D&D 5E Best and Worst Damage Types

[CleverNickName]

Otherwise you've obsoleted fire spells. Lightning better than fire.

I should have mentioned that these were not intended to be for spellcasters everywhere; these re-skinned spells were made for my character only. They were not intended to be substitutions or replacements across the board.

Also, lighting isn't necessarily "better" than fire, any more than it's "better" than cold or slashing. It depends on the campaign you are adventuring in, and the creatures you expect to face there. Obviously my DM had already considered these things before approving the modifications. Sounds like your campaign might be different from hers. (All the more reason to encourage players to check with their DM when making minor tweaks.)

 

[Zardnaar]

I should have mentioned that these were not intended to be for spellcasters everywhere; these re-skinned spells were made for my character only. They were not intended to be substitutions or replacements across the board.

Also, lighting isn't necessarily "better" than fire, any more than it's "better" than cold or slashing. It depends on the campaign you are adventuring in, and the creatures you expect to face there. Obviously my DM had already considered these things before approving the modifications. Sounds like your campaign might be different from hers. (All the more reason to encourage players to check with their DM when making minor tweaks.)

There's a lot more fire resistant/immune critters than lightning. Almost 2-1.

Lightning Bolt traditionally has dealt the same damage as FB but with smaller size but more tactical.

The other damage types are usually weaker or lack the AoE.

The other elemental types are better when fire doesn't do it's trick.

Shocking grasp for example less damage and range than firebolt, picks up a rider though.

If frost dealt the same damage as fire and was more Dex save based it would also be better for general adventuring.

 

[Coroc]

Cold is one of the best to use vs. players since it often targets Con. Some players got evasion or improved evasion, so have fu ndoing anything to them with your lighnting bolt (Hint you won't).

 

[Zardnaar]

Cold is one of the best to use vs. players since it often targets Con. Some players got evasion or improved evasion, so have fu ndoing anything to them with your lighnting bolt (Hint you won't).

Most players also have decent con scores though. 14 at least with the standard array.

I try not to meta against the PCs to often.

 

[Nebulous]

I always liked Vile damage (was it from Book of Vile Darkness in 3e?) that couldn't be resisted by hardly anything. I would sometimes split that half and half with another damage for a monster if it was particularly evil/nasty.

 

[Dausuul]

Call Lightning is a great 3rd level blasting spell (when usable). You can only cast it outdoors or in large indoor areas, but while it doesn't go as much damage as Fireball in one round, it does more damage on average per spell slot.

For one 3rd (or 4th/5th/etc. if upcast) spell slot, you get up to 10 minutes of lightning bolts, once per round. Each bolt does 3d10 damage (with an additional d10 per upcast level). So in 2 rounds, you've outdamaged a Fireball on average (33 vs. 28), and everything past that is all gravy.

With its 20-foot radius, the fireball is apt to hit 3-4 targets on average, and it doesn't cost your action on subsequent rounds. Call lightning might hit 2 targets on the first round, but you aren't going to get more than 1 after that since it is trivially easy for enemies to spread out enough that you can't catch two of them next to each other.

Assuming a 65% chance to fail the save, fireball deals 80.85 damage on the first round (28 damage to 3.5 targets, halved on a successful save). Call lightning deals 27.225 on the first round (16.5 to 2 targets, halved on a successful save).

On subsequent rounds, the fireball caster can cast fire bolt, a cantrip costing no spell slots. Again assuming a 65% chance to hit, this is 7.15 damage per round. Call lightning deals 13.6125 on later rounds (one target instead of two).

In fact, it takes 9 rounds for call lightning to outdamage fireball. By that time, the battle will be over or you will have lost concentration. And that isn't even getting into the superior value of damage on the first round (an enemy that gets incinerated on the first round doesn't get to damage the party on rounds 2+). The storm cloud summoned by call lightning is immobile, so you can't take it with you into future battles unless you can force the enemy to come to the site of the first combat.

 

[Esker]

Was going to point out the action economy of Call Lightning vs Fireball, but @Dausuul beat me to it. On top of all of that, Call Lightning uses your concentration.

I'm playing a Tempest Cleric in a campaign right now, and even I hardly ever use Call Lightning, despite the option to maximize the damage a couple of times. Using a 3rd level slot, and assuming the 65% chance to fail the save, even with the optimistic assumption that I could hit two targets each round, over three rounds at level 6, I can expect to do:

Round 1: 2 * (30 * 0.65 + 15 * 0.35) = 49.5
Round 2: 2 * (30 * 0.65 + 15 * 0.35) = 49.5
Round 3: 2 * (16.5 * 0.65 + 8.25 * 0.35) = 27.2
Total: 126.2

Suppose instead I use Spirit Guardians in round 1, maximize Shatter in round 2, and then Toll the Dead in round 3. I could of course maximize Shatter in rounds 2 and 3, but I want to try to roughly balance resource cost, figuring that the extra Channel Divinity is roughly equivalent to a 2nd level spell slot. Of course if I'm using Call Lightning I don't even have the option to expend more resources to nova. I'll make the conservative assumption that my Spirit Guardians and Shatter only catch two targets.

Round 1: 2 * (13.5 * 0.65 + 6.25 * 0.35) = 21.9
Round 2: 21.9 + 2 * (24 * 0.65 + 12 * 0.35) + 13 * 0.65 = 70
Round 3: 21.9 + 13 * 0.65 = 30.4
Total: 122.3

So, for an even resource cost, even with a conservative assumption about targets (compared to a somewhat liberal assumption in Call Lightning's case), I'm doing about the same damage using spirit guardians and one maxed Shatter that I could do with Call Lightning and two maxed bolts.

Now, under these assumptions, the Call Lightning plan looks clearly better, since (a) the damage is more front-loaded, and (b) once I have 2x Channel Divinity / SR, two channel divinity uses is cheaper than one channel divinity and one 2nd level spell slot. But if I allow for the possibility of catching three enemies in Spirit Guardians and/or Shatter, plus the option of a bigger nova, it's rarely going to make a lot of sense to use Call Lightning even on the class best suited to use it. The main exception is if you're facing flying or highly mobile creatures, in which case Spirit Guardians is tough to leverage.

 

[CleverNickName]

There's a lot more fire resistant/immune critters than lightning. Almost 2-1.

Only if your DM uses them, though. The player doesn't have control over what critters they will face. This statistic comes up a lot in these topics, as if the DM were using a computer program to randomly select monsters. But the truth is, there can be 100% resistant/immune creatures in a campaign if the DM decides it. Or 0%. So it's always good to check with your DM before requesting a house-rule like mine.

Lightning Bolt traditionally has dealt the same damage as FB but with smaller size but more tactical.

True, depending on the battlefield size and shape that your DM is using. The player has limited control over what the battlefield is going to look like. I'm not comparing fireball to lightning bolt; I'm just describing a house-rule for a spell variant. I don't think it's as big of a deal as you say.

The other damage types are usually weaker or lack the AoE.

I'm only swapping out only the damage types--things like size, shape, range, duration, casting time, components, any extra effects, etc. remain unchanged. The result isn't an unbalanced spell; the result is more versatility for those "other damage types." Again, I'm only talking about a house-rule here, for a single character.

The other elemental types are better when fire doesn't do it's trick.

Shocking grasp for example less damage and range than firebolt, picks up a rider though.

If you say so; I think we have different ideas of "better." The house-rule doesn't replace shocking grasp with an electrical firebolt, or even to compare one cantrip versus the other. It just gives my character a signature spell for flavor purposes.

If frost dealt the same damage as fire and was more Dex save based it would also be better for general adventuring.

I don't follow. Damage and Dex saves are pretty much for combat only. What you mean by "general adventuring"?

 

[Dausuul]

With regard to the main topic, I did a bunch of analysis on this a couple years ago. (Note that I weighted the damage types point-for-point; I did not try to account for which types of spells deal more raw damage.) The summary:

• Poison is terrible. Most constructs, elementals, and fiends, and nearly all undead, are totally immune. The effectiveness gap between poison and everything else is stark, and it only gets worse as you go up in level.
• Fire, cold, and lightning are fairly close. Point for point, fire is a bit weaker than cold and lightning, but the difference is not dramatic except at the very highest levels (CR 17+).
• Acid and necrotic are better, and psychic and thunder better still.
• Radiant, force, and "magical physical" (slashing/piercing/bludgeoning from magical weapons) are the best.
• I did not do a separate analysis for nonmagical physical, given the large number of variations (adamantine, silver, etc.) and the fact that it all becomes irrelevant as soon as you get a magic weapon.
• If you know what creature types you're likely to be facing, the rankings change significantly. For example, if you are in an undead-heavy campaign, fire is significantly better than either cold or lightning, and necrotic is quite bad.

 

[FrogReaver]

While interesting, there is no mandate that dms use a PHB distribution of monsters. as such expect results to vary drastically by campaign.