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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6345459" data-attributes="member: 5143">Let's assume a 12 AC on your enemy.  With an 18 Wisdom at 1st level this means You hit on a 6+ or 75% of the time.  That means on average it does 10.5 damage.  The extra damage from the advantage is hard to quantify.  Let's forget it for now and deal with it at the end.12.375 on average.Here's the problem.  This spell is an AOE.  You have to assume people aren't casting it unless they are hitting multiple enemies.  So let's assume 3 enemies because it isn't really worth it to cast it on 2.Let's assume a +0 to Dex Saves.10.5 damage on average to 3 targets is 31.5 damage.  Which is 25.2 since they save 40% of the time.Since I know it's going to be mentioned.  The damage is average 8.4 against one target.  16.8 against 2 enemies.Thunderwave is a 15ftx15ftx15ft cube on one side of you.  It's a wave.  It originates from you and heads in one direction.  It is explained poorly and nearly everyone reads it wrong.  But the idea was that it functions exactly as it does in 4e: a Blast 3.This has the same problem as Burning hands.  If you assume only one enemy stands in a 5 ft square then it affects somewhere between 1 and 9 enemies.  Assuming you only use it on 3+ people again means that it does 21.6 damage and also pushes them back 60% of the time.Against one person it does 7.2 damage and pushes them back.  14.4 against 2 enemies.This just does 13.5 damage on average.  It also has the versatility to split its damage if need be.Which brings us back to exactly how useful the advantage is on Guiding Bolt.  Keep in mind that it gives advantage on the NEXT attack against the target.  Since you often can't control what order your party acts in, this means it might be another Wizard who decides to attack with a dagger against the enemy as the person who gets advantage.Let's assume that the person with the best damage in your party is the one who gets it to maximize the effect.  That means that a Fighter with an 18 strength goes next and has +6 to hit against the target.  That means that advantage roughly gives him a 20% increase in damage.  Assuming that damage is 2d6+4 then it's 20% of 11 damage.  Which means 2.2 damage.  However, you only get the advantage if you hit.  So you add 1.65 to the average damage dealt by Guiding Bolt.That means that it's average damage is between 10.5 and 12.15 depending how how well you use the advantage.This means that it actually does less damage on average than every other spell in the list....assuming you hit 2+ people with your AOE spells.</blockquote>

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