In Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards are known for two things: wielding the most powerful spells in the game and frequently dying. Because of this, playing a wizard means being ready for every situation your DM throws at you, and the right cantrips are a crucial aspect of your preparedness. But not all cantrips are created equal.

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Cantrips are the lowest-level spells you can cast, requiring no components and consuming no spell slots on use. You can only have up to five cantrips prepared at a time, but wizards are the only class that can swap one of their cantrips for another from their available list during a long rest. In other words, you'll always have the right tools for the job if you plan accordingly.

Updated by Chris Stomberg on January 24th, 2024: As the undisputed masters of the arcane, wizards have access to more spell choice options than most other spellcasters. While this is a nice benefit to enjoy, it can also make character creation a bit of a hassle, as you have so many options to choose from. The first of these many choices fledgling wizards will face is their selection of cantrips. Thankfully, we're here to help.

17 Prestidigitation

Utility

Cover art of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything cover art by Magali Villeneuve

With Prestidigitation, you gain access to a grab-bag of minor magical, non-harmful effects only limited by your imagination. These cover everything from instantly cleaning your clothes to lighting your campfire to chilling your mug of ale.

When it comes to what makes an excellent wizard cantrip, it's based on how much you can do with it. Prestidigitation offers a delightful array of seemingly cosmetic yet craftily strategic effects. For example, cleaning your party of henchmen's blood before meeting with their boss.

16 Control Flames

Utility

Dungeons & Dragons Artwork, Showing a group of adventurers camping around fire
Art via Wizards of the Coast

Control Flames spell description allows you to manipulate fire in non-harmful ways, such as creating shapes and images within a flame, brightening and dimming torchlight, and extinguishing fire in five-foot cube-sized increments.

As a wizard, you'll have access to fire spells, which have the passive effect of setting flammable objects alight. And with Control Flames, you can also spread fire, provided there's fuel nearby. Depending on your environment, this cantrip can be devastating.

15 Booming Blade

Combat

bladesinger elves dungeons & dragons
Bladesingers from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything by Wizards of the Coast

Booming Blade is a powerful offensive cantrip. It enhances your typical melee attack with an afterburn-like effect that inflicts thunder damage on your target if they move after you strike them. At a higher level, your melee attack deals additional thunder damage, and the thunder damage dealt to a moving target increases.

The issue with Booming Blade is it requires a melee weapon, which, as a wizard, you may not have. Wizards also tend to have lower armor classes, so this cantrip may not be great for your character.

14 Green Flame Blade

Combat

blood hunter dnd
Blood Hunter by Joma Cueto

Like Booming Blade, this cantrip requires you to make a melee attack on a target for it to function but then allows you to deal extra fire damage to another creature within five feet of your initial target. As you level up, it adds additional fire damage to your melee attack and increases the fire damage dealt to nearby creatures.

Again, you need a melee weapon for this cantrip to function, which you may not have, but multi-target damage is in a class of its own for a no-cost spell.

13 Mending

Utility

Oswald Fiddlebender the gnome artificer hanging from a rope on a skyship
Oswald Fiddlebender by Steven Belledin

Mending is the magical equivalent of duct tape. Each time this cantrip is cast, you can repair one foot of damage to virtually any object or type of material, including living constructs, in a single minute.

This spell leaves no trace of former damage, so there's no need to worry about repeated repairs on a single object. As long as you have the time to spare, your ranger will never need to replace arrows, and doors your barbarian breaks down can be left good-as-new.

12 Gust

Combat

Djinn air elemental genie casting magic
Djinni Windseer by Livia Prima 

This cantrip creates a force of wind capable of pushing a creature up to 5 feet away from you if they fail a Strength Saving throw. On top of that, it can move objects weighing less than five pounds up to 10 feet away from you. Finally, it can cause harmless sensory effects influenced by wind, such as moving a pile of leaves or causing a flock of birds to take flight.T

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Forced movement can place enemies into precarious situations, including knocking them into a pit of lava or off a bridge. It's also often obvious when a creature doesn't have a good strength save, so it's easy to know when you have a good opportunity to cast this cantrip. All of that being said, this cantrip is pretty useless against a Dungeon Master (DM) who doesn't employ environmental hazards.

11 Light

Utility

elf casting time magic
Intelligence Check by Tom Babbey

Light produces more illumination in a single area than the orbs from the Dancing Lights cantrip. It also lasts for an hour, does not require concentration, and can be cast on an object and passed to other party members.

Even with the darkvision trait, perception checks are still at a disadvantage in darkness, so having a light source readily available is never a bad idea. Besides, your non-darkvision party members will thank you for freeing up their hands from holding a torch.

10 Acid Splash

Combat

yuan-ti with poison knife sneaks through jungle past mural
Yuan-ti Fang-Blade by Simon Dominic 

Like Green-Flame Blade, this is one of the few cantrips that can hit multiple targets. Acid splash forces a target within 60 feet to make a Dexterity Saving Throw. On a failure, they take 1d6 acid damage. This cantrip also affects an additional creature if they are within five feet of your target.

Hitting two enemies for the price of one cantrip is a good deal, even if the damage is slightly reduced. A lot of enemies are good at Dexterity saves, but just as many struggle against them. Like Strength saves, it's usually pretty obvious which is which.

In the Unearthed Arcana 2023, Acid Splash was changed to be a 5-foot-radius sphere, potentially allowing for more than two targets per casting. While this is not an officially established rule, it's a common optional home rule.

9 Fire Bolt

Combat

Dungeons and Dragons: Battle between Elves and Lolth
Battle between Elves and Lolth from Mordenkainen's Tome of Monsters

Your wizard will likely have a low armor class, health pool, or both, so engaging in close-quarters combat is never ideal. The further away you can be, the better, and with Fire Bolt's hefty 120-foot range, your next target most likely won't see this spell coming.

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The cantrip deals 1d10 fire damage and, as mentioned above, can be used to ignite flammable objects, but that's all there is to it. It's simple but popular due to its effectiveness, especially when paired with a feat like Spell Sniper, which doubles the range of a chosen attack-based cantrip.

8 Minor Illusion

Utility

magic object bird raven animated
Silver Raven by Joe Slucher 

Minor Illusion allows you to create sounds or imagery from 30 feet away. Most illusion spells rely heavily on the creativity and quick thinking of the caster, which is why they're excellent tools for an intelligent class like the wizard.

What's most impressive about this cantrip is the investigation check made by a creature to reveal the illusion's magical nature, which has to beat your spellcasting DC save so the spell stays viable well into higher-tier play.

7 Mold Earth

Utility

Wild Shape By Sam Guay - Adventure in the Forgotten Realms
Wild Shape By Sam Guay

Similar to Control Flames, Mold Earth allows you to manipulate small areas of dirt or stone. Excavating cave-ins, imprinting imagery, and clearing a rocky patch of road make this cantrip a handy traveler tool, but tactical minds will look beyond its obvious uses.

As long as the ground is either dirt or stone, you can use Mold Earth to dig trenches to give yourself the benefits of half or three-quarters cover and dig potholes to create difficult terrain for an oncoming charge. Why hope for favorable conditions when Mold Earth lets you plan for it?

6 Frostbite

Combat

An owl creature stands atop a frozen man half sunken in the snow
Icewind Dale Rime of the Frostmaiden by Taylor Jacobson

Frostbite assails a target within 60 feet with a biting cold. On a failed constitution saving throw, the target takes 1d6 cold damage and has disadvantage on its next weapon attack. While this might seem situational at first glance, even natural weapons like bite and claw attacks are considered weapon attacks.

In other words, this cantrip trades a higher damage die for an increased chance that your opposition misses their next attack. That's a very worthwhile trade. Unfortunately, almost all creatures are good at constitution saving throws, making this cantrip quite worse. Even so, it can be worth risking the chance against an enemy that hits especially hard.

5 Mage Hand

Utility

Sorcerer casts magehand during an auction to try and steal an item on display from behind the curtain
Magehand Thief by Craig J. Spearing

Having a third hand is already useful, but having a third hand that floats up to 30 feet away from you holds endless possibilities. Unfortunately, this hand prevents you from attacking with it, but there are other spells in a wizard's arsenal for that.

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Mage Hand does have a weight limit of 10 pounds, but carrying things is only one of many uses this spell offers. For instance, a set of Thieves' Tools is only one pound, which means you can technically pick locks (or pockets) from afar without revealing your location.

4 Mind Sliver

Combat

Power of Persuasion by Brian Valeza
Power of Persuasion by Brian Valeza

This cantrip forces the target to make intelligence save or take 1d6 psychic damage, but the target will also subtract 1d4 from their next saving throw. This spell also offers a range of 60 feet, keeping you at a safe distance from most melee attacks.

This spells debuff will eventually feel negligible. However, if you have a cleric or bard in your party with a similar enchantment, you can strategize around disabling your enemy's saves.

3 Chill Touch

Combat

warlock casting hellish rebuke mtg d&d Heonhwa Choe
Hellish Rebuke by Heonhwa Choe

Like Fire Bolt, Chill Touch has a 120-foot range but deals 1d8 necrotic damage instead. However, this cantrip also prevents the target from healing for a single turn, and if the target is undead, they have disadvantage on their attacks against you for a turn.

Fire damage is more commonly resisted amongst monsters than the necrotic, so Chill Touch is an all-around better bet when you're unsure what you're up against. Additionally, the spell creates a skeletal hand in the space of the creature you're attacking. In contrast, Fire Bolt hurls a mote of fire from your location to your target, so this Chill Touch continues to mask your exact location even after casting.

2 Shocking Grasp

Combat

Two armorer artificers fighting against a horde of gnolls.
Armorer Artificers from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything by Brian Valeza

What Shocking Grasp lacks in range, it makes up for in its utility, especially at lower levels. On top of dealing 1d8 lightning damage, the target cannot take reactions until your next turn, allowing you to move away without provoking an opportunity attack.

This is the perfect bug-out spell for when a melee attacker harasses your wizard, and you need to make a run for it. You also get advantage on an attack roll against a target wearing metal armor.

1 Message

Utility

Dungeons & Dragons: In You Find a Cursed Idol by Sidharth Chaturvedi, adventurers argue in front of cursed statue
You Find a Cursed Idol by Sidharth Chaturvedi 

Message permits you to speak into a target's mind, friendly or not, and they can reply to you in a whisper only you can hear. There are limitations to the distance this can travel (up to 120 feet), and certain materials, such as stone walls and anti-magic barriers, will block your telepathy.

Communication with other party members is vital to strategy and survival for a wizard. And the privacy of information is hard to come by in a band of adventures, which this cantrip does a great job of maintaining.

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