A beam of crackling, blue energy lances out toward a creature within range, forming a sustained arc of lightning between you and the target. Make a ranged spell attack against that creature. On a hit, the target takes 1d12 lightning damage, and on each of your turns for the duration, you can use your bonus action to deal 1d12 lightning damage to all current targets automatically. The spell ends if you use your bonus action to do anything else. The spell also ends if the arc of lightning is ever longer than the spell’s range, it bends around corners if the target breaks line of sight. You cannot affect the same target with more than one of your Chasing Bolts at once.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d12 for each slot level above 1st.
* - (a twig from a tree that has been struck by lightning)
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Posted Feb 17, 2026Presenting: Witch Bolt 2 (feedback welcome)
Chasing Bolt is meant to be the arcane caster's equivalent to Heat Metal. It doesn't require concentration but loses the ability to continue to fry someone for long after you've made your escape. It's intended use is to force enemies to back off and, with +10ft of range from basic Witch Bolt, it's more effective against a wider range of movement speeds in addition to encouraging normal enemies within 5-10ft to dash out of there. That's why it's available at lvl 1 when arcane casters are most vulnerable. It deals the same number of dice per round per spell level as Heat Metal but those dice are bigger because A: It makes the spell scarier to the target. and B: The target is expected to run away and end the spell early. I removed the line of sight requirement for maintaining the spell so the target can't just loop around a pillar or something. I wonder if I should downgrade the dice to d10s for those wood elf, hexblades/bladesingers/martial multiclasses with sentinel, spell snipers.