Stoneskin: Hardly Worth It

Usable By: Artificer, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard

Spell Level: 4

School: Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Touch

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour

Components: V, S, M (Diamond dust worth 100 gp, which the spell consumes)

This spell turns the flesh of a willing creature you touch as hard as stone. Until the spell ends, the target has resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Did you know some spells are pay to play? That’s right! Thanks to the spells like Stoneskin, we have microtransactions in our tabletop roleplaying games! For a single platinum piece, an action, and a 4th level spell slot, you can give a 1st level barbarian feature that normally only takes a bonus action to use to any creature you touch! Oof!

Resistances to non-magical weapon damage types is fickle. Some tables will lean heavily on mundane weapons through all tiers of play, making resistance to that damage valuable. That typically looks like a lower magic setting with less magical players and requisite magical villains to counterpose them. Other tables will have a higher density of whimsy (or chaos, depending on your point view), and fall into less common damage types as a baseline. Fire, acid, and necrotic damage become as or more common than weapon damage types. This leads to non-magical weapon resistance being something only to be desired in specific settings, meaning some tables will find Stoneskin is functionally unusable in the bulk of encounters.

At tables where non-magical weapons are abundant, this spell is at its best when used on an allied non-barbarian frontliner like a Fighter or Paladin. If you’re concentrating on this and not getting attacked, the spell is doing nothing. If you’re concentrating on it and are attacked, it can disappear instantly should concentration break, and might not even reduce any incoming damage if the type is wrong. Best case scenario, if you can evade damage with clever positioning and get foes to focus a single creature and potentially mitigate huge amounts of damage.

Defensive spells like this can feel amazing when you get their best case scenario, but that’s not the bulk of the time. Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards all have no shortage of impactful magic to use at this level, and if you’re a Ranger or Artificer, you need to be at least 13th level to start using this spell, and I just can’t get excited about resistance to non-magical damage that late into play. You have to compare this to the greats like Polymorph, Banishment, Conjure Minor Elementals, Dimension Door, and Wall of Fire, all of which offer an encounter warping effect in most situations, not just the few where Stoneskin shines. In addition, because Stoneskin is often doing its best against large groups of mundanely armed creatures, spells like Wall of Fire or Ice Storm can neuter the masses before any instances of damage can be reduced. The cases where Stoneskin is comparatively better is few and far between, even at tables where you might think it’d thrive.

I do love a good rant about gold costs, and let me express just how much I detest this specific spell's consumed material component cost. One HUNDRED gold to use a 4th level spell that is usually a worse option than most of its counterparts is baffling. The spell requires concentration, meaning you already can’t cast it more than once at a time. The situations where you’d WANT to recast it are when things are going to shit and you need to get shields back up, meaning you have to predict this and buy backup material components in advance. The spell being concentration means a stray arrow or loose pebble can randomly remove an effect before it actually does anything, literally siphoning a 4th level slot which already feels awful enough on its own but now also deletes a hundred golds worth of materials invested. If you’re DMing with this, I can’t recommend enough just removing this cost. It arbitrarily gates an effect that is only sometimes good, makes the player’s toolbox smaller, and leads to more situations where you can’t attack a player or end up feeling like an asshole.

From a player's perspective, then, all of these downsides make the spell ultimately not worth the effort. If you know you’re going against multiple forces where you can confidently say you can maintain concentration over the full hour for more than one encounter AND have it matter each encounter, it's great. Otherwise just take one of the known busted 4th level options.

5e Spells

Stoneskin: Hardly Worth It