Blasting in D&D: Not so Hot?
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2024
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If you would like to know how I calculate damage or how baseline damage is determined, I go through it in this video:
• How To Calculate Avera...
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:43 A Focus on Blasting
4:33 What spells are we talking about?
6:54 Blasting Damage
10:15 Bad Scaling of Blasts
12:39 How much damage to expect
15:54 Scaling Spell slot casting
18:55 Meteor Swarm
21:00 How they should work
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Couple of thoughts come to mind:
1) Even a blaster should be concentrating on something. Blasting is what you do after you're already concentrating but you need more oomph than a cantrip.
2) It is justifiable to soften enemies when facing huge numbers of enemies. By increasing the total party DPR it might be possible to finish a round sooner thus avoiding the retaliatory damage that way.
I agree wholeheartedly with you points. Something also to note, and I might be wrong, Tree seems to assume that the blaster is only hitting one target. If you manage to snag three or more targets in the AOE alot of blast spells can keep up or surpass that 15/30 hp difference. Not mention most blasting spells are not save or suck meaning some benefit is still derived from the casting. Is blasting in and of itself good? No, but it is a tool and knowing when and how to use it is the key. (Personal favorite blasting set up is to cast Bless then start twining guiding bolt. Hands out plenty of benefit too the rest of the party.)
I just did a bunch of math to prove this, if you want to check out my comment thread.
@@ContinuumOfHarmony Yes, tree is assuming you are hitting one target. what targe is this? It's a powerful target that could alone drop you or you party members. Do you think a party of 4 5th lvl characters can survive 3 CR5 creatures? For each creature you add to deal this extra damage, you multily the green bar for the extra HP pool you have to spend to kill the encounter, so you are going to deal even less meaningful damage with greater number of high-leveled foes. Now, he said many times that blast spells are efficient with a group of under-leveled creatures, and it's how the blast spell was designed to work. But how many times will you face a situation where your DM will put a group of creatures that will get a "save or die" from your spell during a whole lvl 1st-20th campaign?
@@lukaspequenomatos1681 Your assumption isn't accurate, at least not if the party is supposed to still fight a more or less equally challenging encounter. If your party faces 1 hill giant (CR 5) then blast spells are obviously going to be pretty bad against it, but if the party faces 10 hobgoblins instead (also a combined CR 5) and your fireball or cone of cold can hit at least 5 of them, blasting is suddenly pretty effective.
@@Nr4747 next time you play a gmae and you face that exact situation, then you record it and show to me ^^. It's definetly common seeing a party of weak and stupid creatures line-up for a fireball XD
"You didn't take Fireball!? What does your wizard even DO?"
Speaks with the dead, messes with your head. Fools with your senses, blocks you with their Fiery fences. Blocks and dispels magic, protects allies from death. Wouldn't that be tragic. Detects and protects. Speeds up and slows down, with much versatility you could never frown.
Sure that one spell might make all enemies fall, but with so much to do, they are having a ball.
The mark of a true fan of the channel!
One smoke screen from Pyrotechnics cast on the torch my zombie minion was holding plus some clutch Blindness made one deadly encounter with 4 chimeras (5 level 8 players) a still dangerous but more manageable encounter.
@@TreantmonksTemple The origin of the god wizard is prolly my favorite video on your channel because of that one line.
@@The482075 Top 10 rappers Eminem is too afraid to diss.
Blasting would be more effective if a higher level encounter just means more minions to fight, but the problem is that nobody wants to wait for the DM to roll for 40 goblins
There are some mass combat rules that help make minions easier to use en mass (mob combat rules) but they are kinda hidden away.
Fight enemies in waves.
Hah! But I bet if the DM pulled out 40 goblins people would be happy to have fireball around :D
Too be fair I think in almost every campaign I have been in at least one fight a day has a fairly large group of minions to minions+. You don't need 40 goblins, 6 whatevers and that blast spell looks a bit better. And I have seen many many times where the fireball while it didn't kill the enemies as they were better than minions it was the difference between a fighter finishing it in one round or two, or even one hit or two. Overall I think they aren't the best spells, but if that is your thing you are building towards it and probably playing an evocation specialist.
@@Ahglock I just realized I am being sort of funny In a campaign i'm planning I plan t have a type of magic feeding bug that has resistance to magic that will come in large waves, but I also use the minion rules for them so them being resistant is completely pointless.
People seem to forget Erupting earth IS one of those blast spells with a secondary effect; it creates difficult terrain! Which can be very useful in the right circumstances. I had a druid in a game I was GMing who was already concentrating on a summon spell encounter a hoard of bug bears in a dungeon and a well placed erupting earth spell not only thinned their numbers but prevented their back line from getting into melee range. For bugbears this is a big deal; their melee damage is MUCH higher then their ranged attacks, which is the case for a lot of monsters.
He summoned bug bears??? What??
Erupting Earth also deals magical bludgeoning, one of the absolute best damage types in the game.
Like most things, it will always come down to the type of game you're in (I know, you acknowledge this in pretty much every video you make). If your DM is conscious of this and wants the wizards to still feel effective at those bad levels, they can have big fights with high CR baddies with lower CR minions in those levels, your martials can go toe-to-toe with the single target damage while the wizards take what would have been an exhausting wave of minions and torch them with fireball. I appreciate the data here, I actually think its best use is informing DMs how their players may feel ineffective at particular levels and it may push them to adjust encounters for this.
Seconding this, if your player is into the fantasy of the classic DND wizard & he starts to feel this way, then you have failed them far harder than the math of 5E has. If you are that player and this is happening to you, you shouldn't need to change how you enjoy playing, instead talk to your DM and make sure they know how you feel & what you are looking for.
@@sharkforce8147 earlier editions spellcasters could cast far fewer spells per day. If you can only cast fireball once it had better count, but already by 6th level a wizard can cast it 3x per day, so if it is wiping a tough encounter as a single spell then there is nothing for the rest of the party to do.
I think the main reason why blasting spells diminish in damage is because you get more spell slots. Resource usage wasn't something this video accounted for.
At level 1 that burning hands does good damage. But that's half your spell slots for that day.
At level 5 you do decent damage with fireball. But you still have 1st and 2nd level spells as well to do damage with. You didn't use half of your daily resources for this fireball.
I'm not saying blasting is good (it isn't). But making them scale as well as monster HP would make blasting scale quadratically. The good scaling + greater number of castings is why other kinds of casting scale as well as they do. And that shows in the whole "linear fighters/quadratic wizards" argument. Blasting is closer to scaling linearly than quadratically.
Essentially, blaster mages are closer to martial scaling than caster scaling. And considering martials don't do much else than deal damage, that's probably a good thing.
There's a lot that he didn't really take into account. Spell slots is one. Also, AOE damage is extremely effective vs minions and minions' are typically going to be significantly lower CR than enemies that would be considered "balanced" with 1 or 2 facing the group. So a level 14 wizard can toss a 3rd level fireball at a bunch of minions do shitloads of damage vs them for a small fraction of his overall spell resources and have it be very impactful. Spells are like tools. Each has it's place & weaknesses. Hypnotic patterns runs into issues at higher levels with immunity to charm being common. Slow is far less effective against enemies with 1 big attack.
This is an artifact of the choice of not having spells scale with level but spell slot, in 3rd edition that burning hands would still be a good spell at later levels becasue it's doing more damage without eating up higher level slots.
This is a fair point, but consider that most combat encounters last about 3 rounds on average. It doesn't matter if you have infinite fireball slots, if you only get to cast fireball 3 times in a fight, and even less than that if you cast a concentration spell or some kind of self defense/mobility (although it does significantly affect your adventuring day as a whole)
@@hannayapelekai1628 But it does matter. Most combat encounters last 3 rounds, sure. Going by the 6-8 encounters per adventuring day estimate. That's 18-24 rounds. Plenty of time to throw spells around. We're not talking about one encounter, we're talking about an entire adventuring day here.
@@Melorific which I aknowledged in my original comment
Another thing I think would help out Blast spells a lot, and I saw more use of them in tables where this was the case, is more cases of vulnerability. In vanilla 5e, vulnerability is EXTREMELY rare, such that the only thing that really matters in terms of damage types is not being resisted, and this makes things like Force, or magical Slashing/Piercing/Bludgeoning, the best damage types in the game. If you had a reasonable chance of doing double damage with your blast spell if you picked the right one, that would... well it would actually pump up most of the blast spells to the green line of monster hit points.
I could get behind that. A white dragon being vulnerable to fire damage for one example would make sense as well.
@@TreantmonksTemple i guess vulnerabilities aren't there as much because of metagaming, and players eventually knowing to throw "all the fire" at the white dragon.
We know solo monsters already suffer and rarely last more than 2 or 3 rounds.
My suggestion would be to have a conditional Vulnerability (only when the monster has more than 80% its max hp), then the monster isn't vulnerable anymore but maybe under that threshold (we said 80%) it loses 1 AC, or half its flying speed or some other debuff.
This 100%. I played a blaster in a game using monster weaknesses and it was phenomenonal.
Vulnerability should really be a thing in 5e. Why have it in the game if it is never implemented? Playing Solasta's 5.1e, it trips me up every time when the assorted fire elementals aren't weak to cold damage, or undead to radiant/positive energy damage. Coming from Pathfinder I expect things like vulnerability to be used more to reward critical thinking and premeditation, but 5e would rather everyone just do force damage and call it a day. It's a major shortcoming of the system.
@@havokmusicinc It's because the system never made you follow the monsters statistics they gave you. On all the manuals they show you that the monster blocks are just an average example, and you don't need to follow by the letter what was given to you. They are there to help you not needing extra work to design bunch of creatures from zero, but you take that and make whatever you need for the campaign, make them stronger for champions, generals, bosses. Make them weaker for housewives, househusbands, farmers, children, villagers. Give them vulnerabilities based on your cenario.
I don’t like playing Blast mages because I find them boring. However, I think you can still make a kick ass blast wizard. The trick is that you can’t just rely on blast spells. You still have to be thinking about what spell you should be concentrating on; and you want spells that will help you be a blaster. Maybe that’s spells like Flaming Sphere or Animate Objects that can deal damage on a bonus action. Maybe that’s a defensive spell like Fly that lets you rain down death from above. Or maybe that’s Ye Old Control spells like Slow or Evard’s Black Tentacles that in additional to battlefield control also makes your enemies more susceptible to your blast spells.
Yeah I like playing my clockwork sorcerer this way. Twin spell haste to enable my frontline then transition into blaster, or a hold person or monster instead of haste. A remarkably good blaster spell is synaptic static due to the int save associated to it. My favorite is twin spell polymorph, turning myself into a t rex and my enemy into a chicken.
I find that some players take 'blast caster' too literally. I think the most effective, and fun, blasters think of combining different types of spells to maximize what they are trying to do. Combining Treantmonk's techniques as to being a God Mage should be helpful. Flash freeze an enemy, then sonic boom them. Create a tight enclosed space, then sonic boom them (reduction in overall area should increase damage). Etc. Basically, some players take 'blaster caster' and make them into one-trick ponies. D&D Wizard's aren't really "magical" in the sense LotR's or other magic using archetypes are: they cannot really pump out magic via force of will (sorcerers come close to this); they are more like special operations engineers, psychologists, alchemists, etc. etc. They really don't make good "blasters" because a strict DM would limit them by resources under prior versions of the game.
When I look at this I just think 'At higher levels i just need to cast TWO fireballs instead of one' :)
Except you cant
@@francoisgagnonlemieux3135 thanks Captain Obvious
@@misterright4528 you could not cast 2 fireballs but you could throw a pearl from a necklace of fireball and quicken spell cast a fireball, that is 2 fireball but only 1 is cast
i think thats part of the reason they don't scale hard, because your number of resources are also growing
@@Mr911superstar Exactly, combat at higher levels also typically lasts more rounds because the damage of every character scales like that. The question shouldn't be how well do spells scale vs monster HP it should be how do they scale compared to martial character damage? In that respect they actually scale fine, a rogue sneak attack scales by 1d6 every 2 levels which is the same as upcasting fireball, barbarian's rage damage only increases by 2 from level 5 to level 17, fighters get 1 extra attack in that span, and rangers see almost no increase it damage at all.
Ohhh the automatic scaling of other spells was a good point that I would have never thought of, great video!
2i080 hi iopuy
... could we automaticlaly scale weapon damage from martial characters too then? Because that maxes out once you hot a +5 modifier and barring magic weapons never goes up again.
@@DaDungeDnD in general suffers from level 10-20 with scaling issues and exploding Hit point counts making it a slog.
"It's been a blast." Ha, I see what you did there...
Treantmonk is following D4 and trolling him ❤️😂
This video was completed (and available for patrons) for weeks now ;)
Who's D4?
@@Tom-bb3fm a guy who does optimized dnd builds usually for damage. They did a collab a few weeks ago and the DPR video from treantmonk a few days ago is similar to how D4, Colby, does his calculations. This video also just got published after D4 made a video on damaging spells and which are the best. I know they are both great people and appreciate each other’s ideas but it’s just funny the way timing has worked the past week.
If you don’t recognize that those two channels use the exact same theory, you don’t understand the optimization theory.
Those two videos are different perspectives at different levels of meta considering the same topic.
As a counterexample, when they did a collab video and, by viewer polled request, both presented independently designed Rune Knight builds...they were the same build. They made identical choices unless two choices in one place and two in another might combine to give you results that demanded you pick between RedBlue and BlueRed to make Purple. They both chose Purple...one did RedBlue, the other BlueRed...and both of them said “yeah, I thought about that other choice for a long time”. I don’t like Rune Knights...but the video was great, just to see that uncanny indentical result.
@@3phemaral It was a joke.
Remember when we thought Draconic Sorcerers could add their Charisma modifiers to every beam of Scorching Ray? Those were the days.
I would like to see the average damage per spell as a % of expected creature HP for the level as that would better show how the damage is keeping up. That way we could see, if at level 1 your doing about 50% expected HP, then at level 10 your only doing 40% expected HP, then you are clearly going down. but it it stays at 50% the whole way, then your keeping up and the blast is doing the same effective impact.
One thing that can make the low level feel better is that with fewer dice, the extremes of your damage rolls are more likely, so going from say 50% HP average to 100% HP from a high roll is more likely then at higher levels.
The worst part comes when the table uses some critical house rules. The melee deals extra great dmg with critical builds so DM would probably increase monster's HP with max roll as well. The casters' blasting is mainly for AOE weak enemies, and they have to buff/support/CC instead of blasting during most of time.
Yea my party does something similar. We do double the modifier on all crits an if the damage is greater then (a number I forgot lol) you roll on the table of critical injuries.
@@Hallusions My table does rolled_weapon_damage + max_weapon_damage rather than rolling twice
One thing I do for spells being upcast: increase the damage done per spell level by 2 instead of 1 for most damage spells.
Amusingly, that makes low level spells better damage dealers when they're upcast than spells of the same level, but since a lot of those low level spells are iconic and fun for my players, I don't see an issue with that.
Which is why it feels so good to play as a Tempest Cleric 2 / Order of the Scribes Wizard 18 blasting-focused character
The thing about playing support (control/buffs/debuffs) is that because of the concentration mechanic, you have to choose one of those three. And if you're already concentrating on, say, a Slow spell, what are you going to do with your turns? That's where blasting comes in.
Additionally, casting Haste on the Fighter or Rogue will do more damage, but that's single-target damage. Let's say that we're a level 8 Wizard, and we cast Haste on our buddy the Rogue. Now they can do an extra sneak attack every turn, for 1d8+4d6+5 (average 23.5) assuming they're wielding a rapier and have 20 Dexterity. Not too bad. Roughly equal to the damage we would expect from a Fireball, assuming that the target isn't resistant or immune and is slightly more likely to fail their save than succeed. But here's the detail: that damage from the Rogue is single-target. Fireball isn't. Say we're not fighting one big enemy or a bunch of little ones, but a small group of medium-sized monsters - a pack of giant crocodiles, maybe. If we only catch one of them in the Fireball, that's an expected 28 damage on a failed save. Catch four of them, though, and the total damage goes up to 112 assuming again that all of them fail. The Hasted Rogue would take 5 rounds to put out that much extra damage, and combat probably won't even last that long.
Treantmonk is at his best when hes spitting hot takes like this and the DPR video.
Is this even a hot take? It just sounds like good sense to me
this isn't a hot take
With all due respect, I think Treantmonk needs to theorycraft Tasha's some more. Tasha's gave Evokers some tools (Eldritch Adept, Metamagic Adept, Spirit Shroud) that made Evokers completely busted. Even moreso if your DM agrees to let you use those magical items. I am in all seriousness saying that post-Tasha's Evoker is one of the top subclasses, up there with Illusionist and Chronurgist.
@@maltheopia what do those feats have to do with it?
@@employee4275 Eldritch Adept: Lets you have Agonizing Blast with one level of Warlock instead of two.
Metamagic Adept: Gives you access to Elemental Spell, combine with two levels of Tempest Cleric for some real fun.
Metamagic Adept also allows you to use some of the frankly busted Tasha's metamagic shards. If you have one of those and that feat, that's an extremely strong justification in of itself to grab two levels of Sorcerer.
I played a game last weekend using a 6 lvl "Artichron" build that I got from you and everyone was so surprised that I didn't have fireball.
Then we walked into a room with half a dozen orc leaders and when I cast slow the DM just kept going over and over the stat block realizing that I had basically counter everything the could do to counter the situation we had them in. Druid pit down spike growth coving the their entire side of the room and the swarmkeeper kept blending them inside it and knocking them prone. With the slow they couldn't get out and the thing the DM was worried my be a TPK turned into a cake walk.
No one complains about fireball anymore.
Also Chris thanks for showing us that Artichron build...it's the most fun I've had with a character since I started d&d!
I'm glad these numbers backed up my intuition!
Good video. Thanks for compiling these numbers.
Excellent, as usual.
I'd have loved to see a couple included plots on those graphs of the yield of some of the concentration buffs, like Haste or Improved Invisibility, just to drive home how much more effective blasts would have to be to outpace them. A "typical" Reckless Attacking GWM Barbarian would be an adequate comparable.
A reckless attacking GWM barbarian is a very optimized character and not a good representative sample of a martial character at all.
I did some napkin math a week ago because I was curious what a more effective damage option is for a 5th level wizard: Hasting my party's ranger, or casting fireball. Fireball is by far superior in situations with 2+ targets. Haste out-damages Fireball in single target encounters after 4 rounds. This assumes ideal situations in which he hits every shot and has Hunter's Mark applied, as well as the enemy having no fire resistance and failing the saving throw.
If saving throws, resistance, and AC are taken into account, I suspect Fireball falls even further behind. Following normal attack vs AC progression, Haste will result in more consistent damage. Missing enough shots to nullify Haste is far less likely than an enemy succeeding a saving throw.
This was for my personal party setup. I imagine if we use your example of a Reckless GWM Barbarian with a great sword, the results are even more in favor of Haste. In 2+ target scenarios, though, it takes a significant number of rounds for Haste to catch up to Fireball (at an appropriate level range).
@@DaDunge are you kidding? As a striker goes, it's about as basic as it gets. Anything less than that couldn't be seriously considered, as it is can be fully accomplished by level 2 with nothing except PHB content.
@@Sporrik just shooting from the hip here... a greatsword is average 7 damage, plus 3 str mod, plus 10 for GWM, is 20 average damage on a hit. Haste grants one extra hit per round, so you can't really count the regular hits. Let's say a 60% hit rate, due to the -5 to-hit. So in 5 rounds, Haste will do about 60 damage. In my experience, most fights don't last that long. So this would probably be a major fight to even get the full measure.
Compared to the average value of Fireball of 28, with a level appropriate 60% failed save rate. So average is probably in the 21-23 range.
If you hit 2 targets that's way under Haste. If you hit 3 targets, it's about the same. If you hit 4 targets it does better. Lots of assumptions in both cases, and very simple math. But I think it shows that buffing an Ally is just as solid from the damage standpoint alone, and something like Haste grants more than just the extra hit each round. The movement and AC count for something as well. Then, as the Barbarian's output increases with magic items and ASIs, Haste gets more effective as well... and still costs the same 3rd level slot.
This is why I like the caster level scaling of damage in 3ed and PF :)
Close your ears, JoCrap! "Use fireball and only fireball, just fireball, just fireball, JUST FIREBALL!"
Another great metavideo in Treantmonk's line of expertise. It applies to more than just D&D.
Maybe the classes that specialize in blasting (evoker, fiendlock, some sorcerers) should have class features that made blasting effective at the in between levels? The bonuses they actually get to their damage are pretty small.
Then again, if blasting was that effective, would it be fair to the other classes? Maybe it is fine to have the blasters specialized against masses of weak enemies?
Except the last thing DnD needs is a buff to full casters.
I feel like they scaled caster damage based on consistency of damage and then forgot that if a caster's blast fails they still have expended the spell slot. Weapon classes don't lose their weapons if they miss. (you lose ammo sure but you can carry tons of it).
I've felt like ever since WotC took over D&D they've tried to balance the classes against each other which cause caster classes to get incredibly limited in what they could do while making melee better based off the best case scenario of the caster landing 100% of their casts. More often than not I feel like my caster characters sit there doing nothing because I have a nuke and a twig.
@@rafaelbordoni516 the problem with buffing "blaster" casters is that there is no such thing. An Evoker still has access to the rest of the Wizard spells that make them great at utility and control.
This is kind of like the guy with the Ferrari, complaining about his lack of luggage space... he's still got a Ferrari.
Chris is not saying that casters are weak in any way. He's just pointing out that one tool, which receives a lot of attention, is a bad tool. One bad tool doesn't make for a weak class. In fact, I think you'll hear him say plenty of times that spellcasting is the single strongest feature that any class gets.
@@rafaelbordoni516 your thinking fails to acknowledge that casters, as a group, and wizards in particular are already far stronger than melee. Blasting is a weak area, true. But no Fighter or Barbarian has access to the sort of fight ending power that a caster does. If casters were the best at damage ALSO, there would be nothing left for the martial classes to do.
@@rafaelbordoni516 so... the best control, the most flexibility, the best defenses, the best utility... but you think they need to do more damage. Would you be satisfied, ever, even if your character was twice as good at every single thing, than any other character?
I mean, seriously, just how far ahead do you think a caster needs to be before it is enough. Maybe we make PWK a cantrip?
A third or fourth tier Wizard is capable of winning a battle, single handed. No Fighter or Barbarian will ever Plane Shift a Demon Lord or Arcanoloth. How about Seeming an entire army to look like their own enemy? Magic Jar is an entire category of ass kicking of its own. Earthquaking the enemy fortress you're about to enter? Forcecage the BBEG so that the minions can be mopped up without drama? Not enough survival? Clone, Contingency, Demiplane, Simulacrum. Need utility? Enhanced Ability, Skill Empowerment, Knock, Leo's Hut, etc. Mobility? Teleport, Wind Walk?
...and while blasting may not be great, let's not pretend that casters can't do damage. They're actually very effective at damage dealing, just not using that particular tactic. Spirit Guardians isn't a blast spell, by the criteria given, and yet is an absolute beast. Forbiddance, Spiritual weapon, Incendiary Cloud, Insect Swarm. These all do far better damage than traditional blasts.
No, blast spells do not need any help at all. Neither does the guy pushing on the pull door.
Great Analysis as always 👍
upset comment about blasting spells !!! Also , requesting video about single target damage spells
I see you sneaking that pun in there at the end, Treant-dad-monk
Great video! Here are some other blast spell related concepts:
1. Blast spells like fireball always hit but the trade off is that critical hits are not possible.
2. Extra damage can be done to monsters that are vulnerable to specific damage types.
3. Some monsters like the Dire Troll require elemental damage to kill but the amount of elemental damage required exceeds what nonmagical attacks reliably produce.
4. Spellcaster enemies that use magical attacks such as magic missile reliably deal more damage to high AC players than non-casters.
5. A spell caster without subtle spell may not successfully cast spells when fighting against two monsters with counterspell since a counterspell can be countered by another counterspell and that counterspell can also be countered by a third caster.
Ok, first off, love your videos. Second, I love your ideas for secondary effects on the damaging spells. I hope people at WoTC have someone peepin your videos because that would really be cool and quite thematic
I usually pick spells based on themes of my build/character not how much damage they do etc. though I always make sure to have the golden oldes, Sleep, Silent Image, Web, Magic Missile, Mage Armor, shield, Feather Fall, Find Familiar. anything beyond those is suppose to be the thematics of my character.
I do the same, but I get frustrated by the lack of options at higher levels.
Great thing that for a sorcerer that is like 80% of yout spells known at lvl 9 or 10 so not much room for thematic there (i know they can't normally get familiar)
I recall seeing someone make homebrew metamagic options for the sorcerer, trying to tackle the scaling problem with secondary effects. Fire spells could ignite creatures and do DoT without concentration, electric spells took away actions, cold spells effected movement, and so forth.
Lets be clear here:Blasting isn't useless at high levels.. It's.. situational more or less. There's two situations where you'll be using blast spells (1)-Against a hoard of lower CR enemies. Due to the bounded accuracy of 5E opening a door to find four dozen bug bears is still a threat even at high levels, a few well placed fireballs at 11th+ is the perfect solution to this problem. Having one in your pocket for these situations is useful! Just you don't really need more then that. (2)-A 'filler' spell to use when you're already concentrating on something else. You got your big debuff already down, there's a bunch of foes in the room, you've got a few spare spell slots... can't hurt to throw out a AoE spell to soften them up for the warriors to deal with, better yet kill some filler minions the big bad had. This tactic works best in games with moderate to low fights per day; Adventure league and its 2-3 fights per day comes to mind immediately. Less viable for the 8+ fights per day Treatmonk often suggests where those spell slots are spread thin
I know this.
I did play a bard for 14 levels, and control spells usually transformed a desperate battle into a walk in the park.
A fireball wouldn't have done much of a difference in those instances.
But I managed to use a single use item for casting Meteor Swarm. 40D6 are fun to roll! :)
My biggest problem with building a blaster character, or at least a spellcaster who does damage, is that apart from Agonising Blast Warlocks there are very very few ways to do good single target damage. Depends how your DM runs combats, but with mine at least we don't often fight large groups, and will more often fight one big boss. In that instance there's not really a lot a wizard could do damage wise. Waste an area of effect blast or cast a fire bolt or something for even less damage. Even the good control spells seem wasted against one target, usually because they are save and nothing happens.
Great video. Currently in my first campaign ever and finally got to the level 4 wizard spells. But now you’ve got me wondering...if blasting scales so poorly, what is the best way to deal damage from levels 4-8
Ha ha you’re going to laugh at my episode Tuesday 😉
You don't need to focus on blasting, just take a couple blasts and you're a blaster. Doesn't mean you can't do other stuff. :D
I agree with your assessment (you've had me convinced for years) that blasting shouldn't be a sole focus because of the uneven power level of blast spells. However I disagree with the prescription at 21:00 that the spells *should* scale linearly with player level.
No DPS (well, except for Rogue) increases linearly with level. Even fighters have the dry spell between level 11 and 20 (I know some get a bump, but it's not as major). Different archetypes have different power scaling.
And if you count non-blast spells, Wizards and Sorcerers already have better effectiveness scaling than most other classes. They don't need the bump.
@@sharkforce8147 What do you think of Fighters at level 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10?
Yeah, I noticed that too. I was recently in a one-shot wild west themed game (lvl 8) and besides the fireball spell, my damage spells were lackluster at best.
What are your thoughts on using your spell slots for smiting as a paladin? i normally try to cast a concentration buff spell like bless right before combat starts and then pick out the biggest guy and go nova on them, is this efficient?
I love looking at this and it is a good evaluation. It also proves why I say cast the fireball even if it does not kill but instead *significantly* damages the target (aka they can be killed next attack). When you showed the CR Hitpoints vs best spell damage, the difference between those two lines has a name - the rest of the party.
To me damage and incapacitate are both in the same goal of make it so the party can while them out this turn. The entire CR concept is that the party is challenged and so my expectations are different. The system seems balanced in a 4 person party so each person can do 1/4 then the battle can be fair and thus they kept blast to top out at 1/3. Thus, the blaster can’t be allowed to get a spell that can kill out right or even pass that 1/3 barrier. This is why spells that give crippling effects are way more powerful and maintain there effectiveness. HP grows but the monsters stats are relatively flat against your growing spell casting stat. So by design, blasters are less effective then all other casters.
I agree the game needs better blaster spells and effects. (The problem being 5e is stingy with more spell).
Word. Take the damage line, times it by 3 or 4, overlay that on the enemy HP line, then talk to me about balance.
I agree. I've been playing D&D Wizards for around 45 years, I started with the Basic and Expert box sets. Since 2nd Edition, I've been of the opinion that Control was the best way to play a Wizard. That said Fireball, Magic Missile, and such; are still useful. Fireball, as you said is good for minions. And I like Magic Missile for finishing off multiple foes. If anyone here plays Solasta, I believe they found a solution somewhat, with the Shock Arcanist subclass:
Level 2
Arcane Warfare: When casting spells from the War List, they count as being cast at one slot level higher then the one you actually use: Burning Hands, Magic Missile, Thunderwave, Acid Arrow, Scorching Ray, Flaming Sphere, Fireball, Lightning Bolt.
Level 6
Arcane Fury: Add your proficiency bonus and INT bonus to your evocation spell damage for 1 minute. Recharges after a long rest
Level 10
Wizard Weapon Proficiencies: Constitution up
Arcane Shock: You overcharge your mana and become restrained until the end of your turn. However, when you cast an attack spell, your damage dice are always above average. In return, you make a CON saving throw DC 14 and take 2d6 Psychic Damage if you fail.
I love your breakdowns, they are so well done. I was wondering if you know how damage from other sources compares over time. Like obviously blasting drops off very rapidly in the % of damage it is dealing. How would that compare to "normal" damage from a fighter or other class?
It really depends on the build, but I see builds that do 100+ damage per round at higher levels, though to single targets, so it's a bit of an oranges/apples comparison against area of effect damage.
I would soooo watch a video of you, showing a method to fixing said blasting problem.
I've already got some ideas for you.
Fireball, when cast using a 5th level slot or higher, it causes a burning effect on enemies who fail their saving throw. It does "heat metal" like damage, until said creature uses their action to put out the flames.
Lightning bolt stuns enemies, until they make a con save, at the END of each of their turns.
Well hell, I think I figured out what they need to do in 5.5E it 6E. Add status effects, which are triggered by blast spells; especially when upcast.
Anyways, would still love the video. Maybe you could even do a colab with Dungeon Coach. That would be frigging amazing!
Love your content. Please, keep up the good work. And, if I had the money, I'd donate like crazy. Unfortunately, poor. So I'll just like and share the videos. Got no money to give, but can absolutely spare the time for one of my favorite content creators.
PS. I don't even play DND; having only played and 8 sessions total in my life. But I think a life of game development would have suited me just fine. Lol.
Will you try to make some concrete fixes to this issue? Like doing "Treantmonk Variant" specifically for Blasting spells?
Hmmm, no plans right now, but it might be an interesting project.
@@TreantmonksTemple Do you think the priority would be dealing more damage or having secondary effects? Which would be generally better and more effective do you think?
@@adriltythorin6702 I'm not him, but I think that first of all you need to make adequate relative scaling, so there won't be a situation where damage drops down at the next level (Fireball/Ice Strom).
But after that, I think that additional effects are more important. The damage problem has a justification Treantmonk didn't mention - the number of spell slots. At 10th lvl caster will be able to Blast much more often than at 1st lvl, so the relative damage of each blast should be lower to not make them OP. So additional effects would work fine, though they should be short and not very severe. These are Blast spells, not debuff spells.
Generally, after thinking a bit, I believe that the problem with Blast spells is much more complicated than it may seem from the video. You can't just increase the damage, it would easily make Blasts too strong.
I was pretty heavily influenced by your guides when first starting playing d&d (illusionist wizard as my first character!) , so likewise I've never been much for a blasting builds. Your recent god wizard video caught my interest, but as I'm fresh off the heels of playing a shadow sorcerer I'd be looking to mix it up a little (if I did go sorcerer again, Clockwork would be ideal, but I'd likely end up playing Divine Soul just as it feels more different). If I instead went in a different direction I might go for a 1 Order Cleric, X Evoker, catching allies in cone/area spells to trigger Voice of Authority, but sculpting around them so they're not damaged. This fits closer to my usual supporter role, but I get to try out a bit of blasting which I'd otherwise not do too much. Any particular pros/cons/considerations compared to the sorcerer?
I'm very glad 5e does not have death spirals for what that's worth.
I agree, else the outcome would always be set in stone by who dominates the first few rounds.
Coming back after being surprised could be next to impossible with challenging enemies
I think one component that could help with scaling is to incorporate a mechanic for scaling specific to number of targets. For sorcerers, I would add a metamagic option. And, I'd add a similar (or same) mechanic for Evoker Wizards.
Instead of scaling by increasing the number of damage dice, I would allow scaling to make the spell more effective against a fewer number of targets in a smaller area. I might consider increasing the die type over a smaller area. Or, perhaps allow an outcast spell impose disadvantage on saving throws in the same area.
Homebrew Feat: Elevated Evocation - When casting a spell from the Evocation School using a spell slot of 4th Level or higher that forces one or more targets to make a saving throw and does not require concentration, add (2 × your level) to the damage dealt.
What would you say to a general rule for upcasting that grants 2 damage die per level? Is that an easy, blanket way for a dm to make blasting feel better? Or is it even worth addressing from the DM’s perspective?
EXPLOSION! - Megumin
Another great educational video. I like character builds best but I get more out of this type of video.
Also this problem is why I hope they bring back caster level in future editions, or scale spells with level in some way. It feels weird to me for a 20th level world renown hero's fireball does the same damage as a level 5 character.
How does this compare to a typical martial build damage scaling? Would be interested to see that. I know they can do their damage round after round mainly without expending resources like spell slots. Like. What’s a typical fighters damage on a turn at 5th level compared to fireball or a rogue, etc.
Good video and helps me understand why my Druid was psyched getting lightning bolt (circle of land: mountain) at 5th level but it fizzled out as I leveled. Can’t remember when I cast it last (it’s always prepared so no loss there)
I'm not sure that's an overly useful comparison, since doing a total of X damage and doing X damage to one target have such dramatically different tactical results.
What if we added a feature to a class/subclass that says "when an effect forces a creature to make a saving throw to halve damage taken, apply an effect based on the damage type, as shown in the table below"
This would make transmute spell metamagic a must-take so maybe wouldn't be a good idea to give it to a sorcerer and doesn't affect damage added to weapon attacks or spell attack rolls (mainly for Eldritch Blast but maybe that would still be balanced?)
Fire: targeted creature takes additional damage [some calculation that can scale] at the start of their next turn
Thunder: targeted creature is deafened until the end of their next turn [this feels underpowered, but I really don't know what could be done about it]
Lightning: the nearest creature, randomly chosen in the event of a tie, makes the same saving throw. On a failure, the target takes [double the extra damage of fire's burn - randomness of target and effect happening offset the extra damage]
Cold: target's speed is reduced by 10ft until the start of your next turn
Radiant: target is blinded until the start of their next turn [this feels a little too powerful, but idk what else fits]
Force: the targeted creature is pushed 5ft away from the origin of the effect, eg. The player in a cone or single target effect, or the center of a spherical effect. If the creature failed their saving throw by 8 or more, the player may choose to knock them prone instead
Poison: the targeted creature is poisoned until the end of their next turn
Necrotic: until the end of their next turn, the target takes one level of exhaustion. If a creature is already suffering from this effect, the duration will increase by a round for each instance, rather than adding additional levels of exhaustion [could still be too op with something like sickening radiance + metamagic]
Psychic: until the end of their next turn, the target's wisdom, intelligence and charisma scores are reduced by 5
Acid: target's AC is reduced by 3 until the end of their next turn
How likely do you think it is we'll see more spells with different delivery systems in the future? -Like means other than just attack rolls and the binary saving throw. Do you think the edition is too invested in saving throws for this development to be likely?
So if you fixed the scaling damage so that blasting mages feel more effective. How does this compare the damage output of other classes? Do other classes also then need to be adjusted?
Exactly. Blast spells should deliver secondary effects. That's the simplest and most creative fix.
I wonder how that damage/hitpoints comparison graph would look like if those CR hitpoint increases are split between multiple creatures when calculating an actual encounter.
Great analysis.
I had fun with my Light cleric at early levels, with smart positioning (on my part) and bad positioning (on the baddies side) i managed to soften up a lot of enemies with a lowly Burning hands or channel divinity.
I would still be having fun if the main enemies since level 4 hadn't all been IMMUNE to fire so now I am at level 7 and have yet to cast a fireball. 😑
I am forced to rely on radiant, and feeling like a normal cleric, with Spirit guardians, spiritual weapon and channel divinity... 🙄
@@rafaelbordoni516 funny enough, my other idea for a PC was an abjurer, but then i settled for a cleric. Can't go wrong with a cleric really.
It's a light cleric and you are upset you are forced to use radiant spells? If it was called a fire cleric I would say you had a point but it's a light cleric.
@@DaDunge the only radiant spells in the Light Domain are Guardian of Faith, not so flexible, and Flame Strike, at level 9, and I will never use it.
All the other blasts are Fire spells: Burning hands, flaming sphere, scorching ray, fireball, wall of fire.
The Light cleric is defacto the Fire Cleric.
Meanwhile, any other cleric can use those radiant spells, so they are not at all specific for Light clerics.
The only good thing is the Channel Divinity, the best blast at lowish levels, but it's starting to get worse.
I would have liked to see the damage scaling curve in comparison to other non-blaster classes such as fighter or rogue who still put out consistent damage. Do these classes also suffer from diminishing returns on their attack damage at higher levels? As a DM I'm going to balance monster hit points around the group I have, so if every class is on the same footing then I don't know that there's as big of a problem here.
I'm in a full party of casters right now, and the only one that does real damage is the rogue...control/buff/debuff ftw. Our tank is a Hexblade. Great work here @Treantmonk. Thanks for all the great vids.
Disintegrate is a classic blaster build spell. It’s immensely powerful when combined with the divination Wizard, who can use portent to ensure it lands on most enemies.
I wouldn't say so, to cast disintegrate you need to be level 11.
It averages 75 damage.
Lets say a basic creature, not a boss, just a standard enemy is CR 6 at this level, I feel like that is setting it low, but for arguments sake. They typically have over 110 hit points. So you don't even one shot it, and that is your highest level spell, and half the uses of one of the best abilities in the game.
Compare this with Mass suggestion, which will both take out that creature you used your portent on, and potentially stop several additional enemies.
75 damage just isn't enough at this level, it is the kind of combo we would wish was strong, but isn't that great.
That being said, if you are having fun with it, keep doing it.
@@peterrasmussen4428 - so you disagree with the one point I made, that Disintegrate is a blaster Mage spell? Because the other categorical options are control, utility, etc.
@@peterrasmussen4428 and yes it’s powerful when combined with portent because the average damage is very high, and there are many times when you can take out an enemy completely with 50 or so damage. There just aren’t very many big single target damage blasts in the game. My Div Wizard is all about control and not at all a blaster but disintegrate is a must prepare spell for the right moments. It also is extremely useful for destroying objects at a distance or to blast a wall of force.
Sure, as long as they don't have legendary resistances nor magic resistance they can use to get around your Portent. But if they don't, is using a high level spell slot against ONE creature that doesn't even have those resistances worth it?
@@dylandugan76 I realize this is SA/JC and a DM can rule against this, but for what it's worth: www.sageadvice.eu/diviner-wizard-portent/
Speaking the truth! Wisdom of the Treantmonk.
This why I also like mixing spells like Magic Missile and Hex. Which can be a massive boon because like Treantmonk said Fireball scales bad but a 10th Evocation Wizard with and +4 Int and two first level spells get an automatic 3d6+3d4+3+12 averages 33 points of damage of Force and Necrotic which is barely resisted. And it scales up by 11 points of damage per spell level
This why I also like taking mixing spells like Magic Missile and Hex. Which can be a massive boon because like Treantmonk said Fireball scales bad but a 10th Evocation Wizard with and +4 Int and two first level spells get an automatic 3d6+3d4+3+12 averages 33 points of damage of Force and Necrotic which is barely resisted. And it scales up by 11 points of damage per spell level
In my opinion which this video makes me think about as well. Blast spells are like those special moves in a fighting game that you use as a tool for pressure, control or combo ender. Blasting is a tool that alot of us misuse like a spammer in a fighting game while it helps sometimes its dismissing returns at higher skill level in games
Blaster mages were a lot less common in fiction _before_ D&D and videogames inspired by D&D made it popular. Enchanters, transmuers, conjurers, and illusionists were all a lot more common in basically all fictional media with magic in it. Subtle tricks, changing something into something else, summoning beings from another plane, all vastly more common than blowing stuff up with fiery explosions.
Magic Missile and Fireball are just really cool, it doesn't matter if other spells on the same levels are "better" in a metagame sense, thus these are what videogames picked up on. People drawn into fantasy roleplaying by videogames, then, are used to expecting powerful attack spells.
You also have to consider while the wizard is doing 28 average damage with a fire ball the average fighter at 5th level can deal ~40 average damage with the great weapon master feat and a great sword which doesn't take into account things like action surge, subclasses, or further optimization which allows a 5th level fighter to potentially deal over 100 damage in a single round.
These ~40 damage is to a single enemy assuming that both attacks hit, and they totally may not, considering -5 to attack (which is -25% hit chance, and that's huge). Too bold to assume that you'll hit with all attacks. If we take the average hit chance for 60%, as it's supposed to be by DMG, it's 35% to hit with GWM. The chance for Fireball to deal full damage also about 60%
(2d6+4+10)*0.35*2=14.7 average damage per turn, to a single enemy.
Fireball deals
28*0.6+14*0.4=22.4 damage per cast, in area.
Yes, Fireball is for a spellslot while attacks are free, but it's still unfair to say that Fighter with GWM deals more damage.
@@antongrigoryev6381 Fair enough accuracy is a much bigger part of damage dealing than people give it credit for, but the point is that a character the same level can out damage a fire ball rather easily.
@@YourBoyNobody530 *Can* doesn't mean *will.* If we say *can* , then Fireball *can* deal all 48 damage, to several targets.
One point of this analysis is that blasting spells agent designed to target the highest CR monster in the room, they're meant to target the minions.
If you redo this math but replace the green line with the expected hp for enemies that show up as being at a 1:2 ratio in the 2016 Encounter Building UA, you'll find the line is much shallower and closer to blaster reality.
My initial reaction was “yeah, of course AoE spells aren’t great at single target” - as others have pointed out, if you hit five enemies, you’re doing five times the damage shown. Then I remembered that’s also five times the work for the DM, which is why most prefer fewer, tougher targets as opposed to hordes, and yeah, that’s a good reason to not make blasting the *main focus* of a build (though still an often-useful tool).
That being said, I think you’re underselling the benefit they can provide even without secondary effects. “Every enemy in that general direction now has ~25% less HP” is a pretty good way to support the party, even if it’s not buffing them directly or applying conditions - it translates directly into them not requiring as many attacks or as high damage rolls, which can be pretty incredible for action economy depending on what breakpoints it lets you hit. As someone else said, the gap between monster HP and your spell damage doesn’t look as bad when you realize it’s filled by your party members.
Either way, as pointed out elsewhere, if a player is feeling let down by their ineffectual blasts, the DM can always help out by throwing in a bunch of weak fodder minions that would otherwise force martial classes to waste a bunch of attacks. Sure, keeping track of two dozen goblins might be tedious, but that’s a problem that a player with fireball will happily solve for them.
It would be helpful to have some calculations on when its effective to use blast spells. How many enemies would you have to hit to make the damage worth it? If a fireball/cone of cold can do 1.5x, 2x, or more than total damage of a DPR specialist (fighter or warlock) then it may be worth it. People interested in blasters could benefit from knowing that at level 7-9 they should really save slots until they can hit x enemies. It would also be amusing to see how many you would need to hit at those high level ranges before meteor swarm is available.
Totally agree with your assessment on the area of effect blast spells. But I'm curious what your opinion of single target damage spells, like disintegrate, finger of death, or harm. I realize you were specifically looking at mages but clerics have some good damage options as well so why not mention it?
I may look at those spells in a future video, but single target damage (or continuous damage spells) wasn't the focus here.
@@TreantmonksTemple I would be interested to learn if single target damage dealing spells scale better than blasting spells so if you do a video on that in the future that would be awesome.
I love your guides and breakdowns. Currently playing a Paladin, all of my spells are Treantmonk approved :)
I'd agree with this. And while it might make sense to keep a blasting spell like fireball or shatter around for when you fight lots of small enemies, it's definitely not worth it against most enemies at higher levels.
One option would be closer to 3.5 spell scaling where caster level increases the spells power. More missiles from magic missile etc.
I do agree on secondary effects, but also quirky traits like how blight annihilates plant creature type.
Another fix would be to give options to bypass immunities/resistances. Be it by magic wands or class features (especially evoker wizard) or upgrading elemental atunement feat a lil.
I'm playing an Order of the Scribes Wizard, and I'm having lots of fun with this blaster build, thanks to the ability to switch between damage types when casting spells. Besides that, my DM likes do homebrew monsters, and usually adds vulnerabilities to the mix. This is super fun, cause I can cast a bunch of AoEs with different damage types and when I hit that vulnerability, the hole party goes nuts
For normal 5e play, Treantmonk's advice is well thought out and applies. For AL, however, well - AL is a little "different".
Using up a slot means less in module play, because you rarely have over 3 fights per long rest, sometimes only 2.
Once you get used to AL, and especially when you start DMing, you can see that your caster gets a fireball wand or a staff of power or something like this. My casters, once they get such a thing, use fireballs or other blast spells from such devices instead of cantrips like firebolt or toll dead. Being an evoker could be very worthwhile for such a caster, because sculpting when doing this is so nice - and one or two full-dice-value nukes an adventure is pretty good. Over a Treantmonk adventuring day of many fights, not so much, but over a typical AL adventuring day, very much so. In fact, in many boss fights an evoker can be better than a diviner, because legendary saves negates low portents (high portents still have value to make critical STs) - but half of a maxed big-nuke might make a lot of sense in such a fight, where a boss simply can't be controlled or debuffed. I don't play an evoker, but in AL, I often wish I did - save that the other things I pick are also often very useful - meaning the best caster types all have their moments and shine strongly.
Next, fights are complex. On round one let's say I cast SLOW or Bigby's Hand or some concentration spell. But this fight's going to last 3 or 4 turns maybe. What do I cast on round 2? Well, if I have to pace out my slots over 4 to 7 fights per long rest, maybe I don't waste slots blasting - maybe I toll dead or firebolt or ray of frost. But if I'm in AL, I usually don't need to save my slots - (I'll probably get a short rest and get some spent slots back from arcane recov, if I'm a wiz, too) - I need to maximize myself in every round, because there are so few rounds per adventure. And if I have a wand or staff, I'm not even spending slots.
Furthermore, in AL, you can rebuild now between adventures to lvl 20. So, you can start out evoker and cast on the party while sculpting - you can go diviner at lvl 7 and auto-banish or auto-control nasty monsters for a while - and then if portent starts to suck, maybe go abj or war or blade song or back to evoker. Should we do this? In such a mercenary fashion? Well, if one is a heavy RP'er, maybe not. But if you want to experience different class types, why not? Maybe you don't have much time to play dnd and think, "Why should I be stuck w/ my lvl 1 choice all the way up? I wanna try other things, too!" So of course it's okay to do this - to swtich builds as you lvl up in AL. It's your char - play it how you want.
Even in a non-AL setting, I'd go for balance, because sometimes nuking is the right thing to do, even if it's not as efficient or stellar as it was a few lvls earlier. Again, once you've cast your concentration spell, if it's a clench fight, why not nuke? Especially if you have a wand or staff. Or if you're pretty sure you're gonna get a short rest after this and recover some slots - or maybe you feel this is the last fight of the day before sleeping - doing rnd 1 concentration spell, rnd 2 nuke rnd 3 nuke is usually better than rnd 1 conc, rnd 2 crappy cantrip, rnd 3 crappy cantrip and end fight and adv day w/ many unspent spell slots. Yes, I know it's harmful to burn out your slots if you need them later - if you think you might get jumped that night - if you think a caster might enter fight and you'll have to start counterspelling, of course don't burn up slots nuking, for example. You get a feel for a campaign, and players can generally make good choices when it comes to slot management.
I'm not saying Treantmonk is wrong. I'm saying there are cases where nuking is a lot more justified than others - and his video is set very much not in the world I usually play in. It's good to know - it's wonderful to be challenged and to have to think "am I doing this right?" - and I'm going to be looking for better things to do than nuke at higher lvls. Nukes, overall, are disappointing. But in some cases they're still worth casting.
Wonderful work as always. Ive always just trusted you on this claim as you other explanations generally make sense and you also admit when you are mistaken. Ive never seen the dmg by level comparison done. Now it makes even more sense why blasting is not the best.
You mentioned a few times the designers intentionally made certain levels peak but damage in general sucks relative to enemy level. Maybe that's on purpose and a good thing.
The avg player still sees blasting as optimal and/or enjoyable. I don't see too many complaints about evocazards not evoking hard enough. Spell damage being on the low end allows AOEs to seem amazing while not making single target dmg classes feel completely useless. Blaster mages can cull large group of goblins approaching. Allowing dpr classes to focus on the 2 big ettin enforcers. And all the while God Wizard is working quietly behind the scenes making sure formerly invisible Raksasha is locked down in a force cage until his allies are finished playing with its minions.
I am genuinely curious what a blast spell of each level would look like if you designed it.
Excellent stuff! I concur about 90+%, but there's one fairly significant factor that wasn't part of the analysis. As a blaster, or anyone else for that matter, levelling up allows you greater survivablity and thus one can be expected to last longer in combat. At lower levels, finishing a combat encounter quickly is much more important. Your defenses only can handle so much. Get up to the upper 2 tiers of play, this is not usually as important (encounters can very in intensity we all understand that) but your defenses are much greater due to a variety of factors by now. So you CAN blast more often per encounter. I still would never recommend blaster-only focus though as there is so much more a pure caster can do. And often be more efective while doing non-blaster things. So thank you very much!
Thanks!
Nice pun at the end there.
The best reason to play a blaster? Because the average DM is fairly terrible and they can't deal with actual effective spell usage.
Illusions fool no one, because they are "too smart". Charming doesn't work because "they would never listen to you ". Suggestion to surrender fails because the enemies are "too scared of the BBEG, so suggesting they surrender is obviously fatal, so auto fail". Anything that is an all or nothing doesn't work because they always make their saving throws (at least, when they are rolled behind a screen).
But blasting? Can't deny that I dealt 20 damage, which is more than the fiat I run into all too often.
I once landed a Banishment, only to surround his landing point and have the DM tell me that the BBEG did not return, because "he had a plan for that". No idea what the plan actually WAS, but when we faced him again the DM moved him out of Wall of Force, because "he is too fast, and running around. He moves out of the way before the walls come up". That one was not too much, and I did not return. The DM said "just cast Fireball instead (despite him being a single enemy) it would have dealt a ton of damage - no one wants to have the enemy just removed by a single spell" after I explained why I quit.
So, to reiterate - be a blaster because it is easy for DM's to deal with. Inefficient damage is better than not being allowed to literally anything, and being seen as a disruptive player because you know how to be effective. Assuming you want to stay in that game, that is.
Keep in mind, these are all examples I have personally encountered. I might not have been the spell caster in question that it happened to, but I was never the one making that kind of a ruling. Some were me though; regarding "just cast Fireball" I pointed out I didn't have it. His reply was "no wonder you are not having fun, you don't know how to play a wizard right!"
Different groups play differently of course but I remember when my Wizard absolutely destroyed an entire battle map of 20+ enemies in our campaign ending session with a single 6th level spell of Freezing Sphere. The range effect of that spell more than makes up for it as I was able to get every enemy on field in the AOE.
I would trade a single 6th level spell slot for 6 rounds of combat where our party might lose a lot of health and then the Cleric needs to spend more of their spell slots to heal the damage we took.
I'd like to see this graph adjusted for saves matched up against the baseline damage graph (as well as a standard optimised fighter and standard featless fighter). I wonder if baseline damage keeps up with CR appropriate monsters any better than blasting
As others already noted, one indeed should have to take resource availability in consideration when judging spell performance. A Lvl 7 blaster can throw twice as many fireballs per day as lvl 5 one. Various spell slot regenerating class features that scale with levels giving even more.
I do still agree with the notion that blasting is generally less effective action economy management than neutralizing threats by crowd control or focus-fire. It's just a matter of convincing my Sorcerer friend not to fall into the room-wide 8d6 temptation every time.
I don't agree that you need to switch out fireball; rather, I think you need to recategorize it from a big bomb spell to something to cast with lower slots while concentrating on something useful at higher levels. It's still useful to toss out big splash damage even if that damage isn't outright winning the fight like it used to. Dropping fireball entirely, in my view, is taking it too far.
I completely agree. I'm no DnD 5 expert but most spells felt underwhelming aside from a handful of signature spells.
Now, casters are in general more powerful than non caster in DnD 5 because of all the utility they can bring and giving them the possibility of insane damage on top as a baseline would be too powerful I think. I believe that is you should be a blaster focused class, it would probably be through subclass effects and/or combinasion of feat to prevent a powerful DPS caster to still retain the insane battlefield control, buff and debuffs on top.
So while I agree with the numbers or the spell, as a non specialialist of the rules, I would ask, is it possible to build a strong DPS caster that focuses on doing damages with spells.
I would have liked to see sustained damage spells and a martial character damage on that graph as a reference point
Wouldn’t the strongest 1st level spell be Chromatic orb over Burning hands? 3d8 > 3d6?
My guess is that these spells were balanced cautiously because the designers said, before the game was even out, that they intended for weak monsters like Orcs, Gnolls, etc to remain viable threats (in sufficient numbers) at high level - effectively expanding the DM's repertoire of creatures they can use. Whether they succeeded or whether this is a good thing or not are their own questions, but this may explain why the scaling of blast spells is so underwhelming.
I do like the idea of blast spells having a one-round control effect on a failed save. This makes the spells not only "better" but more strategically interesting, and it adds a bit of verisimilitude as well. A lot of video games have already gone this route and given blast spells secondary effects.
While it's always been abundantly clear that single-target DPR is the two-hander's/sharpshooter's game, as a DM, my biggest take-away from this is that high level play needs to have fights with groups of minions, etc, for blaster spells to be fun and satisfying.
That tempest 2/storm sorc 18 looking better and better with transmuted metamagic. :D
Hey, I liked the video a lot! I watch almost all your content. And I have a content request!
Would you be willing to review and rate MCDM's Illrigger class? I'd love to know what you think, since it went through an extensive playtest process and was worked on for over a year! I love your breakdowns, and your evidence based opinions.
I know this is a big request, but it would be really cool. Thanks!
I agree, more control riders on damage spells would be nice, or more ways to create vulnerabilities. Like dealing fire damage to an iron golem makes it vulnerable to the next source of cold damage before the end of your next turn. Your damage would still be mediocre unless you play well with friends.
5e is a fun system to play and has some great mechanics built in, but I agree with your underlying point that the mathematical foundation has weaknesses and blast spells are a good example. I point to DM's and encounter design as the general answer. Blast spells make your casters feel very powerful when they are a one shot solution, but higher CR encounters largely nullify that strategy with raw hit points AND resistance and immunity. It is incumbent on both players and DM's to be cognizant of those limitations in trying to make a campaign fun for all involved!
The approach that older edition like 2nd and 3rd edition did scaled damage to level of caster. A 5th level caster with fireball did 5d6 while a 10th level caster did 10d6. 5e applied this approach to cantrip scaling with discrete levels but chose not to have leveled spells scale. As a consequence 5e blasting is far more ineffective than previous editions.
How do you think could a future edition of DnD fix this?
I mention some options in the video.