D&D 5E Best and Worst Damage Types

Zardnaar said:

I think it only applies to fire, cold, lightning, acid, poison though.

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RogueJK said:

The UA Elemental Spell metamagic applies to acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder. With Thunder being the clear winner in most cases due to the dearth of Thunder resistant/immune enemies. (Especially if that element-focused Sorcerer with Elemental Spell also dipped 2 levels in Tempest Cleric to be able to maximize their Thunderball for 48 damage + 6 more per upcast slot.)

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Arvok said:

The one thing about fire damage is that you don't even need to be a spell caster to use it. A few flasks of oil and a torch and you can set things ablaze. That's important for a low magic setting.

The downside to fire damage is that it can get out of hand in certain places (urban areas and on ship come to mind) pretty easily. Accidental fires killed an awful lot of people in medieval (and even early modern) Europe.

If your DM is cruel (or realistic), you might find you're suddenly dealing with a conflagration you can't handle.

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StormbringerAUS said:

Still a problem in this day and age - I can look at the window of my office now and see buildings shrouded in smoke form nearby fires - and the fires on the hills around here last night were for the want of a better word - impressive (scary more accurate perhaps) - so fire seems like a fine source of damage to me.

PS I am in Canberra, AustraliaView attachment 117873 this is last night

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Zardnaar said:

Ouch. New Years day in NZ orange sky and you could smell the smoke.

Think I'm around 2000km from you.

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StormbringerAUS said:

Those fires were about 10 or 12 Km from the nearest part of Canberra though a village of about 80 people is closer and between us and it, has calmed down today but Friday/Saturday are suppose to be very hot (40+ Celsius) and winds from the wrong direction, but the fire fighters out there doing an amazing job (mostly volunteers) so it should all be fine.

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RogueJK said:

Another option for a Sorcerer is the new UA Variant Class Feature Metamagic option "Elemental Spell". This allows you to spend Spell Points to substitute an element in a spell for another element. So you can have that Thunderball, or Chain Coldning, or the like.

That really opens up the options if you're going for a Draconic/Elemental Adept build focusing on one element.

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Sword of Spirit said:

The issue with that is that if I'm focusing on a particular element, I am not going to be okay with spending extra sorcery points every time I want to use it. There would need to be some sort of straight up swap: "You can choose to make any of your fire spells instead deal cold damage", or even "once you choose this feature, all of your spells that normally deal fire damage instead deal cold damage" and if it is intended for concept rather than min-maxing damage it needs to be extremely low cost--like an additional benefit to some other useful feature you can choose.

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CleverNickName said:

You can also just talk to your DM about making small changes to spells for the sake of flavor and backstory. When I was playing an air sorcerer, my DM let me "create" a special cantrip for her to use, called spark. It was identical to firebolt in every way except it dealt electrical damage instead of fire damage. Later, I asked to create a spell called St. elmo's fire, which was just burning hands that dealt electrical damage. Ball lightning? Yep, just a re-skinned fireball.

Chatting with your DM is usually your best option for super-specific tweaks to your character.

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