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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8363698" data-attributes="member: 86653">I get hyperbole, but that's a bit much. A fireball only deals 8d6 damage, which averages 28 on a failed save or 14 on a successful save. Its 20-foot radius covers up to 44 squares, which is a lot, but the chances of those all being filled are basically zero. Considering 5E's default is one monster against a four-person party of adventurers, AoE spells are really only useful when the DM intentionally sets up encounters to make them useful. But sure, let's set up a very generous what if. You get a DM who's all about the AoE and hands you an encounter with 22 enemies...enough to fill half the AoE of a fireball...and hands you all of them perfectly lined up in your AoE. Assuming half fail their save and half succeed, you're talking about (28 x 11) + (14  x 11) = 462 average damage. Which is a lot. But a more reasonable encounter would be 4-10 monsters at most. And unless the DM gives you those on a silver platter, they're not going to bunch up for a fireball. So between 2-6 get hit at most, really, for a total of 126 damage. A 5th-level wizard gets to do that once per day. A 5th-level fighter gets two attacks per round, assuming half hit and half miss, and assuming a decent weapon choice, say 1d10 or better, for an average of 10.5 damage, it's only...44 rounds of fighter attacks. Rounds are only 6 seconds long, so in 4.4 minutes the fighter has matched the wizard's damage from that one fireball enconter perfectly served up by the DM. For the more realistic encounter with only 4-10 monsters and 126 damage from a fireball, the fighter only has to attack for a little more than 12 rounds to match that...and has the rest of the day to beat it.So, really, the fighter's not that far behind. If you really want the fighter to cry, just tell them how all the casters' cantrips scale better than the fighter's attacks. LOL. Poor fighters. WotC must really...really hate fighters.</blockquote>

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