Primordial Ward: Live to Fight Another… Round?
Usable By: Druid
Spell Level: 6
School: Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Components: V, S
You have resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder damage for the spell’s duration.
When you take damage of one of those types, you can use your reaction to gain immunity to that type of damage, including against the triggering damage. If you do so, the resistances end, and you have the immunity until the end of your next turn, at which time the spell ends.
Review by Sam West, @CrierKobold
Druid’s are prepared casters; each time you finish a long rest, you prepare a new list of spells you expect to cast down the road. Primordial Ward, a druid exclusive spell, really couldn’t work on any other non-prepared caster because there are few spells that have as niche an application as this. Still, even with the convenience of only taking this effect when you think it’ll be at its best, I’m unconvinced it's worth preparing over basically any other 6th level spell.
When it comes to resistance (the damage reduction effect, not the spell), it tends to be a clear cut binary. You either have it, or you don’t. It's at its best when it persists for long amounts of time, or is easily accessible and costs very little to activate. The higher level you get, the higher the damage numbers get, the better the resistance ends up being as it reduces more damage in total. Rage is a perfect example: it takes a bonus action to start, can occur a bunch of times each long rest, and is accessible in all tiers of play.
Primordial Ward offers you resistance to a decent chunk of damage types, but has three enormous problems: it lasts 1 minute, requires your concentration, and takes an entire action to cast. All of these problems coalesse to present a spell I’d go as far to say is nearly uncastable.
Spells that ask you to take large amounts of damage to get the most out of their effect work terribly with the concentration mechanic. Yes, you can choose to end this and take no damage once, but if you’re ever trying to cast this you’re going to want more than a single use out of it to justify its action. Risking losing the ward to the dragon’s bite before it breath weapons seems like a suspect plan to me. Because of its duration paired with action cost, it’s left being a spell you basically need to cast as combat starts, taking up most of your turn. Circle of Moon druids could wild shape after and represent an enormous hit point well, but you don’t really need resistance to damage AND four-hundred or more HP.
This is an effect you use to attempt to bamboozle a dragon, something you cast moments before engaging a Pit Fiend. It's a spell to block a single powerful other spell in its entirety. Unfortunately for it, most of the time those effects are going to be dealing fire damage, and Investiture of Flame and Ice exist. This then will come up when you specifically are looking to get immunity to one or two major acid, lightning, or thunder damage effects. Those are not particularly plentiful damage types.
What makes this spell particularly awful is its duration. It's a ward that lasts 1 minute. I’d expect an effect like this to be something I cast to defend myself against damage I anticipate facing, but I don’t know when. Most of the time Protection from Energy is going to give you the same resistance you care about for an entire hour. For double the spell level, you’re dropping the duration to a minute, but encompassing all the damage types. That’s just not a practical upside. Environments tend to be themed, meaning you aren’t likely going to see a variety of elemental damage types together. This results in the major selling point being damage immunity once. Yes, that can be crazy useful, but I don’t think it's 6th level slot for only a minute useful.
Buff spells like Protection from Good and Evil tend to be good because you cast them in a scary place prior to an encounter and basically are netting a “free” action in combat by benefiting from one used outside of combat. With the limited duration, you can’t really cast this before most fights break out and know it’ll last long enough to matter.
I think there’s a neat idea with Primordial Ward. As written, you’re better off with something like Protection from Energy or one of the more common Investitures against cold or fire. If you’re going against specifically an ancient blue dragon, I suppose immunity to lightning damage can be crucial, but this taking your action and requiring concentration can lead to the ancient dragon beating the ward off of you before breath weaponing anyway. I just don’t realistically see this ever being useful. I’d avoid it entirely, even going against the acid lightning fire dungeon.
Primordial Ward is way over costed, and has too weak of an effect to be worth the cast. Immunity to a single ancient red breath can be valuable, but probably not more valuable than using any number of other 4th through 6th level spells that also require your action and concentration to set up. Don’t waste your slots, actions, and concentration on this garbage.
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