Every Level 1 Wizard Spell Ranked Worst to Best in D&D 5e
by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
A rat crawls below the floorboards, poking its head out from hole to hole, seeking its target. Across the room, playfully putting on a show, its Wizard conjurer, disguised as an eccentric firework salesman, draws focus with a shower of sparks and smoke, getting applause and attention so their familiar can grab the key from the guardsman on break. The rat crawls up the side of the chair, nose gently reaching for the key, when the guard reaches down to itch their leg, feeling the rodent. They let out a yelp, leaping upward, causing the wizard to turn unexpectedly, their illusory cloak passing right through the nearby table. “That illusionist is trying to steal from me! Charlatan! Scoundrel! Get them!”
Wizards have a suite of tools at their disposal to engage in all manner of environments. Their 1st level spells provide the basic resources that cause area of effect damage, decent single target damage, magical illusions to navigate social and environmental exploration, and so much more.
With so many options, some are worse than others. Here, you can find some quick preselected spell lists to give you solid options in and out of combat as well as my comprehensive ranking of every 1st level Wizard spell in the game. Let's get into it!
Quick Wizard 1st Level Spell Picks
Picking your spells can be daunting; if you want quick picks that will generally perform well at most tables, the following options can be great options for 1st level characters.
Quick Ritual Spell Picks
With only two 1st level slots and the ability to only prepare five spells, to get more out of your character sheet, I recommend putting Ritual spells in your spellbook, as you can cast them from your spellbook as Rituals without needing to prepare them.
For your first six, I recommend putting two ritual spells in your book- Find Familiar and Detect Magic.
Non-Ritual Quick Spell Picks
For the remaining four spells in your spellbook, the following groups of spells you can direct your character toward a specific fantasy.
Level 1 Wizard Spell Picks for Character Types
| Character Type | Level 1 Spells |
|---|---|
| Generalist | Magic Missile, Ice Knife, Feather Fall, Silvery Barbs |
| Arsonist | Burning Hands, Chromatic Orb, Absorb Elements, Mage Armor |
| Psychic | Catapult, Sleep, Magic Missile, Cause Fear |
| Melee/Ranged | Burning Hands, Ice Knife, Shield, Mage Armor |
| Illusionist | Silent Image/Disguise Self, Cause Fear, Silvery Barbs, Magic Missile |
| Aquatic/Arctic | Ice Knife, Absorb Elements, Fog Cloud, Chromatic Orb |
| Earth-Shaper | Magnify Gravity, Mage Armor, Shield, Magic Missile |
| Poisoner | Tasha’s Caustic Brew, Ray of Sickness, Absorb Elements, Sleep |
| Area Control | Ice Knife, Burning Hands, Thunderwave, Fog Cloud |
| Charlatan | Charm Person, Disguise Self, Silvery Barbs, Magic Missile |
| Storm Caller | Thunderwave, Absorb Elements, Feather Fall, Chromatic Orb |
F Tier: Most Sheets Don’t Want These
42. Witch Bolt: 1d10 damage is cantrip damage. In order to get this damage, you need to hit the target with an action and a 1st-level slot, then spend subsequent turns dealing that d10 damage. Not only is this incredibly boring, but maintaining it is nearly impossible, as should an enemy be able to get full cover from you or move slightly further out of range, the spell ends. It's about as close to uncastable as a spell gets. You’ll routinely find taking the Attack action is better than casting Witch Bolt.
41. Snare: If this were just the rules for making mundane Snares I wouldn’t bat an eye- for a 1st level slot, I want to be nowhere close to this. You need so many things to go right for it to do anything at all, and even when it does work, it usually eats a turn or two, an effect you can get on command with a Hideous Laughter or Cause Fear. Those effects don’t have a minute cast time nor need you to goad a creature onto a specific space to function.
40. Distort Value: If Distort Value were a cantrip I’d still say you probably would be better off with Minor Illusion or Prestidigitation. This costs you a 1st level slot. Pass!
39. Illusory Script: While intriguing, I have yet to see Illusory Script really matter when put on a player character sheet. Even as a ritual spell, I have a hard time imagining any character can make great use of this without major DM buy-in and engagement.
38. Earth Tremor: I have tried to get this spell to work- in practice, it’s always clunky. You are the center of the difficult terrain you create, and can’t really ignore it, and while knocking enemies prone can be good, it is as likely to drop other melee allies in the area prone. If you engage with this, you’re spending yor action and a 1st level slot on 1d6 damage in a 10 ft. radius area, which is a horrendous rate, and the odds of other low-tier characters being able to take major advantage of the potentially prone condition is terribly low.
37. Frost Fingers: This should just have been Burning Hands damage, but with cold, or at least augmented to deal equal damage. Instead, it goes under, and by a lot. If you want a Cone of Cold early on, ask your DM if you can swap Burning Hand’s damage to Cold instead of taking this, as this is lower damage in the same area for no good reason.
D Tier: Niche Options Few Want
36. False Life: As a cantrip, False Life is great, as we can see with the at-will version Warlocks get with Fiendish Vigor. As a 1st level spell, it’s just a bit too expensive and low impact. You could stick this on your sheet in the mid-tiers if you’re regularly finding you’ve got tons of spare slots lying around and you want some extra durability, but most characters don’t want to spend resources that could be spent on excellent reaction spells on 4 to 8 temporary hit points.
35. Jump: Watching a person leap a thirty-foot gap sounds incredible- Jump can offer a strong teammate that, but with caveats. Jump distances still require speed spent to move, meaning most characters face a maximum horizontal jump distance equal to their speed minus 10. A character with 16 Strength normally can long jump 16 feet with a running start. Most of the time, that character’s speed is 30, meaning unless they want to spend actions on the Dash action, they’re limited to a grand total of 4 extra feet they can cross.
Dashing can allow you to jump the glorious 48 feet horizontally, and they’ll always be able to leap 18 feet off the ground, but with its minute duration, it's hard to justify putting this on a sheet for exploration only, and it quickly gets outshone past 2nd level.
34. Expeditious Retreat: Cunning Action is a major defining element of the Rogue class- Expeditious Retreat gives you the Dash bonus action from that but at the cost of a 1st level slot. Rogues care about positioning and hiding, wanting to dip in and out of melee range or find tactical cover across wide spaces. Wizards don’t really want to spend spell slots on that kind of tactical advantage. You have to forgo a round in combat casting other 1st level or higher spells to get this ability up at all, and that’s a tall price to pay in the early tiers. Later, the concentration component is debilitating, making it something that doesn’t really justify casting at any point in the game over options like Misty Step or higher impact damage or utility spells.
33. Color Spray: 6d10 sounds like a lot of damage, but is only 33. Color Spray doesn’t affect all the creatures with 33 or fewer hit points, either- it affects creatures with a total of 33 hit points or less. Where Sleep can act as a great execution in this fashion, blinding creatures is something you generally want to do when a fight starts, meaning it is at its most effective the healthier your enemies are. That limits its uses substantially already, but the Blind lasting a single round and in such a tight area makes the actual applications of this spell outrageously challenging to meaningfully set up. It can blind four goblins at once, but most of the time you’ll be lucky to get two creatures blinded for a turn.
32. Gift of Alacrity: In a world lacking the 1st level reaction spells, I think Gift of Alacrity would be a great place to stick your 1st level slots in the upper tiers. Unfortunately for Gift of Alacrity, there are a lot of excellent things to do with 1st level spell slots that I rate higher than a d8 bonus to initiative. If you don’t want the powerful defensive reactions, this can be a reasonable option to give you and the team a passive boost in action economy, occasionally letting you act sooner than enemies, but I usually will prefer the consistency of the other reaction spells over this, and I definitely don’t want this until the mid-tiers or higher when I stop spending 1st level spells on damage or debuff effects.
31. Comprehend Languages: The reality of most D&D worlds is while other languages are plentiful, the vast majority of creatures speak and interact with you in Common. It's just so much easier to narrate and DM scenes with common. If you’re doing a lot of eavesdropping on various kinds of creatures that regularly speak in other languages, as a ritual spell it can be an easy boon to get access to, but most tables are going to never come across a problem Comprehend Languages helps solve.
30. Longstrider: Like Gift of Alacrity, if there weren’t an abundance of great 1st level options for defensive reactions, I’d be a lot more interested in Longstrider as a way to spend 1st level slots in the mid to upper tiers. Currently, I don’t think most tables will ever find time to cast this without it feeling like it's not having a high enough impact relative to its cost.
29. Ray of Sickness: The more variance between me and an outcome, the less I tend to want something on my sheet. Ray of Sickness not only has to hit to function, to justify its cast, you also need the creature to fail a saving throw to poison. Two all-or-nothing rolls don’t get me excited to try this. It's not unusable, but not worth the risk compared to its competition.
C Tier: Fine Options to Consider
28. Silent Image: I adore illusions. Silent Image’s problem is largely that Minor Illusion exists, and is free. Still, the mobility this offers is a meaningful upside. If you’re clever with it, Silent Image can be a massively impactful tool. Most characters and tables won’t be perfect fits for it, though, making it a bit tricky to use as powerfully as cheaper options or options with more sensory effects.
27. Alarm: If Alarm weren’t a Ritual spell, it would definitely find itself in F tier. As a ritual, it's a fine little passive to improve your character. Stick it in your spellbook and walk around your camp casting it every night to get a little extra protection against nighttime ambushes. It probably isn’t going to be worth spell slots, but when it's free, it's a fine little safety precaution to have.
26. Mage Armor: Is +1 Studded Leather Armor worth a spell slot to you? If so, you should probably consider Mage Armor. Usually, it just reads as +3 AC, which is something most characters are happy to have. I don’t love it at 1st through 3rd level, but as you start getting more and more slots, it becomes pretty easy to cast in the morning, but still not something you need, especially if you can get armor proficiency anywhere else.
25. Fog Cloud: Smoke bombs aren’t the most revolutionary tactic in the world, but it's still a useful little trick to pull out now and then. In combat, it's a bit suspect, as it doesn’t take much to move out of, but when robbing a market or escaping a villain in a spooky manor, Fog Cloud can put in work.
24. Grease: Where Earth Tremor requires you be surrounded to work, Grease gives you a remote, somewhat selective repeating prone condition with a bit of difficult terrain. It still isn’t the best option for combat enhancement, but the right parties can take advantage of prone enemies to great effect, plus can clog up a corridor to slow the approach of advancing enemies.
23. Floating Disc: I don’t think I’ve ever needed Floating Disc, but I have had a ton of fun playing with it. It is a treasure hauler, mobile throne, and 5 ft. step ladder bundled together. Crucially, it's a ritual spell, meaning you can just stick it in your spell book and pull it out whenever you’ve got ten minutes to spare.
22. Unseen Servant: Between this and Floating Disc, I think Unseen Servant is going to have slightly more use, but not so much so I always need it in my spellbook. If you want to have a production line for your alchemy station or just helpers to thematically clean your belongings magically, Unseen Servants are great. Plus, occasionally you’ll find they can interact with an environment in some interesting ways and actually act as useful out-of-combat exploration tools.
21. Chromatic Orb: 3d8 damage to a single target is the floor I want when I’m casting a single target 1st-level spell. Chromatic Orb meets that with the small up-side of letting you choose the damage type. Choosing the damage type isn’t a particularly powerful boon, but if you want to consistently deal a specific kind of damage to satisfy a character’s fantasy, this is an entirely reasonable way to do it.
20. Catapult: Catapult is Chromatic Orb damage, but instead of selective damage and an attack roll, you get a saving throw with telekinesis. Throwing around objects can be a blast, and while not regularly going to have a high impact by throwing a MacGuffin away from a villain, having that extra bit of utility does put it a notch above Chromatic Orb to me.
19. Thunderwave: Thunderwave earns a record for my tables as the “Most Overcast” spell. Most of the time, Burning Hands would just do more damage, and that’s why it's getting cast. Still, the damage is fine in a reasonable area, and while the knockback isn’t often going to have a big impact by acting like a disengage or forcing enemies into Wall of Fire or other damaging effects, some sheets can get it to do that enough, or plan to one day, to justify its early inclusion.
18. Sleep: I keep coming back to Sleep and rating it lower and lower. Its knock-out potential can be devastating, but its weird hit-point-based ability makes it tricky to consistently use. It rewards dropping multiple enemies simultaneously, potentially transforming it into a mass execute, but most of the time it's going to knock out one to two enemies, tops, and will shine brightest as an infiltration tool in the early tiers to sneak past guards without bringing them harm.
B Tier: Great Fits for Many
17. Disguise Self: There is a narrow window where Disguise Self is a helpful tool, but in that window, it's such a fun tool to play around with. Invisibility and Suggestion can often act as a better and wider-reaching tool that solves similar problems Disguise Self solves, but if you want to be a charlatan or impersonator at 1st level, this is one of the easiest ways to do it.
16. Identify: If you can front the gold, Identify is a ritual spell I’m reaching for pretty early. Having a method for learning about magic items is useful in a game dedicated to uncovering weird and wacky stuff while slaying monsters.
15. Protection from Evil and Good: When you want Protection from Evil and Good, it's one of the cheapest and most efficient defensive spells in the game. It isn’t useful in most encounters, but it does come up often enough I’d recommend most wizards consider it in the early tiers to defend an ally or themselves in the face of undead or fey.
14. Cause Fear: I think Cause Fear is an underrated gem. Its 1st level cast is fine enough, and in a pinch will prevent a threatening ogre or larger enemy from being able to approach the party while having disadvantage on all its ranged attack options. Cause Fear for a 2nd level slot, though, hits two targets with the fear. That’s a fantastic rate for two save or dies, and what earns Cause Fear its B ranking.
13. Magnify Gravity: This little area of effect damage spell I may be overrating, but I haven’t played with it a ton. I expect it’ll play like Thunderwave, but at a better range, and with some interesting upsides. Halving speeds at a 60 ft. range can force enemies to dash to engage in melee combat, which is a great place to start, and occasionally you can lock disarmed enemies out of picking up their magical weapons that could end in disaster if wielded.
12. Burning Hands: Short-range flaming cones of damage are useful. Need to make some goblins trying to end you gone? A 3d6 15 ft. cone of flames should do the trick. It isn’t rocket science and has been surpassed since its printing with a few area-of-effect damage spells I rate slightly higher, but it's a tried and true method for dealing great damage to clumped-up enemies.
11. Charm Person: There are two critical elements of Charm Person that elevate it to me: its duration paired with no concentration, and its upcast. Not only can you sling this out to affect more than one humanoid at a time with additional casts, giving you advantage on Charisma ability checks involving them, up-casting it offers you simultaneous targeting, making it a tool that expands in usefulness with upper-tier spell slots without ever being constrained to sheets that have room for extra concentration effects. It's a great little spell.
10. Feather Fall: There is an iconic element to Feather Fall I find charming. It acts as a safety valve for spontaneous falls, being closer to a mode of transit than an actual reaction to avoid damage in most circumstances. In a pinch, this will save you when you’re thrown from a high surface. Otherwise, it's a way for you and the party to safely get down from a wizard’s tower without having to trudge back through all its traps and trials.
9. Tasha’s Caustic Brew: 2d4 acid damage isn’t that much damage for a 1st level spell- 4d4 is pretty worth it, and any more than that is exceptional. If this ever deals 2d4 damage and eats a creature’s actions, it's a decent investment should concentration not be a concern, and the ceiling is way higher than that. It won’t always be a perfect option, especially against lower hit point creatures, but against chunkier monsters, I’m pretty high on this effect.
8. Jim’s Magic Missile: Jim’s Magic Missile twists the basic concepts of Magic Missile, taking a spell known for its consistency and offering far greater risk/reward. It's the only spell in the game with text for when it Critically Hits, which is neat, and while the attack rolls definitely are worse than auto-hitting, there is a real payoff with 2d4 damage per missile over 1d4+1. 6d4 versus 3d4+3 is a massive difference in potential, and 4d4 is close to 3d4+3, making it very likely you’re getting enough out of a cast of this to use it over its competition.
A Tier: Excellent for Everyone
7. Detect Magic: Ten minutes isn’t a huge bar to reach for dungeon exploration, making Detect Magic an easy ritual spell to give you passive magic detection that’s endlessly useful in a game full of reanimated zombies and explosive runes. Stick it in your spell book, and cast it from there at no extra resource cost to you. It's a free ability.
6. Magic Missile: What sets Magic Missile above its attack-roll based competitors is consistency. When you cast Magic Missile, you know creatures are going to take 1d4+1 damage three times. When you cast Chromatic Orb, you’re given no such guarantee. Being able to split the damage up means you can consistently execute low hit point creatures while simultaneously damaging healthier ones. The spell isn’t packed with that much raw damage or power, but knowing something will happen in a game largely determined by twenty-sided die with a huge range of variance can be invaluable.
5. Ice Knife: I’ve come a long way on Ice Knife, to now rating it the best area of effect 1st level spell in the game for damage. 2d6 is enough average damage to put down a goblin, and the bonus d10 damage on hit paired with its fantastic range makes it useful in a wide variety of environments. At its worst, it's a cold version of Chromatic Orb that always does something in terms of damage, and at its best, its blasting back a handful of enemies while majorly wounding their more threatening leader.
4. Absorb Elements: Absorb Elements hits a sweet spot for me as a reaction spell. Unlike its other reaction spell siblings, it's not a ubiquitous passive that will always be online. That being said, its trigger happens enough that you’ll find regular uses for it all throughout the game, and its impact is massive when it happens.
S Tier: So Powerful They Can Cause Problems
Normally I stop at A Tier, but I think there are three 1st level Wizard spells on another level above the A tier options that present some tables problems.
3. Shield: Shield makes some characters feel invincible and at an incredibly cheap rate. Take Bladesinger- with Bladesong and Mage Armor, they’re usually working with a starting AC of 18. With Shield, in the rare instance that something hits your solid AC, you can spend a lone 1st-level spell slot to bump that up to a 23, making most CR 1 or lower enemies only able to hit you when they crit. As characters progress in level, this cost goes down comparatively as you get more and more spell slots to spend on splashier upper-tier effects, putting you in a situation where on four rounds where you could be in danger, you’ve got an AC that goes toe to toe or past characters with heavy armor.
It protects your concentration, blocks incoming damage to the party, and does so without forgoing casting on your turns, too. Shield is a major culprit in builds who seek to be unhittable, and can be a huge problem for some groups.
2. Silvery Barbs: Silvery Barbs takes notes from Shield and works to mitigate more than just attack rolls while simultaneously buffing you or other members of your party. If a monster makes a roll you don’t like, for a 1st level spell slot and a reaction, you can change it. This makes singular or few threats insanely difficult to run as realistic challenges as a DM. As characters get higher and higher level, and the comparative cost of these 1st level slots goes down, Slivery Barbs keeps churning out value without restricting any other spellcasting options you’ve got access to.
1. Find Familiar: Find Familiar is closer to a feature than a spell, and is yucky good. Its functionally a second character you control with some small limitations, like your inability to take the attack action with it. That trade off is absolutely worth it when the only other conditions around it are gold costs and having it take up space in your spellbook. You don’t ever need to commit spell slots to having this buddy. Said buddy can usually fly, climb, or move in other unconventional methods. It acts as a stelar spy, can be swapped around between forms on long rest, can deliver items and activate supportive abilities, and so much more.
Familiars will regularly bring more utility to a party than most martial characters can for out of combat exploration, and that’s in addition to having your entire full-caster suite of spells prepared and ready to rumble. While the reactions may have a higher in-combat influence on gameplay, Find Familiar’s cost is as close to zero as a spell can be, and gives you a massive pool of extended options.
Wizard’s Have Busted 1st Level Spells
Well, there you have it; a comprehensive ranking of every 1st level Wizard spell in the game with some packages to jump-start you on your adventure. Go forth with this information and craft the perfect spell list for your favorite arcanist!
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