Shield: I Wish You Hadn’t Done That
Spell Level: 1
School: Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 reaction, which you take when you are hit by an attack or targeted by the Magic Missile spell
Range: Self
Duration: 1 round
Components: V, S
An invisible barrier of magical force appears and protects you. Until the start of your next turn, you have a +5 bonus to AC, including against the triggering attack, and you take no damage from magic missile.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
One element of 5e that I find WOEFULLY underdeveloped is reactions. Each class has a bountiful amount of action options, normally some potential options for bonus actions, and just two reactions: attacks of opportunity, and performing a readied action. That’s really it. For a lot of characters, this will feel closer to one usable reaction, as attacks of opportunity only occur when enemies retreat without disengaging from melee combat. Only your fighters, barbarians, monks, and other melee weapon wielders will occasionally see this occur.
Enter Shield: a 1st level spell you can cast with your reaction at any time you’d be hit with a weapon attack. It offers you +5 AC when you know you’d need it, and then subsequently lasts until your next turn. In the lowest tier, this can save you from otherwise certain death, and often will just be better than something like Mage Armor. If you weren’t going to be hit much or at all, Mage Armor is wasted; Shield will only ever come up if you know you’re getting attacked. All other times that slot can go do something else!
What pushes Shield over the top for me is just how easy it is to have on hand. The more slots you accumulate over the game, the harder a time your DM is going to have expending them. Once you reach a critical mass of spells, you can comfortably spend ALL of your 1st level slots on Shield. In the top tiers of play, you’ll actively and eagerly spend second or in rare cases third level slots on +5 AC. You’re functionally playing a character that is a full caster with an AC of 20+ when you need it. It’s bananas.
Having something to do with your reaction is invaluable. There are just so few other options competing with it you’ll readily take it. Even on characters with few spell slots like Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters, I still find room for Shield as you’ve already got plenty of other things to do with your actions. Shield is the kind of spell every character benefits from, costs you next to nothing to have at the ready, and can save your characters life time and time again. Shield is absolutely nuts.
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