Fire Shield: I’m Just Getting Warmed Up
Usable By: Wizard
Spell Level: 4
School: Evocation
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: Self
Duration: 10 minutes
Components: V, S, M (A bit of phosphorus or a firefly)
Thin and wispy flames wreathe your body for the duration, shedding bright light in a 10-foot radius and dim light for an additional 10 feet. You can end the spell early by using an action to dismiss it.
The flames provide you with a warm shield or a chill shield, as you choose. The warm shield grants you resistance to cold damage, and the chill shield grants you resistance to fire damage.
In addition, whenever a creature within 5 feet of you hits you with a melee attack, the shield erupts with flame. The attacker takes 2d8 fire damage from a warm shield, or 2d8 cold damage from a cold shield.
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Fire Shield is an oddity of a spell. It's a 10 minute duration rebuking effect that punishes enemies for hitting you with 2d8 fire or cold damage, which is pretty nifty. Outside of subclasses, this is a wizard exclusive, and leaves me wondering what wizard builds actually want to cast this?
To juice Fire Shield to its fullest, you’re going to want to be attacked. If you ever cast Fire Shield and go two encounters without getting a single creature within 5 feet of you to try to hit you, this spell doesn’t do anything. It's a glorified torch at that point. Hypothetically you want to be a melee ranged wizard, like an abjurer or bladesinger, to really get the full value out of this. On those builds making short ranged attacks and acting as a part of a front line, I can see this being a nifty little bonus to damage. It puts enemies in a position often where they’ll have to choose between attacking wizards through their lines of magical defense while taking on damage or swinging at the 23 AC paladin. It’s a lose lose for the melee ranged monster.
The bonus resistances it offers makes it fairly flexible in utility as well; some environments will want either resistance, and when that comes up this spell suddenly goes from a fine defensive frontline tool to an incredibly important layer of defense against the red or white dragon. Spells that are generally applicable to some builds and have a little extra bonus in specific circumstances are great for the game, as you’ll always get something out of it, but can really feel like a superhero when its working at its fullest.
Ultimately, Fire Shield probably doesn’t have a home on the majority of wizards that can take it, as you’d rather not get hit in the first place, and if you’re not built to get hit, you probably can’t take much advantage of the effect in the mid to upper tiers. The artificer, warlock, and druid options that get this all tend to like to play in the front line as well, though, making this an excellent addition to many of those sheets along with the handful of frontline wizards out there looking to defy the squishy wizard trope and hit some people with a hammer while being on fire.
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