Best Dungeon Utility Spells?

[BoxANT]

Your party has entered the dungeon, a deadly one at that.

What spells are top priority for survival and utility?


Enhance Ability (Wisdom) for trap/secret finding?
Knock for locks?
Rope Trick for safe short rests (and possible escape from danger)?
Enlarge/Reduce for object shrinking?

What are your top picks?

[Man_Over_Game]

Your party has entered the dungeon, a deadly one at that.

What spells are top priority for survival and utility?


Enhance Ability (Wisdom) for trap/secret finding?
Knock for locks?
Rope Trick for safe short rests (and possible escape from danger)?
Enlarge/Reduce for object shrinking?

What are your top picks?

It heavily depends on the level, but Light and Sleep are probably the two most important options at low levels. With Light, you can just enchant an arrow, shoot it into the darkness, see what you find and repeat until you've scouted out the region. Sleep is an amazing low level control spell that'll buy you 1-2 turns, enough to mop up a decent encounter of minions without spending many resources.

Find Familiar, with a Rat, is an absolute must at almost any level. Most dungeon creatures won't bother at paying attention to a Rat, who has Darkvision. An Owl isn't graceful enough to get under doorways and is much too obvious as a target. I can think of a few things that would definitely see an Owl as a delicacy.

If Find Familiar isn't an option for some reason, Speak With Animals is a decent second choice and will nearly do the same thing. Since it lasts 10 minutes, you could easily ask it to scout out the region for a favor (like food). If it doesn't come back from a specific direction, you found your answer.

Knock's biggest thing is that it can get rid of magical locks, but otherwise I wouldn't rely on it when most groups have someone with Thieves' Tools.

[Callak_Remier]

Alarm, Leomunds Tiny Hut ( anti-TPK spell)
Floating disk, Arcane lock, Find familiar, Mage hand.

[MaxWilson]

Your party has entered the dungeon, a deadly one at that.

What spells are top priority for survival and utility?

What are your top picks?

TrapZap and Kiel's Magic Compass.

[Haldir]

Augury. Detect Magic. Guidance. Freedom of MOvement, Gaseous Form, Locate Object, Message, See Invisibility, SpiderClimb/Levitate/Fly, Telepathic Bond, True Seeing, Water Walk, Water Breathing.

Edit- definitely some form of illusion. Can be unrivaled in solving dungeoneering problems that relate to remaining undetected or otherwise misleading your opposition.

[Keravath]

Utility spells only go so far ... the right dungeon delving skills/characters are at least as important.

1) For traps and other nasty hidden surprises.
- someone with expertise in perception (enhance ability wis)
- someone with expertise in investigation (enhance ability int)

both perception and investigation are important to discovering and understanding secrets and things hidden in a dungeon.

2) If there is the reasonable liklihood of deadly traps then a rogue with expertise in thieves tools (the only class that can get expertise in thieves tools) can be very useful (along with enhance ability dex) for actually disarming such traps.

Sometimes the help action by another character who is proficient with the skill can provide advantage with these checks so enhance ability might not be required.

3) One or more characters with healing word (revivify would also be good). Nothing worse than going dungeon delving and having to leave your bodies behind since there wasn't enough healing.

4) Reach a party consensus on light and darkness. Using a light source makes your party very obvious and if an ambush is possible it will happen. A light source in a dark dungeon no matter how stealthy your characters may be is the opposite of stealth. Keep in mind that characters with darkvision have disadvantage on perception checks in total darkness ... so odds are things might get missed if you don't have a light source or warlock with devils sight.


More on topic ... some other spells that might come in handy ...

- purify food and drink (if you run out of supplies ... or something happens to them)
- rope trick and leomund's tiny hut for safer resting
- control flame/fire cantrips/prestidigitation for starting and stopping camp fires
- silence, darkness, pass without trace can all make it possible for you to remain stealthy and undiscovered.
- detect magic (very convenient for finding magical traps since it usually makes them extremely obvious) ... nice if you can get it as an at will warlock invocation


From a combat perspective ... hypnotic pattern can be awesome ... especially when quarters might be too tight for a fireball.