D&D 5E Witch Bolt and Elemental Affinity

[Fralex]

Yeah, if they can't do anything else effective, ducking behind a wall is a pretty good idea. I was mainly referring to situations where they could attempt to keep contributing in a meaningful way to the fight, or at least they could try to charge first to see if they could break through the lines.

I get you. And I agree that it's ridiculous to play enemies as if they all read the descriptions for every spell in the book and know the exact number of feet any given ranged attack is limited to. My point was just that when confronted with a spell effect they want to end, some of the common things they'll try are either disrupt the caster's concentration, block the caster's line of sight, or attempt to escape the spell's range, whatever that may be.

 

[Pickaxe]

I get you. And I agree that it's ridiculous to play enemies as if they all read the descriptions for every spell in the book and know the exact number of feet any given ranged attack is limited to. My point was just that when confronted with a spell effect they want to end, some of the common things they'll try are either disrupt the caster's concentration, block the caster's line of sight, or attempt to escape the spell's range, whatever that may be.

Don't forget having your dad pick up the caster and throw him down a shaft.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Here's one I just made up:

Flashbolt
Evocation cantrip

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 50 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

A crackling arc of lightning streaks toward a creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d6 lightning damage. Whether you hit or miss, your hand emits a flash of dim light in a 40-foot radius, illuminating yourself and your surroundings for a second or so.
The spell creates more than one arc when you reach higher levels: two arcs at 5th level, three arcs at 11th level, and four arcs at 17th level. You can direct the arcs at the same target or at different ones. Make a separate attack roll for each arc.

I like this enough I'm going to use it, and I almost never use non-official content I didn't create myself.

One nitpick though is that the range is nonstandard. I seem to remember 50' ranges in the playtest, but the spreadsheet I've got has no 50' range spells in any of the 5e products.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

On a hit, the target takes 1d6 lightning damage..

I'm not sure that much of a loss of damage or range potential is merited compared to Fire bolt. Shocking grasp's extra affects are actually quite potent for those who can make use of it. So I don't think a lightning ranged catrip that doesn't have those needs to deal less than a d8 even if it has the same range as firebolt.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The problem with increasing the damage is that the spell is basically a poor man's eldritch blast in the hands of a draconic lightning sorcerer or an evoker, due to adding their spell casting ability modifier to each attack. Even if you limit the extra damage to applying only once to each creature (which I'm probably going to do just as soon as I can find an elegant way to phrase such a restriction), you have a great ability to blast multiple opponents. It's like some of the Elemental Evil spells--slightly inferior to PHB spells in general, but better than them for the right draconic sorcerer.

 

[Fralex]

Yeah, that was my reasoning. Lightning spells sounded like a natural contender for something that could branch out and hit multiple targets like eldritch blast, but I wanted to make sure it wouldn't step on the warlock's toes. So I gave it 1d6 damage (the standard amount for a multitarget cantrip) and a range of 50 feet because acid splash has a range of 60 feet but isn't as flexible. Then I added the light flash detail to both give it an interesting limitation (casting it might reveal your location if you're attacking from a dark place) that could also be used as a very minor utility (in the dark or shadows, casting this gives you a second to look around). Making it unable to hit the same target with two bolts is actually a good suggestion that I might implement, too. I don't have enough experience with mid- or high-level play to know whether the way it is now is still too good. Let me know how it works out if you try it!

EDIT: Oh, wait, you were talking about the extra damage from Elemental Affinity. I misunderstood.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

The problem with increasing the damage is that the spell is basically a poor man's eldritch blast in the hands of a draconic lightning sorcerer or an evoker,

I don't think thats a good argument since a Draconic Fire Sorcerer has Firebolt.

 

[Fralex]

I don't think thats a good argument since a Draconic Fire Sorcerer has Firebolt.

Why? Fire bolt and eldritch blast are very different from each other. The only similarity is the damage die and the attack roll.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I don't think thats a good argument since a Draconic Fire Sorcerer has Firebolt.

What I mean is that while firebolt can benefit from the sorcerer's Cha mod (or an evoker's Int mod), eldritch blast can benefit from a warlocks Cha mod on each strike.* That's an extra +20 damage compared to +5.

So that was the basis of comparison. This spell seems to work wonderfully as long as you only allow the ability mod to work against the same creature once. Your maximum single target damage is going to be quite a bit less than firebolt, and even if you split it against two targets and add the damage together it's still doing less overall damage than firebolt. It's not until you split it to attack 3 creatures that the overall damage slightly exceeds firebolt.

Hmm... Now that I compare it to acid splash I begin to wonder if it might actually need to use d8s to keep up with the ability mod only applying once per target.

*Provided they took Agonizing Blast, which they probably did.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

Oops, just noticed the Homemade spell ws using multi-shots, not a damage increase.