Hypnotic Pattern: LSD&D

Usable By: Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

Spell Level: 3

School: Illusion

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 120 feet

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

Components: S, M (a glowing stick of incense or a crystal vial filled with phosphorescent material)

You create a twisting pattern of colors that weaves through the air inside a 30-foot cube within range. The pattern appears for a moment and vanishes. Each creature in the area who sees the pattern must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the creature becomes charmed for the duration. While charmed by this spell, the creature is incapacitated and has a speed of 0.
The spell ends for an affected creature if it takes any damage or if someone else uses an action to shake the creature out of its stupor.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Area of effect lockdown can be really good. Fear earns a spot on my top five wizard 3rd level slots for this reason; it wastes a bunch of creatures' actions, makes them drop stuff, and frightens them. That’s valuable. Similarly, Hypnotic Pattern can incapacitate huge groups of creatures until damaged. That has a lot of potential, but there are some hiccups that make it have a bit wider variance than I think Fear and similar saves tend to have.

Hypnotic Pattern is tricky. Oftentimes, it's going to feel like a one round long stun effect for a handful of baddies. That’s definitely worth a 3rd level slot. Sometimes you’ll get more than a round’s worth of incapacitation on a handful of baddies, and when that occurs, Hypnotic Pattern is exceptional. At its floor, it's a save or die against one or two creatures that end the second they’re damaged, which can result in everyone readying actions to hit the thing all at once and functionally just shifts around initiative. That’s fine, but not as debilitating or necessarily useful as something like Fear can be, and I think that use case is going to be more common than many would expect.

With minions, if any pass, they can free any bigger bads that fail the save if they aren’t confident in their own aim, meaning you aren’t really able to lock down any single major threat with this if other enemies are grouped up with them. Hypnotic Pattern tends to eat the worst actions the enemy has if initiative order is lined up with any weaker enemies between you and the main threat. That’s going to make this spell have a pretty high variance in power.

It having concentration paints a large target on you as well; if a creature is torn between shaking its friend awake or just shooting you, the latter seems like a better approach from a tactics standpoint. Concentration also makes Hypnotic Pattern something you’re casting less and less as the game goes on and you start to lean heavier on higher level concentration effects. This makes it so it's a spell that doesn't age particularly well, and is about as good as it can be the second you have access to it.

At minimum, Hypnotic Pattern is a fine area of effect save or die. At its best, it's giving you a way to pick off a group of creatures one at a time. At its worst, it's eating a pair of lackey’s actions, and doing little to nothing else. You won’t ever be bummed out to have Hypnotic Pattern on your sheet. It's a great 3rd level wizard spell you can find great uses for. It shouldn’t wildly change the game, though. There is a lot of counterplay to this spell, and it can be a joy to DM for and play with.

5e Spells

Hypnotic Pattern: LSD&D