Irda Ranger
First Post
Okay, so are you of the opinion then that the relative spread of adding Agonizing Blast to AoE would be necessary to make it balanced?You are understood but Eldritch blast is still better than all that in most circumstances most of the time. Focus fire is typically better than small aoe spells even if the aoe spell does slightly more total damage after all targets are accounted for (this is because focus fire) Couple that with eldritch blasts ability to be a decent two target aoe in its own right and I'm not seeing your proposed change as anything other than making a few cantrips situationally better than eldritch blast. its only when 3+ creatures can be caught in your air and no friendlys that your proposal is distinctly better than eldritch blast.
If you take Fire Bolt (2d10), add Agonizing Blast (+3-5), and multiply by 2x for the DMG's suggested AoE multiplier, you end up doing (on average) 11 HP/turn more damage than Eldritch Blast. Sometimes less (because they're too sprea out), but sometimes also a lot more. Eldritch Blast plus Hex reduces the spread in favor of "Exploding Fire Bolt" down to +8 HP/turn at 11th level and +5 HP/turn at 17th level.
Does that seem too good? Or do you think focus fire/spread fire is a fair trade-off for 10 HP/turn of raw damage output?