Underrated But AMAZING 2nd Level Spells 

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I remember one time where magic mouth lead to the downfall of a thieves guild. The party wizard took the spell for funzies and began creating magic mouths on small fake coins that had the function of screaming alert repeatedly whenever someone other than the owner would as much touch their gold pouch. He would sell them for 30gp, and after a while, some nobles would employ him to make house alarms, and safe alarms. In time, the thieves guild sent assassins to kill the wizard, and after they failed and we took the case to the town mayor, we took part on their plan to wipe the guild for good. It was a good plot that started with a pretty underestimated spell

If you use the Enlarge/Reduce on a Rune Knight Fighter when they use Giant’s Might, you make them go from Large to Huge, or if they’re at Level 18, from Huge to Gargantuan. That means you are big enough to grapple a Tarrasque or Ancient Dragon. That just strengthens how good your suggestion about using Enlarge/Reduce on the Fighter/Barbarian/etc. lol

magic mouth could be cast on a single coin in a treasure chest that makes it start breathing or snoring basically, false mimic

Didn't realise how heavy plate armor was, but you can do the same trick at 6:58 on any other clothes, shoes, weapons etc. so it's still super dope!

Note for Immovable Object - it does specify that the target object weigh no more than 10 pounds, and this value doesn't scale with up-casting. So, the plate armor example is a bust, but you could cast it on a rogue/archer's leather armor or bow, or the enemy caster's robes or arcane focus/component pouch, to just as effectively shut an enemy out of combat.

Compiles a list of all the spells I'd want to take on a future wizard character. "Man, there really isn't a lot of 2nd level spells in this list. Weird. Oh well." Literally 1 day later, DnD shorts releases this video, pointing out that levitate can basically one-shot a werewolf.

Re: Dragon Breath, an Order of Scribes Wizard can change the damage type. So you can have pretty much any type of dragon breath (force, radiant, etc.).

03:45 forget squeezing past, doing that would tear the door off its hinges, especially since the thickness would be halved, so if the hinges shrink they're too small and fal out of the frame and if they don't the door is too small to fit them and something breaks

Immovable Object - "Check with your DM," because often, attended objects get hand-waved into being invalid targets for spells like this. That said, "cook and book" also relies on being able to target worn armor (with _heat metal_ in this case), so it may work by precedent. Magic Mouth - The mouth can't automatically detect hidden things; it has to actually be visible or audible, and whether either is the case is largely up to the DM. I would probably default the mouth to having effective passive perception equal to the caster's own, if it came up, but that's a DM ruling, as the spell is silent on what, precisely, the mouth can and cannot "see" or "hear." ...and I was wondering if you'd go for the "magic mouth computer" trick. That is an interesting one, but I think it is very likely NEVER going to be allowed by a DM. At best, you might get away with a very simple machine that does only one thing. Dragon's Breath - I can attest, as a DM, that the dragon's breath familiar trick is really effective, though it does make monsters take a sudden interest in killing the tiny thing.

Levitate and Dragons Breath are amazing I swung an entire fight by casting levitate with my clockwork soul sorcerer. Twin spelled it, used restore balance and took two dangerous minions out of the fight on the first round. Dragons breath on a Scribes wizard is fun too. Nothing quite like letting the barbarian shoot hammers out of his mouth causing bludgeoning damage.

Please continue the "Underrated But Amazing Spells" series. You've really got me wondering what other sorts of exploitable insanity we're overlooking at every spell level!

My party combined silence, levitate and hunger of hadar on an enemy I prepared for weeks. Levitate is deadly.

Continual Flame is an amazing ILLUSION spell that's permanent. A cloak that makes you appear to be on fire is excellent for distraction or intimidation. But RAW there's no size requirement, meaning you can make an entire building appear to burst into flames instantly. People who compare it to Light are failing to imagine the game off the grid.

Magic mouth is one of my favorite spells right now. My party is helping to get our cleric elected to the high council, and i spent a week going through the town casting it on random buildings foundation stones so when 3 people walk buy a campaign message plays

I've been using the dragon's breath familiar combo for a bit now, it's actually even better than at first or second glance because it's up-casting potential is insane; it increases by 1d6 per breath per level up-cast, but since each round of combat is 6 seconds, and the spell lasts for 60, then you're actually up-casting by 10d6 per level, thus the total possible output (if you're insane and use it at the 9th level) is 100d6 (and I'm a DnD noob, so I'm sure that there are ways to make it even stronger)!

7:27 “horrify your DM with this spell”. Shows a picture of Matt Mercer, the man who literally created the spell

A cool combo for the dragon's breath is also when you are a necromancy wizzard. Having fireburping skeletons is a lot of fun.

I'm soooo happy someone else sees the power of magic mouth. It's my single favorite spell. I've had entire characters based around it

I would argue that wings already push and pull against the air, and are therefore not bound by levitate's restrictions.

nice video! i wish that more people would enjoy the creativity of using "magic mouth". i can imagine two old wizards teasing each other to death with surprise messages in unusual places

dragonsbreath is the best spell in dnd. i had a character who would always give it to his familiar. then in combat the familiar would sit on his shoulder, essentially giving him an extra attack if enemies got too close to him. then if required, the familiar could do a fly-by attack on an enemy making it super useful and fun as hell to play

Better uses for Immovable object: Note that the rulings say that you CAN move the object normally, not that you have to. Enchant your shirt/harness and never take fall damage again by falling in little drops. Enchant both your boots and "step" into the air for always on flying.

The fact wizards of the coast used realistic weight reduction and expansion for enlarge/reduce is amazing

Multiclass into Warlock and cast Dragon's Breath on your Imp familiar, a creature that can fly, shapeshift, and go invisible at will. Also, Sorcerers can learn Dragon's Breath, so you can go Coffeelock if you want

Magic Mouth is also broken for radar. You could have your helmet speak whenever a creature enters a range of feet of you.

- get a bow - cast levitate on a target that is melee based - shoot your target for 100 consecutive rounds of combat with no consequences

I almost always skip past the ad portions of videos, but that skit had me chuckling throughout! Well done on pulling that off and thank you for the kickass spell info.

11:00 - Pair 'Dragon's Breath' with a Paladin's 'Find Steed' (via multiclass) and make your DM HATE you. Why? Any spell you cast that affects you ALSO AFFECTS YOUR STEED. So now you can ride into battle on your mount, swing your greatsword to fish for Smites and then Bonus Action fire-breath... and then your mount can Bonus Action fire-breath. All with YOUR Spell Save DC. ENJOY!

Depending on your DM you can also use Enlarge/Reduce to dismantle ships. Assuming for balance reasons that a structure counts as being made of smaller objects, a ship's keel is definitely a single object and messing with the size of that will cause a ship to fall apart.

Odd question: if a Centaur was hit with levitate, would they be able to walk normally along the ceiling, or be stuck at 1/4 speed?

Funny detail about Enlarge/Reduce - it works on dead bodies. Necromancer player in a party I DM for was using it to shove corpses in his bag of holding D:

Some time ago, I made a logical demonstration of how you can really use Magic Mouth to build a full adder circuit. From this, we extrapolated that building a Turing Machine was possible. Each logical gate was three mouthes (zero, one and carry bit), and we calculated that building a small processor like those used in TI calculators was roughly 9000 gold pieces, and that was without any optimizations done to leverage the full potential of making the triggering conditions more specific. We eventually ended up calling the spell Logic Mouth.

I LOVE your content here, but I would also LOVE seeing you DM stream some games!

Cool, so Levitate CAN be used on your party members for a Feather Fall effect!

I've tried using Levitate and a rope to maneuver our rogue in and out of combat, like a whip with kleptomania.

Enlarge/Reduce is a bit weird in that it says that your weapon size increases with you, and then it says it's always a 1d4 extra, no matter if it's Daggers, Longsword or Greatmauls. There are rules in 5e found in the monster creation section that basically says that for every size higher than medium a weapon increases it's damage die by the original ammount, which supports this spell if we talk about 1d4 weapons increasing to 2d4, but that large Greataxe would deal 2d12 instead of 1d12+1d4. Of course, that would be incredibly powerful for a 2nd level spell if you include all the other things this spell does, so that's probably why they did that.

dragons breath was my sorcerer's favorite, casted it on a little kid as I was freeing him to protect his little brothers as they ran to safety, actually came in clutch when they were running away

One of my favorite utility uses for levitate was in a 3.5e campaign where the party was forced to swim after the ship we were in sunk. My DM told me to make a strength check in order to swim, and I counted him by casting levitate and floating up to the surface

The ad was great 😂 Thx for the list and examples

Arcane Trickster Rogues of smaller races can Reduce/Enlarge to shrink themselves down. So long as they weigh 5 or less pounds after the shrink, they can carry themselves with Mage Hand and move the hand with a bonus action and save their action to cast other spells. So now they can fly through the room in combat shooting Fire Bolts.

We had a 3 session game where we were slaves on a pirate ship, one of my fellow players played distraction by constantly getting himself in trouble and flogged, so it was easier for me to get on the crews good side as the cooks assistant. After enough trust I managed to steal his keys and unchain my friends and we snuck on the deck during their night shift and the cook was passed out drunk in the crows nest when he should have been keeping watch, and I cast levitate on him and the ship sailed away. 10 minutes later he gently landed in the water and was too far away to scream for help as he treaded water. He probably drowned after a while. I then was given position of cook and after a few more days I was trusted enough to be offered a spot on the crew and I played the whole "it's better than being a slave, Of course I will!" angle. Spent the next week "making jars of preservatives" out of the fruit on board and stored them near the slaves to "ferment." In reality it was so when I unchained everyone after enough prep work was done, they could get a quick meal in to regain strength and then break the bottles for glass shanks. Then we and the maybe 70 other slaves completed a mutiny, the flogged one was killed and then his Fey patron manifested in the ship and absorbed the slaver captain into the boat for breaking guest rites. I became the new captain, we dropped the slaves off near their home islands and we named the ship Narcian's Guest Rites after our fallen friend. Fuck Slavery, and Fuck Yeah to Narcian!

0:20 my favorite use of Levitate was when one of our party members was being annoying and I cast it on him. He failed his save, we tied a rope to him and pulled him along behind the party at 30' up to be useful and watch over the trees ahead of us.

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Your videos rock! Always so fun, always such cool tech :)

Levitate has been used multiple times in my current campaign despite being a spell I ignored for a long time lol. Our wizard has used it to suspend someone chasing him in order to get away, to lift my rogue up high enough to reach the window of a hag's house on giant chicken legs, and I swear I'm forgetting more. Definitely a spell that has merit as control and for creative play.

I've been using Dragon's Breath on my owl familiar for a while now. I'm amazed that no DM I've run into has tried to disallow it. It is great to have my owl flying around in the back of the bad guys roasting them. With Flyby, it is quite hard for them to kill my familiar as well. (Usually, I have her fly up to 30 feet or so between rounds so they have to use a ranged attack to get her.) Loads of fun! I've got to get some potions of invisibility so I can have her be invisible as she breathes destruction down on them!

I just need to point out how awesome that add read was! You sir are talented!

Fun point on levitate: it can double as a Telvanni style building limitation, preventing access to hidden areas or chambers.

I've been playing a mad scientist Artificer/Wizard for a while now, and have been using most of these spells like this already... but dang, I've been missing out on a lot of utility with Magic Mouth. I'll have to add that one for future shenanigans

BRO!!! Levitate is my all time favorite and I'm hype that it got included, but you missed a VERY important part of it. Sorcerers can twin it to double the value, and either but twining it to target yourself and opponent (or being a race with native flying) you can both go to higher than 60ft (normal range for the spell). You're right that normally they float down slowly, but a dispell magic can wipe that off. If you do it for the full 10 min I think you can drop them from 1,000 ft in the air.

Best examples of uses ive ever heard so much utility my party will love this

I once used Enlarge on the pillar of a small bridge with enemies on top since the growth was instantaneous it catapulted part of the bridge onto them dealing good damage. One of them also got thrown of the bridge downstream. So just drop concentration and they got crushed by the debris.

Levitate is one of my favourite spells, to the point that I look at Fly as a downgrade. Often Levitate will get the job done if you're clever enough. By contrast, Fly gives you omnidirectional movement speed for a longer duration at the cost of a high level spell slot. If you're in a fight against melee attackers, going 30ft straight up is enough. If you're in a fight against ranged attackers, you're gonna need a colossal flying speed that Fly simply doesn't give you anyway. The only time Fly is objectively better than Levitate in my opinion is for very niche combat encounters where the movement or duration is required, or for travelling (at which point why aren't you teleporting or just journeying like a normal person?)

I once used Levitate as a Wizard to walk on the Ceiling and evitate every Pit trap of the Dungeon + climbing down to trigger the trap just un case

This is like the third video of yours I've seen and I thought, "surely I've subscribed." I hadn't. But have now. Love the content man

One of the few video that I like watching the ad roll.

The first two entries made me wonder how Levitate and Enlarge/Reduce interact. Levitate drops the target slowly to the ground when it runs out or you drop concentration, but what if an object just stopped weighing less than 500 pounds? Like, if you cast Enlarge on something, or cast Reduce on something and THEN levitated it, only for the Reduce-effect to run out? I guess it'd depend on the DM, but I would be inclined to say that, since the 'featherfall' effect at the end is part of the spell, and an object weighing more than 500 pounds cannot be affected by that spell, this now very heavy object would drop like a rock.

A "immovable" castle would be the most expensive stuff ever, each brick would need to be enchanted with a 6 level spell slot and 25 gold pieces worth of material components. Even if you do this only for the foundation, that stuff is cost enough to drain a drgons hoard twice, at that point just hire a silver dragon to make a cloud castle.

The use of enlarge reduce on rocks flung with the catapult spell makes excellent siege weapons

With Dragon’s Breath, I once knew a sorcerer player with two pets along for the ride. He Twin Spell'd Dragon’s Breath onto them, meaning he now had a pair of shoulder-mounted flamethrowers. I know it's concentration, but the DM allowed it since it was Twinning the same spell.

There is one about dragons breath that makes it even better. If your a sorcerer you can twin spell dragons breath . I'm playing one and we have a necromancer wizard twin spelling dragons breath on two skeletons is very effective.

I did pull off the Dragon's Breath/Find Familiar combo in a campaign I play in, but the DM got fed up with it real quick and would send all ranged attacks at my hawk if I tried to use the combo. You might think the attention diversion is a good thing, since it's diverting attacks away from the players, but with 4 health and 13 AC, the DM's usually sacrificing only one or two attacks to shut down a 2nd-level spell and a full action, so make sure you don't give your DM a vendetta against this combo

Your list of common magic items inspired me to look through my XGtE, and I found the Talking Doll. This common magic item can do the same thing as the Magic Mouth spell, but is reprogrammable, can hold up to 6 phrases and conditions. Downsides are that it needs to stay within 5ft of you to be active, only detects conditions within 5ft of it, and requires attunement.

I think most DM would argue that levitate wouldn't lock a flying creature, at least not one with hover, but other then that I am glad someone else is talking about the power of this spell

Another enlarge/reduce idea; Cast reduce on a creature; make a cage barely large enough for a 3 foot humanoid, reduce the enemy and put them in the cage, and finally, end concentration. The spell changes the target back to normal size the moment the spell ends/you drop concentration, and nothing says they're put in the nearest unoccupied space, so the only available outcomes are either they break the bars or the bars break them.

1:15 Gelatinous Cube weighs 50,000 pounds ... well outside the levitate spell's 500-pound weight limit ... levitate typically outright fails against any large-size creature. 1:20 Wait wait, levitate WORKS against flying opponents? Nah man, that makes no sense at all. One of those rules-as-written vs rules-as-intended arguments. 6:55 Immovable Object only works on objects weighing 10 pounds or less, so that caster or monk in robes or rogue in leather armor is screwed, but full plate weighs 65 pounds. I guess you could affect only a section of the armor ... touching a melee combatant's helmet might be funny, as they wouldn't be able to unstrap the helmet to get it off.

For some reason, you going over Enlarge/Reduce makes me want to combine it with my Fractal Mascot Familiar now.

In earlier editions, Enlarge/Reduce could not be used to shrink a door so that it broke off its hinges becasue of built-in restrictions. In 5e, those restrictions mostly don't exist, except in the Enlarge version of the spell stating that a creature or object can only be enlarged if there is available space.

7:00 "an object that weights no more then 10 lb" The only armor that falls within that requirement is padded, and I don't know any creatures that wear padded armor. This spell is yet another reason why a maul is better then a greatsword.

Question: Is Explorer's Guide to Wildmount an official source book? I am genuinely asking, because there are loads of unofficial books and not all DMs want to use those. Isn't critical role content a glorified homebrew?

In my current session we've got a Mage that rightfully so uses levitate in several ways. One of which was to deal with a Large Draconian ex noble who had been put through several experiments to reach immortality through demon blood but only to become a monstrosity with arms bigger than it's own body. Obviously, the mage casted levitate on him and successfully "incapacitated" him. To which our smart dm improvised and started to throw axes, swords and various weapons that HE HAD STUCK TO HIS BODY. Those were from previous warriors that tried to kill him and our dm admitted were there for flavour only... Few throws later, the wizard was brought down and he was free to fling us against each other (effectively using us as weapons) and crush our bodies leaping over us. Hardly but surely (and with the help of a collar we found on those ruins) we managed to end his hundred years suffering.

Very informative, thanks!

1 - 0:48 - Levitate 2 - 2:33 - enlarge/reduce 3 - 5:47 - immovable objects 4 - 8:04 - magic mouth 5 - 10:00 - dragon breath

Some of these definitely feel exploitative. For instance, considering every CC spell allows additional opportunities to escape each turn, there's no way the creators intended Levitate to *not* share that opportunity.

I once used enlarge/reduce on a giant's ship, crushing all of the giants inside. Very effective.

I love Magic Mouth. I set my spellbook to chant the verbal for powerful spells. Using it to trigger an enemies counterspell before I actually cast a strong spell. If they are smart they may catch the trick but when it works it is great.

Thank you for the great work my friend. Just want to let you know, you're doing A GREAT job. Keep it up! Not many people can do ehat you're doing. DnD info is not for the faint of heart.

It seems to me there was a low level wind spell that paired insanely good with Levitate because it sent airborn targets 2x the distance away from you AND as a bonus did something like 2-4x damage to airborn targets that hit wall or obstacle. So basically you spend your actions levitating+wind spell-ing the target, and either send them really far away from your team/off a cliff/blasting off again or into a wall/trap/another enemy etc to deal multiplied damage to them. Combo-ing spells can be so much fun.

"You see those cultists over there, made of the cheese" said the forest gnome sorcerer, directly after giving the rats dragon's breath

Another use for levitate. If you need to get down a cliff or a straight drop, you can cast this, shove off the edge, and stop concentrating. It's a never ending feather fall.

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I love the idea of a multiclassed Pact of the Chain Warlock / Sorcerer using Dragon’s Breath on their imp familiar for hilarious invisible flame thrower.

Really interesting ways to use those spells. In my opinion there is another really useful 2nd level spell: heat metal. It can do crazy damage per round and if I remember right it doesn't need a saving throw or an attack roll. The drawback is that the creature must wear metal.

I really learn a lot from these

I would so have my character have various studs in their ears that have magic mouth on them for a multitude of things. Or even have a siren's song on a bracelet for an owl familiar, just lead all enemies away.

The roof trap is a good idea but as for the thrown rock I always used a conservation of mass debuff so it slows in mid air when enlarging back up. usually I give disadvantage to hit to account for the change in trajectory.

Just had a thought. You just need a magic carpet, a petite halfling, a large chunk of dense material, and some clear air. Cast reduce on a large chunk of tungsten/lead/gold/granite, whatever is dense and you can form together into a single roughly 12,000 pound mass. That should bring it down to a still heavy but more manageable 1500+ mass. One which can technically be carried by a larger flying carpet at half speed. Get yourself on a flying broom or another carpet. Then proceed to have your halfling friend fly it well above target, preferably where it can it reach terminal velocity before hitting, accountinging for wind and such. Then cast enlarge to both break the previous casting and to increase it to a 99,000+ mass. Where the carpet will give out and drop this death ball on your enemy. What about the halfling? Hopefully they have feather fall, because you have to concentrate until impact. This sort of gets around the physics issues of suddenly adding mass to a moving object.

My warlock/sorc did the firebreath thing. Dm did rule that it was an attack because it was pretty strong in combat. Another use for it was to cast it in our druid who wildshaped since some forms weren't that great against multiple foes

With levitate, a useful spell indeed, a way around it or added bonus would be using a anti-magic item/effect to end the spell, dropping said thing from a certain height. if it's available it's handy.

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As someone currently playing a level 4 Transmuter, I appreciate this video.

Thank you for the video.

I think this is the only channel where I look forward to the ads.

Enlarge reduce is especially fun with a rune knight. Roll up a fairy rune knight fighter, and they can use an action and a bonus action to go from a small creature to huge.

This familiar - Dragons breath - combo is very popular in my group. I see it as a burning hands that costs 50 gold and a lvl2 spellslot, because that familiar uses the breath once and is then subsequently shot down. 😅

in 3.5 there was a reduce item spell, that would shrink inanimate objects to 1/16 size in each dimension. It was meant to transport things like treasure - but I used it to trick monsters into swallowing large spiked objects

On enlarge reduce, my dm houseruled, that the mass doesnt change, so when i used reduce on a flying enemay, i argumented that the reduced wingspan should cause the creature to fall/glide down.

I played a wizard who pulled some fun shenanigans using magic mouth. Enchanted the barbs axe to taunt enemies in my weird old man voice whenever they were hit with an attack. And enchanted several of the rogues arrows with distraction phrases that they could fire 100+ feet away to distract enemies.

Well done!