Protection from Energy: SPF 5,000
Usable By: Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard
Spell Level: 3
School: Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
Components: V, S
For the duration, the willing creature you touch has resistance to one damage type of your choice: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Protection from Energy has no business being a concentration spell. None. Concentration takes any potential applications of the spell and guts it, making it something you’ll consider for the dragon fight, but ultimately not use because you’d much rather have access to Haste or some form of summoning magic.
There aren’t a lot of environments where you’ll be facing creatures that deal primarily one of these damage types; even Salamanders, large fire elemental creatures, deal more piercing damage with their attacks than fire damage. Getting resistance to half of a creature's damaging effects for a 3rd level slot while eating your concentration is just too niche.
At its best, Protection from Energy on a paladin keeps them up from a breath weapon once, guaranteed, and sometimes that’s good enough to prepare. The majority of the time, you’ll have way better options than this. Absorb Elements is leagues better than this; you get the resistance at a cheaper price when you need it, and with a bonus bit of damage after the fact.
One other bit that annoys me: Protection from Energy doesn’t even offer protection from necrotic, radiant, poison, or psychic damage, all of which are ABSOLUTELY a form of energy, or at least as much energy as acid and cold is. I get that Protection from Poison is its own thing (which is about as bad as this is, but slightly cheaper), but come on. If you’re going to make a spell that targets a non-weapon damage type, at least let it hit a wider breadth of types.
If you are a cleric or druid, you can consider preparing this as a target effect against a dragon’s opening breath weapon you’ll immediately switch for a better concentration effect. Beyond that, this spell is not going to be worth it on your character sheet. It does too little at too high a cost.
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