Aura of Purity: My Impure Thoughts

Usable By: Cleric, Paladin

Spell Level: 4

School: Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Self (30-foot radius)

Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes

Components: V

Purifying energy radiates from you in an aura with a 30-foot radius. Until the spell ends, the aura moves with you, centered on you. Each non-hostile creature in the aura (including you) can’t become diseased, has resistance to poison damage, and has advantage on saving throws against effects that cause any of the following conditions: blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, paralyzed, poisoned, and stunned.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Conditions in 5e range from neat problems to overcome to wildly unfun mechanics that should never hit a player (cough cough paralysis cough cough). Having a tool to combat them seems like something you’d actively want a lot of the time, but it can be really hard to justify a whole spell on JUST condition management, especially if it eats your concentration. Therein lies the problems with Aura of Purity; yes, mitigating conditions that gimp players can majorly alter the dynamics of some encounters. I find myself never wanting to spend actions casting this, though, even in situations where it SHOULD be great.

The problem with it boils down to resource cost and action economy. For Aura of Purity to be “worth it”, you need it to either net your side at least an action by preventing people from dropping from poison damage (which is unbelievably niche), negate at least one disease that would majorly affect an ally, or mitigate enough conditions that it nets you more “action economy” than the action spent to cast it. In addition, you have to consider the opportunity cost of instead using another 4th level spell or 4th level divine smite, both of which can have major impacts in a fight.

Cases where this happens tend to be in encounters where the advantage gets more than one character out from being paralyzed or stunned. It isn’t really good enough if it prevents a single instance of the condition with advantage; you need multiple allies to shrug off the condition because of the advantage. Crucially, if they would be succeeding without the advantage the majority of the time, functionally the spell isn’t helping, and is basically wasted.

A weird element of 5e is that the better a character is at doing something, the worse comparatively advantage is for them. If your group all have terrible Wisdom and Constitution saving throws, this spell tends to be better, but only against middling DCs they have a chance of passing. If your group cohesively is great at making these saves, the only real instance it becomes worth it is against creatures that have enormous DCs that your friends wouldn’t be passing the majority of the time anyway.

To make matters worse, Aura of Purity encourages allies to stay close together, making you all more vulnerable to area of effect abilities and spells. If everyone is standing within 30 feet of you, that adult black dragon’s breath is hitting everyone, and while sure, you might all have resistance to the damage, had you spread out, it potentially could only get one or two creatures instead, functionally halving the incoming damage anyway without consuming any resources.

All of this comes together to show in extremely specific encounters, like fighting Ancient Black Dragons, Aura of Purity can be a major asset that denies a lot of action-eating elements IF your group wants to stay close together. These cases are few and far between; this is a spell you’ll get mileage out of once a campaign, tops, and most of the time find it to be a waste of a slot.

5e Spells

Aura of Purity: My Impure Thoughts