D&D 5E Spells cast at higher level spell slots. Worth it?

[The Crimson Binome]

A spellcaster has very few spells they can memorize, and if you allow every single lower-level spell to be booted to the equivalent power of a 9th level spell by expending a 9th level slot, then you just gave an 18th level caster access to ~22 9th level spell choices.

Versatility isn't power, though; it's versatility. If you had twenty-two different ways of dealing 40d6 damage from you ninth-level spell slot, then you can still only deal 40d6 damage with that spell slot. A level 20 wizard is balanced around the fact that they can cast Meteor Swarm once per day, and letting them deal that damage with Burning Hands or Lightning Bolt instead - by sacrificing the option of affecting a large area, or spending an extra spell-preparation-slot if they want to maintain versatility - wouldn't break anything.

The problem is that they've brought back the old quadratic-scaling for spellcasters. As you gain higher levels, you gain higher-level spell slots and spells that deal increased damage-per-spell-slot-level. And given that nobody is complaining about the amount of damage spellcasters can deal with spells under the current system, they could have linearized that in such a way to ensure that they maintain their expected contribution for their level, instead of making pure-casting-in-your-highest-slot-level so meh and making anything that doesn't benefit from quadratic scaling even less useful.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I'm sorry, but I don't follow your logic. You ask what is the cost of the Burning Hands versus Fireball, then you explicitly state the cost. The fireball gives you way more damage potential in fewer rounds against a greater number of individuals. Even when Burning Hands does a similar amount of damage, Fireball is the better choice against large numbers of distant enemies. Burning Hands can target a MAXIMUM number of medium or small sized creatures equal to 7. With a casting of Fireball, you can hit 41 medium or small sized creatures in a single blast. Additionally, those targets you hit with your Burning Hands are close enough to close on you and attack that same round if they have yet to act. At long range, you can launch a Fireball at enemies that may need two or three rounds to even get close to melee range.

So it's acceptable for fireball to have bigger numbers in range and blast radius? Then why can't it have bigger numbers in damage? Couldn't I reverse your reasoning to argue that fireball should be a small and short-ranged blast like burning hands, but that it's still justified at 3rd level because it deals more damage?

Isn't that the point of the Wizard? You do the best when you go in prepared for what you're about to face?

Yes. So spells with more differentiated strong and weak points are better. The what-to-prepare puzzle is far less interesting when burning hands is the safe choice most of the time. Especially since it's the lower-level spell. As a rule of thumb, players should be more excited to prepare higher-level spells, and have more incentive to do so. Not only does this better fulfill the fantasy of the wizard getting stronger in magic, it creates competing pressures -- players are pushed towards higher-level spells by their power, but towards lower-level spells by the need to make use of their low spell slots, and they have to decide where to strike the balance.

And wouldn't it be more useful for a sorcerer with their SUPER limited number of spells known to know that their choice to learn Burning Hands won't ever lead to regret because it will remain just as useful in higher level spell slots?

No. For the same reason above, only more so. Given how limited sorc slots are, if burning hands is a safe and flexible source of fireball-caliber damage, there is very little incentive to learn fireball. And sorcerers damn well ought to want to learn fireball. Also, sorcerers can relearn spells in 5E, so if they regret a spell choice, it's not forever. And again, this choice of what to relearn is subject to competing pressures.

 

[schnee]

Versatility isn't power, though; it's versatility.

I keep talking specific game balance issues and you keep going back to semantics games. Last time I'll play this game: That's a silly equivocation. Versatility is a kind of power, especially when your most powerful feature - a 9th level spell slot - is made more than two orders of magnitude more versatile.

A level 20 wizard is balanced around the fact that they can cast Meteor Swarm once per day, and letting them deal that damage with Burning Hands or Lightning Bolt instead - by sacrificing the option of affecting a large area, or spending an extra spell-preparation-slot if they want to maintain versatility - wouldn't break anything.

The game already gives you that versatility! Just with less power than you want.

The thing is, the past two editions have been all about nerfing spellcasters, and you feel it's too nerfed, and you deserve to be un-nerfed. Go for it! Your martial characters may or may not be outshined horribly, depending on how smart your casters are, but that'll be your problem, not mine. Good luck!

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Except, you're not accounting for what else you're doing on those extra rounds. Mathematically speaking, you should at least be comparing nine Burning Hands in successively-weaker spell slots against two Fireballs and seven Fire Bolts. That's 16d6 +14d10 damage, if you're level 5, and you still have all of your lower-level spell slots to save for Shield or whatever.

This is a fair criticism of what I said. I should have stressed more that I was talking in terms of what you do with your spell slots rather than what you do with your rounds. With burning hands, you always have the option of turning a 1st- or 2nd-level slot into some damage. With fireball, you don't.

(The scaling of cantrips vs. the non-scaling of slotted spells is a separate issue. I'm aware that at higher levels firebolt actually deals more damage than burning hands, and I don't like that. But one thing at a time. We're comparing slotted spells to other slotted spells.)

Which goes back to my earlier point: if you can cast Fireball in a third-level spell slot, then you won't be in a situation where you would want to cast Burning Hands in a first-level spell slot. If you're fighting an enemy that's strong enough to warrant a fifth-level spellcaster spending slots against, then 3d6 is a meaningless contribution.

You don't help your case when you keep asserting things that I know from experience are not true. 5th-level spellcasters spend 1st- and 2nd-level slots on damage all the time.

Versatility isn't power, though; it's versatility. If you had twenty-two different ways of dealing 40d6 damage from you ninth-level spell slot, then you can still only deal 40d6 damage with that spell slot. A level 20 wizard is balanced around the fact that they can cast Meteor Swarm once per day, and letting them deal that damage with Burning Hands or Lightning Bolt instead - by sacrificing the option of affecting a large area, or spending an extra spell-preparation-slot if they want to maintain versatility - wouldn't break anything.

Going all the way up to 9th level, you run into problems of sheer in-universe absurdity. Surely smacking a target with a meteor should deal more damage than shooting some fire from one's fingertips. To a certain extent, this problem can be argued even for burning hands vs. fireball, but comparing to meteor swarm really underscores it.

The problem is that they've brought back the old quadratic-scaling for spellcasters. As you gain higher levels, you gain higher-level spell slots and spells that deal increased damage-per-spell-slot-level.

This is not what "quadratic scaling" is in the standard sense of the term. No, it's not linear, but progression shouldn't be linear. Pure linear progression is very very boring.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You don't help your case when you keep asserting things that I know from experience are not true. 5th-level spellcasters spend 1st- and 2nd-level slots on damage all the time.

If you could give an example, then that would help, because some people in this thread are having difficulty imagining this. What sorts of things were you fighting, the last two times that your fifth-level spellcaster decided to cast Burning Hands for 3d6?

Going all the way up to 9th level, you run into problems of sheer in-universe absurdity. Surely smacking a target with a meteor should deal more damage than shooting some fire from one's fingertips. To a certain extent, this problem can be argued even for burning hands vs. fireball, but comparing to meteor swarm really underscores it.

Why should the shape of a spell matter more than the power behind it? If I'm throwing level 9 spell energy into making a magical fire, then why should it be hotter if it also affects a larger area? If anything, confining a finite amount of energy into a smaller area should make it more intense.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

So here are a couple of observations I have from this thread:

1) People either seem pretty entrenched in either side of their argument. Either people believe spells (particularly damage dealing spells) do not scale very well when cast at higher spell slots (and in fact there may be little consistency even within spells of a given level in terms of damage potential), or spells are fine as written and don't need to scale.

2) Those that believe spells don't scale well when cast at higher levels have provided a few potential options to address this. I posted some adjustments to 1st and 2nd level spells. Another person posted that spells should triple damage dice per spell level (double for AoE spells). Another person posted options to adjust other spell factors such as range, duration, ect with increased spell level (I personally feel this steps too much on the sorcerer’s metamagic, but that's just my take).

So, for those of us that believe spell damage should have increased consistency for a given level of spell slot used to power the spell, can we come together to figure out a way to analyze spell damage?

My difficulty when trying to compare spells is that damage spells take several forms. Instant single target damage (which may require either and attack roll for all or nothing or saving throw, most of which guarantee to deal at least half damage), instant AoE damage, and on-going spells that require action or bonus action commitments in future rounds to deal damage (both single target or AoE). This is further complicated by concentration (flame sword requires concentration, but spiritual weapon does not).

So my main difficulty has been trying to find a way to break spells down in such a manner that spells of a given type can be compared to one another to gauge their balance/consistency and better determine where adjustments might need to be made.

Personally, I feel that wherever you fall in this debate, being able to better break spells down for comparison is useful to both be better at judging whether new officially released spells are broken, as well as to assist in players researching/homebrewing new spells.

 

[EborElf]

God observations above. At lower levels I've seen it work well. The extra damage die or target affected can turn the tide of battle. Really situational dependent on higher levels.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

If you could give an example, then that would help, because some people in this thread are having difficulty imagining this. What sorts of things were you fighting, the last two times that your fifth-level spellcaster decided to cast Burning Hands for 3d6?

I think the difficulty "some people" are having imagining that others play D&D differently than they do is already a warning sign that "some people" are standing on shaky ground. "Some people" might want to reconsider a position which assumes their exact playstyle is the correct way to play the game.

But since "some people" asked: No caster in our party has burning hands itself. However, the bard has thunderwave, which he most recently used on a big swarm of crawling claws and before that on a giant crayfish thing. And the wizard has magic missile, which he casts at... well, pretty much everything. If "some people" think we're doing it wrong and that spells should be balanced assuming we're only ever going cast fireballs and firebolts with nothing in between... well, that's "some people's" problem, not ours.

Why should the shape of a spell matter more than the power behind it? If I'm throwing level 9 spell energy into making a magical fire, then why should it be hotter if it also affects a larger area? If anything, confining a finite amount of energy into a smaller area should make it more intense.

Why do you assume that a 9th-level spell slot is a constant unit of magical energy? D&D magic doesn't run on energy that way; if it did, we'd be using mana or spell points, not slots. And how on earth is burning hands supposed to be "confining" its energy? It's not confining anything; it's spraying it everywhere! Surely if you call up a fire as hot as you say, it's going to spray farther than 15 feet. So that makes two pieces of evidence that a 9th-level spell slot is not intended to be a constant unit of magical energy: burning hands does not deal as much damage as meteor swarm, and consistent with that lesser damage, it does not spread as far. If you like, you can think of it in terms of performance optimization: a meteor swarm spell is optimized for a 9th-level slot, so it's getting the most out of it, whereas a burning hands spell is optimized for a 1st-level slot, so there's a massive amount of waste at higher levels. It's like trying to drive 60 mph in first gear. Now, perhaps a wizard could do some research to optimize the burning hands effect for 9th level, creating a new meteor spray spell that did 40d6 damage and probably also a larger area of effect. But he wouldn't be able to cast this new spell in lower-level slots. That's the price of efficiency.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But since "some people" asked: No caster in our party has burning hands itself. However, the bard has thunderwave, which he most recently used on a big swarm of crawling claws and before that on a giant crayfish thing. And the wizard has magic missile, which he casts at... well, pretty much everything.

Magic Missile has all sorts of useful properties, which renders it incomparable against other spells. It's not strictly worse than any higher-level spell, since no higher-level spell can do what it does.

And even Thunderwave has a useful push component. One of the earlier arguments in this thread is that non-damage spells maintain their utility without regard to level.

Why do you assume that a 9th-level spell slot is a constant unit of magical energy? D&D magic doesn't run on energy that way; if it did, we'd be using mana or spell points, not slots.

It certainly seems like the most consistent explanation. Higher-level spells require higher-level spell slots because they require more power, and the capacity of a spellcaster to channel enough power all at once is limited by the experience of the individual, as is their total capacity for magical energy.

If that was how the game world actually worked, then I would expect to see the game rules as they are in the book, because those rules actually do reflect that reality fairly well... aside from the scaling issue which is currently under contention. And while it would make more sense to be using mana or spell points instead of slots, it's easy enough to see how they ended up as they did.

And how on earth is burning hands supposed to be "confining" its energy? It's not confining anything; it's spraying it everywhere! Surely if you call up a fire as hot as you say, it's going to spray farther than 15 feet.

Fire isn't a physical thing in real life; it's a process which matter can undergo, in certain conditions. Given that free-floating fire is an entirely magical concept, there's no way to say how it should work, or how far it should spray.

If you like, you can think of it in terms of performance optimization: a meteor swarm spell is optimized for a 9th-level slot, so it's getting the most out of it, whereas a burning hands spell is optimized for a 1st-level slot, so there's a massive amount of waste at higher levels.

This is a somewhat more-convincing argument, although it assumes a lot about the setting, that there are powerful experimental-arcanists who conduct magical research on how to get the most performance out of their spells.

It also goes back to the underlying intent of the rules, though. Given that the designers could say that magic works however they want it to, then why would they decide to penalize multi-class spellcasters by making their high-level spell slots so weak? It really seems like a trap, that they would tell you that a split-level wizard/cleric has full spell slots, and that you can up-rank your low-level spells to use those slots, but then design the scaling rules so that you're strictly worse in terms of what you can do with those spells.

And of course, the fact that the bard gets all of those spell slots and access to higher level spells, while poaching the best spells from every other class and only requiring one high ability score, really goes to show the vast disparity in power level between characters that are conceptually similar. This edition was supposed to be a step back from requiring such system mastery!

 

[clearstream]

It also goes back to the underlying intent of the rules, though. Given that the designers could say that magic works however they want it to, then why would they decide to penalize multi-class spellcasters by making their high-level spell slots so weak? It really seems like a trap, that they would tell you that a split-level wizard/cleric has full spell slots, and that you can up-rank your low-level spells to use those slots, but then design the scaling rules so that you're strictly worse in terms of what you can do with those spells.

And of course, the fact that the bard gets all of those spell slots and access to higher level spells, while poaching the best spells from every other class and only requiring one high ability score, really goes to show the vast disparity in power level between characters that are conceptually similar. This edition was supposed to be a step back from requiring such system mastery!

@Hawk Diesel @Saelorn I feel like the designers probably respected a few things (of even if they didn't, those things should be taken into account). A quick list includes

1. Casting potential. I can cast 15x Burning Hands at level 10 versus 8x Fireballs. Fireballs need to do more damage to have parity. They both do the same total damage, right? 71d6 from 4/3/3/3/2 spell slots.
2. Tempo. Doing more damage in less time has a value. And that helps amplify excitement and variety. Fireball has better tempo than Burning Hands, while you can cast it. Which is compensated by Burning Hands having better casting potential than Fireball once you take into account Arcane Recovery and Empowered Evocation.
3. Oom (out of magic). If I have used my last 3rd and higher spell slot and my only damage spell is Fireball, then I am oom on damaging spells.
4. Versatility. As has been mentioned a higher level spell should get bonus damage to compensate for less flexibility.
5. Excitement. Players should feel excited to gain higher level spells. No matter how you cut it, more damage is an element of that.
6. Variety. The more that spells are able to differ from close neighbours, the more interesting player choices become.

Point 1. for instance, at level 10 they both do 71d6 using all available spell slots to cast. Burning Hands can be conditionally better (+75 from EE versus +40). Fireball has the better alpha.

@TheCosmicKid relating to your arguments I believe taking into account casting potential and tempo supports that the damage of Burning Hands has parity with Fireball. AR and EE apply better to Burning Hands so there's the gain.