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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord_Blacksteel" data-source="post: 6169836" data-attributes="member: 53082">Couple of points:-The AD&D Fireball had no dice cap (15th level MU = 15d6 fireball) and covered considerably more area indoors because of the volume of the blast (as noted in the spell description). Outdoors it had a 20-yard radius instead of 20', which was nice too.-The AD&D Lightning Bolt could be bounced off a wall to double-dip on damage and blast a line of enemies twice. It also had no dice cap. -2E capped the dice but left in the volume and rebound rules in the spell descriptions so they were still good but not as awesomely powerful as before-3E kept the cap and dropped the volume/area/rebound funSo there has been an ongoing weakening of some key blasting spells through the editions. I never thought they were underpowered but they were certainly less glorious than the old days.I don't think character hit points are all that relevant to the conversation but monster hit points certainly are. Monster hit points started going up in 2E - the biggest, meanest red dragon (huge, ancient) in 1E had 11HD and 88hp. In 2E, a red hatchling (the smallest) has 9HD and the older age brackets get into the 20's! Giants saw about a 50% boost in HD too. With 3E the most powerful dragons got a bump again while giants stayed about where they were in 2E. An AD&D MU at 8th level can throw his 8d6 fireball into a room (even a very large room) and take out 2/3 of every hill giant's HP (average) - and one more fireball clears it, barring two saves. By 2E, those are 12HD giants, but a 12th level wizard only has a 10HD fireball, so he's only doing slightly over half even on a failed save and by 3E he's only doing that in a 20' radius, which is pretty limiting when fighting larger creatures.In contrast orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, bugbears, etc - the things that seem to end up on the receiving end of fireballs the most, stayed pretty much the same through all these editions. They're all in the 1-3 HD range, mostly 1-2, which means even the 5d6 fireball handles them in any edition.I'd like to see Next move back towards the fireball being the answer to hordes, for sure - maybe with a larger blast radius. It does have the built-in option to spend a higher slot for more damage which is nice, but I'd rather see that for Lightning Bolt (which it does have) and give Fireball an option to increase the area. I don't really expect that to happen outside of some kind of magical feat but it would give a wizard some more options during play.</blockquote>

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