of a Prolong comes from the many buff spells. Greater Invisibility may be one of the most prime examples of this.
Greater Invisibility renders a creature completely invisible as long as you can maintain Concentration. Normally, it only lasts a minute, but with even a single buddy willing to spend a level 1+ spell slot, you can get an hour (that’s multiple fights) of the Invisible Condition, meaning Advantage on every attack roll and Disadvantage on attacks made at you.
Aura of Vitality
Or consider the humble Aura of Vitality spell. It’s already an incredible spell because it lets you heal 2d6 hit points as a Bonus Action just for playing. But while it originally only lasts a minute or so, you could just as easily extend that duration to an hour for a total of 1200d6 (average of 4200) points of healing, meaning you don’t have to spend a single hit die or take a short rest – or if you have a few friends (or hired spellcasters) you could extend it to a whole adventuring day and never need to actually cast a healing spell.
Sunbeam
It gets trickier to find a spell that doesn’t require Delayed Blast Fireball to keep up the damage numbers that will make people say, “Oh, that’s busted.” But consider something like Sunbeam, which gives you effectively 6d8 points of damage per round, any time you take a Magic Action to create a line of sunlight. If you can keep the Sunbeam up for even an hour, you’re putting out something like 3600d8 points of damage overall. Likely, though, you’ll be blasting a lot less. But it’s still worth the effort to keep the damage going.
Crusader’s Mantle
Although for my money, Crusader’s Mantle feels like the perfect option. It’s not that it’s outwardly busted, but whenever you or an ally within 30 feet of you hits with a weapon attack, they deal an extra d4 of radiant damage. At low levels, that’s not that much. But when you start making multiple attacks per round? The damage adds up so quickly. Sure, you have to Concentrate on it. But, if you’re going to use Circle Magic to keep the party going, this is one that would make any party happy to have you around.
Happy adventuring!
