D&D (2024) Fireball is a C Tier Spell

[MarkB]

It's best as a first strike weapon. Throwing it before the enemy knows you're there means they're neither spread out nor intermingled with friendlies, and it has sufficient range to be deployed by a sneaking party before they get close enough to be easily spotted.

 

[ezo]

For years I have thought fireball is an over rated spells. But Zard you drunken kiwi how dare you say that. The designers even said it's overpowered!!!.

1. They made that comment years ago.
2. Most of the other damage dealing spells are D tier.

So why is it C tier? This implies it's situational at best. I'm arguing that's exactly what it is.

Generally fireball is better the more targets it can hit. And they're not fire resistant. And you can do it without nuking the party. Even in Baldurs Gate 3 with bonus action black hole we rarely use it.

The last time it was a good spell was 3.5. I would rate it as B tier there. Remember those broken 3.5 meta builds built around fireball and the warmage? No neither do I. It was B+ in 3.0 and A tier in 2E.

So why is it mediocre most of the time? 5E hit point inflation. Generally 5E critters have double to triple the HP of a 1E to 3.5 monster. Your 8d6 Fireball is the equivalent of a 8th level caster. That in effect deals 3d6 or 4d6 damage and in extreme cases it's 2d6.

Consider a 5E ogre has 59 hit points. A gladiator has 112, a Mage 40. In 5.5 they buffed the mage to 81 hit points.

28 average damage save for half. Let's say you roll exceptionally well 36 damage. Doesn't change the math that much.

But bit but what if I hit 10 targets!!! thats 280 damage save for half. In real games how often does that actually happen? In official adventures it's rare to unheard of. Even then it's generally at higher levels. Levels where anything a fireball is actually a threat to will get curb stomped anyway.

This is why damage dealing spells in 5E basically suck without some sort of rider effect outside of specific situations. Even in those situations you may be better off casting something else.

The final nail in the coffin is 5.5 changes to classes. A low level barbarian berzerker hits for 5d6+modifiers in damage. Dual Wielding Rangers and Paladins can pump out the damage. Fighters are just good. Sorcerers get innate sorcery and can pick up hex easily. Spells such as command, tashas hideous laughter, Chromatic Orb got buffed and one can abuse emanations even without cheesing them. More forced movement as well.

All this added up is why I consider fireball is now a C tier spell. The required situations to make it B or A tier are so few and far between it makes it extremely situational. It's a bit better for the DM and scarier for the players since they mostly have 3E era of hit points or similar to it.

The spell is resting on faded glory and PC fear of getting hit by it often at low level since CR3 and 4 critter can pack it and some CR 2 ones have level 3 spells so a DM special might include it.

Didn't we cover this discussion on fireball weeks ago in another thread?!?

 

[GreyLord]

Yeah, I'd say it's over-rated these days. It started getting nerfed hard during the 3.x days, and 5e has basically nerfed it far greater.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, lets buff the wizard.

Wizard damage is mediocre at best.

Slellcaster danage isn't great. Spells are roughly 3.5 levels of damage vs double/ triple the HP.

Low levels 5E ones deal more they kinda triples or double low level ones cast at say level 1.

 

[Horwath]

Yeah, lets buff the wizard.

As I stated, buffing fireball is in a way a stealth nerf to wizard.
damage is still THE weakest point of wizards arsenal.

more spell slots burned on fireball, less headache for DMs

 

[Horwath]

+2d6 o upcast makes sense. He'll you can probably let it scale for free tbh.

Otherwise spells like Spirit guardians will always be better.

I would keep the scaling cost in, but it really needs to be a lot better.

in general, AoE should be +2 dice per spell level, single target damage spells +3 dice per spell level.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Fireball is fun! All these control spells might be tactically optimal, but they are also boring.

 

[Maialideth]

I think the problem with Fireball isn't whether it is overpowered compared to other classes, but that it is overpowered compared to other damage spells. Neither Lightning Bolt nor Cone of Cold compares to Fireball because they are even more situational and scales nearly equally to Fireball, so it would hardly ever be a choice between spells, thus making the other two mostly redundant in terms of space in the book. If Fireball would always be chosen over Lightning Bolt (not including encounters with fire resistance or immunity) then Lightning Bolt just gets ignored (which is not fair for the poor spell sad face).
But, Fireball isn't actually the best damage-dealing mid-level AoE spell in 5.5e. That would be Flame Strike. It has half the radius of Fireball though, but damage is equal to a 5th-level Fireball and scales twice as much as Fireball (with half being Radiant damage).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Seems to me that this is not actually saying fireball is "C-tier."

What it's actually saying is, "Because DMs don't actually throw hordes of enemies at the party, that will make fireball 'C-tier.'"

Taking a thing out of its context and judging it by that out-of-context application is precisely what led to the almost total misjudgment of 3rd edition, where Monks were thought to be stupidly OP when they were actually one of the worst base classes ever printed.

 

[Horwath]

another take on how to make fireball more AoE and more single-ish target spell, or more precise, less AoE spell.

damage 8d6, scaling +2d6 per spell level(this is mandatory if anyone will use 4+ level slot for fireball), each spell level also increases radius by 5ft above 4rd level

you can reduce fireball radius by 5ft and increase damage by d6 for every 5ft that is reduced,
if this makes radius 0ft, it becomes ranged attack spell for a single target(no save then)

that would make it at 3rd level:

8d6, 20ft radius, dex save for half
9d6, 15ft radius, dex save for half
10d6, 10ft radius, dex save for half
11d6, 5ft radius, dex save for half
12d6, single target, ranged attack spell, half damage on a miss


6th level fireball would be:
14d6, 35ft radius, dex save for half
...
21d6, single target, ranged attack spell, half damage on a miss

9th level fireball would be:
20d6, 50ft radius, dex save for half
...
30d6, single target, ranged attack spell, half damage on a miss