Couple of thoughts come to mind: 1) Even a blaster should be concentrating on something. Blasting is what you do after you're already concentrating but you need more oomph than a cantrip. 2) It is justifiable to soften enemies when facing huge numbers of enemies. By increasing the total party DPR it might be possible to finish a round sooner thus avoiding the retaliatory damage that way.

Blasting would be more effective if a higher level encounter just means more minions to fight, but the problem is that nobody wants to wait for the DM to roll for 40 goblins

"You didn't take Fireball!? What does your wizard even DO?"

People seem to forget Erupting earth IS one of those blast spells with a secondary effect; it creates difficult terrain! Which can be very useful in the right circumstances. I had a druid in a game I was GMing who was already concentrating on a summon spell encounter a hoard of bug bears in a dungeon and a well placed erupting earth spell not only thinned their numbers but prevented their back line from getting into melee range. For bugbears this is a big deal; their melee damage is MUCH higher then their ranged attacks, which is the case for a lot of monsters.

Another thing I think would help out Blast spells a lot, and I saw more use of them in tables where this was the case, is more cases of vulnerability. In vanilla 5e, vulnerability is EXTREMELY rare, such that the only thing that really matters in terms of damage types is not being resisted, and this makes things like Force, or magical Slashing/Piercing/Bludgeoning, the best damage types in the game. If you had a reasonable chance of doing double damage with your blast spell if you picked the right one, that would... well it would actually pump up most of the blast spells to the green line of monster hit points.

Like most things, it will always come down to the type of game you're in (I know, you acknowledge this in pretty much every video you make). If your DM is conscious of this and wants the wizards to still feel effective at those bad levels, they can have big fights with high CR baddies with lower CR minions in those levels, your martials can go toe-to-toe with the single target damage while the wizards take what would have been an exhausting wave of minions and torch them with fireball. I appreciate the data here, I actually think its best use is informing DMs how their players may feel ineffective at particular levels and it may push them to adjust encounters for this.

I don’t like playing Blast mages because I find them boring. However, I think you can still make a kick ass blast wizard. The trick is that you can’t just rely on blast spells. You still have to be thinking about what spell you should be concentrating on; and you want spells that will help you be a blaster. Maybe that’s spells like Flaming Sphere or Animate Objects that can deal damage on a bonus action. Maybe that’s a defensive spell like Fly that lets you rain down death from above. Or maybe that’s Ye Old Control spells like Slow or Evard’s Black Tentacles that in additional to battlefield control also makes your enemies more susceptible to your blast spells.

I think the main reason why blasting spells diminish in damage is because you get more spell slots. Resource usage wasn't something this video accounted for. At level 1 that burning hands does good damage. But that's half your spell slots for that day. At level 5 you do decent damage with fireball. But you still have 1st and 2nd level spells as well to do damage with. You didn't use half of your daily resources for this fireball. I'm not saying blasting is good (it isn't). But making them scale as well as monster HP would make blasting scale quadratically. The good scaling + greater number of castings is why other kinds of casting scale as well as they do. And that shows in the whole "linear fighters/quadratic wizards" argument. Blasting is closer to scaling linearly than quadratically. Essentially, blaster mages are closer to martial scaling than caster scaling. And considering martials don't do much else than deal damage, that's probably a good thing.

Ohhh the automatic scaling of other spells was a good point that I would have never thought of, great video!

I played a game last weekend using a 6 lvl "Artichron" build that I got from you and everyone was so surprised that I didn't have fireball. Then we walked into a room with half a dozen orc leaders and when I cast slow the DM just kept going over and over the stat block realizing that I had basically counter everything the could do to counter the situation we had them in. Druid pit down spike growth coving the their entire side of the room and the swarmkeeper kept blending them inside it and knocking them prone. With the slow they couldn't get out and the thing the DM was worried my be a TPK turned into a cake walk. No one complains about fireball anymore. Also Chris thanks for showing us that Artichron build...it's the most fun I've had with a character since I started d&d!

The worst part comes when the table uses some critical house rules. The melee deals extra great dmg with critical builds so DM would probably increase monster's HP with max roll as well. The casters' blasting is mainly for AOE weak enemies, and they have to buff/support/CC instead of blasting during most of time.

I would like to see the average damage per spell as a % of expected creature HP for the level as that would better show how the damage is keeping up. That way we could see, if at level 1 your doing about 50% expected HP, then at level 10 your only doing 40% expected HP, then you are clearly going down. but it it stays at 50% the whole way, then your keeping up and the blast is doing the same effective impact. One thing that can make the low level feel better is that with fewer dice, the extremes of your damage rolls are more likely, so going from say 50% HP average to 100% HP from a high roll is more likely then at higher levels.

Treantmonk is following D4 and trolling him ❤️😂

When I look at this I just think 'At higher levels i just need to cast TWO fireballs instead of one' :)

One thing I do for spells being upcast: increase the damage done per spell level by 2 instead of 1 for most damage spells. Amusingly, that makes low level spells better damage dealers when they're upcast than spells of the same level, but since a lot of those low level spells are iconic and fun for my players, I don't see an issue with that.

Excellent, as usual. I'd have loved to see a couple included plots on those graphs of the yield of some of the concentration buffs, like Haste or Improved Invisibility, just to drive home how much more effective blasts would have to be to outpace them. A "typical" Reckless Attacking GWM Barbarian would be an adequate comparable.

The thing about playing support (control/buffs/debuffs) is that because of the concentration mechanic, you have to choose one of those three. And if you're already concentrating on, say, a Slow spell, what are you going to do with your turns? That's where blasting comes in. Additionally, casting Haste on the Fighter or Rogue will do more damage, but that's single-target damage. Let's say that we're a level 8 Wizard, and we cast Haste on our buddy the Rogue. Now they can do an extra sneak attack every turn, for 1d8+4d6+5 (average 23.5) assuming they're wielding a rapier and have 20 Dexterity. Not too bad. Roughly equal to the damage we would expect from a Fireball, assuming that the target isn't resistant or immune and is slightly more likely to fail their save than succeed. But here's the detail: that damage from the Rogue is single-target. Fireball isn't. Say we're not fighting one big enemy or a bunch of little ones, but a small group of medium-sized monsters - a pack of giant crocodiles, maybe. If we only catch one of them in the Fireball, that's an expected 28 damage on a failed save. Catch four of them, though, and the total damage goes up to 112 assuming again that all of them fail. The Hasted Rogue would take 5 rounds to put out that much extra damage, and combat probably won't even last that long.

Remember when we thought Draconic Sorcerers could add their Charisma modifiers to every beam of Scorching Ray? Those were the days.

"It's been a blast." Ha, I see what you did there...

I usually pick spells based on themes of my build/character not how much damage they do etc. though I always make sure to have the golden oldes, Sleep, Silent Image, Web, Magic Missile, Mage Armor, shield, Feather Fall, Find Familiar. anything beyond those is suppose to be the thematics of my character.

Which is why it feels so good to play as a Tempest Cleric 2 / Order of the Scribes Wizard 18 blasting-focused character

Treantmonk is at his best when hes spitting hot takes like this and the DPR video.

Great video! Here are some other blast spell related concepts: 1. Blast spells like fireball always hit but the trade off is that critical hits are not possible. 2. Extra damage can be done to monsters that are vulnerable to specific damage types. 3. Some monsters like the Dire Troll require elemental damage to kill but the amount of elemental damage required exceeds what nonmagical attacks reliably produce. 4. Spellcaster enemies that use magical attacks such as magic missile reliably deal more damage to high AC players than non-casters. 5. A spell caster without subtle spell may not successfully cast spells when fighting against two monsters with counterspell since a counterspell can be countered by another counterspell and that counterspell can also be countered by a third caster.

Maybe the classes that specialize in blasting (evoker, fiendlock, some sorcerers) should have class features that made blasting effective at the in between levels? The bonuses they actually get to their damage are pretty small. Then again, if blasting was that effective, would it be fair to the other classes? Maybe it is fine to have the blasters specialized against masses of weak enemies?

I recall seeing someone make homebrew metamagic options for the sorcerer, trying to tackle the scaling problem with secondary effects. Fire spells could ignite creatures and do DoT without concentration, electric spells took away actions, cold spells effected movement, and so forth.

I agree with your assessment (you've had me convinced for years) that blasting shouldn't be a sole focus because of the uneven power level of blast spells. However I disagree with the prescription at 21:00 that the spells *should* scale linearly with player level. No DPS (well, except for Rogue) increases linearly with level. Even fighters have the dry spell between level 11 and 20 (I know some get a bump, but it's not as major). Different archetypes have different power scaling. And if you count non-blast spells, Wizards and Sorcerers already have better effectiveness scaling than most other classes. They don't need the bump.

My biggest problem with building a blaster character, or at least a spellcaster who does damage, is that apart from Agonising Blast Warlocks there are very very few ways to do good single target damage. Depends how your DM runs combats, but with mine at least we don't often fight large groups, and will more often fight one big boss. In that instance there's not really a lot a wizard could do damage wise. Waste an area of effect blast or cast a fire bolt or something for even less damage. Even the good control spells seem wasted against one target, usually because they are save and nothing happens.

Close your ears, JoCrap! "Use fireball and only fireball, just fireball, just fireball, JUST FIREBALL!"

I know this. I did play a bard for 14 levels, and control spells usually transformed a desperate battle into a walk in the park. A fireball wouldn't have done much of a difference in those instances. But I managed to use a single use item for casting Meteor Swarm. 40D6 are fun to roll! :)

I love looking at this and it is a good evaluation. It also proves why I say cast the fireball even if it does not kill but instead *significantly* damages the target (aka they can be killed next attack). When you showed the CR Hitpoints vs best spell damage, the difference between those two lines has a name - the rest of the party. To me damage and incapacitate are both in the same goal of make it so the party can while them out this turn. The entire CR concept is that the party is challenged and so my expectations are different. The system seems balanced in a 4 person party so each person can do 1/4 then the battle can be fair and thus they kept blast to top out at 1/3. Thus, the blaster can’t be allowed to get a spell that can kill out right or even pass that 1/3 barrier. This is why spells that give crippling effects are way more powerful and maintain there effectiveness. HP grows but the monsters stats are relatively flat against your growing spell casting stat. So by design, blasters are less effective then all other casters. I agree the game needs better blaster spells and effects. (The problem being 5e is stingy with more spell).

Lets be clear here:Blasting isn't useless at high levels.. It's.. situational more or less. There's two situations where you'll be using blast spells (1)-Against a hoard of lower CR enemies. Due to the bounded accuracy of 5E opening a door to find four dozen bug bears is still a threat even at high levels, a few well placed fireballs at 11th+ is the perfect solution to this problem. Having one in your pocket for these situations is useful! Just you don't really need more then that. (2)-A 'filler' spell to use when you're already concentrating on something else. You got your big debuff already down, there's a bunch of foes in the room, you've got a few spare spell slots... can't hurt to throw out a AoE spell to soften them up for the warriors to deal with, better yet kill some filler minions the big bad had. This tactic works best in games with moderate to low fights per day; Adventure league and its 2-3 fights per day comes to mind immediately. Less viable for the 8+ fights per day Treatmonk often suggests where those spell slots are spread thin

upset comment about blasting spells !!! Also , requesting video about single target damage spells

I think one component that could help with scaling is to incorporate a mechanic for scaling specific to number of targets. For sorcerers, I would add a metamagic option. And, I'd add a similar (or same) mechanic for Evoker Wizards. Instead of scaling by increasing the number of damage dice, I would allow scaling to make the spell more effective against a fewer number of targets in a smaller area. I might consider increasing the die type over a smaller area. Or, perhaps allow an outcast spell impose disadvantage on saving throws in the same area.

You also have to consider while the wizard is doing 28 average damage with a fire ball the average fighter at 5th level can deal ~40 average damage with the great weapon master feat and a great sword which doesn't take into account things like action surge, subclasses, or further optimization which allows a 5th level fighter to potentially deal over 100 damage in a single round.

This is why I like the caster level scaling of damage in 3ed and PF :)

Great analysis. I had fun with my Light cleric at early levels, with smart positioning (on my part) and bad positioning (on the baddies side) i managed to soften up a lot of enemies with a lowly Burning hands or channel divinity. I would still be having fun if the main enemies since level 4 hadn't all been IMMUNE to fire so now I am at level 7 and have yet to cast a fireball. 😑 I am forced to rely on radiant, and feeling like a normal cleric, with Spirit guardians, spiritual weapon and channel divinity... 🙄

You don't need to focus on blasting, just take a couple blasts and you're a blaster. Doesn't mean you can't do other stuff. :D

Disintegrate is a classic blaster build spell. It’s immensely powerful when combined with the divination Wizard, who can use portent to ensure it lands on most enemies.

What if we added a feature to a class/subclass that says "when an effect forces a creature to make a saving throw to halve damage taken, apply an effect based on the damage type, as shown in the table below" This would make transmute spell metamagic a must-take so maybe wouldn't be a good idea to give it to a sorcerer and doesn't affect damage added to weapon attacks or spell attack rolls (mainly for Eldritch Blast but maybe that would still be balanced?) Fire: targeted creature takes additional damage [some calculation that can scale] at the start of their next turn Thunder: targeted creature is deafened until the end of their next turn [this feels underpowered, but I really don't know what could be done about it] Lightning: the nearest creature, randomly chosen in the event of a tie, makes the same saving throw. On a failure, the target takes [double the extra damage of fire's burn - randomness of target and effect happening offset the extra damage] Cold: target's speed is reduced by 10ft until the start of your next turn Radiant: target is blinded until the start of their next turn [this feels a little too powerful, but idk what else fits] Force: the targeted creature is pushed 5ft away from the origin of the effect, eg. The player in a cone or single target effect, or the center of a spherical effect. If the creature failed their saving throw by 8 or more, the player may choose to knock them prone instead Poison: the targeted creature is poisoned until the end of their next turn Necrotic: until the end of their next turn, the target takes one level of exhaustion. If a creature is already suffering from this effect, the duration will increase by a round for each instance, rather than adding additional levels of exhaustion [could still be too op with something like sickening radiance + metamagic] Psychic: until the end of their next turn, the target's wisdom, intelligence and charisma scores are reduced by 5 Acid: target's AC is reduced by 3 until the end of their next turn

I agree. I've been playing D&D Wizards for around 45 years, I started with the Basic and Expert box sets. Since 2nd Edition, I've been of the opinion that Control was the best way to play a Wizard. That said Fireball, Magic Missile, and such; are still useful. Fireball, as you said is good for minions. And I like Magic Missile for finishing off multiple foes. If anyone here plays Solasta, I believe they found a solution somewhat, with the Shock Arcanist subclass: Level 2 Arcane Warfare: When casting spells from the War List, they count as being cast at one slot level higher then the one you actually use: Burning Hands, Magic Missile, Thunderwave, Acid Arrow, Scorching Ray, Flaming Sphere, Fireball, Lightning Bolt. Level 6 Arcane Fury: Add your proficiency bonus and INT bonus to your evocation spell damage for 1 minute. Recharges after a long rest Level 10 Wizard Weapon Proficiencies: Constitution up Arcane Shock: You overcharge your mana and become restrained until the end of your turn. However, when you cast an attack spell, your damage dice are always above average. In return, you make a CON saving throw DC 14 and take 2d6 Psychic Damage if you fail.

I'm glad these numbers backed up my intuition!

Ok, first off, love your videos. Second, I love your ideas for secondary effects on the damaging spells. I hope people at WoTC have someone peepin your videos because that would really be cool and quite thematic

I would soooo watch a video of you, showing a method to fixing said blasting problem. I've already got some ideas for you. Fireball, when cast using a 5th level slot or higher, it causes a burning effect on enemies who fail their saving throw. It does "heat metal" like damage, until said creature uses their action to put out the flames. Lightning bolt stuns enemies, until they make a con save, at the END of each of their turns. Well hell, I think I figured out what they need to do in 5.5E it 6E. Add status effects, which are triggered by blast spells; especially when upcast. Anyways, would still love the video. Maybe you could even do a colab with Dungeon Coach. That would be frigging amazing! Love your content. Please, keep up the good work. And, if I had the money, I'd donate like crazy. Unfortunately, poor. So I'll just like and share the videos. Got no money to give, but can absolutely spare the time for one of my favorite content creators. PS. I don't even play DND; having only played and 8 sessions total in my life. But I think a life of game development would have suited me just fine. Lol.

Ha ha you’re going to laugh at my episode Tuesday 😉

Homebrew Feat: Elevated Evocation - When casting a spell from the Evocation School using a spell slot of 4th Level or higher that forces one or more targets to make a saving throw and does not require concentration, add (2 × your level) to the damage dealt.

One point of this analysis is that blasting spells agent designed to target the highest CR monster in the room, they're meant to target the minions. If you redo this math but replace the green line with the expected hp for enemies that show up as being at a 1:2 ratio in the 2016 Encounter Building UA, you'll find the line is much shallower and closer to blaster reality.

Another great metavideo in Treantmonk's line of expertise. It applies to more than just D&D.

I see you sneaking that pun in there at the end, Treant-dad-monk

Also this problem is why I hope they bring back caster level in future editions, or scale spells with level in some way. It feels weird to me for a 20th level world renown hero's fireball does the same damage as a level 5 character.

This why I also like mixing spells like Magic Missile and Hex. Which can be a massive boon because like Treantmonk said Fireball scales bad but a 10th Evocation Wizard with and +4 Int and two first level spells get an automatic 3d6+3d4+3+12 averages 33 points of damage of Force and Necrotic which is barely resisted. And it scales up by 11 points of damage per spell level

This why I also like taking mixing spells like Magic Missile and Hex. Which can be a massive boon because like Treantmonk said Fireball scales bad but a 10th Evocation Wizard with and +4 Int and two first level spells get an automatic 3d6+3d4+3+12 averages 33 points of damage of Force and Necrotic which is barely resisted. And it scales up by 11 points of damage per spell level

One option would be closer to 3.5 spell scaling where caster level increases the spells power. More missiles from magic missile etc. I do agree on secondary effects, but also quirky traits like how blight annihilates plant creature type. Another fix would be to give options to bypass immunities/resistances. Be it by magic wands or class features (especially evoker wizard) or upgrading elemental atunement feat a lil.

The best reason to play a blaster? Because the average DM is fairly terrible and they can't deal with actual effective spell usage. Illusions fool no one, because they are "too smart". Charming doesn't work because "they would never listen to you ". Suggestion to surrender fails because the enemies are "too scared of the BBEG, so suggesting they surrender is obviously fatal, so auto fail". Anything that is an all or nothing doesn't work because they always make their saving throws (at least, when they are rolled behind a screen). But blasting? Can't deny that I dealt 20 damage, which is more than the fiat I run into all too often. I once landed a Banishment, only to surround his landing point and have the DM tell me that the BBEG did not return, because "he had a plan for that". No idea what the plan actually WAS, but when we faced him again the DM moved him out of Wall of Force, because "he is too fast, and running around. He moves out of the way before the walls come up". That one was not too much, and I did not return. The DM said "just cast Fireball instead (despite him being a single enemy) it would have dealt a ton of damage - no one wants to have the enemy just removed by a single spell" after I explained why I quit. So, to reiterate - be a blaster because it is easy for DM's to deal with. Inefficient damage is better than not being allowed to literally anything, and being seen as a disruptive player because you know how to be effective. Assuming you want to stay in that game, that is.

Will you try to make some concrete fixes to this issue? Like doing "Treantmonk Variant" specifically for Blasting spells?

Blasting is overrated. This is why I continue to assert Cleric is low-key an awesome damage dealer. Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon man! 2 spell slots and you have damage the entire combat if you hold onto concentration.

My initial reaction was “yeah, of course AoE spells aren’t great at single target” - as others have pointed out, if you hit five enemies, you’re doing five times the damage shown. Then I remembered that’s also five times the work for the DM, which is why most prefer fewer, tougher targets as opposed to hordes, and yeah, that’s a good reason to not make blasting the *main focus* of a build (though still an often-useful tool). That being said, I think you’re underselling the benefit they can provide even without secondary effects. “Every enemy in that general direction now has ~25% less HP” is a pretty good way to support the party, even if it’s not buffing them directly or applying conditions - it translates directly into them not requiring as many attacks or as high damage rolls, which can be pretty incredible for action economy depending on what breakpoints it lets you hit. As someone else said, the gap between monster HP and your spell damage doesn’t look as bad when you realize it’s filled by your party members. Either way, as pointed out elsewhere, if a player is feeling let down by their ineffectual blasts, the DM can always help out by throwing in a bunch of weak fodder minions that would otherwise force martial classes to waste a bunch of attacks. Sure, keeping track of two dozen goblins might be tedious, but that’s a problem that a player with fireball will happily solve for them.

Exactly. Blast spells should deliver secondary effects. That's the simplest and most creative fix.

Blaster mages were a lot less common in fiction _before_ D&D and videogames inspired by D&D made it popular. Enchanters, transmuers, conjurers, and illusionists were all a lot more common in basically all fictional media with magic in it. Subtle tricks, changing something into something else, summoning beings from another plane, all vastly more common than blowing stuff up with fiery explosions. Magic Missile and Fireball are just really cool, it doesn't matter if other spells on the same levels are "better" in a metagame sense, thus these are what videogames picked up on. People drawn into fantasy roleplaying by videogames, then, are used to expecting powerful attack spells.

For normal 5e play, Treantmonk's advice is well thought out and applies. For AL, however, well - AL is a little "different". Using up a slot means less in module play, because you rarely have over 3 fights per long rest, sometimes only 2. Once you get used to AL, and especially when you start DMing, you can see that your caster gets a fireball wand or a staff of power or something like this. My casters, once they get such a thing, use fireballs or other blast spells from such devices instead of cantrips like firebolt or toll dead. Being an evoker could be very worthwhile for such a caster, because sculpting when doing this is so nice - and one or two full-dice-value nukes an adventure is pretty good. Over a Treantmonk adventuring day of many fights, not so much, but over a typical AL adventuring day, very much so. In fact, in many boss fights an evoker can be better than a diviner, because legendary saves negates low portents (high portents still have value to make critical STs) - but half of a maxed big-nuke might make a lot of sense in such a fight, where a boss simply can't be controlled or debuffed. I don't play an evoker, but in AL, I often wish I did - save that the other things I pick are also often very useful - meaning the best caster types all have their moments and shine strongly. Next, fights are complex. On round one let's say I cast SLOW or Bigby's Hand or some concentration spell. But this fight's going to last 3 or 4 turns maybe. What do I cast on round 2? Well, if I have to pace out my slots over 4 to 7 fights per long rest, maybe I don't waste slots blasting - maybe I toll dead or firebolt or ray of frost. But if I'm in AL, I usually don't need to save my slots - (I'll probably get a short rest and get some spent slots back from arcane recov, if I'm a wiz, too) - I need to maximize myself in every round, because there are so few rounds per adventure. And if I have a wand or staff, I'm not even spending slots. Furthermore, in AL, you can rebuild now between adventures to lvl 20. So, you can start out evoker and cast on the party while sculpting - you can go diviner at lvl 7 and auto-banish or auto-control nasty monsters for a while - and then if portent starts to suck, maybe go abj or war or blade song or back to evoker. Should we do this? In such a mercenary fashion? Well, if one is a heavy RP'er, maybe not. But if you want to experience different class types, why not? Maybe you don't have much time to play dnd and think, "Why should I be stuck w/ my lvl 1 choice all the way up? I wanna try other things, too!" So of course it's okay to do this - to swtich builds as you lvl up in AL. It's your char - play it how you want. Even in a non-AL setting, I'd go for balance, because sometimes nuking is the right thing to do, even if it's not as efficient or stellar as it was a few lvls earlier. Again, once you've cast your concentration spell, if it's a clench fight, why not nuke? Especially if you have a wand or staff. Or if you're pretty sure you're gonna get a short rest after this and recover some slots - or maybe you feel this is the last fight of the day before sleeping - doing rnd 1 concentration spell, rnd 2 nuke rnd 3 nuke is usually better than rnd 1 conc, rnd 2 crappy cantrip, rnd 3 crappy cantrip and end fight and adv day w/ many unspent spell slots. Yes, I know it's harmful to burn out your slots if you need them later - if you think you might get jumped that night - if you think a caster might enter fight and you'll have to start counterspelling, of course don't burn up slots nuking, for example. You get a feel for a campaign, and players can generally make good choices when it comes to slot management. I'm not saying Treantmonk is wrong. I'm saying there are cases where nuking is a lot more justified than others - and his video is set very much not in the world I usually play in. It's good to know - it's wonderful to be challenged and to have to think "am I doing this right?" - and I'm going to be looking for better things to do than nuke at higher lvls. Nukes, overall, are disappointing. But in some cases they're still worth casting.

I'm very glad 5e does not have death spirals for what that's worth.

In this community, it can be easy to forget how rarely the average player, or even the average DM, has this level of appreciation for game design. I often look back and cringe at the most memorable encounter of the very first adventure I ever ran in 5e. I threw a pair of manticores at the 7th level party of five, simply because I thought they were cool. At the time, we all thought the encounter was fun and interesting because none of us knew what we were doing (some of them still don't). The players felt challenged and the outcome seemed genuinely uncertain at first. But if I were to do something similar today, it would probably be for a 2nd level party. A couple of my players, to this day, maintain that Hold Person is overpowered, no matter how many times I sit them down and demonstrate the opposite. I think a lot of players gravitate towards blasting for damage because those types of spells are the simplest to understand and the easiest to use. And they often get away with using spells that are grossly underpowered or underlevelled because the adventures they go on simply aren't as challenging, nor as deliberately designed, as the numbers in this video would suggest.

I don't agree that you need to switch out fireball; rather, I think you need to recategorize it from a big bomb spell to something to cast with lower slots while concentrating on something useful at higher levels. It's still useful to toss out big splash damage even if that damage isn't outright winning the fight like it used to. Dropping fireball entirely, in my view, is taking it too far.

Excellent stuff! I concur about 90+%, but there's one fairly significant factor that wasn't part of the analysis. As a blaster, or anyone else for that matter, levelling up allows you greater survivablity and thus one can be expected to last longer in combat. At lower levels, finishing a combat encounter quickly is much more important. Your defenses only can handle so much. Get up to the upper 2 tiers of play, this is not usually as important (encounters can very in intensity we all understand that) but your defenses are much greater due to a variety of factors by now. So you CAN blast more often per encounter. I still would never recommend blaster-only focus though as there is so much more a pure caster can do. And often be more efective while doing non-blaster things. So thank you very much!

Wonderful work as always. Ive always just trusted you on this claim as you other explanations generally make sense and you also admit when you are mistaken. Ive never seen the dmg by level comparison done. Now it makes even more sense why blasting is not the best. You mentioned a few times the designers intentionally made certain levels peak but damage in general sucks relative to enemy level. Maybe that's on purpose and a good thing. The avg player still sees blasting as optimal and/or enjoyable. I don't see too many complaints about evocazards not evoking hard enough. Spell damage being on the low end allows AOEs to seem amazing while not making single target dmg classes feel completely useless. Blaster mages can cull large group of goblins approaching. Allowing dpr classes to focus on the 2 big ettin enforcers. And all the while God Wizard is working quietly behind the scenes making sure formerly invisible Raksasha is locked down in a force cage until his allies are finished playing with its minions.

One point that should be raised is that for a lot of enemies dexterity saves do not scale very well or at all. So at level 5 a typical enemy might have a 65% chance of failing a dex save against a DC 15 fireball, but at level 13 the DC of that fireball is now 18 so a lot of enemies might fail that save 80% of the time. Doesn't solve the problem of limited damage, but does mean that average damage will be closer to the max damage, whereas the GWM paladin who does 26 damage on a hit will probably be missing ~30-40% of the time consistently from levels 1-20.

I have been playing Baldurs gate 3 and Solasta recently, Treantmonk my buddy, guiding bolt and magic missile has been the most devastating spells i have ever had the pleasure to cast, maybe magic missile is so freaking good because i know the enemies HP but still it is really fun! even upcasting magic missile is really effective especially with " Shock Arcanist " subclass in solasta!! :D

As others already noted, one indeed should have to take resource availability in consideration when judging spell performance. A Lvl 7 blaster can throw twice as many fireballs per day as lvl 5 one. Various spell slot regenerating class features that scale with levels giving even more. I do still agree with the notion that blasting is generally less effective action economy management than neutralizing threats by crowd control or focus-fire. It's just a matter of convincing my Sorcerer friend not to fall into the room-wide 8d6 temptation every time.

There’s now A LOT of ways to get Hex which really helps with single target damage Hex + Scorching Ray or the classic Hex + Eldritch Blast

I completely agree. I'm no DnD 5 expert but most spells felt underwhelming aside from a handful of signature spells. Now, casters are in general more powerful than non caster in DnD 5 because of all the utility they can bring and giving them the possibility of insane damage on top as a baseline would be too powerful I think. I believe that is you should be a blaster focused class, it would probably be through subclass effects and/or combinasion of feat to prevent a powerful DPS caster to still retain the insane battlefield control, buff and debuffs on top. So while I agree with the numbers or the spell, as a non specialialist of the rules, I would ask, is it possible to build a strong DPS caster that focuses on doing damages with spells.

I'd agree with this. And while it might make sense to keep a blasting spell like fireball or shatter around for when you fight lots of small enemies, it's definitely not worth it against most enemies at higher levels.

In my opinion which this video makes me think about as well. Blast spells are like those special moves in a fighting game that you use as a tool for pressure, control or combo ender. Blasting is a tool that alot of us misuse like a spammer in a fighting game while it helps sometimes its dismissing returns at higher skill level in games

The biggest problem I can see is that it seems like the damage spells do are balanced around the health pools of an unoptimized PC, not around that of monsters of the appropriate CR. An 11th level wizard can cast a 10d6 Otiluke's Freezing Sphere. He also has 11d6 HP, ignoring the constitution bonus that he probably should have... while monster hit points scale exponentially, PC hp shares the linear scaling that spells have for the most part (barring upcasting) meaning that if these spells scaled appropriately with *monster* hit points, they would be absolutely devastating when used against PCs. The ideal fix for this would be through class features and feats empowering PC spells while leaving NPC magic untouched, but I don't know to what degree would be necessary. The opportunity cost as it stands is far too great for what you get in return for most blasting spells outside of casting Fireball at 5th level.

Elemental damage needs to have innate secondary effects. Fire needs to deal ongoing damage and disadvantage due to being on fire (save every turn to end, you can spend an action to put it out). Cold encases the foe in ice, grappling them (again, save per round or action ends). Acid with high ongoing damage (save or action ends). Lightning gives disadvantage that is save ends only. And poison damage automatically gives the poisoned condition (again, save ends). Suddenly elemental blast spells innately scale a bit thanks to giving a debuff effect.

I agree, more control riders on damage spells would be nice, or more ways to create vulnerabilities. Like dealing fire damage to an iron golem makes it vulnerable to the next source of cold damage before the end of your next turn. Your damage would still be mediocre unless you play well with friends.

I would have liked to see sustained damage spells and a martial character damage on that graph as a reference point

Your suggested solution, to add secondary effects to blaster spells is a good one, by the time you presented it a small voice in my head was saying 'ok your analysis is very cool but what is your suggested fix'. My dad always said to me 'no one's born with a fair ticket' also 'don't complain, present solutions'. My 10th level wizard is feeling the effects of exactly what you're describing. while his fireball spell recently killed 4 'cultists' in one shot it was because they only had 25 or so HP each but I've watched a rogue's dagger attack go from 20 hp per round to over 40 damage per round typcally. the player is a very good Optomizer though.

Yeah, I noticed that too. I was recently in a one-shot wild west themed game (lvl 8) and besides the fireball spell, my damage spells were lackluster at best.

Different groups play differently of course but I remember when my Wizard absolutely destroyed an entire battle map of 20+ enemies in our campaign ending session with a single 6th level spell of Freezing Sphere. The range effect of that spell more than makes up for it as I was able to get every enemy on field in the AOE. I would trade a single 6th level spell slot for 6 rounds of combat where our party might lose a lot of health and then the Cleric needs to spend more of their spell slots to heal the damage we took.

I think a spell that deals damage, such as fireball, when cast at a higher level, should give you an extra 2 or 3 dice per level.

Here's the thing though, I'm going to get 3 to 4 actions per-combat if what most people say is true, that combat only last 3 to 4 rounds. I can really only cast either one debuff/control spell or one buff spell normally since there aren't a lot of them that do not take your concentration. What are you going to do after that then after you've cast that spell? Just stand there? Every caster should be picking up both their best control spell and a good blasting spell each level. Even if you focus on control effects more, and have a wider range of them in your pocket to use, you will be casting damage dealing spells 2 to 3 rounds out of every combat. It's better if its not a cantrip.

Blasting spells should have d6 or d8 damage dice, depending on area/targets/secondary effect. Single target spells should get +3 dice per spell level, AoE spells should get +2 dice per spell level.

My guess is that these spells were balanced cautiously because the designers said, before the game was even out, that they intended for weak monsters like Orcs, Gnolls, etc to remain viable threats (in sufficient numbers) at high level - effectively expanding the DM's repertoire of creatures they can use. Whether they succeeded or whether this is a good thing or not are their own questions, but this may explain why the scaling of blast spells is so underwhelming. I do like the idea of blast spells having a one-round control effect on a failed save. This makes the spells not only "better" but more strategically interesting, and it adds a bit of verisimilitude as well. A lot of video games have already gone this route and given blast spells secondary effects. While it's always been abundantly clear that single-target DPR is the two-hander's/sharpshooter's game, as a DM, my biggest take-away from this is that high level play needs to have fights with groups of minions, etc, for blaster spells to be fun and satisfying.

Fwiw, the rate that the CR increases in large encounters (more than 6 enemies) isn't quite 1 CR per spell level. It goes from CR 1/8 at level 1, to CR 1/2 at level 3, CR 1 at level 5, CR 2 at level 7, then steady on target for levels 9 and 11, stays CR 4 at level 13, and is CR 5 or 6 at level 17. This is the deadly encounter threshold for a party of 4. From blasting CR 1 at level 5 to blasting CR 5 at level 15 or 17.

The approach that older edition like 2nd and 3rd edition did scaled damage to level of caster. A 5th level caster with fireball did 5d6 while a 10th level caster did 10d6. 5e applied this approach to cantrip scaling with discrete levels but chose not to have leveled spells scale. As a consequence 5e blasting is far more ineffective than previous editions.

I made a subclass for sorcerers that gives them the ability to make aoe spells into ray spells, able to hit only 1 creature. They also get boosted by a number of damage die equal to their spell mod, max of the spell level. Like a Ray of Fireball would only harm 1 target, but do 8d6+3d6 damage. Which honestly gives not enough damage to a single creature. It's around 39 damage (maybe 44 if they get to add spell mod) But if they miss it's totally wasted. It does technically make the spells scale better. I found that the only way to make this blasting subclass worth focusing on the blasting aspect was to also give them improved crit chance. Critting in 19 at level 6, and 18 at level 18.

Yep. The only way to fix this issue is with home-brewed spells and/or home-brew changes to spells. Making your own spells in game is great fun for spellcasters. Especially when you have to adventure for them. Get roll playing people! 😁

I would have liked to see a breakdown of the saving throws, because if the monsters of higher CR ratings scaled worse in saving throws than the spell save DCs of the caster, the monsters would more often than not get full damage. Also, I think it's reasonable to assume that the casters would get magic items to improve their spells, such as Wand of the Warmage. Also, class features would come into play. An Evocation Wizard gets to add their Int Mod to damage rolls at level 10, assuming Point Buy it Standard Array, that should be a +5 at level 10. Still scales worse than monster HP, but with more damage, more difficult saves and more spell slots, it should make up for some of the difference

5e is a fun system to play and has some great mechanics built in, but I agree with your underlying point that the mathematical foundation has weaknesses and blast spells are a good example. I point to DM's and encounter design as the general answer. Blast spells make your casters feel very powerful when they are a one shot solution, but higher CR encounters largely nullify that strategy with raw hit points AND resistance and immunity. It is incumbent on both players and DM's to be cognizant of those limitations in trying to make a campaign fun for all involved!

Damage spells are usually subpar unless you are hitting multiple enemies or if they are DPR spells like flaming sphere, moon beam etc, since those are repeat use. To be honest I don't think this is a design problems though, since martial classes are supposed to have higher direct damage to single targets than spellcasters, especially over an extended period (spell slots run out etc)

In previous editions, these spells automatically scaled with the caster's level and _still_ effectively ran out of oomph soon after you got them. So it's funny that 5e made casters a lot more capable in some ways (especially prepared casting classes, who ganged up on the Sorcerer and stole its lunch money), but the one spellcasting archetype that really lagged behind - the archetype which also happens to be the most iconic of all, the one most people think of first when you say "wizard," "mage," or whatever - got pushed _even further_ behind.

Chris, I think to make this comparison - accurately - we need to have a look at the average number of enemies in published encounters at the different levels as well? as more targets, as you note, represents increased returns

Blasting in movies and other media is always portrayed as an "I win" button meanwhile in D&D it's more of a widespread hitpoint reduction tool and circumstantially an insta-wipe of enemies (Think minions or low CR monsters at high levels). Since most references for (primarily new) players comes from entertainment media, they walk into the game with the wrong perspective about it. Granted, once they start experiencing the shortcomings, they will realize how different the game is. Design-wise this makes 5e clearly an action economy game (obviously) which is why control spells that remove actions from enemies are highly valuable, meanwhile in different systems, encounters can be quickly ended through a 1-2 round damage check of the party.

I'm playing an Order of the Scribes Wizard, and I'm having lots of fun with this blaster build, thanks to the ability to switch between damage types when casting spells. Besides that, my DM likes do homebrew monsters, and usually adds vulnerabilities to the mix. This is super fun, cause I can cast a bunch of AoEs with different damage types and when I hit that vulnerability, the hole party goes nuts

It's all well and good to point out that blasting becomes less effective as you level, peaking at places and dipping in others, but I think that it SHOULD. I was looking at the graph where the red lines meet the green consistently and just thought: "Why does the wizard need a party then?". If you can one shot most creatures of an equal power level to yourself, then that only serves to elevate an already incredible caste of characters (casters) above everyone else. To me, although they don't scale well, bursts of area damage have plenty of uses in most campaigns. Even if the damage drops off, at higher levels a fireball is perfect for blowing up a group of minions or swarming enemies which would take the martial classes AGES to plow through due to the limited targets innate to having to make weapon attacks, which frees up the tankier classes to do what they do best: Engaging the powerful threats and keeping you safe. To this end I do think that a focused playstyle on blasting can be very satisfying, but it would depend on how the DM likes to build encounters I suppose. Good food for thought in any case! I am enjoying the discourse that is being had around this.

this really explained why blasting felt so bad in the campaign I was playing in...except it's even worse than this video portrays because my DM was creating enemies with 200+ HP when we were only 6th level!

It would be an interesting experiment to modify existing blasing spells or come up with new ones, that ignore the existing guidelines in the DMG and scale properly, to see how they feel at the table and how they impact the game.

I'm in a full party of casters right now, and the only one that does real damage is the rogue...control/buff/debuff ftw. Our tank is a Hexblade. Great work here @Treantmonk. Thanks for all the great vids.

In AD&D (1ed) a lot of spells were based on the spell casters level e.g Fireball (in ADD) did 1d6 damage per level of the caster and the range was written as folllows '10" +1"/level.' I wish e5 used the 'based on casters level rather than slot level mechanic but it would take a lot of effort to homebrew that sort of fix for all the spells. Your solution is much more 5e mechanically sound.

Great video as usual! It's pretty obvious the non-concentration AoE damage spells were intentionally nerfed in 5e. It's a design choice I don't care for and one of the main complaints I have about the game's trajectory after Tier 2. Now, I could maybe see the logic behind this idea in a vacuum, but within the larger context of how 5e's numbers scale throughout the level curve it it is a complete misfire. Enemy hit points have skyrocketed in the last several editions, and Fireball - one of the best spells for its spell level - only increased by 3d6 initially (Caster Level 5), but peaks at lower potential damage compared to 2e or 3e because Caster Level no longer matters. For these reasons I classify the entire concept of fixed spell damage as a mistake in 5e design. It's also inconsistent given cantrips level-scale about as well as a martial character's basic attack. Except in specific cases, up-casting (intended to replace the Caster Level mechanic) does anywhere from nothing to next-to-nothing to mitigate it. AoE crowd controls become increasingly available in the tiers where the blasts are at their weakest, which is another reason not to spec in direct damage magic. Some of these crowd controls do incremental damage per turn that is almost as good as the instant damage from a blast spell. Meanwhile, summons - particularly in the expansion books - are more powerful than ever. The suggestions in this video are both valid and necessary, unless you offer homebrew content (feats, items, custom spells) to enhance nuker damage and/or have encounters specifically designed to cater to those poor Evocation mages. Fortunately, IMO the core system is good enough to handle these corrections just by tweaking numbers. A bit of extra effort, but worth it to get those combats feeling spot-on.

so what you are saying its I can play a blast focus build till level 5 then use the tasha options to re-skin mi magic user to an utility focus AND do ot as a sign of maturity in game