Banishment: Take Your Shit and Go

Usable By: Cleric, Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

Spell Level: 4

School: Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 60 feet

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

Components: V, S, M (an item distasteful to the target)

You attempt to send one creature that you can see within range to another plane of existence. The target must succeed on a Charisma saving throw or be banished.

If the target is native to the plane of existence you’re on, you banish the target to a harmless demiplane. While there, the target is incapacitated. The target remains there until the spell ends, at which point the target reappears in the space it left or in the nearest unoccupied space if that space is occupied.

If the target is native to a different plane of existence than the one you’re on, the target is banished with a faint popping noise, returning to its home plane. If the spell ends before 1 minute has passed, the target reappears in the space it left or in the nearest unoccupied space if that space is occupied. Otherwise, the target doesn’t return.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, you can target one additional creature for each slot level above 4th.

Review by Nick Olivo

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

The term “save or die” is a term used in older RPGs that has carried on into 5th edition that refers to any spell that has a single saving throw that, should the creature fail it, have horrendous consequences, yet should they pass, no consequence whatsoever. Banishment is the 4th level poster child for a save or die: if a critical creature part of a larger encounter fails the save, that often is debilitating for the entire encounter, and if they’re extraplanar, often a simple “death sentence” as they often won’t be coming back.

The potential of taking hundreds of hit points and two or three attacks or more powerful actions away from a fight all at once can throw any encounter balance your DM plans for out the window. Going from three threatening frost giants to two in the first round of a fight dissipates a huge chunk of the threat, and seeing as whatever gets banished gets no subsequent saves for the duration, puts it on their now likely outnumbered allies to get to the banisher to knock concentration off. Many party compositions with a frontline fighter or two will make that feel incredibly difficult, especially given the quantity of 5th edition monsters that are just a series of melee attack rolls with varying damage types.

What you trade for this potential blowout is the potential to waste a 4th level spell slot on nothing. If it passes, you’ve wasted a turn and a powerful resource, and that can feel horrible. Its one of the main reasons why I don’t typically put these kinds of save or dies on my sheet- I want a spell to always do something. Banishment doesn’t offer that.

Up-casting it does also wildly empower the effect, giving you more potential targets to banish. Not only does this reduce the number of times you’ll cast this and get nothing out of it, the cost to benefit ratio is going up strictly in your favor. In an encounter against five enemies, removing a 5th of them for one turn and one spell slot is powerful for sure, but when you could remove two or three of them for a spell slot and that same action, the power difference is massive. Instead of cutting down enemy actions by a fifth, you can potentially halve the amount of actions available to the monsters. Preparing encounters around up-cast Banishments can be brutal, forcing DMs to create wider diversity of threats and lean more on large groups of smaller monsters to maneuver around this spell.

Banishment has the potential to warp all future encounters around it. Temporarily halving the quantity of enemies your group faces will give you an enormous resource advantage that can easily trivialize encounters built around a handful of moderately threatening enemies. If the risk doesn’t steer you away from it, and you accept a third of the time you’ll cast this on a single creature and nothing will happen, Banishment can be a massive boon to your character sheet.

Banishment FAQ

Can I banish myself to get out of trouble?

Not really, as the banishment would only for a fraction of a second. Once you’ve banished yourself, you’re incapacitated, and if you’re incapacitated, you can’t hold concentration on the spell. Confirmation from Jeremy Crawford on that HERE.

What if I’m on another plane of existence and I cast Banish on myself? Could I banish myself back to my home plane?

Yes, that works, because the incapacitated effect only applies when you banish a creature from its native plane. That said, the spell does not allow for you to choose *where* on the other plane you end up. The Material Plane is a big place. You could wind up at the bottom of an ocean, inside an erupting volcano, or on the surface of a moon. More on that HERE.

Can I use Dispel Magic to undo Banishment?

Theoretically, yes, but from a practical standpoint, likely not. Dispel Magic needs to be cast on someone or something that is currently under the effect of a spell. Because the creature that was banished is now on another plane of existence, you would have to have the means to travel to that location on that plane in order to cast Dispel Magic on them. If you have the means, sure, go for it, but that sort of thing won’t be possible for most casters. Your most effective option will be to damage the caster and try to get them to drop Concentration.

5e Spells

Banishment: Take Your Shit and Go

Banishment FAQ