ensnaring strike

Spell-by-Spell: Ensnaring Strike

(All links take you to DnD Beyond unless otherwise noted.)

Overview

“As you hit the target, grasping vines appear on it, and it makes a Strength saving throw. A Large or larger creature has Advantage on this save. On a failed save, the target has the Restrained condition until the spell ends. On a successful save, the vines shrivel away, and the spell ends.

“While Restrained, the target takes 1d6 Piercing damage at the start of each of its turns. The target or a creature within reach of it can take an action to make a Strength (Athletics) check against your spell save DC. On a success, the spell ends.” (DnD Beyond Link)

I so want this spell to be a good spell. The image of vines or webs erupting from a spear or arrow to ensnare and tangle an enemy, squeezing them until they perish or surrender, is visually enticing and cinematic. And yet, it’s got so many funky design choices that prevent it from being an automatic go-to option for your quiver. 

As written, ensnaring strike is only available to rangers and Oath of the Ancients paladins, despite being perfect for druids, or a good ammunition add-on for artificers. It feels like a good fit for rangers—especially those that like to attack from range, but unless you’re all-in on your elven, longbow-wielding, elk-riding, defender-of-nature-at-all-costs, it feels like a spell most paladins would consider cheating. 

A Local-Hero tier spell, it does damage on par with other 1st-level spells that also inflict a condition, though the chances of inflicting that condition drop preciptiously once you’re fighting ogres and giants. Against small or medium flying creatures, ensnaring strike can be extrememly bad-ass, as the restrained condition brings their flying to a crashing halt. I’ve never had a ranger player choose it over absorb elements, alarm, cure wounds, entangle, the despised goodberry, or zephyr strike, but I can see it being a nice addition for jungle- or vine-themed characters or archers.

Ensnaring strike, like the various smite spells, only uses up a bonus action, and you don’t have to decide to cast it until after you see if you hit, and you can use it in-between any other attacks you might have. Because being restrained gives attacks against you advantage, you’ll usually want to use it the first time you hit someone. Unlike the smite spells, ensnaring strike doesn’t work with Unarmed Strikes. As written, that seems like more of an oversight than a balancing act. 

The range of this spell is confusing—in that you are casting it on yourself, even though it’s clearly delivered through your weapon. “Touch” would seem to make more sense, but I get that that muddies the ranged attack waters. Because you can cast it after you hit with a ranged weapon, this is a space where ensnaring strike out-performs hunter’s mark: with a longbow, ensnaring strike has an effective range of 150/600 feet.

The spell only lists a verbal component (“Ha!?” “Take that?”), but clearly requires you to have a weapon as well. 

You have to assume that any large or larger creature is going to successfully save against this spell. They tend to be strong anyway, and them getting Advantage pretty much guarantees it. There’s a saving grace to ensnaring strike though, in that if your oppenent does successfully save against it, you don’t have to worry about maintaining concentration. If you do need to maintain concentration, at least you’ve taken a baddy out of the fight and can hit it with advantage while it’s restrained. 

The damage of ensnaring strike increases by 1d6 for each spell slot above 1, but unless it’s the last fight of the day against a medium-sized solo baddy and you aren’t worried about using up your spell slots, I don’t know why you’d ever choose to upcast it. 

Ensnaring strike in past editions

As far as I can tell, the spell was new in 5th edition. In the 2014 PHB, ensnaring strike clarifies that the vines appear at the point of impact, but the spell is otherwise the same. 

How good is ensnaring strike?

I think it might be a B-tier spell for certain ranged attackers, but overall, it’s C-Tier for me. Ensnaring strike is a good spell, but not good enough to be chosen over other spells unless you are really leaning into a theme. The vines created “just appear,” which to me, seems like the designers didn’t want to get caught up in the metaphysics and consequences of where the vines actually come from. Like many D&D spells, it feels like it was invented in a vacuum, instead of having a specific niche that was trying to be filled or otherwise finding a home in an ecosystem of other spells. 

House rules and other thoughts

Ensnaring strike could be a cooler spell. Give it to druids, have the vines emerge from the ground, or better yet, grow from the weapon or ammunition itself, creating opportunities for moving the restrained character in melee. Give it a chance to affect large or bigger creatures at higher levels. And why Athletics to break free? Is this a sport I haven’t heard of? (Yes, I know it’s because that’s how the grappling rules are written–that’s a conversation for another day).

Ensnaring Strike (Far Reach revision)

1st-level conjuration (Druid, Ranger, Paladin – Oath of the Ancients)
Casting Time: 1 bonus action (which you take immediately after hitting a target with a weapon)
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (the somatic component is that you must hit a target with a weapon or piece of ammunition; the material component is the weapon or piece of ammunition used during the attack)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Attack/Save: Strength save

As you hit the target, grasping vines erupt from your weapon or piece of ammunition, and the creature must make a Strength saving throw. A Large or larger creature has Advantage on this save. On a failed save, the target is Restrained until the spell ends. On a successful save, or if you lose concentration, the vines shrivel away, and the spell ends.
While Restrained, the target takes 1d6 Piercing damage at the start of each of its turns. The target or a creature within reach of it can take an action to make a Strength check against your spell save DC. On a success, the spell ends.
If you are holding on to the weapon in question, such as when wielding a melee weapon, and successfully ensnared your opponent, the creature is considered Grappled as well as Restrained, and you can drag or carry them, but every foot of movement costs 1 extra foot unless you are two or more size categories larger. 

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, you can use each spell level above 1st to either inflict an additional 1d6 points of piercing damage to the target each round, or to increase the size category the creature must possess in order to get advantage on the save.
For example, if you cast ensnaring strike as a 5th-level spell, you could inflict 3d6 damage every round on a Huge creature and it wouldn’t get advantage on its Strength save to resist the spell. 

About Spell-by-Spell

Spell-by-spell is a series of articles where we discuss the spells in Dungeons & Dragons 5.5e. We start with the spell as-written, and we’ll provide our take on how “good” the spell is (S-Tier to F-Tier), and thoughts for using the spell as a player or DM. We offer up suggestions for adding color or flavor to the spell, out-of-the-box ideas for non-combat applications, and occasionally stories from the game-table. We might look the history of a spell and the different versions across editions or even different games.  Finally, we weigh in on how well the spell does what it says it does; how well it plays in-game (does it slow the game down, does it steal the thunder of other classes, is it fun); whether it should be banned, nerfed, or boosted; and revisions we’d like to see in theoretical future editions or that we plan to make (or have made) in our own D&D games.

Spell-by-Spell Tier Rankings
  • S-Tier: Spells that are so cool or so useful that you want to be able to cast them as many times as possible.
  • A-Tier: Spells that you always want to have in your spellbook or spell list. There may be situations where you would choose to not memorize or prepare them, but those cases are rare.
  • B-Tier: Good, solid spells. Spells you are often happy you have in your spellbook or spell list, but maybe don’t memorize or prepare every day.
  • C-Tier: Spells that are only situationally useful, that do too little damage, or that have some other strange or confusing unexpected flaw. Also poorly-named spells that don’t do what you would think they do.
  • D-Tier: Spells that are poorly designed, overshadow the schtick of other classes, or interact with other effects or abilities in ways detrimental to the player or game.
  • F-Tier: Spells that are so bad, they shouldn’t be in the game. This includes useless and trap spells, as well as always-spam spells that seem to have been created to cause friction between players and GMs.