- Conjure animals
- Counterspell
- Leomund's Tiny Hut
- Plant Growth
- Revivify
- Slow
Just to name a few
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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Conjure animals may be mechanically powerful but it's impact on pacing and round time may as well deal psychic damage directly to the table.
Hypnotic pattern is usually better. Maybe slightly more situational depending on your DM and monster intelligence.
I think the difference really comes if fireball would reliable actually kill your opponents and if that's your objective.
A phalanx of hobgoblins have 11 hitpoints each, so their half damage on a success is still likely to mean they go from full to dead in a fireball. Hypnotic pattern would probably still take out 3/4+ of them, but now you and mop up the incapacitated creatures.
Hypnotic pattern is more versatile as it's humane and can be used to achieve multiple objectives, but when it's life or death, nothing kills like fireball.
How many 11 HP enemies are you fighting past level 5?
From level 5-7, I could see myself throwing a dozen CR 1/2 hobgoblins at a party looks a.
At level 9, a CR 5 boss, a pair of CR 2 lieutenants and 8 CR 1/2 minions would also be a fun fight. I'm pulling both these numbers from page 68 of Forge of Foes, a great 3rd party suppliment.
If I suspected the PC was itching to use fireball, I'd give them a killer use for it soon after they hit level 5, such as the aforementioned 8 wide, 4 deep phalanx of hobgoblins that could be incinerated in a single blast from this. If you're not familiar with lightning rods, if the idea of specific things to make the PCs feel cool, undead for the cleric to turn, mundane archers for the mink to deflect, or dense, weak enemies for the sorcerer to fireball. The mother of all lightning rods is the one you set up soon after they get the ability to show how it shines.
Also if you use the minion rules such as those created by MCDM, then at basically any level, those mooks will be instantly killed by this effect, it's great empowerment for the player and if it's budgeted for in your encounter creation, not fun spoiling.
Depends heavily on your campaign. Sometimes you're fighting a big powerful monster, sometimes you're fighting an invading army.
Me: fireball isn't the answer to everything
My son: No?
Me: No. Fireball is the question.
Son: Fireball is the question?
Me: Fireball is the question and the answer is yes
All those other spells are incredibly situational. Fireball is useful in every situation!
Hostile Creatures? Fireball! Locked Door? Fireball! Failed speech check? Fireball! Queue in front of smithy too long? Fireball!
All I'm hearing is Dwight Schrute yelling "FIREBALL!"
Hypnotic Pattern.
FIreball is good, don't get me wrong. AoE damage with absolutely fucked range and radius is hard to argue with.
But Hypnotic Pattern coming off a Bard (due to Cutting/Unsettling Words, and possibly the horrifyingly overpowered Instrument of the Bards) completely destroys any encounter it touches.
It effectively does one of three things:
-At worst, it burns a Legendary Resistance
-Second worst, it wastes several enemy actions as they all need to spend turns waking each other up instead of doing damage
-Likely: Turns any swarm encounter into a bunch of very easy 'party against one mook' fights
-Likely: Allows you to just skip a boss' turn
Well, in that picture, I'd go with Lightning Bolt instead.
Counterspell
Need a wizard with a gun going Counterspell This you filthy casual
Counter spells counter spell
My bard friend counterspells your counterspell
In a 5e campaign where I played a halfling Warlock, and found that Fireball isn't on the basic Warlock spell list, I convinced my DM to allow me to create a Fireball-like spell, since at that point I didn't have a lot of choices for AoE attack spells, and my party-mates could all do more single-target damage than I could.
Since the 5e go-to attack cantrip for Warlocks is Eldritch Blast, I figured I might as well learn into it and called it Eldritch Boom. The effect is similar to a sonic boom. Instead of catching fire, creatures and objects in the AoE that fail their save are knocked over (creatures are knocked prone). For the damage, I conceded that I couldn't just copy Fireball, so instead of 8d6, I went for 6d8, but higher level slots add 1d8 per level.
The DM allowed it mainly because I was the main spellcaster. But later on, our party got a new addition: a pyromaniac sorcerer. Around that time, I switched to Blight as my go-to attack (when I didn't just use Eldritch Blast).
For aoe damage? Yeah it was designed that way. Same for lightning bolt but a fireball will hit more in average than a line spell. But the line has more range. But 3rd is when great utility comes into play as well.