Shield of Faith: Pray the Slay Away
Spell Level: 1
School: Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: 60 feet
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
Components: V, S, M (a small parchment with a bit of holy text written on it)
A shimmering field appears and surrounds a creature of your choice within range, granting it a +2 bonus to AC for the duration.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Want a simple, clean, protective spell for your cleric? Shield of Faith has your back. Its clean. Its simple. It's a way to leverage your concentration early. All of these elements fit nicely alongside the cleric's typical position in a fight to deliver a great boon for a teammate at a cheap cost with a worthy effect you’ll prepare up until 5th level regularly.
+2 AC results in 10% of attacks that would have hit the target prior now missing. Basically, for a 1st level spell slot and a bonus action, you can potentially mitigate one in ten hits a target receives, which isn’t a glowing review. This will shine brighter in environments with a lot of attacks as you’d expect, and brightest on creatures with already high ACs to often prevent any damage from coming in at all. Taking a paladin with a base AC of 20 and jacking it up to 22 makes it so creatures with a +2 to hit need to crit to hit them at all, missing 95% of the time.
Putting this on yourself defends the concentration it asks you to keep, as with a shield, this is often putting your AC of 18 up to 20, which will make it so nearly no attacks threaten your AC from weaker monsters. Want to take some attacks in the frontline? Shield of Faith can contribute to that.
Concentration becomes a lot taller of an order later in the game as you get more potent effects to use, and if you’re not intending to take a lot of hits, or you foresee a lot of saves in your parties future, simple comparable spells like Bless probably are more worth the slot and your concentration. This being a bonus action does mean early you can engage a fight with a casting of Shield of Faith, drawing your mace and smashing face. That’s a pretty excellent floor with an incredibly low cost.
Shield of Faith is a perfectly fine cleric spell. It's cheap, efficient, and will mitigate enough hits over a pair of fights; it'll be worth casting as long as you’re still taking other actions that matter. War Domain clerics in particular will love this kind of spell, as they get to continue smashing things with their martial weapons while simultaneously bulking up to block hit after hit. If you want a cheap, efficient buff spell, and aren’t dedicating your concentration to a higher level spell, Shield of Faith can easily slot onto your prepared list.
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