Aura of Vitality 5E Guide

With the Aura of Vitality 5E spell, healing energy radiates from your character and healing a character you choose within 30 foot. A spell that can have a high impact, especially in tough battles, Aura of Vitality is a unique one! Click below to learn more:

What does Aura of Vitality do in D&D?

Aura of Vitality is a 3rd level evocation spell in D&D. Here are some pieces of information you’ll want to know:

Related -> How to Get Into D&D

How does Aura of Vitality work?

The 5E Aura of Vitality spell is fairly straight forward:

1. With 1 Action, cast Aura of Vitality on your self (until the spell ends, the aura moves with you)
2. As a bonus action, choose 1 creature in the aura (including yourself); that creature gains 2d6 hit points.

Is Aura of Vitality Good?

When it comes to keeping a party up, Aura of Vitality is a great option. Let’s just do the math real quick. The spell lasts for 1 minute. With a round equaling 6 seconds, that means you can heal 20d6 with the spell (2d6 x 10)! That’s a LOT of healing.

Understanding the law of averages, and assuming your character is using its bonus action to heal every round, that’s an average of 70 HP!

What to keep in mind before casting Aura of Vitality

Before choosing Aura of Vitality, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Concentration: Aura of Vitality is a concentration spell. Before choosing this spell, you’ll have to be confident your character can maintain concentration. You also need to be confident that Aura of Vitality is the best concentration spell to cast over the other concentration spells available to your character.
2. Verbal component: While there are no somatic or material components, your character must be able to speak in order to cast the spell. If your character is unable to do so, having this spell available won’t help.
3. Spell level: 3rd level is somewhat high compared to other healing spells available.
4. Need: It’s a bit risky using this in combat. Definitely don’t use it before anyone has taken damage, otherwise you could simply waste a 3rd level spell slot.

Aura of Vitality Use Cases

The obvious use case here is to regain hit points for your self or the rest of your party. Having said that, there are two specific use cases when it comes to healing:

1. Non-combat healing: At the end of the day, regaining an average of 70 hit points with a single 3rd level spell is very impressive. I would suggest casting this spell once or twice (depending on your caster’s level) to top everyone off right before a battle.
2. Combat healing: Healing during combat is a bit of a tough subject for some. There is a group of people who are strongly against it (arguing it’s better to take enemies out than heal), and there is a group for it. At the end of the day, you could cast Aura of Vitality if you’re afraid your group might go down; doing so would keep your party members up (mitigating potential team wipes or even permanent deaths).
3. Healing Undead and Constructs

Who can cast Aura of Vitality?

With this being a healing spell, there are only a handful of individuals who can cast Aura of Vitality:

• Paladins
• Battle Smith Artificer subclass
• Crown Paladin subclass
• Twilight Cleric subclass
• Halflings (Mark of Healing)
• Cleric (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything)
• Druid (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything)
• Divine Soul Sorcerer (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything)

Aura of Vitality vs Other Options

You’re probably wondering how Aura of Vitality stacks up against other healing spells. At first glance, I thought this would be great as an in-combat option. The more I think about it, the more I realize how great it performs vs many of the other healing spells available in DnD.

Aura of Vitality vs Healing Spirit

Healing Spirit is a good option for many looking to regain hit points. The question, however, is which is better between Aura of Vitality and Healing Spirit. Let’s take a quick look:

*With Healing Spirit, there is no action required to heal. You cause a spirit to appear and when a creature you can see moves into the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn (or starts its turn there), you cause the spirit to restore 1d6 hit points.

**The description for Healing Spirit says the spirit is able to heal a number of times equal to 1 + your character’s spellcasting modifier. With the max spellcasting modifier of +5, that means the max HP regain would be 36.

In the end, I personally think Aura of Vitality is the better spell. While it’s more reliant on your character (you decide to heal someone with your bonus action), it provides more healing output.

Aura of Vitality vs Prayer of Healing

Aura of Vitality and Prayer of Healing are both good options for regaining HP, but let’s take a look at the differences between the two:

Prayer of Healing is an interesting one. As for as I can tell, Aura of Vitality doesn’t scale at higher levels, which would mean the amount of HP regained would stay the same. Prayer of Healing, on the other hand, can be up-cast. For each spell slot above 2nd level, the Healing increases by 1d8. Maxing out spell slots at 9th level, that means the maximum healing amount would be 72 per creature which equals 432 total HP!

Deciding which spell is better is tough. I would personally still suggest Aura of Vitality over Prayer of Healing, primarily due to Prayer of Healing’s casting time. 10 minutes is a while. And, while I probably wouldn’t use Aura of Vitality in a battle very often, it’s nice to have that as an option to keep people up (as well as the option to use it outside of battle to do an average of 70 HP regained with just a 3rd level spell slot. You can do more healing to more creatures with Prayer of Healing, but it requires time and higher level spell slots to do so.

Frequently Asked Questions

Aura of Vitality 5E: Conclusion

Aura of Vitality is a great healing option for parties both in and out of combat. Compared to every other healing spell, it stacks up and has its merit. While it is better out of combat, it can also be quite viable in a battle!

Additional D&D Spells to Consider:

• Water Spells 5E: How They Work, Best Water Spells, and More!
• Synaptic Static 5E Guide
• Aura of Vitality 5E Guide
• Enhance Ability 5e Guide
• Kinetic Jaunt 5E Guide

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