Hello magic casters of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the fourth episode of our second level spell series. Today we’re going to be taking a look at one of the thematically very cool, but i got beef with it on mechanically but i really like thematically i don’t know i’ll it up to you guys to decide.
Today we’re gonna be taking a look at animal messenger spell this spell is usable by the bard, druid and the ranger and it is found in the good old players handbook so we should all have access to it. Now look at its mechanics and then we’ll talk about a little bit later.
Table of Contents
Mechanics
- Level: 2nd
- Casting Time: 1 Action (Ritual)
- Range/Area: 30 ft
- Components: V, S, M *
- Duration: 24 Hours
- School: Enchantment
- Attack/Save: None
- Damage/Effect: Communication
The cast time is the standard one action but it can also be ritual casted for an additional 10 minutes which is great, ritual spells in 5e super awesome. Make sure your class is the ritual tag by the way but assuming it does it’s good. The range on this is a thirty feet, the duration is a 24 hours which is pretty awesome. Don’t miss this totem animals dnd 5e.
The effect at a glance is as followed: Choose a tiny beast, and get it to deliver a message to a specified target and a described individual. The message can be 25 words and is relayed in your voice. The speed of the delivery varies based on the types of beast.
At higher levels; The duration of the spell increases by 48 hours for each slot level above second. The components are somatic, material and verbal so it’s a holy trinity spell. In any case you can also check out this what is the animal transformation spell in d&d?.
Somatic means you have to gesture with one hand, the material component in this case is a morsel of food and the spell doesn’t say it gets consumed when it kind of makes sense that it would you know you give a pet a treat he does a thing for you but whatever, And the verbal component means you speak forth an incantation.
The school is enchantment which makes a lot of sense you’re making something talk that order, otherwise can’t talk and enchantments a good way to do that. In any case let’s move on to the full description. You can also check out this is animal shapes a good spell?
Description
By means of this spell, you use an animal to deliver a message. Choose a Tiny beast you can see within range, such as a squirrel, a blue jay, or a bat. You specify a location, which you must have visited, and a recipient who matches a general description, such as
“a man or woman dressed in the uniform of the town guard” or “a red-haired dwarf wearing a pointed hat.“
You also speak a message of up to twenty-five words. The target beast travels for the duration of the spell toward the specified location, covering about 50 miles per 24 hours for a flying messenger, or 25 miles for other animals.
When the messenger arrives, it delivers your message to the creature that you described, replicating the sound of your voice. The messenger speaks only to a creature matching the description you gave. If the messenger doesn’t reach its destination before the spell ends, the message is lost, and the beast makes its way back to where you cast this spell.
At Higher Levels: If you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the duration of the spell increases by 48 hours for each slot level above 2nd. * – (a morsel of food)
Oh my goodness is on a long one, so really cool in theory to summarize super generally. Get an animal to deliver a message for you, pretty cool! What i don’t like about it, is the distance they cover are quite small. I think it ends up working out to be something like less than 2 miles an hour or something like that and there’s a ton of animals that can move fast in that all their own and a lot of them you get as familiars.
So i don’t know if you have find familair through like magic initiate or ritual caster or any of those feats, there’s no real benefit to using this, not in my opinion. The spell also doesn’t say that it makes it so the creature doesn’t need to eat or sleep or any of that stuff. So it’s really really hard for me to justify and if it’s a pivotal plot point a DM could kind of just mess you up by saying yeah the bird was waylaid by a snowstorm and couldn’t make it to the town in time.
Like there’s just a lot of ways this could kind of backfire and i don’t really like that as much as i should like i get a still low level spell and then get making those alterations might cause it to move up a level but it’s just it seems really has it to me. That being said thoug, it’s not without its fair share of interesting uses. Well let’s get to that now. Moving on to the alternative uses section here.
Alternative Uses
There’s a couple things that would be worth touching on, first and foremost if you are role playing a character who is a grand strategist. This could be a fantastic way of implementing certain plans. Use creatures that are very inconspicuous and found adjustable anywhere.
Cats, pigeons, birds, rodents would be a really common as well and get them to deliver the messages at key places, at key times to key individuals and kind of just plan your plan that way. Alternatively the fact that this is a ritual spell that does not require concentration for the duration.
You can use this multiple times on multiple different animals and through that you can achieve some sort of a nexus hub of communication, it is one-way communication but if you’re the central leader or figure that’s all you need. This would especially work well if you were a scout, waiting on or relating instructions back to the leader so that the party might catch up to where you are.
I think it could be used to great effect there, it could also be used to broker deals. In order to do this correctly however it would kind of have to imply that there’s a mutual location on which they accept information and relay it back like that does hinge on a couple things but i could definitely see it playing out.
For example between two groups of druids for example, i think that could be a very good, very cool idea. In all honesty it’s just a just a communication spell, so really anything to do with communication this should be able to one degree or another. Basically it is similar to speak with animals 5e, it would work well for relaying messages as a Spy.
Conclusion
That being said, if you have any alternative uses, interesting ideas or cool stories about animal messenger 5e i’d really like to hear them down beneath in the comments, i just like reading them, they give me a lot of ideas, they give the community a lot of ideas, it’s just a great space to be a part of. Thank you so much have a great day and as always happy casting. Keep readind animal friendship 5e | sending 5e | beast sense 5e | conjure animals |