Wizards have access to more spells than any other class in Dungeons & Dragons. Honestly, it’s obscene the amount of spells they have at their disposal to manipulate the elements and warp reality. But with such a wide variety to choose from, deciding what to cast can sometimes feel overwhelming.

So I’m going to list my picks for the top 5 spells for every spell level. Mind you, this is for a generic, run-of-the-mill wizard. If you want to pick spells that better match your particular wizard’s theme or personality, I strongly encourage you to do so. But this list won’t take any of that into account.

Best Wizard Cantrips

Fire Bolt: There are plenty of damage spells for blasting your enemies to bits, but you’ll want to have a solid damage cantrip to fall back on in case you run out of other spells. If range and damage are your priorities, Fire Bolt is the clear winner.
Mold Earth: Moving dirt around may not seem like a particularly useful spell effect, but a 5-foot cube is a LOT of dirt. With Move Earth, you can potentially alter the dynamics of a battle map in seconds, providing full cover almost instantaneously, or digging a defensive trench in a matter of of minutes. And if you happen to win the fight, it makes burying the bodies a breeze. That’s not too shabby for a cantrip.
Mage Hand: The usefulness of a minor telekinesis spell is limited only by your imagination. Distract someone with a tap on the shoulder, poison a drink from across the room, or sneakily arm yourself with a dagger some guard carelessly left on a table 30 feet away from your cell.
Use it to trigger traps or open doors you suspect may be trapped. Throw a sheet over it and make it appear as though a ghost is flying around the room. I’ll stop now.
Ray of Frost: I was hesitant to include a second damage spell, especially since Fire Bolt outshines this one in almost every measurable way. But for a calculating wizard who’s willing to sacrifice a little bit of damage (and quite a bit of range) for some limited battlefield control, slowing a creature’s movement by 10 feet can potentially reduce the number of attacks it’s able to make on you and your fellow party members.
Mind Sliver: Mind Sliver does little enough damage that it can hardly be considered a damage cantrip. That’s not what you take it for. Rather, you take this spell for the penalty it bestows on your target’s next saving throw. This is a spell that rewards teamwork. Do a little bit of damage while setting up a fellow party member to hit them with something bigger that forces a saving throw.

Worst Wizard Cantrip

Blade Ward: I came really close to giving this honor to True Strike, but there are a tiny few niche cases where True Strike isn’t necessarily completely useless. Blade Ward, on the other hand, is pretty much just the dodge action, except that it takes up a valuable cantrip slot.

Best Level 1 Wizard Spells

Find Familiar: Like Mage Hand, Find Familiar gives you access to a lot of lightweight things that would otherwise be out of reach, but it does so much more than that! For much of your adventuring career, this will be the only spell you need for reconnaissance, sending messages, setting off traps, or any number of other tasks you need doing. It can even deliver touch spells on your behalf.
Perhaps the best part of this spell is that it doesn’t really end. Your familiar becomes a feature of your character that you’ll use time and time again throughout your adventuring career.
Magic Missile: The standard for Level 1 damage spells, Magic Missile doesn’t do amazing damage, but it’s a solid option for when you absolutely need to hit your target. Aside from being a guaranteed hit, Magic Missile offers versatility in that you can focus the separate missiles on a single target or multiple targets, allowing you to do more damage to one creature or weaken several creatures.
This can be even more valuable when trying to break an enemy caster’s concentration, as each individual missile forces a concentration check.
Shield: If you’re a squishy caster, the best option is usually to stay out of harm’s way, cast spells from a distance, and let the beefier members of your party take the hits. But sometimes being the target of an attack is unavoidable. It’s for these reasons that I chose Shield over Mage Armor. As a reaction spell, Shield is there when you need it.
It also blocks Magic Missiles, meaning you can keep a concentration spell going even when an enemy caster takes their best shot at shutting it down.
Silvery Barbs: It’s kind of hard to believe that this is a first level spell. Silvery Barbs is something you’ll want to keep on using throughout the entire campaign. It’s crazy powerful, and only gets more so as the stakes become greater.
Detect Magic: Knowledge is power, and knowing where the magic is makes you the biggest badass on the block.

Worst Level 1 Wizard Spell

Distort Value: Outside of some wacky hijinks that will ultimately fail and inevitably get you into trouble, Distort Value has very little to offer. I wouldn’t recommend this even as a cantrip.

Best Level 2 Wizard Spells

Hold Person: Do you want to stand back and watch your friends beat someone like a piñata? Hold Person paralyzes a humanoid creature for a full minute, allowing attacks with advantage that automatically crit on a successful hit. More often than not, rolling the dice for the rest of the fight is merely a formality.
Web: An AOE spell that restrains creatures and can be weaponized with fire? Yes, please. At the very least, you can block off a passage while you run away.
Invisibility: I don’t need to tell you how cool Invisibility is. You’ve been thinking about what you could get away with if you were invisible since you were four years old. There are a gazillion ways to make use of this spell, from infiltration to assisting your rogue’s sneak attacks to good old-fashioned burglary.
With a duration of up to an hour, it can be a fun spell to cast on a stealthy friend while you hang back secure in your concentration.
Misty Step: Outside of simply being able to access places that would otherwise be inaccessible or making a quick escape, which are both plenty good enough to put Misty Step on this list, the casting time of 1 Bonus Action means that you can run up and stab a wounded bugbear, then teleport to safety after you inevitably fail to kill it.
Scorching Ray: My level 2 damage spell of choice, Scorching Ray provides you with similar versatility to Magic Missile. It’s not a guaranteed hit, but those hits that land do respectable damage.

Worst Level 2 Wizard Spell

Darkvision: Everyone already has either Darkvision or access to a torch. It would pain me to have to spend magic resources to cast this.

Best Level 3 Wizard Spells

Fireball: Every damage spell from this point forward will be compared to Fireball cast at the same level, and most of them will fail miserably. It’s got an impressively long range, a respectable AOE, and dishes out heaps of damage. When you need to incinerate a horde of creatures as efficiently as possible, accept no substitute.
Haste: Turn your mightiest warrior or your deadliest rogue into a blur of blades and bowstrings, darting to and fro all over the map to make short work of your enemies.
Slow: Alternatively, you can slow down up to six enemies, making them easier to hit, crippling their movement, denying them their reactions, and otherwise severely limiting their options.
Fear: Scaring multiple enemies and forcing them to flee can be useful for compartmentalizing battles, but that alone wouldn’t be enough to put Fear on this list. My favorite part is that the targets drop what they’re holding.
So after you and your party finish off everyone who initially succeeded their saving throws, the ones who failed are now likely unarmed. You can fight them with their own weapons. Or, if they decide to run away, free stuff!
Fly: You’re fucking flying!

Worst Level 3 Wizard Spell

Vampiric Touch: This spell fails spectacularly to deliver on the fantasy it promises. The damage it deals is embarrassing for a third level spell. But the worst part is that, for this to live up to its full potential, it requires you to both already be injured and to touch the creature you’re attacking (most likely the one that’s already beating the crap out of you).
You’re almost guaranteed to come away worse from this spell than before you cast it.

Best Level 4 Wizard Spells

Polymorph: Both Polymorph and Banishment can effectively remove a Big Bad from a fight while you deal with the minions. But I chose Polymorph for this list because there are a variety of useful ways you can use it on your allies as well.
Conjure Minor Elementals: Yes, you can choose higher CR creatures, but it’s hard to beat a swarm of mephits. Between their sheer numbers, regular attacks, breath weapons, innate spellcasting abilities, and the fact that they EXPLODE when they die, mephits will ensure that your enemies have a very bad day.
Greater Invisibility: Just like regular invisibility, but greater! No more becoming visible when you attack makes this especially deadly to cast on the rogue in your party.
Wall of Fire: Nothing makes pursuing enemies think twice about chasing you like having to run through a massive wall of flames. An initial casting makes for an adequate battlefield control spell, but pairing it with other spells and effects to throw your foes through the wall keeps the party going.
Dimension Door: Teleport with a friend up to 500 feet in any direction. You’ll probably be using this mostly to airlift a comrade out of a fight when things aren’t going so well, but it can be just as effective teleporting into harm’s way when your enemy least expects it.

Worst Level 4 Wizard Spell

Secret Chest: For the life of me, I can’t imagine a scenario in which anyone would ever want to cast this spell. Even if it wasn’t prohibitively expensive, it’s more of a liability than anything. If you’re worried about someone stealing your precious whatever, they can just as easily steal the tiny replica chest you need to retrieve it. If you don’t get it back in a month’s time, there’s a good chance your chest and its contents will be lost forever. No thank you.

Best Level 5 Wizard Spells

Animate Objects: Be our guest, be our guest, until we stab you in the chest. Animate Objects allows you to turn inanimate objects in the vicinity into killing machines, which you control with your bonus action.
Hold Monster: Like Hold Person, but for monsters. That’s a much wider range of creatures that you and your friends can wail on as they sit helplessly paralyzed.
Dominate Person: Nothing throws off a group’s dynamic like one member suddenly going homicidally berserk on the rest. Dominate Person can really turn the tables in a fight right out of the gate. Upcasting it at higher levels increases the duration, allowing for longer-term out-of-combat applications.
Arcane Hand: Beat, squeeze, or shove your enemies, or just use it as an extremely annoying obstacle between yourself and them. The wide variety of powerful effects makes this one a winner.
Wall of Stone: I’m a sucker for any spell that leaves something permanent behind. Start building your dream fortress today!

Worst Level 5 Wizard Spell

Contact Other Plane: It was a toss up between this and Create Spelljamming Helm. While the latter is almost completely useless for 99.99% of players, at least it won’t hurt you. With Contact Other Plane, success means a likely ambiguous one-word answer. Failure means you take psychic damage and go insane. Pass.

Best Level 6 Wizard Spells

Mass Suggestion: Inciting a riot has never been easier! Use this spell to turn the tide of battle. Even accounting for saving throws, getting half a dozen opponents to suddenly switch sides can make a hell of a difference.
Contingency: Keep a special spell in the bank, ready to fire off just when you need it. There are so many different ways you can use Contingency. It’s like having an extra reaction that isn’t limited to reaction spells. This one is well worth taking some time to think about.
Freezing Sphere: Huge AOE, decent damage, a time-delay option, and the potential to trap creatures in water. Cast this spell just before a fight and wait for the most opportune time to use it.
Irresistible Dance: Not as powerful an effect as Hold Person, but no initial saving throw means that you’re always going to get at least a little something out of this spell. What’s even better is that your target has to blow an action to attempt a saving throw on the next round.
Scatter: It’s one thing to be able to move your chess pieces wherever you want on the board. It’s another thing entirely to be able to move your opponent’s pieces.

Worst Level 6 Wizard Spell

Instant Summons: It’s like Secret Chest, only somehow manages to be even worse. For a mere 1,000 gold pieces, you might be able to summon an item. How is this a sixth level spell? Just keep what you need with you in a Bag of Holding.

Best Level 7 Wizard Spells

Whirlwind: Respectable damage, maneuverability, and the possibility of restraining your enemies. If you manage to suck up enough of them before the spell ends, they’ll be in a great position to get finished off with a Fireball.
Crown of Stars: A powerful multi-use bonus action attack never hurts to have at the ready.
Simulacrum: Build yourself a naked extra party member. Try not to get too weird with it.
Teleport: Dimension Door is fine when you need to get yourself and a buddy out of immediate danger. But a determined foe will eventually be able to close that 500-foot gap after they slaughter the rest of your friends. When things really go south and you need to get the entire party to safety immediately, Teleport is the spell you need.
Reverse Gravity: The massive AOE of this spell can completely incapacitate a horde of terrestrial foes, making them sitting ducks for your archers and ranged spellcasters before they eventually slam back down to the ground for falling damage.

Worst Level 7 Wizard Spell

Power Word Pain: You’re a wizard casting seventh level spells. If your target has fewer than 100 hit points, just kill it.

Best Level 8 Wizard Spells

Dominate Monster: What’s better than a dead troll? A living troll under your control, of course. Send it into battle ahead of you to soften up your opponent, and mind you’re not too close when it starts taking damage and making saving throws.
Illusory Dragon: This may be an illusion whenever it gets attacked, but the effects of its attacks are very real. This spell is nuts. It causes fear, has a breath weapon, only uses a bonus action, and is extremely mobile. As long as you keep your head down and maintain concentration, you can really wreak some havoc with this one.
Antipathy/Sympathy: The practical effects of this spell don’t seem exceptionally powerful, compelling people to either approach or flee from an area. But it has a duration of 10 days and can be cast on a target as large as a 200-foot cube that only needs to be seen to take effect. Depending on its placement, a 200-foot-cube can be seen from pretty damn far away. What you do with that is up to your imagination, but that’s powerful.
Demiplane: An extremely versatile spell, Demiplane can be used for storage, smuggling, a place to hide and recuperate, or even as a prison.
Sunburst: A massive AOE spell that does slightly less damage than an upcast Fireball, but also blinds everyone in the area for up to a full minute.

Worst Level 8 Wizard Spell

Maze: Maze isn’t necessarily a bad spell, but it’s boring. It’s eighth-level Banishment that doesn’t allow for a saving throw. You’ll still have to deal with them in a round or two, only now you’ll have to do it with one less eighth-level spell.

Best Level 9 Wizard Spells

Wish: The king of spells. This can either replicate any level 8 spell or lower, or it can do a multitude of other things. Use it wisely.
Meteor Swarm: When You need to obliterate everyone and everything in the vicinity, Meteor Swarm is the spell for you.
True Polymorph: The potential for this spell is beyond this humble blogger’s comprehension. Go nuts. You’ve earned it.
Invulnerability: You’ve spent the whole game being squishy. Now’s your chance to strut into the field of battle, slinging spells with impunity as arrows, Lightning Bolts, and giant boulders bounce off you. Your enemies will have a hard time breaking your concentration when you can’t take damage.
Psychic Scream: Stun up to 10 creatures and possibly make their HEADS EXPLODE!

Worst Level 9 Wizard Spell

Weird: Nobody deserves to be bullied… except Weird. Fourth level spells should be shoving Weird into lockers and giving it wedgies.
When I see a ninth-level spell called Weird, I expect it to be the epitome of chaos magic. I want this to be a Hail Mary you cast when all hope is nearly lost. Maybe your enemies will all turn into lawn furniture, or maybe all your limbs will fuse together.
Instead, you get some crap damage and a “frightened” effect that isn’t even as good as the third level spell Fear.
Weird can eat a dick.

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