List of General Spells for Most Combat Situations

So blogs are a thing here. I doubt this will be a regular thing but I've been thinking about this thing for a while and figured I should put it somewhere, in case someone else wanted to think about it too.

Unicorn master-race and all that. But really unicorns are probably the most deadly race in combat if properly optimised. Every good weapon has multiple uses though, so in addition to the combat uses of the spells, I will also focus on utility. Actually, only one of these spells is normally thought of as a combat spell. These are all in the order I would use to maximise my survival at any step of the way. (ie. [1,2&3]>[1&2] > 1 >2>3)

1. Telekinesis. In Split Second, Sparkle tells a class of guards she is teaching that telekinesis is the most dangerous unicorn spell because it is so versatile. It can be used to distract by making noises in places you aren't; it can be used to set dangerous or volatile traps without danger to the caster; It can be used defensively, to put something between the caster and a source of danger; and with knowledge of an enemy's physiology, it can kill or incapacitate with minimal difficulty. You could kick someone in the balls from range, or put someone in a sleeper hold without standing up. You could gouge out an enemy's eyes or break their eardrums, or if you wanted to be instantly lethal, you could push the left half of their brain into their right. If Mage Hand weren't restricted to doing no damage, it would easily be the most dangerous spell a 1st level wizard could learn.

2. Illusions. Illusions have two real uses: spreading information and spreading misinformation. For the first, illusions can be used to signal allies or create a tactical map in real time, or for some non-combat uses, they could assist with teaching or rapid-prototyping. For the second, they could hide your forces, make them seem larger than they really are, create unkillable allies, or fill the air with "deadly" bursts of magic. In addition to the obvious uses for illusions, a truly powerful illusionist might never need another spell because all other spells can be faked through illusions. But, for practical purposes, only three specific illusions are going here so a caster doesn't need to master the entire field to move to #3; a light spell: for temporary blinding, distractions, and light (duh); a body double: so an enemy has something to aim at that isn't you; and invisibility: to keep yourself from being aimed at in general.

3. Teleportation. This spell only really has one use: to get you from somewhere that you don't want to be to somewhere that you do. However, manoeuvrability is important enough in combat that this was almost #2. A big problem with illusions is that even if you're hiding in a corner where no one can see you while your double does battle, you might still get hurt if your enemy gets annoyed enough to start chucking explosives. So you want a quick, sure fire way of getting out of dodge. Teleportation is also useful for gaining tactical ground, bypassing choke points, and scouting. In addition, when used at the same time as illusion spells, you can confuse an enemy by appearing in multiple spots, as a clone that they already disbelieved, or nowhere at all.

4. Create Food and Drink. This probably seems like an odd spell for combat but it is less for combat and more for preparedness. If you can't just kill all your enemies, running isn't an option, and your illusions aren't good enough to create an exact copy of where you are for the enemy to attack, then it's time to bunker down; or if you're travelling and don't want to carry all the rations you'd need to sustain yourself, you still need to eat. Either way, food and water are really important on the hierarchy of needs, so you don't want to be without either (this spell assumes that conservation of energy isn't a thing. If it is a thing this is pretty much useless). Also, in a pinch you might be able to drown someone with it, so there's that too.

5. Scrying. They say that knowledge is power and this is your source of knowledge. From troop movements, to blackmail, to long distance communication, you can get all the info you might need from scrying so long as you have luck or the right timing. In addition, if used with your body doubles, you could make them seem more realistic by having your clones react to things from their own perspective. Bonus points if you can see through illusions with this.

6. Shields. Okay an actual combat spell. Except a shield can't kill anything. Unless its full of something lethal. Or is air tight. Or shaped like something stabby. Or moving at sufficient velocity. Or can bounce back deadly attacks. Or is shaped like a cannon, or can focus enough light on a spot, or isn't actually forming a safe path over something deadly (illusion), or etc... The real reason this spell is on the list though is as a final line of defence against an unexpected attack. Not that it doesn't have other uses: rapid fabrication and prototyping, impromptu container, human-sized hamster ball, enhanced illusions (now your doubles actually feel like something), lethal things, etc. Shining Armour is actually really scary.

All of the above should probably be sufficient to keep any threat below country-destroying from killing you, but if you're fighting a planet destroyer you might need some help from causality. Which is why #7 is

7. Time Travel. If you're running on stable-loop time travel you've got to hope that the universe likes you and things get really confusing very fast, but you can abuse P=NP and make anything you want happen as long as it already happened. If something happened that you didn't want to happen though, you're kinda out of luck. If , on the other hand, you are running with branching time travel, everything is much simpler and you can actually change things, but you can't pull information out of nowhere and there's plenty of stories of extended time travel loops of either kind driving people mad, so be careful.

Keep in mind that these are spells and spell combos that are useful for general combat, but some enemies can only be killed under specific conditions and if you need to resort to #7, you will probably need some more specialized spell combinations.