D&D 5E Lightning Bolt should be better.

[Steampunkette]

What about breaking the line?

Allow the Lightning Bolt to turn 45 degrees (From straight to diagonal, from diagonal to horizontal, from horizontal to diagonal, etc) every 10ft of it's length.

Then, at least, you could aim it to hit enemies, turn around an ally, and then turn back to hit a more distant enemy. Or turn it into a hook to zap someone "Behind" you, relative to where you're firing from. It would also look more like a lightning bolt, rather than a laser on the battlemap.

Or you could create a "Branch" every time it hits a target. "Select two other targets within 15ft of the character in the line of effect. Those two targets take an amount of damage equal to the number of dice rolled against the character in the line". Dealt 8d6 to the guy in the line? Those two other targets within 15 feet take 8 damage.

Way more complex, but not super big.

 

[Stormonu]

Perhaps a variant, more like Chain Lightning (Arc Lightning?)? Start at the caster, select a target in range. From that target, select another target until the chain is 120 feet long - so the bolt can zigzag around the battlefield, hitting targets - but it’s only one bolt. Can’t hit the same target more than once.

 

[J-H]

For a while in 3e or 3.5 or something, you could run Lightning Bolt down the border between two squares, functionally making it 10' wide. That made it a lot better.

 

[el-remmen]

My lightning bolts still bounce. My fireballs still make 33,000 cubic feet of fire. Cast carefully.

 

[aco175]

For a while in 3e or 3.5 or something, you could run Lightning Bolt down the border between two squares, functionally making it 10' wide. That made it a lot better.

Apparently Xanathar's does allow this as a clarification. It does make it better and could be all that is needed. Harder for casting at a angle or diagonal. Then, you may need to pull out a 1" wide strip of paper to see or just wing it and favor the player on who is hit. Sometimes we allow advantage on saves if the DM or player is unsure if a monster should be hit or not.

 

[Mannahnin]

The division between fireball and lightning bolt made sense when the primary focus of play was dungeon crawling; then you could use fireballs in rooms (ideally big ones you weren't in) and lightning bolts for long corridors.

Well, remember that the division originates in Chainmail, and that both were designed for an outdoor battlefield. Under their first rules, Lightning Bolt used the rules for Cannons, and Fireball used the rules for a heavy catapult.

Fireball in OD&D might or might not be good in dungeons, depending on the size of the spaces involved, though it did say that it would elongate in narrow spaces. By the time we got to AD&D Gary explicitly codified the volume of the fireball (all 33,0000 cubic feet) and make quite explicit that it would expand out of narrower spaces, making it dangerous as heck to use in dungeons with short/winding corridors and smaller and/or low-ceilinged chambers.

I love some of the writing Dan Collins and Jeff Rients have done on how to actually run that in play without it being a big pain, though I was relieved in later editions when they got rid of those calculations.

Delta's D&D Hotspot

Math, history, and design of old-school D&D.

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[tetrasodium]

Think about what it would mean to add a stun to lightning bolt from a balance perspective - you'd be negating at least 1 action from each target that failed a save and giving advantage to attacks on them. That would be ridiculously stronger than fireball - and both of these spells start off overpowered. Fireball, lightning bolt and hypnotic pattern were all intentionally designed to be signature spells stronger than other spells of their level.

When you look at the at will damage disparity between martians and casters the problem looks a lot more like those spells not brushing shoulder
S with fireball & lightning bolt are probably just "ridiculously" under powered

 

[Blue]

The lightning bolt spell should be better.

Maybe a minor stunning or shocking effect. Or increased damage again metal armour. Not sure what, but lightning is damned cool to be stuck with a little used spell.

So let's take a spell that already does damage above it's level (it and fireball are noticeably better than other 3rd level spells), and is more applicably to when it can be cast than fireball because it's a lot easier to miss allies, and improve it? (Note: please read what I actually wrote before responding about how fireball rocks. I didn't say it was a "better" spell than fireball, I said it was applicable to more situations because of more selective targeting.)

It's already one of the best-in-class 3rd level damage spells, it doesn't need a buff.

 

[Blue]

Being a line just makes it impractical (and that goes for other line effects too). It's a red-letter day when you can hit three opponents with a line effect, where radius effects can affect multiple targets much, much easier.

Being a line makes it a heck of a lot more practical then the celebrated fireball. There are so many more situations you can use it to hit opponents and miss allies then a radius spell. Radius effects like fireball are often completely impractical to use without hitting allies as well.

You have this one 180 degrees backwards. It sounds like you are arguing something different than practicality.

 

[jgsugden]

For those arguing about whether a line makes it more or less easy to use it in combat, I will remind folks that this is highly dependent upon encounter designed and DM style. If your DM metagames to reduce the chance of lines of enemies forming, or metagames to give you excellent lines, your experience will be different than a DM that ignores the chance of lines being formed. If your DM likes dungeons with long corridors and lots of low level monsters as opposed to big rooms and a couple beefy monsters, you'll have different experiences.

I've played in a few adventure paths on Roll20 with prepopulated monster positions. In one, I had lightning bolt, and in another another PC had lightning bolt. In the one that I had it, I added gravity fissure as a spell as well towards the end of the game. Readied gravity fissure followed immediately by lightning bolt.... That was fun. I only pulled it off a couple times, but it was shockingly effective. Any creature within 30 feet of the line was potentially at risk. I was sad when the gravity fissure did them in by itself.