D&D (2024) Fireball is a C Tier Spell

[FrogReaver]

I mean if fireball is knocking off 25% hp from half the enemies in an encounter and 12.5% from most of the rest then it’s going to significantly reduce enemy turns. It’s just the reduction will be delayed a bit instead of up front like a control spell would be.

The point is the reduction in enemy turns caused by fireball is going to be similar to most hard control spells against 4-5 enemies as long as they have approx 100 hp each, maybe even vs a little more hp and better at least by the time fireball is doing 50% of enemy ho save for 25%.

Control is just easier to see the impact of immediately because it’s easier to answer what if questions about.

 

[Maxperson]

Is it though? Is it really?

Because one of the most common complaints I see about 5e around here, and from my more casual 5e player friends, is that it feels like you just never go anywhere, except ever-bloated HP and damage numbers. You never make any progress, because you always fight exactly the same things for ages and ages.

Again, it wasn't the intent for high level PCs to keep fighting lots of lower level things. It was only intended to be an option available to the DM if he wanted to do a combat like that.

Read the DMG. At no point is it even told to DMs that a ton of kobolds against a 20th level party is even something that they can do. The encounter table shows like level challenges and then says that 1) this is how you can run multiple monsters, and 2) significantly lower CR creatures do not count unless the DM thinks that they are a threat for some reason.

That advice runs contrary to what you are arguing that the designers intended.

Around 175,000 people played the 5e playtest and many of them would only have downloaded the docs and not followed the videos and designers statements outside of the playtest. There are something like 15 million current players of the game. That means that less than 1% of the players of the game would even have heard that statement that it was a possibility that WotC intended to be there.

If you feel like you are never making progress because you always fight the same things for ages and ages, talk to the DM or get a new one, because he's not running the game as intended.

 

[Maxperson]

But again: This leads to many people feeling that they aren't really progressing at all. You've swapped the problem of large numbers for the problem of ACTUALLY feeling like one is on a treadmill because nothing changes.

Instead of an abstract mathematical treadmill, theoretically there and thus annoying for some players to think about, we have now hand-built ourselves an actual in-experience treadmill where change doesn't happen and monsters are either hordes of tedious uninteresting trash, or ever-inflating bags of HP.

I do agree with you that they reduced the bonuses too much. They should have gone from +2 to +10, not +6.

 

[Staffan]

I do agree with you that they reduced the bonuses too much. They should have gone from +2 to +10, not +6.

I don't really have a stake in the magnitude of the bonuses, but this is another area where I think 4e had the right core idea. In 4e, you had a level-based bonus to everything: ability checks, skills, attack rolls, defenses. Proficiency and/or class gave you a fixed bonus on top of that, and of course you also had ability scores modifying things. 5e reverses that, by having the proficiency and level bonus mixed together. This means that higher-level characters get greater and greater gaps between the things they are good at and the things they aren't. This is particularly notable for saves, where it isn't uncommon for high-level characters to have like +1 to important saves at level 10, making them extremely vulnerable to that avenue of attack.

 

[Willie the Duck]

if a spell can be mostly countered by walking away from others and not spending any gold or class resource, then it's a highly situational spell.

Only if 1) the walking away from others does not have an opportunity cost/incur some other vulnerability, and 2) if enemies actually do space themselves out.

Regardless, please note what I said:

I mean, it's still not wrong -- if all these things are true about your campaign, then fireball will end up being a niche spell option at best (the actual thread topic).

 

[Horwath]

This is particularly notable for saves, where it isn't uncommon for high-level characters to have like +1 to important saves at level 10, making them extremely vulnerable to that avenue of attack.

it was the same in 4E, just masked with level bonuses, if you started with in 10 or 8 in ability and no class bonus on the defense, you started at 10 at 1st level and you got 23 at 24th level, while casters attack went from +4 to +19. not really an upgrade for the bad defense, it's even worse. didn't use and feats or magic items as I considered they are equal in overall bonus.

 

[Maxperson]

it was the same in 4E, just masked with level bonuses, if you started with in 10 or 8 in ability and no class bonus on the defense, you started at 10 at 1st level and you got 23 at 24th level, while casters attack went from +4 to +19. not really an upgrade for the bad defense, it's even worse. didn't use and feats or magic items as I considered they are equal in overall bonus.

Not to mention, int, str and cha saves aren't commonly encountered, so half the saves aren't that big of a deal. Dex saves tend to just be damage, so they don't take you out of the fight with a single spell. Con and wis saves are the big ones, and you can take a feat to be proficient in one of those if you really want to shore up that weakness.

 

[James Gasik]

Not to mention, int, str and cha saves aren't commonly encountered, so half the saves aren't that big of a deal. Dex saves tend to just be damage, so they don't take you out of the fight with a single spell. Con and wis saves are the big ones, and you can take a feat to be proficient in one of those if you really want to shore up that weakness.

Though, to be fair, most Int or Cha saves you really don't want to fail.

 

[Maxperson]

Though, to be fair, most Int or Cha saves you really don't want to fail.

That's true, but proficiency in those just for those few saves is not going to be as effective across levels as say wis or con, each of which can take you out of a fight and are very commonly encountered.

Int and cha are just those that you pray not to encounter and/or pray you get lucky when you do.

 

[mellored]

I definitely think PCs should get +1/2 proficiency to all saves.

Not too worried about the level 20 paladin with -1 Stealth.