Imagine you are a Paladin, in magical Plate armor, with a magic shield and a magic weapon of glorious awesomeness. This is your first character and you have been playing every week in your friend’s game for over two and a half years! Everyone else at the table is playing a ranged class. You are the melee, the tank, the one who gets up in the monster’s face, scoffs at their pathetic attempts to hit you, and brings the pain. Your team is counting on you to be the hero you have been since your first Critical Smite! Suddenly, your Dungeon Master grins with a sense of malevolence you have never seen from them before. Their main antagonist, Kurn, the Forge Domain Cleric casts Heat Metal using a 7th level spell slot on your magical armor for 7d8 fire damage.
No attack roll. No saving throw.
Just an average of 32 damage with potential max damage of 56, every round. Kurn is 45 feet away from you on a balcony with no visible stairs or way of reaching it. If you want to break his concentration you will have to rely on your wizard companion, Shaster Foechuckle to cast Fly on you instead of Haste and you are still fighting Kurn’s army of ghouls and shadows... If Foechuckle fails, this could be your last stand...
Let's shine a light on one of the best (if not the best) low-level spells in the game, Heat Metal. What I find fascinating is this amazing spell seems to have slipped under the radar of many adventurers since the beginning of Fifth Edition, and as more fantastic spells continue to come out it remains incredibly strong, overlooked, and exceptional. Perhaps it is because it can only be cast by what many consider to be “support” spell casters. Perhaps it is because it doesn’t have an intimidating name. Regardless of all that, this spell is magnificent.
What does Heat Metal do and why is it so good?
Heat Metal is a really simple and straightforward 2nd level Transmutation spell available to Artificers, Bards, Druids, and Forge Domain Clerics. First, it allows the caster to 'choose a manufactured metal object, such as a metal weapon or a suit of heavy or medium metal armor, that you can see within range.' Let’s stop here and quickly point out that the range is 60 feet, which is nothing to scoff at. It's certainly further than any Dwarf could move in one turn without the assistance of magical aid.
'You cause the object to glow red-hot. Any creature in physical contact with the object takes 2d8 fire damage when you cast the spell. Until the spell ends, you can use a bonus action on each of your subsequent turns to cause this damage again.' Notice anything special about this? How about the fact that it just happens. No attack roll, no saving throw, you spend a spell slot and the result is fire damage. On your following turns, for the cost of a bonus action, you can continue this damage all while using your action to do whatever tickles your fancy and doesn't break your concentration.
In case you weren’t sold yet: “if a creature is holding or wearing the object and takes the damage from it, the creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or drop the object if it can. If it doesn't drop the object, it has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the start of your next turn.” These lines are what tip this spell from being pretty cool to completely, wonderfully overpowered. Let’s break this down. This is one of the few spells in 5th edition that has the ability to explicitly disarm a creature, thereby combining damage and utility!
The real power of this spell occurs when the object you choose is a suit of heavy or medium metal armor. It takes a full minute (or ten rounds of combat) to remove medium armor and five minutes (or fifty rounds of combat) to remove heavy armor. Each round spent this way would certainly count as taking the [Tooltip Not Found] action, effectively taking this creature out of the fight and damaging it while doing so.
The only weakness of this spell, as mentioned above, is that it requires concentration. But that should not deter you in the slightest! If you are STILL not sold on how wonderful this is, “when you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d8 for each slot above 2nd.” Come on- what else do we need to say to get you to drive this car off the lot today?
Optimizing this spell as a Player
I always prefer to play strange, non-optimized characters. Unique personalities who contribute more to making people laugh at the table and assist in moving the story along than combat. That said I don’t want to let these goofballs drag down the team in combat. So, I always pick up Heat Metal when I can.
As mentioned above, this spell mixes damage with utility in ways that no other spell or ability does in the rest of the game. I universally prefer to cast Heat Metal on a piece of armor instead of a metal weapon because I want that continuous damage and ensure the target is forced to attack at disadvantage each turn. Let's look at some ways to use this spell when as the various classes that are a part of the Heat Metal family.
Bards are masters of utility and supporting other classes in the main pillars of D&D (exploration, combat, role play). Normally when I cast Heat Metal or any concentration spell as a bard, I want to ensure I am doing everything I can to avoid damage. For that reason, I usually will use my movement to both avoid attackers and also stay within distance of my target. I also will use my action to support this, either by using the Dodge or Disengage actions. If I feel I am safe from harm, I will then opt to support my team members either by casting other (non-concentration) spells, making a ranged attack, or even using the Help action.
Clerics are arguably one of the strongest classes in the game because of their ability to cast powerful healing and damaging spells in armor. In this case, Forge Domain clerics also gain proficiency with heavy armor. Depending on how well equipped your Forge Domain cleric is, they might have a really high armor class and thus will be rather difficult to hit; a major benefit to maintaining concentration for those types of spells. Regardless of that, the way I prefer to use Heat Metal with this type of character is to lock down one target (in metal armor of course) while I bash another target with my Attack. This feels particularly effective when I want to protect other members of my party with lower armor classes from melee combatants while attacking another target.
Artificers are ingenious magical engineers that use tools to cast spells and invent fantastical items. Thanks to their different subclass options and creative design they can adopt and accommodate many different playstyles and roles in an adventuring party. Similar to Clerics, Artificers can take advantage of casting spells in armor. A unique way to play Armorer Artificers (which gains proficient with heavy armor) is to act as a bodyguard to my party’s other spell casters rather than stand in the front line. If I could not cast Heat Metal on a piece of armor I would default to the attacker’s weapons and then use my action to Attack with my Thunder Gauntlets. Besides dealing a formidable 1d8 thunder damage “a creature hit by the gauntlet has disadvantage on attack rolls against targets other than you until the start of your next turn.” This would ensure that the attacking creature is greatly discouraged into attacking my fellow party member because it guarantees it will attack at disadvantage, one way or another.
Druids are unique as the only class that can transform into other creatures with their “Wild Shape” class ability. I personally adore the rules for Wild Shape (especially with the Circle of the Moon) because you can cast spells prior to shapeshifting and can maintain concentration on them in the beast form. For this reason, this is my favorite class to pick up the Heat Metal Spell. My go-to way of using the spell is to cast it before I use my Bonus Action to Wild Shape into a beast. My choice of beast depends on how important it is for me to remain concentrated on the spell but my preferred form is that of the Giant Spider; specifically, so I can use its climb speed to get out of the way of present danger and also use its Web Action to support my team further. The amazing thing here is that you can change your strategy depending on what creature you turn into! Even though I prefer Circle of the Moon druids, you can effectively do this combo with any druid subclass. If maintaining concentration is the most important aspect for you, turn into something with a unique movement speed, or skilled in Stealth such as a Giant Badger, a Giant Centipede or a Wolf.
Optimizing this spell as a Dungeon Master
This spell is so powerful that as a Dungeon Master I very rarely use it against players. When I do use it, I prefer to use it either with experienced players or as a tool to introduce newer players to more advanced combat strategies that involve spells such as Dispel Magic and Counterspell.
When using it against experienced players I go right for the jugular and will cast it on the melee character with the highest armor class that is most likely wearing metal. It feels borderline cruel, so normally I save this for final boss fights or a boss’ highest-ranking officers. It can often be a great solution to pressuring characters that have simply become too difficult to hit or impede in more conventional ways (such as spells with saving throws). I suggest using this cautiously because its greatest power (of not needing an attack roll nor saving throw) will also make it feel incredibly unfair.
A more fun way to use this spell as a Dungeon Master is as a tool for teaching newer players about the importance of Dispel Magic and Counterspell. A relatively simple way of achieving this is with a puzzle or trap encounter that targets a character’s weapons or a metal object that can easily be removed (such as a neckless, ring, or shield). By introducing the spell this way it doesn’t have the urgency nor deadliness of occurring during combat as well as not feeling as punishing. I would design the puzzle or trap to impede my players from gaining cool magic items or exciting and important story lore that could help them later in the adventure, rather than a hard block to the story. What I really like about this is it gets everyone involved. It makes them aware that this spell exists and how it works. Most importantly it gives them insight into how to deal with this in the future when the luxury of time won’t be on their side.
I hope the next time you are building a character or designing an encounter you'll include this incredible spell. Its one-of-a-kind properties make it strong and versatile to use in many instances that could either tilt combat in your favor or make your players praise you for challenging them in ways they have not previously experienced. My last piece of wisdom for players is to remember that simply because you can use your bonus action to inflict more damage on subsequent turns, you do not have to and the spell won’t end if you don’t. My final piece of advice for Dungeon Masters is to remember this spell is brutal and I implore you to use caution both when and with whom you decide to use it.
In other words, with great Heat Metal power, comes great Heat Metal responsibility.
Heat Metal may be the only thing that keeps you alive in the Domains of Dread found in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, available for preorder now in the D&D Beyond Marketplace! All preorders come with digital dice, as well as character themes, frames, and backdrops!
Elliot Spilk (@DiceyDM) is the Game Content Manager at Fandom Tabletop who leads a fantastic team to digitize all game content. He is deeply passionate about D&D, fantasy, science fiction, and bringing out the creativity in others. He rolls dice openly in front of his players and runs a tough but fair game with high stakes. He proudly wears the badge for "killing the most player characters in the internal office games."
Perhaps the Villain has multiclassed a couple of paladins level but his main class is something else. It is quite confusing though, perhaps the author wanted to make a cool entry without thinking much about it.
And this is why I miss the Glassteel spell. (Plus, those swords my character wielded in 2nd ed. were works of art!)
I have it always prepared as my forge domain cleric, and I really want to love it. Everything you said is true, but I think you are overlooking one major caveat, your target has to have something made of metal. Maybe it is just the encounters my DM is running, but we have been playing regularly for about a year now and in that time I have used the spell twice. There are more monsters/creatures you encounter that don't have any metal than do. The utility part of the spell can be fun, but is still very situational. Do to how situational the spell is I find that there are far better cleric spells that are worth my concentration.
Although an armorer artificer it is worth remembering can doff their armor as an action. So it’d take them out of melee, but if they can get away and doff the armor they can still go to town on you with spells
Glassteel and Ironwood both.
Love this spell on my flimsy Tiefling Bard Habard Ashery; the moment he knows an opponent has some form of armour he casts it on them and then gets well out of range for retaliation. One of the craziest things about this spell is that once it's cast it has no range limit; you could Dimension Door five hundred feet away and still use it, or grab Plane Shift and just go to an entirely different plane where your target cannot harm you, and yet you can keep boiling them alive inside their own armour.
The only real drawback is that it only usually works on humanoids; a lot of big monsters can have solid AC without wearing a scrap of armour, and I think that's part of what balances the spell, as while it can be amazing on certain enemies, it can be completely useless against others. In this way the main balancing factor for Artificers is that as a half caster you have limited spell picks per day, while for a Bard you can't normally swap spells except when levelling up, so in both cases you're picking a spell that might be amazing, but also might not come up at all.
I still really like it, even though on my Bard it's fighting for a bunch of other things I can do with my Bonus Action, but when it works it works so I'd rather have it and not get to use it then regret not taking it.
Beat up them concentration casters with magic missile / high character level eldritch blast / lots of hits. Heat Metal is a powerful spell, but is easy to beat because of concentration. The only time it becomes a extremely scary spell is when the creature holding concentration has a Con save of +10 or more. At that point you wanna be doing like 40 damage or more in a single hit to make the concentration save a Dc 20+, still very doable with +10 but the chance to fail exists now. Also any condition that also has the condition 'incapacitated' tied to it will brake concentration. (looking at you monk players.) But this is me taking a look at it honorably, we all know the best strategy with this spell is "Cook and Book" (Youtuber Video about Heat Metal)
At the end of the day, its one of the stronger spells. But concentration puts a big leash on it.
Once a spell is cast, its effects aren't limited by range unless the spell says otherwise. The concentration rules don't say a concentration spell ends if its target leaves the spell's range. The range of the spell only applies to initial casting of the spell in this case. making it quite useful for the "Cook and book" strategy when casted on armor.
But if I'm wrong pleas correct me.
I would hope that the DM's goal would not be to render this spell useless, but to render it balanced. There's nothing wrong with a spell being useful, or even with a spell being particularly effective in certain situations (just like some spells/features are particularly effective against undead, or against large numbers of weaker enemies). Two things that should not happen are
1) one spell becomes the best option in all situations, or
2) one spell trivializes what is intended to be a difficult encounter.
With Heat Metal, 1) is unlikely to happen unless the DM is actively trying to make it happen, because of the spell's situational nature. 2) is a bit more of a concern, but is easy to design around. Moderately strong enemies could be designed to be resistant to fire, or could have a metal weapon but non-metal armor and a backup non-metal weapon. Stronger enemies (like the boss of a dungeon) might simply be immune to fire or not use metal at all, if the spell would unbalance the encounter. It makes sense that, if the antagonists see players using a spell like this, they might adjust their tactics accordingly.
I wouldn't say Heat Metal trivialises difficult encounters as such; it's a great spell but it can only affect a single target at a time and can't be transferred when they die, so the simplest "fix"for a DM is to ensure that when they send heavily armoured enemies at you is to send multiple weakers ones.
Heat Metal can do a decent amount of damage, but it only does so much per turn as it's full value comes from casting it over multiple rounds; at level 2 it's only doing 2d8 damage (average of 9) per round, at 3rd level that only increases to 3d8 (average of 13.5). Compare to a 3rd level fireball that can do an average of 28, or 14 on a successful save, and can do-so to multiple enemies. You only need to hit two or three per fireball to deal way more damage than Heat Metal will.
To really cheese Heat Metal would require you to be facing only a single very heavily armoured enemy with a tonne of hit-points, as the spell's damage will really add up, and it should be easy for you to stay at range while your party's melee fighters keep it at bay. But that kind of specialised lone enemy is going to be vulnerable to bunch of shenanigans (probably has a relatively low Wisdom save etc.) so Heat Metal isn't the only way to cheese it.
Ultimately I think of Heat Metal as a deterrent spell; it should discourage your DM from sending ridiculously high AC enemies against you, as it's just not fun for a party to be missing all the time, and the easiest way to prevent abuse is to keep groups reasonably mixed. For example, if you want a high AC giant statue, consider pairing it with some kind of caster, so while Heat Metal can work wonders agains the statue, it will only work if others keep the caster at bay.
But there are also spells such as Booming Blade which functions as a damage bonus to your attack and scale the same (at least at 5th lvl, both 2d8).
It can be argued that Heat Metal is more applicable in various situations, but that contributes to the utility nature of the spell.
But I agree the resolving of each action before applying the next makes a good point, but could be up to the DM's disgression.
So First I wanted to mention a couple of weaknesses:
it’s situational, when you rely on your opponent wearing metal entirely for your battletools to work, then you‘ll have a hard time against things like blights or most fey.
it’s also Fire Damage, a commonly resisted damage type.
i also think when it comes to 2nd level combat spells, there are some pretty good contenders. Spiritual Weapon comes to mind, here you trade the consistency for the ability to switch targets, almost always use it and use buffs on the attack rolls like hex or something similar. So as a Forge Cleric why not bring both of these great spells. Or if you want to cheese a lot and depending on how much wiggle room your dm let’s you, you could combine suggestion with a metal object and boom very expensive but somewhat more consistent Heat Metal.
Cook and Book enough said.
Go watch ZeeBashew's video on the spell it's epic
I used this spell so effectively as a forge cleric a few campaigns ago that my DM now has house rules specifically designed to nerf it.
Thanks for the comparison to Witch Bolt! That's a good example of when the designers want to explicitly limit the spell.
Yep, the character I most play is circle of the moon druid with heat metal, create bonfire and thorn whip, this makes up for a solid support + damage role without taking away from a nice background.
I've played a lot of 5th edition modules, and when I reflect on my experiences and how often we fought enemies who were wearing metal armor, it's shockingly few. Eight combat encounters with probably 30+ unique enemies in RoTFM so far and not-a-one has been wearing metal armor.
Usually it's only humanoid enemies, and even then they're often unarmored, or wearing leather armor.
It my underwhelming for 7th level spell, but it's 32 damage per round for 10 rounds and all you need to is keep concentrating and use your bonus action to keep it up. You can use your action to go hit others (or even the same guy) or cast spell that aren't concentration. That's 320 average (or 520 if you do max damage) magical fire damage total if you keep up for 10 rounds just using your bonus action. Not a bad trade in my book.
P.S. NPCs don't need to follow the player class/race restrictions, hence paladin casting 7th level spell. Could for example be an innate ability of a follower of an evil forge deity, that wants to destroy the world with manufactured weapons, for example a magical weapon of mass destruction.
the spell ignores ac and there is nothing you can do about, other than dispel magic and counterspell of course. but the thing is the con check to keep your weapon or shield can be harmful, I was playing as a barbarian when a bard used heat metal on my shield, and my armor clas dropped because I dropped the shield. also if the person is wearing metal armor then that constant damage to a player who probably relies on their armor to defend them can be damming. yes, the damage isn't great but the utility of causing the enemy to drop their weapon or have disadvantage is extremely useful, and you can always cast it at its base level for similar effects, even if the damage isn't as great. and yes the concentration can be an issue especially against a party or enemy with lots of ranged players, but no spell is perfect.
that is up to the dm thanebyron, in my opinion, yes and no, the spell heats the object so the caster cannot continue to use the bonus action to deal damage but maybe it would do a halved or lesser amount of damage for a turn or two because the metal was heated up to the point it could burn