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

[FrogReaver]

Last 3 adventures have been heavy on fire immunity and resistance.

They're all official WotC ones.

So?

 

[FrogReaver]

Are you including fireball save for half?

Of course.

 

[Zardnaar]

So?

All I'm saying in real world scenarios I'm seeing CB be the bomb. It's probably outperforming fireball.
I'm seeing if anyone else is noticing it vs white room theory crafting.

 

[ECMO3]

Each target will take more damage with FB, and you can easily get more targets, so unless you are SUPER worried about friendly fire, FB is still much better.

As we like to say at my table any time we need to throw a Fireball into friendlies - Don't worry about Janet she has Evasion (whether she does or not).

 

[ECMO3]

All I'm saying in real world scenarios I'm seeing CB be the bomb. It's probably outperforming fireball.
I'm seeing if anyone else is noticing it vs white room theory crafting.

I don't have experience with CB, but Fireball is underwhelming in play IMO.

Now CWB .... that is the new bomb.

 

[Distracted DM]

Obviously it depends on what you're dealing with, but it's hard to unseat 5e's Fireball- according to the designers it's intentionally OP because it's a classic: "fireball!" A5E's fireball is 6d6 instead of 8d6 and players still use it very frequently. Fireball goes around corners- that's big.

 

[Zardnaar]

Obviously it depends on what you're dealing with, but it's hard to unseat 5e's Fireball- according to the designers it's intentionally OP because it's a classic: "fireball!" A5E's fireball is 6d6 instead of 8d6 and players still use it very frequently. Fireball goes around corners- that's big.

It's only OP vs other danage dealing spells.

5E hit point inflation basically means you're lobbing a 3d6 or 4d6 fireball in earlier editions. Remember fireball being great in 3.5?

Fireball underwhelming for me due to HP inflation and fire resistance/immunity. IMHO. Friendly fire as well.

Most of the rest direct damage spells are C tier and situational. Rider effects can change that.

 

[Sorinth]

All I'm saying in real world scenarios I'm seeing CB be the bomb. It's probably outperforming fireball.
I'm seeing if anyone else is noticing it vs white room theory crafting.

I haven't started running games with the '24 ruleset yet so can't say much about how it's doing in actual play. In theory crafting Fireball will probably always outperform in a generic white room, but ironically there seems to be a lot more optimization potential for CO and so I do expect it to outperform Fireball in actual play when built for.

For example Elemental Adept is a pretty meh feat because it locks you into one damage type and is a fairly minor damage boost. So sure a Fireball focused player might take it for the ignore resistance aspect, but with CO even though it's locking you into a damage type it's damage boost isn't the minor part of the feat. Similarly something like Empower metamagic, is usually considered one of the weaker options because it's a relatively small damage boost, but with CO these aren't small damage boosts, they are increasing the chance to bounce which is a significant damage boost.

Even if going CO I'd probably still also want Fireball in my spells known/prepared but it wouldn't surprise me if CO ended up being used way more often.

 

[Zardnaar]

I haven't started running games with the '24 ruleset yet so can't say much about how it's doing in actual play. In theory crafting Fireball will probably always outperform in a generic white room, but ironically there seems to be a lot more optimization potential for CO and so I do expect it to outperform Fireball in actual play when built for.

For example Elemental Adept is a pretty meh feat because it locks you into one damage type and is a fairly minor damage boost. So sure a Fireball focused player might take it for the ignore resistance aspect, but with CO even though it's locking you into a damage type it's damage boost isn't the minor part of the feat. Similarly something like Empower metamagic, is usually considered one of the weaker options because it's a relatively small damage boost, but with CO these aren't small damage boosts, they are increasing the chance to bounce which is a significant damage boost.

Even if going CO I'd probably still also want Fireball in my spells known/prepared but it wouldn't surprise me if CO ended up being used way more often.

This is what I'm thinking. The lightning sorcerer picked LB over FB similar idea though.

Light clerics packing radiance of the dawn and Fireball for mooks. He had a great FB situation but that was a few sessions back now.

Radiance of the dawn got 80 damage in vs willow of the wisps. Friendly fire scenario (he didn't know they're fire resistant).

 

[Distracted DM]

It's only OP vs other danage dealing spells.

5E hit point inflation basically means you're lobbing a 3d6 or 4d6 fireball in earlier editions. Remember fireball being great in 3.5?

Fireball underwhelming for me due to HP inflation and fire resistance/immunity. IMHO. Friendly fire as well.

Most of the rest direct damage spells are C tier and situational. Rider effects can change that.

The casters at my tables tend to take feats n features to compensate- the feat that makes you ignore fire resistance and reroll low damage dice, for example, and evocation wizards' ignoring allies in AoEs. Obviously that means you're investing a bit to make it consistently effective, but effective it is

But yeah, I could do without the hp bloat.