Baldur’s Gate 3 has over 200 different spells and cantrips, so it’s obviously pretty easy to get lost on your journey of deciding which ones are most useful.
Utility spells can be especially confusing for new players, as their benefit is not always immediately obvious to those who aren’t familiar with the Dungeons & Dragons rules.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, Utility Spells are just as necessary as Combat Spells are to make the most of your magic-wielding characters, and can sometimes even be more beneficial to winning tricky fights than their damage-dealing counterparts. This guide will walk you through my personal picks for the 15 best Utility Spells in Baldur’s Gate 3 and give a brief description on how to use them to their maximum potential.
The best Utility Spells in Baldur’s Gate 3
It’s best to avoid thinking of Utility Spells as “noncombat” Spells. They may not always deal damage directly, but they can easily work as catalysts for damage dealing, escaping tools, and even for unlocking unique alternative options for combat, quests, and dialogue.
This list is in no particular order—there are so many different scenarios and niches you simply cannot say as an umbrella statement which Utility Spell is best. Rather, the Spells on this list have plenty of uses. While some may be better than others at specific times, they all are Utility Spells that be glad you selected and will cast often.
1) Mage Hand
“Create a spectral hand that can manipulate and interact with objects.” Do you hate setting off traps that you failed a perception check for? Same here. Do you hate failing disarm checks on traps you did notice even more than that? You’re speaking my language. That’s why I use Mage Hand to do all my dirty work on traps, meaning I never have to risk an untimely exploding Rogue.
2) Haste
“Target yourself or an ally to to become Hastened: Gaining an additional Action and becoming faster and harder to hit.” The Extra Attack class feature grants an additional attack whenever the Attack Action is taken. Taking multiple Attack Actions means taking multiple Extra Attacks. I killed the Grymforge Guardian with just Karlach and Haste, which got me an achievement for not using the forge’s hammer.
3) Slow
“Alter time to Slow up to Six enemies. They won’t get far, they can’t do much, and they’re easier to hit.” Like Haste, but in a parallel universe where everything is evil. Slow prevents Reactions, Halves movement speed, lowers Action economy, reduces AC by two, and prevents extra attacks. That would be overpowered if you could only use it on one target. Six targets is downright unfair.
4) Sleep
“Put creatures into a magical slumber. Select targets up to a combined 24 hit points.” This is a level one spell that scales when upcast, adding 12 additional hit points per spell level. In all honesty, it doesn’t hold up well at higher levels, but it is an absolute life saver from levels one to five. Plus, it makes it so that rounds with 10-plus characters don’t take literal ages.
5) Minor Illusion
“Create an illusion that compels nearby creatures to investigate.” This one isn’t as immediately apparent in its strength but can be used creatively and in way more scenarios than you would imagine. Low intelligence (most) enemies will have a hard time discerning that the illusion is fake, meaning they’ll focus in on for much longer. This can be used to lure enemies to or from certain areas with ease. Whether that means luring them towards a nest of combustibles or away from their purchasable goods is up to the player.
6) Enlarge/Reduce
“Make a creature larger or smaller to affect their weapon damage by plus or minus 1d4 and give Advantage or Disadvantage on Strength Checks and Saving Throws.” Who doesn’t love a versatility spell? This can be used for offense or defense alike, and has a ton of room for creativity. Aside from the more obvious uses, I once enlarged an already large foe so that it couldn’t fit through a doorway to attack me. Enlarging would usually be perceived as the offensive tool in this spell, but keep an open mind and you’ll find all sorts of outside-the-box uses here.
7) Disguise Self
“Magically change all aspects of your appearance.” Many interactions/dialogue options are barred behind character appearance, either being a certain race or sometimes not being a certain race. Aside from that, if you’ve ever tried to use Speak With the Dead on a victim of yours, you know they aren’t too keen to offer up information. Disguise Self prevents NPCs from recognizing you as their killer, and thus they’ll treat you as a stranger instead of their murderer.
8) Blink
“At the end of your turn, roll a D20. On 11 or higher, you vanish into the Ethereal Plane. While there, you can’t be harmed or seen in this world.” If you really think about it, this spell might as well say, “for 10 turns, there is only a 50 percent chance that you can be damaged.” Believe it or not, that’s not the best part. This spell is not a concentration, meaning it can be used in tandem with Haste, Slow, Wall of fire, etc.
9) Detect Thoughts
“Focus your mind to read the thoughts of certain creatures while talking to them.” Baldur’s Gate 3 developers took a page from the book of any good Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master—they mess with your head. A lot. Some games make it exceedingly obvious when NPCs are telling the truth and when they’re lying—Baldur’s Gate 3 does not. It also puts you in situations where you have to figure out if characters are lying or not countless different times. I’m not going to list examples to avoid spoilers, but there are more than a handful of situations I would have done differently had I been using this spell earlier.
10) Speak With Animals
“Gain the ability to comprehend and verbally communicate with beasts.” In my opinion, this spell doesn’t have quite as much practical use as Speak With the Dead does. It is far from useless and can unlock options to gain new allies, unite against common enemies, learn about potential threats ahead, or avoid fights/ambushes altogether. The selling point for this spell is the special interactions, though. Talking to any animal in Baldur’s Gate 3 is an absolute joy, and has made me laugh harder than any other game in as long as I can remember. Do it. Seriously, do it.
11) Speak With the Dead
“Allow a corpse that still has a mouth and is not an undead to answer five questions to the caster.” You’ve got to love that disclaimer in the spell’s description. Anyway, dead men tell MANY tales in Baldur’s Gate 3. There are mystery/detective quests I’ve skipped through entirely by using this spell, and Larian Studios clearly put work into avoiding any possible scenario where a player casts this spell and realizes a specific corpse has nothing interesting/useful to say. It’s genuinely impressive—the dead character’s have lives of their own.
12) Bless
“Bless up to 3 creatures. They gain a plus 1d4 bonus to Attack Rolls and Saving Throws.” This doesn’t sound like much to new players at first glance but keep in mind that 1d4 is 20 percent of 1d20, so basically this spell makes three players 20 percent better at everything in combat. That’s huge. It can also be upcast to affect more target’s, so with just a second level slot your entire party can benefit.
13) Guidance
“The target gains a plus 1d4 bonus to Ability Checks.” This is absolutely the best Cantrip in Baldur’s Gate 3 if you ask me. You can cast it directly from the dice roller screen at will and there is literally no reason to ever not do so. Ability Checks are a massive part of Baldur’s Gate 3, and you want to take every buff to them that you can, especially when it’s completely free of cost.
14) Misty Step
“Surrounded by silver mist, you teleport to an unoccupied space you can see.” This might be my personal favorite spell in Baldur’s Gate 3. There simply is not a class or build that this isn’t top-tier for. Escaping, attacking, preventing Opportunity Attacks, boxing in enemies, reaching high-ground, avoiding Surface Effects—you name it. To top it all off, this spell is a Bonus Action, so you can still attack in the same turn.
15) Create/Destroy Water
“Call forth rain. It extinguishes exposed flames and forms a Water Surface.” The sleeper cell. The secret strongest spell in Baldur’s Gate 3. The creator. The destroyer. I’m being dramatic, but this spell is genuinely incredible. Aside from extinguishing flames, this spell creates a Surface with the Wet Condition. This Condition grants resistance to fire damage and vulnerability to shock and cold damage.
Further, shock damage will affect all creatures within the Surface, and cold spells will turn the surface into Ice, a Difficult Terrain that has the chance of knocking creatures prone.
