Just take a close look at dragons or demons, for example, to see what I mean. energy, where usually they have a little resistance at best, and rarely have immunity, and then only to a single type. Blasting OTOH tends to at least do something all the time, takes less thinking, and is less likely to fall prey to one of the myriad of resistances or immunities that monsters have to thwart control. i.e., you have to be smart to use them right and they may fail under the wrong circumstances, but they're intentionally stronger than direct-damage if you do some thinking and properly apply them. You get rewarded for playing smart, and that's built into the control spells. Plus blasting all the time or relying on any blanket strategy all the time is suboptimal. Direct damage isn't that bad at all, just maybe a little worse. direct damage", and internet people exaggerated, said control was all powerful and direct damage was worthless (neither is true). But there is a reason that a caster dealing damage is considered less than intelligent.ī/c when people discovered battlefield control, it was a sudden revelation, before which blasting was the popular things to do. The damage spells might be balanced in core. Ever try to start a fire with only a little lighter fluid, without letting it soak in first so it can keep burning? But also see comment on rolling 1 on reflex saves, and many spell descriptions do give effects for unattended objects, there are rules for damaging objects even if they aren't particularly flammable, etc. Yeah, I too have a conceptual problem with magic dealing enormous amounts of bodily harm, but having no ill effects immediately after. But if you shot it diagonally you would hit 2 diagonal lines not just 1. Nah, I think the line has to pass through the squares not just touch their edge. I've been shocking more PCs that I should have been. If so, I guess that makes it a LITTLE better, since you can hit everything in a 10-foot-wide hallway, and also have a chance to hit a whole party with it elsewhere if they march in groups of two side-by-side (like they do in most games I've been in). I always took it to mean that you could start it at one corner of your square and have it run right down the line between two columns of squares, effecting squares on BOTH sides of the line (essentially make the area of lightning bolt a 2 square by 120 square rectangle). The SRD has this to say about Line spells: And the fireball spell description does say it ignites flammables. being dazed or cardiac arrest), they'd be far more usable.įun and little known fact: If you roll a 1 on a reflex save against a blasting spell, it affects a piece of your gear (normally they don't). If Fireball actually did have a shockwave that knocked people down (or set 'em on fire) and if Lightning Bolt was the rubberbolt we all knew and loved (or forced a save vs. 3e has bland blasting spells, main arguments against them (since the base effect is mediocre and that's all they'll ever give). Then a bunch of people got fired or something, they started experimenting with splatbooks including some concepts to be used later for 4e, and all that went out the window.Ģe Bolt is a classic. I dunno if they hired a mathematician or what, but I checked their numbers and they are crazy careful. Go ahead and dis 3.5e for it's style, blandness, for some classes having more options than others, w/e, but believe me, don't dis the balance. They were insanely careful at making things work right, even if most people don't bother reading all those tiny rules and run into "balance" problems b/c of it. After reading way too many 3.5e rules and doing way too much number crunching, I've come to the conclusion that WotC was even crazier with their core rule-making than I am for checking their work. Usually I find complaints people have come from THEM not knowing how to play the game, or from non-core material, or etc. There's surprising little redundancy in the spell list (though there are many spells that are significant variations on others). And if you had a lightning ball spell that was just like fireball, that would be dull. I'm surprised that lightning bolt even does equal damage, so I don't really see a minor AoE problem as being all that bad. The other energy damage spells would be kinda redundant otherwise. If all you want is damage, you're supposed to pick fire spells. ALL fire spells in D&D tend to be better, do more damage, etc., because resistance is so common. Also, it's a Core-spell unlike Scintillating Sphere Fireball often just doesn't cut it due to Fire Resistance being so common. Anyways, the effect area is much better in for example corridors, than that Burst. WoTC doesn't know how to play their own game. I disagree with corridor comments, unless party is more than 40 feet apart in said corridor.
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