S tier: Breach (Abjuration), Spell Immunity (Abjuration).

Breach is a bread-and-butter spell of level 5 and one of the most important spells in the arcane arsenal overall. This will strip away virtually every combat protection: Stoneskin, Protection from Magical Weapons, Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Protection from [insert damage type here], Free Action, etc etc. It’ll even tear down many HLAs (including, amusingly, dispelling a Bard’s Magic Flute), but that’s mostly not relevant for vanilla. And it will always work, with 100% probability of tearing down every single protection it can affect.

In case that somehow weren’t enough, in vanilla this spell is also almost impossible to block. It completely ignores most spell defenses: (Minor) Spell Deflection, (Minor) Spell Turning, not even Spell Immunity: Abjuration or Spell Trap can stop this (although the spell also doesn’t take any of those down… but that usually doesn’t matter). Only Spell Shield can block this, and man does the vanilla AI not cast that often.

(SCS players take note that this is not the case there, and Breach gets blocked by most things you’d expect it would (although I think it still ignores SI: Abjuration). Definitely tear down Spell Turning before launching Breach).

Oh! This spell also completely bypasses Magic Resistance. Your Mage may have a tough time actually doing damage to a Drow Mage, but you can at least nuke his defenses so your warriors can take care of it.

A couple of limitations. It can’t target invisible enemies, so you’ll have to reveal them first, and it doesn’t bring down Illusory Protections – if an enemy has Stoneskin, Spirit Armor, Blur, and Mirror Image, Breach will only remove the first two.

More importantly, as a level 5 spell, Liches, Demiliches, and Rakshasa are completely immune to this.

Always have at least one memorized - even opponents that aren’t obviously Mages can often still end up throwing up Stoneskin or Protection from Magical Weapons or similar. There are some major fights where this won’t do anything – they’re rare, but they exist – and other major fights where other solutions (Remove Magic; Keldorn; ignoring protections and just deleting the enemy with AoE spells) may suffice, but even so, this spell is just endlessly useful.

Well, okay, I’m a little lukewarm on it in SoD, but as mentioned that’s not really in view here.

 

Spell Immunity does what it says: Choose a school and you’re effectively immune to spells from that school. Absolutely incredible. SI: Divination combined with Mislead is basically Temu Time Stop. SI: Abjuration will keep you safe from the Remove Magic that even in vanilla many casters love to chuck around. SI: Necromancy is incredible, and even lesser effects like SI: Enchantment (sometimes there just aren’t enough Chaotic Commands to go around) and SI: Conjuration (some enemies just love their Symbols) can occasionally make a big difference. Plus you don’t have to choose the school until you actually cast the spell, making this highly versatile.

While most special abilities don’t have a school, there are some exceptions (Abazigal’s lightning blast, for instance, is, oddly enough, blocked by SI: Necromancy).

There are some limitations, of course. SI: Abjuration shuts down Dispel/Remove Magic but not dedicated removal like Secret Word or RRR or Breach (blocks Imprisonment, though, gotta love that) and SI: Necromancy is often worse than combining Protection from Magical Energy and Death Ward (but why use level 6 and level 4 spell when level 5 spell do trick?).

Even so, this is a ridiculous spell, especially since it stacks with itself: you can cast it multiple times to get immunity to several different schools, if needed.

Finally, the casting speed. Not amazing, but still low enough that it can become an insta-cast with items, and that’s where this really shines: being able to wait until the enemy’s cast the spell, then immediately toss up Immunity if it’s something troubling (might need to be quick with your spacebar, though).

Take it, learn it, love it, and enjoy.

First Available: Bridge District Fence.

 

A Tier: Chaos* (Enchantment), Cloudkill* (Invocation).

 

Chaos is literally just Confusion but with a better save malus (-4 instead of -2), but the save malus is what these spells live or die on so that’s actually an enormous upgrade. As an AoE non-damage spell it bypasses virtually all magical defenses and will generally completely shut down spellcasting and special abilities. Throw down Greater Malison to make it a -8 save, not a lot of things are going to resist that. Confusion immunity is also much less common than you might expect, and many of the spookier enemies are vulnerable to this.

The only thing holding it back from S tier is the fact that, like Confusion, even if this procs it may or may not do anything against melee opponents, depending on the situation, your skill at positioning, and just plain luck. Well, I mean, if we’re wishing, it’d also be nice if its duration was longer. Even so, this is a reliable, party-friendly group disabler that’s the final word in Enchantment magic.

First Available: Sorcerous Sundries.

 

The definitive Artillery Mage spell, lob one or two Cloudkills at a distant group, or one that’s been locked down (Web is your best friend for this – but! Consider that Stinking Cloud will make the whole thing skelly friendly), and watch as it does huge damage to them.

Oh, and let’s not forget - anything with 4HD or less dies instantly, and anything with 5-6 HD dies unless it passes a save. At -4. Every round. And you’d think that wouldn’t matter but there’s a surprising amount of irritating or even dangerous enemies that can fall prey to it: Umber Hulks and Spore Colonies stand out as potentially annoying, Confusion-inducing fights that can just be auto-deleted with this spell.

Even late in the game, don’t underestimate this: 1d10 damage per round for ten rounds can really add up. Especially because the damage has no save. Drop two of these and they’ll do a combined 110 damage on average, and while you may reach a point where that’s inefficient, you will never reach a point where that’s trivial.

There’s two reasons why it’s A tier rather than S tier.

First, it unfortunately does poison damage, which is probably the most common resistance among enemies, while at the same time being relatively scarce when it comes to your own party. And unlike, say, fire damage, where enemy resistance exists on a spectrum, enemies that are resistant to poison are often 100% resistant, meaning this spell will do nothing at all. Still plenty of fights where it’s strong, but it’s not quite universal enough.

Second, BG2 has several wands that replicate it. Of course, the spell is strong and useful enough that you may end up wanting to use it considerably more than what the wands’ charges allow for, so really whether this spell is worth memorizing comes down to whether “recharging” wands is something you’ll be doing or not (as opposed to, say, Fireball in BG1, where even if you don’t recharge you’ll just never, ever run out of consumables. Ever). If you do plan on investing either the money or the Thief points into recharging, then you can probably shove this spell down a couple tiers. Except in BG1 and SoD, where this remains virtually unmatched.

In terms of actual power this spell could arguably be considered S tier, but where we’re evaluating spells based on how useful they are for general memorization, the fact that Cloudkill is a) a waste of a slot in, for example, undead-heavy areas, which are not rare, and b) has a wand that’s just as good as casting the spell yourself, I can’t quite recommend this as a “Yes, always memorize this” spell. But if you have the spell slots, and you suspect you’ll be able to use it (most undead-heavy areas are telegraphed as such in advance so you can reasonably anticipate it), this is a great choice to mix in.

First available: Forest SW of Nashkel (lol).

 

B Tier: Animate Dead (Necromancy), Feeblemind* (Enchantment), Lower Resistance (Abjuration).

 

There’s some tricky arithmetic to ranking Animate Dead.

The good? The skeletons summoned by this have great resistances that scale with level, boasting an incredible 90% Magic Resistance at caster level 15, as well as a host of physical resistances and a bevy of status immunities. These are absolutely incredible at soaking up damage, spells, and abilities, and their damage output, while unimpressive, can still be helpful in a pinch. Oh, and they last for 8 hours. They’ll stick with you for an entire dungeon level.

The bad? This is completely identical to the level 3 Cleric spell. Spending a level 5 slot to emulate a level 3 slot is insane.

The strange? Cleric and Mages have wild XP tables. From levels 7-12, Mages require less XP than Clerics. Why? Who knows. 2e is from the 80s (1989! That still counts!), so presumably everyone who made the XP tables was on cocaine. So while Clerics will hit that magic level 15 a little sooner, Mages will hit level 11 considerably earlier, giving a window where this spell is actually better for them. Level 11 Skellies aren’t the main attraction here but they’re still noticeably more potent than the level 7 ones, including an impressive 65% Magic Resistance. Is that worth a level 5 Mage slot over a level 3 Cleric slot? Usually not, but sometimes.

So a little bit like Dispel Magic, the actual value of this spell can shift a ton depending on party composition:

• If you have no Cleric, then this spell is A tier, if not S tier.
• If you have Anomen or Viccy in BG2, or literally any Cleric in BG1, then this spell is C tier, if not D tier.
• If you have a Cleric but it’s Aerie, then she’ll level up slowly enough that this spell is more interesting – unless Aerie is also your only Mage, in which case you should probably only use the divine version.

Weird spell. Amazing in a vacuum, often but not always mostly redundant in context, but strong enough that even when it is redundant, it will still pull a good amount of weight if you memorize it. Just not as much weight as the slot could have pulled otherwise.

First Available: Sorcerous Sundries.

 

An effectively permanent, effectively fatal status effect, Feeblemind can almost be thought of as the next step up from Polymorph Other – only this time it’s packing a nice -2 save malus on top (which in practice is even better than it looks, since most enemies have better save vs polymorph than they do save vs spell). A single-target save-or-die isn’t the absolute best use of a level 5 slot, but very few enemies are immune to this effect, making it a great Hail Mary.

It also doesn’t turn neutral enemies hostile, whether it lands or not, offering some unique cheese in certain situations. You can just lob as many of these as you have level 5 slots at Firkraag, and if none of them make it past his Magic Resistance or saving throws, he’ll just happily sit there while you rest and try again. Not really ranking it on that basis, but it’s there.

If you memorize this spell, it’s likely to make your life a fair bit easier. If you don’t, you may not miss it.

First Available: Durlag’s Tower.

 

For the first half of SoA, Lower Resistance is, like Animate Dead, a little party-dependent – albeit for different reasons. Magic Resistance is not common but also not rare, so if you’re rocking a lot of casters, this can be an amazing tool for tearing down the resistance of enemies that could otherwise no-sell a lot of what you have to offer. If you aren’t rocking a lot of casters, however, then in high MR fights you may be better off putting your Mage on buff/summon duty and just prodding the enemy with pointed sticks – although bear in mind that many weapon specials like FoA’s Slow and Celestial Fury’s Stun are also blocked by Magic Resistance, so even in a caster-light party this can pull more weight than you’d expect.

By mid-late SoA and ToB, however, Magic Resistance is everywhere, and this spell can do a lot of work for you. Many bosses in ToB can be mostly trivialized just by 2-3 Lower Resistances followed up by something like Power Word: Blind.

A tough thing to recommend memorizing as a matter of course, but if you do so, this will still pull its weight as an ace in the hole.

 

 

C Tier: Hold Monster* (Enchantment), Oracle (Divination), Spell Shield (Abjuration).

 

Both the name and description are misleading; it seems there’s actually no restrictions on the type of enemy Hold Monster can, well, hold: it will lock down people or undead as well as monsters (well, in theory. In practice, many undead are simply immune to the Hold1 effect, which the spell uses). And with a -2 save malus added in the mix, that’s pretty impressive.

Unfortunately, the tiny AoE means this isn’t an attractive disabler against large groups of enemies (where Chaos, Slow, and Web are likely to all outperform this), and against a single enemy there’s no real reason to use this instead of Feeblemind, which has the same chance of working but is basically permanent and fewer enemies are immune to it.

That being said, Chaos and Slow aren’t effective auto-kills like this is, and Web isn’t party-friendly, so there are situations where this can conceivably be good against tightly-clumped enemies. And the good news is that “respawning” enemies who aren’t handplaced will appear in very tight clumps, so if you’re quick you can shut down an entire spawn with this. Of course, to spawn they have to be off-screen, which means you could also just scout and shut them down with Web, instead…

Solid spell in a vacuum; in context there’s usually better options. Even so, if you memorize this you should get at least some use out of it. Pretty potent in Xan’s hands; shame he doesn’t get to use it very long.

First Available: Durlag’s Tower.

 

Note that, despite the description, Oracle does work on Mislead and Project Image (not Mass Invisibility, though, although I don’t think the AI ever casts that anyway). It’s basically True Sight if that was one-and-done instead of firing every round; this even works on enemies immune to level 5 spells.

The problem? Divine True Sight is also level 5, and Arcane True Sight isn’t all that far off. Either one of those spells makes this one completely redundant.

The good news? Arcane level 6 is an extremely competitive level, and divine level 5 isn’t much less competitive (for Druids especially, but even for Clerics). True Sight is always better, but you may still often find yourself in situations where adding in an extra Improved Haste or Chaotic Commands or Insect Plague is more important, so tearing down Mislead falls to Oracle.

…or Keldorn. Or Jan. Or Hexxat. Or even potentially Yoshimo (he can dance on the head of a pin as well!). But if you don’t have an Inquisitor or a Thief with good Detect Illusion, Oracle can be handy.

…I dunno, I’m wavering a little. The thing is that BG2 includes True Sight in the lowest possible random scroll table, so it’s not inconceivable that you’ll never need to memorize any Divination spells because you will just always be able to scrollcast True Sight. That’s too RNG-dependent to actually change the ranking, I think, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

First Available: Trademeet.

 

I feel very weird putting Spell Shield here, this is another one that would be ranked higher if this were a list for SCS. It blocks virtually all anti-magic spells (Breach, Secret Word, Spellstrike, Beholder Anti-magic Ray, etc), which on paper is just plain amazing… except the vanilla AI just isn’t all that interested in Wizard’s Chess. Many casters don’t bother with it at all, many others mostly do so through Remove Magic (which ignores this anyway; just cast SI: Abjuration), so a spell that thwarts their attempts to do so, even one as excellent as Spell Shield, is of kinda limited value. Even things like blocking Anti-Magic Rays – that would be extremely strong in a game that didn’t have the Shield of Balduran and Cloak of Mirroring.

This doesn’t just block anti-magic spells, though. It also blocks a frankly bizarre assortment of other effects, including:

• Shadow, Black, and Silver Dragon breath attacks (but not Red, Green, and Blue Dragon breath. Not sure on Brown).
• Dragons’ lower elemental resistance effects.
• Most psionic attacks *except* the ones used by Mind Flayers (i.e. Spell Shield will help against Gith and the Dark Sun psychic cannibal Halfling guys… not exactly “bread and butter.” Though I think it also works against some of the Elder Brain’s attacks).

Again, weird spell. Occasionally very handy, but hard to make use of without extensive metaknowledge. But hey, if you’re still playing OG, it blocks Dragon Wing Buffets there, and that’s handy.

First Available: **No fixed drop** before the Underdark. Mid-level random drop.

 

C- Tier: Cone of Cold* (Evocation), Domination* (Enchantment), Minor Spell Turning (Abjuration), Protection from Acid (Abjuration).

 

Cone of Cold is finicky and difficult to aim (partially due to the slow projectile speed, which means even ShowAoE only helps so much), but cold resistance is relatively rare. At 2-5 damage per level, scaling up to level 20, the damage output will, on average, be the same as Skull Trap – but “This level 5 spell is as good as a level 3 spell, only harder to aim” is not an easy sell. Add to that the fact that this destroys loot unless Gore is disabled and you’ve got a spell that looks pretty bleak.

But it’s not all doom and gloom! Cone of Cold is extremely difficult to block. In fact, the only spell that can stop it is Spell Immunity: Evocation, which the vanilla AI almost never casts (I think just the adventurer party in the Underdark?). In a way, this spell kind of allows you to sever the Gordian knot of Wizard’s Chess; just walk up to an enemy Mage and blast them in the face with this. Nothing they can do about it, so long as they don’t have Magic or Cold Resistance (which, assuming they’re an ordinary Mage, they likely don’t). Of course, the same is true of Cloudkill and Sunfire, but where Cloudkill is damage over time and Sunfire has… other limitations, Cone of Cold may be your best option of the three for Mage-blasting burst damage (except for solo play).

Even in ToB, loading three of these in a Spell Trigger and just immediately icing some random Spell Trap’d, PfMW’d Mage who’s about to launch a Time Stop? Not too shabby. Not the best thing you can do, not even in the best 100 things you can do, but a far cry from the worst thing you can do. Just make sure Gore is disabled. And that you’ve familiarized yourself with the finicky aiming. And remember that Liches are still immune to this.

First Available: Sorcerous Sundries.

 

In theory, Domination is the ultimate in charm spells, boasting a longer duration and a -2 save malus. In practice, it’s actually just an objectively worse version of Mental Domination, a divine spell that’s not only level 4 instead of level 5, but also has a shorter casting time and bypasses (half)Elf charm resistances. Oh, and Mental Domination is available to both Clerics and Druids, making this even less useful (I mean, fine, Druids can’t cast it, but Call Woodland Beings summons a Nymph that can cast it, so same thing). It’s still a useful spell with a strong effect in a vacuum, which spares it from the lowest rungs, but outside of that vacuum, there are very few reasons to memorize this.

Decent library-builder in the earliest stages of BG2, however. I think most Mages start with it already known? So don’t be afraid to memorize this if you haven’t been able to buy or find many level 5 scrolls yet, it can do some good work for you.

First Available: Durlag’s Tower.

 

Take Minor Spell Deflection, but now imagine it only covered up to four levels of spells in exchange for bouncing the spell back at the caster, and you’ve got Minor Spell Turning. I basically never use this. Avoiding the spell is the important part. Having it turned back on its caster is neat, but to me it isn’t worth either being two spell levels higher or covering only four spell levels, let alone both. Note, however, that it does work on Call Lightning, which can be very funny in the Druid Grove. A good and efficient use of level 5 slots? Absolutely not. But very funny nonetheless.

But! I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this spell’s cheese potential. Something goes wonky with the math when it reflects Agannazar’s Scorcher, causing the ray to bounce back doing way more damage than it should. Two Mages, both with (Minor) Spell Turning up (and ideally Protection from Fire) can send Scorchers ricocheting between them, and anything caught in the stream will eat a truly enormous amount of damage.

Furthermore, any spell reflected by this seems to lose its spell level? Maybe? At any rate, it can hit enemies otherwise immune to spells of that level. Rakshasa in particular have almost exclusively single-target, low-level, direct damage spells that, when bounced off this, will still hurt them.

Those are niche and janky applications that can often be more trouble than they’re worth, but they do give the spell more of a usecase than you might initially think.

 

First Available: Waukeen’s Promenade Fence. Mid-level random drop.

 

Like other elemental protection spells, Protection from Acid entirely blocks all of its associated damage. On the one hand, completely shutting down a damage type - and being the only spell that can do so - is quite nice. On the other hand, acid damage is pretty rare. However, when it does crop up, it can be a pain, so whether you’re making Death Fog party-friendly or just wanting to keep a Cleric or Druid from being disrupted by a rolling Melf’s Acid Arrow, this spell can occasionally come in clutch. Extremely situational at best, but solid in those situations.

 

First Available: Waukeen’s Promenade Fence.

 

D Tier: Conjure Lesser Air/Earth/Fire Elemental (Conjuration), Phantom Blade (Evocation), Protection from Electricity (Abjuration), Shadow Door (Illusion), Sunfire (Evocation).

 

Whoo boy, what to do with the Conjure Lesser Elemental spells.

Let’s start with the good.

First, they’re immune to normal and +1 weapons. That makes them invulnerable to the attacks of a surprisingly large amount of enemies in early SoA, and there’s a few major sidequests (de’Arnise, Mae’var, Druids) where these can just handle the majority of the fights for you while your party pops an Invisibility 10’ Radius and has a smoke.

Second, they all do enormous Crushing damage (Air not quite as much so as Fire and Earth, but the difference is way too marginal to justify separate rankings). That’s always handy, and can be transformative if you’re facing Clay Golems and either haven’t found any good blunt weapons yet, or don’t have any frontliners spec’d in wielding them.

Pretty impressive.

Now, the downsides.

First, if you want a level 5 summon, these are competing with Animate Dead, and while there’s certain windows where these will be better, they aren’t the majority.

Second, and more importantly, there’s that stupid mental combat. Casting this spell stuns the caster for three rounds, meaning mid-battle it’s completely unusable, and pre-battle it’s annoying at best. And then, once that’s done, there’s a 15% chance that the summoned Elemental will be hostile, making you fight it (which is annoying) and completely wasting the spell slot (which is way worse). Don’t even get XP for killing it.

There’s no mental combat if you cast these spells via Spell Trigger or Chain Contingency, but… don’t do that (well, okay, using Chain Contingency to conjure one of each type of Lesser Elemental is actually kind of funny. If you want to do that, then more power to you).

Finally, once again, divine spells do this just so much better (no matter how many times that happens it doesn’t change the fact that arcane magic is much more potent overall… but it’s still crazy how often it happens). There’s basically no reason to memorize this if you have a Druid, whose Conjure Fire Elemental spell is excellent. A level 6 spell, sure, but where a) even Jaheira can cast level 6 spells extremely early, and b) divine level 6 is not very competitive, that’s not the dealbreaker you might think. At least it’s more complicated with Clerics. I mean, their level 6 slots are also uncompetitive, and Aerial Servants throw down some titantic crushing damage, but they come much later than Druid (or even Mage) level 6 spells, and they lack the immunity to +1 weapons. So not as clear-cut, but I’d still rather spend a level 6 Cleric slot on that than a level 5 Mage slot on this.

Tricky spells to rank, because if you can make them work, they can actually do a sizeable amount of heavy lifting for you in chapter 2… but there’s just so many reasons to not bother making them work.

If you are going to cast this, the Fire Elemental is probably the best of the three, due to Fire immunity being so handy, but again, the difference isn’t pronounced enough to warrant a separate ranking.

First Available: Waukeen’s Promenade Fence (Air, Earth); Trademeet (Fire). Mid-level random drop (Air and Earth only, for some reason).

 

As mentioned, this list weighs single/dual Mages above multi and Bards, so Phantom Blade is already at a huge disadvantage. But even for F/Ms and Blades, this spell isn’t amazing. The weapon this creates is actually pretty impressive: basically a Katana +3 that does an extra +10 damage to undead. That’s remarkable. Hell, Celestial Fury is the only Katana +3 in SoA.

Couple of issues, though. First, the spell ignores weapon proficiencies. Not a concern for Haer’Dalis, but may result in this actually being less potent than a Charname F/M or F->M’s standard weapon, except against undead. But then there’s the second issue: the +10 damage vs undead is slashing damage, which many undead are resistant to, so in practice the damage is often considerably less than you might expect (although note that Vampires have no slashing resistance, so they’re eating the full thing).

So it’s not even entirely guaranteed that this will be better than attacking with your actual weapon, and once you’ve accumulated some good gear this spell can become redundant. But even if this is better than your actual weapon, that’s not the real question, is it? No, here’s the real question: Is the degree to which this is better than your actual weapon worth a level 5 slot? And even for a Fighter/Mage, the answer to that question will likely be “no” more often than “yes.”

As far as NPCs go? This can be an appealing option for Haer’Dalis, maybe make it C tier for him. If Jan’s got level 5 slots to spare and you want him to backstab, this can be a good tool for that, and with a specific setup Aerie can do some good work with this (personally I don’t think it’s worth the effort, but you do you). Not even Tenser’s Transformation can make this interesting for Edwin, Nalia, and Neera.

I dunno about this one. D tier feels too low and too high at the same time.

First Available: Waukeen’s Promenade Fence.

Protection from Electricity already suffers from being very niche. Enemies that delight in tossing Lightning Bolt everywhere is mostly a BG1 thing (and this isn’t available at all in BG1… not that it’d be interesting by the time you can cast it either way) and you don’t see it all that much in BG2, while Chain Lightning just doesn’t hit hard enough to be worth a level 5 spell slot to block. This can be okay for, like, the Druid Grove, or one or two fights like Abazigal. But Clerics and Druids get this spell as well, at level 4. Like PfF the divine version is a shorter duration, but unlike PfF the difference is a) much smaller and b) something that wouldn’t matter either way.

I dunno. You basically never need this but it's technically not useless, and as unimpressive as Chain Lightning's damage is, it can still be a problem for low-HP schmucks like Aerie and Haer'Dalis.

First Available: Bridge District Warehouse.

 

Shadow Door is so dumb. This is like my least favourite spell. It’s literally just Improved Invisibility, only with a slightly shorter casting time - which doesn’t make up for the fact that this one can’t be targeted and is a level higher. What is the point of this? Why does it exist? It would make sense to me if this were like a Conjuration spell or something and it was like “Oh hey if you’re a Necromancer here’s a consolation Improved Invisibility for you.” But it isn’t. The duration is slightly different but I think it mostly works out to being shorter.

Okay, I guess this spell has one thing going for it, and that’s that being a self-target spell means you can pair it with other self-target spells in a spell sequencer. So I guess if you really wanted you could set up a Spell Trigger with like Stoneskin, Shadow Door, and Protection from Magical Weapons as like an ultimate panic button. If, you know, you haven’t found a Mislead scroll by that point, or something. But Mislead scrolls are everywhere, so you have found one. You just have.

Mind you, Improved Invisibility is still an enormously strong effect, and if nothing else this gives you a way to get it on your caster if your level 4 slots are all tapped out, so it is technically occasionally good, landing it in D tier. But in my heart, this is an F tier spell. Up yours, Shadow Door.

First Available: Candlekeep Catacombs.

 

Sunfire is just a self-targeted Fireball that scales up to level 15. In theory, being a level 5 AoE spell gives all sorts of interesting Mage-deleting options similar to Cone of Cold; in practice, being self-targeted means that this spell can be tricky to use in the context of a party. If you’re playing solo, or if you’re playing the original versions where this bypasses Magic Resistance, this spell is more interesting. If you’re not playing solo, or you’re playing the EE where the bug that caused this to ignore MR is fixed, this is highly dubious.

That being said, depending on playstyle, you may want to swap this with Cone of Cold. I dunno. On the one hand, this can be kind of neat if you know you’re already going to have plenty of Protection from Fire up anyway. On the other hand, it has a weird bug where the Robe of Vecna kind of just breaks the spell and keeps it from casting if the Mage does so mid-stride, and like that’s such an easy detail to forget in the chaos of battle.

But! I do like this spell a lot more in SoD, where sometimes you just really need to pack your spell slots full of AoE damage, and Cloudkill is too slow and Cone of Cold too narrow to really do it for you (or you’re facing a horde of Poison and Cold resistant undead). Even then, the fact that it’s self-targeting really limits this spell’s potential, but it’s more usable for sure.

Fun fact: this spell works by giving the caster 100% Fire Resistance for a split second upon casting. I’ve seen people try to theorycraft all sorts of applications from this; I have yet to see that bear any useful fruit.

First available: Sorcerous Sundries.

 

F Tier: Monster Summoning III (Conjuration), Protection from Normal Weapons (Abjuration).

 

Round three of “throwing away a spell slot on summoning useless chaff.” Monster Summoning III bringing forth 1-2 Ogre Berserkers or Ettercaps would be such a crappy use of a level 5 slot even if there weren’t just objectively better options available.

This could be interesting if it were more reliable. Still bad, mind you, but interesting. If it just summoned Ettercaps, for example, they ignore Web and their Poison is brutal, doing nearly 150 damage to a hasted target. That could potentially have some good applications. If it just summoned Ogre Berserkers, they do crushing damage, I guess maybe two of them could be an okay alternative to elementals when you need crushing damage but don’t want to deal with mental combat?

But even then, this would be D tier at best. As it stands now? The odds of facing a Golem battle and having this conjure up a single Ettercap are higher than losing a mental battle with an elemental.

First Available: Durlag’s Tower.

 

I’m prepared to take the L on Protection from Normal Weapons, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s some secret, bizarre edge case where this is actually helpful, something like “Thanks to a bug, Bodhi’s attacks are coded as normal weapons” (that’s not actually true but you get the point). But until I learn some sort of crazy fact like that, this spell is just plain bad. Normal weapons barely exist at this point anyway, when they are relevant they aren’t super dangerous, you’re already protected from them via Stoneskin, Mirror Image, and who knows what else, there just isn’t really a use case for this spell.

(Actually, I think vanilla Sarevok’s attacks at the end of BG1 are coded as normal weapons. Irrelevant for this spell as it’s unattainable in BG1, but maybe I was too harsh on Wraithform…).

First Available: Lady Yuth, but notably(?) it’s also the only level 5 spell to be a low-level random drop.