Nowhere in the system is it more evident how horrendous the existence of half-casting is than here. When college or lore bards are the best users for the top end half-caster spells, you know there is a problem.

Conjure Barrage is a ranger exclusive spell no other character would ever want to have. At 9th level, for one of your two 3rd level spell slots, you too can have the ability to fire out damage that roughly equates to damage sorcerers and wizards have been putting out since first level.

Heroes’ Feast is the kitchen sink mentality for spells; just grab whatever you’ve got around and toss it together to see what comes out. Its part Aid, part Protection from Evil and Good, part Lesser Restoration, and part Protection from Poison

Sleep is an old classic. Put your enemies to sleep as a non-violent means to end a confrontation… or make them easier to kill.

Greater Invisibility takes all of those elements, boils down the window to use them to just a minute, but drops the remaining conditions that keep Invisibility in check.

Few damaging elements are permanent; limb loss or other major maiming elements pop up rarely as being permanently damaged can feel terrible. Regenerate, then, exists as a solution to a problem most games will never face, and lands itself where most healing spells land: stuck forever in the book and never being worth your time.

Fear is a baller 3rd level spell that’s often outshone by Fireball and the other all-star 3rd level spells. Bards probably get the most out of it, as their 3rd level options aren’t quite as robust as Sorcerers and Wizards, and without scaling its very difficult for warlocks to justify even considering this.

Counterspell often dictates how the game can be played in its entirety. It feels like a release valve that mitigates all magic, regardless of how powerful, for a 3rd level spell slot, and something DMs feel they have to start leaning on heavily to sculpt encounters that can meaningfully challenge all members of upper tier encounters.

Be prepared to hear a lot of "uncertains" if you're asking about things unrelated to their realm. How you phrase each question is critical to the spells function; "if we walk this way, will we get home?" might result in a yes, but could require you circling the world a few thousand times to actually get to where you want to go.

Scorching Ray is a damaging fire spell. The three separate attack rolls give you a decent amount of control and choice with it, but like most low level damaging spells, this is something you’ll never up-cast because higher level spells do way more damage for the slot.

Traps: a DMs best tool for instantaneous, unseen, unjustified death. Long into D&D’s history have traps been at the forefront of dungeoneering. Symbol, like Glyph of Warding, moves that power to the players, and does so in a moderately compelling way.

Fire Shield is an oddity of a spell. It's a 10 minute duration rebuking effect that punishes enemies for hitting you with 2d8 fire or cold damage, which is pretty nifty. Outside of subclasses, this is a wizard exclusive, and leaves me wondering what wizard builds actually want to cast this?

While it may be cool to deliver sensitive information via talking squirrel, you’re putting an awful lot of faith in that squirrel. The spell doesn’t make it smarter or anything. It only allows it to verbally deliver a specific short message one way.

In fact, Animal Messenger might actually make the squirrel dumber. Animals tend to be wary of danger and will often seek a place to hide when predators come sniffing around. The target of this spell, however, is single-minded in purpose, moving straight toward the location you sent it to without regard for its own safety. This could make it more likely to be eaten. That sucks for the creature, but it also sucks for you, because your message won’t be delivered.

Aid is one of those spells that is at its worst when you get it, and get substantially better as your resource pool expands. It will very often feel “free” to burn two or three lower level slots when you’re playing with 7th+ level slots, especially with features like harness divine power added in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.

Acid Arrow WANTS to be Magic Missile. It's using d4s. It always does a bit of damage. It's got a solid range. The reality of it though is Acid Arrow is just terrible. Really awful stuff.

If the intended goal is to get somebody up from zero, there isn’t any compelling reason to use Cure Wounds over Healing Word. Healing word can happen from up to 60 feet away; if you’re targeting a creature that’s unconscious, you now don’t need to approach whatever has attempted to murder them.

Beyond the beautiful catastrophe you impose on the DM when casting, when prepared for, Reverse Gravity can thrash enemies, be a get out of jail free card, and warp some problems in wild ways. Weaponizing fall damage is a tried and true strategy for the munchkins out there looking to make as big numbers as possible, and with a well placed wall spell conjured a hundred feet up, you’re looking at inflicting 10d6 falling damage both ways.

To grasp how game warping Animal Shapes can be you need to understand the scope of its effect. On a battlemap, creatures within 30 feet of you make up a total of 168 spaces just on the ground. When you add on familiars and small or smaller creatures you can easily transform over **200** creatures. You could literally transform them into three of every printed beast in the base rules that qualifies. If you start adding lots of flying allies like Pixies, these numbers balloon to absurd territories.

Fabricate at its best is neat, but at its worst it can be worthless for sessions on end. The DM has to work to create problems where the spell can function as part of a solution where other magic fails. It definitely has a home on some character sheets, but if it finds a home on yours, keep your expectations low.

Some of the conjure spells require a caveat. As written, the caster picks the CR, then the DM picks the monsters that are summoned. This can make the spell a headache for many DMs to manage. I’d highly recommend working with your DM out of game with your expectations from the spell. If you are a DM, I highly discourage you from keeping pixies as a summonable option, because, well…