Hold Person

Hold Person turns every sword hit into a critical, if it lands on a Humanoid

At the table. Hold Person targets one Humanoid you can see within 60 feet. It makes a Wisdom save or has the Paralyzed condition, and it repeats the save at the end of each of its turns. Paralyzed means it can't act or move, it fails Strength and Dexterity saves, attacks against it have Advantage, and any hit from within 5 feet is a Critical Hit. Each slot level above 2 adds one more Humanoid.

What changed from 2014. The spell itself barely changed, but the monsters did. In SRD 5.2.1 goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears are Fey, not Humanoids, so Hold Person does nothing to them. Bandits, cultists, knights, mages and priests are still Humanoids. Ogres and trolls are Giants.

How long it holds. The target has to fail the first save, then keeps failing until it makes one:

Why it's worth it. A fighter with +5 swinging a greatsword (2d6+3) at a Knight's AC 18 averages 4.35 damage a swing. Against a held Knight, with Advantage and every hit a critical, that's 10.9. Hold one Knight in front of two fighters and the fight can end in a round.

The choice that matters is timing. The first round of the hold is the only one you can count on, so cast it when the heavy hitters stand within 5 feet of the target and act before it gets another save.

The common mistake is holding a target nobody can reach. The crits only happen from within 5 feet, and archers only get the Advantage.

The human angle. A hold that turns into a round of critical hits is the moment the table talks about afterwards. Kahneman and colleagues found people judge an experience largely by its most intense moment and how it ends, not by how long it lasted. A two-round fight with one great peak can feel better than a long one.

Source: Kahneman, D., Fredrickson, B. L., Schreiber, C. A., & Redelmeier, D. A. (1993). When more pain is preferred to less: Adding a better end. Psychological Science, 4(6), 401–405. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00589.x