D&D 5E Lightning Bolt should be better.

[Dausuul]

You can always get in position to hit an enemy with lightning bolt without hitting party members, unless you are an evoker you can not do that nearly as well with fireball.

@Voadam's scenario is a perfect example of where you can't do that: You're in a tight corridor and the enemy has engaged the party's warriors in melee. There is no path from you to the enemy that does not pass through an ally's space, and there is nowhere you can move to which would give you a clear shot.

----------------------------------
W | . | F | X | . | X | . | X |
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. | . | P | X | . | . | X | . |
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(W = wizard, F = fighter, P = paladin, X = bad guys.)

This is typical for a corridor battle: Your front-liners wall off the corridor to protect you, Squishy McCasterson, and the enemy's front-liners engage them. This ought be the ideal case for lightning bolt (a bunch of foes lined up in a corridor)... but as it turns out, fireball here can get you a solid five hits on the baddies and zero on your friends, while lightning bolt can only get you three baddies and you have to hit a friend to do it.

In the old AD&D versions of these spells, everything would be quite different. You could throw down a forked lightning bolt and set the origin point right in front of the fighter and paladin, hitting all the bad guys and none of your allies; whereas a fireball would be channeled by the corridor and blast out in both directions, frying the entire party along with the enemy.

 

[Stalker0]

I think people are getting too caught up in explaining how lines can be "good", as obviously that is an encounter specific thing. If you are commonly facing enemies "down the hallway" then yes lightning bolt is going to look mighty good.

I think this is where we can look to the board as a more average weight. The board as a whole clearly thinks fireball is a better spell than lightning bolt most of the time. No one is saying lightning bolt is useless, no one is saying its garbage, but if you only have 1 spell to choose, most casters in most campaigns are going to choose fireball....that seems to be the common consensus built over years and years of debate on forums like this.

I do like the idea of giving lightning bolt some area adjustment options, the simplest being the 10 by 40 option, or maybe even 15 by 20 if you want to go for the "fat bolt". The flavor of that is cool, its literally how far apart you put your hands or something to that effect. Adding that little bit of flexibility seems like a nice option.

 

[jgsugden]

Also recall that far more creature have fire immunity than lightning immunity, and more have fire resistance than lightning resistance.

 

[commandercrud]

I have it bounce off walls for the full distance and shock anything in water nearby that line. Not to make the spell better, just because common sense.

 

[tetrasodium]

Also recall that far more creature have fire immunity than lightning immunity, and more have fire resistance than lightning resistance.

This is why the dearth of meaningful options is so problematic for casters who need to balance ac vrs resists, energy resist/immune, poor damage vrs moderate damage, & secondary/primary nondamage effects with area/coverage type provided by the spell's targeting allowance. If not for the options other than fireball & lightning bolt plus maybe a couple (de)buff/control spells that can border on questionable due to concentration & excessive save allowances there wouldn't be much discussion about lightning bolt rather than why all of these other spells arethings a caster should really consider first

 

[Asisreo]

It doesn't matter where your allies are positioned if you're a level 6 evocation wizard.

 

[Oofta]

Two points will make up a line. You can always get at least two foes. And it's rather easy to make sure that somewhere on the battlefield are two foes that don't also have a allie in the same line.

It is more applicable, that is not a DM style thing. Just how much more applicable will be up to the specific combat and foe positions. But over any reasonable amount of combats, it is pretty definite that more rounds will be found where lightning bolt can be cast without getting an ally than fireball.

Lightning bolt can be applied in more situations than fireball without hitting an ally. That is not DM dependent at all.

Only if you can get into position and there's nothing in the way like fellow PCs.

Depends on style of campaign.

 

[Stormonu]

Nope, but that would just slow the rate of decay when upcasting if it did Casters are still left with so many other awful spells that are bad even before they get worse by upcasting those that upcasting these two is made to look like a "good" option by virtue of being better than truly abhorrent options though.
Nope, but that would just slow the rate of decay when upcasting if it did Casters are still left with so many other awful spells that are bad even before they get worse by upcasting those that upcasting these two is made to look like a "good" option by virtue of being better than truly abhorrent options though.

With that in mind, would changing Fireball & Lightning bolt to scale up by 2d6 per level be out of line (assuming similar other direct damage spells were scaled up similarly)? Also, would it be better if Lightning Bolt was given back its “start & end point” instead of simply making the start point the caster?

 

[Mort]

This is why the dearth of meaningful options is so problematic for casters who need to balance ac vrs resists, energy resist/immune, poor damage vrs moderate damage, & secondary/primary nondamage effects with area/coverage type provided by the spell's targeting allowance. If not for the options other than fireball & lightning bolt plus maybe a couple (de)buff/control spells that can border on questionable due to concentration & excessive save allowances there wouldn't be much discussion about lightning bolt rather than why all of these other spells arethings a caster should really consider first

Before I fully respond, you are claiming that wizards don't have enough options against opponents with their 3rd level spells?

Because that's a pretty bold claim!

 

[Lanefan]

Let them rebound geometrically off hard surfaces, like billiard balls. Also force an aiming roll to make sure it goes where you want it to.

Having it start right at the caster is a hard nerf from the 1e version.