Giving some dailies more oomph

[keterys]

It's not as if that is an issue really though

Haven't seen dazed people having to sustain powers, or people unable to move because they needed to sustain and do something else? Also, many creatures can trivially make the move action to escape Bigby's against a wizard's Fort, fwiw.

That said, there is probably some big difference in viability of the spell depending on whether you allow someone to use a standard to attack with the spell when it has no one grabbed then in the same round sustain minor to deal damage.

But, if you assume a creature can escape often, say 60% of the time, and a wizard can hit 50% of the time, that makes the spell's expected damage more like

Round 1: 50% it misses, 50% it hits and does ~17 damage
Round 2: 20% chance that it hit and the creature did not escape for ~12.5, then 50% chance it hits the target or another target for ~17. If it's holding onto the only eligible target already, then you use an at-will which does about 1d8 less damage negating the advantage of the sustain extra damage compared to its attack extra damage, which means all further rounds are the same 20% and 50%, for our purposes.

So 8.5 plus (N-1)*(12.5/5+8.5)=8.5+11(N-1), where N is # of rounds... or 11N-2.5, for best ease.

Ie,
1 = 8.5
2 = 19.5
3 = 30.5
4 = 41.5
5 = 52.5
etc

Fireball following the same process is +1.5 per target (50% hit), half on miss (so 25% more), in one go, or 18.5X*.75, where X is number of targets.
Ie
1 = 13.875
2 = 27.75
3 = 41.625
4 = 55.5
5 = 69.375

Except, that's in an N=1 situation. So, sub in the at-will you're doing while that is happening. If you magic missile, that's an additional 6.5(N-1) you're adding (Avg 13, 50% hit), so in a 5 round combat where fireball hits 3 targets you're doing about 25% more damage than Icy Grasp. Even assuming you don't have encounter powers to use instead of at-wills that might be quite a bit more effective than magic missile.

Of course, Icy Grasp also _grabs_, but it does take a minor action every round and is just a better power than Fireball. Fireball is just not as bad as you think it is, or your requirements for daily powers are set by the select few that are shoulders above the rest. At which point, I have a vast list of powers that your fix does not address, at all.

 

[Stalker0]

That'd be fine, though personally I'd just as soon add something snazzier than raw damage to it. Much like I think magic missile is great with the push 1 from a master wand, I'd rather see Fireball have a "Cool!" factor that makes people grab it.

hehe, the funny thing is I'm getting so used to conditions, to me the unique cool factor would be a power that just does a metric boatload of damage.

When everything does push this, immobilize that, the power that says "I'm just going to wipe you from the world" starts sounding sexy

 

[Alex319]

20% chance that it hit and the creature did not escape for +4.5

Where did you get the +4.5 from? Remember that the sustain damage from Icy Grasp is 1d8+int (and plus all other modifiers), not just 1d8 (IIRC).

 

[keterys]

That's odd - even if it were only 1d8, you'd still get implement, etc. Not sure what I was doing there. that'd up it from .9 per to 2.5 per (1d8+8~, * 20%) or an extra 1.6(N-1)

I am curious now - what's actually a good baseline for where you'd want dailies to be? It did occur to me that many of the dailies I object to would be fine if I change 'start of turn' to 'end of turn' in each of them. Consecrated Ground would still heal far too much, so you'd probably still need a clause that it only worked if someone was >0 hp or something similar.

How about things like many of the warlock dailies, that are hit + special effect, often subpar damage, no damage on miss, and an easily shaken effect? They wouldn't apply to this house rule, but they could probably use some help too

 

[keterys]

hehe, the funny thing is I'm getting so used to conditions, to me the unique cool factor would be a power that just does a metric boatload of damage.

That's someone else's job, frankly. It also creates an imbalance pretty easily - if the damage has to be strong enough to compete with blind and with multi-round effects like stinking cloud and all the rest... at what point is that damage high enough to just obliterate monsters too easily? Eh.

 

[Plane Sailing]

That's someone else's job, frankly.

Other people have a power which grabs the wizards job (rogues getting mass blind, clerics with their Firestorm (bigger damage than wizards and only affects enemies too!)

It only seems fair that wizards out to have at least one strikery power available to them.

 

[keterys]

It only seems fair that wizards out to have at least one strikery power available to them.

Agreed - like Disintegrate.

Strikers do mega damage to a single target. No one really does mega damage to an area, unless it's over several rounds. And I'll agree that many others do encroach on the wizard on its shtick, unless its shtick is purely that it has some area effect at-wills, which it may well be.

But, let's look at Stinking Cloud vs. Fireball, because that's the far more painful comparison since Stinking Cloud is an amazingly good power.

Stinking Cloud: Initial ~13.5 dmg with 50% miss chance to, say, 2 creatures... then automatic ~13.5 to the same creatures when they start their turn, then automatic ~13.5 to 1-2 (call it 1.5) creatures per turn for remaining turns. so 13.5*(2*50%+2)+13.5*1.5*(N-1), or 13.5(3+1.5N-1.5), 20.25+20.25N

1: 40.5
2: 60.75
3: 81
4: 101.25
5: 121.5

So, for fireball to hit 3 targets and compare to 5 rounds of usage, it needs another ~54 damage or 18 per target or... 7d6 more after the 75% factor. So a 10d6 fireball.

Which is amusing in its grandfathered nature, but also means that a fireball crit would -one shot- any non-brute creature of 5th or lower. And that Brute would be in woeful shape indeed. Even normal hits would one-shot some Lurkers and bloody any non-elite whatsoever. It would indeed be a metric ton of damage.

And I don't think that'd be healthy for the game.

 

[Victim]

Comparing the amount of damage over the whole fight to a one shot attack seems pretty weak. Think about the present value of money - X amount of money of delivered in chunks of X/10 over the next ten years is worth a lot less than just getting the right away. Damage is the same way, since all the damage up front lets you kill enemies right away so they take fewer actions, instead of slowly bleeding them while they attack you. If Fireball did the same damage as Stinking Cloud in less time, it'd be much better than the later power (which is already really good).

Plus there's the action cost. Fireball costs the standard action to use. Stinking Cloud or Icy Grasp costs not just the initial action to use, but also actions to sustain and possibly move or attack with the effect. Sure, you can use Bigby's the whole encounter and it will do a lot of damage. But the mage who used fireball will have extra actions he can use to do other things. When the Bigby's has to attack again (using a standard action), the mage who used Fireball can make other attacks (probably just with an at will, but still) - it's not those extra attacks from Bigby's come out of nowhere; they're just replacing other attacks that could be made.

 

[CapnZapp]

What would be interesting is not limiting the discussion to intra-Wizard power comparisons.

We can agree some Wizard powers are better than others. The interesting question to answer is if the solution really should be to boost the weaker ones?

Perhaps instead it is the stronger ones (Stinking Cloud) who should be nerfed?

In other words, is the Wizard balanced and competitive when using Stinking Cloud et al? If so, by all means boost Fireball. But if that spell catapults the Wizard class to the top tier of classes, then perhaps Fireball should be left alone.

All this in addition to the indications we get that Fireball is easy to underestimate, but perhaps isn't so worthless as we think.

What I'm taking away from the thread is that I'm going to wait and see, before doing anything drastic such as tweaking individual powers. If I will see slightly fewer Wizards with Fireballs in the meanwhile, that doesn't sound too bad a sacrifice to me...