A first level ranger spell that turns one arrow into a shotgun blast, and for ten years almost nobody cast it twice. Come fight me about it.
Today we’re looking at a 1st level conjuration spell called Hail of Thorns. This one is Ranger only, in both the 2014 book and the 2024 one. No paladin oath list, no Magic Initiate side door, no setting background that sneaks it onto a cleric. If you want it, you take a level of Ranger. You shoot something, thorns erupt out of your arrow, and every creature standing next to your target rolls a Dexterity save or eats piercing damage.
Sitting at a range of self, a casting time of one bonus action, and, in 2014, a concentration length of one minute, Hail of Thorns is the ranger’s answer to the paladin’s smite, except it splashes. Paladins get a whole shelf of bonus action spells that ride a weapon hit and dump the damage into one skull. This one takes that damage, shaves it down, and sprays it across everyone within five feet of the guy you shot.
The community argument about this spell was settled fast and stayed settled for a decade. Cast Hunter’s Mark instead. Then the 2024 Player’s Handbook did the one thing this spell had been begging for since 2014, and the answer changed. We’ll get there. First, 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 249:
“The next time you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack before the spell ends, this spell creates a rain of thorns that sprouts from your ranged weapon or ammunition. In addition to the normal effect of the attack, the target of the attack and each creature within 5 feet of it must make a Dexterity saving throw. A creature takes 1d10 piercing damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.”
Let’s slow down, because four separate clauses in there cause fights.
“The next time you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack before the spell ends.” In 2014 you cast it and then you go hunting for a hit. Bonus action, spell goes live, and it rides on you until an arrow finally connects. It fires exactly once. Sage Advice Compendium, page 18, answers the question people kept asking: “Hail of thorns lasts until you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack or your concentration ends, whichever comes first.” One hit and it’s spent, and the minute is ticking the whole time you’re missing.
“a ranged weapon attack.” The Sage Advice Compendium, page 13, spells out what that phrase means. A ranged weapon attack “means a ranged attack with a weapon.” So in 2014 a thrown javelin sets off the thorns. So does a hurled handaxe, a dagger, a dart, an improvised bar stool if your DM is in a good mood. Hold onto that, because 2024 flips the answer completely.
“In addition to the normal effect of the attack.” Your arrow does its normal job first. Weapon die, Dexterity modifier, Archery fighting style, Hunter’s Mark, Colossus Slayer, all of it lands as usual. Then the spell goes off as a separate effect on top.
“the target of the attack and each creature within 5 feet of it must make a Dexterity saving throw.” That line does two jobs. First, the creature you shot rolls a save too, so your main target can halve the thorns even though your arrow already hit it. Second, “each creature” means each creature. Your barbarian standing toe to toe with the target is a creature. Your wolf companion is a creature. This spell has friendly fire and it does not care that you’re sorry.
Let’s watch it work. Level 5 ranger, 16 Wisdom, spell save DC 14. Three goblins bunched at a doorway. You shoot the middle one for 1d8 plus 4, cast Hail of Thorns off the hit, and all three roll Dexterity saves. Goblin Dex is plus 2, so each one needs a 12 or better. The middle goblin rolls a 6, fails, takes 6 piercing. The two flanking it roll high, save, and take 3 each. That’s 12 damage sprayed off a first level slot on top of an arrow that already dropped the guy in the middle.
“A creature takes 1d10 piercing damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.” Nobody in the blast walks away clean, which puts this ahead of its sibling Ensnaring Strike on consistency. A successful Strength save against Ensnaring Strike wastes your entire slot. A successful Dexterity save against Hail of Thorns still costs the target an average of 2.75.
The thorn damage never crits, and that one trips people up every time. A critical hit lets you roll the attack’s damage dice twice, and the 1d10 is spell damage attached to a saving throw, not to the attack roll. Roll a natural 20 and your arrow doubles while the thorns sit there at 1d10. Same reasoning knocks out Sneak Attack, Colossus Slayer, and the Piercer feat, which specifically lets you reroll “one of the attack’s damage dice.” None of those touch the spell half.
At Higher Levels. The 2014 text reads, “If you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d10 for each slot level above 1st (to a maximum of 6d10).” Cute cap. Rangers top out at 5th level spell slots in both editions, so 5d10 is your actual ceiling and the 6d10 line is decoration unless you’re reading it off a scroll or you’re a multiclass build with high slots. A 3rd level slot is 3d10, an average of 16.5 on a failure and 8 on a save, to every creature in the huddle. That’s a real number when three things are stacked up.
Limits and Cheeses
The short version, because the companion uses post has the whole pile.
Five feet is not very much space. On a grid it’s the eight squares touching your target, and monsters do not politely queue up for you. Against one enemy standing alone this is a first level slot for one save-for-half d10, which is a bad trade almost every time.
Friendly fire is a running joke at some tables. Your melee people are the ones standing within five feet of things, which is the exact space this spell fills.
Cover works against it. Half cover gives a target plus 2 to Dexterity saving throws, and you’re shooting at range, so cover comes up.
Piercing gets resisted by a decent chunk of the monster manual. The good news is the thorns come from a spell, so a monster with resistance to “nonmagical attacks” takes them full in the face even when your arrows bounce.
And in 2014, concentration is the leash. Casting this meant dropping Hunter’s Mark, spending your slot, hoping to connect, and then spending another slot next turn to put the mark back up. That single word is why this spell sat unused for ten years, and it’s what 2024 fixed.
The 2014 version versus the 2024 version
This one changed, and it got the single biggest quality of life fix any ranger spell received. Page 283 in the 2024 Player’s Handbook.
Start with the timing. The casting time is now a “Bonus Action, which you take immediately after hitting a creature with a Ranged weapon.” You swing, you watch the hit land, and only then do you decide to spend the slot. No more casting it, whiffing for three rounds, and watching your minute drain away. The text now opens “As you hit the creature, this spell creates a rain of thorns.”
Concentration is gone. The 2024 duration is Instantaneous, and if you played a 2014 ranger, that one word changes what the spell is for. You can hold Hunter’s Mark all fight and still fire Hail of Thorns off the same bow on any turn you like. The 2024 Ranger even gets Hunter’s Mark free twice per long rest from Favored Enemy at level 1, and the new one-slot-per-turn rule on page 236 says “On a turn, you can expend only one spell slot to cast a spell,” which a free casting of Hunter’s Mark does not trip. The spell stopped competing with the ranger’s signature button.
The upcast cap disappeared too. The 2024 scaling reads “The damage increases by 1d10 for each spell slot level above 1,” with no maximum printed. Your ranger slots still stop at 5th, so in practice it’s the same 5d10 ceiling, but a scroll or a multiclass caster can now push it to 9d10.
The sneaky change is the trigger. In 2014 it’s a ranged weapon attack, which the Sage Advice ruling above tells us is any ranged attack with a weapon. In 2024 the trigger is hitting “with a Ranged weapon,” and Ranged weapon is a defined category on the 2024 weapon table. Bows, crossbows, slings, blowguns, darts, and firearms live there. A dagger, a javelin, a handaxe, and a spear are all Melee weapons with the Thrown property, so throwing one is a ranged attack made with a melee weapon. By the text, those no longer set off the thorns. Darts still do, since a dart is a Simple Ranged weapon. This comes up constantly with Shadow Blade, which conjures a melee weapon that happens to have Thrown, and the answer rules as written is no.
The area wording survived a rewrite that could have changed it. 2024 introduced Emanation as a formal area shape, and an Emanation excludes the creature at its origin. Hail of Thorns still says “each creature within 5 feet of it,” and the target of the attack is still explicitly included in the save. So WotC looked at that sentence, had a new tool available, and left it alone on purpose.
Everything else held. First level conjuration, verbal only, range of self, 1d10 piercing, Dexterity save for half, still Ranger only.
Two footnotes for the 2024 crowd. Its sibling Ensnaring Strike kept concentration, because that spell has a minute of restrained to hold up and this one is a single burst. And Hail of Thorns did not make the free 2024 Basic Rules or SRD 5.2, the way Ensnaring Strike, Searing Smite, and Divine Smite did, and it never made SRD 5.1 either, which is why free tools have been skipping it for a decade. The Ranger chapter on page 119 still recommends Cure Wounds and Ensnaring Strike as your two level 1 picks. This spell got a great rewrite and no marketing.
History
Short section, because Hail of Thorns is a fifth edition original. There is no OD&D version, no AD&D 1st or 2nd edition version, nothing in the 3.5 SRD, and no 4th edition power by this name. Its whole history is two printings, the 2014 Player’s Handbook and the 2024 Player’s Handbook.
It arrived in 2014 as part of a small experimental family. That book gave paladins a shelf of bonus action smite spells that ride a weapon hit, and gave rangers three of their own: Hail of Thorns at 1st, Ensnaring Strike at 1st, and Lightning Arrow at 3rd, with Hunter’s Mark sitting on the same bonus action and the same concentration. A ranger learns two spells at level 2 and gets one concentration slot, so on paper the family was four options and in practice it was one. It was never reprinted in Xanathar’s or Tasha’s, never errata’d in any way that mattered, and sat exactly as printed for ten years before the 2024 rewrite.
Plants as artillery are much older than this spell. Wall of Thorns and Spike Growth go back decades in druid country. The specific idea of an arrow that shatters into shrapnel on impact is a 5e invention, and if someone tells you their 2nd edition ranger cast it, they’re remembering Spike Growth.
Opinion
I think the 2014 version was a trap and the 2024 version is a genuinely good little spell that nobody has updated their opinion about yet.
The trade comes down to head count. Against a single enemy, a first level slot buys you about four points of expected damage. That is terrible. Against two adjacent enemies it’s about eight, which is fine. Against three it’s about twelve for a first level slot with no attack roll to miss with, and that is a good spell. Hail of Thorns has always been priced for the three-target case and then handed to a class that spends most fights shooting one thing in the face.
What 2024 changed is the cost of finding out. You no longer gamble the slot before you know you hit, and you no longer trade away Hunter’s Mark to try. It became the thing you do with the bonus action you weren’t using anyway, on the turn where two goblins happen to be standing shoulder to shoulder. That’s a real spell. It’s also still small, still hits your own front line, and still has a five foot radius that asks your party to cooperate with the geometry.
So tell me where you land. Did your ranger ever cast this in 2014, or did Hunter’s Mark own that concentration slot forever? Has anyone out there hit only their own barbarian with it, because I know some of you have. And for the 2024 crowd, is dropping concentration enough to get this onto your prepared list, or is Ensnaring Strike still the better first level pick? Let me know in the comments below, go check out the companion post for the whole pile of thorn tricks, and until next time, roll high and stay ridiculous.
