InDungeons & Dragons, cantrips can often feel repetitive and dull. Although they’re far more powerful at low levels, they sometimes begin to feel tried later down the line when you are just endlessly spamming your highest damage cantrip to save a spellslot. As a result, cantrips can be underrated, especially ones that aremore focused on utilitythan damage.
However, we have a few fancy tricks up our spellcasting sleeves for ways that you can use different types of cantrips that will surely impress your fellow players around the table and come in handy in many ways throughout your adventures. Here are some clever ways that you can use cantrips that others may be overlooking.
8Test The Depths With Dancing Lights
This Is Always Great For Dungeon Delving
The Dancing Lights cantrip usually gets overlooked. Light tends to be more useful to a lot of players and that’s evenifyou need a spell to see in the dark, considering almost every species in D&D tends to have darkvision. However, that doesn’t mean Dancing Lights is totally useless.
you’re able to actually use it as a fancy way of testing the depths of rivers, crevasses, and other places. Create orbs from the spell and then move them down one after another to test the depths of a place that is too dark to see.
7Minor Illusion Creates Cover
Cover Will Boost Your AC Against Ranged Attacks
One of the most useful cantrips is Minor Illusion and you can use this to provide cover if you’re in an open space. The spell allows you to create a visual illusion that is no more than five feet in diameter, which means you could create a five-foot tall opaque wall or box and have your character or another party member use it for cover.
The spell lasts a minute which would be the equivalent of ten rounds in combat, so you’ll get some great use out of it, as most fights don’t tend to last that long.
6Subtitles Are A Great Use Of Minor Illusion
A Great Way To Translate Languages
Another way that you can use the Minor Illusion cantrip is to create subtitles. There will be plenty of scenarios in which an NPC you come acrossspeaks a languageonly a few party members know, so if you’re a spellcaster who understands the language while the rest of your party don’t, then use Minor Illusion to create subtitles that translate what the speaker is saying.
This is a great inclusive way of using the spell and also means you don’t have to have your character repeat everything to your party, which can save time.
5Ice Bridge With Shape Water
Cross A River Fast With One Simple Cantrip
Want to get over some water like a lake or river? Well, now you can with Shape Water. You don’t need to worry about shaping water itself, but you can freeze it little by little so that you can begin to make something like an icy bridge for you to traverse over.
It’s really up to your Dungeon Master how stable such a bridge could be, depending on the current of the water and how many people walk along it, but you’re able to keep repeatedly using the cantrip to freeze more blocks of water and step onto them to walk over this makeshift bridge if you need to get over a body of water fast. The water stays frozen for one hour.
4Scents And Sounds With Prestidigitation
Prestidigitation Can Help You Hunt Beasts
Here’s something your rangers will love, using a spell so that you can aid them in hunting. Oftentimes, when you do something like the Help action, a Dungeon Master will ask you how you are specifically helping the target.
In that case, one way you can help a Ranger or anyone who is doing some hunting is to use Prestidigitation to create the scent of blood to attract an animal which could make hunting easier. Another thing you can do is also create the sounds of certain animals in hopes they are attracted to it, believing the area issafe from beastsand predators.
Use This Cantrip In A Political Campaign
If you’re in a political campaign or one that requires deceit and secrecy then letters are probably going to play an important role and there’s bound to be a couple with some juicy information you want to check for. But the issue is that they likely have wax seals. But don’t fret, this is where the Mending cantrip comes in.
You can open up the wax seals and then read any letter you want and then quickly put the letter back (or if you’re feeling really sneaky, put a false one in) and use Mending to fix the wax seal so that it looks as if was unopened.
2Break Locks With Shape Water
Impress Your Rogue By Breaking Locks
Don’t have a Rogue? Don’t worry. You won’t need to use Thieves Tools to deal with every lock, in fact, you could probably use Shape Water and a waterskin. Pour water inside a lock and then use Shape Water to freeze it. Due to how water freezes, it should expand and voila, it’ll expand so much that the lock will be broken, meaning you can enter the door.
This isn’t bound to work on every locked door, but for some common ones, this is a great way to get inside a place without having to rely on a Rogue or breaking down the door with brute force.
1Use Minor Illusion For Illusory Maps
Create Magical Holograms For Your Party
One of the essential moments in Dungeons & Dragons is when your party huddles together and begins to create a plan. This isn’t to say those plans are always successful but hey, there’s no point in not trying. However, if you’re a spellcaster then you can do something that can help make the planning session a little more serious.
Whether it’s a dungeon you’ve mapped out or some keep that you’re planning to break into, you’re able to use Minor Illusion to create a rudimentary map in the air, sort of like a fantasy version of a hologram. Be aware that the spell only lasts a minute though, so be sure to recast the cantrip and update it with new details.
