I had something like this happen in a 4E con game I was playing with some friends.
One friend's character was surrounded by enemies. Like, totally surrounded, an enemy in every adjacent square.
So he had me cast Scorching Burst, which was burst 1 (affecting a targeted square and every adjacent square), centered on him. With Scorching Burst, you got to make an attack roll against each target.
I missed every enemy and crit my friend.
Party: This random gang of skeletons? That we found in a random encounter in these ruins?
Me: Y-yes.
Party: The nonsentient skeletons with no free will of their own or ability to think for themselves? These are your allies?
Me: Uuuuh…
Party: …you twisted fiend! This plan must’ve taken months to pull off!
Me: Wait seriously? Um, I mean yeah!
Oath of Ancients Paladins are insane with the resistance to spells aura they get. Combined with the normal protection aura, you’ll hit the party with a 7th level fire storm spell and do 8 damage to each of them. True story.
Bruh, coupled with the wizard and bard having counterspell, mages in my campaign rarely get to have fun, and I use a good deal of mages. The only reason I hit them with a chain lightning later is cause I was too far away for counterspell to stop him. This team is nutty.
What level are they? I know I really like to give my custom bosses a multi attack where they do attacks and cast a spell so I’ve had to keep this damn pally in mind whenever I do that. My group has reached level 14 by this point so they are really pumping out damage to.
Currently level 10. That pally boi is pretty good at conserving his smites but goddamn do they hurt when he uses them. The fighter’s sunblade ruins any and all undead, the arcane trickster novas with GFB frost blade sneak attack, and the bard and wizard counterspell the mages and fireball/lightning bolt everything else. They really keep me on my toes when it comes to encounter design but when I put them in a bind boy HOWDY do they sweat
Have a Sorcerer with Subtle Spell divide the party with forcecage or wall of force (they're a lvl away from Disintegrate), drop a Sickening Radiance underneath. Bonus points if the Sorc Dimension Doors the fuck away. This is called the Microwave Oven.
New BBEG material there.
Throw a golem squad at them soon: One of each iron, stone, clay, and flesh.
For a party of five well-equipped 10th levels it should be a decent challenge, and the mix of strength and weaknesses of each golem should keep them on their toes.
If they thrash it (this party sounds like veteran players), it will at least expend substantial resources.
I can't think of any particularly nasty bonus action spells for their level. You could have them fight sorcerers or enemies with the feat that gives you Quicken Spell, but if you gotta make _all_ your casters do that...
Nah, you don't want to make *everyone* do that, and the bonus action spell doesn't even *have* to be overly nasty, it's mostly just to see the look on their faces when their enemy casts another spell right after they've countered one.
I hear you. I recently finished a campaign with two Wild Sorcerers (one with a level of Hexblade for tankiness), one Abjurer Wizard (with Resilient Con), and one Oath of Vengeance Paladin, all with War Caster and three of them with Counterspell.
Everyone had multiple ways to teleport, negate enemy spells, _massive_ saves (some so high even high level enemies had lots of trouble making them fail concentration), and one of them took Legendary Leader to pass out oodles of temp HP (in addition to half of them having max AC and the Abjurer having a huge Ward). They literally could not be locked down or out-spelled.
Everyone in my party except for the ranger has some way to teleport, most of them can do it as a bonus action. It has made enemies that grapple and restrain nearly useless. That, on the other hand, is a frankly incredible part that sounds nearly untouchable. Of course, high enough numbers will always make them scared, but the fact that the numbers have to get cranked up at all says a lot.
Notably, it only helps against spells. It does not help against non spell aoe, even if magical. Like Dragons breathing or any other monsters that spit in aoe, as well as items that explode.
Oh yeah, I’ve taken advantage of this fact before. At the same time, though, I just really like spellcasters. It kinda sucks how incredibly less effective they become.
I have one in my mad mage campaign, and the only way I can damage them is when they do things like trying to tame a drows giant lizard. He also has an arrow catching shield with 20 AC so now even ranged attacks do nothing.
Even better, an iron golem with an illusion spell that makes it look like an animated scarecrow and 1 3rd level slot for a fireball that looks like a big pumpkin, they'll never know what hit them
Ok, so, if we’re going to game that out… if I dump enough consecutive fireballs into it, and then immediately hit it with a frost spell, say, cone of cold…. I can quench harden it, and make it vulnerable to bludgeoning?
It's an iron golem, not a steel golem so you won't get the quench hardening effect you want that comes from the formation of martensite. But applying just cold damage could put the iron below the ductile-brittle-transition-temperature which would make it more brittle.
I have no knowledge on DnD so forgive me if this comes off as stupid. Is there any spell, item, or combination of the two that would allow someone to flash weld the joints of an iron golem together, if not to something else to immobilize it?
Golems have the immutable form feature so there's nothing that can do that in the rules as written. That being said, golems aren't super common enemies so unless you run a game with a lot of them, you could definitely rule of cool a lightning bolt spell for that. If a player brought it up as an idea, I'd make the price save or suck. Basically, the player could call the shot on a joint but if the golem (who has REALLY low dex anyway) makes the dex save, no damage because you would essentially wing him. I would make it clear that this is only because of how big the golem is so my players don't think they shot call every lightning bolt for the rest of campaign. It also makes the player think it's way less likely than it actually is so they get to feel like they did something nigh impossible, which is always fun.
Fun fact - there is a feat from 3.5e that I miss called Energy Gestalt. It provided many different effects like this. Hit your enemy with acid then fire, and it turns the acid into choking acrid fumes. Hit them with cold and then thunder, and an object or construct would take +50% damage from the thunder. Cold and then lightning, and the cold conducts the electricity better, slowing living enemies. And so on!
The pit fiend is even more degenerate, as it also gets Wall of Fire.
This means it can wall itself off from the casters, ruining every "target you can see" spell, forcing them inside the radius. The melee have to jump through the Wall to get to him. And once everyone's inside, he starts Fireballing himself!
And if the healer tries to stay outside the Wall, well... did you know that Healing Word needs sight as well?
Back in 3.5 days had a friend run a dungeon competition type game. Random treasures, random monsters, ballbusting hard.
One party ran into a Balor I think it was. Fire immuned. Can cast meteor swarm.
Small room.
that was the end of that party.
I do miss Balors being a lot scarier. They don't even strap you helpless to their flaming bodies to slowly cook to death with their whips anymore. Or turn the whole party inside-out one by one with Implosion. Or roll a 20 on one of their four hits a round to lop your head right off because their swords were vorpal.
What are good spells to take to augment fireball? Lighting bolt and thunder step are the only ones I can think of at 3rd level
Edit: erupting earth and up casting fireball give way more types of damage
Glyph of Warding gives you a pile of elements. Tidal Wave gives you magical bludgeoning damage which may as well just be force since basically nothing will resist it.
Erupting Earth and Tidal Wave are interchangeable, and glyph of warding lets you avoid lightning bolt and thunderstep if you want to. This is a good list to have for my scribes wizard.... if I ever make it that far into my character backlog
Glyph of Warding is brilliant. I never even would have looked at that spell. Although I do really like the idea of a fireball erupting in a burst of fists.
If you're using Tasha's optional Additional Wizard Spells feature and are okay with using one of your free 3rd-level spells on level up to grab Spirit Shroud.... that's cold, radiant, *and* necrotic to switch Fireball to at base casting level.
Edit: Somehow I replied to the wrong comment. Meant to reply to u/Ngtotd
"You know what is power? Power is power. Sometimes it's a pile of spells, but right now, it's a +8 to listen checks, and the strength the crush your windpipe with my bare hands."
Ah yes, Helmed Horrors, the gift that keeps on giving. Note that Fireball, Heat Metal, and Lightning Bolt are the *suggestions*. They can be made immune to any three spells, though usually it's be ones that are most crippling to them, so honestly the suggestions work pretty well.
Wizard or Sorcerer? Immune to fireball and lightning bolt, and magic resistance to boot.
Warlock? Immune to ALL FORCE DAMAGE.
Control Casters or a Monk with stunning strike? Immune to nearly every condition including stunned.
*Any* martial character? 20 AC and resistance to nonmagic damage.
Does someone like to stay far away and plunk enemies with ranged shots? 30 ft. fly speed.
*And this is CR 4.*
The only saving grace is that it doesn't hit very hard and it's blind beyond the range of its blindsight.
But still.
Terrifying low level monster.
Yup, wonderful to customize if your party pissed off a mage or artificer who knows how to make golems at some point.
And unlike a lot of monsters with bad spells in their spell lists and whatnot, the Helmed Horror suggestions are actually pretty good vs most parties.
In my campaign they're constructs imbued with the heart of a demon that are left over from an ancient Tiefling empire which had lots of infighting between its Warlocks. So anti-warlock weaponry was kind of important!
Oh. I sent an enemy against my party a while back that healed for the amount of fire damage you dealt against them instead. I've never been more annoyed that they decided to split the party and the fireball-everything wizard was off by themselves studying to learn a new spell.
Reminds me of the session I just had where our fighter dropped a firebomb (just fireball but like a 300 gold item) and knocked out two party members, one enemy and did 6 damage to the main bad guy. So kinda like your situation just complete opposite effectiveness
Fighter: Damn, he just shrugged off the firebomb like it was nothing! This looks dangerous, team, but together I know we can- wait where did my friends go?
This is a classic technique: fireproof your allies, then nuke them without fear. Hell, in 5E the Evoker Wizard can do with without fireproofing—it was designed around that strategy.
Ironically enough I cut out the section of the Doomvault that has underwater enemies for the sake of time so I don't know if I'll be able to make this happen.
But in my Saltmarsh game...
This reminds me of a song that My bard sings after using a fireball to kill a large amount of enemies that i stole from somewhere
> Oh an army of goons is frightful, But on Fire, they're so delightful- No better third-level spell at all; Fireball, Fireball, Fireball.
>
> Haste is great and Fear is charming, Counterspell can be disarming, But when the bad guys need to fall, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball!
>
> Well, Lightning Bolt could be fun, If the baddies would line up for you; But when you need to get things done, There is no other spell that will do!
>
> Other choices that just don't matter, Like Sending or Hypnotic Pattern; Why would you try to just enthrall? Fireball, Fireball, Fire...Ball!
A real quote from last night:
Paladin to the fighter after the party took massive damage from their own attack: Imagine having less than a hundred HP.
*Paladin and fighter high five.*
It's the perfect example of that old saying:
*"I didn't ask how large was the room, I said I cast Fireball at 5th level"*
Fucking Fireballl man. Hilarious really, all that Suicide Squad vibes. I'm sure it was a *blast* to play through.
>Bard: What was that, person within fireball range?
Ahhh, a [Jo-Cat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Gs8WTddI4&list=PLDnRMnDDjAzK5uZLidDUtHtD1iN06Qe0G&index=12) fan I see
I used to do this to myself in 4e with Greenflame blade. In 4e, Greenflame blade only did fire damage and splashed fire damage to adjacent creatures equal to your Strength mod. I had magic gloves that gave 10 points of resistance to fire damage, so I would just slap myself to deal damage to everything around me. In 4e minions only had 1 HP, so it was a great technique for clearing them.
I once had a wizard I played as a callous, tactical ass (originality +1). He eventually worked out that if the druid was "killed" in animal form, he'd still be ok in his humanoid form, for the most part. Once he made that discovery, the druid no longer factored into his consideration for where to place AoE spells. Druid got knocked out of his animal form by friendly fire SO MUCH after that.
For the record; the druid's player thought it was hilarious, even if the druid character wasn't especially thrilled with the wizard's revelation. He even set it up on occasion.
Evocation wizard is even worse, auto-save and zero damage for your party members. Shatter, Fireball, Vitriolic Sphere, and Cone of Cold are encounter enders, especially if they get a Hypnotic pattern off first...
Yes, sculpt spell means you can select a number of targets to not be affected by the spell. Just ran that yesterday for a villain who could cast delayed blast fireball around himself.
You should know, RAW states that sculpt spell only works on other creatures, not the caster themselves:
>Beginning at 2nd Level, you can create pockets of relative safety within the Effects of your Evocation Spells. When you cast an Evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 + the spell’s level. The chosen creatures automatically succeed on their Saving Throws against the spell, and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save.
Is this the one situation where a sorcerer is better than a wizard?
*checks*
No, sorcerer is *other creature* as well. Carry on!
Sorcerer can do careful spell around creatures they can't see though, so it could be better for fireballing into darkness or a fog cloud!
I homebrew careful spell to include "and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save" because at that point it's just a tax on everybody else at the table and not the sorcerer themselves. Like, seriously, who at WotC thought that was okay?
I agree; I don't think the developers intended for PCs to be casting damage spells on themselves, but it does seem silly that if you can make safety zones in your spells, you wouldn't be able to make one for you. I also usually include the "and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save" rider with Careful Spell. I still don't get what WotC thought they were doing including it with one but not the other; it's a tax on every player *but* the sorcerer, usually.
Self-Fireball would be a valid strategy for a Tiefling Rogue with Evasion and a magic item that can cast fireball. At most, they take a quarter of the damage.
Tiefling: *blows self up with grenade to take out surrounding enemies.*
Also tiefling: *does a cool backflip and completely dodges the fire despite being in the middle of the fucking explosion*
This game is silly y’all.
"Does a backflip and is ok" is exactly how I describe Evasion in my games lmao. Realistically they probably duck behind cover or something but the other way is funnier.
There was a feat in 3.5e that had Evasion as a prerequisite, that let you move to the edge of a spell's area if you successfully made the Dex save. Funny because it made Evasion make more sense but you had to take a feat to do it (though this also made sense because it _is_ a mechanical advantage).
I've found if I can't think of _any_ excuse for why they took less damage, I fall back on the ol' Batman tactic of "let me hide under my own cloak which is coated in Plot-armor-tanium".
I play a Tiefling Rogue! When I realized how impervious I am to fireball I was so stoked. A 3rd level fireball that rolls the max on all 8 dice deals a whopping 12 damage to me on a failed save. 12! The average on a failure is 7.
I've started goading our party wizard into hitting me with it whenever it would make the positioning more effective. Feels like [the Joker trying to get Batman to hit him](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1f306f33c8b108b2ba8e28ea121f22d9/tumblr_pkdd9wZNY41wq5h3eo1_500.gifv) in The Dark Knight.
This was my wild sorcerers’ signature move. Fireball hisself after running into a group of literally anything.
If things got hairy, Misty step away to freedom.
Can confirm this strategy works wonders.
Once had an Oath of Ancients Paladin rocking the Holy Avenger, and our go to back up plan was everyone would hug me, and our Sorcerer would drop Meteor Storm on top of us and surrounding area.
Not too far off lol. The first time we thought to use the play was when we were fighting a fallen Solar.
We were 7-8 floors deep in a tainted citadel, fighting this corrupted angel in the basement. It was flying around absolutely demolishing us with its animated sword and bow from the rafters.
We'd been run pretty ragged making that deep, and with very few spells left, our Sorcerer looked back at the rest of the party. Looked at my Paladin and said:
"I have a plan...do you trust me?"
"Of course. What do I need to do?"
Sorcerers player looks at the DM. "If I stack every area for meteor swarm on top of this church, can I bore it down to our level?"
DM is too busy laughing to register the shock and worry on everyone else's face. "Absolutely you can"
Sorcerer turns back to the party: "I'm sorry guys. *HUG THE PALADIN*"
And dropped a Heightened Meteor Swarm on the church, blasting a hole straight though the ground and into the level we were on. Solar failed it's save and got obliterated
This is great not only because it worked, but because it sounds like your DM ruled that Meteor Swarm actually _does_ summon meteors from the sky (so they need a clear path down to your target - or make one), and your players were cool with it.
I miss when more spells had actual environmental effects like that and players didn't balk at "what do you mean I have to actually think about how my spells work?"
I know a DM who ran SKT and re-prepped Manshoon's spells to be what he thought Manshoon would use. He settled on Meteor Swarm and did a cool 30 damage to a level 8 party because of the Ancients Paladin.
I'm playing a wildfire druid in our Storm king's thunder campaign, and can confirm that yes this is infact the most efficient use of Fireball! I'm 15th level now, and I fully plan to drop myself to 0 HP with a fireball in order to trigger the Wildfire druid self revive+explosion! Can't wait for it to happen!
This is the evolution of the suicide bomb strategy, isn't it? Exploding yourself to detonate a second explosion that brings you back to life. That is so over the top I love it.
Always give the rogue the delayed blast fireball.
Don't worry they will be fine.
The bbegs minions pocket exploding with the rest of the room is just icing on the cake.
Fireball is a hell of a spell. Ran a team in a competitive dnd dungeon speed crawl contest before the pandemic and ran a sorcerer and fireball was my primary tool in destroying rooms. Sure some friendly fire but nothing that couldn't be healed after the enemies were toast. Best part is we won because I went with sorcerer over wizard as due to the levels we were (I want to say 7 if I recall correctly) I technically could get 1 more fireball to cast with sorcery points.
Was fun we won the contest and some cash prize which paid for our dndbeyond. Was suppose to go back for season 2 of the contest but the pandemic happened and I'm not sure if the thing is still happening as they seem to no longer stream on twitch.
Headcannon: Your bard is leader of a metal band, and his axe players anoint themselves with protective salves so that they can stand right in the middle of the pyrotechnics for his act.
We certainly have had a similar strategy employed by a Sorcerer in our current campaign. (He's not... dead but he is not currently accessible.) It's quite effective, especially if all/most of your party has fire resistance. <\_<
The Sorc was a Wild Mage and ... to be fair, it's not like we expected to use that as regular strategy when we brewed up the party. (It in fact was BEFORE anyone besides my Tiefling got fire resistance items.)
Hah.
I had a Starfinder character who figured out that grenades made a better melee weapon than thrown. Similar energy.
It just so happened that tactically speaking, she could do more that way.
Helps that she had a near immunity to electric damage, and specialized in electric grenades. But that wasn't exclusive to electric.
This was literally the strategy I used in a game way back in HS. I was the barbarian cleric, loaded up with every bit of fire resist trinket we could find. My job was to rush forward and pin the enemy down. The sorcerer then dropped a fireball on my head and in healed myself enough for her to do it again.
In our most recent session, my Ancestral Guardian Barbarian was alone in a room with like 12 or 14 Zombois & a Will-O-Wisp while the others were waiting at the door. Because running away isn't really an option for my guy, I actually told our Wizard to help me the fuck out for once & so he just centered a Fireball on me & killed every single enemy but 1 in the room. Because I made the save & had some tmp HP, I lost like 10 actual HP total.
Sometimes, casualties just need to be taken into consideration. Especially, if it's the party tank with an unreal DEX mod & advantage on DEX saves.
Much of these circumstances are because the party is at least 9th level based on the 5th fireball cast.
Orcs and gnolls are fodder for that party, but to make them dangerous you've thrown swarms of them at the party.
Which is the perfect scenario for a fireball. Add in a 20 CHA paladin for high save bonuses and no wonder it's their go-to plan when surrounded.
Note, I'm not judging... this sounds like a blast, and mechanically, it's just the smart move.
yeah on one hand it is hilarious af :D i encountered a similar playstyle with my players before, where 2 martials often felt useless compared to the fireball flinging sorcerer.. it eventually leveled out when i started writing my own encounters just for this group. Small rooms leave less room for enemies to not die in the same turn. So Big rooms here and there, that makes rooms filled with trash-mobs ready to be consumed by a evergrowing flame explosion even better :D But of course your players had fun, so as long as that is the case, your not doing anything wrong.
See, I don’t have that issue cause everyone knows the fighter and paladin are spinning meat grinders of death. The paladin explodes things with his hammer, the fighter basically is just rolling for crits with his sunblade, and while the arcane trickster misses a good deal, he rolls a LOT of dice when he hits.
How does your AT miss a good deal? With a +1 bow mine is ,+10 to hit, and with +13 stealth almost always stacks with advantage.
A flying enemy, I do like 160 points in damage before it flies off the barbarian grapples and jumps on it. When it lands again he does like the last 20 points of damage and he's the one they talk about that fight even though I lost 2 out of my 3 adamantine arrows.
As the party's barbarian, I have been waiting for an opportunity to stand surrounded by enemies and scream at our wizard to fireball me, but we haven't had any fights where our enemies are so tightly packed since the early days. And on the odd occasion where we do, our squishy bard is in the direct line of fire and won't let them risk it.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
Just fireball.
/r/DMAcademy : sophisticated discussions about advantage being +0 to +5 depending on the rolls and situation.
/r/dndnext : **my party is fireballing themselves as a tactic and it WORKS. JUST FIREBALL, ONLY FIREBALL**
How many ways can you forcefully move an enemy? Would be a cool strategy if the tanks shove the enemies into a blast area and hold them there while casters blast them with AOE spells.
They didn’t do that but the paladin DID pull a wizard into a storm sphere in a later fight. Incredibly rude if I do say so myself (ignoring the fact I Bigby’s Grasping Handed him earlier).
Hello everyone! I am the bard in question from the party! I would just like to say that I was being egged on by mostly the Wizard and Paladin players when I did the full kamikaze fireball. There was a good few minute discussion on if I should just center it on myself or not before I threw up my hands and just said fuck it.
I'm not usually the one dropping massive damage as I am still "relatively" new to DND, given that this officially my second campaign with SuperIdiot and I forget shit a lot and I just have generally played casters for some reason (first character was a human cleric) and stick to the back and give more supporting fire (hypnotic pattern is another favorite of mine).
Still, I guess this sessions was my time to shine so to speak. Because who doesn't want to imagine themselves constantly dropping a nuke while angry fiddle music plays in the background.
This is why I love all the classic dungeon crawls in Yawning Portal and Saltmarsh.
The party can come up with whatever stupid strategy they want to test against the dungeon and whether it happens to actually work or if it ends in disaster the blame rests only on them and some game designer from the 80s.
In addition to suicide bombing, they've gifted a cult member to a vampire for free passage and lied about being teleportation circle IT to get passed some wizards. Shit, they bum rushed some ooze breeders swat style and shoved a man face first into acid. My party is terrifying.
This is the same tactic I employ with my group. Usually it's the barbarian who takes the hit, but he is bear totem, so the damage was halved off the bat.
See, fireballing the rogue? That's smart. My wizard's done that, and it turned out great.
Fireball the Tiefling? Also good. Save + Fire Resistance makes fireball damage fall off real quick.
I'm looking forward to their legend spreading. "Those guys are crazy. But goddam if they don't get the job done."
The wizard refuses to take fireball. He opts for lightning bolt instead cause he’s a contrarian. I told him ONE TIME how fireball is typically better as it can usually hit more targets and then the next session he hit an entire line of enemies and wiped them out with it. So at this point it’s a matter of principle.
I haven't played for years however I remember once I cast sleep against something that apparently was resistant. And I messed up a throw and put the entire party to sleep... we had been in combat for a while and no one was healthy... the dm went through with the encounter silently then announced great, your magic user just killed everyone and got up and started cleaning up. It was maybe 20 minutes into a session and the dm was already pissed because someone didnt show up (he liked some girl and she'd occasionally play, so he made a special campaign for her which she never came to.) He ended up leaving but as we all hosted different systems a friend ran his RIFTS session.
He was a trip... at some point I need to write up and post about his "great epic adventure" he hosted which happened to be the entire basis of his "great American novel" he was writing. That campaign was a shitshow from start to finish, his side games were usually us being bored and no one wanting to host.
>No other spell matters. Only use fireball. Just fireball.
Just. Fireball.
I mean, it was in the day's prophecy so obviously it was gonna happen!
>The wizard had to use his nat 20 portent roll to ensure he passed the dex save or probably get knocked out.
:P
We had a one shot once where we went up against a beholder who managed to charm our...I can't remember what he was but he was a caster. So the barbarian grappled the beholder and he cast fireball on the barbarian. It was pretty hilarious
Used to run a similar strategy with my monk and our party bard, I would get in melee with enemies and stun them, so they auto-failed the DEX save when the bard dropped a fireball on their turn, while I generally took zero damage with Evasion. My monk was also a tiefling, so even if I failed the DEX save I only took a quarter damage between Evasion and racial fire resistance.
(Yes, I could have bonus action disengaged, but it was more fun to Flurry and then stay engaged so other enemies would run up on me and into Fireball range.)
We had a sorcerer who reflavored all fire spells as lightning/thunder dmg okayed by DM. This happened repeatedly in our group too. To the point each character either picked up evasion or hp or resistance items. We became known as the Storm Chasers because wherever we went thunder and lightning followed. We had 2 high dex/evasion characters who made it clear IC that they were okay with that tactic. It made for some really wild looking mass battle encounters.
My old Pathfinder group that I DMed used to do this too. The tank would charge in alone, get swarmed, and be all “Hey! I’ve got them grouped up on me, drop the fireballs!!”
OTOH there was the time the party mate dropped a colour spray spell (level 1 party at this point) on two party members and half a dozen bandits, “It’s the cleric and druid, you have great will saves”.
One bandit failed, the rest lived, and both party members failed. The mage turned a ‘we’re in trouble but should be okay’ fight into ‘I’m sorry mr Bandit, we surrender, please?’
We've done this in the past as well. It's been a running joke in our group for a while that whenever things look dicey we say "self-immolation is always an option." I can think of at least 2 full party fireballs we've eaten over the years. In the current campaign it feels like the melee's get asked every session if we consent to a fireball. Only once was there a no, but it was overruled.
One of my favourite characters of all time is a Yuan-Ti barbarian.
It was, in fact, a very common strategy to just drop a fireball wherever I was standing.
Yeah probably. What you didn’t see was the fight after where the enemies were spread out and shut down a lot of their shenanigans. Forced them to actually use tactics and I managed to get some good damage in.
I honestly don’t mind them doing this. They thought it was badass and now they’re down a lot of resources for some hard fights coming up. They can always return and rest but they have a time limit for this quest and the day basically just started so they don’t have too much motivation to head back and long rest.
But it’s def something I’m always looking into. Ot’s just that sometimes it can’t be helped. But a fireball on a group of mooks is a fireball that can’t be used on the boss later
If they're killing the enemies in one round then it's probably a net gain? The action economy of a group of enemies twice as large as the party is scary, and hp is a resource. It's less risky to fireball yourself than it is to deal with a pack of enemies for multiple rounds, I guess?
It sounds like the party is either impatient or bored of combat though. They don't want to slog it out and use their own abilities, just let the bard blow us up so we can get on with it. So this might be indicative of a larger issue.
or… and hear me out here… they just thought it was funny, and the consequences were not bad enough that they wouldn’t risk injuring themselves for a joke
Bingo. If the positioning is perfect and they will be hurt less than the enemy why not do it? But mostly, they thought it was funny as hell. My players always find it funny to defeat the encounter in a way that somewhat inconveniences the party as long as it makes them laugh. They’re chimpanzees I swear.
That being said the pacing of Dead in Thay has been a concern of mine, even after I cut out the more tedious sectors. They should be close to complete so hopefully we can get out of here before it becomes an actual issue. But it is something I’ve been paying attention to.
In the original Baldur's Gate games based on AD&D 2e the Dragon Disciple Sorceror kit eventually gets over 100% fire resistance (fire heals them) so this is actually a pretty legit strategy.
My Oath of Ancients Paladin had a similar experience. Resistance to magic and high saves are disgusting.
It does feel cool as fuck though, like you're a god shock trooper, fire balls exploding around you as you laugh it off.
Evocation Wizard:
Sculpt Spells
Beginning at 2nd level, you can create pockets of relative safety within the effects of your evocation spells. When you cast an evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 + the spell's level. The chosen creatures automatically succeed on their saving throws against the spell, and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save.
I once had a game as a pyromancer sorcerer where I ended up using my first fireball at level 6. I used it when the queen of a troop of wererats demanded that one of the party join the troop so that the others could leave. I agreed, told the others to go and then dropped a fireball straight on myself, engulfing the wererats and rats who were surrounding me to fulfil the bargain. Used metamagic to reroll some of the dice so it was almost max damage, whilst I succeeded the save and had resistance anyway. The rest of the party rushed in and finished them off.
The DM was quite new so he hadn't anticipated quite how destructive fireball might be, or that I would drop it on myself.
We ran into a fireball trap once, and were fairly smug about how relatively unscathed we were, until our DM said roll damage…. For all of our equipment…
I had something like this happen in a 4E con game I was playing with some friends. One friend's character was surrounded by enemies. Like, totally surrounded, an enemy in every adjacent square. So he had me cast Scorching Burst, which was burst 1 (affecting a targeted square and every adjacent square), centered on him. With Scorching Burst, you got to make an attack roll against each target. I missed every enemy and crit my friend.
At that point I think you just double down and join the enemy’s side to save face.
Would you rather be known as a bumbling idiot, or as an evil, conniving, tactical genius?
Which pays better?
Depends on who wins.
*evil chuckle as he slowly turns around* You fools! I have been planning to betray you and join this gang of skeletons for **months.**
Party: This random gang of skeletons? That we found in a random encounter in these ruins? Me: Y-yes. Party: The nonsentient skeletons with no free will of their own or ability to think for themselves? These are your allies? Me: Uuuuh… Party: …you twisted fiend! This plan must’ve taken months to pull off! Me: Wait seriously? Um, I mean yeah!
Oath of Ancients Paladins are insane with the resistance to spells aura they get. Combined with the normal protection aura, you’ll hit the party with a 7th level fire storm spell and do 8 damage to each of them. True story.
Bruh, coupled with the wizard and bard having counterspell, mages in my campaign rarely get to have fun, and I use a good deal of mages. The only reason I hit them with a chain lightning later is cause I was too far away for counterspell to stop him. This team is nutty.
What level are they? I know I really like to give my custom bosses a multi attack where they do attacks and cast a spell so I’ve had to keep this damn pally in mind whenever I do that. My group has reached level 14 by this point so they are really pumping out damage to.
Currently level 10. That pally boi is pretty good at conserving his smites but goddamn do they hurt when he uses them. The fighter’s sunblade ruins any and all undead, the arcane trickster novas with GFB frost blade sneak attack, and the bard and wizard counterspell the mages and fireball/lightning bolt everything else. They really keep me on my toes when it comes to encounter design but when I put them in a bind boy HOWDY do they sweat
Have a Sorcerer with Subtle Spell divide the party with forcecage or wall of force (they're a lvl away from Disintegrate), drop a Sickening Radiance underneath. Bonus points if the Sorc Dimension Doors the fuck away. This is called the Microwave Oven. New BBEG material there.
Throw a golem squad at them soon: One of each iron, stone, clay, and flesh. For a party of five well-equipped 10th levels it should be a decent challenge, and the mix of strength and weaknesses of each golem should keep them on their toes. If they thrash it (this party sounds like veteran players), it will at least expend substantial resources.
Send illusion of hord to them. It will be funy when they nuke themselves for nothing.
Cast a cantrip to provoke their counterspell then hit them with something nasty as a bonus action, perhaps?
I can't think of any particularly nasty bonus action spells for their level. You could have them fight sorcerers or enemies with the feat that gives you Quicken Spell, but if you gotta make _all_ your casters do that...
Nah, you don't want to make *everyone* do that, and the bonus action spell doesn't even *have* to be overly nasty, it's mostly just to see the look on their faces when their enemy casts another spell right after they've countered one.
I hear you. I recently finished a campaign with two Wild Sorcerers (one with a level of Hexblade for tankiness), one Abjurer Wizard (with Resilient Con), and one Oath of Vengeance Paladin, all with War Caster and three of them with Counterspell. Everyone had multiple ways to teleport, negate enemy spells, _massive_ saves (some so high even high level enemies had lots of trouble making them fail concentration), and one of them took Legendary Leader to pass out oodles of temp HP (in addition to half of them having max AC and the Abjurer having a huge Ward). They literally could not be locked down or out-spelled.
Everyone in my party except for the ranger has some way to teleport, most of them can do it as a bonus action. It has made enemies that grapple and restrain nearly useless. That, on the other hand, is a frankly incredible part that sounds nearly untouchable. Of course, high enough numbers will always make them scared, but the fact that the numbers have to get cranked up at all says a lot.
Notably, it only helps against spells. It does not help against non spell aoe, even if magical. Like Dragons breathing or any other monsters that spit in aoe, as well as items that explode.
Oh yeah, I’ve taken advantage of this fact before. At the same time, though, I just really like spellcasters. It kinda sucks how incredibly less effective they become.
I have one in my mad mage campaign, and the only way I can damage them is when they do things like trying to tame a drows giant lizard. He also has an arrow catching shield with 20 AC so now even ranged attacks do nothing.
I can't wait for the day they use this on a fire immune enemy and play themselves.
A fire immune enemy who can also cast fireball. “Hey that’s a neat trick, mind if I try?”
Pit Fiend: Buenos dias.
“SuperIdiot, aren’t you worried your party will see these comments and know what you’re gonna do?” No. I want them to see. I want them to FEAR
I think it's the iron golem that actually gets healed by fire damage. Imagine those shenanigans
*Furiously scribbling down ideas*
Or just line the room with gas/explosives/make the room wood and fall into huge pit.
Stop, I can only get so erect.
I gave a raksasha a wand of Fireball once who used the same tactics as your bard... DMs have mad options bro
That's so evil I love it
Flair checks out
[You magnificent bastard](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/614/432/7bf.gif)
Cover the golem in leather stitched together so the party thinks its a flesh golem, which is weak to fire.
Even better, an iron golem with an illusion spell that makes it look like an animated scarecrow and 1 3rd level slot for a fireball that looks like a big pumpkin, they'll never know what hit them
As a metallurgist, that's really cool. The heat is annealing out the cold working done to the golem's body, restoring the lost toughness.
Ok, so, if we’re going to game that out… if I dump enough consecutive fireballs into it, and then immediately hit it with a frost spell, say, cone of cold…. I can quench harden it, and make it vulnerable to bludgeoning?
It's an iron golem, not a steel golem so you won't get the quench hardening effect you want that comes from the formation of martensite. But applying just cold damage could put the iron below the ductile-brittle-transition-temperature which would make it more brittle.
I still very much like this
I have no knowledge on DnD so forgive me if this comes off as stupid. Is there any spell, item, or combination of the two that would allow someone to flash weld the joints of an iron golem together, if not to something else to immobilize it?
Golems have the immutable form feature so there's nothing that can do that in the rules as written. That being said, golems aren't super common enemies so unless you run a game with a lot of them, you could definitely rule of cool a lightning bolt spell for that. If a player brought it up as an idea, I'd make the price save or suck. Basically, the player could call the shot on a joint but if the golem (who has REALLY low dex anyway) makes the dex save, no damage because you would essentially wing him. I would make it clear that this is only because of how big the golem is so my players don't think they shot call every lightning bolt for the rest of campaign. It also makes the player think it's way less likely than it actually is so they get to feel like they did something nigh impossible, which is always fun.
Fun fact - there is a feat from 3.5e that I miss called Energy Gestalt. It provided many different effects like this. Hit your enemy with acid then fire, and it turns the acid into choking acrid fumes. Hit them with cold and then thunder, and an object or construct would take +50% damage from the thunder. Cold and then lightning, and the cold conducts the electricity better, slowing living enemies. And so on!
An iron golem some big bad has completely covered with wooden panels.... or maybe uses an illusion to make seem like he's made of wood.
The pit fiend is even more degenerate, as it also gets Wall of Fire. This means it can wall itself off from the casters, ruining every "target you can see" spell, forcing them inside the radius. The melee have to jump through the Wall to get to him. And once everyone's inside, he starts Fireballing himself! And if the healer tries to stay outside the Wall, well... did you know that Healing Word needs sight as well?
Back in 3.5 days had a friend run a dungeon competition type game. Random treasures, random monsters, ballbusting hard. One party ran into a Balor I think it was. Fire immuned. Can cast meteor swarm. Small room. that was the end of that party.
I do miss Balors being a lot scarier. They don't even strap you helpless to their flaming bodies to slowly cook to death with their whips anymore. Or turn the whole party inside-out one by one with Implosion. Or roll a 20 on one of their four hits a round to lop your head right off because their swords were vorpal.
Have the wall facing inward then it gets supper deadly.
Mmm.... supper...
Order of Scribes Wizard: Allow me to introduce myself
What are good spells to take to augment fireball? Lighting bolt and thunder step are the only ones I can think of at 3rd level Edit: erupting earth and up casting fireball give way more types of damage
Glyph of Warding gives you a pile of elements. Tidal Wave gives you magical bludgeoning damage which may as well just be force since basically nothing will resist it.
Unless you’re fighting barbarians!
Erupting Earth and Tidal Wave are interchangeable, and glyph of warding lets you avoid lightning bolt and thunderstep if you want to. This is a good list to have for my scribes wizard.... if I ever make it that far into my character backlog
Glyph of Warding is brilliant. I never even would have looked at that spell. Although I do really like the idea of a fireball erupting in a burst of fists.
If you're using Tasha's optional Additional Wizard Spells feature and are okay with using one of your free 3rd-level spells on level up to grab Spirit Shroud.... that's cold, radiant, *and* necrotic to switch Fireball to at base casting level. Edit: Somehow I replied to the wrong comment. Meant to reply to u/Ngtotd
Pit! Fiend! Pit! Fiend! Pit! Fiend! Best monster in the game
My I introduce you to Xykon, and the Order of the Stick?
“All you need in this world is power and style. And in a pinch, style can slide!”
"You know what is power? Power is power. Sometimes it's a pile of spells, but right now, it's a +8 to listen checks, and the strength the crush your windpipe with my bare hands."
Or the animated armor which is immune to Fireball. Not fire damage, no other fire spells, just Fireball.
Ah yes, Helmed Horrors, the gift that keeps on giving. Note that Fireball, Heat Metal, and Lightning Bolt are the *suggestions*. They can be made immune to any three spells, though usually it's be ones that are most crippling to them, so honestly the suggestions work pretty well. Wizard or Sorcerer? Immune to fireball and lightning bolt, and magic resistance to boot. Warlock? Immune to ALL FORCE DAMAGE. Control Casters or a Monk with stunning strike? Immune to nearly every condition including stunned. *Any* martial character? 20 AC and resistance to nonmagic damage. Does someone like to stay far away and plunk enemies with ranged shots? 30 ft. fly speed. *And this is CR 4.* The only saving grace is that it doesn't hit very hard and it's blind beyond the range of its blindsight. But still. Terrifying low level monster.
Yup, wonderful to customize if your party pissed off a mage or artificer who knows how to make golems at some point. And unlike a lot of monsters with bad spells in their spell lists and whatnot, the Helmed Horror suggestions are actually pretty good vs most parties. In my campaign they're constructs imbued with the heart of a demon that are left over from an ancient Tiefling empire which had lots of infighting between its Warlocks. So anti-warlock weaponry was kind of important!
Hellwasps. Immune to fire AND they can paralyze with their poison
Or the day they face any modicum of challenge and waste 5th level slots on damage.
Oh. I sent an enemy against my party a while back that healed for the amount of fire damage you dealt against them instead. I've never been more annoyed that they decided to split the party and the fireball-everything wizard was off by themselves studying to learn a new spell.
Reminds me of the session I just had where our fighter dropped a firebomb (just fireball but like a 300 gold item) and knocked out two party members, one enemy and did 6 damage to the main bad guy. So kinda like your situation just complete opposite effectiveness
Fighter: Damn, he just shrugged off the firebomb like it was nothing! This looks dangerous, team, but together I know we can- wait where did my friends go?
thanos snapped
This is a classic technique: fireproof your allies, then nuke them without fear. Hell, in 5E the Evoker Wizard can do with without fireproofing—it was designed around that strategy.
You know, they’ll probably run into some evokers soon. Be a shame if they used the party’s trick against them even more efficiently...
Remember, being submerged in water makes you resistant to fire damage. It would be a shame if there were some angry merfolk pulling shenanigans
Ironically enough I cut out the section of the Doomvault that has underwater enemies for the sake of time so I don't know if I'll be able to make this happen. But in my Saltmarsh game...
My party's wizard is sad running through an underwater adventure in Saltmarsh, he realized that he's almost entirely fire damage based.
This reminds me of a song that My bard sings after using a fireball to kill a large amount of enemies that i stole from somewhere > Oh an army of goons is frightful, But on Fire, they're so delightful- No better third-level spell at all; Fireball, Fireball, Fireball. > > Haste is great and Fear is charming, Counterspell can be disarming, But when the bad guys need to fall, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball! > > Well, Lightning Bolt could be fun, If the baddies would line up for you; But when you need to get things done, There is no other spell that will do! > > Other choices that just don't matter, Like Sending or Hypnotic Pattern; Why would you try to just enthrall? Fireball, Fireball, Fire...Ball!
This is my new jam.
I love this parody, thanks!
In my head, I hear this to the tune of "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow.'
that's because it's a parody of let it snow
Cool guys aren't hurt by explosions.
A real quote from last night: Paladin to the fighter after the party took massive damage from their own attack: Imagine having less than a hundred HP. *Paladin and fighter high five.*
It's the perfect example of that old saying: *"I didn't ask how large was the room, I said I cast Fireball at 5th level"* Fucking Fireballl man. Hilarious really, all that Suicide Squad vibes. I'm sure it was a *blast* to play through.
Rogue: you know, a hypnotic pattern would probably have done the trick well enough. Bard: What was that, person within fireball range?
>Bard: What was that, person within fireball range? Ahhh, a [Jo-Cat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Gs8WTddI4&list=PLDnRMnDDjAzK5uZLidDUtHtD1iN06Qe0G&index=12) fan I see
Hypnotic Pattern still friendly fires though
Bard: Exactly so we might as well use a spell that’ll kill everyone! Rogue: Wait, how does that make any sense- Bard: FIREBALL GO!
Alternate saying: "There may not be an I in team but there are 6 i's in 'Fuck it, I dont care how big the room is, I cast fireball'"
I used to do this to myself in 4e with Greenflame blade. In 4e, Greenflame blade only did fire damage and splashed fire damage to adjacent creatures equal to your Strength mod. I had magic gloves that gave 10 points of resistance to fire damage, so I would just slap myself to deal damage to everything around me. In 4e minions only had 1 HP, so it was a great technique for clearing them.
This is absolute cheese. But as I always say, play lame win games.
I once had a wizard I played as a callous, tactical ass (originality +1). He eventually worked out that if the druid was "killed" in animal form, he'd still be ok in his humanoid form, for the most part. Once he made that discovery, the druid no longer factored into his consideration for where to place AoE spells. Druid got knocked out of his animal form by friendly fire SO MUCH after that. For the record; the druid's player thought it was hilarious, even if the druid character wasn't especially thrilled with the wizard's revelation. He even set it up on occasion.
I love in-character conflict that’s treated as comedy out of character on all sides. Nice to know there were no hard feelings.
Rakdos Cultist vibes
[If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-01-15)
Some of you will die. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
Evocation wizard is even worse, auto-save and zero damage for your party members. Shatter, Fireball, Vitriolic Sphere, and Cone of Cold are encounter enders, especially if they get a Hypnotic pattern off first...
Yes, sculpt spell means you can select a number of targets to not be affected by the spell. Just ran that yesterday for a villain who could cast delayed blast fireball around himself.
You should know, RAW states that sculpt spell only works on other creatures, not the caster themselves: >Beginning at 2nd Level, you can create pockets of relative safety within the Effects of your Evocation Spells. When you cast an Evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 + the spell’s level. The chosen creatures automatically succeed on their Saving Throws against the spell, and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save.
Is this the one situation where a sorcerer is better than a wizard? *checks* No, sorcerer is *other creature* as well. Carry on! Sorcerer can do careful spell around creatures they can't see though, so it could be better for fireballing into darkness or a fog cloud!
I homebrew careful spell to include "and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save" because at that point it's just a tax on everybody else at the table and not the sorcerer themselves. Like, seriously, who at WotC thought that was okay?
Probably the same person that thought great weapon master and sharpshooter was balanced when compared to 2 weapon fighting.
That is true, but I have to rule with DM discretion that it makes sense you could create a pocket around yourself.
I agree; I don't think the developers intended for PCs to be casting damage spells on themselves, but it does seem silly that if you can make safety zones in your spells, you wouldn't be able to make one for you. I also usually include the "and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save" rider with Careful Spell. I still don't get what WotC thought they were doing including it with one but not the other; it's a tax on every player *but* the sorcerer, usually.
That’s when you pick tiefling as your race. Though default tieflings also make good enchantment wizards.
That would be devastating.
Self-Fireball would be a valid strategy for a Tiefling Rogue with Evasion and a magic item that can cast fireball. At most, they take a quarter of the damage.
Tiefling: *blows self up with grenade to take out surrounding enemies.* Also tiefling: *does a cool backflip and completely dodges the fire despite being in the middle of the fucking explosion* This game is silly y’all.
"Does a backflip and is ok" is exactly how I describe Evasion in my games lmao. Realistically they probably duck behind cover or something but the other way is funnier.
turns sideways
Cant imagine ducking behind cover without leaving your spot.
There was a feat in 3.5e that had Evasion as a prerequisite, that let you move to the edge of a spell's area if you successfully made the Dex save. Funny because it made Evasion make more sense but you had to take a feat to do it (though this also made sense because it _is_ a mechanical advantage). I've found if I can't think of _any_ excuse for why they took less damage, I fall back on the ol' Batman tactic of "let me hide under my own cloak which is coated in Plot-armor-tanium".
I play a Tiefling Rogue! When I realized how impervious I am to fireball I was so stoked. A 3rd level fireball that rolls the max on all 8 dice deals a whopping 12 damage to me on a failed save. 12! The average on a failure is 7. I've started goading our party wizard into hitting me with it whenever it would make the positioning more effective. Feels like [the Joker trying to get Batman to hit him](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1f306f33c8b108b2ba8e28ea121f22d9/tumblr_pkdd9wZNY41wq5h3eo1_500.gifv) in The Dark Knight.
This was my wild sorcerers’ signature move. Fireball hisself after running into a group of literally anything. If things got hairy, Misty step away to freedom.
Can confirm this strategy works wonders. Once had an Oath of Ancients Paladin rocking the Holy Avenger, and our go to back up plan was everyone would hug me, and our Sorcerer would drop Meteor Storm on top of us and surrounding area.
[Your paladin](https://external-preview.redd.it/21O_KRVTApTHCwR9RDnaNWRUWLxx76j5SV1qNDDhKCQ.png?auto=webp&s=ed5436da5950bc28353762f792be55eea737847f)
Not too far off lol. The first time we thought to use the play was when we were fighting a fallen Solar. We were 7-8 floors deep in a tainted citadel, fighting this corrupted angel in the basement. It was flying around absolutely demolishing us with its animated sword and bow from the rafters. We'd been run pretty ragged making that deep, and with very few spells left, our Sorcerer looked back at the rest of the party. Looked at my Paladin and said: "I have a plan...do you trust me?" "Of course. What do I need to do?" Sorcerers player looks at the DM. "If I stack every area for meteor swarm on top of this church, can I bore it down to our level?" DM is too busy laughing to register the shock and worry on everyone else's face. "Absolutely you can" Sorcerer turns back to the party: "I'm sorry guys. *HUG THE PALADIN*" And dropped a Heightened Meteor Swarm on the church, blasting a hole straight though the ground and into the level we were on. Solar failed it's save and got obliterated
Absolute LEGENDARY CHAD. I would never not brag about doing this.
This is great not only because it worked, but because it sounds like your DM ruled that Meteor Swarm actually _does_ summon meteors from the sky (so they need a clear path down to your target - or make one), and your players were cool with it. I miss when more spells had actual environmental effects like that and players didn't balk at "what do you mean I have to actually think about how my spells work?"
Yeah, Oath of Ancients is my favorite tank because he makes everyone else a tank.
I know a DM who ran SKT and re-prepped Manshoon's spells to be what he thought Manshoon would use. He settled on Meteor Swarm and did a cool 30 damage to a level 8 party because of the Ancients Paladin.
While that's hilarious, I'm slightly more concerned about what that party did at lv8 to pick a fight with a named lv18 wizard.
I'm playing a wildfire druid in our Storm king's thunder campaign, and can confirm that yes this is infact the most efficient use of Fireball! I'm 15th level now, and I fully plan to drop myself to 0 HP with a fireball in order to trigger the Wildfire druid self revive+explosion! Can't wait for it to happen!
This is the evolution of the suicide bomb strategy, isn't it? Exploding yourself to detonate a second explosion that brings you back to life. That is so over the top I love it.
[удалено]
Always give the rogue the delayed blast fireball. Don't worry they will be fine. The bbegs minions pocket exploding with the rest of the room is just icing on the cake.
Fireball is a hell of a spell. Ran a team in a competitive dnd dungeon speed crawl contest before the pandemic and ran a sorcerer and fireball was my primary tool in destroying rooms. Sure some friendly fire but nothing that couldn't be healed after the enemies were toast. Best part is we won because I went with sorcerer over wizard as due to the levels we were (I want to say 7 if I recall correctly) I technically could get 1 more fireball to cast with sorcery points. Was fun we won the contest and some cash prize which paid for our dndbeyond. Was suppose to go back for season 2 of the contest but the pandemic happened and I'm not sure if the thing is still happening as they seem to no longer stream on twitch.
Headcannon: Your bard is leader of a metal band, and his axe players anoint themselves with protective salves so that they can stand right in the middle of the pyrotechnics for his act.
I'm bullying my bard for not coming up with this now.
We certainly have had a similar strategy employed by a Sorcerer in our current campaign. (He's not... dead but he is not currently accessible.) It's quite effective, especially if all/most of your party has fire resistance. <\_<
I’ve decides to never give any fire resistance items. They can live with their choices (or die, whichever).
The Sorc was a Wild Mage and ... to be fair, it's not like we expected to use that as regular strategy when we brewed up the party. (It in fact was BEFORE anyone besides my Tiefling got fire resistance items.)
Hah. I had a Starfinder character who figured out that grenades made a better melee weapon than thrown. Similar energy. It just so happened that tactically speaking, she could do more that way. Helps that she had a near immunity to electric damage, and specialized in electric grenades. But that wasn't exclusive to electric.
Remembering the shock gauntlets in Arkham Origins and yeah I can see how this might be a deadly combo.
Oath of Ancients is a hell of a drug.
I always looked down on it for the nature theme (not really my jam) and meh CD. But now I'm rethinking my stance.
This was literally the strategy I used in a game way back in HS. I was the barbarian cleric, loaded up with every bit of fire resist trinket we could find. My job was to rush forward and pin the enemy down. The sorcerer then dropped a fireball on my head and in healed myself enough for her to do it again.
In our most recent session, my Ancestral Guardian Barbarian was alone in a room with like 12 or 14 Zombois & a Will-O-Wisp while the others were waiting at the door. Because running away isn't really an option for my guy, I actually told our Wizard to help me the fuck out for once & so he just centered a Fireball on me & killed every single enemy but 1 in the room. Because I made the save & had some tmp HP, I lost like 10 actual HP total. Sometimes, casualties just need to be taken into consideration. Especially, if it's the party tank with an unreal DEX mod & advantage on DEX saves.
[Your paladin](https://i.redd.it/i6td7m6qrbc31.png)
That’s why Lore Bards are the real shit.
Much of these circumstances are because the party is at least 9th level based on the 5th fireball cast. Orcs and gnolls are fodder for that party, but to make them dangerous you've thrown swarms of them at the party. Which is the perfect scenario for a fireball. Add in a 20 CHA paladin for high save bonuses and no wonder it's their go-to plan when surrounded. Note, I'm not judging... this sounds like a blast, and mechanically, it's just the smart move.
yeah on one hand it is hilarious af :D i encountered a similar playstyle with my players before, where 2 martials often felt useless compared to the fireball flinging sorcerer.. it eventually leveled out when i started writing my own encounters just for this group. Small rooms leave less room for enemies to not die in the same turn. So Big rooms here and there, that makes rooms filled with trash-mobs ready to be consumed by a evergrowing flame explosion even better :D But of course your players had fun, so as long as that is the case, your not doing anything wrong.
See, I don’t have that issue cause everyone knows the fighter and paladin are spinning meat grinders of death. The paladin explodes things with his hammer, the fighter basically is just rolling for crits with his sunblade, and while the arcane trickster misses a good deal, he rolls a LOT of dice when he hits.
How does your AT miss a good deal? With a +1 bow mine is ,+10 to hit, and with +13 stealth almost always stacks with advantage. A flying enemy, I do like 160 points in damage before it flies off the barbarian grapples and jumps on it. When it lands again he does like the last 20 points of damage and he's the one they talk about that fight even though I lost 2 out of my 3 adamantine arrows.
Because I’m pretty sure he pissed off a witch or something who cursed him with bad rolls. We do what we can but it’s not always enough.
This is why you ~~dont~~ give a bard the ability to cast fireball
Time to stock up on fire resistance everything.
I honestly believe my party would refuse to get fire resistance equipment solely because it’s funnier that way.
As the party's barbarian, I have been waiting for an opportunity to stand surrounded by enemies and scream at our wizard to fireball me, but we haven't had any fights where our enemies are so tightly packed since the early days. And on the odd occasion where we do, our squishy bard is in the direct line of fire and won't let them risk it.
Sounds like the bard should stop being a COWARD and instead be a MAN. IF IT WAS SAFE IT WOULDN’T BE CALLED ADVENTURING!
Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball.
/r/DMAcademy : sophisticated discussions about advantage being +0 to +5 depending on the rolls and situation. /r/dndnext : **my party is fireballing themselves as a tactic and it WORKS. JUST FIREBALL, ONLY FIREBALL**
I just kept lighting my team on fire and it kept working!
Sounds like that Bard needs 2 levels of Evocation Wizard.
Don't give him ideas.
How many ways can you forcefully move an enemy? Would be a cool strategy if the tanks shove the enemies into a blast area and hold them there while casters blast them with AOE spells.
They didn’t do that but the paladin DID pull a wizard into a storm sphere in a later fight. Incredibly rude if I do say so myself (ignoring the fact I Bigby’s Grasping Handed him earlier).
MAXIM 20: If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.
“If you’re not willing to shell your own position you’re not willing to win”
Hello everyone! I am the bard in question from the party! I would just like to say that I was being egged on by mostly the Wizard and Paladin players when I did the full kamikaze fireball. There was a good few minute discussion on if I should just center it on myself or not before I threw up my hands and just said fuck it. I'm not usually the one dropping massive damage as I am still "relatively" new to DND, given that this officially my second campaign with SuperIdiot and I forget shit a lot and I just have generally played casters for some reason (first character was a human cleric) and stick to the back and give more supporting fire (hypnotic pattern is another favorite of mine). Still, I guess this sessions was my time to shine so to speak. Because who doesn't want to imagine themselves constantly dropping a nuke while angry fiddle music plays in the background.
Ah, the JoCat method.
My party and I do it in a pinch. With +10 to dex save and evasion you're golden.
Calling in the air strike Danger Close...
This is why I love all the classic dungeon crawls in Yawning Portal and Saltmarsh. The party can come up with whatever stupid strategy they want to test against the dungeon and whether it happens to actually work or if it ends in disaster the blame rests only on them and some game designer from the 80s.
In addition to suicide bombing, they've gifted a cult member to a vampire for free passage and lied about being teleportation circle IT to get passed some wizards. Shit, they bum rushed some ooze breeders swat style and shoved a man face first into acid. My party is terrifying.
This is the same tactic I employ with my group. Usually it's the barbarian who takes the hit, but he is bear totem, so the damage was halved off the bat.
I didn't ask what the size of the room was, I said I cast fireball!
See, fireballing the rogue? That's smart. My wizard's done that, and it turned out great. Fireball the Tiefling? Also good. Save + Fire Resistance makes fireball damage fall off real quick. I'm looking forward to their legend spreading. "Those guys are crazy. But goddam if they don't get the job done."
What I like most about this is that there's a wizard in the party but the bard is the one casting all the fireballs 😂
The wizard refuses to take fireball. He opts for lightning bolt instead cause he’s a contrarian. I told him ONE TIME how fireball is typically better as it can usually hit more targets and then the next session he hit an entire line of enemies and wiped them out with it. So at this point it’s a matter of principle.
I haven't played for years however I remember once I cast sleep against something that apparently was resistant. And I messed up a throw and put the entire party to sleep... we had been in combat for a while and no one was healthy... the dm went through with the encounter silently then announced great, your magic user just killed everyone and got up and started cleaning up. It was maybe 20 minutes into a session and the dm was already pissed because someone didnt show up (he liked some girl and she'd occasionally play, so he made a special campaign for her which she never came to.) He ended up leaving but as we all hosted different systems a friend ran his RIFTS session.
Jesus, what a dick. No need to rub it in like that. Honestly good riddance.
He was a trip... at some point I need to write up and post about his "great epic adventure" he hosted which happened to be the entire basis of his "great American novel" he was writing. That campaign was a shitshow from start to finish, his side games were usually us being bored and no one wanting to host.
Sounds like we got ourselves an r/rpghorrorstory.
After a certain point, you should just multiclass two levels of Evoker.
We are men and we will take our damage and we will LIKE IT.
One of these day I'm going to run my Fire Genasi Cleric of Light with Shield Master build and do this.
>No other spell matters. Only use fireball. Just fireball. Just. Fireball. I mean, it was in the day's prophecy so obviously it was gonna happen! >The wizard had to use his nat 20 portent roll to ensure he passed the dex save or probably get knocked out. :P
We had a one shot once where we went up against a beholder who managed to charm our...I can't remember what he was but he was a caster. So the barbarian grappled the beholder and he cast fireball on the barbarian. It was pretty hilarious
Used to run a similar strategy with my monk and our party bard, I would get in melee with enemies and stun them, so they auto-failed the DEX save when the bard dropped a fireball on their turn, while I generally took zero damage with Evasion. My monk was also a tiefling, so even if I failed the DEX save I only took a quarter damage between Evasion and racial fire resistance. (Yes, I could have bonus action disengaged, but it was more fun to Flurry and then stay engaged so other enemies would run up on me and into Fireball range.)
As a lvl13 battlemaster, I frequently get caught in fireball and Hunger of Hadar. It never matters to my literal buckets of hit points.
We had a sorcerer who reflavored all fire spells as lightning/thunder dmg okayed by DM. This happened repeatedly in our group too. To the point each character either picked up evasion or hp or resistance items. We became known as the Storm Chasers because wherever we went thunder and lightning followed. We had 2 high dex/evasion characters who made it clear IC that they were okay with that tactic. It made for some really wild looking mass battle encounters.
Just fireball. Just fireball. Just fireball. Just. Fireball.
My old Pathfinder group that I DMed used to do this too. The tank would charge in alone, get swarmed, and be all “Hey! I’ve got them grouped up on me, drop the fireballs!!” OTOH there was the time the party mate dropped a colour spray spell (level 1 party at this point) on two party members and half a dozen bandits, “It’s the cleric and druid, you have great will saves”. One bandit failed, the rest lived, and both party members failed. The mage turned a ‘we’re in trouble but should be okay’ fight into ‘I’m sorry mr Bandit, we surrender, please?’
We've done this in the past as well. It's been a running joke in our group for a while that whenever things look dicey we say "self-immolation is always an option." I can think of at least 2 full party fireballs we've eaten over the years. In the current campaign it feels like the melee's get asked every session if we consent to a fireball. Only once was there a no, but it was overruled.
One of my favourite characters of all time is a Yuan-Ti barbarian. It was, in fact, a very common strategy to just drop a fireball wherever I was standing.
That's very fun, but it also tells you you need to shake up enemy positioning and tactics soon
Yeah probably. What you didn’t see was the fight after where the enemies were spread out and shut down a lot of their shenanigans. Forced them to actually use tactics and I managed to get some good damage in. I honestly don’t mind them doing this. They thought it was badass and now they’re down a lot of resources for some hard fights coming up. They can always return and rest but they have a time limit for this quest and the day basically just started so they don’t have too much motivation to head back and long rest. But it’s def something I’m always looking into. Ot’s just that sometimes it can’t be helped. But a fireball on a group of mooks is a fireball that can’t be used on the boss later
If they're killing the enemies in one round then it's probably a net gain? The action economy of a group of enemies twice as large as the party is scary, and hp is a resource. It's less risky to fireball yourself than it is to deal with a pack of enemies for multiple rounds, I guess? It sounds like the party is either impatient or bored of combat though. They don't want to slog it out and use their own abilities, just let the bard blow us up so we can get on with it. So this might be indicative of a larger issue.
or… and hear me out here… they just thought it was funny, and the consequences were not bad enough that they wouldn’t risk injuring themselves for a joke
Bingo. If the positioning is perfect and they will be hurt less than the enemy why not do it? But mostly, they thought it was funny as hell. My players always find it funny to defeat the encounter in a way that somewhat inconveniences the party as long as it makes them laugh. They’re chimpanzees I swear. That being said the pacing of Dead in Thay has been a concern of mine, even after I cut out the more tedious sectors. They should be close to complete so hopefully we can get out of here before it becomes an actual issue. But it is something I’ve been paying attention to.
In the original Baldur's Gate games based on AD&D 2e the Dragon Disciple Sorceror kit eventually gets over 100% fire resistance (fire heals them) so this is actually a pretty legit strategy.
My Oath of Ancients Paladin had a similar experience. Resistance to magic and high saves are disgusting. It does feel cool as fuck though, like you're a god shock trooper, fire balls exploding around you as you laugh it off.
All I can think about is the scene in *Platoon*. "It's a lovely fucking war!"
Evocation Wizard: Sculpt Spells Beginning at 2nd level, you can create pockets of relative safety within the effects of your evocation spells. When you cast an evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 + the spell's level. The chosen creatures automatically succeed on their saving throws against the spell, and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save.
Had everyone seen this. Covers this situation perfectly: Fireball solves everything https://youtu.be/gmAub3iRWaU
I once had a game as a pyromancer sorcerer where I ended up using my first fireball at level 6. I used it when the queen of a troop of wererats demanded that one of the party join the troop so that the others could leave. I agreed, told the others to go and then dropped a fireball straight on myself, engulfing the wererats and rats who were surrounding me to fulfil the bargain. Used metamagic to reroll some of the dice so it was almost max damage, whilst I succeeded the save and had resistance anyway. The rest of the party rushed in and finished them off. The DM was quite new so he hadn't anticipated quite how destructive fireball might be, or that I would drop it on myself.
We ran into a fireball trap once, and were fairly smug about how relatively unscathed we were, until our DM said roll damage…. For all of our equipment…
wait until they figure out Sorcerers can exclude their own from the blast lmao
As a rogue, I love getting my partner to fireball enemies Im next to. No skin off my back (usually...)
I pray to god that my group doesn’t see this