Entangle: Caught With Your Plants Down

Usable By: Druid

Spell Level: 1

School: Conjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 90 feet

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

Components: V, S

Grasping weeds and vines sprout from the ground in a 20-foot square starting from a point within range. For the duration, these plants turn the ground in the area into difficult terrain.

A creature in the area when you cast the spell must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be restrained by the entangling plants until the spell ends. A creature restrained by the plants can use its action to make a Strength check against your spell save DC. On a success, it frees itself.

When the spell ends, the conjured plants wilt away.

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

I’ve really done a full 180 with how I feel about Entangle. Back when I first started playing the game, I thought it was near useless. It's a 20 ft. square of difficult terrain; what’s the big deal? Creatures can just spend an action to break free should it beat your spell save DC; that can’t be THAT hard.

Where I landed now, though, is that it is very efficient for what it offers. This oftentimes is going to take two-three creatures in a 20 ft. square area and restrain one or more of them. That creature, then, is wasting precious turns doing nothing while trying to break free. That’s pretty great. Some creatures with ranged options might just say “screw it” and attack you with disadvantage from a distance, or maybe just swing wildly at your melee friends that went up to take advantage of the restrained condition, but you’re still getting a decent benefit out of it. You’re creating a no win situation for the entangled enemies.

I think my flaw in thinking was looking at Entangle as a difficult terrain creating tool first, and an area of effect restraint tool second. 20 feet of difficult terrain on the ground means at minimum creatures with a 30 ft. ground speed will need to dash to get through it. More likely, though, they’ll walk around it, fly over it, or climb over it. That’s not a particularly robust area of coverage with difficult terrain, and is really easy to avoid as soon as you get to tiers with teleportation, bonus action moves, and higher base speeds. There will be a handful of times per game where you’ll find a scenario to tangle up a corridor to eat a single dash from a band of enemies, and for a 1st level slot in the upper tiers that can be totally worth it. At 1st level, though, that’s just not doing enough. You really need the restrained condition from this to justify its cast from levels 1-4 I think. When you get those restraints, though, the spell is excellent.

Entangle can also be leveraged alongside some other slowing effects to lock down some enemies and can reward team cooperation. I’m a big fan of that. Effects that reward teamwork and coordination are fairly rare in this cooperative game. It won’t likely be better than just area of effect damaging spells, nor will it justify your concentration as soon as it starts competing with summoning magic, but it can have some niche windows, even in the upper tiers, where it’ll be surprisingly effective at completely shutting down some cumbersome, large baddies. That’s pretty cool.

Entangle is a spell both druids and rangers can get a decent amount out of, and probably can find a home on most of those sheets. It does its job efficiently and effectively; if you want to restrain up to sixteen squares worth of creatures, there isn’t a cheaper way to do it. Entangle is very solid.

5e Spells

Entangle: Caught With Your Plants Down