Hello spellcasters of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 17th episode of our second level spell series. Today wer’e gonna be taking a look at what does the crown of madness do in d&d? which in my opinion is one of the coolest spells out there but a lot of people aren’t super impressed by it.
I’ll get into why i like it and why i think a lot of people aren’t super happy about it a little bit later on here but firstly it is usable by the bard, sorcerer, warlock and the wizard which is the vast majority of the main casters in the game and naturally through extension anyone else with access to their spell lists and it is found in the good old players handbook, so we should all have access to it. With that hyped up intro out of the way let’s take a look at its mechanics.
Table of Contents
Mechanics
- Level: 2nd
- Casting Time: 1 Action
- Range/Area: 120 ft
- Components: V, S
- Duration: 1 Minute (Concentration)
- School: Enchantment
- Attack/Save: WIS Save
- Damage/Effect: Charmed
Your cast time is the standard one action, the range is an absolutely insane 120 feet and the duration is a minute and it is concentration which is where a lot of criticism comes from. The effect at a glance is as followed:
Choose one humanoid you can see within range. They make a wisdom save. On a failed save becoming charmed for the duration. A twisted crown of jagged iron appears on its head and a madness glows in its eyes. Really cool!
The target must use its action before moving on each of its turns to make a melee attack against a creature other than itself that you mentally choose. The target can act normally on its turn if you choose no creature or if none are within range.
You must use your action to maintain control over the target, or the spell ends. Also the target can make a wisdom saving throw at the end of each of its turns, on a success, the spell ends. In any case you can also check out this is crown of stars a good spell?
The components are somatic and verbal meaning you have to gesture with one hand and speak forth an incantation and the school is enchantment. Oh quite a wordy one, the concentration is probably the biggest downside to this outright and the fact you constantly have to burn actions you keep up and running. In any case let’s take a look at its full description and kind of flesh it out a little bit better. Also read this 5e madness effects.
Description
One humanoid of your choice that you can see within range must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become charmed by you for the duration. While the target is charmed in this way, a twisted crown of jagged iron appears on its head, and a madness glows in its eyes.
The charmed target must use its action before moving on each of its turns to make a melee attack against a creature other than itself that you mentally choose. The target can act normally on its turn if you choose no creature or if none are within its reach.
On your subsequent turns, you must use your action to maintain control over the target, or the spell ends. Also, the target can make a Wisdom saving throw at the end of each of its turns. On a success, the spell ends.
Wow….so once again the biggest downsides are the concentration and the fact that you have to constantly burn actions to keep it up and running. The charmed effect reads as followed by the way:
The charmed creature can’t attack the charmer or target the charmer with harmful abilities or magical effects. The charmer has advantage on any ability check to interact socially with the creature. Which is important the charmed condition is not to be overlooked here and i can certainly see where people have a lot of problems with this.
It also specifies has to be a melee attack which means sadly no spells or otherwise ranged attacks. So bear that in mind as well if you’re using it. So yeah! In any case let’s move on to some alternative uses. Also read is there a truth spell in dnd?
Alternative Uses
In my opinion the best way to use this particular pell is actually out of combat. Fact of the matter is between the actions and the concentration and the limited amout of options that there are just simply better choices to pick in combat like literally any cantrip for example.
That being said though, if you were to use this on a insanely powerful enemy fighter who you know for sure can cause you a lot of grief. At the very least it will cause the enemy team a lot of headache and it will buy you some time to actually set everything up for more effective plan.
You could also have very effectively use this on creatures that have a nasty habit of running away from you or slipping away. One minute is a ton of time in combat especially if you have a larger party so that could be a great way of fixing that problem.
You could also use it on a figure of authority such as a king or noble or lord something like that and you could cause them to essentially go berserker and their guards would in a strange position or they could attack said figure or authority for fear of losing their own lives after the fact but they also couldn’t ignore the fact that he was going on a rampage.
So it’d be very interesting and would do a great job of creating a huge distraction. I think levaraging the range in this spell makes a lot of sense as well and just puts you in a good position execute a lot of otherwise a fairly complicated plans.
Conclusion
That being said, if you have any alternative uses, cool ideas or thoughts about is crown of madness a good spell? please put it down in the comment section beneath. I really appreciate reading them and i know everyone else does as well. That being said, thank you so much guys i really appreciate your time, i hope you all have a wonderful day and as always happy casting. Also check out this suggestion 5e | blade spell 5e | cloud of daggers 5e | darkness 5e | phantasmal force 5e |