Reading some commentary on Banishment to day got me thinking about the classic trope of banishing something to another dimension, and how to express that in #DnD5e
The tricky thing is, banishment in most stories isn't a "the caster snaps their fingers, says a word, and their gone" kind of thing. I may have recently been reminded of this watching the Willow series on Disney Plus.
On one hand, you could fix this by just making the casting time longer, but having one spellcaster in the group dedicating their action to casting a spell for a longer period than most fights take doesn't seem like fun, or fit the playstyle.
So how do you make this dynamic? Well, it still ends up being a more complicated spell than most in 5e, but I think you could do something workable.
Let's assume Banishment takes an action, and then grants you a special bonus action, called "binding." A creature has to be bound before you can attempt to banish it.
If you know the creature's truename, and use it as part of the spell, it's automatically bound. The first time you bind the creature, it's susceptible to being banished, but you don't have to attempt to banish the creature then.
If you establish a second binding, the creature is now at disadvantage to resist the save to be banished. Yes, you are forcing it to make a normal save to be at disadvantage, but it makes sense since the denouement is the actual banishment.
Those extra bonus action bindings might also be handy for wearing down epic resistances as well. The main point is, the caster is only using their bonus action to advance the banishment, but it's also not a "one and done" spell.
Is this a good design? I have no idea, but I do think it flows more with the action of a D&D fight. If you really want to press the issue, you can bind the thing and attempt to banish it right away. Otherwise, you can attempt to make it stick.
This is definitely not a refined thought process, it's literally just what popped into my head as the neurons started firing in response to reading other posts.
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