Study Up on 5E D&D Magic — Evocation Spells

Salutations, nerds! Let’s explore evocation magic for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. These spellcasters represent elementalists and those who make things go boom! Evocation magic is arguably the most useful 5E D&D school of magic in combat and most healing spells are also classified as evocation too. Evocation is also the school I don’t feel as inclined to glorify for you because so many 5E D&D players already at least strongly consider playing an evoker or at least rely heavily on spells from this school of magic. Let’s blast off!

Arcane tradition — evocation

First of all the School of Evocation Arcane Tradition allows you to pick and choose where your spell is going to hit and miss your allies. You want to throw a fireball into the middle of the melee? This is how you do it. Evokers also get the ability to still cause damage when something passes the save on a cantrip — any cantrip, not just evocation cantrips (vicious mockery anyone?).

These wizards also receive a feature whereby they add their Intelligence modifier to the damage of their evocation spells and as a capstone the Overchannel feature allows for maximum damage with wizard spells of 1st through 5th level. By the way this capstone feature is on a soft cooldown, by which you can use it again but you take necrotic damage if you do so. I kind of love this because it means you could potentially wear yourself out casting.

“Evocation spells manipulate magical energy to produce a desired effect. Some call up blasts of fire or lightning. Others channel positive energy to heal wounds.” — from the 5E D&D Player’s Handbook

10 notable evocation spells

1. Booming Blade. A must have for a gish character type. You make an attack as part of the spell and if you’re over 5th level it just flat does extra damage. And costs no spell slots.
2. Contingency. Set up a spell in advance to kick in whenever you need it to do so. One of my personal favorite spells in the game.
3. Cure Wounds. Yep, this is an evocation. It’s exactly what it says on the tin but I figure it’s a good one to mention here.
4. Darkness. You create a sphere of darkness. This one’s on the list because I find it interesting this is an evocation and not an illusion.
5. Fireball. The infamous spell given more damage than a 3rd level spell should have because rolling all those dice feels good.
6. Magic Missile. A classic, whether you’re attacking the enemy or the darkness.
7. Meteor Swarm. Four points of massive fire damage and bludgeoning damage to everything in the blast radius — and the range of this spell is one mile. This is the quintessential “wizard standing on top of a tower burninating the countryside” spell.
8. Sunbeam. Blind things, deal radiant damage and absolutely vaporize vampires.
9. Telepathy. This is listed as evocation magic instead of an enchantment on D&D Beyond so just to make sure I looked it up in the PHB and it’s listed as evocation there too. This is so monumentally weird to me that I’m pretty sure this was a mistake but it’s getting listed here because it’s still Rules as Written.
10. Tiny Hut. This is a barrier. It’s the spell that makes a dome of force and then the stuff outside can’t get you for eight hours. If you have two wizards and at least one of them has conjure food and water you can basically stay in there indefinitely.

5 character concepts for evocation magic

1. The Bandit. You find out you have magical powers and the very first thing you do is start robbing people with it on the highway. Maybe you drew down too much heat in the process and that’s why you’re travelling now.
2. The Healer. Healing spells are largely evocation, after all. You know how to channel energy into mending wounds.
3. The Naturalist. You have a connection to the earth and the elements, and evocation magic is how this manifests. Storms and floods are your friends.
4. The Scientist. One thing all evokers use is energy. You can generate a lot of it with little effort so why not use it to try to find a power source? Not all evokers are meatheads after all.
5. The Soldier. Evokers are often recruited into armies and there’s no small wonder why. If you can fireball the cavalry then suddenly warfare looks very different.

Evocation tends to be pretty straightforward and I think this is what draws people towards the school of magic in the first place. It’s also really fun to make things go boom, right? Tell me all about your experiences with 5E D&D evocation magic in the comments below, connecting with us on Facebook or tweeting us @Nerdarchy. Feel free to comment or tweet me @Pyrosynthesis too and of course, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — Randomness is the jam! This foxfolk spellcaster evokes the power of the storm in one paw and caustic acid in the other. One of our more popular posts here on the site is a take on presenting foxlike humanoids for 5E D&D if you’re interested in playing one. While you’re at it you might consider some of these highest rated evocation spells for your next 5E D&D spellcaster. Arc lightning, celestial burst and thousand cuts are terrific. This image was created in just a few minutes with full color thanks to the amazing resources at Hero Forge. There’s so much you can do with Hero Forge! Check it out for yourself here.

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