Bard Faerie Fire in Tier 1

[Guest 6801328]

What specific typical kinds of situations in tier 1 is it better than dissonant whispers?

Low Dex and/or high Wisdom and/or high AC targets. -5/+10 feats in your party. A rogue in your party, and a situation where he/she might have trouble getting Sneak Attack. Invisible opponents, or chance of darkness. Groups of enemies. Immunity to psychic.

So...let's say you're fighting 3 Animated Armor in a darkened room. Which spell would you use?

 

[Guest 6801328]

I am getting the sense this is not a thread where you want other people's views, but is instead a thread for you to tell other people why you're right and everyone else just a poopy pants.

Like in this thread?

EDIT: I actually think these discussions could be interesting and insightful. It's ok to come up with an off-beat hypothesis and be wrong about it.* It's the intransigence that gets tiresome.

*Someone once said that Harvard professors strive to be trivially right, proving exhaustively something your grandmother could have told you is true, while MIT professors strive to be interestingly wrong, suggesting something that can't possibly be true but that generates interesting debate. I prefer the latter.

 

[FrogReaver]

So...let's say you're fighting 3 Animated Armor in a darkened room. Which spell would you use?

Now you are not even trying to offer a reasonable example.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Now you are not even trying to offer a reasonable example.

What? Why? What's unreasonable about that? Sure, I picked an example in which clearly, obvious, incontrovertibly FF is the better option (unless, for some reason, it's super-duper important that ONE of the 3 enemies spends 1 turn fleeing) but it's not a ridiculous situation. I'd put 3 animated armor in a dark room against level 3-4 characters.

But the position I'm arguing is that there's a whole spectrum of situations. Sometimes FF will be much better, some times DW will be much better, and sometimes it's a toss-up.

EDIT: Upon further reflection, I think the point you're trying to make is that 3 animated armor in a dark room is an edge case, and if you're trying to decide which of the two spells to learn, you want to base it off of typical cases, not edge cases. Fair enough. But I'm not sure how you decide what is typical, unless your DM gives you advance notice of the foes you'll be facing.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

You ignored half my objections, and your response to the one you did address was more of a fiat. That tells me you just wanted to compare them even if that's fitting a square peg in a roung hole. Again, Bane seems to be the comparable spell, and I am not sure why you think it's not?

Again. Bane serves a too different purpose in my opinion. Bane does not help you hit at all. Faery fire's hit enabling is the most used purpose.
Bless is a hit enabler. Most probably the best. Easy to use and it also helps the cleric kee concentrating.
I compared them because I think even the best one bless is not always a good cast. So I can say that the slightly inferior faery fire is obbiously also not always useful.
And to cover your concerns: since both are mutually exclusive there is no competition between both for the same character. It might however arise a situation where the cleric casts bless and the bard casts faery fire on top which seems wasted...
Knowing that faery fire has even more limitations than the best one should support the OP that faery fire is not always a good spell to cast if the opportunity cost of the initial cast can't be mitigated and I support that sleep is often a better spell.
One spell that My bard/arcanr trickster is using is color spray instead of faery fire. It is a one round guaranteed 6d10 hp disable at tier 1. But know that I think of it color spray might come from the arcane trickster side...

 

[Zardnaar]

Faerie Fire is a bit more reliable than whispers. Chuck it on a group and odds are something flunks a save. It's also easier to guess low Dex than low wisdom.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

As a druid one alternative might be entangle. Same area, str save and posibly restrained, at least difficult terrain. In most circumstances that seems to be a better effect since it gives advantage and also disables the enemy's ability to harm you.

Does not help the bard, but a useful option for the druid.
An alternate for dissonant whispers and feary fire might be the good old thunderwave. It is 2d8 damage and a push back. It is an area effect and in the worst case you do some minor damage. While the push back is nothing spectacular, it allows to regroup or isolate targets to possobly followup.

 

[FrogReaver]

What? Why? What's unreasonable about that? Sure, I picked an example in which clearly, obvious, incontrovertibly FF is the better option (unless, for some reason, it's super-duper important that ONE of the 3 enemies spends 1 turn fleeing) but it's not a ridiculous situation. I'd put 3 animated armor in a dark room against level 3-4 characters.

Because you picked the most unrepresentative creature imaginable to compare with. Nothing is perfectly representative but Orcs are a lot more representative of the types of encounters you will face than helmed horrors (one of the only immune to psychic damage creatures). When you cherry pick and don't even try at a semi-representative comparison then it's not a reasonable example.

But the position I'm arguing is that there's a whole spectrum of situations. Sometimes FF will be much better, some times DW will be much better, and sometimes it's a toss-up.

I agree. I'm talking about which is generally better.

EDIT: Upon further reflection, I think the point you're trying to make is that 3 animated armor in a dark room is an edge case, and if you're trying to decide which of the two spells to learn, you want to base it off of typical cases, not edge cases. Fair enough. But I'm not sure how you decide what is typical, unless your DM gives you advance notice of the foes you'll be facing.

:Thumbsup

I don't think a new player could make an assessment about what is typical. I do think an experienced player can. Of course his experience won't match 100% of all games he may ever play in but it's a better starting point than him flat out ignoring his experience because any given campaign could be different.

 

[FrogReaver]

As a druid one alternative might be entangle. Same area, str save and posibly restrained, at least difficult terrain. In most circumstances that seems to be a better effect since it gives advantage and also disables the enemy's ability to harm you.

Does not help the bard, but a useful option for the druid.
An alternate for dissonant whispers and feary fire might be the good old thunderwave. It is 2d8 damage and a push back. It is an area effect and in the worst case you do some minor damage. While the push back is nothing spectacular, it allows to regroup or isolate targets to possobly followup.

I think entangle is highly underrated.
If thunderwave could be cast at range then I'd say it'd move up to being arguably the best option. It's to close range for most bards IMO.

 

[FrogReaver]

Faerie Fire is a bit more reliable than whispers. Chuck it on a group and odds are something flunks a save. It's also easier to guess low Dex than low wisdom.

Reliable is a weird word. DW is very reliable in that it always does some damage. FF still has a chance to totally flop and do nothing. So in some since DW is more reliable.

I think what you mean is reliably impactful but if you really examine I think you'll come away with a different conclusion.

FF has 5 options when targeting a group of 4 orcs.

Hits 0 Orcs -(1.5%) > low chance but doesn't do anything

Hits 1 Orc -> Fairly low chance (about 11%). More importantly the benefit of giving advantage to 1 of 4 orcs is very minor. There's still a good chance the spell doesn't even turn a miss into a hit before that single orc is dead in this scenario.

Hits 2 Orcs -> Much higher chance 31%. Do you think advantage on 2 enemies that would have likely died in a single round even without FF is a particularly strong effect?

Hits 3 Orcs -> Good chance 38%. I think advantage on 3/4 enemies starts to be very meaningful to the outcome of the encounter.

Hits 4 Orcs -> 11.6% chance. Advantage on all 4 orcs is pretty good. It will on average turn 2-3 would be misses into hits. Of course it's not very reliable to get this effect.

So IMO advantage on 1-2 enemies is about like DW damage on a miss. The real good effects are FF on 3 or 4 enemies which only have a combined 50% chance of occurring. From what I can tell the DW and FF both have similar chances for major effects and similar chances for minor effects. Do you disagree?