Hello there magic practitioners of all shapes and sizes! Thank you so much for using my spellbook, alright let’s get started on the second step to our cantrip journey we have a blade ward spell dnd 5e. The first one was acid splash if you haven’t check that out yet i highly recommend it. This guy is usable by the bard, sorcerer, warlock and wizard spell sheet. So most of the spellcasters and it is found in the players handbook so everyone should have access to it. Alright well let’s take a look at the mechanics.
Table of Contents
Mechanics
- Casting time: 1 Action
- Range: Self
- Duration: 1 Round
- Effect: Resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage.
- Components: Somatic and Verbal
- School: Abjuration
So cast time only one action which is standard for most cantrips. Range is self, duration is one round and the effect is resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. There’s a caveat to that but i’ll get into it later. The components are somatic and verbal which means not only do you have to speak it, they have to gesture your hand as well and the school is abjuration. All right, let’s do a quick description. Also read this dodge article.
Description
You extend your hand and trace a sigil of warding in the air. Until the end of your next turn, you have resistance against bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage dealt by weapon attacks.
Now weapon attacks is the keyword there and is the one phrase that turn this cantrip from pretty good into not that great at all especially at lower levels. All right, so essentially what it breaks down is slashing damage, piercing damage, bludgeoning damage but you take half damage. That’s what resistance means. Don’t miss out this friends 5e.
If you already have resistance to any of these damages that you cast played word on it. You’ll have immunity to those damages which is pretty cool in the right context. With some magical items you might have a pretty good chance of using it. Now let’s get into some alternate uses. Also read this bonus action guide.
Alternative Uses
So imagine you’re with a group and you break a lot. Is your punishment you either have to get lashings or if you get hit or you have your arrow shot at you from some guardsmen in order to repent or something of those nature’s. You can also read magic weapons.
That would be great time for you to cast blade ward especially if you’re squish your character and your AC might not be the highest and i know it says that it has to be dealt by weapon attacks but i would homebrew it so traps will be allowed in there, so if you’re going down a dungeon and you’re one of the squishier characters that i would pass it on myself if your DM allows it that’d be great. Also check out dancing lights 5e.
Another interesting use i saw for it is getting the most bang for your buck when they came to armor of agathys a lot of warlocks some gish mages and eldritch knights might be able to take advantage of that. In addition the eldritch knight might be able to take even more advantage of it, because they can get that extra attack right.
So that might be one way to do it and they’ll also get action surge might be another good way to do it. But for most characters i couldn’t really imagine playing with this a lot like circumstantially huge upside but overall i’m not too so on it.
Blade ward is useful in a number of ways. It can be used by spell casters to improve their chances of maintaining concentration. Less damage taken means less dc required for the con check. If you need the haste to stay on the barbarian or any other spell that is crucial to stay in play, blade ward can be used to dissuade enemies from targeting the spell caster to remove the spell.
Its also useful for conjuration and necromancy wizards and other classes with those spells. Animate dead, control undead and most conjuration spells either have no action required or only a bonus action required to give commands to minions. A necromancer can defend themselves with blade ward, focus on a concentration spell and command their undead all in the same turn and still have their reaction, movement and interaction.
Yes it would take two turns to set it up but you can do it and still not sacrifice your ability to do damage or support the party. Blade Ward is also great with quicken spell. Bonus action concentration spell, action blade ward. Between the resistance from blade ward and the sorcerer’s con save proficiency your not losing concentration any time soon. Throw in war caster and you can have advantage on the con check as well.
Between blade ward damage resistance, sorcerer’s proficiency in con and war caster you have a low con check, proficiency and advantage on the roll. You can make a very strong control sorcerer fresh out of the gate with a variant human.
Add in shadow origin for the hound and heighten spell and you have the ability to spread disadvantage to two targets for spells like hold person. Focus on tossing out hastes and slows, dominate person and monster, sleet storm and the like. Pick up fire ball for damage and chill touch to negate healing and deal damage. Blade ward is a spell that is useful for anyone that wants to do any kind of control based plays or has the ability to cast more than one spell a turn.
Its based heavily around the three pillars of play. Combat, exploration and social. Most characters excel at two of those area’s just by design. Just about anything can work well if you know what area its good at and how its play style is.
Certain classes are not good in certain situations though and a lot of the bad spells and abilities are ones that were not used in the right situation. Blade ward for example requires an action to cast. A lot of people write it off because of that.
Some classes have more use of their bonus action or reaction than others mitigating the action requirement. Necromancers, certain other wizards and sorcerer’s can do damage or contribute with just their concentration and bonus action allowing them the option to cast blade ward if need be or another damaging cantrip or spell. Another benefit to blade ward is that its a cantrip so you can use it all day long and drastically increase your hp pool.
Conclusion
If you have any creative uses for it, i’d really like to hear it down in the comments below. With that in mind guys thank you so much for checking out my spellbook and i’m looking forward to doing the next one. Don’t miss out these interesting blog posts such as booming blade 5e | true strike 5e | chill touch 5e | prestidigitation 5e.