D&D 5E Changing Spell Elemental Damage

[MindxKiller]

So I was imagining a draconic sorcerer with a black dragon heritage (green for RP, black for all the mechanical gamey bits) however there aren't too many acid spells available to sorcerers, to my knowledge only 3 if you include Chromatic Orb and Elemental Evil pdf, not to mention that the best blast spells are fire. Would it be overpowered to retool scorching ray to deal acid damage instead of fire? What about Firebolt and Fireball? I'm a forever player so I don't quite have the system mastery of some DM's, hence why I'm curious if this character concept could be pulled off without being gimped. Thank you to all who help me figure this out!

 

[ad_hoc]

I think it would be fine to just let them have Melf's Acid Arrow.

AFAIK they don't have it for theme reasons.

 

[MindxKiller]

I think it would be fine to just let them have Melf's Acid Arrow.

AFAIK they don't have it for theme reasons.

The problem with that is Melf's Acid Arrow is an awful spell, a level 2 Chromatic Orb would do more damage, hell you might as well just cast a level 2 Magic Missile since its only 1 average damage less and auto hits.

 

[Larrin]

Mechanics-wise: an acid-dragon sorcerer casting fire spells that are retooled with acid damage should not be any more powerful than a fire-dragon sorcerer casting those same spells in their original form. So from a balance standpoint, it is probably not overpowered to do this.

Flavor-wise: This is where things can feel wrong. It does cheapen a spell's identity to just swap its damage type to whatever you happen to be playing at the time. On the other hand, a acid-dragon sorcerer currently has plenty of flavor, but nothing to use that flavor on, so maybe cheapening spell flavor is the right move.

A possible solution: work with DM to take a spell like fireball and make acidball be something more than just fire-ball with acid damage: maybe take all the fire spells and to make them acid spells split the damage it deals between this round and next round: acidball does 4d6 acid damage ref save for half, and next round (whether you save or not) take 4d6 acid (con save for half). Something like that makes the spells have their own identity, so they don't just look like cheap pallette swaps.

Of course, its probably easier to talk a DM into a simple damage type shift than rewritting a dozen spells, so YMMV a lot...

Bottom line: Do whatever you can to get access to more acid spells, improvising 'new' acid spells based on other spells won't shift the game balance all that much.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Would it be overpowered to retool scorching ray to deal acid damage instead of fire? What about Firebolt and Fireball?

Yes, it would be overpowered to change any fire spell to any other damage type. Fire spells and effects deal more damage because there are more creatures which resist fire. This is an important aspect of how they are balanced. You can also see this with magic weapons, where the flametongue deals +2d6 fire damage and the frostbrand only deals +1d6 cold damage. If you wanted to create an Acidbolt or Acidball, they would need to deal less damage in order to be balanced.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

The problem with that is Melf's Acid Arrow is an awful spell, a level 2 Chromatic Orb would do more damage.

That depends. If you have a 40% chance of missing the attack, melf's acid arrow and a 2nd level chromatic orb actually have the same average damage, and if you have a higher miss chance melf's acid arrow actually deals more damage on average, which is the benefit of dealing half damage on a miss.

As for the question of whether it would be overpowered to just change scorching ray to dealing acid damage, I can't say that it would be too powerful for the game to handle (it probably isn't), but I can say that acid is absolutely a more powerful damage type than fire because it is less common that things have resistance or immunity to acid damage - so if you are wanting to not change the balance of the game at all, you would want to avoid changing fire damage to another type of damage without there being some drawback, such as reducing the damage from 2d6 per ray to 2d4 or 1d10 per ray.

 

[MindxKiller]

Yes, it would be overpowered to change any fire spell to any other damage type. Fire spells and effects deal more damage because there are more creatures which resist fire. This is an important aspect of how they are balanced. You can also see this with magic weapons, where the flametongue deals +2d6 fire damage and the frostbrand only deals +1d6 cold damage. If you wanted to create an Acidbolt or Acidball, they would need to deal less damage in order to be balanced.

Comparing flame tongue to frost brand isn't a good comparison because frost brand also gives resistance to fire, the rest of your comment makes sense though. Though when you really look at the monster manual, there are only 38 fire resistant creatures out of roughly 430, and only 40 fire immune, 8 of which being "good" creatures that you are unlikely to battle. However, the vast majority of things that resist fire or are immune to fire are devils/demons, the rest being red dragons and elementals and aside from elementals those are usually saved for rare occasions in most D&D campaigns. The downside of a red dragon sorcerer is so miniscule that the slightly less common acid resist/immunity doesn't seem very powerful, whose to say the dragon isn't black instead of red? Also, while very small, there are a few creatures vulnerable to fire, yet nothing is vulnerable to acid. When you look at the whole picture, I'd say its a wash.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Though when you really look at the monster manual, there are only 38 fire resistant creatures out of roughly 430, and only 40 fire immune, 8 of which being "good" creatures that you are unlikely to battle. However, the vast majority of things that resist fire or are immune to fire are devils/demons, the rest being red dragons and elementals and aside from elementals those are usually saved for rare occasions in most D&D campaigns.

Demons/devils and dragons are iconic big bads, though. Fire will fail you when you need it most, but is slightly more effective against the weaker foes you could probably beat anyway.

The boss dragon at the end of the adventure could be black, but it's probably going to be red. That's just how things tend to work out, unless there's a very specific reason to the contrary. It's kind of like how swords are more popular than axes, so you're more likely to find a magic sword than a magic axe.

 

[Sunseeker]

I allow spells to be reflavored into another damage type. If a player wants this option I basically say "You can either take the original, or the mechanically identical spell with the damage of the type you want. Not both. Ever." It makes no difference to me, it just means you're going to be pretty useless when we run into things immune to acid.

 

[Creamsteak]

On the topic at-hand, fire is the most fleshed out of any elemental damage type and it's also the most resisted besides... I think... poison. Poison is sort of a special snowflake and there are just a ton of different categories of creatures that are straight-up immune to it.

Scorching Ray in particular is also interesting, as written I believe, in that it gains the benefit of the dragon sorcerer's damage multiple times.

Another note is that in this edition, unlike 3e/3.5e/Pathfinder at least, you don't need a ton of spells to cover your damage needs. You just need some general bases covered as a sorcerer. You need something good for single target, something good as a single-action cantrip, and something for AOE and/or Multi-target.

Acid has a cantrip, and it's actually one of the higher damage cantrips when 2 enemies are next to each other, with the disadvantage being that the damage is spread out over multiple targets (which is kinda fine for dragon sorcerer since you'll add +Cha to damage on both as well).

Chromatic Orb isn't... bad... but it's not competitive with most things.

Melf's Acid Arrow doesn't seem that bad to me. You're also adding +Cha damage on the second turn, and you can twin-spell it. It's fairly par with scorching ray till you start stacking up those rays and those extra +Cha modifiers.

What's really missing is an AOE or multi-target effect. Acid Fog is an iconic one from previous editions that you might be able to re-skin.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/acidFog.htm
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/acid-fog

6th level spells though are pretty high for your first real aoe damage. Either way, at my table I'd try to figure out something reasonable to make any element work. I also want them to all have slightly different special things about them, and fire seems to be straight up about burning things with damage. That seems like the gimmick it has been given. Acid... so-far (ignoring Chromatic Sphere) seems to be multi-hit (either multiple targets or multiple rounds) where the damage might even be a little bit better than fire if whatever special circumstances are met and you don't mind the fact your damage is spread out (over multiple targets or multiple turns).