Is Spell Blasting Doomed to Suck Even More in Next than it did in 3.x?

[Dausuul]

I'd like to see Next move back towards the fireball being the answer to hordes, for sure - maybe with a larger blast radius. It does have the built-in option to spend a higher slot for more damage which is nice, but I'd rather see that for Lightning Bolt (which it does have) and give Fireball an option to increase the area. I don't really expect that to happen outside of some kind of magical feat but it would give a wizard some more options during play.

Have you played a Next wizard? Fireball works just dandy against hordes. Bigger AoEs are available with higher-level spells: Cone of cold targets a 60-foot cone, sunburst has a 50-foot radius, and meteor swarm creates four 40-foot-radius blasts. (Meteor swarm also has a listed range of 1 mile, in case you want to bombard the dungeon without ever leaving town.) Unfortunately, the playtest spell list is not all it could be, but it gives us an idea what's available.

Now, when the horde consists of giants or trolls or something... yeah, you won't be able to slaughter them all with one blasting spell, and I think that's as it should be. Not everything is easily zorched into oblivion; this is why mass hold monster was invented. But you can go well beyond low-level humanoid mooks. For instance, wights, wraiths, ogres, werewolves, and medusae are all within the average damage range of a single mid-level blast.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

Sunburst and Meteor Swarm are nice, but they are 8th and 9th level spells. Cone of cold is good too but it emanates from the user so it's a little different in practice, more like a flamethrower than a grenade toss.

When using a grid a 20' radius can be limiting against large creatures, so it would be nice to have a blasting spell where the AoE was adjustable by level rather than the damage. If throwing it as a 5th level slot meant a 6d6 40' radius rather than an 8d6 20' radius. I'm not wedded to it, I'm just thinking out loud.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I don't agree that blasters in 3.5 were bad. Some of those ray spells were really good. Ranged touch to hit, no save. For multiple target damage, no other characters where close, except the cleric/druids. At high level you have so many spell slots it basically isn't a limitation anymore, especially since those ray spells are level 2 spells and a ring of wizardy lets you have like 10-12 of them.

... haste as mentioned here is a good alternative, especially in a large party. We had up to seven players, so yeah, it was effective. At the same time it also made the wizard use less spells in easy encounters so in the hard encounters he could quicken those ray spells and use them in addtion to high level spells. (Assuming some cheaper way of using metamagic feats like rods/wands or PrC features)

I am playing a blaster wizard in 4e, and sure, he isn't the most effective character in all encounters, but the dailies can easily rack up 100-200 damage at low levels while other characters have dailies that do 3W+str damage.

I haven't looked at the specifics of 5e, but I am thinking Wizards will still be the best multi-target damage dealers there are. In addition, they seem to have more tricks up their sleave in 5e than in 4e.

To sum it up: I don't think there are any reason to worry about the wizards of 5e to feel gimped.

 

[Dausuul]

Sunburst and Meteor Swarm are nice, but they are 8th and 9th level spells. Cone of cold is good too but it emanates from the user so it's a little different in practice, more like a flamethrower than a grenade toss.

When using a grid a 20' radius can be limiting against large creatures, so it would be nice to have a blasting spell where the AoE was adjustable by level rather than the damage. If throwing it as a 5th level slot meant a 6d6 40' radius rather than an 8d6 20' radius. I'm not wedded to it, I'm just thinking out loud.

Like I said, it's a playtest. We don't have a complete spell list yet. Those three spells give us an idea of what we can expect, in terms of AoE, from a "native" 5th-level or 8th-level or 9th-level blasting spell.

And I wouldn't be surprised if we got a spell-widening option in the feat list. Mages in this packet don't really have any feat support; I don't see a single feat that I would even consider for my mage before maxing out my Intelligence.

I don't agree that blasters in 3.5 were bad.

Well, "bad" is relative. 3.5E blasters were quite solid by any reasonable standard. Pick up Empower Spell to boost your damage output, Energy Substitution to get around damage resistance, and a few orb spells for magic resistant foes, and you'd contribute on par with a well-built noncaster.

It's just that when you looked at what save-or-lose and utility spells could do, blasting was... well, let's just say it was a sub-optimal choice.

 

[N'raac]

-The AD&D Fireball had no dice cap (15th level MU = 15d6 fireball) and covered considerably more area indoors because of the volume of the blast (as noted in the spell description). Outdoors it had a 20-yard radius instead of 20', which was nice too.

-The AD&D Lightning Bolt could be bounced off a wall to double-dip on damage and blast a line of enemies twice. It also had no dice cap.

-2E capped the dice but left in the volume and rebound rules in the spell descriptions so they were still good but not as awesomely powerful as before

-3E kept the cap and dropped the volume/area/rebound fun

It also made use of a fireball in a dungeon practical. 1e and 2e saw a lot of backblast accidents, and a lot of wizards who could apparently do complex spatial geometry in the time it takes to select a spell - too bad players needed considerably longer...wake me when the Wizard decides his next move.

I'd like to see Next move back towards the fireball being the answer to hordes, for sure - maybe with a larger blast radius. It does have the built-in option to spend a higher slot for more damage which is nice, but I'd rather see that for Lightning Bolt (which it does have) and give Fireball an option to increase the area. I don't really expect that to happen outside of some kind of magical feat but it would give a wizard some more options during play.

Making the 20' radius 6d6 Fireball the baseline and allowing additional dice and radius (traded off, say) for using higher level slots would work. Your high level spells also better be pretty awesome if you can use that L9 slot to optimize any of a number of lower level spells instead.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Well, "bad" is relative. 3.5E blasters were quite solid by any reasonable standard. Pick up Empower Spell to boost your damage output, Energy Substitution to get around damage resistance, and a few orb spells for magic resistant foes, and you'd contribute on par with a well-built noncaster.

I don't really agree to your finishing comment here at all. A well-built noncaster is most often quite specialized and are only useful in certain situations, for instance in situations where you can get into melee range. A blaster can easily have a good selection of utility spells that makes them a lot more useful in all situations and with damage on par with the noncasters in their most favoured circumstances. The only character that's probably better than a blaster, with maybe 20% of spells utility or control (acid fog for instance) is a save-or-die monkey or codzilla.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't really agree to your finishing comment here at all. A well-built noncaster is most often quite specialized and are only useful in certain situations, for instance in situations where you can get into melee range. A blaster can easily have a good selection of utility spells that makes them a lot more useful in all situations and with damage on par with the noncasters in their most favoured circumstances. The only character that's probably better than a blaster, with maybe 20% of spells utility or control (acid fog for instance) is a save-or-die monkey or codzilla.

So, essentially, blasters outperform noncasters to the extent that they use non-blasting spells?

Well, yes. Can't argue with that. It's not as if there's a sharp dividing line between "blaster" and "utility/save-or-die wizard." It's a continuum. But to the extent that a blaster functions as a blaster, I find they perform about as well as a well-built noncaster--and a noncaster who is too specialized to contribute much of the time is, by definition, not well-built. Keep in mind that magic items are part of your build in 3E, so if you're a melee warrior, your build should include whatever items you need to get to the foe and pound on them.

 

[Blackbrrd]

So, essentially, blasters outperform noncasters to the extent that they use non-blasting spells?

Basically, I am arguing that 3.5 blasters compete with noncasters in single target damage (which we were discussing I believe), outdo them in multitarget damage (by a wide margin, I am guessing you agree here) and in addition have a lot of utility and versatility that noncasters usually don't have. In other words, I am arguing that 3.5 blasters are still a couple of tiers above noncasters.

The reason I brought it up is that I think one of the premises of this thread is wrong, and that if blasters in 5e are a bit less powerful than they were in 3.5, they will still be plenty powerful. In the earlier editions, the casters were real glass cannons, while in 3.5 they had lost the "glass" part of glasscannon. If the blasters in 5e are a bit less powerful than earlier, but are just "cannons" instead of "glasscannons", it's something I am fine with.

Keep in mind that magic items are part of your build in 3E, so if you're a melee warrior, your build should include whatever items you need to get to the foe and pound on them.

That really depends, the "wishlist" was brought into the game in 4e, in 3e, it was much more up to the DM or you would have to depend on a caster in the party taking item creation feats. Besides, even with items like boots of flying, as a melee character, you would have serious problem handling fast flying monsters like dragons. The damage output when you can't full-attack is usually severly hindered. That was at least the case in many of the parties I played in.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

It also made use of a fireball in a dungeon practical. 1e and 2e saw a lot of backblast accidents, and a lot of wizards who could apparently do complex spatial geometry in the time it takes to select a spell - too bad players needed considerably longer...wake me when the Wizard decides his next move.

Oh I agree, and it was one of the most selectively applied things in the game. Fighting in tight quarters? "It's a 20' radius." A swarm of bad guys coming across a large open cave? "Well, with a 20' average ceiling height it should cover (math math math) the entire cavern right up to here and shoot 50' back down these entrance tunnels".

Making the 20' radius 6d6 Fireball the baseline and allowing additional dice and radius (traded off, say) for using higher level slots would work. Your high level spells also better be pretty awesome if you can use that L9 slot to optimize any of a number of lower level spells instead.

You can already flip the fireball or lightning bolt up to a 9th level slot for a 12d6 damage in the latest playtest packet. The FB is still a 50' range with a 20' blast radius but it's a pretty strong blast within those limits, and it should be for a 9th level slot! Meteor swarm gives you a mile range and four 40' radius blasts for 6d6 fire and 6d6 bludgeoning, so I can't think of a situation where fireball is mechanically better if you're looking to blow a 9th level spell. A 12d6 lightning bolt might be handy enough in a dungeon situation though so I can see it coming up sometime.

My idea for allowing the radius to be the level-slider on fireball does have one potential limit: the 50' range of the spell. Even if you allow, say 5' extra per slot, then at 9th level you'd have a spell with a 50' range and a 50' blast radius. Any more than that and we're right back into the old "fire on my position" problem of self (and likely party)-immolating mages and I don't think anyone is looking to make that a more common occurrence.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Btw, one thing I do like is that spells don't automatically scale due to caster level. It's one of the reasons you had quadratic casters in 3.5 and earlier editions.