Hello spellcasters of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 22nd episode of our third level spell series. Today we have quite arguably one of the most overlooked yet amazing 3rd level spells. If used with a slight grain of creativity…i’ll get into that in a little bit. But today we’re taking a look at dnd 5e feign death spell.
This spell is usable by the bard, cleric, druid and the wizard and it is found in the good old players handbook so we should all have access to it. Now without further ado let’s take a quick look at its mechanics here so we can understand exactly what we’re talking about.
Table of Contents
Mechanics
- Level: 3rd
- Casting Time: 1 Action (Ritual)
- Range/Area: Touch
- Components: V, S, M *
- Duration: 1 Hour
- School: Necromancy
- Attack/Save: None
- Damage/Effect: Blinded
The effect at a glance is as followed: A willing creature is put into a death like state. This lasts for the spells duration or until the caster uses an action to dismiss the spell. While in this state, the target is: blinded, incapacitated and given resistance to all damage except psychic. The target’s speed is reduced to zero. Also poison and disease is delayed for the spells duration.
So very cool stuff there! The cast time is one action and it can be ritual casted. The range is touch, the duration is one hour, the components are verbal, material and somatic. If you’re curious about that material component it is a pinch of graveyard dirt which is really cool! And the school if you haven’t figured it out already is necromancy. Now let’s take a look at the full description here so we can better flush out exactly how this spell operates.
Description
You touch a willing creature and put it into a cataleptic state that is indistinguishable from death. For the spell’s duration, or until you use an action to touch the target and dismiss the spell, the target appears dead to all outward inspection and to spells used to determine the target’s status.
The target is blinded and incapacitated, and its speed drops to 0. The target has resistance to all damage except psychic damage. If the target is diseased or poisoned when you cast the spell, or becomes diseased or poisoned while under the spell’s effect, the disease and poison have no effect until the spell ends. * – (a pinch of graveyard dirt)
Very cool stuff! God is this cool! So a couple things, i want to point out in relation to a few other spells. If you use something like detect magic on a creature affected by a feign death what happens. So technically the only thing you be able to figure out is the school of magic which would be necromancy. Also check out what creature is immune to force damage 5e.
So all the dm would be able to tell you is there’s an aura of necromancy around this corpse because it would technically be considered a corpse. Another interesting thing about this spell is the use of a willing creature. So when you combine it with spells like suggestion or fast friends or a couple other spells we’ve covered up until this point there’s a good chance you could convert them the willing creatures.
There’s also a strong argument to be made for the average person, not really understanding what you’re casting right, like it would be kind of difficult for them to figure it out if they haven’t had some form of magical training up the third level or beyond.
So you could say something like hey man i’m gonna cast a spell used to protect you…are you okay with that and he’s like yeah sure and then you cast feign death dnd 5e on them, card them away and throw them in a wood chipper or something so there’s a lot of weird ways you could partner this up with other spells and the fact that it’s a ritual cast makes it even more enticing to pursue that route with.
So i’m kind of interested to see what you guys can come up with but before we get too far ahead or ourselves let’s take a quick look at some other alternative uses here.
Feign Death 5E Uses
So a great one to use is just using this as a band-aid solution until you can find a healer or until you regain some of your healing slots if you’re a cleric. So that’s one way to use this the fact that it basically removes a friendly ally from the fight entirely and gives them resistance to boot is a very tempting combo.
Outside of that you could really use this to orchestrate some complicated plans like smuggling a friend out of jail after he appears to have died kind of cool stuff! And another great use is using this to protect an important figure like a king or noble i think that would be hilarious kind of for the reasons i mentioned earlier makes them appear as though they’re entirely dead for an hour at least which is a decent amount of time and it gives them resistance to all damage except psychic sounds like a pretty safe place to be combine it with something like sanctuary if you feel obligated to go that extra mile and you’re pretty set to go.
Conclusion
That being said, what do you say about is feign death a good spell in d&d? if you have any alternative uses, ideas, combos, questions, comments or concerns please feel free to put it down beneath in the comment section. That being said, i hope you all have a great day and as always happy casting everyone.