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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 7038269" data-attributes="member: 71699">Tempo is action efficiency over time. If I will usually get 7 actions per fight, then casts 8-15 of Burning Hands aren't much help. Until I get into a second fight, of course.I guess you've noticed that taking Burning Hands and Fireball optimises the total damage potential, right? You get to use all your slots efficiently. I feel like a possible difference in our evaluations is that I don't think of this in terms of a dichotomy. Taking both yields 98d6 of damage potential +75 with EE + 15d6 more with AR (taking all Burning Hands). That is significantly better than either alone. In trade, you give up two of your 15 or fewer spells in mind (i.e. at Level 10) instead of one.I agree that players get to say what excites them. Speaking as a game designer, my role is to try and understand what that is. More damage does that for a decent number of people.You see that I am arguing that balancing spells by looking at one cast in isolation isn't formally correct: its not a dichotomy, and players get to make more than one cast. They can cast one Meteor Swarm between rests, or two between long rests. For me it is very hard to ignore that intrinsic balancing. Arcane Recovery at that sort of level (i.e. 20th) can recover 30d6 worth of Burning Hands, or 20d6 worth of Meteor Swarm + 3d6 of Burning Hands. With EE, the former will do +50 damage while the latter will do +10. The more I dig into this, the neater a piece of design work I think it is.</blockquote>

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