Hello magic casters! well come to our dnd 5e spells by level series. From this article we’re gonna be taking a look at acid splash spell 5e. Which is one of the more discussed cantrips, it’s usefulness is often harped on a little bit. Al though for what it is? i think it’s pretty good overall and whether or not it stacks is beside the point, it’s still pretty cool!
The d&d 5e acid splash is usable by the sorcerer, wizard and the artificer as so far as to say it is found on their spell lists. There are handful of other ways to gain access to this cantrip, magic initiate is one such example but it terms of where it’s found sorcerer, wizard and the artificer and it is found in the good old player’s handbook so every one should have access to it. Now if you’d like to see all of the dnd 5e spells list please free to click on the given link. Now without further ado let’s move on to it’s mechanics.
Table of Contents
Mechanics
If you’re not familiar with how damaging cantrips work they become more powerful as you level up as a character. So at first level it’ll deal 1d6 damage, at fifth level it’ll increase to 2d6, at 11th level it’ll increase to 3d6 and upon reaching the 17th level it’ll cap off at 4d6 damage.
- Damage: 1st: 1d6, 5th:2d6, 11th:3d6, 17th:4d6.
- Effect: Damage up to 2 creatures, so long as they are within 5ft of each other.
- Casting Time: 1 Action.
- Range: 60ft.
- Duration: Instantaneous
- Save: DEX(0 dmg on a success)
- Components: Verbal and Somatic
- School: Conjuration
- Damage: Acid
The Effect at a glance, damage up to two creatures so long as they were within five feet of each other, so adjacent to each other. The cast time is one standard action. The range is 60 feet. The duration is Instantaneous and it requires a dexterity saving throw and it deals 0 damage should your target succeed on the save. The components are verbal and somatic meaning you have to speak forth in incantation as well as a gesture with one hand. The school is conjuration and the damage type is unsurprisingly acid.
There is a lot of good things to point out here. First and foremost the ability to damage two creatures simultaneously in a single turn. It is super useful especially at those early levels where the odds of you taking on several weaker opponents are quite likely. The biggest criticism of this acid splash 5e in dnd that i’ve seen is that it’s damage type is acid which is often resisted or in some cases some creatures may be immune to it. There are some ways to cheese around that or at the very least mitigate it.
However let’s take a look at its full description.
Description:
In this d&d 5e acid splash you actually hurl a bubble of acid. In this dnd spell you need to chose one of the creatures within a range, or else chose two creatures within a specific range like which are within 5 feet of each other. In this acid splash cantrip 5e a target should be succeeded on the dexterity saving throw or it should take 1d6 acid damage.
Actually, this acid splash 5e spell’s damage would be increased by 1d6 whenever you do reach 5th level the damage would increase by 2d6, if you reach at 11th level the damage would increase 3d6 and also at 17th level the damage would be 4d6.
Now if you haven’t read through all the spells you won’t know this but as someone who has wizards of the coast doesn’t really provide a lot of flavor text. From time to time they do but it kind of depends on the book you’re reading it from and when it was released and who was involved in actually creating those spells. But in terms of the core rule book or the player’s handbook they’re all pretty plain jane in terms of their description.
My personal favorite way of describing d & d 5e acid splash spell is:
I raise up my hand as though to pluck an apple from a tree and between my fingers forms a simple greenish bubble sitting gingerly on my fingertips. I then lean over to my hand and give it a gentle blow and cast it off into the wind. The bubble adrifts lazily as though not having a care in the world and then it seeks out its prey darting straight towards two unsuspecting foes after which i ask my dungeon master to roll a dexterity save for each of the targets.
It’s pretty cool and based on the role they make it deals however many d6 of acid damage. It’s just a cool way to flavor up the caster experience. Try not to make your descriptions too long or too wordy and don’t do them all the time if it’s a long combat just kind of do it the first time you do it and then leave it at that if it’s a group you’re playing with over the long term. Maybe just a couple times in the first few sessions and then once every other session from there on out should be fine. It’s just an interesting bit of flavor to add to your character and might even not you some sweet inspiration if you’ve a DM that appreciates that kind of stuff.
You can also check out mass heal spell 5e
Attributes Of Acid Splash Spell 5E
| Casting Time | 1 action |
| Classes | Sorcerer, Wizard |
| Components | V S |
| Damage | 1d6 |
| Damage Type | Acid |
| Duration | Instantaneous |
| Level | 0 |
| Name | Acid Splash |
| Range | 60 feet |
| Save | Dexterity |
| School | Conjuration |
| Target | One creature within range or two creatures within range that are within 5 feet of each other. |
Now let’s get into some alternative uses here:
Alternative Uses:
So before i flesh out these alternative uses there are some things i have to talk about in regards to the spell itself. There’s a couple things that really limit it. Two in particular first and foremost its Duration is instantaneous. What that means is as soon as you cast it and it’s effect takes place it’s gone the acid doesn’t linger. There is one spell where the acid does linger at least one early level spell sadly this is not it and secondly you choose one or two creatures. What this line in particular means is that you cannot use it to target objects. Which is sad but there are some ways to kind of cheese it, it’s worth having a conversation with your dungeon master about they may have allow it in the past i’ve allowed acid splash to be used on things like shining up coins things of that nature anything that would require a weak acid with that being said there have been cases throughout history of individuals using weak acid to do things like slowly erode away at steel bars things of that nature.
This is gonna be one of those things where it’s up to the dungeon master by raw you’re not allowed to do it. However you know to give the spell a little bit of an extra allure i personally don’t see a hard time with someone for example being able to cast acid splash on a metal object and have someone make a strength check with advantage to see if they can break it as opposed to just a straight strength check.
I think that’d be an interesting way to do it but nonetheless let’s get into some alternative uses that you should be able to use by raw.
- The first and foremost is just straight up disintegrating dudes. This does play around with the idea of is a corpse still a creature. In my opinion i don’t see why not, i can see why if you really start to finagle the details a little bit. You can make the argument that it’s just a sack of meat at that point. But that gets into the nature of what is a soul and what is life. personally i believe that if the spell can work on undead which it can. It should be able to work on just your generic corpse.
- Now disintegration might take a while but what you might be able to do is if you have the animate dead spell you could use this on a corpse to a point where it was just its skeleton and you could get a skeleton as opposed to a zombie out of it like that, i think that’s a pretty fair way of using this spell. I don’t think any dungeon masters would have a really hard time with.
- The second interesting way of using acid spalsh is to use it to change someone’s appearance.
Potential Combos
So, i mentioned earlier one of this spell spell’s biggest downsides is that it deals acid damage which is very commonly resisted to and in some cases outright immune to. There are some ways to cheese that though. The first and easiest way of doing it is through a feat called elemental adept. What this feat does is you select a damage type; one of which is acid and the spells you cast ignore resistance to the damage you chose. In addition when you make a roll for a spell that deals that type of damage, you treat any ones as a two so it does increase your overall damage that way. But the most important thing is that it allows you to ignore resistances. It doesn’t help with immunities sadly i know it sucks.
Now let’s have a couple honorable mentions. The first one we are going to be diving into is the
Wizards potent cantrip: With this feature starting at sixth level, your damaging cantrip affect even though when the creatures that avoid the brunt of the effect. Whenever a creature succeeds on a saving throw against your cantrip. The creature takes half the cantrip damage but suffers no additional effects from that cantrip. What this allows you to do is it basically means you’ll never waste an attack action with a cantrip simply because even if they succeed on that dexterity saving throw. They’re still gonna be taking half damage as opposed to none at all which is quite nice.
Now let’s take a look at the draconic sorcerer’s elemental affinity. If you’re not super familiar with the draconic sorcerer we will be doing a series on all of the sorcerers main class and subclasses and breaking them all down.
Elemental Affinity: When the draconic sorcerer reaches a sixth level it gain elemental affinity. When you do cast a spell which usually deals a damage of the type associated with your draconic ancestry, however you can add your charisma modifier to one damage roll of that particular spell. Simultaneously, you can spend 1 sorcery point in order to gain resistance to that damage type for an hour.
The sorcery point thing doesn’t really pertain to us but what does matter to us. Is it allows you to add your charisma modifier onto one of the damage rolls. You’re affecting two creatures at once here or you have the potential to at the very least. You can only apply it to one but you know it’s an extra handful of damage which would otherwise not be there. So for that reason and that reason alone i do think it is worth mentioning.
Now let’s get into the good stuff. We’re going to be looking at the metamagic called transmuted spell.
Transmuted spell: This particular metamagic was added in during the tash’s cauldron of everything expansion and it’s pretty dang cool. When you cast a spell that deals a specific type of damage from the following list.
You have a chance to spend a sorcery point to change that damage type to one of the other listed types such as Acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison and thunder. Which was strangely enough actually sonic damage in previous editions but they changed it to thunder. Because it kind of makes more sense with the fantasy world i guess but that’s beside the point.
The point is is acid damage is on that list right, front and center all glorious and such. What this means is just by spending one sorcery point you can switch it to a different damage type altogether. It’s hard to say it’s a negative if it’s a different damage type altogether.
Now there is an argument to be made that you don’t have meta magic because you’re not a sorcerer and to that i say you really gotta check out our Metamagic Adept feat article.
