D&D 5E Meteor Swarm Vs. All other spells & DMG's spell creation guidelines

While the subject of expanding the game's spell selection to round out the various energy damage types, I realized just how out of sync Meteor Swarm's damage is when compared to the DMG's spell creation guidelines and in fact ALL other spells. Ignoring it's huge range and area, it deals 20d6 fire and 20d6 bludgeoning damage save for half. The Spell Creation guidelines recommend just 14d6 damage for a 9th level spell that hit multiple targets. ( Damage guidelines for a single target spell was 15d10, roughly 24d6 ).

This has me thinking, are the DMG guidelines crippling low for 9th level spells, does Meteor swarm just get that much more for being Fire type or is errata possibly on the horizon for the only spell that deals anywhere NEAR 40d6 damage.

Well... meteor swarm is pretty iconic. And, arguably, it was underpowered in both 3e and 4e. In 3e, save-or-suck spells ruled the roost. And the less said about 4e's meteor swarm, the better. So, I'm glad it's back in force.

My understanding is that 5e's rules for 9th level spells are basically: these are game breaking. They should feel suitably epic. You shouldn't be simply doing a carefully measured amount of damage to the enemy. You should be messing them up. An army of onrushing giants shouldn't be lightly toasted (3e, 4e), they should be utterly obliterated. Keep some semblance in balance in the game for most of the campaign, and then put your pants on over your head for the last couple of levels, because it's going to get craaaaazy up in here. Which I kind of love. Consider that, even if you make it to this level, you might only get to cast this spell a half-dozen times in your adventuring life... it needs to be something really special.

Also, meteor swarm has a massive drawback already built into it. That 40' radius blast area (...which extends around corners)? Frequently, that makes this spell just as scary for the caster and his allies. In fact, there are going to be plenty of times when it's darn-near unusable. Once the minis hit the battlemap, you'd be surprised at how often my group hesitates to cast even the humble fireball with it's "mere" 20' radius blast. Plus the fire resistance thing. So, it's not perfect, even just looking at the mechanics.

I think it looks okay. I'd be way more concerned if a 1st-3rd level spell was unbalanced, because those are going to get used all the time, for months or years of game-time.

It's part of making evokers actually as good at annihilating the opposition as a newbie would think they are, rather than a "trap option" for those who don't know that the real route to power is a variety of save or sucks, synergies, and lock down types of spells (as in 3e).

I'm a fan of the change.

5E Meteor Swarm is bringing back the "friendly fire" wizards to D&D!

Meteor swarm is as it should be, an encounter ending pile of awesomeness at the end game. That you can cast once per day. I guess the DMG guidelines are wrong, unless the point is to make this awesome iconic spell (I remember drooling over it in the Companion Set) better than any old archmages' hackabout creation!

Redacting what I had typed, after I noticed this issue was brought up to Mearls...

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/489205748853776384

So it does look like the guidelines are worthless for 9th level. Sure hope PCs can handle a 40d6 meteor from an enemy Archmage after hitting 12th level since swapping spells specifically does not change CR's for spellcasters

miniaturehoarder said:

Sure hope PCs can handle a 40d6 meteor from an enemy Archmage after hitting 12th level since swapping spells specifically does not change CR's for spellcasters

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Changing spells doesn't change CR, but changing the amount of Challenge presented does change the CR.

If the creature is capable of easily killing the whole party, then that is a beyond-deadly encounter, and it's worth a ton of experience if they survive it.

mach1.9pants said:

Meteor swarm is as it should be, an encounter ending pile of awesomeness at the end game. That you can cast once per day. I guess the DMG guidelines are wrong, unless the point is to make this awesome iconic spell (I remember drooling over it in the Companion Set) better than any old archmages' hackabout creation!
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I remember this picture. I have to say (at the risk of heresy) that those meteors are not very scary looking.

Raith5 said:

I remember this picture. I have to say (at the risk of heresy) that those meteors are not very scary looking.

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HERESY! BURN THE WITCH!

Yeah true, but the Magic User looks so cool!

mach1.9pants said:

I guess the DMG guidelines are wrong, unless the point is to make this awesome iconic spell (I remember drooling over it in the Companion Set) better than any old archmages' hackabout creation!
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I can only guess the spell scaling rules along with the spell creation guidelines were written BEFORE they made the call to reduce high level spells to 1 per day. It just feels like there was a extreme disconnect when boosting Delayed blast fireball from 7th to 9th level only bumps the damage from 12d6+cook time to 14d6+cook time, but the 9th level meteor swarm deals out 40d6s.

And don't get me wrong I've always LOVED Meteor Swarm, Especially the imagery of them coming down from above, even if it looks more 'conjuration-y'.