Area of Firestorm: Clarification wanted

[Pielorinho]

Out of curiosity, what are good uses for delayed blast fireball? I've never seen fit to want to hurt enemies a specific number of rounds in the future. I like the higher damage cap is good, but the delay?

Huh -- never thought about it before. That's a good question.

Were it not for the 25% of explosion when it's handled, it'd be superduper for an ambush. Cast the spell three times to give a bead to each of your allies; then, on the suprise round, each of them tosses it while you toss an empowered fireball, for 60d6 of fire damage (assuming casting at 15th level). You could take out a sizeable number of enemies with this trick. But the 25% failure rate means you'd really want to have protection against fire for yourselves.

I wonder if you could time it? Have your whole party delay until they go on the same initiative score, with you going after all the rest of them; then toss a one-round-delayed fireball into the middle of the big old melee. There are several possible outcomes:
1) An enemy picks up the bead and hurls it successfully. As long as you're at least 80 feet away, you're almost certainly safe: they can't throw it far enough to get you in the AoE, unless they have the far shot feat. In any case, the enemy that picks it up has just wasted their action, and your allies can resume whaling on them.
2) An enemy picks it up and it explodes. Oops! Your allies won't be happy -- but neither will the enemy be. If you prepared for the battle with some fire resistance on the allies, you can cheaply minimize their suffering.
3) The enemy ignores the bead. Then all your allies either withdraw (if they're afraid of AoOs), or they move back, drawing out ranged weapons, and ready an action to pick off survivors of the explosion. Then the bead explodes, you as the wizard follow up with any other spell (maybe a well-placed fireball, or some evard's tentacles to hold the enemy in place or something), and your allies begin firing at the wounded.

Daniel

 

[jgsugden]

DBF is often used with time stop to 'stack' fireballs.

It is also used just to deal more damage with a fireball spell than the 10d6 limit of a normal fireball.

In truth, it is a bit underpowered for its level. It really only gets good when you empower it for a 9th level spell (average 90 damage at 17th level and 105 at 20th versus 84 for the secondary targets of a meteor swarm and 112 for the primary target (with no saves for the primary)). To make it a balanced spell, they should have allowed a choice of AoOs: 10' radius, 20' radius or 30' radius.

 

[Diirk]

Firestorm has a casting time of 1 round which can make it a pain in the ass to cast in the heat of battle tho.

 

[hong]

The spell says "shapeable". You can have two 10' cubes per level and they must be contiguous.

Actually, does the book say that a shapeable spell must be contiguous? It's an obvious requirement, but I can't find the rule that actually specifies this.

 

[Victim]

DBF is useful for Timestops - delay the blasts so they explode when the Timestop ends, thus allowing you to get around the restrictions.

Also, sometimes you need to stack damage in 1 round, to beat healing or something. For example, if the group is facing a marilinth dervish with 6 scimitars that grant her HP on critical hits, then every round she'll heal up to full with her attacks. So when you need to do 600 damage in one round, delaying some spells might help.

But yes, aside from special circumstances, DBF is like a more powerful, inefficient fireball. Not very neat for a 7th level spell - I like the napalm like fireball in relics and rituals.

 

[beaver1024]

Firestorm is indeed an impressive spell. I wonder if anyone noticed that it's a divine damage spell and it's better than delayed blast fireball.

 

[Pielorinho]

Interesting point, Hong; I would bring the letter of the rules in line with the spirit of the rules by saying that if you separated the AoE into two or more pieces, then you would have areas of effect, which the shapeable description doesn't allow for. It's only one area if every cube is contiguous to another cube.

Daniel

 

[Destil]

DBF is often used with time stop to 'stack' fireballs.

In pratice this dosn't work very well, because you don't know how long the timestop will last (unless this has been changed in 3.5)...