D&D 5E What level is this spell?

I'm converting some spells from older editions.

One called fire spiral is giving me some trouble. It's from an old Dragon magazine article (#268; Secrets of the Brotherhood of True Flame; by Paul Fraser). What level would you assign it?

[SBLOCK=The AD&D spell for reference]

[/SBLOCK]

The original spell is like a mashup of AD&D protection from normal missiles and 5e's fire shield (4th level). To come up with the right mechanics, I compared to other 5e spells like warding wind (2nd level) and Otiluke's resilient sphere (4th level). The "roll a d20" mechanic I borrowed from blink (3rd level).

Here's my first stab at a conversion...

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Fire Spiral (renaming to Warding Flame for clarity)
4th-level abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (small piece of pumice)
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes

A transparent faint sparkling crimson field springs into being centered on you, and extending up to a 10-foot radius sphere away. You decide the field’s size when you cast this spell; it can be so small as to just encompass yourself, or any size in between. Tiny nonmagical missiles like arrows, crossbow bolts, and sling stones are instantly incinerated by the spell before they can reach any creature within it. Heavier ranged weapons like handaxes or ballista bolts, as well as all magical ammunition or ammunition fired from a magical bow, have a chance of being incinerated. Against such weapons, roll a d20; on a result of 1-10, the attack is uninterrupted, while on a result of 11 or higher, the weapon or ammunition is incinerated.
As a reaction to ammunition or a thrown weapon being incinerated by the spell, you can make it reflect off the field at any target within range. The attacker re-rolls their attack against a creature of your choice, and on a hit the target takes 4d6 fire damage in addition to the attack’s normal damage. Thereupon, it is incinerated.

Why not use disavantage?

Warding Flame: Level 3.
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (small piece of pumice)
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
A flame spirals around you burning up arrows before they reach you. Ranged weapon attacks against you have disadvantage, with all non-magical projectiles being incinerated. In addition, you can use your reaction to deal 2d6 damage to a creature who made a melee attack against you. You also have disadvantage on any ranged weapon attack, and take 2d6 fire damage if you make a melee attack.

I'd compare it to wind wall in the PHB as a frame of reference. It's basically a fire variant. That's 3rd level.

mellored said:

Why not use disavantage?

Warding Flame: Level 3.
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (small piece of pumice)
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
A flame spirals around you burning up arrows before they reach you. Ranged weapon attacks against you have disadvantage, with all non-magical projectiles being incinerated. In addition, you can use your reaction to deal 2d6 damage to a creature who made a melee attack against you. You also have disadvantage on any ranged weapon attack, and take 2d6 fire damage if you make a melee attack.

Click to expand...

I almost went that direction with the reaction doing damage when you sustain melee attacks, but then I thought it was too similar to fire shield in the PHB.

Jester David said:

I'd compare it to wind wall in the PHB as a frame of reference. It's basically a fire variant. That's 3rd level.

Click to expand...

Great catch, thank you!

I'm not sure why you changed the description from the previous version, and I'm glad you removed the 'practical immunity to both melee and ranged attacks' aspect of the original. I too would go with using the disadvantage mechanic though. Maybe about third level?

Gadget said:

I'm not sure why you changed the description from the previous version, and I'm glad you removed the 'practical immunity to both melee and ranged attacks' aspect of the original. I too would go with using the disadvantage mechanic though. Maybe about third level?

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a tricky spell to convert because conceptually it overlaps with wind wall (outright denying missile attacks) or its lesser version warding wind (imposing disadvantage on missile attack), otiluke's resilient sphere (defending against melee attacks too!), and fire shield (burning people who melee attack you).

The ribbon of flame description is cool, but it doesn't map well to the concept of a sphere of effect. And I felt giving it the ability to protect more than just yourself (which is too similar to fire shield) calls for the area of effect to be a sphere.

Converting the spell is threading a needle between all these other spells in terms of design space. Which is what led me to something that allows a mage PC (who rarely have good uses for their reactions) to take reactions.

I don't know, maybe it's not convertible to 5e? Better to just use a re-skinned wind wall like Jester suggested?

I think I figured out something that's balanced for 3rd level...

[MENTION=6801209]mellored[/MENTION] I took your disadvantage idea and blended it with the reaction thing – doing that allowed me to incorporate the melee element of the original AD&D spell without making it broken powerful.
[MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] I totally took your page of replicating part of the effect of wind wall, and used its 3d8 damage as a guide post.
[MENTION=23716]Gadget[/MENTION] I restored a lot of the original spell's flavor, while still keeping the sphere element - this helps me differentiate it from fire shield, gives the player a bit more flexibility with creative ideas, and helps me balance it for 3rd level.

Fire Spiral (considering renaming to Warding Flame)
3rd-level abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (small piece of pumice)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

A transparent sphere flowing with spirals of flame springs into being centered on you, moving with you. You decide the sphere’s size when you cast this spell: anywhere between a 10-foot radius and hugging your body. Any creature crossing the boundary of the sphere must make a Constitution saving throw, sustaining 4d6 fire damage on a failed save, and half that much on a successful one; a creature can sustain this damage no more than once per round.

Arrows, bolts, and other ordinary projectiles launched at targets within the sphere are incinerated and automatically miss. (Boulders hurled by giants or siege engines, and similar projectiles, are unaffected.)

As a reaction to a weapon attack against a target within the sphere, you can impose disadvantage on the attack roll; if the attack misses (or would be automatically incinerated), you make it reflect off the sphere toward a target within range. The attacker re-rolls their attack against a creature of your choice, and on a hit the target takes 2d6 fire damage in addition to the attack’s normal damage. Thereupon, the ammunition or weapon is incinerated if it is nonmagical.

That seems a bit powerful when compared against Wind Wall, also a third level spell, along with more utility than Fire Shield, a fourth level spell. The spell seems to want to do a lot of things, and that's understandable considering the original, and I'm not sure if that is really the 5e way. There are spells in 5e that have long descriptions, but those are usually spells that have complicated ending conditions or multiple saves for progressive effects. Then there are the ones that are just complex, like Prismatic Wall/Spray.

I mean the spell A) stops opponents from approaching you (or at least make them pay a heavy price for doing so), B) prevents ranged weapon attacks outright (magic weapons?), C) imposes disadvantage to melee weapon attacks against people in the sphere (but what if the opponent has already 'paid the price' for entering the sphere and is inside?), and D) all weapon attacks (ranged and melee) can be redirected on a miss against a target in range (at the cost of a reaction). Not to mention that you can protect multiple people with this sphere.

I presume it would be on the Wizard spell list? I think this spell, as written and if I understand it correctly, would be a bargain at fourth level.

[Edit: Feedback not applicable to new version of spell.]

Gadget said:

That seems a bit powerful when compared against Wind Wall, also a third level spell, along with more utility than Fire Shield, a fourth level spell. The spell seems to want to do a lot of things, and that's understandable considering the original, and I'm not sure if that is really the 5e way. There are spells in 5e that have long descriptions, but those are usually spells that have complicated ending conditions or multiple saves for progressive effects. Then there are the ones that are just complex, like Prismatic Wall/Spray.

I mean the spell A) stops opponents from approaching you (or at least make them pay a heavy price for doing so), B) prevents ranged weapon attacks outright (magic weapons?), C) imposes disadvantage to melee weapon attacks against people in the sphere (but what if the opponent has already 'paid the price' for entering the sphere and is inside?), and D) all weapon attacks (ranged and melee) can be redirected on a miss against a target in range (at the cost of a reaction). Not to mention that you can protect multiple people with this sphere.

I presume it would be on the Wizard spell list? I think this spell, as written and if I understand it correctly, would be a bargain at fourth level.

Click to expand...

Yep, definitely a wizard spell. Maybe sorcerer, not sure yet. And conceptually, you may be right - it does too much for 5e. That was my gut instinct, and why I initially placed it as higher than the AD&D 3rd level spell it was in Dragon magazine.

There are two guide posts I'm using to balance it... fire shield (it should deal less damage overall than fire shield ~40) and wind wall (its damage should be comparable or slightly superior to wind wall ~27).

Damage calculations
Wind wall does 3d8 damage in a 50' long x 20' high x 1' wide wall when it is created. Using DMG pg. 249 "Adjudicating Areas of Effect", we can surmise wind wall is expected to catch 2 targets (50 / 30, round up). And 2*3d8 = 27 damage.

Fire shield does 2d8 whenever you're hit with a melee attack. Generally, DPR calculations in 5e are done using a 3-round assumption thanks to DMG pg. 278 under "overall damage output." We can further assume that the caster is subject to 1-2 melee attacks each round (after all, they thought to cast fire shield so they were expecting melee). 3*2d8 =27 damage. 6*2d8=54 damage. We'll take the average and assume that's the amount fire shield was designed toward. (27+54)/2 = 40 damage.

Thinking about your points
A. makes opponents pay heavy price for approaching you: I assumed that one opponent would try to approach you in the combat, taking 14 (4d6) damage, and once others saw that they would adapt to other tactics if capable...if they realize bows don't work, then they'll need to switch to...heavier thrown weapons, spells, or other attack modes like breath weapons. Granted, there are plenty of monsters in the MM with some variant of bite/claw/sword/bow as their only attacks, so maybe you're right this needs tweaking...
B. prevents ranged weapon attacks: To be fair, wind wall does exactly the same thing, and on top of it deals damage and hedges out gases/gaseous form monsters, and keeps small flying creatures at bay! I mean, I literally took the wording of the second paragraph (about preventing ranged weapon attacks) from wind wall in the PHB.
C. imposes disadvantage to melee weapon attacks against people in the sphere: First, it's a reaction and you only get one 1/round. So the caster will only be able to impose disadvantage on one weapon attack per round. Second, imposing disadvantage 1/round as a reaction is actually weaker than shield (a 1st-level spell which grants +5 AC); because of the ability to protect allies, however, I considered it comparable. And you're right that it's meant to only apply to creatures attacking through the sphere, not once they're already inside of it; I'll need to clarify.
D. all weapon attacks (ranged and melee) can be redirected on a miss against a target in range: Again, this is bounded by the 1/round reaction rule. But I assumed that in our hypothetical 3-round scenario that imposing disadvantage would cause 2 out of 3 of those attacks to miss (mathematically disadvantage causes the probability of reaching a target AC to decrease by 1/2 to 1/3). So 2 attacks are actually redirected, and then the attack roll is done again, and I assume 1 attack hits. This begs the question...

How much damage does a monster facing a party capable of 3rd-level spells (i.e. 5th level) deal? There's no right answer, but we can make assumptions. For this example, I used the gladiator (CR 5) from the MM, with a spear attack dealing 11 (2d6+4) damage.

And that reflected attack actually deals extra fire damage due to fire spiral / warding flame, so... 18 (2d6+4+2d6 damage. This puts the damage output of the spell at 32 (14+18). Which is 5 points higher than wind wall, but 8 points lower than fire shield.

What do you guys think? Are my assumptions off base? Should I reduce the damage it deals, shave off a die here or there?