D&D 5E 5e fireballs

[Nebulous]

Could be useful for exploration to have higher level variants of some of those utility spells. In Robert Bakker's "Aspect Emperor" series, the sorcerers have different types of light spells, for instance. Your basic types, and then another that is sometimes used called "Bar of Heaven". It almost seems to open a gash to the plane of radiance (or whatever their equivalent is), and casts light through a wide area....such that if you're standing in a big underground cavern the size of a few football fields, the whole thing is lit up. It's considered a major expenditure though.

From a tactical perspective, it could be more useful for adventuring parties, to not be limited to a 20' radius of light or whatever.

Banshee

DnD could go all kinds of directions with this, and i sort of wish they would. You could have your baseline 0 level orison "Light", and then within the spell itself it would be upgradable to higher and higher aptitudes of light. How they would balance that i don't know. Might work better in a point buy system.

 

[Banshee16]

Scott Bakker?

Yes....Canadian author of a pair of fantasy trilogies called the "Prince of Nothing" trilogy, and the "Aspect Emperor" trilogy (the sequel).

Very, very good, though dark.

I think in sequence you're looking for:

Prince of Nothing
Warrior Prophet
Thousandfold Thought
The Judging Eye
The White Luck Warrior

The books are fantasy, in a darker setting than normal, and deal with a lot of philosophy, depict holy war, the struggle against an apocalypse, etc.

Banshee

 

[JRRNeiklot]

See, the problem with including non-combat and combat spells together is that you have a limited number of spell slots. Which means that the narrow focus non-combat spells will virtually never be memorized unless you know that you're going to need them.

So, take something like Comprehend Languages. It's a pretty rare player that would take Comprehend Languages before, say, Sleep. And, because most of the situations where you would need Comprehend Languages (such as reading something) can typically wait until the next day, you probably have the spell in your book and then use it as is convenient.

I'd much prefer a system where your daily resources aren't being taken up by stuff that is so narrowly focused. Make something like Knock, or Comprehend Languages a ritual, have it cost something (not necessarily money - time is fine) and leave the daily resources for stuff that is going to make the game more exciting.

See, my experience differs. I generally see mages memorize an equal mix of combat and utility spells, and some that overlap. You're always free to load up on all sleeps and magic missiles and fireballs if you want, but you're not forced to.

Unseen servant is great for setting off traps, fetching dangerous items, etc. Knock is useful if there's no thief or he fails to pick the lock. Rope trick, wizard lock, clairaudience, Leo's tiny hut, water breathing, are all great spells to memorize. separating them into out of combat spells takes the fun out of managing your resources. They need to be spells, nothing more.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

In Robert Bakker's "Aspect Emperor" series . . .

Scott Bakker?

Yes....Canadian author of a pair of fantasy trilogies called the "Prince of Nothing" trilogy, and the "Aspect Emperor" trilogy (the sequel).

Yeah, I know who Scott Bakker is, I read the books. Just clarifying you meant to say Scott Bakker, not Robert Bakker.

 

[Mark CMG]

Monte Cook: "Fireball is a static 5d6. If you want more damage, you use a higher-level spell slot."

I handle things a similar way for G&G whereby you have an energy spell that does 1d6 damage, the caster, in the moemnt, determines how it deploys, as fire, acid, frost, etc. and also decides if they want it to be larger, investing it with more power as well as narrating how it manifests, as a fireball, a wall of fire, a pillar, etc.

 

[Hussar]

See, my experience differs. I generally see mages memorize an equal mix of combat and utility spells, and some that overlap. You're always free to load up on all sleeps and magic missiles and fireballs if you want, but you're not forced to.

Unseen servant is great for setting off traps, fetching dangerous items, etc. Knock is useful if there's no thief or he fails to pick the lock. Rope trick, wizard lock, clairaudience, Leo's tiny hut, water breathing, are all great spells to memorize. separating them into out of combat spells takes the fun out of managing your resources. They need to be spells, nothing more.

Equal mix? Really? Take a 5th level MU in 1e. 1 3rd level spell, 2 2nd, 4 1st. ((IIRC)). You're going to tell me that out of those 7 spells, four will be utility spells and three with be combat spells? (or possibly reversed - that's close enough). Someone actually takes Water Breathing instead of Fireball or Lightning bolt if they have the choice?

Leo's Tiny Hut, again, going from memory, is a 3rd level spell. Someone's going to choose that over a combat spell at 3rd level. When you've just spent the rest of this thread talking about how great fireball is as an offensive spell, I'm thinking that it's probably higher on most people's list.

Sure, once the caster gets into higher levels, say 7+, you start taking more and more utility spells. But up to 6th level? Invisibility, sure. But unseen servant in 1e vs Magic Missile? Not likely.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Here's my current memorized spell list at 5th level:

Detect Magic
Sleep
Charm Person
Unseen servant
Mirror Image
Rope trick
Monster summoning I

That's generally what I run with unless I know there's a need for other spells. Yeah, I would probably have fireball in there instead of monster summoning, but I blew the chance to learn it. But at 6th level, I'd go with a fireball and something else.

So, yep, 4 utility, 3 combat. And charm person which can be either.

MMm is really a lackluster spell. Really only good for interrupting casting after level 3 or so. Unseen servant is a wonderful and underused spell. It can slip through a portcullis and open it. Open a door while you are safely away, open the trapped chest or any other dangerous object. Distract guards, carry a torch, set alight oil, open a fire trapped object, etc. At 5th level, it's there for an hour and a half. Magic missile can do 6-15 damage. So can the fighter.

Now, if I know a big fight is on the horizon, sure, I might have 3 magic missiles, a stinking cloud or two. But for dungeon crawling, there are usually better alternatives.

Also, I never said fireball was that great. I said nerfing it to 5d6 made it a tool of vermin exterminators, nothing more. GFireball was merely good in AD&D, and has been pretty much useless since.

 

[Hussar]

I have to admit JRRNeiklot - you are the first 5th level caster I've ever seen, other than myself, that would ever take unseen servant. I totally agree that it's a great utility spell. Although, considering you're playing 1e, it's only really effective for one encounter. After all, you spend at least two turns resting after each encounter and movement rates of 60 feet (presuming you're moving at the speed of your slowest PC) every ten feet, mean that your unseen servant isn't lasting too long.

First spell I ever researched in 2e was upping the duration on unseen servant to 1 hour per level.

 

[Mark CMG]

Unseen Servant is almost always on my Wizard list of chosen spells no matter what level. From slipping a map or scroll away from another, untying the occasional shoe, to lifting keys from a jailer, it has too many uses to discount.

 

[KarinsDad]

Whether you like it or not, D&D has expanded beyond the 1e wizard. We've seen armored mages, wizards who don't need somatic components, and casters who don't automatically lose their spell when damaged. The genie is out of the bottle so to speak, and to put him back would alienate many.

Yes it has, but it has done so because of "inferior game design".

1E and 2E Wizards had balancing factors like those mentioned above.

3E Wizards replaced those balancing factors with ones like 5 dice max for certain spell levels. Although that is balance in one sense of the meaning, it didn't prevent higher level 3E Wizards from becoming mini-gods at the expense of many of the other classes.

4E came along and said "Opps. Wizards and Codzillas are too strong, we'll make all classes the same balance across all levels". A balancing adjustment to be sure, but one that rips the heart out of what a Wizard meant for D&D. Regardless of the propaganda that people have bought into from the 4E designers and their own experiences with 3E, Wizards are SUPPOSED to be these mega-powerful guys that change the course of battle. But, they are supposed to have some very serious disadvantages as well to balance that.

3E took away most of the disadvantages and 4E took away most of the power.

In layman's terms, that's not a D&D Wizard, just like a non-Human non-LG Paladin is not a D&D Paladin.


As an example, my very first blue book PC was a 1st level Wizard. The PCs got ambushed. My Wizard got his Sleep spell off, put the enemies on one side of the group to sleep, and then promptly got shot from behind with an arrow that killed him. Not to say that this extreme of play is fun for anyone, but the concept remains. If the Wizard survived (which was a very big IF back in those early days), he became monumentally helpful to the group as a whole and the player knew going in that his PC was a bit of a glass cannon, so he played the PC judiciously (e.g. hiding in the back, taking defensive spells, etc.).

It was many years before I ever played another class. Even at lower levels, I was able to use my Wizards' spells in unique ways that helped save the day over and over again. You don't really get this in 4E. The Wizard isn't special in any way and neither is magic in 4E. It's like drinking chocolate milk one day, and then drinking mile with just a tiny hint of chocolate in it the next. Bland. Unimaginative.

And what is worse is that if 5E became a rehash of 4E, you would have an entire gaming culture that will grow up on 4E/5E, thinking that they are drinking chocolate milk when they are not.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It was many years before I ever played another class. Even at lower levels, I was able to use my Wizards' spells in unique ways that helped save the day over and over again. You don't really get this in 4E. The Wizard isn't special in any way and neither is magic in 4E. It's like drinking chocolate milk one day, and then drinking mile with just a tiny hint of chocolate in it the next. Bland. Unimaginative.

I've seen a few 4E encounters where the Wizard spells worked incredibly well to "ruin" the enemies plan. Not "let all enemies sleep", but at least "kill all minions and negate several enemy archers thanks to a well placed stinking cloud".

 

[pemerton]

If fireball is a killer spell, then a single target spell of equal level has to be a more killer spell.

A good summary of your posts - and a good point.

Spell resistance was a flat percentage

This is not corrrect. It was acutally +/- 5% for every level below/above 11th. (I think this rule is found in the Monster Manual, in the definition of magic resistsnace.) But I believe 2nd ed may have changed it to a flat number - perhaps because most groups didn't use that rule from the MM?

Note that at 1st level, they are every bit as good at hitting things as a fighter.

From memory this is true in Basic, but it is not true in AD&D. In AD&D 1st level fighters and clerics hit AC 10 on a 10, but MUs and thieves need an 11 (like 0-level NPCs).

There's also the bizarre thing where some of the steps on the MU and thief combat matrices are +3 rather than +2 - and also one of the charts (the cleric, I think, but I could be wrong) has only a +1 step at its higher end.

Before 3rd ed, you didn't have ANY official rules for building characters higher that 1st level.

In AD&D there was Appendix P of the DMG. And it was also possible to follow the guidelines for buidling and equipping high level NPCs (of which I think there may have been multiple versions - one in Appendix C, but maybe one also somewhere in the middle of the book).

You may be correct that 2nd ed had no such rules.

Wizards xp flattens a LOT after about 6th level. To the point, by about 9th or 10th, they actually need almost the least xp/level (second to thieves). And, at no point does a wizard need more than a paladin for xp.

I was about to point this out too - people tend to look at the higher cost for 2nd level, and the higher cost after name level and gloss over the middle - but the irrational xp advancement charts from the early editions make it easier for them to advance just as they start to really hit their stride!

I was also about to post on this. Just bizarre - MUs and druids especially are brokenly good at those midde levels.

But Hussar, technically you are wrong about the paladin vs the MU. The paladin is 350,000 XP to 9th, plus 350,000 per level. The MU is 375,000 to 11th, plus the same per level. So the MU reaches the paladin at 38th level (both require 10,500,000 XP to get there) and then requires an extra 25,000 XP for each subsequent level!

Sure, once the caster gets into higher levels, say 7+, you start taking more and more utility spells. But up to 6th level? Invisibility, sure.

But invisibility is not really a utility spell, is it? It's a pretty strong offensive spell!

 

[pemerton]

I *do* think there may be a generational difference in terms of how newer/younger players view the game compared to older players.

I don't think I count as a newer/younger player - born 1971, started playing in 1982 with Moldvay Basic, started playing AD&D in 1984. But I prefer the "level advancement as backdrop" approach of 4e to the "level advancement as achievement" approach of AD&D. Even back when I was using classic D&D as a system, I wasn't playing it in that way - we took it for granted that if you turned up and played your PC, you would gradually gain levels. We never treated XP as a reward in that Gygaxian sense.

Whether I therefore refute your conjecture, or just count as an outlier, I don't know.

I was thinking you were thinking 4E style. What I'd like to avoid is a situation where mages are restricted to only having combat spells, and all the interesting utility or more "role playing" oriented spells are restricted to rituals.

It's a while since I've done the count, but around half the utility spells (warlock and wizard) in the 4e PHB are not combat-oriented - various fly spells, disguise self, amassador imp, glib-tongue type spells, cantrips of various sorts, etc.

Regardless of the propaganda that people have bought into from the 4E designers and their own experiences with 3E, Wizards are SUPPOSED to be these mega-powerful guys that change the course of battle.

<snip>

I was able to use my Wizards' spells in unique ways that helped save the day over and over again. You don't really get this in 4E.

On this, I think you can only speak for yourself. I have found it to be true that 4e supports creative stuff across a wider range of PCs than just wizards, but at least in my 4e game the wizard - in virtue of having access to magic - does creative wizardly stuff, both in and out of combat. Mostly it is via the ability to act at a distance (TK, teleport etc).

 

[BryonD]

Whether I therefore refute your conjecture, or just count as an outlier, I don't know.

I'm with you on this one.

Born in 1969 and I've completely stopped using XP altogether.

Characters in my games now advance under two rules.
1) Level 1 lasts one full session.
2) Every other level lasts until new abilities to explore is more fun than continuing to explore the existing abilities.

 

[Mark CMG]

But invisibility is not really a utility spell, is it? It's a pretty strong offensive spell!

Defensive, really. Like good armor, it can be donned while being on offense but that doesn't make the armor anything but defensive.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Yes it has, but it has done so because of "inferior game design".

1E and 2E Wizards had balancing factors like those mentioned above.

3E Wizards replaced those balancing factors with ones like 5 dice max for certain spell levels. Although that is balance in one sense of the meaning, it didn't prevent higher level 3E Wizards from becoming mini-gods at the expense of many of the other classes.

4E came along and said "Opps. Wizards and Codzillas are too strong, we'll make all classes the same balance across all levels". A balancing adjustment to be sure, but one that rips the heart out of what a Wizard meant for D&D. Regardless of the propaganda that people have bought into from the 4E designers and their own experiences with 3E, Wizards are SUPPOSED to be these mega-powerful guys that change the course of battle. But, they are supposed to have some very serious disadvantages as well to balance that.

3E took away most of the disadvantages and 4E took away most of the power.

In layman's terms, that's not a D&D Wizard, just like a non-Human non-LG Paladin is not a D&D Paladin.


As an example, my very first blue book PC was a 1st level Wizard. The PCs got ambushed. My Wizard got his Sleep spell off, put the enemies on one side of the group to sleep, and then promptly got shot from behind with an arrow that killed him. Not to say that this extreme of play is fun for anyone, but the concept remains. If the Wizard survived (which was a very big IF back in those early days), he became monumentally helpful to the group as a whole and the player knew going in that his PC was a bit of a glass cannon, so he played the PC judiciously (e.g. hiding in the back, taking defensive spells, etc.).

It was many years before I ever played another class. Even at lower levels, I was able to use my Wizards' spells in unique ways that helped save the day over and over again. You don't really get this in 4E. The Wizard isn't special in any way and neither is magic in 4E. It's like drinking chocolate milk one day, and then drinking mile with just a tiny hint of chocolate in it the next. Bland. Unimaginative.

And what is worse is that if 5E became a rehash of 4E, you would have an entire gaming culture that will grow up on 4E/5E, thinking that they are drinking chocolate milk when they are not.

Your "inferior" game design is my "superior" game design, although I'd agree that it was a bumpy road getting there.

Regarding mages who could ignore their limitations; yes, it was an issue in 2e and 3e, primarily because the designers left the magic system mostly intact. If you remove limitations, you have to remove some of the corresponding power. IMO, they finally got it right with 4e, in that the magic system no longer reflected the assumptions about mages that 1e had made.

IMO, 4e did get it right (although it may, admittedly, have gone a tad overboard). Balancing between god-like power and peasant-like vulnerabilities wasn't the best design. Their god-like power could often completely negate the peasant-like vulnerabilities (such as casting mirror image to avoid being a one-shot kill). Wizards survived in early editions only if the DM had mercy on them. Without their defensive spells, one hit would kill them at 1st level, and oftentimes even later (if it was a hard hit, from a giant or some such). If the DM wanted to, he could have a goblin slip around the fighter and finish off the mage before anyone could do otherwise. But back in the 1e/2e days, we were nice. We typically avoided attacking the poor little mage too often, because to do so felt unfair, akin to bullying a kindergartener. I DM'd 2e, I remember.

The 4e wizard can be incredible if you choose the right spells for him (something which has been true of D&D wizards irrespective of edition). What he cannot do anymore, is win the entire encounter with a single spell. In return, he has increased survivability, though he's still no fighter. Nonetheless, he can turn the tide of the encounter with a single spell. Personally, I much prefer the new balance. I think casting one spell and thereby winning is bland and boring. Give me a real struggle any day!

I do agree, however, that I'd like to see some of the utility magic return outside of rituals. The good news is that it sounds like that's what they're doing for 5e!

In the end, what I was saying, when you quoted me, was that mages in fantasy aren't limited to stories from Vance. Not every mage is a demigod waiting to be. Plenty of stories are about mages whose powers are far more subtle. In addition, plenty of stories are about mages who don't ascribe to D&D limitations. While balance is of utmost import to me (right up there with fun), I believe that allowing players to tell their story with the character they envision is also very important.

 

[Hassassin]

Defensive, really. Like good armor, it can be donned while being on offense but that doesn't make the armor anything but defensive.

On a rogue it's maybe more offensive than defensive, but I'd still say it's a utility spell. Otherwise fly should also be categorized as a combat spell due to its defensive utility.

 

[Mark CMG]

On a rogue it's maybe more offensive than defensive, (. . .)

How is it offensive rather than defensive when used for combat?


(And when used outside of combat, it is used generally to avoid combat, and actually should be considered defensive in that case as well, IMO, rather than considered a utility spell.)

 

[Hassassin]

How is it offensive rather than defensive when used for combat?

By denying the opponent's Dex to AC it enables the rogue's sneak attack and gives him a nice boost to his chance to hit. This is 3e, not sure about all the others.

 

[Mark CMG]

By denying the opponent's Dex to AC it enables the rogue's sneak attack and gives him a nice boost to his chance to hit. This is 3e, not sure about all the others.

I can buy that argument. Thanks for the perspective.


(24 hour XP rule thwarts my XPing attempt on Hassassin. Perhaps he was invisible. Film at 11!)