The Five Best Damage Dealing Spells in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

Kelly mentioned Fireball, you don't need proficiency in insight to see that one coming.

Cast spiritual weapon It takes the form of an arrow PC starts whistling COME A LITTLE BIT CLOSER...

Fun fact: Animate Objects turns the objects into full creatures, meaning they can take opportunity attacks as well.

The opening joke is actually a double pun. "You can't say spell 'damage' without 'mage'" also has 'spell damage' in it. Peculiar.

I'm 21 years old and I'm getting into D&D. I bought the Starter Pack and I'll soon be DMing "The Lost Mine of Phandelver" for my family, and then my friends. I got into D&D because of Critical Role's second campaign, but you Dungeon Dudes are the reason why I actually will try my hand at DMing. I just wanted to let you know. You're awesome.

I remember once when my party and I had been commissioned to deal with a Medusa in the nearby woods. We were unaware of just how dangerous such creatures were, and so eagerly agreed. The Medusa got the drop on us, and after only a few rounds of combat, my entire party had been petrified, leaving just me (a low health wizard) to deal with a nearly full health Medusa. There was only one thing for it, and I turn to my DM and say: "I cast animate objects." Now, it wasn't rare for me to cast this on some coins when damage needed to be done, and so my DM nods to me and starts to set the scene: "You reach into your coin pouch, grabbing a handful of coins and-." "No no." I interrupt, motioning to my party. "I cast animate objects on the party." The DM considers this for a moment, rubs his chin, and then nods. "You animate the statues that were formerly your party." From there, defeating the Medusa was simple. My allies were already petrified, so couldn't be petrified further, and many of them got an AC buff from being animated in this way. Morale of the story, always pick Animate Objects. Edit: A lot of people are saying 'this isn't how the spell works' or 'that's not what the rules say'. Let me tell you all something, in D&D there is only 1 rule that matters: Everyone is having fun. The DM can bend, break, ignore, or houserule anything they want, but the entire group should always be having fun. My spell gave the DM a way to still involve the group rather than having them sit and watch as he and I rolled dice at one another to what would have likely been a TPK. To the people asking for specifics, the other players were limited to the actions of the animate objects spell. On my turn I had to give them a single command as a bonus action, and on their turn they had to carry out that command to the best of their ability. Their HP, AC, damage, and hit modifiers all became that listed under the spell. The only thing the DM changed was that we kept initiative order, this was so that the players still felt involved rather than just tacked onto my turn. Ironically, the pacifist bard in our party actually landed the killing blow, and this led to a whole story arc of him feeling guilty for killing, even though he was acting under my magical influence.

Please talk to your DM to find if conjure animals is right for you.

I swear to God you don't know how many times I'm dming a large boss monster and then the sorcerer in the back goes, "I'M GOING TO CONJURE 8 WOLVES"

3:35 Eldritch Blast 6:28 Spiritual Weapon 8:52 Fireball 11:50 Spirit Guardians 15:13 Animate Objects 19:00 Honourable Mentions Guiding Bolt Dissonant Whispers Conjure Animals Destructive Wave

Whenever our party defeats a dragon, I harvest the dragon's teeth and use Animate Objects on those, almost like caltrops. When I fire them at an enemy my DM allows me to let the damage become magical based on the type of dragon they're harvested from (e.g. cold damage from white dragon teeth, acid damage from black dragon teeth, etc.)

" ... Animate several of the coins from a Dragons hoard, which then beat it to death." Oh, the horrrid , delicious, karmic and hillarious irony. 😂

"I'd like to buy some crossbow bolts." "Sure, but why? You don't carry a crossbow." Later: "Animate objects! Swarm of bolts!"

Rogues carry a bag of ball bearings. Animate Object and do a Magneto.

Part of me feels good seeing Animate Objects finally get the recognition it deserves, but part of me is a little bummed that the secret is out... my wizards bag of marbles used to be my ultimate trump card lol. There was also something just incredibly satisfying about rp-ing my kookie old spellcaster busily scurrying around after a battle re-collecting all of his lost marbles. lol

Hellish Rebuke: The only damaging spell you can cast as a REACTION

One of my favorite damage dealing combinations is just two cantrips, but it also requires two feats to really lay down the hurt. Create Bonfire, Thorn Whip, Sentinel, and War Caster. You lay a bonfire under your targets feet while they're in melee with you, it does its damage. When they get their turn they'll probably try to move out of that square because standing in fire is a bad idea. So you use war caster to make your opportunity attack with thorn whip, which does it's damage, and lets you drag them back into the square with the bonfire, which does it's damage again because they're entering the square. Then Sentinel drops their movement to zero, so they have to end their turn in that square, at which point the bonfire does its damage again. so that's one thorn whip damage and three bonfire damages in a single round. At 17th level that's 16d8 damage from two cantrips. Because of sentinel they can't even Disengage to avoid this nonsense.

we all know the best damage you can deal to a BBEG is Vicius Mockery, cuz it hurt even the GM.

I think the value of magic missile is highly underappreciated. Force damage that can't miss and can't be reduced outside of resistance. I think this is highly efficient.

I never thought of Animate Objects as a good spell, much less a great one. It's little gems of knowledge like that that keep me coming back and watching your new videos. I am already excited to use it now!

I am currently playing a divine sorcerer and he has access to almost every one if these spells, plus the metamagic... Let me tell you, It is called Divine for a reason...