D&D Spell Focus: Acid Splash

An area of effect cantrip?! Yes please! …oh, you’d like to DOUBLE its potential in the new rules, sure, why not? This is Acid Splash.

There really isn’t much to say about our humble level 0 spells usually, as they do their simple jobs without much fuss when you’ve burnt all your big spell slots by lunch rest… again. Each of them usually has a little bonus schtick, and for Acid Splash, that has been Area of Effect damage. The potential to dish out 2d6 damage as a Level 1 character means the spell was already impressive. But you know what they say, you can never have enough magical face-melting juice… so in the new rules, along with the spell moving from the school of Conjuration to rightly join Firebolt and Ray of Frost in Evocation land, if you are lucky, you can now get up to 4d6 damage instead!

The proviso is proximity. The 2014 rules gave you a free second target that was within 5ft of your first one. Now, it is simply a 5ft radius blast of green burning goo you can position anywhere you can see within 60ft. Densely packed kobolds? No worries! Dex saves all around! If you are being swarmed in the open or fighting in close quarters and can get 4 creatures on 4 adjacent squares, Acid Splash is the cantrip for you.

It gains an extra d6 damage per target at Levels 5, 11 and 17, meaning at the top your cantrip could deal out 16d6 damage in the right circumstances. Now imagine being swarmed by a pack of 16 stirges grouped in 4 squares coming down a corridor to drain every last drop of your precious life fluids dry and…. Your DM will be in tears.

You’d have to check with your DM, but I always like to reward clever uses of spells, even cantrips. Keep an eye out for when you could potentially use this spell to melt some prison bars, weaken the coupling on a wagon so it breaks 10 minutes into a journey, or bore a hole in the side of a low pH limestone building. Fantasy Science for the win! (Hey, I’m an analytical chemist by trade, don’t shoot the geek, I just work here!)

Acid Splash: It's Face-Meltingly Good...

Now as always, if you are after some class-based spell cards for the Artificer, Wizard and Sorcerer who can access this spell, along with a cool scaled templates, click here to visit the ZG Store where you'll find affordable print-your-own versions designed by me, for my table to help you, at yours.