Many of the spells in the DnD 2024 Player’s Handbook have only had minor tweaks, while others are entirely the same. However, budding Wizards and Sorcerers should take heed – quite a few magical spells have been radically altered from their 5e form.
If your first character in the new ruleset will be a spellcasting DnD class, you’ll probably want to know which entries are worth re-reading. Here are the six DnD 5e spells that have changed the most from 2014 to 2024.
True Strike
This is one that was announced a long time ago. True Strike has long been held up as an example of a useless spell in DnD. Rather than spending your entire action to cast a spell that gives advantage on your next attack, it almost always worked out better to just attack on both turns.
But this cantrip now works entirely differently. Rather than powering up a future attack, it itself is an attack. Specifically, when you cast True Strike you must designate a weapon to use in the spell’s casting. You then make an attack with that weapon, and you can use your spellcasting ability for the attack and damage rolls. This lets the squishier DnD classes use weapons effectively, using Int, Wis, or Cha to deliver effective physical blows or ranged shots.
You can also choose to change the weapon’s DnD damage type to radiant, and the cantrip gains damage as you level up, dealing an additional 1d6 radiant damage at level 5, 2d6 at level 11, and 3d6 at level 17.
Sleep
The unique mechanics of Sleep, where you roll d8s to determine how many HP of creatures are taken to slumberland, have been stripped away in the 2024 rules, presumably in an attempt to streamline gameplay. Now anyone in the area of effect can be sent to sleep, if they fail a Wisdom saving throw.
It’s by no means a straight up buff to the spell: more of a sidegrade. For starters, not only do they now get a save, those creatures are only incapacitated at first, and get to make a second save at the end of their next turn to snap out of it and avoid falling unconscious for Sleep’s duration.
The spell’s range has also been reduced from 90 to 60 feet, and most importantly of all, the radius of the Sleep spell has dropped from 20 feet to 5, meaning you’ll rarely be able to wipe out an entire battlefield of hostiles.
Conjure spells
In an attempt to stop turns getting bogged down, Wizards of the Coast has drastically changed all the conjure spells, from Conjure Animals to Conjure Woodland Beings. Rather than creating a bunch of creatures – which could be a logistical pain for DMs and cause combat to drag – these spells are now more like Spiritual Weapon. They bring forth spirits, which don’t have their own turns, but instead create different effects.
For instance, Conjure Celestial produces a 40 foot high pillar of light that can heal friends and sear foes, while Conjure Elemental plonks a damaging effect on a space, which can grab enemies and deal elemental damage. It’s also worth noting that these are all concentration spells with a max duration of 10 minutes, instead of an hour.
Some will love this change, while others will hate it. If you’re in the latter group, don’t be too dismayed. If the fun of conjuration is fetching up a statblock from the Monster Manual to fight for you, you’ll be pleased to hear that the summon spells like Summon Aberration still function just as they used to (though that one now has a Mindflayer form instead of a Star Spawn).
Ray of Enfeeblement
Rather than a ranged attack that can miss, Ray of Enfeeblement now forces a Constitution save. But the great thing about it is, even if the enemy passes, they still get a pretty big debuff: disadvantage on their next attack roll.
If they fail the save, you get to subtract 1d8 from all that enemy’s damage rolls. Now for some foes, that will have less impact than the 5e version of the spell, which halved damage dealt. However, it applies to all attacks, not just those made with weapons, which dramatically widens the variety of DnD monsters this spell is useful against.
The affected creature also gets disadvantage on Strength-based tests, which might have some synergy with your party, making them vulnerable – for instance – to a martial DnD class’ maneuvers.
Polymorph
Polymorph, along with True Polymorph, Animal Shapes, and Shapechange have all seen similar tweaks, which are also reflected in the new DnD 2024 Druid’s Wild Shape. Now, when something is transformed by one of these spells, it doesn’t just retain its alignment and personality, but its HP too.
In all cases, a transformed creature keeps its hit points, but gains temporary HP equal to the hit points of whatever it turned into. When it runs out of temporary HP it transforms back to its regular form. It seems like a minor change, but a pretty big nerf since you can’t gain that temp HP back through other means.
Animal Shapes also isn’t a concentration spell anymore, which is pretty cool. And Polymorph works on shapechangers and unconscious creatures.
Counterspell
The tweak to Counterspell is one of the most controversial changes in all the spell list. The main differences are that rather than an ability check against your spellcasting ability, the target has to beat a Constitution saving throw to avoid their spell dissipating.
More crucially, if you’re successful at stopping a spell, you don’t waste your opponent’s spell slot. This caused uproar when it was first announced, but we suspect it benefits players rather than NPCs.
Nothing is more frustrating than having a high level spell slot wasted as an enemy forces you to fizzle, but now you get that spell slot back. And crucially, spellcasting monsters don’t actually use spell slots anymore. As of Monsters of the Multiverse, they have spells they can cast a certain number of times per day. There’s nothing in this spell’s description to imply they get those spell charges back.
For more DnD content, check out our guides to all the different DnD races, as well as our picks for the best DnD maps.