Indistinguishable from Magic

Cloudkill One of the more infamous D&D spells because, like its little brother Stinking Cloud, it has been inspiring nerds to make fart jokes for fifty years. And, like a fart, it is inescapable and travels along with its creator. But, in the words of TV knife celebrity Doug Marcaida, will it kill ? You bet your beans it will. It lasts for ten minutes, too! This is actually a pretty effective spell, and even has the advantage of ease, cheapness, and mobility over its technological equivalent (presumably a canister of mustard gas or some such).  Real-World Rating  8 (Very Effective) Color Spray Kind of a confusing debuff, this causes blindness in opponents based on their number of hit points for some reason. Look, folks, I'm going to level with you: This spell is extremely gay. It's so gay that its main utility would be renting it out for use at discos.  It's a rainbow that you shoot out of your fingers, causing people to be dazzled in directly inverse proportion ...

Call Lightning In-game, this one is an interesting contrast with the better-known Lightning Bolt: worse in some ways (you can really only cast it outside or in a huge room, and it doesn't do as much initial damage) and better in others (higher damage at higher levels, and it can last up to ten minutes , with the caster being able to blast an enemy with lighting on every turn ).  But that's just nitpicking. Is this an effective real-world spell? You bet your ass it is. Even if some people survive getting hit by lightning, calling down electrical bolts from the heavens to smite your enemies is classic wizard shit. Real-World Rating  7 (Effective) Calm Emotions The only thing this does that you couldn't do with a handful of valium is work on a crowd. I'm trying to think of a real-world situation in which this wouldn't be just a temporary distraction, and it's hard -- this is your typical RPG debuff, which is contingent on their being buffs in the first place. I sup...

Blade Ward Like a lot of D&D spells, this one is more impressive in a medieval-fantasy milieu than it is in the real world. Unlike previous iterations of the spell, it doesn't make you immune to conventional melee weapon damage; it just gives you advantage. That's not bad, though, and since it's a cantrip in 5th edition, you can just use it over and over again. In the real world, of course, someone would just shoot you*, and you can't use it to, say, protect a crowd against police beatings, because it only works on the caster. Still and all, 'being largely immune to beatings and stabbings' is a good thing to have in your pocket, depending on the circles you travel in. Real-World Rating  5 (Effective But Limited) Blinding Smite We've talked before about the usefulness of these 'tons of damage plus '-type spells, and most of them, including this one, are generally in the why-bother category, especially given that here, the blindness is not permanen...