D&D 5E Spells cast at higher level spell slots. Worth it?

[Zardnaar]

For spells like hold and bless its great, damage dealing spells not so much.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I would call a system in which points can be "wasted", one in which the value of a point has been assigned incorrectly. Spending 1 point on something should be well worth 1 point

As I'm sure we're both aware, what should be and what is are often two different things.

Having played (or at least read through) a lot of point-based systems, it's hard to assign any point cost to ribbon abilities that don't affect your core competencies. One of the most important differences between Shadowrun 2E and Shadowrun 3E is that the latter segregated out active skills from knowledge skills, because they realized that players were only putting skill points into things that could keep them alive and rarely (if ever) putting points into knowing about sports or elven wines or anything. Asking your players to make themselves less effective at their main role, in exchange for benefits that are much more situational, is rarely a persuasive offer regardless of the exchange rate.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Having a minimum level feels to be like a bit of disadvantage: worth a 1/2 point to power per level or something like that. Consider -

Little Foom!
1st level
1 target
2d10 fire damage + 1d10 fire damage for each higher level spell slot (3d10 for 2nd, 4d10 for 3rd etc)

Big Foom!
4th level
1 target
5d10 fire damage + 1d10 fire damage for each higher level spell slot.

Little Foom! as written is always better than Big Foom! because it can be cast using all spell slots from level one upwards.

To compensate, Big Foom! needs something else. Quantified in hypothetical points it could be that Big Foom! needs 1.5 points of other stuff.

If we look to existing examples of spells as guides, the difference would be that Little Foom targets one creature, while Big Foom would hit all targets in a given area. Then you could have a Great Foom that hits all enemies (excludes allies) and perhaps a larger area.

 

[Lidgar]

Chromatic orb is pretty good cast at higher levels. Especially if you happen to get a crit.

 

[Barolo]

Chromatic orb is pretty good cast at higher levels. Especially if you happen to get a crit.

Do you really think so? Isn't it completely outclassed by scorching ray against any enemy that is not fire resistant/imune?

 

[Angelo Pantano]

Last session the wizard used sleep as 2nd level spell and put a flying wounded dragon to sleep making him crash on the trees below.. So yes I'd say it's worth to cast spells with higher slots..

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Last session the wizard used sleep as 2nd level spell and put a flying wounded dragon to sleep making him crash on the trees below.. So yes I'd say it's worth to cast spells with higher slots..

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

I agree that there are many spells that continue to have value when using higher level spell slots. But I would argue often those are more the status effect and utility spells, whereas damage dealing spells are less consistent with using higher level spell slots and tend to be worse off.

 

[clearstream]

If we look to existing examples of spells as guides, the difference would be that Little Foom targets one creature, while Big Foom would hit all targets in a given area. Then you could have a Great Foom that hits all enemies (excludes allies) and perhaps a larger area.

I think we're basically in agreement. We concur that the example clearly demonstrates that having a higher slot minimum is a cost. We're agreed that we have to give something extra to Big Foom. I feel like that is a separate conclusion from any conclusion about how much extra to give.

 

[cbwjm]

If we look to existing examples of spells as guides, the difference would be that Little Foom targets one creature, while Big Foom would hit all targets in a given area. Then you could have a Great Foom that hits all enemies (excludes allies) and perhaps a larger area.

Shadowrun does spells like this, although rather than levels they are more ease of use. They have something like:

Damage, touch
Damage, ranged
Damage, ranged aoe

You could equate that to levels 1 to 3 although single target and multitarget tend to deal different damage at the same level.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Do you really think so? Isn't it completely outclassed by scorching ray against any enemy that is not fire resistant/imune?

I think that spells have more metrics by which to measure usefulness than only comparing damage amount and type, and as a result it is not so easy to say that scorching ray completely outclasses chromatic orb.

Let's look at a few possible metrics to compare the two in detail (because I'm coming into this post without an opinion as to whether one spell outclasses the other or not).

Range: Both have enough range to cover the entire field of battle in typical encounter conditions, but scorching ray has the edge in some atypical encounter conditions.

Components: Scorching ray has the edge here too, since it doesn't require a material component of any kind.

Usability: Chromatic orb has a very slight edge here since it can be cast with any available spell slot. I say the edge is very slight because at a certain level, the damage of cantrips matches or beats the damage of a 1st-level casting of chromatic orb, and at that level other 1st-level spell options remain solidly useful (i.e. shield) so reserving 1st-level spell slots for those isn't unwise.

Versatility: Chromatic orb has the edge here, since scorching ray is only ever going to do fire damage (barring class features or feats that provide options not yet officially in the game), which might be resisted or ignored by a target, and chromatic orb has enough choices for damage type that it is unlikely to be resisted or ignored entirely by monsters that aren't resisting or ignoring all spells of level X or lower.

The Gamble: This one, I feel, is more subjective. Some people (me, for example) like the better odds of a big hit and don't mind better odds of a complete miss in trade to get it, and some people like the better odds of having some effect even if it means smaller chance at the big hits. It would take an in-depth look at the damage estimations of each spell given the actual details of enemies faced in the campaign to be sure which has an edge, so I'm comfortable calling this metric a draw.

Strategy: scorching ray has the edge again (in the general case at least), since it can be multi-target or single-target, while chromatic orb is stuck single-target only. A sorcerer with twin spell can change that a bit, especially given that a sorcerer might also add some bonus damage for choosing a particular damage type when casting chromatic orb.

So that's 3 for scorching ray, and 2 for chromatic orb with an extra nod to the spell if the character in question is a sorcerer with the right set of features. Which isn't, by my reckoning, a complete outclassing - even though it is clear that scorching ray is definitely generally more potent, which I think it should be, given that it's a higher level spell.