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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinematics" data-source="post: 9015382" data-attributes="member: 6932123">Aside: The 8d6 spell with a 50% resist rate:Unresisted average damage: 28Average damage with 50% resist rate: 21Average Heightened with 25% resist: 24.5Unresisted average Empowered damage: 33.89Average Empowered with 50% resist: 25.4Average Heightened+Empowered with 25% resist: 29.65You'd need to hit 6 targets in order for Heightened to give as much benefit as hitting 1 additional target. If Careful Spell can let you hit one additional target, it's likely a better choice than Heightened, at least for a pure damage spell.However it does remind me of Arcane Eruption, where a failed save means not just more damage, but an inflicted status. 75% incapacitated or blinded or whatever beats 50% affected by a good margin. And its effect only lasts one round, and isn't concentration, so it's a good candidate to be casting round after round.If you keep one die that's a 1 through 4, and Empower the rest, the average damage on Arcane Eruption would be 23.75, which is 70% of the damage you could do with an 8d6 pure damage spell. After resistances, assuming Heightened, average damage would be 20.78.You'll probably want to use Careful Spell as well, so that you can cast it into melee without affecting your allies. That combos well with the wing flap damage, which allows you to select who you hit with that damage. Though you'd be giving up Quickened, so no combo with cantrips for more damage.So, Careful+Heightened+Empowered Arcane Eruption, which does middling damage, but can seriously shut down the enemy forces — a choice of incapacitated, blinded, frightened, or poisoned each turn means they'll either be unable to do anything, or have disadvantage on any attacks, and maybe advantage for your allies — actually feels like an effective use of Sorcery Incarnate.  A 4th level spell is much easier to maintain spell slots for. You've given up a ton of damage vs the ideal, but the tradeoff is that you can freely position the spell to hit as many enemies as possible, rather than having to work around where you're "allowed" to cast in order to avoid hitting allies. The white room calculations for the pure damage setups are actually likely to be severely hindered in actual use by the positioning necessary to avoid hitting allies (assumining Quickened+Heightened, which I now think is sub-optimal).Plus, a severely hindered enemy force is easier for the sorcerer to move around in, which makes the wing flap damage easier to use with a larger area.Aside: Looking at the DMG suggested values, the square and the circle calculations for expected targets contradict each other, so I'm readjusting expectations. The circle should most likely be diameter ÷ 5 instead of radius ÷ 5.So Arcane Eruption should be a 40' diameter sphere, and Dragon Wings can affect targets in a 35' diameter circle (or a bit less if you're flying). That gives an expected number of targets of around 7, but with some of those being your allies. Probably 3-5 enemies.It still leaves you little point in getting advantage on attack rolls.  I guess you can use it for the cantrip on the turn you cast Sorcery Incarnate itself.This would cost sorcery points of: 1 (Extend Sorcery Incarnate) + 4 per Arcane Eruption (Careful+Heightened+Empower) = 13 for 3 AE casts over 4 rounds.  At level 9 you have 1 5th level spell slot for SI, and 3 4th level spell slots for AE, so that's covered. At level 9 you have 9 sorcery points, plus the 1-4 you get back from casting Sorcery Incarnate itself.  So if you converted one 3rd level spell slot, you'd have just barely enough to pull this off if you rolled a 1 on SI, assuming you started fresh for the day.Recalculation of damage build:The Heightened for damage is not as useful as Careful.  If Careful allows you to hit more targets, it's more useful than a bonus cantrip, assuming you Quickened the spell. Heightened over multiple targets is also likely to be more damage than a bonus cantrip.Thus it's more reasonable to just use Heightened+Careful for pure damage spells as well.  That's also a 3 SP cost per cast instead of 4 SP.Is that worth the cost of casting a 5th level spell first?If you could hit 6 targets with a Careful spell, using Heightened increases that to an effective 7 targets, and wing flaps could increase it to an effective 8. So an extra 2 targets' worth of damage per turn (or +1/3 damage done). That would roughly break even after 3 turns.Summary:Arcane Eruption feels like a good use of Sorcery Incarnate, even if you're doing a good bit less raw damage. Both Heightened and Careful are very valuable contributors to its usefulness.A pure damage focus would need to last at least 4 rounds after casting Sorcery Incarnate to really be worthwhile, I think.There is almost no value at all in the advantage on attack rolls. Every scenario I can think of would be better served with a different spell. Maybe Crown of Stars, since that lasts an hour without concentration, and allows you to make attack rolls as a bonus action. Since we're not using the bonus action anymore, it's freed up for that purpose.</blockquote>

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