Indistinguishable from Magic

Bane Insert joke here about Tom Hardy's weird voice work here! Actually, for the low low price of one single drop of blood, this spell makes an enemy of your choice bad at things for up to a minute. The perfect example of an effective buff spell:  simple, basic, tilts the odds just enough in your favor. As good in the real world as in D&D. Real-World Rating  7 (Effective) Banishing Smite Another of those high-level spells that is more flash than function. It can inflict a fuck-ton of damage (up to 50 HP in addition to whatever you normally do with a weapon), but the real heat is if that takes your target to under 50 HP -- which it surely will to all but the most powerful foes -- you banish them to another plane of existence! Spectacular, cool, but...why bother? Why not just kill them, thus totally eliminating the possibility this dangerous enemy will return and be super pissed at you? There's no insult-to-injury scale in the real world, so this just seems like murder ...

Animate Objects I'm a little torn on this one. It's a classic higher-level spell that sounds cool but has limited utility; there's not a lot of practical things you could get, say, an animated credenza to do for you that you couldn't just pay a regular person to do. It also only lasts a minute, so it's not like you can even have the fun of bringing a mailbox to life and having it haul your laundry around. So it's probably just going to be used for extremely rare circumstances (having a couch throw itself in front of a door instead of having to drag it there yourself) or for combat. The latter is a bit intriguing; even Tiny-sized objects have a surprisingly high number of hit points, so it could be kind of fun to watch a cop get beaten up by a folding chair, but it's still kind of a gimmick, and a lot more effort than just using a handgun or a fireball spell. In the end, most of the enjoyment you would get out of this would be making your own Transformers. Re...

Acid Splash We start out with a spell that's so simple it's boring, one of the most basic offensive cantrips in the Player's Handbook . In practical terms, what this spell allows you to do is toss a thin mist of toxic vapor at a target (or two) within 60 feet; if they don't make a Dexterity save, they get a face full of sulfuric acid.  Now, in D&D terms, this isn't really that big a deal. It does a maximum of 1d6 damage, and has a 60' range (which is basically D&D standard range for an offensive spell). It's minor enough that it's usually an afterthought, the damage-inflicting cantrip you pick if you forgot to get Magic Missile. But put it in the real world! For one thing, 1d6 isn't much in a D&D campaign, but it's within the average hit points of almost any normal human, or, as alt-right weirdos and the game calls them, "NPCs". 6 points of damage is more than enough to kill a normal human! And even a 1st-level wizard with i...

Hello!  Welcome to Indistinguishable from Magic , in which I will examine the real-world utility of spells from Dungeons & Dragons.  Before we get started, here's the house rules: - I'm using only the spells used in the Player's Handbook, 5th edition, but I will discuss all the spells listed there. - The assumption is that our theoretical magic-user has the ability to cast any  spell, but that they have no other extraordinary powers.  - Further assume that normal people they encounter in 'the real world' -- defined generally as 21st-century America in our present reality -- have the typical NPC stat blocks provided in the Monster Manual . So an average person would have 5 or 6 hit points, an Armor Class of 18-20, and statistics averaging between 10 and 12. - Crucially, it is assumed that no one in 'the real world' has the abilities that our magic-user has, and more importantly, that magic as is understood in a D&D context does not exist . Our magic-u...