D&D 5E A slight tweak to the new UA spell: Chaos Bolt

[Hawk Diesel]

Not to mention that each bounce has to strike a new target. Run out of targets, and regardless of whether the bounce could happen, it stops.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Has anyone run the math on both versions?

To what end? Even a quick BOTE shows you that the original version was utterly pathetic drek which gets a single bounce 1/8 of the time, a double bounce only 1% of the time and a triple bounce essentially never. That means bouncing is essentially irrelevant to the original version for DPR computations--a 13% DPR boost gets lost in the noise. How much more specific do you need the math to be? Do you want specific computations of Original Chaos Bolt I, II, III, IV vs. all ACs from 10 to 20, or can you just take my word for it (based on the above math) that you can basically ignore bouncing and just do a regular DPR calculation on the initial damage?

 

[TwoSix]

Your numbers are helpful - I hadn't realized how much the bounce chance increased with additional d8's. However, as Hemlock points out, that just means chaos bolt is not a horrible choice for upcasting. It's still not clearly superior to other options, and certainly not unbalanced.

It's not wildly unbalanced or anything, it's just weird. Damage spells scale (at least all the ones I'm aware of, I haven't checked all of them) so that they do their highest average damage / spell level at their base level, and then the average drops.

For example, fireball does 8d6 (28) at 3rd, so 9.33 damage per spell level (not factoring in hit rolls or saves here, which doesn't factor into the upscaling ratio). At 4th, it's 9d6 (31.5), so 8.88 damage per spell level. At 5th, it's 10d6 (35), so 7 damage per spell level. Every damage spell scales in this fashion.

Except that this version of chaos belt doesn't. Factoring in hit chance (I used 70%), it starts off doing 6.85 damage/spell level at 1st level, drops down to 5.5 dmg/sl at level 2, then scales up after that. Again, it isn't necessarily bad, but it's different, because adding a damage dice increases the damage of the base spell, the chance of the bounce, and the damage of the bounce. It's kind of like if scorching ray gave you an extra ray AND increased the damage of each ray.

Not a big deal, really, but something to keep in mind.

 

[Xeviat]

Except that this version of chaos belt doesn't. Factoring in hit chance (I used 70%), it starts off doing 6.85 damage/spell level at 1st level, drops down to 5.5 dmg/sl at level 2, then scales up after that. Again, it isn't necessarily bad, but it's different, because adding a damage dice increases the damage of the base spell, the chance of the bounce, and the damage of the bounce. It's kind of like if scorching ray gave you an extra ray AND increased the damage of each ray.

Not a big deal, really, but something to keep in mind.

Since you can only hit each target once, that shouldn't be a problem, should it?

As for testing, yes. Chromatic Orb is 3d8? (it's not in the SRD or Basic, so I can't check right now) That's 13.5. Chaos Bolt is 2d8, or 9, with a 1/8 chance of another 9 on someone else. Since it's a selective multi-target spell sometimes, it having slightly lower damage is to be expected; 13.5 vs 10.something is a bit too much of a difference.

I'm just curious what the numbers look like when fully extended. I'll check myself when I'm home.