Enhance Ability: Differently Abled

Usable By: Artificer, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer

Spell Level: 2

School: Transmutation

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Touch

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour

Components: V, S, M (fur or feather from a beast)

You touch a creature and bestow upon it a magical enhancement. Choose one of the following effects; the target gains that effect until the spell ends.

Bear’s Endurance. The target has advantage on Constitution checks. It also gains 2d6 temporary hit points, which are lost when the spell ends.

Bull’s Strength. The target has advantage on Strength checks, and his or her carrying capacity doubles.

Cat’s Grace. The target has advantage on Dexterity checks. It also doesn’t take damage from falling 20 feet or less if it isn’t incapacitated.

Eagle’s Splendor. The target has advantage on Charisma checks.

Fox’s Cunning. The target has advantage on Intelligence checks.

Owl’s Wisdom. The target has advantage on Wisdom checks.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, you can target one additional creature for each slot level above 2nd.

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

If you can cast spells and aren’t a paladin, you can take Enhance Ability. It's a nifty little 2nd level transmutation spell, honestly, but majorly suffers from a single design element of 5th edition: advantage. If advantage had a way of stacking, if the help action didn’t grant advantage, or if advantage wasn’t as abundantly available, I’d say Enhance Ability is a perfectly reasonable spell. As is, I don’t think you ever really want or need to cast this.

The six modes are nearly identical; Bull’s Strength, Eagle's Splendor, Fox’s Cunning, and Owl’s Wisdom all just grant advantage on their respective ability checks. Neat.

Bear’s Endurance grants advantage to Constitution checks, of which there are nearly none. Instead of letting this just be terrible, they stapled 2d6 temporary hit points onto it. That’s still not really worth concentrating on a 2nd level spell for.

Finally, Cat’s Grace gives you advantage on Dexterity checks and removes any fall damage from 20 or less feet. That’s no Feather Fall.

What is the only main redeeming quality here is that clerics, druids, and wizards can have a very easy time getting access to this. Clerics and druids just can prepare it before going on the noble court charisma encounter day, while wizards can put it in their spell book when they run out of rituals they care to put in there when they get new spells they don’t plan on preparing. Then, they can use it as effectively as clerics and druids. That’s the only main use case I see for this. In dungeons, the help action is very often just going to give players the advantage their looking for for one or two ability checks. Even without it, I don’t think you really want to be spending a 2nd level spell slot to get advantage on one or two perception or investigation checks. You need to be making a lot of these checks without advantage to justify the cast.

I think Enhance Ability is a missed opportunity. This could be a tool to empower the ability scores in new ways, offering tools that highlight effective uses of each. Cat’s Grace is close to a decent example of this; offering immunity to fall damage and some other benefit from otherworldly Dexterity beyond just advantage could make it a neat toolbox option to have at the ready. Imagine a world where Owl’s Wisdom outlines liars while increasing your vision range, a world where Eagle’s Splendor creates an aura of glory around you, automatically improving non-hostile creatures' feelings towards you. There could be interesting ways to manifest these ideas, interesting ways that aren’t accessible with just the help action, but alas, that’s not the world we live in.

Enhance Ability is something you prepare for a single low tier encounter involving seducing a nobleman and then never again. It's an unremarkable spell with underwhelming text that doesn’t play well in a system that gives out advantage like candy on Halloween. You probably don’t ever want to spend spell slots on this. There are better tools that offer you entirely new ways to engage a scenario for the same or lower spell level that also give you the advantage you’re looking for.

5e Spells

Enhance Ability: Differently Abled