Hello magic casters of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 14th episode of our third level spell series. We have a rather interesting spell in store for us, as so far as to say i think wizards of the coast is implying something about certain classes and if they’re not i would certainly say that this is useful regardless. Today we’re gonna be taking a look at what does crusaders mantle spell do? which is just such a cool sounding spell i tell you.
It is usable by the paladin and it is found in the players handbook so we should all have access to it. Now a quick aside here, i’ve never actually seen the spell used in play before. The paladin has a nasty habit of not really using a lot of spells and instead focusing on smites. I do think that is a mistake more often than not but then again it does strongly depend on the campaign you’re running. The reason i think it’s a mistake by the way is they just have so many cool spells. In any case let’s take a quick look at its mechanics so you can understand exactly what we’re talking about.
Table of Contents
Mechanics
- Level: 3rd
- Casting Time: 1 Action
- Range/Area: Self (30 ft sphere)
- Components: V
- Duration: 1 Minute (Concentration)
- School: Evocation
- Attack/Save: None
- Damage/Effect: Radiant
The effect at a glance is as followed: Friendly creatures within the area deal an extra 1d4 radiant damage on a successful weapon attack. The cast time is one action, the range is technically self but the actual area of effect is 30 feet. The duration is 1 minute and it is a concentration spell. The components are verbal, the school’s evocation and the damage type once again is radiant. Now without further ado let’s take a look at the full description here so we can figure out exactly what we’re talking about.
Description
Holy power radiates from you in an aura with a 30-foot radius, awakening boldness in friendly creatures. Until the spell ends, the aura moves with you, centered on you. While in the aura, each nonhostile creature in the aura (including you) deals an extra 1d4 radiant damage when it hits with a weapon attack.
Very cool stuff! So a couple things i want to address here really quick! Firstly technically speaking there’s no direct limit on the amount of creatures that can be effective. Secondly it doesn’t specify humanoids, so if you pair this up with something like let’s say animate dead, conjure animals or various other summoning spells. This is the potential to be very impactful.
Also something worth noting out is it says per weapon attack which essentially means that this stacks with multi attack so quick note there that’s gonna be important for a little bit later on. Now without further ado, let’s take quick moment and check on some alternative uses here. You can also check out this spirit shroud 5e.
Alternative Uses
So this is a very interesting spell in the way that it deals radiant damage and as i’m sure you know there are a lot of creatures who take radiant damage a little bit more seriously it that is so far as to say they’re vulnerable to it. In addition to that a lot of those same creatures have very interesting ways of hiding themselves. Also read this destructive wave 5e.
So if you were to let’s say use this as a way to inflict small amounts of damage on people to confirm whether or not they belong to these more often than not on dead types, then i would consider to be a pretty good use. Outside of that this is a great spell same with ceremony arming a militia.
By this what i mean is use this spell to provide an offensive boost, this is especially good in campaigns like curse of strahd for example. And then you use the marriage component of ceremony to boost their defensive stats, i think that is a very interesting combination and although i alluded to a little bit earlier, this is a great way of making sure everyone can put the pain down on certain undead, vampires and zombies are great examples of this. As both of them have effects that are nullified by radiant damage. So it’s pretty interesting.
Conclusion
That being said, if you have any alternative uses, thoughts, questions, concerns, ideas or stories please put them down beneath in the comment section. That being said, i hope you all have a great day and as always happy casting everyone. Also check out this aura of vitality 5e.