A first-level ranger spell that can yank a flying monster out of the sky and pin a wizard to the floor, and half the rangers I’ve met have never cast it. Come fight me about it.
Today we’re looking at a 1st level conjuration spell called Ensnaring Strike. This one lives on the Ranger list, and Oath of the Ancients paladins get it free as an oath spell at level 3, so those are your two casters unless somebody dips or begs. You hit a creature with a weapon, thorny vines burst out of the wound, and if the target flunks a Strength save it’s restrained, taking piercing damage every turn until it muscles its way out or you drop concentration.
Sitting at a range of self, a casting time of one bonus action, and a concentration length of one minute, Ensnaring Strike is the ranger’s smite. Paladins have a whole shelf of bonus action spells that ride on a weapon hit, and this is the ranger’s entry in that family, except the payoff is a condition instead of damage, and the condition is one of the best in the game. Restrained means speed zero, attacks against the target have advantage, the target’s attacks have disadvantage, and it has disadvantage on Dexterity saves. One hit, one failed save, and the monster is a piñata.
The community fight around this spell has been running for ten years, and it’s about concentration. Hunter’s Mark wants your concentration. Ensnaring Strike wants your concentration. You get one. So rangers take Hunter’s Mark at level 1, cast it every fight, and a lot of them never find out this spell can drop a wyvern out of the air. We’ll get to why that’s a mistake, and we’ll get to the 2024 version, which changed how you cast it. For now, let’s look at the rules as written, and remember, you can always fight me in the comments if you read it different.
RAW
- Casting Time: 1 bonus action
- Range: Self
- Components: V
- Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Here’s the 2014 text, straight from the Player’s Handbook, page 237:
“The next time you hit a creature with a weapon attack before this spell ends, a writhing mass of thorny vines appears at the point of impact, and the target must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be restrained by the magical vines until the spell ends. A Large or larger creature has advantage on this saving throw. If the target succeeds on the save, the vines shrivel away.
While restrained by this spell, the target takes 1d6 piercing damage at the start of each of its turns. A creature restrained by the vines or one that can touch the creature can use its action to make a Strength check against your spell save DC. On a success, the target is freed.”
Let’s slow down, because almost every clause in there trips somebody up.
“The next time you hit a creature with a weapon attack before this spell ends.” In 2014 you cast this before you swing. Bonus action, spell goes live, and then it sits there waiting for your next weapon hit. If you miss with both attacks this turn, nothing is lost, the spell is still primed, and your next hit on a later turn triggers it as long as you’re still concentrating. Jeremy Crawford confirmed that one on Sage Advice, “missing has no effect on it.” Two catches. It only fires on one hit, ever, which Mike Mearls confirmed on the same site, and the clock is running the whole time, so if you cast it, whiff for four rounds, and finally land it, you’ve got six rounds of vines left, not ten.
“A weapon attack.” Any weapon attack. Longbow, javelin, shortsword, thrown dagger, it all counts. This is one of the few bonus action riders in the game a ranged character can use, which is why archers should care about it. You’re eighty feet away, you plink a flying thing, and it is suddenly on the ground.
“The target must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be restrained.” Strength. Your spell save DC is 8 plus your proficiency bonus plus Wisdom for a ranger, Charisma for an Ancients paladin, so a level 5 ranger with a 16 Wisdom is throwing DC 14. Let’s watch that play out. You shoot a goblin. Goblin Strength is 8, a minus 1, so it needs a 15 or better on the die to wriggle free. Seventy percent of the time it’s stuck. Now you shoot a mage. Mage Strength is 9, same minus 1, same seventy percent, and that wizard is now rooted to the floor with advantage on every attack coming at him. Now try it on an ogre. Strength 19, plus 4, passes on a 10, so fifty-five percent on a straight roll.
“A Large or larger creature has advantage on this saving throw.” And there’s the clause that keeps this spell honest. Our ogre is Large, so it rolls that save twice and keeps the better one, and now it passes about eighty percent of the time. A young red dragon, Strength 23, Large, passes about eighty-eight percent of the time. An adult red dragon, Strength 27 and Huge, shrugs it off about ninety-four percent of the time. So the target list for this spell is Medium and smaller things with low Strength, the casters, the archers, the goblins, the assassins, the guy sprinting for the alarm bell. Don’t waste the slot on the giant.
“While restrained by this spell, the target takes 1d6 piercing damage at the start of each of its turns.” Small and steady. Three turns stuck is 3d6, about ten damage, on top of whatever your party is doing to it with advantage. And that damage comes from a spell, so the “nonmagical weapons” resistances that shrug off your arrows don’t apply to the thorns.
“A creature restrained by the vines or one that can touch the creature can use its action to make a Strength check.” It costs an action, the whole thing, and that’s where the value hides. Every turn the target spends trying to rip itself loose is a turn it isn’t attacking your wizard. And it’s a Strength check, an ability check, so things that hurt ability checks, like a bard’s Cutting Words, hurt this escape roll too. A friend of the target can also spend its action to cut it loose, which means two enemy actions burned if the first one fails.
At Higher Levels. “If you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 1st.” Only the damage scales. The save DC doesn’t change, the Large creature advantage doesn’t go away, and you don’t get extra targets. A 3rd level slot is 3d6 at the start of each of the target’s turns, ten and a half on average, so a caster stuck for three rounds eats about thirty-one damage for a single slot. But that’s a big slot for a half caster, and the save is the same coin flip it was at 1st level. Most of the time cast this cheap.
Limits and Cheeses
The quick version, because the companion uses post has the whole pile.
Concentration is the leash. You cannot run this and Hunter’s Mark, or Entangle, or Spike Growth, at the same time, and that fight over the ranger’s single concentration slot is the main reason this spell gets benched. Pick the job. If the fight has one dangerous squishy target, this beats Hunter’s Mark by a mile. If it’s ten goblins, mark something and shoot.
Restrained does not stop spellcasting. The condition says nothing about hands, so a restrained wizard keeps casting, and most DMs let a Misty Step carry him right out of your vines. Some tables rule the vines pin the arms. That’s a house rule, and we’ll argue about it in the uses post.
The save DC runs off your secondary stat. A Strength ranger with a 12 Wisdom is asking enemies to beat a DC 11, and they will.
The fun part, and the reason this spell earns its slot, is flyers. Restrained sets speed to zero, and the rules for flying say a creature whose speed drops to zero falls unless it can hover. A wyvern is Large with a plus 4, so it saves about eighty percent of the time, but when it fails, a wyvern at sixty feet takes 6d6 from the fall, lands prone and still restrained, and your whole party walks over and starts swinging with advantage. The net combo, the stunned-target auto-fail, and the Eldritch Knight build are all in the uses post.
The 2014 version versus the 2024 version
Yes, this one changed in the 2024 Player’s Handbook, page 268, and the change is the same one every smite got.
In 2014 you cast Ensnaring Strike with a bonus action before you attack, then concentrate while you hunt for a hit. In 2024 the casting time is a bonus action “which you take immediately after hitting a creature with a weapon.” So you swing first, you see the hit land, and then you decide whether to spend the slot. No more casting it, whiffing for two rounds, and watching the duration tick down. No more dropping concentration on something else before you’ve even confirmed you’ll connect. The 2024 text reads “As you hit the target, grasping vines appear on it, and it makes a Strength saving throw.”
Everything else held steady. Still 1st level conjuration, still verbal only, still range of self, still concentration up to a minute, still a Strength save, still advantage for Large or larger, still 1d6 piercing at the start of each of its turns, still plus 1d6 per slot above 1st. Concentration stayed, and people were mad about that, because Hail of Thorns and Lightning Arrow lost theirs in 2024 and this didn’t. The reason is that this spell has an ongoing effect to hold up, a minute of restrained, and the other two are one-shot bursts.
Three smaller edits show up at the table. One, the escape roll is now a Strength (Athletics) check instead of a plain Strength check, so proficiency counts. A bandit captain’s plain Strength check in 2014 is a plus 2. His Athletics in 2024 is a plus 4. Strong, trained enemies get out a little easier. Two, a successful initial save now explicitly ends the spell, where the 2014 text just said the vines shrivel away. Same outcome in practice, cleaner wording. Three, the trigger is now “hitting a creature with a weapon” rather than “a weapon attack.” In 2014 an unarmed strike counts as a melee weapon attack, so a punch could trigger the vines. The 2024 smites that want to include fists say “a Melee weapon or an Unarmed Strike” right in the casting time, and Ensnaring Strike doesn’t, so by the text your fists are out in 2024. Ask your DM.
And one interaction for the Ancients paladins. In 2014, Divine Smite is a class feature, not a spell, so you could cast Ensnaring Strike with your bonus action, hit, and dump a Divine Smite into the same swing. In 2024, Divine Smite is itself a bonus action spell, and the new rule says one spell slot per turn, so an Ensnaring Strike turn and a Divine Smite turn are two different turns now. Pick one per hit.
Last note for the 2024 crowd. The new Ranger chapter names this as one of the two spells it recommends at level 1, alongside Cure Wounds, and it made the free 2024 Basic Rules and SRD 5.2. The 2014 version never made the 5.1 SRD, which is why a lot of free tools skipped it for a decade.
History
Short section, because Ensnaring Strike is a fifth edition original. There’s no OD&D version, no AD&D version, nothing in 3rd or 3.5, and no 4th edition power by this name. It arrived in the 2014 Player’s Handbook as one of the handful of new ranger spells built for the bonus action system, alongside Hail of Thorns and Hunter’s Mark, and it’s been a ranger spell and an Ancients paladin oath spell ever since. Its whole history is the 2014 printing and the 2024 reprint, which swapped the cast-then-hit timing for hit-then-cast and changed the escape roll to Athletics.
Pinning a creature with magic plants goes back to Entangle, which is an ancient druid spell, but this spell, name and mechanics, is ten years old, and if anyone tells you their 2nd edition ranger used to cast it, they’re remembering something else.
Opinion
I think Ensnaring Strike is the most underrated spell on the ranger list, and I think Hunter’s Mark is the reason. Rangers learn Hunter’s Mark at level 1, it’s reliable, it adds damage every fight, and it eats the one concentration slot this spell needs, so the spell gets judged as “the thing I’d have to drop Hunter’s Mark for” instead of on its own merits. On its own merits, a first-level slot that can take a flyer out of the sky, lock a caster in place with advantage for everyone, and burn enemy actions on escape attempts is a steal, and the 2024 hit-then-cast timing removes the one real frustration it had.
Where I’ll give ground is the target list. Against Large things with big Strength scores it’s a bad bet, and against a fight full of goblins Hunter’s Mark does more work. This is a situational tool, and situational tools on a half caster with few spells known are expensive. But the situations it covers are the ones that ruin parties, the fleeing caster and the dragon you can’t reach, and I’d rather have the answer.
So tell me where you land. Is Ensnaring Strike a real pick on your ranger, or does Hunter’s Mark own that concentration slot for life? And for the Ancients paladins, did you ever cast this over a smite in 2014, and does the 2024 one-slot-per-turn rule change your mind? Let me know in the comments below, go check out the companion post for the full pile of vine tricks, and until next time, roll high and stay ridiculous.
