D&D 5E Lightning Bolt should be better.

[MGibster]

I once had an NPC hit three PCs with Lightning Bolt. It was glorious!

 

[Dausuul]

Let them rebound geometrically off hard surfaces, like billiard balls. Also force an aiming roll to make sure it goes where you want it to.

Having it start right at the caster is a hard nerf from the 1e version.

Here's a thought, which would strengthen the "bouncing bolt" and also simplify adjudication (no calculating angles of incidence or debating the curve of a cave wall):

When the line hits a solid barrier other than the ground, it ricochets and continues in a new direction of the caster's choice. A creature crossed multiple times by the same bolt only takes damage once.

In close quarters where you could bounce it between walls, hitting enemies and dodging allies, lightning bolt would now be a clear winner over fireball. On the other hand, fireball would remain the superior option in open spaces.

 

[tetrasodium]

With that in mind, would changing Fireball & Lightning bolt to scale up by 2d6 per level be out of line (assuming similar other direct damage spells were scaled up similarly)? Also, would it be better if Lightning Bolt was given back its “start & end point” instead of simply making the start point the caster?

On the first part probably not because so much of what casters do is things other than damage spells & there are spell slots first through ninth level. If you want to talk damage alone though ithose twostarts out at 2.666_d6/slot level as 8d6 third level spells & adds +1d6 per after that. By comparison sneak attack can be used every round at no limited resource cost beyond the need to attack also scales at the same +1d6/2 character levels but can add strength or dex at least once per round and +1d6 or +2d6 depending on if dual wielding or not if they self restrict to short swords.

Fireball & lightning bolt get all the attention because they are one of the few spells that are at least close to reasonable at base level but the math for at will & most spells is abhorrent & you can see that drawn out step by step along with a spreadsheet link here showing where a generic d12 cantrip plus a couple leveled spells stacks up to various weapon users.. I'm not sure what the "start & end point" means since I mostly skipped 4e & don't know if that's a reference to old style bouncing lightning bolts or not. When it's all said & done there are a few things that add up to be big problems for casters that fireball & lightning bolt just happen to sidestep enough to keep up in that one pillar of their abilities. For their part the nondamage spells tend to be written as if they are part of a game where the rankings for at will & spike damage by class are inverted

• Spoiler: lack of meaningful specialization

  If a caster wants to specialize as a glass cannon type or really any other type of caster there are no meaningful options for them between class archetype feat & to a degree even magic items other than charged spell wands available for accomplishing that. Yes there are ways to get +attribute mod to spells or cantrips meeting various conditions but that's literally just getting the benefit granted to every weapon user before even considering race/class/feat/etc choices that add to those weapon attacks.
• Spoiler: martials are multiplicitive without cost

  Wotc removed the penalty for second/third/etc attack to make them basically as guaranteed as the first causing them to reliably multiply everything each round while casters rarely multiply anything of meaning & almost never more than one round worth if they do save a few exceptions.
• Spoiler: casters lack solid support for other roles in the spells list

  Concentration is massively overused & often pointlessly attached to spells that are already self limiting in multiple ways as if they were instead cranked to 11. This is especially problematic for nondamage spells that go from being almost good to flat out cruddy & denies casters an especially meaningful alternate pillar involving nondamage options. You can see that easily by looking at the scorn bordering on outright contempt for the glass cannon idea over better options in the old 3.5 god wizard guide.
• Spoiler: WotC is fighting the problems of a different edition & ignoring how this one works even while writing it

  Wotc designs everything against some faulty whiteroom what if where fighters never get magic weapons then never considers what happens when they do & go out of their way making every effort to make sure that the martials are as likely as possible to trivially obtain magic weapons. This one is really what makes everything else so difficult since it affects spells themselves, magic items, magic item availability, & critically so many aspects of monster design

  Spoiler: To show how reprehensible this is, here's advice from 3 different 5e sources on the matter

  
• Spoiler: spells that once started poor & became great over time just stay bad

  Because of that last point most spells are absolute trash unused by design. In previous editions a caster might go through spell options in the book from time to time seeing if things jump out as a meaningful option they passed on before now that they are higher caster level & have whatever expecting a reasonable chance of coming across broadly useful options. In 5e the odds are near zero
• Finally there's this ↓

Before I fully respond, you are claiming that wizards don't have enough options against opponents with their 3rd level spells?

Because that's a pretty bold claim!

Wow that's a pretty bold way of missing the point. Before I fully respond, you are claiming that the third level spell duo fireball &
lightning bolt are not only the only spells a caster needs but also that blasting is the only meaningful role that a caster should bother with or that the mere presence of those two spells excuses any amount of bad design in the other 300something spells that are often each trying tocombat rampant unchecked lfqw alongside monster design attempting to do the same without stopping to notice that 5e inverts LFQW into LWQF & LWQF . Thanks for providing an example of why a couple good enough spells atop a pile of unused by design & almost but not really good spells is so problematic in a ways that makes doing anything about it such a sisyphean task. So much of what casters do is the nondamage stuff while that nondamage stuff is hamstrung by the faulty assumption that LFQW is still a serious thing present in 5e.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I once had an NPC hit three PCs with Lightning Bolt. It was glorious!

Playing in (a highly homebrewed) Tomb of Annihilation campaign, in a fight with those goblins that stack on top of each other, my party's Sorcerer killed ~30 goblins with one fireball.

 

[Mort]

On the first part probably not because so much of what casters do is things other than damage spells & there are spell slots first through ninth level. If you want to talk damage alone though ithose twostarts out at 2.666_d6/slot level as 8d6 third level spells & adds +1d6 per after that. By comparison sneak attack can be used every round at no limited resource cost beyond the need to attack also scales at the same +1d6/2 character levels but can add strength or dex at least once per round and +1d6 or +2d6 depending on if dual wielding or not if they self restrict to short swords.

Fireball & lightning bolt get all the attention because they are one of the few spells that are at least close to reasonable at base level but the math for at will & most spells is abhorrent & you can see that drawn out step by step along with a spreadsheet link here showing where a generic d12 cantrip plus a couple leveled spells stacks up to various weapon users.. I'm not sure what the "start & end point" means since I mostly skipped 4e & don't know if that's a reference to old style bouncing lightning bolts or not. When it's all said & done there are a few things that add up to be big problems for casters that fireball & lightning bolt just happen to sidestep enough to keep up in that one pillar of their abilities. For their part the nondamage spells tend to be written as if they are part of a game where the rankings for at will & spike damage by class are inverted

• Spoiler: lack of meaningful specialization

  If a caster wants to specialize as a glass cannon type or really any other type of caster there are no meaningful options for them between class archetype feat & to a degree even magic items other than charged spell wands available for accomplishing that. Yes there are ways to get +attribute mod to spells or cantrips meeting various conditions but that's literally just getting the benefit granted to every weapon user before even considering race/class/feat/etc choices that add to those weapon attacks.
• Spoiler: martials are multiplicitive without cost

  Wotc removed the penalty for second/third/etc attack to make them basically as guaranteed as the first causing them to reliably multiply everything each round while casters rarely multiply anything of meaning & almost never more than one round worth if they do save a few exceptions.
• Spoiler: casters lack solid support for other roles in the spells list

  Concentration is massively overused & often pointlessly attached to spells that are already self limiting in multiple ways as if they were instead cranked to 11. This is especially problematic for nondamage spells that go from being almost good to flat out cruddy & denies casters an especially meaningful alternate pillar involving nondamage options. You can see that easily by looking at the scorn bordering on outright contempt for the glass cannon idea over better options in the old 3.5 god wizard guide.
• Spoiler: WotC is fighting the problems of a different edition & ignoring how this one works even while writing it

  Wotc designs everything against some faulty whiteroom what if where fighters never get magic weapons then never considers what happens when they do & go out of their way making every effort to make sure that the martials are as likely as possible to trivially obtain magic weapons. This one is really what makes everything else so difficult since it affects spells themselves, magic items, magic item availability, & critically so many aspects of monster design

  Spoiler: To show how reprehensible this is, here's advice from 3 different 5e sources on the matter

  View attachment 135848
• Spoiler: spells that once started poor & became great over time just stay bad

  Because of that last point most spells are absolute trash unused by design. In previous editions a caster might go through spell options in the book from time to time seeing if things jump out as a meaningful option they passed on before now that they are higher caster level & have whatever expecting a reasonable chance of coming across broadly useful options. In 5e the odds are near zero
• Finally there's this ↓

Wow that's a pretty bold way of missing the point. Before I fully respond, you are claiming that the third level spell duo fireball &
lightning bolt are not only the only spells a caster needs but also that blasting is the only meaningful role that a caster should bother with or that the mere presence of those two spells excuses any amount of bad design in the other 300something spells that are often each trying tocombat rampant unchecked lfqw alongside monster design attempting to do the same without stopping to notice that 5e inverts LFQW into LWQF & LWQR . Thanks for providing an example of why a couple good enough spells atop a pile of unused by design & almost but not really good spells is so problematic in a ways that makes doing anything about it such a sisyphean task. So much of what casters do is the nondamage stuff while that nondamage stuff is hamstrung by the faulty assumption that LFQW is still a serious thing present in 5e.

Saying those 2 spells (fireball and lightning bolt) are the only spells a caster needs, is not even close to what I'm claiming. That would be a ridiculous claim. Maybe I was a bit too flippant in my response, rich took away from the point. If sorry about that.

I'm claiming that wizards are quite versatile in the many things they can accomplish through spells, across all 3 tiers of play. Your post, which was not easy to parse, seemed to be arguing that that's not the case.

I wanted to make sure that was what you were actually arguing.

Preemptively, yes there are quite a few "garbage" spells across many levels. This is unfortunate as they can act as traps for the unwary (though this is a bigger problem for the sorcerer than the wizard), but weeding those out, the wizard still has many good choices.

Also, as too LFQW: 5e greatly reduces it, especially when compared to 3e. But it's still there, too a greatly lessened degree.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I would probably allow it to function a tiny bit more like Chain Lightning, but not much. Something like you choose a line to point the lightning bolt, but it doesn't go straight down that line, it can zig-zag to creatures within 5 feet of it (in any direction) until the end of the line, allowing the caster to choose who in the line are affected. I also might change the saving throw type of CON, as lightning doesn't actually need to hit you to kill you, and trying to dodge lightning in real life is doomed to failure.

 

[tetrasodium]

Saying those 2 spells (fireball and lightning bolt) are the only spells a caster needs, is not even close to what I'm claiming. That would be a ridiculous claim. Maybe I was a bit too flippant in my response, rich took away from the point. If sorry about that.

I'm claiming that wizards are quite versatile in the many things they can accomplish through spells, across all 3 tiers of play. Your post, which was not easy to parse, seemed to be arguing that that's not the case.

I wanted to make sure that was what you were actually arguing.

Preemptively, yes there are quite a few "garbage" spells across many levels. This is unfortunate as they can act as traps for the unwary (though this is a bigger problem for the sorcerer than the wizard), but weeding those out, the wizard still has many good choices.

Also, as too LFQW: 5e greatly reduces it, especially when compared to 3e. But it's still there, too a greatly lessened degree.

5e doesn't "reduce it", that bolded statement is simply false because an inversion is quite different from a reduction & the math supports me in that statement. Leveled spells do not create LFQW unless you ignore that martials also have limited use options & don't include them or start doing things like " well if these spells always hit the number of targets defined in the faulty dmg249 targets in areas of effect spherical cow that assumes enough opponents present who are also politely arranged for the spell. Remember that wotc's own advice rules out the relevance of "but what if the GM deliberately refuses to allow magic items" as a meaningful concern. To give you a leg up on proving your point, here is the math of & what compares to a maximized disintegrate & maximized meteor swarm but it's not pretty and nicely shows how untrue that bolded claim of yours is in 5e.

 

[Mort]

5e doesn't "reduce it", that bolded statement is simply false because an inversion is quite different from a reduction & the math supports me in that statement. Leveled spells do not create LFQW unless you ignore that martials also have limited use options & don't include them or start doing things like " well if these spells always hit the number of targets defined in the faulty dmg249 targets in areas of effect spherical cow that assumes enough opponents present who are also politely arranged for the spell. Remember that wotc's own advice rules out the relevance of "but what if the GM deliberately refuses to allow magic items" as a meaningful concern. To give you a leg up on proving your point, here is the math of & what compares to a maximized disintegrate & maximized meteor swarm but it's not pretty and nicely shows how untrue that bolded claim of yours is in 5e.

There are two problems with your claim :

1. It only addresses damage dealt. In combat, damage isn't really the true strength of the Wizard. The true strength of the Wizard is control - hampering enemies to give time for others to eliminate them. From early on spells like sleep, continuing to web, to the wall spells, to spells like force cage and maze. That's the Wizard's true strength.

2. There are two other pillars of play, exploration and social interaction. The wizard's spells allow serious interaction with both these pillars to a degree the fighter simply cannot match. And it gets much worse as the levels increase, thus preserving a big aspect of LFQW.

 

[jgsugden]

Playing in (a highly homebrewed) Tomb of Annihilation campaign, in a fight with those goblins that stack on top of each other, my party's Sorcerer killed ~30 goblins with one fireball.

Have none of you ever used wizards/blue dragons at the end of a 100 foot hallway?

 

[Blue]

1. Solo encounters.
2. Monsters filling alcoves that are opposite each other.
3. The party is between the monsters. Here, you can get them, but there is a cost that exceeds the benefit.
4. The monsters are airborne (and you are not) and are not in a line to the ground.
5. The monsters are spaced by more than 100 feet.
6. The line you need to get two of them requires you to move more than your speed to set up.
7. I can go on.

The utility of each of these spells is HIGHLY dependent upon DM style and encounter design.

Okay, if you are saying that a common DM style is to actively every encounter prevent lines from happening, then I have to agree with you. Just provide evidence that this is a common DM style to occur in the majority of battles and I will apologize and agree.

Or, we can be serious for a bit. Yes, it's easy to picture specifics it doesn't work. That said, the cases where fireball can't be used without hitting an ally are much greater than the cases for lightning bolt.