Faerie Fire too powerful

[ad_hoc]

AFB but I thought Faerie Fire says 'creatures you choose in the area...'

Also, yes not overpowered. Quite good.but fine.

 

[werecorpse]

Heat metal also has limitations: only affects metal, range is only 60', requires bonus action to use each round. The last two items are the most important. I had a druid player who liked to use this, until he found his targets would often run away or hide. He couldn't stay within 60', or he couldn't see them, so he couldn't use the bonus action. Of course, if the target does move away, that's useful. Is it worth a 2nd level spell? Depends on the situation. Again, a spell that's good at times, but not overpowered.

Range is only a limit to cast the spell, not use the bonus action. At the top of page 203 of the PHB under spell range it says "once the spell is cast, its effects aren't limited by its range, unless the spells description says otherwise." So having cast the spell the Druid doesn't have to see or be within 60 feet of the victim - just use a bonus action to make them burn.
in theory the Druid can cast the spell within 60 feet then spend every round running away and hiding and a bonus action to burn the recipient of the spell.

 

[Uchawi]

It's no worse than Fog Cloud, which does the same thing for ranged attacks out of the cloud (due to the way the heavy obscurement rules work) with no save.

If you have a beef here, it's probably with the vision rules and the granularity vel none of advantage/disadvantage.

As a DM, you should have intelligent foes seek advantage and seek to impose disadvantage in the same way. Skilled tactical combat largely involves trying to manipulate battlefield geometry and gain advantage, moreso than making attack rolls. Have enemies toss nets, hide in the dark while firing (with advantage) at targets illuminated by one Dodging enemy carrying a torch, push enemies prone or off cliffs, etc. Faerie Fire fits into this scheme as one pretty good option, but certainly not one that cannot b e countered.

Unintelligent foes are not supposed to be a real challenge anyway, so it shouldn't matter if PCs find an exploit against them and exploit it to the hilt.

I agree on the granularity portion, and that is the price that is paid for simplification of modifiers. The same concept applies to Drow having sunlight sensitivity, etc.

 

[Ashrym]

I am not seeing faerie fire as OP either. Good spell once the caster has a decent DC but that takes a while and the save continues to exist regardless while there is strong competition for concentration.

I really don't think much of heat metal. Single target that also takes concentration with the most commonly resisted damage type on top of the metal requirements makes it too situational for me. It's worth prepping if a druid knows what's coming (assuming metal to heat is included in what is coming) but I wouldn't touch it on a bard unless it's a specific type of campaign that would make it suitable.

 

[werecorpse]

It's no worse than Fog Cloud, which does the same thing for ranged attacks out of the cloud (due to the way the heavy obscurement rules work) with no save.

if you are in a fog cloud you are in a heavily obscured area which means you effectively suffer from the blinded condition (p183 of PHB). Is there something I'm missing?

 

[Croesus]

Range is only a limit to cast the spell, not use the bonus action. At the top of page 203 of the PHB under spell range it says "once the spell is cast, its effects aren't limited by its range, unless the spells description says otherwise." So having cast the spell the Druid doesn't have to see or be within 60 feet of the victim - just use a bonus action to make them burn.
in theory the Druid can cast the spell within 60 feet then spend every round running away and hiding and a bonus action to burn the recipient of the spell.

Oops. You're right. This belongs in the thread about rules that trip us up - I always forget that range normally doesn't matter after casting. Oh well...

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The real benefit of faerie fire is that it will light up any invisible enemies in the area of effect who fail their save, letting all of your party target them normally.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Towards heat metal, my group is fairly certain it is an effective death sentence against any target wearing heavy metal armor.

It takes so long to remove that the targets only choice is to break the concentration, which makes it a race. A race I've never seen an NPC with platemail win. It's just too much fire damage to take consistently every round.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

if you are in a fog cloud you are in a heavily obscured area which means you effectively suffer from the blinded condition (p183 of PHB). Is there something I'm missing?

Yes, you're using an old edition of the PHB with the bonkers rules. In the errata and later printings of the PHB the devs realized that being blinded when you're in darkness makes zero sense, and reversed the text you refer to. Now,

Vision and Light (p. 183). A heavilyobscured area doesn’t blind you, but youare effectively blinded when you try to seesomething obscured by it.

The original wording implied that a guy with a torch standing in a pitch-black humongous cavern can see everything in the cavern, but nothing can see him, because they are all heavily obscured by darkness. I doubt anyone ever ran it that way though because it is totally bonkers. The new ruling makes darkness work the same way as real life: you can't see things in the dark, but they can see you.

 

[werecorpse]

Well that new definition certainly makes sense for darkness (everyone can see the person in light, no one can see the person in darkness so the person in darkness gets the benefit of obscurement and the person in the light doesn't) but IMO the way you appear to be reading it doesn't make sense for fog cloud. I would rule that if you are standing in the fog enough to be gain the benefit of being obscured from people then those who you are obscured from are obscured from you (there is fog between you and them). Ie by standing in the edge of the fog cloud enough to get obscurement and looking out the things out of the cloud are obscured by it so the last 14 words of the rule would apply.

This is is because darkness creates a vision difficulty in a different way to something that blocks line of sight (like fog).