D&D (2024) Fireball/Lightning Bolt vs Chromatic Orb?

[Kinematics]

Interesting math on Chromatic Orb. I put together a spreadsheet for lots of combinations of stuff.

(Spreadsheet here. Caution: It seems completely broken in Google Docs, which doesn't seem to be able to handle the table syntax. It was made using Excel in Office 365.)

On its own, it is, as noted, still a bit weaker than Fireball. But for a sorcerer, it really does do pretty well. Getting advantage from Innate Sorcery puts the damage (compared to ezo's chart) on par with Chain Lightning (vs the same number of targets) when base accuracy is at least 85%. Add Seeking Spell and it beats Chain Lightning even with a base accuracy of just 60%. You'd likely only need 1 use of Seeking Spell per cast, but it helps nearly guarantee that you'll get the max number of bounces instead of getting cut off early.

Meanwhile, Empowered Spell is a modest boost at high level — maybe +20% total damage, regardless of accuracy, if you're willing to burn sorcery points. Technically you could use ES on ~4 dice each on each of 7 damage rolls, for a total boost of about 56 damage (average of +2 damage per die when you reroll a 4 or less).

Empowered Spell is actually more useful at lower levels, because you have fewer dice to roll. With lots of dice, the chance of not getting a bounce is minuscule, so the main benefit of ES is the extra damage. With fewer dice, the chance of not getting a bounce is fairly high, so rerolling some of the dice is a drastic increase in the overall damage value of the spell, since each additional target is a big boost in total damage.

Using Empowered Spell at spell level 3 is worth an extra 30% to 40% damage, primarily from raising your bounce chance from about 80% to about 95%. Like with Seeking Spell, if you focus only on that aspect, you're probably only using 1 sorcery point per cast of the spell to guarantee max bounces. Using ES to increase damage is less useful, but still allows you to eek out a bit more from the spell.

Together, Innate Sorcery, Seeking Spell, and Empowered Spell can double or triple the damage of the spell. At the lowest accuracy, I have it increasing average damage by 362%. So sorcerers can get a lot more from the spell than non-sorcerers.

Compared with Fireball:

• Assuming 4 targets at character level 5, and using Innate Sorcery in both situations
• Fireball uses Careful Spell to avoid friendlies, plus Empowered Spell
• Chromatic Orb uses Seeking Spell and Empowered Spell

Chromatic Orb can expect to do around 96 to 100 total damage, depending on base accuracy. (70 to 72 without Empowered. 112-116 with multiple uses of Empowered Spell.)

Fireball can expect to do about 102 to 119 total damage, depending on target saves. (84 to 98 without Empowered.)

Empowered Spell gives about a 21% boost to Fireball, but a 37% boost to Chromatic Orb.

It's close enough that I'd very much consider it a useful alternative to spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt, even without the minimum floor of damage.

 

[wizard71]

Interesting math on Chromatic Orb. I put together a spreadsheet for lots of combinations of stuff.

(Spreadsheet here. Caution: It seems completely broken in Google Docs, which doesn't seem to be able to handle the table syntax. It was made using Excel in Office 365.)

On its own, it is, as noted, still a bit weaker than Fireball. But for a sorcerer, it really does do pretty well. Getting advantage from Innate Sorcery puts the damage (compared to ezo's chart) on par with Chain Lightning (vs the same number of targets) when base accuracy is at least 85%. Add Seeking Spell and it beats Chain Lightning even with a base accuracy of just 60%. You'd likely only need 1 use of Seeking Spell per cast, but it helps nearly guarantee that you'll get the max number of bounces instead of getting cut off early.

Meanwhile, Empowered Spell is a modest boost at high level — maybe +20% total damage, regardless of accuracy, if you're willing to burn sorcery points. Technically you could use ES on ~4 dice each on each of 7 damage rolls, for a total boost of about 56 damage (average of +2 damage per die when you reroll a 4 or less).

Empowered Spell is actually more useful at lower levels, because you have fewer dice to roll. With lots of dice, the chance of not getting a bounce is minuscule, so the main benefit of ES is the extra damage. With fewer dice, the chance of not getting a bounce is fairly high, so rerolling some of the dice is a drastic increase in the overall damage value of the spell, since each additional target is a big boost in total damage.

Using Empowered Spell at spell level 3 is worth an extra 30% to 40% damage, primarily from raising your bounce chance from about 80% to about 95%. Like with Seeking Spell, if you focus only on that aspect, you're probably only using 1 sorcery point per cast of the spell to guarantee max bounces. Using ES to increase damage is less useful, but still allows you to eek out a bit more from the spell.

Together, Innate Sorcery, Seeking Spell, and Empowered Spell can double or triple the damage of the spell. At the lowest accuracy, I have it increasing average damage by 362%. So sorcerers can get a lot more from the spell than non-sorcerers.

Compared with Fireball:

• Assuming 4 targets at character level 5, and using Innate Sorcery in both situations
• Fireball uses Careful Spell to avoid friendlies, plus Empowered Spell
• Chromatic Orb uses Seeking Spell and Empowered Spell

Chromatic Orb can expect to do around 96 to 100 total damage, depending on base accuracy. (70 to 72 without Empowered. 112-116 with multiple uses of Empowered Spell.)

Fireball can expect to do about 102 to 119 total damage, depending on target saves. (84 to 98 without Empowered.)

Empowered Spell gives about a 21% boost to Fireball, but a 37% boost to Chromatic Orb.

It's close enough that I'd very much consider it a useful alternative to spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt, even without the minimum floor of damage.

I don’t buy this simply because the possibility exists you can miss at any moment with chromatic orb and the chain is ruined. A similar claim might be made for evasion but that is mostly a PC power that I haven’t seen in monsters yet. The only way fireball is stopped is with monster immunity to fire. I would rather have fireball when a rakshasha appears then chromatic orb which would be useless.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don’t buy this simply because the possibility exists you can miss at any moment with chromatic orb and the chain is ruined. A similar claim might be made for evasion but that is mostly a PC power that I haven’t seen in monsters yet. The only way fireball is stopped is with monster immunity to fire. I would rather have fireball when a rakshasha appears then chromatic orb which would be useless.

It doesn't miss very often in practice. It does happen.

Fireball whiff whenever fire resistance is around. Most of the times it's initiative and positioning issues. Getting a good one off is harder vs COs target within 30' bounce.

Even when you outright miss especially on higher level slots there's reroll abilities in 5.5.

Inspiring leader feat, inspiration in general, 85-95% hit chance with advantage or super advantage with Elven Accuracy.

In effect COs a no save spell that rarely misses.

Fireball also can't be picked up via an origin feat or downcast and barely worth upcasting.

No fires also nice. One group has a hunter ranger as well. Vulnerable to thunder......

 

[Zardnaar]

Interesting math on Chromatic Orb. I put together a spreadsheet for lots of combinations of stuff.

(Spreadsheet here. Caution: It seems completely broken in Google Docs, which doesn't seem to be able to handle the table syntax. It was made using Excel in Office 365.)

On its own, it is, as noted, still a bit weaker than Fireball. But for a sorcerer, it really does do pretty well. Getting advantage from Innate Sorcery puts the damage (compared to ezo's chart) on par with Chain Lightning (vs the same number of targets) when base accuracy is at least 85%. Add Seeking Spell and it beats Chain Lightning even with a base accuracy of just 60%. You'd likely only need 1 use of Seeking Spell per cast, but it helps nearly guarantee that you'll get the max number of bounces instead of getting cut off early.

Meanwhile, Empowered Spell is a modest boost at high level — maybe +20% total damage, regardless of accuracy, if you're willing to burn sorcery points. Technically you could use ES on ~4 dice each on each of 7 damage rolls, for a total boost of about 56 damage (average of +2 damage per die when you reroll a 4 or less).

Empowered Spell is actually more useful at lower levels, because you have fewer dice to roll. With lots of dice, the chance of not getting a bounce is minuscule, so the main benefit of ES is the extra damage. With fewer dice, the chance of not getting a bounce is fairly high, so rerolling some of the dice is a drastic increase in the overall damage value of the spell, since each additional target is a big boost in total damage.

Using Empowered Spell at spell level 3 is worth an extra 30% to 40% damage, primarily from raising your bounce chance from about 80% to about 95%. Like with Seeking Spell, if you focus only on that aspect, you're probably only using 1 sorcery point per cast of the spell to guarantee max bounces. Using ES to increase damage is less useful, but still allows you to eek out a bit more from the spell.

Together, Innate Sorcery, Seeking Spell, and Empowered Spell can double or triple the damage of the spell. At the lowest accuracy, I have it increasing average damage by 362%. So sorcerers can get a lot more from the spell than non-sorcerers.

Compared with Fireball:

• Assuming 4 targets at character level 5, and using Innate Sorcery in both situations
• Fireball uses Careful Spell to avoid friendlies, plus Empowered Spell
• Chromatic Orb uses Seeking Spell and Empowered Spell

Chromatic Orb can expect to do around 96 to 100 total damage, depending on base accuracy. (70 to 72 without Empowered. 112-116 with multiple uses of Empowered Spell.)

Fireball can expect to do about 102 to 119 total damage, depending on target saves. (84 to 98 without Empowered.)

Empowered Spell gives about a 21% boost to Fireball, but a 37% boost to Chromatic Orb.

It's close enough that I'd very much consider it a useful alternative to spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt, even without the minimum floor of damage.

Cheers. I got the basic idea off reddit when they did the bounce math.

Then started playing around with it in testing, theory crafting and two players using it.

 

[Kinematics]

I don’t buy this simply because the possibility exists you can miss at any moment with chromatic orb and the chain is ruined.

But, that's what the math is there to help you figure out. The average result includes the chance for you to miss completely, or miss at any point in the chain.

I didn't spell it out in the post because the math (and Excel formula) is complicated, but it's very much accounted for. I posted a link to the spreadsheet if you want to look at it yourself. If you can't use that file, let me know, and I can try to rewrite it in a format that Google Docs or similar can make use of.

The only way fireball is stopped is with monster immunity to fire. I would rather have fireball when a rakshasha appears then chromatic orb which would be useless.

Obviously targets which make a spell useless mean it's pointless to use that spell. I'd wager there are more monsters that are immune to fire than monsters which can't be hit with a spell attack, though.

 

[wizard71]

It doesn't miss very often in practice. It does happen.

Fireball whiff whenever fire resistance is around. Most of the times it's initiative and positioning issues. Getting a good one off is harder vs COs target within 30' bounce.

Even when you outright miss especially on higher level slots there's reroll abilities in 5.5.

Inspiring leader feat, inspiration in general, 85-95% hit chance with advantage or super advantage with Elven Accuracy.

In effect COs a no save spell that rarely misses.

Fireball also can't be picked up via an origin feat or downcast and barely worth upcasting.

No fires also nice. One group has a hunter ranger as well. Vulnerable to thunder......

Again, I am skeptical of your analysis. Fireball hits more targets period. For you to get the extra damage and bounces you have are demonstrating, you have to upcast Chromatic Orb. Are you upcasting fireball to get similar results? I.E a 5th level chromatic orb is .
7D8 damage vs a 5th level fireball being 10D6 damage. Sure you might squeeze a bit more average damage on a D8 vs D6 but odds are much easier to roll higher on D6's. My playtest with sorcerous burst confirmed this and they upped the damage dice because exploding a 6 came up far more often tan exploding a D8. Control issues with fireball are non-existent for evoker wizards or sorcerers with careful metamagic. The fire immunity can also be bypassed with the alter energy metamagic from Tasha's. Most monsters have average at best Dex saves so the chances are good that they fail dexterity saves. Monster AC has been buffed so even with Innate Sorcery you can fail. My nephew had a bad night of rolls with innate sorcery as a 5th level sorcerer with a 18 Charisma. He was +7 to hit and could not roll higher than a 7. He was reduced to cantrips as he missed quite often with 2nd and 3rd level castings of Chromatic Orb. Chromatic Orb is a good spell but its in NO WAY a substitute for Fireball. Fireball is so good, they gave it to every single class except Barbarian, Monk and Paladin.

 

[Zardnaar]

Again, I am skeptical of your analysis. Fireball hits more targets period. For you to get the extra damage and bounces you have are demonstrating, you have to upcast Chromatic Orb. Are you upcasting fireball to get similar results? I.E a 5th level chromatic orb is .
7D8 damage vs a 5th level fireball being 10D6 damage. Sure you might squeeze a bit more average damage on a D8 vs D6 but odds are much easier to roll higher on D6's. My playtest with sorcerous burst confirmed this and they upped the damage dice because exploding a 6 came up far more often tan exploding a D8. Control issues with fireball are non-existent for evoker wizards or sorcerers with careful metamagic. The fire immunity can also be bypassed with the alter energy metamagic from Tasha's. Most monsters have average at best Dex saves so the chances are good that they fail dexterity saves. Monster AC has been buffed so even with Innate Sorcery you can fail. My nephew had a bad night of rolls with innate sorcery as a 5th level sorcerer with a 18 Charisma. He was +7 to hit and could not roll higher than a 7. He was reduced to cantrips as he missed quite often with 2nd and 3rd level castings of Chromatic Orb. Chromatic Orb is a good spell but its in NO WAY a substitute for Fireball. Fireball is so good, they gave it to every single class except Barbarian, Monk and Paladin.

Can come down to how DM does encounters as well.

10d6 fireball is competing with synaptic static for sone classes. We don't upcast it generally due to opportunity cost.

You don't get very many metabagic early on to take substitute spell. Building around negating fire resistance comes at heavy opportunity cost. Invokers B tier.

Are you playing 5.5 or 5.0? 5.5 has buffed monster HP.

You can't do much to double a fireballs damage either. Chromatic Orb you just need to paralyze someone. And that's something spellcasters tend to do anyway.

Other 5.5 changes include crafting magic items. We haven't gone down that road yet but RAW......

 

[Kinematics]

Fireball hits more targets period.

Somewhat true. Rather, it has the potential for hitting more targets, possibly substantially more. Against a zombie horde or a pack of kobolds, etc, there's no real competition.

On the other hand, if targets are too spread out, or you're fighting a smaller group of higher level creatures, that extra potential doesn't really matter. From personal anecdote only, I've only had a couple times where a Fireball managed to hit more than a handful of targets. It was fun when it happened, but those targets also happened to not be that significant, either.

For you to get the extra damage and bounces you are demonstrating, you have to upcast Chromatic Orb. Are you upcasting fireball to get similar results? I.E a 5th level chromatic orb is 7D8 damage vs a 5th level fireball being 10D6 damage.

For the comparison I mentioned, it was at character level 5, so spell level 3, which means Chromatic Orb was upcast and Fireball was cast at its base level. I set up my spreadsheet to make it easy to switch things around, though, and looked at lots of different spell levels and accuracy levels.

Here's some quick numbers for a high level cast:

Fireball, spell level 6, using Innate Sorcery (+1 spell DC, total 18 DC) and Empowered Spell, vs 7 targets with between a +0 and +6 Dex save. Average total damage is between 250 and 298.

Chromatic Orb, spell level 6, using Innate Sorcery (advantage) and Seeking Spell, no Empowered Spell, vs 7 targets (up to 6 bounces) with a base accuracy between 60% and 95%. Average total damage is between 252 and 275.

The same two, but take away Empowered Spell from Fireball and Seeking Spell from Chromatic Orb:
Fireball: 209 to 249
Chromatic Orb: 148 to 272 (Roughly on par when at 80% base accuracy.)

Seeking Spell is very significant for Chromatic Orb at the low end, but doesn't do much at the high end. Empowered Spell is a fairly hefty chunk of damage for Fireball (~40 damage), but barely noticeable for Chromatic Orb (~10 damage).

7 enemies should be a pretty solid number of targets to hit with Fireball, so it looks like things are still roughly on par. Chromatic Orb loses more from not using Seeking Spell than Fireball loses from not using Empowered Spell, though.

Sure you might squeeze a bit more average damage on a D8 vs D6 but odds are much easier to roll higher on D6's.

Eh? That's... not how odds work. You have a 50% chance to roll a 4, 5, or 6 on a d6. You have a 50% chance to roll a 5, 6, 7, or 8 on a d8. You get a higher average on a d8 because the probability of rolling at least some value N is always higher on a d8 than on a d6. On both the upper half of values and the lower half of values, your results will be better on a d8 than a d6.

Roll at least	On a d8	On a d6
8	12.5%	0%
7	25%	0%
6	37.5%	16.7%
5	50%	33.3%
4	62.5%	50%
3	75%	66.7%
2	87.5%	83.3%
1	100%	100%

My playtest with sorcerous burst confirmed this and they upped the damage dice because exploding a 6 came up far more often tan exploding a D8.

That is a different probability issue. That's about the odds of getting a very specific value. In the case of Sorcerous Burst, the specific value for getting it to explode is easier to achieve on a d6 than on a d8.

Of course the problem with Sorcerous Burst (as first playtested) was that, even with that higher explosion probability, the base value was low enough that the explosion didn't make up for it (on average; spikes make it appear better in the moment). A straight d8 cantrip did more damage on average than the d6 cantrip with exploding dice.

Switching Sorcerous Burst to a d8 base means its total damage is now between a d8 and a d10 cantrip, which is sufficient to go along with its other features. It does make the explosions less frequent, though, which is mildly disappointing.

The fire immunity can also be bypassed with the alter energy metamagic from Tasha's.

That would be the Transmuted Spell metamagic in the 2024 PHB. And yes, it could be useful.

Getting it before level 10 is a hard choice, though, since you only start off with 2 metamagics. At level 2, I find most of the other metamagics more desirable.

 

[Distracted DM]

Re: the possibility of missing, you can also crit... and, more importantly, there are lots of ways to get advantage/bonuses on the attack- if you're upcasting, it's worth it. Advantage, or using inspiration to make sure you hit.

 

[Zardnaar]

Re: the possibility of missing, you can also crit... and, more importantly, there are lots of ways to get advantage/bonuses on the attack- if you're upcasting, it's worth it. Advantage, or using inspiration to make sure you hit.

So many ways lol. Not even counting direct boosts like bard dice or bless (party dependent).