One first-level slot, a room full of enemies glowing purple, and every swing your party makes for the next minute has advantage. Invisible wizard? Glowing too. Come fight me about whether this beats Bless.
Today we’re looking at a 1st level evocation spell called Faerie Fire. On the core lists it belongs to Bards and Druids, Artificers picked it up in Tasha’s, and it leaks out to a crowd of subclasses and races: Light Domain and Twilight Domain clerics, Archfey warlocks, Swarmkeeper rangers, and every drow who ever held a hand crossbow, who can cast it once a day for free from 3rd level. Cast it and everything in a 20 foot cube lights up in blue, green, or violet, and every creature in that cube that flunks a Dexterity save is painted for a full minute. Painted creatures are easier to hit, and they cannot hide behind invisibility.
Sitting at a range of 60 feet, a casting time of one action, and a concentration length of one minute, Faerie Fire is the spell the bard drops on turn one so the rogue, the fighter, and the paladin spend the rest of the fight rolling two dice and keeping the high one. The component line is the quiet surprise. Verbal only. You can cast it while grappled, while holding a sword and a shield, while hanging off a ledge by one arm, as long as you can talk.
Half the community calls it a cheaper Bless that also counters invisibility. The other half says it’s swingy, it eats concentration, and it needs enemies to clump up. 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 action
- Range: 60 feet
- Components: V
- Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Here’s the 2014 text, straight from the Player’s Handbook, page 239:
“Each object in a 20-foot cube within range is outlined in blue, green, or violet light (your choice). Any creature in the area when the spell is cast is also outlined in light if it fails a Dexterity saving throw. For the duration, objects and affected creatures shed dim light in a 10-foot radius.”
“Any attack roll against an affected creature or object has advantage if the attacker can see it, and the affected creature or object can’t benefit from being invisible.”
“Each object in a 20-foot cube within range is outlined.” Objects get no save. Every chest, chair, tripwire, and pressure plate in that cube lights up automatically, which is why people treat this as a dungeon-crawl utility spell as much as a combat spell. And you place the cube anywhere within 60 feet, including straight up in the air, which matters for fliers.
“Any creature in the area when the spell is cast is also outlined in light if it fails a Dexterity saving throw.” Read the timing. There is one save, on the turn you cast it, and that’s it. A creature that walks into the cube on a later turn never has to save, and a creature that failed and then walks out is still outlined, because the effect rides on the creature now. The glitter stays on. And creatures, plural, means all creatures. Your fighter standing in the cube rolls the same Dexterity save the ogre does, which is the main complaint from people who try to cast it after the barbarian has already charged in.
Numbers. Your level 3 bard has a spell save DC of 13. An ogre has a Dexterity of 8, so it rolls at minus 1 and needs a 14 to shake it, which means 65 percent of the time the ogre glows. A goblin, Dexterity 14, needs an 11, a coin flip. Drop the cube on an ogre and three goblins and on average you paint the ogre and one or two goblins for ten rounds.
“For the duration, objects and affected creatures shed dim light in a 10-foot radius.” The painted creatures are walking lanterns, so the human fighter with no darkvision can suddenly see the thing he’s fighting, and the painted creature can forget about hiding, because a glowing rogue is a bad rogue.
“Any attack roll against an affected creature or object has advantage if the attacker can see it.” This is why the spell gets cast. Every attack roll, melee, ranged, or spell attack, from every attacker, gets advantage against a painted creature for as long as you hold concentration. Your fighter with a plus 5 swings at a hobgoblin captain, armor class 17, so he needs a 12 on the die. That’s 45 percent to hit. Now the captain failed his Faerie Fire save. Same fighter, same swing, two dice, keep the higher. About 70 percent. A 25 point jump on every swing, for every party member, for a minute, off a first-level slot. Your rogue is the happiest person at the table, because advantage triggers Sneak Attack, and Jeremy Crawford confirmed years ago that it doesn’t matter where the advantage came from, “Faerie fire is perfect for it.” The crit math moves too. One die crits 5 percent of the time, two dice crit about 9.75 percent of the time, which is why paladins who smite on crits and anyone with Elven Accuracy loves standing next to a bard who prepared this. I can already hear the comments, “advantage is easy to get, John, my barbarian has Reckless Attack.” Sure, your barbarian does. Your ranger doesn’t, the cleric’s Spiritual Weapon doesn’t, and the rogue only has it when somebody is already standing next to the target. This hands it to all of them at once.
The catch in that clause is “if the attacker can see it.” Blinded, heavily obscured, standing in a Fog Cloud? No advantage. The glow doesn’t help someone who can’t see at all.
“And the affected creature or object can’t benefit from being invisible.” The second job, and the reason plenty of people keep it on the list at level 15. An invisible creature normally attacks with advantage and gets attacked with disadvantage. Paint it and both go away, and Crawford confirmed in 2015 that attacks against an invisible creature that failed its Faerie Fire save have advantage. The invisible assassin goes from “disadvantage, if you can even guess the square” to “glowing, and everyone attacks with advantage.” One first-level slot.
At Higher Levels
There isn’t one. Faerie Fire has no upcasting text, so a 5th level slot buys the same cube, the same single Dex save, the same advantage. Cast it at first level, always, with one weird exception. The Darkness spell says that if its area overlaps light created by a spell of 2nd level or lower, the light spell is dispelled. Faerie Fire makes light and it’s first level, so if a painted creature steps into a Darkness sphere, your Faerie Fire ends, and Crawford confirmed exactly that in 2018. Cast it out of a 3rd level slot and Darkness can’t touch it, which Mike Mearls said he’d rule the same way. That’s the only time upcasting this spell does anything, and you only care when the enemy warlock is running the Darkness and Devil’s Sight routine.
Limits and Cheeses
The quick version, because the depth lives in the companion uses post.
Concentration is the real price. At level 1 it’s an easy call and at level 9 it’s competing with Hypnotic Pattern and Spirit Guardians for the same slot in your brain. The spell itself never gets worse. Your other options get better. Plenty of players keep it anyway for the three fights a day where they don’t want to burn a 3rd level slot.
One save, and that cuts both ways. If the boss makes it, you spent your action and your slot on some glowing furniture. If the boss fails it, there’s no repeat save and no escape action, only knocking you off concentration or spending a 3rd level Dispel Magic on a 1st level spell. Entangle and Web let the target keep trying. This one doesn’t.
Friendly fire, as covered. Evokers with Sculpt Spells and sorcerers with Careful Spell can carve their friends out, and the rest of us go before the barbarian in initiative. It also needs a party that makes attack rolls. Three casters throwing save spells get nothing from it. A rogue, a sharpshooter ranger, and a Great Weapon Master fighter get an absurd amount. And if your table uses the optional flanking rule, where two allies on opposite sides get advantage for free, Faerie Fire loses most of its value, which is one of the forty reasons people tell you to turn flanking off.
The 2014 version versus the 2024 version
This is the question I get in the comments every time, so let’s settle it. Did Faerie Fire change in the 2024 Player’s Handbook?
Barely. The wording got tidied and the rules held. It’s on page 271 of the 2024 book, still 1st level evocation, still one action, still 60 feet, still verbal only, still concentration up to a minute, still a 20 foot cube, still a Dexterity save, still no upcasting. The 2024 wording reads: “Objects in a 20-foot Cube within range are outlined in blue, green, or violet light (your choice). Each creature in the Cube is also outlined if it fails a Dexterity saving throw. For the duration, objects and affected creatures shed Dim Light in a 10-foot radius and can’t benefit from the Invisible condition.” Then: “Attack rolls against an affected creature or object have Advantage if the attacker can see it.”
Three things moved. “Any creature in the area when the spell is cast” became “each creature in the Cube,” same meaning, cleaner sentence. The invisibility clause migrated into the first paragraph and now says “can’t benefit from the Invisible condition,” because 2024 made Invisible a defined condition with three parts, advantage on initiative, concealment from effects that need to see you, and the attack roll swing, and Faerie Fire strips all of it. And the 2024 Invisible condition itself now says that if a creature can somehow see you, you lose the attack benefit against it, so the spell and the condition finally agree without a trip to Sage Advice.
The bigger 2024 change is who has it. The 2024 Druid chapter recommends Faerie Fire as one of your four starting spells. Light Domain clerics get it at 3rd level now alongside See Invisibility, Archfey warlocks get it at 3rd level with Misty Step and Sleep, and the 2024 drow lineage learns it at character level 3, always prepared, once per long rest for free and again with slots. Then the 2025 Eberron: Forge of the Artificer book gave the new Cartographer subclass free castings of it plus a feature that adds Intelligence to damage against painted targets and makes its concentration unbreakable by damage. That’s the first time Wizards built a whole subclass around this spell, and the Reddit reaction, which you’ll hear in the uses post, was mixed.
Advantage also got cheaper in 2024. Weapon masteries like Vex hand it out on the next swing, so a lot of parties already have advantage on their big attacks before anyone casts anything. Faerie Fire is still the cheapest way to give everyone advantage against several enemies at once, and still the best first-level answer to invisibility, but the gap shrank.
History
Now the part I love, because this spell is older than most of the people casting it, and it has been a druid spell the entire time.
Faerie Fire first shows up in 1976, in Supplement III, Eldritch Wizardry, the original D&D booklet that introduced the druid as a player class. The spell limned an object in a pale glow, caused no damage, and showed only its outline.
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, the 1978 Player’s Handbook, made it a proper 1st level druid spell. Alteration, verbal only, a range of 8 inches on the table, which is 80 feet, lasting 4 rounds per caster level. You outlined about 12 linear feet per level, which the book explained is one 6 foot man or two 3 foot kobolds. Outlined creatures, invisible ones included, were visible at 80 feet in the dark, and anyone attacking them got plus 2 to hit. Blue, green, or violet, no save.
2nd edition, 1989, page 254, kept it as a 1st level priest spell, still Alteration, filed under the Weather sphere of all things, with a range of 80 yards and a duration of 4 rounds per level across 10 square feet per level. The material component was a small piece of foxfire, the glowing fungus that faerie fire is named after in folklore. The bonus became plus 2 in darkness and plus 1 in twilight or better, it could reveal invisible creatures but not anything noncorporeal, ethereal, or gaseous, and there was still no save.
3rd edition and 3.5 renamed the school. Faerie Fire became Evocation with the Light descriptor, druid 1, long range, which was 400 feet plus 40 per level, in a 5 foot radius burst, for 1 minute per level. Still no save, though spell resistance applied. Outlined creatures shed light like candles and got no concealment from darkness, Blur, Displacement, or Invisibility, with one carve-out for 2nd level or higher magical darkness, which still worked. That carve-out is the ancestor of 5e’s Darkness interaction.
4th edition, in the 2009 Player’s Handbook 2 on page 86, turned it into a druid daily attack power, and it hit hard. Area burst 1 within 10 squares, Wisdom versus Will, and on a hit the target was slowed and granted combat advantage until it saved, then took 3d6 plus Wisdom radiant damage as an aftereffect. Even a miss dealt 1d6 plus Wisdom radiant. That is the only edition where Faerie Fire dealt damage.
Then 5th edition, 2014, built the version we’ve been talking about. The damage went away, the flat plus 2 became advantage, the anti-invisibility line came back in plain English, and for the first time in the spell’s history creatures got a saving throw. It also picked up concentration, shrank to a 20 foot cube at 60 feet, and got handed to bards and drow alongside druids. 2024 left all of that alone. Fifty years, same blue, green, or violet glow, and the only things that ever changed were how much easier it made things to hit, and whether the monster got to roll.
Opinion
I’ll tell you where I land. In the 2014 game Faerie Fire is one of the three or four best first-level spells printed, with the asterisk that it needs a party that makes attack rolls and a DM who lets enemies stand near each other. Give it both and it’s a cheaper Bless that doubles as the best anti-invisibility tool in the game, and it stays relevant through tier 4 for exactly that reason. If your party is three wizards and a warlock, skip it. In 2024 it’s still very good, just no longer the only way to hand advantage around the table, and the 2024 drow and Light cleric get the best deal, because they’re getting it free on top of a real spell list.
The Bless versus Faerie Fire fight is the one I want in the comments. Bless can’t miss and boosts saves. Faerie Fire can whiff entirely but does more per attack when it lands and shuts down invisibility. My answer is whoever has Bless casts Bless, whoever has Faerie Fire casts Faerie Fire, and a party with both is in great shape. But tell me I’m wrong. Do you keep Faerie Fire prepared past level 5? Has the one-save-or-nothing ever cost you a fight? And has anyone out there outlined a mimic? Let me know in the comments below, go read the companion post for the combos, the cheeses, and the cursed ring of infinite Faerie Fire, and until next time, roll high and stay ridiculous.
