Eyebite: If Looks Could Ill

Usable By: Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

Spell Level: 6

School: Necromancy

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Self

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

Components: V, S

For the spell’s duration, your eyes become an inky void imbued with dread power. One creature of your choice within 60 feet of you that you can see must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be affected by one of the following effects of your choice for the duration. On each of your turns until the spell ends, you can use your action to target another creature but can’t target a creature again if it has succeeded on a saving throw against this casting of eyebite.

Asleep. The target falls unconscious. It wakes up if it takes any damage or if another creature uses its action to shake the sleeper awake.

Panicked. The target is frightened of you. On each of its turns, the frightened creature must take the Dash action and move away from you by the safest and shortest available route, unless there is nowhere to move. If the target moves to a place at least 60 feet away from you where it can no longer see you, this effect ends.

Sickened. The target has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. At the end of each of its turns, it can make another Wisdom saving throw. If it succeeds, the effect ends.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

“Save or suck” references a mechanic where should you fail a single saving throw roll, you’ll suck. It has a long history in Dungeons & Dragons as a polarizing tool that either ends encounters or does nothing; Banishment, Polymorph, Hold Person, and Dominate Monster all fit this criteria in 5e, and all of these frustrate me because I know they could be better. I know that because Eyebite exists.

Eyebite is a modern example of how to do save or sucks. It harkens to older versions of itself by offering repeatable lockdown, and can have massive encounter implications, but unlike the one attempt on cast save or sucks, Eyebite has a higher floor on its utility. Even if the first monster succeeds on the save, you still have access to the magic for a full minute to take out other creatures. You can’t use it as a tool to lock down one thing forever, but instead can use it to flexibly weaken varying combatants as an encounter progresses. The spell always gives you something, which is a direction save or sucks desperately need to move towards to feel better to use.

The actual effects are miles apart in power. If you can, putting a creature to sleep eats at minimum an enemy action, and potentially can remove creatures from a fight entirely. If you can successfully put more than one creature to sleep, you’re creating a massive advantage in actions that your foes likely won’t overcome. In scenarios with a large quantity of weaker monsters, it can be worse than the other two still.

Panicked can be good, but it has less use cases. Fast creatures can end the effect with just their dash, while slower creatures get locked into fleeing for potentially two turns. It pairs nicely with difficult terrain generation like Sleet Storm and Entangle, as functionally halving a creature's speed doubles the number of rounds it needs to run and waste.

Sickened will come out only when you’re facing a threat that both is immune to being frightened and put to sleep, or in the rare case where a single low initiative baddy with ample access to minions to wake it up is present and also immune to being frightened. It being the only effect that prompts saves at the end of each turn makes it comparably terrible; it doesn’t hurt to have the option, though.

All in all Eyebite delivers on a cool fantasy in a fair way. It takes an unfun mechanic and makes it feel better to use when a creature passes the first save against it. You can’t waste a turn casting Eyebite; you always get something, and that something can massively impact encounters

5e Spells

Eyebite: If Looks Could Ill