Gift of Alacrity 5E Guide | Wildemount Dunmancy Cantrip

Do you hear that? That’s the sound of a brand new book being released! The Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount has officially been released into the 5^th edition Dungeon and Dragon’s Universe, giving us players and dungeon masters a lot of new content to sift through. That includes Dunamancy spells.  These spells are developed and harnessed through the use of Dunamis and protected by the Kryn Dynasty in Wildemount. These spells are only available to the specific Wizard subclasses released in the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount like Chronurgy Wizard and the Graviturgy Wizard, but it is possible for another character to learn these spells during the campaign through another method that is determined by the Dungeon Master. And trust me, these spells are powerful! Learn more with our Gift of Alacrity 5E Guide!

Gift of Alacrity 5E Guide

So how about we start breaking them down? I bet you would like to see this gift:

For the duration of the spell, a willing character that you touch will get to roll an additional 1d8 when making their Initiative Roll.

Initiative determines the order (called the Initiative order) that everyone goes in when resolving combat. To roll for Initiative, all character’s need to follow this formula:

When rolling for the non-playable characters, the Dungeon Master will roll for all characters that are alike at once, and all of those characters will take their action at the same time. Once everyone has their Initiative number, the Dungeon Master puts everyone on a numerical list with the character that has the highest Initiative putting put on the top. If there is a tie between just the players, they can determine who goes in what order. If there is a tie between the just non-playable characters or the non-playable characters and the players, the Dungeon Master can determine the order that all tied characters go in.

Gift of Alacrity changes the Initiative Roll formula to this:

Pros

With the Gift of Alacrity, you can almost always guarantee that your party will go first in combat. I say almost always because there will be chances that one or two of the enemies will get a higher roll, but that is the law of percentages. Getting an additional 1d8 added to your Initiative Roll will give your team a significant advantage when it comes to beating the enemies that you ran into. Despite how powerful this ability is, that is the only Pro I have to present to you.

Cons

The biggest Con to Gift of Alacrity is the fact that it is a level one spell. Unlike Cantrips, you can only cast a certain number of leveled spells until you have to take a long rest to replenish that count. A long rest is considered a long time span where the character is performing no extraneous activities. So the time that you are eating, reading, talking, or standing watch can be considered part of a long rest as long as you do no strenuous activity in an eight-hour time span. Eight hours is also Gift of Alacrity’s Duration time, so you cannot take a long rest and then cast another Gift of Alacrity on another character. You are unfortunately limited to the amount of level one spell slots that your character has access to.

For example, a level one Wizard can only cast two first level spells. If you are to cast Gift of Alacrity twice, you will use up both of your level one spell slots for what could be the day. That means you will be relying on your Cantrips to deal most of your damage. If your team is bigger than two characters, you will have to choose who will get the boost to their Initiative… Although, I feel that this decision should be easy (obviously, you cast Gift of Alacrity on your melee characters).

Lost Slot Opportunities

If you are using all of your level one slots to cast Gift of Alacrity every day, you will not have the opportunity to cast any of the other awesome spells that are available at this level. Luckily, most of the damage-dealing spells can be used to greater benefit at the higher-level spell slots, but how about those

Gift of Alacrity also has a casting time of one minute. Typically, one minute of game time takes place in the span of eight rounds. If you getting ready to jump into combat, it is already too late to cast Gift of Alacrity because everyone has already rolled for Initiative. Unlike previous editions of the game, once Initiative is set, it is set for the rest of the combat. Gift of Alacrity cannot change that fact.

When Should You Use Gift of Alacrity

The best time to cast Gift of Alacrity is right before your team starts the game. This is because you will never know what your team will encounter. Casting it early will prevent you from having to fumble around when time becomes an important commodity. That time usually happens when you are about to enter combat.

Personally, I would only cast it once a game and use it on my tankiest character. A character is considered a tank when they have the ability to take a lot of damage. Most often, your tank will either be a Warrior or a Barbarian. Getting your heaviest hitter higher up on the Initiative order will give your team a greater chance of survival.

When Better Options Are Available

The only good time to cast Gift of Alacrity is right before you start your day. Next is several moments before you get into combat. While this is a powerful ability, the window of opportunity to cast this spell is minimum. Any other time, you will want to cast something else.

That concludes our Gift of Alacrity 5E Guide. We liked this one enough to give it top billing on our Wildemount Spells Rankings. Give us a shout if we missed anything!