D&D (2024) Fireball/Lightning Bolt vs Chromatic Orb?

[FrogReaver]

18. 20 Cha, 4 PB, and +1 from Innate Sorcery.

Shouldn't 18 vs +3 Enemy Dex save be 75% fail rate instead of 70% then? EDIT: Nevermind. Saves are not attacks. Enemy meeting the DC is bad state for player, unlike attack rolls.

For Empowered Spell, I'm allocating a certain number of reroll dice per bounce. I explained the strategy in this post.

Thanks.

For Seeking Spell, it seems I hadn't updated it when I updated Empowered Spell. It still assumes it applies to all attack rolls. I haven't yet worked out how to make it only a single reroll per sequence, though I think I have an idea.

I think I've figured it out but there might be a better way. Essentially for every attack but your first it should be something like:

[ hit chance with advantage + ( miss chance with advantage * chance to hit without advantage ) ] * ( Cumulative chance you haven't already used Seeking on a previous attack) + (chance you have used seeking on a previous attack ) * ( chance to hit with advantage )

Then you do almost the same thing to determine crits. Just swap some but not all of the hit/miss chances with and without advantage for crit chance with/without advantage.

Essentially that's your updated hit and crit chance which now differs per attack. You can probably work out the rest from there.

I have Elemental Adept math incorporated into my spreadsheet. Did you want a column like I did with the other metamagic stuff? I'll cut a couple other columns to make room.

Lvl Cast	Base Dmg	w/Emp Spell	% Gain	Elven Acc	% Gain	w/Ele Adept	% Gain
1	17.86	26.58	149%	20.10	113%	18.73	105%
2	33.09	49.89	151%	38.22	115%	36.22	109%
3	59.51	84.49	142%	71.15	120%	65.90	111%
4	98.92	115.7	117%	122.9	124%	106.53	108%
5	146.0	160.2	110%	188.1	129%	150.76	103%
6	193.5	205.3	106%	257.5	133%	194.75	101%

Cool Thanks!

 

[evilbob]

Isn’t it 5?

Gah! I messed up again! I keep missing how many bounces it can make. But the end results would have the same conclusion.

When it comes to calculating the optimal bounce numbers, Kinematics had a chart that is probably optimal or close: basically you likely won't need to do more than 2 per bounce at low levels, 1 at medium levels, and past spell level 6 it's pointless. All the rest can be used for increasing damage. But since rerolls only apply to one die out of dozens and dozens, they still won't make much impact. Fireball rerolls apply the same damage to everyone, which makes the rerolls extremely impactful.

 

[FrogReaver]

Gah! I messed up again! I keep missing how many bounces it can make. But the end results would have the same conclusion.

When it comes to calculating the optimal bounce numbers, Kinematics had a chart that is probably optimal or close: basically you likely won't need to do more than 2 per bounce at low levels, 1 at medium levels, and past spell level 6 it's pointless. All the rest can be used for increasing damage. But since rerolls only apply to one die out of dozens and dozens, they still won't make much impact. Fireball rerolls apply the same damage to everyone, which makes the rerolls extremely impactful.

I've been there before too on the number of bounces!

Rerolling damage dice isn't completely pointless given how many damage dice the spell rolls. There's lots of 1's and 2's to be converted to an average of 4.5. I mean you could easily be rolling 8*4 or more damage die with the spell. On average that's going to be alot of low results. Could easily approach +10% damage on the spell if just replacing 5 1's with average results. Better bounce rate isn't all empowered does afterall.

 

[Zardnaar]

Gah! I messed up again! I keep missing how many bounces it can make. But the end results would have the same conclusion.

When it comes to calculating the optimal bounce numbers, Kinematics had a chart that is probably optimal or close: basically you likely won't need to do more than 2 per bounce at low levels, 1 at medium levels, and past spell level 6 it's pointless. All the rest can be used for increasing damage. But since rerolls only apply to one die out of dozens and dozens, they still won't make much impact. Fireball rerolls apply the same damage to everyone, which makes the rerolls extremely impactful.

Fureball charisma to damage if you're a dragon sorcerer.

I don't lije theory crafting fireball as there's to many variables eg DM encounter design. It's also fairly obvious when to use it. Bigger the group that's not red or using fire the better.

CO is way more tactical. If they're wearing full plate/shield or something similar or if it's obvious high AC eg dragon think before using it.

Guiding bolt principle. Never fire one without advantage or bless running. If you don't know the AC at least ball park figures.

 

[evilbob]

Rerolling damage dice isn't completely pointless given how many damage dice the spell rolls. There's lots of 1's and 2's to be converted to an average of 4.5. I mean you could easily be rolling 8*4 or more damage die with the spell. On average that's going to be alot of low results. Could easily approach +10% damage on the spell if just replacing 5 1's with average results. Better bounce rate isn't all empowered does afterall.

Good points! You're saying that you would most likely be adding 3.5 five times, or about 17.5 total damage.

 

[evilbob]

Ok so Scorching Ray vs. single target.

Same assumptions but + Hex, so this sorcerer now has Elven Accuracy and Fey Touched and only 18 CHA.

Those rays do 3d6+4 each, and you get 7 of them with a 6th level slot. That's still only avg 14.5 per ray. Empower would only add 2.5x4 at most, or another 10. Same deal with crits: 14.2% chance, but they only add 10.5 more damage, or roughly +1.5. Grand total: 122 max avg damage, assuming no misses (which isn't too far off, maybe a 2.8% chance at least one misses).

Better than Disintegrate for single target by far (avg 75 damage, plus the save chance for no damage makes it worse).

 

[Kinematics]

@FrogReaver — I'll go into more detail on my choice of number of dice to reroll.

Level 1: You have a total of 3 dice, and can reroll 1, 2, or 3 of them. Depending on DM, you might be able to reroll one at a time, and decide whether to keep rerolling after each one (and this is the more optimal strategy), but I'll assume you have to choose just one amount from the start.

Actually, here's a chart giving the odds of a bounce, assuming a certain number of dice are rerolled from the pool available at given spell levels:

Spell Lvl	0 Reroll	1 Reroll	2 Reroll	3 Reroll	4 Reroll
1	34.38%	50.78%	56.04%	56.93%	56.93%
2	58.98%	74.37%	79.81%	81.97%	83.18%
3	79.49%	89.75%	92.99%	94.32%	95.07%
4	92.31%	97.12%	98.32%	98.77%	99.00%
5	98.08%	99.52%	99.76%	99.84%	99.88%
6	99.76%	99.97%	99.99%	99.99%	99.99%

For spell level 1, going from 2 to 3 rerolled dice is barely a difference. I'd say there's no point in rerolling all 3, and just use the last reroll die on the second target to boost any low damage dice.

For spell level 2, again, going above 2 reroll dice will barely matter. If you have 4 reroll dice from Cha, using 2 dice for each of the two bounces will give you better overall averages than trying to maximize the first bounce and only having 1 die for the second.

For spell level 3, we again have diminishing returns after 2 rerolled dice. You also have an 80% chance of a bounce without using reroll dice, so since you have up to 3 bounces and only 4 rerolls at level 5 (assuming 18 Cha), expect that at least one of the rolls will give you a bounce without you needing to reroll any, and save the rerolls for any failures. There's a less than 1 percent chance that all three bounce checks will fail before rerolls.

For spell levels 4-6, a single reroll die puts you in the 97%-100% range for a bounce. There's no point in using more than that, and that gives you room to spread the dice among all your targets. In fact, for spell levels 5+, I wouldn't even expect to need to reroll for bounces at all, and just use them for damage.

That's also why Empowered Spell drops off in utility at higher spell levels. You're vastly more likely to lose a bounce chain due to missing the attack roll than you are to fail to get doubles in the damage.