A sorcerer or wizard’s best friend, Mage Armor is perfect for making spellcasters and their armorless companions a little less squishy.

The impressive 8-hour duration gives you a nice big window with which to guess when you’re most likely going to be getting into a scuffle most days.

When you absolutely need to hit a foe, Magic Missile is the spell for you. There are no attack rolls or saving throws, so it’s usually a guaranteed hit.

Protection from Evil and Good creates a clear moment for the clerics, paladins, warlocks, and wizards out there to be epic. It's not something you’re going to be casting every adventure, but many will have moments where this can really shine.

When you need this spell, you’ll be glad you have it. A great reaction spell to have ready when escaping attacks is unavoidable, Shield not only defends you against the attack that trigers it, but from all attacks made at you until the start of your next turn.

Easily one of the best low-level illusion spells, Silent Image allows for all sorts of illusory shenanigans.

Gone are the limitations of being able to cast a mere static image. Silent Image lets you conjure up lifelike animated moving visual representations of pretty much anything you want within the limits of its volume.

Thunderwave is fine. If you want a decent area effect damaging spell, this counts. But you probably shouldn’t put that much more faith into it. Unless you’re deliberately planning out managing area damage effects like Wall of Fire mixed with it, most of the rest of the spell will be at its best when all you need to care about is its damage

At its best, Unseen Servant is a worse Mage Hand. It's a little invisible force that does things you can just do mundanely. This cleans your pot after cooking a stew. It can be used rarely to have a major impact on fights, exploration, or even roleplay, yet still, I want this spell on all my characters.

As long as Bane is in effect, you want to be forcing those effected to make roll as many saving throws as you can.

Anything you can do to boost your own party members’ armor classes is also a good idea, making it extremely difficult for your enemies’ attacks to land.

The opposite of Bane, Bless allows you to buff up to three allies with an extra d4 added to their attack rolls and saving throws.

So… does it really make a difference if you cast Bless on your allies or Bane on your enemies?

The answer is a definitive YES.

Command is sweet. This is exactly the kind of control spell I want to see on clerics, bards, and paladins. I like that it feels different on each, too, with paladins coming with a righteous holier than thou attitude, and bards coming with a more subtle, cunning, beguiling magic.

You don’t need Create or Destroy Water, unless you and your group really love figuring out what happens when you fit ten gallons worth of water in a tiny open waterskin.

You won’t ever really need Detect Poison and Disease outside of specific protection missions where your job is to identify the assassin and apprehend them. The rest of the time, it's going to alert you that the giant spider is in fact poisonous.

A powerful first level attack spell for the cleric, Guiding Bolt not only dishes out a respectable amount of damage while boasting an impressive range, but it also sets up one of your fellow party members for advantage on his or her attack on the target you cast it at.

Inflict Wounds is like Burning Hands in that any time you cast a single target damaging spell, you have to ask what you’re getting beyond damage that makes it worth it over just dealing more damage with Inflict Wounds.

Purify Food and Drink, while unbearably boring, presents this issue for DMs - poisoned food and drink becomes a problem whose solution is so clean and easy it becomes not worth doing at all. 

If Sanctuary is effective, it takes a character who is likely not meaningfully contributing to a fight and removes them from the fight until all their friends are dead. That’s not where you want to be.

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.

Speak with Animals will range wildly table to table. Some DMs will lean on beasts being incomprehensible creatures who communicate in very different ways than people, leaning on instinct and direction to give out sparse information. Others will turn them into societies, cultures, and personalities that rival the most outlandish NPCs.

Faerie Fire can’t really compete with other 1st level spells, but is fine to get alongside other goodies. Ultimately, you have better ways, even at 1st level, to use your concentration or offer allies advantage on attack rolls than this.

The best element of Goodberry is how cheap it is. Have some spell slots lying around before a long rest? Turn them all into yummy berries! Divide them evenly among the party; now functionally everyone has a bunch of free healing potions to get people off of zero and fighting again.