D&D 5E Lightning Bolt should be better.

[Lanefan]

Same goes with Druids. Druids are powerful when they can turn into an animal etc but the spells in dungeons are not great

Of course they're not - that's the point! They're a specialty class - great in outdoor settings but poor indoors or underground.

 

[Garthanos]

Personally I think damage spells need more minor riders.

Stuff like:

• Creatures damaged by lighting bolt may not take reactions until the end of your next turn.
• Creatures in heavy or medium metallic armor have disadvantage on the dex save.
• You can add up to your spellcasting modifier bonus of targets within 5' of the edge of the lightning bolt as additional targets.

1 means you can run up, bolt, then flee without taking OAs.

2 is mostly fluff, but fun fluff.

3 I hope helps the targetting problem. It makes it 5' of doom and 15' of targeting in a line. Might even be too good.

I like those I added something like the first to my 4e lightning bolt ... how shocking

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Of course they're not - that's the point! They're a specialty class - great in outdoor settings but poor indoors or underground.

Errrrrr... I play a Druid in one of my campaigns and the idea that I'm "poor indoors or underground" on him is pretty bizarre. He's one of the most powerful PCs. Most of the best Druid spells don't rely on being outdoors. Maybe it's just LFQW or I'm good at picking spells but I actually prefer indoors/dungeons because smaller rooms and more choke points and corridors where people can't go around stuff actually make a lot of Druid spells more powerful.

 

[jgsugden]

You're right, I used hyperbole.

It didn't come off as that way. It came off as you literally thinking you can ALWAYS get 2 - when you can't always for many obvious reasons which multiple people have pointed out, but you disregard.

And you're trying to use a technicality of the debate to avoid engaging with the actual meat of the statement.

I've handled my meat thoroughly.

Yes, these have existed for editions. Which doesn't support anyone's point.

LB was actually quite different in earlier ones in that it rebounded off walls so in enclosed spaces and therefore mroe likely for there not to be a shot that would avoid allies. So LB has definitely not been consistent in how applicable it is over the editions, and basing an argument that with a foundation that won't support it.

Frankly, BS. Yes, the bolt that extended back (even though they used the word rebound) but for the most part it was not horrendously different. Lining up foes to get hit without hitting allies, has been similar in each edition although some editions have given us more tools to reposition.

And I say that while it can vary on those factors, you still will find that LB is more applicable than FB across general play. Both statements can and are true. Almost every combat has melee combatants on at least one side. Once your party members are intermixed it is very hard to use FB and still avoid all allies. LB has an easier time with it.

Stop trying to make absolute statements about LB, when the discussion is LB vs. FB.

The first half of my quoted text applied to both. I noted how it specifically applied to lightning bolt because that is where we disagree. I fail to see how that was inappropriate.

Your position is quite clear. The experience of many others greatly differs from yours based upon many people posting in this thread. That is all that needs to be said, as all you're doing is repeating yourself and dismissing the views of all the people that have disagreed with you without truly addressing the meat, as you say, of their statements. For example, I provided you a starter list of situations in which 2 targets were either impossible, or unlikely. Most of them are common, and while a few are a bit more uncommon, I have seen all of the ones I suggested this year - in roughly 3 months, of D&D. Dismissing them as unrealistic was just ... hollow.

 

[NotAYakk]

Looking at your level 1
, 27*3.5=84, that's a short sword not a 2 handed sword & the fighter apparently started with 10 strength.

I accounted for misses. I also made accuracy errors. Both fixed.

A level 1 fighter with 16 strength and a greatsword and defensive fighting style hit for 10 and has +5 to hit. Against a 21 AC foe immune to crits that is 5*10/20 = 2.5 damage per action. I picked 21 AC and no crits to make math easier.

Changing the AC downward makes it even less covex up.

Then you get 24 actions/day.

And yes, optional rules like feats, giving out magic items, and multiclassing can bend the curve up. DMs who use those have to rebalance D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

Errrrrr... I play a Druid in one of my campaigns and the idea that I'm "poor indoors or underground" on him is pretty bizarre. He's one of the most powerful PCs. Most of the best Druid spells don't rely on being outdoors. Maybe it's just LFQW or I'm good at picking spells but I actually prefer indoors/dungeons because smaller rooms and more choke points and corridors where people can't go around stuff actually make a lot of Druid spells more powerful.

Cool. I was replying to someone complaining that Druids aren't useful in dungeons, and trying to point out that taking a specialty class and then complaining about its weakness is a bit much.

 

[tetrasodium]

I accounted for misses. I also made accuracy errors. Both fixed.

A level 1 fighter with 16 strength and a greatsword and defensive fighting style hit for 10 and has +5 to hit. Against a 21 AC foe immune to crits that is 5*10/20 = 2.5 damage per action. I picked 21 AC and no crits to make math easier.

Changing the AC downward makes it even less covex up.

Then you get 24 actions/day.

And yes, optional rules like feats, giving out magic items, and multiclassing can bend the curve up. DMs who use those have to rebalance D&D.

"and defensive style "is just noise with no bearing on damage, +1 bonus to the wearer's ac has no impact on how much damage their attacks deal. Also I'm aware it would deal ten damage with 16 strength which is why I said & showed as much when I corrected you. Why did you quote the first part of that post and omit the part where I showed that when repeating it?

"21 ac" is also a meaningless number unless you define the level fighter you are looking at & we know that at nearly any level after 5-10 a fighter built with some level of sanity will meet or drastically exceed a d12 cantrip. There is also the fact that your looking at an ac value almost exclusively filled by ancient dragons & named creatures where magic resistance legendary resistance & energy resist/immune is incredibly common if not universal making an already horrific matchup flat out absurd

As to that bolt point, absolutely not. That claim is completely false gibberish because we are talking about the edition where wotc wrote this across multiple sources

Spoiler

Wotc needs to design casters for the game they created with the rules & advice they provide not some hypothetical spherical cow they make serious efforts to avoid having ever exist. Even if we use that spherical cow as a hypothetical for the purpose of discussion there's the fact that the magic items added for casters in TCoE in no way even manage to narrow the disparity to a meaningful degree because too many different parts of 5e are coded to combat any attempt to "rebalance d&d" without rebuilding huge chunks.

We can top all of that off with the fact that we know for a fact that the fault is unequivocally with WotC rather than the GM's failure to rebuild 5e because AL gm's are forbidden from doing such things while both feats and magic items are entirely the default. This foul smelling disaster is 100% on the bottom of WotC's shoe & as recently as tasha's they are still effectively saying "I don't smell anything" while leaving foul smelling footprints based on the alternative class features spells & magic items rather than making so much as a halfhearted attempt at working towards a solution for this.

edit: spreadsheets have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years to help humans communicate large datsets & significant amounts of math. I've linked you to this one a few times that covers this kinda stuff including misses in extreme detail, your welcome to use it but google sheets & I believe office online sheets are both free so there's no reason tryng to do themultistep math your aiming for in text on a forum post

 

[NotAYakk]

The 21 AC/defensive was literally to make math easier.

A fixed AC is correct, because we are measuiring character power. Measuring it against similar level foes convolves character power and monster power. So I picked the simpler option.

21 ac and crit immune means avarage damage on a hit times accuracy divided by 20 is your damage per swing. And that is the same ac as the simple character.

If you lower AC, this causes a larger percent increase to low level fighters compared to high level fighters. Which makes it more convex down.

Keeping things simple is about jnderstanding the math. I can do this in a spreadsheet or a half dozen programming languages, but the simple model is both sufficient and easier to understand. I can also understand what happens when you tweak it, like lowering AC, because I did the math.

DPH*HITPIPS*APA*APD/20 is your damage per day. Hitpips go from 5 to 11 against 21 ac; adding a constant corresponds to lower AC, and bends the dpr curve down. Having AC scale upward with level also bends the curce down.

Static damage and accuracy from magic weapons booses DPH and PIPs. As DPH starts at 10 and goes to 12 baseline, each +1 damage is a 10% upward bend. If we scale AC down by 5-7 and have it go up with level, that more than makes up for thd +3 to hit and damage curve from weapons.

Which leaves feats. The -5/+10 feats let you convert advantage and/or runaway ATK bonus to DPR, and give you more ways to convert ASIs to offensive power.

Adding the rest (feats, magic items) is optional. If you claim that magic items boost fighter dpr more than spellcassters, or fightera have better feat support, go ahead. But those are specific problems with optional rules and things 100% under DM control.

AL may have super linear damage output, but they use lots of optional rules, and strips DMs of much of their toolkit. It is D&D lite.

 

[tetrasodium]

The 21 AC/defensive was literally to make math easier.

A fixed AC is correct, because we are measuiring character power. Measuring it against similar level foes convolves character power and monster power. So I picked the simpler option.

21 ac and crit immune means avarage damage on a hit times accuracy divided by 20 is your damage per swing. And that is the same ac as the simple character.

If you lower AC, this causes a larger percent increase to low level fighters compared to high level fighters. Which makes it more convex down.

Keeping things simple is about jnderstanding the math. I can do this in a spreadsheet or a half dozen programming languages, but the simple model is both sufficient and easier to understand. I can also understand what happens when you tweak it, like lowering AC, because I did the math.

DPH*HITPIPS*APA*APD/20 is your damage per day. Hitpips go from 5 to 11 against 21 ac; adding a constant corresponds to lower AC, and bends the dpr curve down. Having AC scale upward with level also bends the curce down.

Static damage and accuracy from magic weapons booses DPH and PIPs. As DPH starts at 10 and goes to 12 baseline, each +1 damage is a 10% upward bend. If we scale AC down by 5-7 and have it go up with level, that more than makes up for thd +3 to hit and damage curve from weapons.

Which leaves feats. The -5/+10 feats let you convert advantage and/or runaway ATK bonus to DPR, and give you more ways to convert ASIs to offensive power.

Adding the rest (feats, magic items) is optional. If you claim that magic items boost fighter dpr more than spellcassters, or fightera have better feat support, go ahead. But those are specific problems with optional rules and things 100% under DM control.

AL may have super linear damage output, but they use lots of optional rules, and strips DMs of much of their toolkit. It is D&D lite.

a low level fighter and a high level fighter will be fighting different creatures with different AC. Miss chances are also pretty irrelevant because they have nothing to do with how much damage that successful attacks from class A will do when compared to class B when they target different defenses and/or have a differing number of chances. The numbers are too grossly out of wack to make the fine grained analysis you are trying to perform meaningful beyond a randomly chosen isolated statistic. If you want to show how it's relevant to anything it needs to be compared to something worth comparing to.

"Optional" that word, you keep using it does not mean what you are using it to mean. "Optional" implies that it is a supported part of the system that a gm won't need to fix. The correct word would be "unsupported" given the requirement for the gm to finish the system for wotc & rebalance everything around the use of an unsupported sections of rules with significant pagespace devoted to them across multiple 5e books & nearly if not literally every hardcover adventure

 

[Stalker0]

Miss chances are also pretty irrelevant because they have nothing to do with how much damage that successful attacks from class A will do when compared to class B when they target different defenses and/or have a differing number of chances. The numbers are too grossly out of wack to make the fine grained analysis you are trying to perform meaningful beyond a randomly chosen isolated statistic. If you want to show how it's relevant to anything it needs to be compared to something worth comparing to.

If that is true, than all DPR analysis is inherently faulty.