Soul Cage
2014 Rules
- Level & School
- 6th-level necromancy
- Casting Time
- Reaction which you take when a humanoid you can see within 60 feet of you dies
- Range
- 60 feet
- Components
- V, S, M (a tiny silver cage worth 100 gp)
- Duration
- 8 hours
- Classes
- Warlock, Wizard
- Source
- Xanathar's Guide to Everything
This spell snatches the soul of a humanoid as it dies and traps it inside the tiny cage you use for the material component. A stolen soul remains inside the cage until the spell ends or until you destroy the cage, which ends the spell. While you have a soul inside the cage, you can exploit it in any of the ways described below. You can use a trapped soul up to six times. Once you exploit a soul for the sixth time, it is released, and the spell ends. While a soul is trapped, the dead humanoid it came from can't be revived.
Steal Life. You can use a bonus action to drain vigor from the soul and regain 2d8 hit points.
Query Soul. You ask the soul a question (no action required) and receive a brief telepathic answer, which you can understand regardless of the language used. The soul knows only what it knew in life, but it must answer you truthfully and to the best of its ability. The answer is no more than a sentence or two and might be cryptic.
Borrow Experience. You can use a bonus action to bolster yourself with the soul's life experience, making your next attack roll, ability check, or saving throw with advantage. If you don't use this benefit before the start of your next turn, it is lost.
Eyes of the Dead. You can use an action to name a place the humanoid saw in life, which creates an invisible sensor somewhere in that place if it is on the plane of existence you're currently on. The sensor remains for as long as you concentrate, up to 10 minutes (as if you were concentrating on a spell). You receive visual and auditory information from the sensor as if you were in its space using your senses.
A creature that can see the sensor (such as one using see invisibility or truesight) sees a translucent image of the tormented humanoid whose soul you caged.
Soul Cage 5.5e 2024 vs. 5e 2014 edition differences
Soul Cage is currently only available in the 2014 edition.
Soul Cage popularity
How popular is Soul Cage? It is one of the rarest spells in the game, and it is almost never chosen when available. This spell is virtually unheard of in most campaigns, but you can change that.
- Bottom 10% picked level 6 Warlock spell
- Bottom 10% picked level 6 Wizard spell
- Bottom 10% of all 5e spells
- Bottom 10% of all level 6 spells
Read about how this popularity data is calculated.
Spells similar to Soul Cage
Contact Other Plane 5th-level divination
The spells let characters question an otherworldly intelligence for brief answers, and both suit warlock and wizard investigators.
Players prefer Contact Other Plane over Soul Cage
Vampiric Touch 3rd-level necromancy
Both are necromantic spells that convert stolen life force into healing and can provide repeated benefits during an encounter.
Players prefer Vampiric Touch over Soul Cage
Speak with Dead 3rd-level necromancy
Both draw on a deceased humanoid's knowledge to obtain truthful answers, with a strong necromantic connection.
Players prefer Speak with Dead over Soul Cage
Gentle Repose 2nd-level necromancy
This shares Soul Cage's concern with preserving a corpse and controlling whether the dead can be returned to life.
Players prefer Gentle Repose over Soul Cage
Clairvoyance 3rd-level divination
Like Eyes of the Dead, it creates a remote sensor that delivers visual and auditory information.
Players prefer Clairvoyance over Soul Cage
Scrying 5th-level divination
Each provides remote observation over several minutes, allowing information gathering from a distant location.
Players prefer Scrying over Soul Cage