Animal Friendship isn’t ever something you’ll need. This is a spell for the druids out there who want to befriend every animal in the forest, and take it primarily as a flavor option. It can act as a recruitment tool, or can occasionally sway an animal to act a certain way for you, but at the end of the day a spell slot isn’t worth what Animal Handling checks already can do no problem.

Alter Self is lying to you. It's not one spell, but three. Each is kind of wildly different from the other, and while I think all of them would work just fine as 1st level effects, having them packaged together doesn’t really matter when only one of the options is what you’ll realistically want from it.

Alarm is a low cost, decent utility option. This is a spell classic dungeoneers know and love, but also can be a tool for the creative schemere to set some grand plans in motion. You probably won’t ever NEED Alarm; taking shifts watching over the campsite over a long rest will cover the basics of this.

Minimum damage is a massive element of 5e combat I think people should consider more often when building characters. When you’re taking your turn casting spells or smacking people around, knowing the bare minimum of possible outcomes can be a useful tool when deciding what is tactically your best bet. This is why so many cantrips feel horrendous to use; Acid Splash is no exception.

Of all the traps DMs have at their disposal, by far most flexible is Glyph of Warding. If player’s aren’t actively investigating for traps, one encounter with a Glyph of Warding and they’ll never make that mistake again.

At minimum, Hypnotic Pattern is a fine area of effect save or die. At its best, it's giving you a way to pick off a group of creatures one at a time. At its worst, it's eating a pair of lackey’s actions, and doing little to nothing else. You won’t ever be bummed out to have Hypnotic Pattern on your sheet.

Arcane Eye is a great spell to have at your wizard’s spellcasting disposal If you are interested in scouting, espionage and have a great imagination. It’s arguably the best 4th level Divination spell that Wizards have access to, Divination and Locate Creature included.

When you’re preparing healing magic, you’re often wanting to prepare the least amount necessary, and upgrading dice for reduced range and inflexible casting makes Mass Cure Wounds worse than Mass Healing Word in the majority of cases.

Greater Restoration is a legacy spell when spells had duality and multiple tiers of power. It’s been grandfathered into the game as a means of empowering your character using Lesser Restoration by growing it into Greater Restoration.

Flame Strike is the cleric Fireball. It’s 8d6 damage, two spell levels higher than Fireball, for the same damage. It might innately seem like that makes this a bad spell, and if you’re a light domain cleric with access to Fireball, that’s absolutely true.

Plane Shift is kind of like Water Breathing in that it just opens up more areas to explore otherwise cut off from the group. Your adventures no longer need to obey the laws of physics or be stationed on an earthly biome; now, you can explore hell and heaven, delve into a realm of pure fire, and retrieve magic from the worlds of fairies or undead spirits.

Remove Curse is probably a net positive at the table, but not something I’d ever recommend players learning or preparing without knowing a cursed item or cursed individual is in their future. Take it when you need it, forget it when you don’t. 

Pull out your Tiny Hut, pop up on the couch, and get some well deserved R&R in your own private getaway, anytime, anywhere! If you’ve got a minute, you’ve got a long rest!

Major Image is the poster child for this kind of magic; in the right hands at the right table, it can break the game in half. At other tables or in other hands, it can be a gigantic waste of a spell slot.

3rd level is a very steep price to pay for this effect, and for some reason this isn’t a ritual spell, but sometimes you need a translator you can trust. Tongues gives you that. This lets all the perks of varying languages stay, while giving the players a tool to navigate any circumstance where unknown languages pop up.

Phantom Steed is a ritual summon spell, meaning you’re getting an extra entity summoned into existence for the low cost of spending 11 minutes casting it. You don’t need to spend spell slots to get this free; if you want a 100 ft. move speed attached to a 1 hit point riding horse, all you need to do is extend the end of your rests by ten minutes and BAM! Free horse!

Vampiric Touch sounds metal. This is supposed to be the dark draining fantasy, sucking the life force from your foes to bolster your own. Unfortunately, in play, this spell is almost unusably bad.

If you’re going into a pirate themed arch or some naval exploration mission, Water Breathing probably will come in handy. It's a ritual, making it almost no cost to the druids and wizards of the world, and opens up a whole new world to explore in the waters below.

Plant Growth has two modes, one of which is an exceptional tool to highlight druids and bards as area controllers, and the other is an out of combat ribbon that denotes your characters as a natural being sent to bring lush life to the world around you.

Simulacrum is a deeply flawed and unfair spell that can be an absolute blast to use. I’d go in with the expectation of it being altered or changed at the table, though, because rules as written, this gets out of hand incredibly fast, and is so ripe for abuse I can’t imagine many DMs wanting to manage the nightmare power bubble it creates that’ll make the wizard feel like a god.