Faerie Fire too powerful

Dr N · Apr 2, 2016

Faerie Fire provides advantage to all combat rolls for the entire party. This is far too powerful for a first level spell, and very imbalancing. Why should an attacker get advantage simply because the defender is glowing? It shouldn't make the hit significantly easier.

DEFCON 1 · Apr 2, 2016

Then don't use it.

Fanaelialae · Apr 2, 2016

Dr N said:
Faerie Fire provides advantage to all combat rolls for the entire party. This is far too powerful for a first level spell, and very imbalancing. Why should an attacker get advantage simply because the defender is glowing? It shouldn't make the hit significantly easier.

IMO, this is an oversimplification. Faerie Fire does not provide advantage to all combat rolls for the entire party.

Faerie Fire provides advantage to all combat rolls for the entire party against any creatures that were inside it's 20 foot cube and failed their saving throws against it, so long as the caster is able to maintain concentration. That's quite different.

While it can certainly be a worthwhile spell, one needs to consider that unlike many (non-cantrip) spells, it does absolutely nothing on a successful save. Since it requires concentration, it not only prevents you from casting many other spells that are as or more useful (Entangle, Spike Stones, etc) but it can also be brought down by simply damaging the caster.

In the Underdark campaign I'm currently playing we currently have two drow warriors in the party. While their Faerie Fire has proven useful on occasion, there have been quite a few times when the targets all made their saving throw, making it a wasted turn. Even when they do successfully land the spell, it often makes the drow who cast it a priority target.

In a campaign previous to that one there was a Circle of the Land Druid who cast it a few times and found it quite underwhelming compared to his other options.

As such I haven't found it to be a problem, IME of course.

Zardnaar · Apr 2, 2016

Its one of the few lvl 1 spells that sort of scales an is useful later

Radaceus · Apr 2, 2016

It's a great spell, and why shouldn't it be?
requires concentration, its AOE is small enough as well as being a cube, and only 60' range

and if your party has no Druid, nor Bard...no faerie fire for your group.

Also note, Bard get's a limited amount of spells, taking this situational spell as one of the three 1st level spells known ( odds of not choosing a 2nd level spell occuring) would be rare

Oofta · Apr 2, 2016

At least there's a saving throw with Faerie Fire.

Unlike Heat Metal ... I'll just give that guy over there in metal armor disadvantage on all attacks for the rest of the combat and there's no save. Oh and have a little damage too!

werecorpse · Apr 2, 2016

I agree. Faerie fire is good but the save means it might fail.

Heat metal with no save - doing damage and giving disadvantage (despite concentration) is very potent.

Fanaelialae · Apr 2, 2016

werecorpse said:
Heat metal with no save - doing damage and giving disadvantage (despite concentration) is very potent.

Heat metal is very potent in the right circumstances, I agree. The limitation being that it's useless if the creatures you're facing don't have metal weapons or armor.

FormerlyHemlock · Apr 2, 2016

Dr N said:
Faerie Fire provides advantage to all combat rolls for the entire party. This is far too powerful for a first level spell, and very imbalancing. Why should an attacker get advantage simply because the defender is glowing? It shouldn't make the hit significantly easier.

It's no worse than Fog Cloud, which does the same thing for ranged attacks out of the cloud (due to the way the heavy obscurement rules work) with no save.

If you have a beef here, it's probably with the vision rules and the granularity vel none of advantage/disadvantage.

As a DM, you should have intelligent foes seek advantage and seek to impose disadvantage in the same way. Skilled tactical combat largely involves trying to manipulate battlefield geometry and gain advantage, moreso than making attack rolls. Have enemies toss nets, hide in the dark while firing (with advantage) at targets illuminated by one Dodging enemy carrying a torch, push enemies prone or off cliffs, etc. Faerie Fire fits into this scheme as one pretty good option, but certainly not one that cannot b e countered.

Unintelligent foes are not supposed to be a real challenge anyway, so it shouldn't matter if PCs find an exploit against them and exploit it to the hilt.

FormerlyHemlock · Apr 2, 2016

Oofta said:
At least there's a saving throw with Faerie Fire.

Unlike Heat Metal ... I'll just give that guy over there in metal armor disadvantage on all attacks for the rest of the combat and there's no save. Oh and have a little damage too!

Hooray for Conjure Elementals (Magma Mephits)! [Assuming of course that you can manage to get magma mephits out of the spell, which may involve building a bonfire or something first.] 4x Heat Metal plus some free breath weapons is pretty good for one fourth-level spell.

Fanaelialae said:
Heat metal is very potent in the right circumstances, I agree. The limitation being that it's useless if the creatures you're facing don't have metal weapons or armor.

Things that don't use metal weapons or armor are likely to not be tool-users in the first place, and therefore not much of a threat. I can imagine theoretical exceptions such as a race of tool-users who rely primarily on obsidian or bio-weapons (xixchil!) but they're probably going to be rare. In the usual 5E D&D campaign I think it's a fairly safe assumption that anything which doesn't use metal is probably vulnerable to ranged tactics.