Paladins at their core are a martial class and their spells are set up to enable their battle prowess to be as powerful and useful as possible. Compelled Duel is a 1st level enchantment that forces an opponent to focus their aggression on a paladin, keeping them engaged and keeping them as the focus for the paladin’s attacks in return. As divine knights, a spell like Compelled Duel makes the caster the focus of an enemy’s aggression and thereby shields their allies from attacks is right at home in their repertoire.
Compelled Duel – The Basics
- Spell level: 1st level
- Range: 30 feet
- Casting time: 1 bonus action
- Attack/Save: Wisdom saving throw
- Components: verbal
- Duration: 1 minute (while concentrating)
- Effect: control
- Available to: paladins
You force one creature that you can see within 30 feet of you to make a Wisdom saving throw. If they fail, the creature is compelled to focus their attacks on you for up to 1 minute, as long as you maintain concentration. They have disadvantage on attack rolls against any creature other than you. If they try to move into a space that is more than 30 feet away from you they must make a Wisdom saving throw. If they succeed on this saving throw, this spell doesn’t restrict the target’s movement for that turn.
The spell ends if:
- you attack any other creature;
- you cast a spell that targets a hostile creature other than the target;
- a creature friendly to you damages the target or casts a harmful spell on it; or
- you end your turn more than 30 feet away from the target.
What Is Compelled Duel?
Compelled Duel is a 1st level enchantment spell that is exclusive to the paladin class. In compelling an enemy to engage with them and forego attacks against others, it essentially allows a paladin to voluntarily put themself more directly in harm’s way in order to protect their allies. As holy warriors it makes complete thematic sense that Compelled Duel would only be available to paladins.
Though paladins are magic users, their main power comes from their martial ability. The non-healing spells that they have access to are therefore designed to be those that bolster and optimise physical combat.
Of all the martial classes, there aren’t many who can compete with a paladin in terms of potential for damage dealt within one round. This is because of a paladin’s smites – particularly their Divine Smite. However, in order to use smites, you must hit with a melee weapon attack
Using Compelled Duel to ensure that you are the target of an enemy’s attacks means that either:
- they are likely going to be in your melee range for the length of time that they are under the effect of this spell. Or,
- if the target is a creature who is more likely to use ranged attacks, then Compelled Duel’s ability to limit their movement away from you means that at the very least, you will be able to get to them within one round of combat in order to take melee weapon attacks against them.
Compelled Duel is therefore a way to ensure your ability to apply your smites to one particular creature.
Compelled Duel is an enchantment spell. Enchantment is the school of magics that affect people’s behavior. Enchantment spells aim to influence and control. The school of enchantment includes spells such as Charm Person and Hold Monster, the fraternal twins Bane and Bless, and the ridiculous Power Word Kill. Whether it be charming or harming, a well-placed enchantment can be extremely useful to turn the tide both in social scenarios and in combat itself.
When a creature is under the influence of Compelled Duel, their tactical choices in combat are significantly limited, so this spell fits snugly into the mix of other enchantment spells that affect how a creature might approach a battle.
When Is Compelled Duel Useful?
Compelled Duel is obviously a spell to be used in combat – or even to spark it. It aims to control your enemy by essentially limiting their ability to fight tactically, locking them into one-on-one combat – and one-on-one combat against a paladin is enough to make the anyone gulp.
Paladins are normally the tanks of a party and it makes sense for them to be the linchpin of physical attacks. Therefore a tactical enemy may deliberately attack physically weaker party members – especially if they are spellcasters. This in itself could distract a paladin by drawing their focus onto healing their squishier party members.
If the character were to have come across paladins before, they may also be reluctant to enter your melee space, provoking your ire and in turn your smites. Compelled Duel therefore negates their ability to avoid you completely and allows you to be as effective as possible in all your radiant paladiny goodness.
Compelled Duel would be particularly useful if you were fighting a gang of enemies with one individual specifically who was proving a problem to the party. Casting Compelled Duel on the problem opponent would allow the rest of the party to focus on picking off the other enemies while you pile your smites on the big bad.
Similarly, if you are fighting a particularly beefy or adept melee fighter within a group – such as a barbarian, monk, or even another paladin – as the resident beefcake of your own party it may be suitable to compel them to take you on one-on-one while your party deals with the rest of the group. This way you can hack and smite away at their sack of hit points while they do not pose as much of a risk to the rest of your allies.
One of the best times to use Compelled Duel would be if you are fighting an enemy who is actively avoiding entering direct combat with you. Especially if they have a faster speed than you and are therefore out of your reach each round, compelling them to turn their focus onto you can throw their tactics out the window.
Compelled Duel in the right scenario can be really useful, but there are also instances where it wouldn’t be a go-to spell. Arguably one of these less suitable situations would be where your entire party are fighting a single enemy.
It would be sensible to assume that if you are fighting a single enemy, the rest of your party will also all be trying to damage them. As Compelled Duel ends if one of your allies damages the target or casts a harmful spell on it, casting this when you are all focusing on one enemy would be a bit of a waste of a spell slot.
Before casting this spell it is worth checking the caveats for what breaks the spell to make sure it will be worth your slot.
How Does Compelled Duel Affect Movement?
If the target of Compelled Duel wants to move to a space that is more than 30 feet away from you they must first make a Wisdom saving throw. If they fail they cannot move more than 30 feet away from you in that turn. If they succeed they may move outside your 30 foot range for that turn.
Why is this worth specifying? Because most spells and effects within D&D are worded extremely specifically and do not leave a lot of room for confusion. There are however some instances where the wording feels a little unclear and the movement component of Compelled Duel is one of these.
The wording is: “[the target] must make a Wisdom saving throw each time it attempts to move to a space that is more than 30 feet away from you; if it succeeds on this saving throw, this spell doesn’t restrict the target’s movement for that turn.”
However nowhere in the wording does it actually specify that part of the spell’s effect is that the target cannot move more than 30 feet away from you. However in context this is the only ruling that makes sense, as if the spell didn’t restrict the target’s movement, what would be the point in them making a Wisdom save?
Still not sure why this is important? One of the conditions for the spell breaking is if you end your turn more than 30 feet away from the target. Therefore the target having a restriction on movement is important to give you the best hope for maintaining the spell.
Let’s say you have successfully compelled an enemy and they realise that fighting a paladin one-on-one is looking like a fast-track ticket to the nine hells. They may sensibly decide to run away, using their full movement of 30 feet.
Barring any magical effects on you – such as Slow or having 2 levels of Exhaustion – and assuming you’re a medium creature rather than small, then you are likely to have at least 30 feet of movement yourself, so the spell deliberately keeping the target within 30 feet of you means that they will always be close enough for you to get to within your turn to Attack.
Because of this they may then also choose to use their Action for that round to Dash, moving a full 60 feet away from you. In response you could also move and the Dash to catch them and keep the spell going, but having used your action to Dash you wouldn’t be able to also Attack. This means you’d essentially be chasing this person round for the battle without damaging them, just to ensure the spell doesn’t end – making it a bit pointless.
It’s therefore important – and makes narrative sense – that the affected creature would have to make a save to try to get away from you. This mechanic allows them the opportunity to get away whilst still stacking the odds in your favor. The addition of this saving throw to allow them to move away from you therefore means they are unlikely to be more than 30 feet away from you when your turn ends – unless of course you’ve chosen to move away from them yourself.
Is Compelled Duel Good?
In specific situations, Compelled Duel can be very useful. Removing your enemy’s agency to ensure they are going up against a heavy hitter can be a really effective way of throwing a battle in your favor and protecting your squishier allies. However as with nearly any spell in D&D, there are situations you wouldn’t use it in.
Like a lot of lower-level enchantments – such as Charm Person, Sleep, or Suggestion – if the target is damaged or you or your allies do something harmful to them then the spell is broken. These types of enchantments therefore require cooperation from your allies.
It can be very annoying when you’ve just used a spell slot to send an enemy to Sleep, and then one of your own party rushes forward and stabs them, only for them to wake up and immediately get back into battle, thereby wasting your spell. However it would be equally annoying if your whole party were fighting one enemy together and the paladin cast Compelled Duel. Your allies would either have to immediately break your spell by damaging the enemy, or just sit the combat out and watch you, which defeats the purpose of being a party.
Casting Compelled Duel in a scenario that would pose a penalty on your allies would be a bit ‘Main Character Syndrome’, so it would be best to avoid it in these situations to negate either your own frustration at wasting a slot, or your party’s frustration at just watching you do combat without them.
That being said, as Compelled Duel only uses a first level spell slot, there may be scenarios you would cast it knowing that it wouldn’t last long. For example, if you could see that one of the squishier members of your party was about to be rushed by a large, strong enemy, you could cast Compelled Duel to get them to refocus their attention on you. The rest of your party may then still attack and break the spell, but even just one round of this Compelled Duel could still be enough to save your wizard from getting struck in the face by a giant’s greatclub.
Depending on where you are in initiative, in that situation your allies could even hold their attacks to optimise this use. Your party being on board with you casting Compelled Duel therefore would really help, even if this scenario.
Now in the heat of battle you wouldn’t have time to take a quick poll to check if everyone is ok with you casting a particular spell. But over the course of gameplay you can get to know the other players in your party and their characters and if they are likely to aid you casting it. But most importantly when faced with combat you would need to assess the scenario in front of you to check if it would be appropriate.
How Do You Roleplay Compelled Duel?
From a roleplay perspective, you can see why Compelled Duel is solely belongs to the paladin. A spell that allows you to sacrifice yourself to be an enemy’s main target and hence protects your allies from their aggression – what could be more “holy knight” than that?
This spell would work well for a paladin who sees themselves in the role of a martyr. However it would also work well if your paladin was on a quest for revenge, as this spell is essentially a version of screaming “LEAVE THEM TO ME!”. It could even be that your character has a particular hatred for a certain type of enemy (similar to a ranger’s favored enemy) and whenever faced with that foe they would cast Compelled Duel to make sure they had a hard time fleeing.
Roleplay inspiration
The white dragonborn stares at the huge ogre that is striding towards his wizard companion as he fumbles with his spellbook. The dragonborn screams out at the ogre, “NO, LEAVE HIM! IT’S ME YOUR WANT!”. The ogre turns, slack-jawed and slavering, and refocuses his attention onto the dragonborn. The dragonborn smirks as he lifts his greatsword and readies a fistful of radiant light.
—
In the middle of a colosseum, the crucible is about to begin. The scar-faced dwarf stares around at her competitors. She sizes them up and focuses her gaze on the goliath, who is grinning maliciously at the halfling to her left. The dwarf points at the goliath and snarls “You’re mine”. His gaze shifts onto her and the halfling breathes an inaudible sigh of relief.
—
The small goblin rogue runs in once more and stabs the paladin through the chinks in his plate armor. The goblin darts out of his way and runs back out of his reach as quick as lightning. Howling in frustration the paladin storms closer to the goblin and shouts, “No you don’t!”. The goblin, with fear in her eyes tries to flee, but can only get so far before finding herself compelled to stay closer than is comfortable. She glances back at the paladin and gulps.
FAQs
Compelled Duel is a 1st-level enchantment exclusive to the paladin class that encourages an enemy to engage in combat with only the caster. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a fail, for 1 minute – and as long as the paladin maintains concentration – they are compelled to focus their attacks onto the caster and attacks against anyone else have disadvantage. If the target of the spell wishes to move into a space that is more than 30 feet away from the caster, they must make another Wisdom saving through. If they fail, they are unable to move outside of the 30 foot range of the caster. If they succeed, their movement is unimpeded for that turn.
A target affected by Compelled Duel may not move more than 30 feet away from the caster unless they succeed on a Wisdom saving throw. If they do succeed on this save, their movement is unimpeded for that turn only.
Yes, Compelled Duel is a concentration spell. Therefore no other spells can be cast that require concentration whilst you are trying to maintain Compelled Duel. If you take damage whilst concentrating on Compelled Duel you must make a concentration check. As the target of Compelled Duel will be focusing their attacks on you, you are therefore likely to need to make a concentration check every round.
Then my partner bought me a starter set for 5e and my friend ran us a mini-dungeon to give us a feel for the game play and I was immediately hooked. Since then, I have lost countless hours to playing, DMing, and creating homebrew.
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