Antilife Shell: When Pro Choice Shell Doesn’t Quite Cut It
Usable By: Druid
Spell Level: 5
School: Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self (10-foot radius)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
Components: V, S
A shimmering barrier extends out from you in a 10-foot radius and moves with you, remaining centered on you and hedging out creatures other than undead and constructs. The barrier lasts for the duration. The barrier prevents an affected creature from passing or reaching through. An affected creature can cast spells or make attacks with ranged or reach weapons through the barrier.
If you move so that an affected creature is forced to pass through the barrier, the spell ends.
Review by Sam West, Twitter @CrierKobold
Antilife Shell is a simple spell which I lovingly refer to as “Personal Space”. It is a real shit spell.
Antilife Shell promises the fantasy of a protective bubble that keeps the horde of monsters at bay while you sling out Fire Bolts and Lightning Bolts, and it fails spectacularly to deliver on that fantasy. Even in the cases where you’re trying to stop the adult red dragon from clawing you, you are still posed to get roasted by flame breath.
Friends don’t let friends take Antilife Shell.
There are a few glaring issues with this form of defensive spell; it requires concentration, heavily restrains the caster’s movement options, and has so many exceptions that break through its defense it will functionally do nothing at all to actually protect you.
Here is a brief list of spells at or below 5th level that you’d probably rather be concentrating on: Haste, Greater Invisibility, Fly, Cloudkill, Wall of Force, Wall of Fire, Polymorph, Banishment, Conjure Minor Elementals, Slow, Gaseous Form, and Darkness. More often than not these will do a better job protecting you from harm while having way more practical uses than Antilife Shell.
Where the spell is supposed to shine brightest is against large numbers of Medium or smaller melee creatures that you absolutely must keep from getting within 10 ft. of you. Example encounters are easy to come up with; a band of goblins, a pack of gnolls, a squad of lemur, etc.
These monsters are iconic and typically are seen in the lower tiers of play before you have access to Antilife Shell. Should you come up against these creatures anyway, if the group of baddies gets the drop on the party and act first, they can probably get within 10 ft of you. At that point, you can’t even cast Antilife Shell.
Even if you do manage to cast it before they are in range, if they surround you, you literally can’t move without ending the spell; at this point you have your bubble that prevents them from making specifically melee attacks that lack the reach property. Now what? Would the monsters just stand there menacingly while you pick them off with cantrips? If that goblin standing ten feet from you doesn’t pull out its shortbow or pick up some sticks and start throwing them at you, it should be embarrassed to call itself a goblin.
A large group can easily force a handful of concentration saves with loose objects around; just one failed save and you spent a 5th level spell and your action to deter a handful of attacks. Do you know what else can deter a handful of attacks, but only costs a 1st level spell slot? Shield! And shield is better because it doesn’t even cost an action, you can just spend a reaction when you need it!
But wait, it gets worse still! If these groups are minions of a villainous mastermind, say something like a Lich, the default minions are typically undead soldiers like skeletons and zombies or constructs like animated objects or golems. Sure, there are plenty of minions that aren’t undead or constructs, but the majority of those minions come with built in ranged attacks or enough intelligence to improvise. Constructs and Undead are some of the only creatures dumb enough to lack consistent ranged options, and they ignore the spell entirely.
All of these problems exist only in the exact space you’d want to cast the spell to get the most out of it. The rest of the time (the majority of it) the spell isn’t applicable, full stop. You either weren’t being threatened by the niche form of creatures that this keeps out, or would have just been better off using a spell that deals damage, turns you invisible, moves you to a safe location, or any other of the hundreds of effects at your disposal.
Fireball is two spell levels lower, handles the best case scenario by killing the creatures that would be threatening you, and has a far wider breadth of applicable uses.
The idea behind Antilife Shell is epic; a veil of force that keeps life out feels like it belongs with the edgy necromancer or introvert illusionist. You may want to take the spell for the aesthetic; that's a valid thing to do, just hear my warning and be aware it will fail you in more ways than one when you need it most.
This spell is probably at its best as a niche DM toolbox option to give there big bad casters against very specific adventuring parties. If you are a player, there are swaths of better options out there.
Like I said; friends don’t let friends take Antilife Shell.
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
