Fire Guy
I may not agree with Sorcerer, but goddamn if I don’t sympathize. Fireball is a special kind of spell, you know? There’s the nostalgia factor of course. I mean, I’ve certainly got a special place in my heart for that first troop of flambéed orcs back in my early wizarding days. There’s the wow factor too. Fireballs are big splashy effects, and there’s something about that bright burst of pyrotechnics that screams “magical badass.” But even more than that, I think there’s a question of what’s effective. And when the enemies are massed up and you’re a dedicated evocationist and the team has the element of surprise, nothing satisfies quite like an artillery mage.
Of course, there’s nothing harder than watching somebody do something wrong. I know that was the case for my dragon-blooded pal down on Level 8 of the local megadungeon.
So no shit there they were, wafting ever so slowly forward on their flying carpet. The party had good reason to be cautious. They were at the bottom of a dark pit in an undead-themed level. They’d found an iron door at the bottom of the pit, saw the blood smears on the wall, and smelled the reek of death all around. Behind the door was an encounter that the module called “ghoul storage,” and that miserable little broom cupboard lived up to its name. No less than nine ghouls and six ghasts were waiting behind the door, crammed into a 20′ x 20′ space.
Someone put out a trembling hand to test the door. As per Monte Cook:
“Sounds of fiddling at the door attract the ghouls, who likely open the door and attack those outside with surprise. Show the players the Charging Ghoul Illustration handout.”
Suffice it to say that it was not a fun first round for our heroes. It still lives in my memory as the most frustrated I’ve ever seen a caster. You see, that particular group had a pair of magic-users: the aforementioned draconic bloodline sorcerer and a considerably less offensively-inclined support wizard.
Now remember folks, there were 15 undead minions charging out to tangle with the party. It was a tight space, and a well-placed fireball could have yielded some truly spectacular results. Unfortunately, ghouls are all about paralysis, and those 15 undead minions had the surprise round. My pal the sorcerer got bad-touched straight away. It would be a full five rounds of not doing shit.
“Blast them!” shouted the helpless sorcerer.
“Very well, I shall,” said the wizard. “Burning hands!”
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 5d4 fire damage (average of 12.5). Compare that to the draconic sorcerer’s 9d6+8 fireball (average of 39.5 ). Of course, the wizard didn’t roll average. Average would have been a godsend. Average might have left the sorcerer less red-faced and indignant.
“That’s seven perfectly respectable points of fire damage,” says the wizard.
“WHY DON’T YOU HAVE FIREBALL?” explodes the sorcerer.
“Well,” says the sheepish wizard. “I didn’t want to step on your toes.” The ghouls, who had mostly made their saves to half (three fire damage! woo!), continued to gnaw on the sorcerer.
So always remember, kids. Whether you’re a dedicated blaster or not, make sure to prepare fireball. You’ll usually be glad you did.
That brings us down to today’s question of the day! For today’s discussion, what do you say we swap tales of our favorite AoEs? What’s the most effective fireball you’ve ever cast? When did lightning bolt save the day? Tell us all about your greatest explosions, ice storms, and thunder waves down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
I played a Wizard in Hackmaster, and I was definitely the heavy artillery mage. Hackmaster has a system, where at the end of each session the character who did the most damage with a single attack or spell gets an xp bonus, and the character voted MVP bu the most other players gets an xp bonus. About 3-4 sessions after I hit level 5 the DM had to decide to houserule the most damage rule (to most damage to a single target), and I voluntarily declared that “just using fireball” wasn’t MVP worthy, as I had claimed both rewards every session after picking up the spell (granted, no one else minded as higher level wizard = more dead monsters, but I was starting to feel guilty).
However, my biggest explosion wasn’t thanks to Fireball. My character was also the repository for every weird or limited use magic item, and on one level of the Temple of Existential Evil (Hackmasters spoof version of the Temple of Elemental Evil), the DM, having got worried about how destructive we were provide, emptied the entire dungeon level in one massive battle.
My “lesser” actions during that fight included taking out an entire wing of harpies with a single lightening bolt, emptying a corridors worth of orcs with a second, assassinating an enemy mage by summoning a herd of Dire Elks on top of him (the same Dire Elks were then eaten by a Purple Worm, who could only do that a limited time a day, so was “filled up” by my Elks before it got to the party Fighter). But the big bang was thanks to a Necklace of Beads of Force. You are only really meant to throw one at a time, but we got flanked by 20-odd ogres lead by a heavily armed human warrior, who to add insult to injury, cast down an Instant Fortress to block the corridor off behind his ogre strike team. At the back of the party, directly facing this storm of Ogres, and the party Fighters and Paladin all engaged the other side of me, I said screw it, and threw the entire necklace of beads at the ogres. I hadn’t even used one bead before, so wasn’t prepared for the blast, which once the DM had counted how many dice he would need, decided it killed every single ogre, the warrior, and the even reduced the instant fortress to rubble (and carved a massive crater in the dungeon floor.
That one fight took us all day, and it was brilliant!
The one time my guys threw a necklace of fireballs at the enemy, it was to mess with the anti-party. They guessed correctly that their rivals were fighting a bunch of mutual enemies around the corner.
“If this works, we destroy our mutual enemy. If it doesn’t work, we’ve got no more rivals!”
Unfortunately, that was the scene where I’d set out to reintroduce a player’s long-lost love. The anti-party had captured her, and brought her along for the adventure. Dude blew up his own one true love.
I was playing my idiot savant dwarven wizard, when we ambushed a dragon. He had some followers running around, one of them carrying a staff of healing. Half the party is melee, so hey went in, carved some pieces out of the dragon. The minion with the staff got closer, but didn’t have an action left to use it, before it was my turn.
I went closer to the dragon, and dropped a Fireball right under myself. Elemental Adept (Fire) meant fire resistance did not count, while sculpt spells meant me and the party members were safe. All the minions (including the one with the staff) dropped, and the dragon looked quite surprised. The DM cursed for a couple minutes…
I hope the DM cursed in draconic.
I don’t usually play heavy casters but as a 5th edition Druid, Thunderwave is one of the few non-concentration spells I’ve got right now so it’s definitely seeing a lot of use. And speaking of seeing…at least one party member and one NPC ally have already learned the hard way not to stand in front of the druid if he can’t see you.
Invisible party members getting caught in the blast? A staple of the game since 1979!
Same, and I’m in a party with a tempest cleric. Somehow my damage rolls with it keep being awful.
I’m sure your invisible allies appreciate the poopy rolls.
While playing 5th edition’s ‘Curse of Strahd’, I would have to say that my favorite AoE would be Spirit Guardians. What makes it so effective is that the cleric’s AC breaks bounded accuracy, and with few undead with ranged options it meant inevitable death to any who dated enter the spell’s aoe. And if the AoE didn’t kill them, the warlock would simply knock them out of the AoE forcing them to re-enter the AoE again. Of course the GM doesn’t mind that we cakewalk every combat encounter because our group prefer the intrigue, roleplaying, and story aspects of the campaign.
For me it was wall of fire + hunger of hadar. It was a hoot and a half using repelling blast to fling people back into Pain Land.
I don’t have a lot of experience playing full casters, but I am currently playing an Arcane Trickster in that homebrew soldier campaign I’ve talked about a couple of times.
So there was this undead abomination thing we’d heard about causing trouble around an outpost. Apparently it was hanging around an underground burial site. Naturally, as the absolute master tacticians we are, we decided the best way to deal with it was to lure it out and blast it with an excessive amount of explosives.
So the summoner sends her Eidolon inside to challenge the creature and outrun it back to the entrance. After some complications, it finally comes charging out the gate, right where the Eidolon was waiting.
Now, what I didn’t mention was, the Eidolon is kind of a fire elemental. Immune to fire, that is. You might see where this is going. So there it is, standing face to face with the large creature, right next to the strategically placed barrels of explosives. And that is when the bright red bead arced across the battlefield and softly landed between them, before…
F I R E B A L L.
I like to imagine the explosion was rather magnificent. The explosives idea was spontaneous, so we didn’t quite know what damage to add. The GM just said “You know what, just double whatever your fireball does”. And that is how I threw a 16d6 damage fireball at level 6. And also how my friend’s Eidolon survived 16d6 damage without a scratch.
I shall refer you back to that other Sorcerer comic: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/explosives
Well done, ya freakin’ pyro!
We were in the middle of some godforsaken swamp, hunting down a drow bane sword so we wouldn’t immediately die once we started hunting them. Eventually, after much cursing and general displeasure at being in a swamp, we found the sword in some sort of protective magical shrine that was keeping the local monsters from messing with it. Naturally, actually taking the sword deactivated the defenses, so we were quickly surrounded by various flavors of swamp undead.
Now, one of my friends was playing the wizard, and he had a fondness for dimension door and lightning bolt. He D-doors to the other side of the undead and launches a lightning bolt through a pack of them. It roasts a few… then hits the freaking shrine, which is still magical. The bloody thing bounces off the shrine and reflects straight back at the poor unsuspecting wizard, and kills him immediately.
And that’s how he learned to not shoot magical structures with lightning. They don’t like it.
Oof. Did you manage to resuscitate the poor guy? Was there any foreshadowing about this reflective magical property?
That’s rough going for a dude with a squishy d6 hit die. I like to design my fighty mans along the principle of, “Be able to take as much damage as you can dish out.” That way I don’t KO my party the minute I get mind controlled since I’m defense-shifted. It’s a little harder to pull off that trick when you’re a casty man though.
Unfortunately, Real Life ended that particular character’s journey shortly after. His player moved to the other side of the States. But while the specific nature of the defenses wasn’t telegraphed, i’d like to think “don’t shoot lightning at the magic wards unless you want something to blow up” doesn’t need a lot of telegraphing.
Honestly I’m not even sure if it was the most effective one I’ve ever seen, but the time my witch used lightning bolt as substitute thieves tools to blast through a locked door that we needed to get through quickly is a memorable one.
Forced the GM to dig up the rules on what happens when a line spell hits a solid obstacle, I admit. There was some frustration in finding the answer, but I was quite convinced that his “You never hear about evocation damaging the terrain, so it does nothing to the door” ruling was incorrect (and I was right, it turns out).
I know, I know, I argued over a GM’s call and ground the game to a halt to dig for confirmations of the rules, and I try not to do that sort of thing, but in this case, we really didn’t have any other ways of getting through that door in a timely fashion.
Cleric would be proud.
my bf was running a solo game for me and mid-dungeon about lvl 6ish we made a decision to change rulesets and i got a redo on my character. we went from 3.5 dnd to pathfinder. my character i had been TRYING to make into an arcane archer but being a lvl 4 scout/lvl 2 wizard left me seriously lacking in a lot of departments, and i would have still had a grueling 2 levels to get to arcane archery goodness. i had been gazing longingly at the magus class thinking ‘if i could do this with bows that would be damn perfect for what i wanted” and lo and behold-archetype that could. only it was even better because i got heavier armor use sooner and of course could still do all that badassery with sword and magic too! i even managed to use a few traits and some of my feats and stuff to keep my sneakiness intact.
now prior to this re-work my bf had somewhat lamented that i was a bit…..passive. being a solo campaign all my friends were npcs and while they were all important i was a Main Character. but he didn’t quite feel like i felt like it. so i finish up making my shiny lvl 6 magus and we leave our secured room from where we had paused mid-dungeon during a rest and we turn a corner out into a canyon shelf with a large gnoll captain and a pack of hyenas.
i rolled first on initiative and decided to flex my new abilities- the ability to cast a spell and make a weapon attack in the same round sure is cool i think. so i throw a burning hands on the gnoll and his pack of hyenas- only one makes his save and i roll near max damage which is enough to outright kill 4 of the hyenas, then i rolled a crit on the captain with my sword and brought him to like 2 hp. my bf looks up at me with his jaw dropped, then jumps up and says THATS HOW YOU DO A MAIN CHARACTER HONEY! come out of the gate swingin! he also ruled my companions into stunned silence at my sudden badassery.
this character is now level 14 and one of my recent fights involved myself and my cleric brother flying at a kraken, then busting out from the inside after he ate us. i also recall the same level i dinged fireball i legit popped it off on a full area covered in goblins- a crowd of miners whilst i was spider climbing on the ceiling. this may be one of my most fave characters ever because what beats literally flying around the battlefield in mythril heavy armor blasting stuff outta the sky with free haste spells and then slapping a bunch of enchantments on my weapons and going ham?! NOTHING
Did you have an in-game explanation for your sudden shift in prowess? Or were your NPCs bros just like, “I never knew you had it in ya!”
Grats on the long-running campaign, btw.
Sort of a combination of the latter and a sort of ‘hadn’t been under this sort of duress’ thing. hard times can bring out the best in us after all 🙂
My rogue once threw what he thought was an alchemist fire down the hall, past the paladin, at some drow who attacked us. Our DM was so kind to let the Quest Giver have a scroll of Resurrection in his inventory to get the Paladin back up on his feet.
Necklace of fireballs?
just a falsely identified regular fireball, that alchemist fire.
hey, what happened to my gravatar?
The biggest fireball i have cast is the one i never cast. A time ago in a campaign we were playing the bad guy have conquered Golarion, we were exiled into the other planes. The other pc were getting support to return and defeat him once we manage to pass the magical force that prevent us from getting into Golarion again. As the wizard of the group it was my duty to breach the barrier, but my pc have better things to do so i device a plan to destroy the barrier. As that wall was powered by some buildings across Golarion we needed to attack them, at the same time, after pass the barrier which were to breach to attack the buildings in the first place. My plan then was to attack and destroy them at the same time from afar. I suggest to use Create greater demiplane, a big demiplane, use gate to open a portal to the elemental plane of fire and fill the demiplane with fire, hot fire, then send the demiplane in a collision route into Golarion. The plan was then merge both planes and release a demiplane size fireball upon the planet. Sadly our DM didn’t like the idea, he said something about death-toll, incredible destruction, end of civilizations, defenestration of morals and a lot of other things i didn’t bother to hear while i was calculating the cost of the demiplane permanency. My plan didn’t see the action not matter how much the other players insist in his awesomeness 🙁
Your GM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l6vqPUM_FE
But i want… 🙁
Also, wasn’t Sorcerer death after helping save Barbarian’s life?
How do you think he became acquainted with a personal injury cleric?
After buying the material components Sorcerer and FemWizard go to take a coffee. FemWizard speak of arcane matters, Sorcerer have another ideas on his mind. Cleric appear saying that FW needs to go back before Fighter awakes up of his beauty nap, FW presents Cleric to Sorcerer. In a moment when FW is paying the coffee, Sorcerer speaks with Cleric about what he can do to get FW attention and get her on a date. Cleric informs him that FW already has a girlfriend and that she used to be a guy. Sorcerer thanks Cleric, they become friends and then cast Expeditious Retreat. FW then came back and ask Cleric for money because Thief has taken her’s.
Or maybe there is another way they know each other 🙂
That… That may be be the first time anyone has written fan fiction about the Handbook of Heroes. I’ll take it!
Enjoy it 🙂
You know most people think blasty boomy explosions when they think AoE, but my biggest AoE success was from the humble and horrifying Hypotic Pattern strat. My GM has blessed me with an instrument of bards, which has a bunch of things racked onto it but the one that matters most is that when I cast a spell that causes the enemy to be charmed, they have disadvantage in the save.
Hypotic Pattern is an AoE charm spell that renders those who fail the save to do nothing but stare off into the distance until they take damage or someone uses an action to awaken them.
Cut to me and my party planning to rob a slaver caravan guarded by heavily armed and armored mercs. Our objective was both a specific slave as well as the slaver’s fancy magic chest. We all got into position, and with a single Hypotic pattern, all the guards and sentries were having a trippy daydream. When they came to they were twenty slaves short and 12k poorer. And not a single drop of blood was shed.
That mess is tricky though. If one minion aces his save he wakes everybody else up. I hope you made proper offerings to the dice gods for their largess!
I’ve got 3 AoE stories, two are linked as “how my rogue killed off the party Wizard” and one is “the fireball that anti-climatically preempted an adventure”…
The first two. So it’s 3e and we’re playing in a long campaign, still at low level (5th?). We had a Dwarven Fighter, Human Wizard, my Elven Rogue, an Elven Ranger, and a Gnome Druid. We were fighting a (Robe/Cape of the Bat wearing) flying Evil Cleric and his henchmen (which the Dwarf and Ranger slew handedly), and the Cleric blinded my Elven Rogue… because repeatedly getting sneak attack arrows was annoying the flying bastard. Joke was on him when I kept managing to to hit him despite being blind. HAH! So he flies down into his keep (COWARD!), into the dungeon under it, and we follow, with the Wizard and my Rogue on ‘rear guard’. The Wizard was leading my blind Elf… so we’re creeping along and I discover a secret door! I say ICly “A secret door!” and OOCly “I’m opening it”. The Wizard shouted “NOOOOOOO!” just as I (successfully) rolled to pop the door.
Of course the firetrap went off, hosed most of the party (My Rogue reflexively evaded behind the Wizard for no damage*) and the Wizard went down at death’s door. I poured a heal potion into his nose, and off we went to catch the Evil Cleric (though he was pretty sore about it).
I did this a lot throughout the campaign. Common exclamations of “How can you evade a fireball while still int eh middle of it?” (“I’m hiding behind my own shadow!”) and “Wait, why does the Rogue get to evade a Fort Save?” Yeah… 3e got pretty broken with some of those splatbooks…
Much later at the end of the campaign we faced a Deep Gnome (or was it a Druegar?) Sorcerer in a set piece battle. He monologued for a second, deployed some figurine minions, and we spotted the force walls bisecting the room (after loosing ranged attacks that bounced harmlessly). But there were narrow corridors around the edges of the room (clearly trapped). The Wizard used some magesight/scrying/whatever spell and figured out the traps were magical, and I tumbled forward to skirt the entire room and get the Sorcerer before he could do anything else…
Of course the Wizard again screamed “NOOOOO!” as I set off death ward after death after death ward… Can you guess who all made their saves and who didn’t? 😉
The last story is indeed anticlimactic. Different group, this time I was an Elven Wizard (about 5-6 level with the Elven Wizard Specialization from some splat). The group is traveling to [WHERE EVER VILLE] and we spot a dragon flying at us. We group ready for battle… and I throw fireball at max range. The dragon roars and keeps coming. I throw another fireball. The Dragon realizes it’s massive error and turns to flee. Third fireball and it dies, crashing into the plains. We didn’t know where it had come from, so we shrugged our shoulders and said stuff like, “It’s what, like 400 feet away? I don’t wanna walk all the way over there just to look at a fried up dragon corpse… let’s just keep going to [WHERE EVER VILLE]”
The GM (with a look of pure distilled 100% cosmic hatred) just dropped the adventure into the dustbin and pulled out the adventure for [WHERE EVER VILLE] that he hadn’t finished reading yet…
(Later on he admitted that he should have just fudged the Dragon’s HP and let it escape, that was the adventure hook after all, a dragon that’s badly wounded that we can follow back to its lair… he just didn’t count on my gatling fireball wizard and didn’t adapt fast enough.)
I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this gag for a while, but I’ve got no idea how to draw somebody dodging a fireball in a single panel.
Thief standing next to a fireball, looking nonchalant, with a Thief shaped void in the fireball where she was a moment ago?
Don’t you confuse the issue with your reasonable suggestions!
And of course I can’t believe you’d have a comic about Insanely Overpowered Fireballs without a link to the iconic Insanely Overpowered Fireballs comic:
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/189.html
By the simple expedient of never having heard of that comic.
Oh man…I’m deficient in this aspect. Evocation routinely goes on my Banned Schools list, next to Enchantment and Necromancy (in that order, as necromancers have some really interesting options). In Pathfinder, it’s not as terrible because they just take an extra spell slot to use instead of being absolutely verboten, but the fact remains that the most use I ever get out of Evocation is the Light cantrip.
That said, there’s a phenomenal spell tucked nice and tight into Evocation, and it’s not blasty either…it’s Contingency. When you get a wizard into 9th level, though, they’ve all got enough juice to sluice a goose, so it matters less.
I did have a drow ninja named Kaede in an Evil Campaign climb onto a stalactite and Sneak Attack a bunch of (brawny) knuckleheads below her with an entire Necklace of Fireballs, though. Clean up took the other party about 3 rounds, not more than that. While they were doing that and sorting through the corpses, though, Kaede snuck ahead and looted most of the stash for herself. She did leave a believable amount in there for ‘everyone’ to find when we broke down the re-locked door. Eventually, she sold her Extra Cut in town, and one of the party members wound up buying one of the magic swords back, none the wiser. Kaede, of course, had nothing to say about it.
I disapprove of stealing from the party. I therefore hope that karma was swift and did terrible things to you most sensitive HPs.
Well, at this game, out of character we had the unspoken agreement to steal from each other equally. Everyone basically made sure that someone else got to get a leg up on them at some point.
Fairly cooperative as mutual antagonists go, I suspect.
In which case I hope it was a TPK. 😛
I think all my very best stories start with “the DM was drunk”. I’m only just now noticing this. Clearly we need to start bringing more alcohol bribes to games….
Eh, the AoE entertainment I’m thinking of those wasn’t really big on the damage portion.
Your usual lynch mob shows up, hysterical about something-or-other we’d done, and the party’s winter witch throws a… wait that was a spell she’d researched. Um, like “ice storm” without the initial damage plus “ice slick” effect for the area. She called it “Flurry of Fury” or something silly and alliterative like that. The actual snowfall that obscures visibility lasts 1/2 caster levels and is the part that’s duration of the spell, the iced over was instant and lasts until it melts normally (so if she does it in winter, it’s instant-hockey-ring until spring, in a desert in summer it’s gone pretty fast).
Anyhow.
She throws that out there, which shocks and sobers them a little, and about half of them plum fall over (only about an eighth did originally, but then they slid and domino effect…)
so then my bard does this rather crazy diplomacy roll about “Welcome to the Winter Fair, slip-in-slide free but you must register if you want to compete for the prize of longest slide!” (I MIGHT have been drunk, too), and the DM thinks that’s hilarious, so….
So we turned the whole lynch mob into an impromptu winter festival thing which turned into an annual event at that village. We made some massive gold amounts selling booth stalls to merchants, as our substitute loot for winning that encounter, and it was a yearly tithe, too…
Well, until the place got wiped out later, but that’s another story.
Yeah, I definitely need to get our DM drunk more often.
Ah the “RPG lie” in action:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/charm-anything
Kudos to the bard!
Well my greatest explosion was in a Shadowrun game where I double hand chucked two grenades into the back of a van full of dozens of drones and leapt away. The GM ruled that the explosive force properly bounced off the walls as it would due to proper physics of the situation, which just annihilated everything in there. So my one round action saved us countless rounds of fighting what would probably have been very annoying enemies if they’d been allowed a chance to act.
Apparently that’s a thing in Shadowrun:
http://gamerjargon.wikia.com/wiki/Chunky_salsa
In consequence, all my runners have claustrophobia.
Ah, he was probably just following the rules then. I’d hardly memorized them or anything and it’s been so long since I read them there’s no way that even if I knew that was a rule at the time I remembered it now. (Since I haven’t played any version of Shadowrun for years now and only played a total of maybe 6 or 7 sessions. Though man are they among my most memorable games I’ve played.)
Depending on version, Ramsus, your GM may have just been following the rules. See the “Chunky Salsa Effect” sidebox in the 4th Edition book. ~.^
My favorite Fireball and my most effective fireball are not quite the same. But that’s mainly because my most effective Fireball was a 3.5 D&D Maximized Empowered Energy Wave (Sonic) that dealt somewhere in the neighborhood of 162 Hardness ignoring damage in a 160 foot cone aimed in a roughly 30 degree below ground level at an enemy fortress. It was followed by an Earthquake from the Warmage. We really didn’t want to go in that dungeon.
My favorite fireball is as the GM when I introduced my Pathfinder party to one of the newer Metamagic feats, Centered Spell. Centered spell takes a spell like Fireball and removes its range, centering the effect on you but making you immune to the spell. It does not increase the level of the modified spell at all. So they charged the seemingly unaware sorceress only to receive four AOs from the Greater Invisibility using Bearded Devil followed by a Centered Fireball as her readied action. The panicked look on faces as plans fell apart and the summoned monsters winked out.
Always check for Alarm spells, folks. This has been your friendly reminder. ~.^
I feel like this needs to be a comic.
Personally, I prefer summoning spells to blasts. The versatility is nice, but it can also deal some awesome damage throughout the combat. Case in point, once played a Wizard in Pathfinder with the Pact Wizard archetype. Among other things, the archetype grants an Oracle curse. I chose Legalistic, because it gives a +4 morale bonus to any roll. Moment of greatness doubles morale bonuses. Summoning monsters off a lower list has you roll a 1d3. All said and done, I was throwing around 12 Bralani Azatas that can each cast a 6d6 lightning bolt… and they can do this twice. And then cast Cure Serious Wounds. Suffice to say, it was enough dice to make any blaster green with envy, and our enemies had Lightning Resistance more often than not from then on.
You must have the Legalistic curse IRL to pull that off! As per Table: Bonus Types and Effects, a morale bonus can affect, “attacks, checks, damage, saves, Str, Con, Dex.”
It’s only 1/day, so I can see a GM allowing it for the lols. Still, for my money summoning is already good. No need to sprinkle the freshly grated parmesan over it!
Actually, if you scroll to just above the table you will see that those restrictions only apply for “creating more balanced spells with the spell creation system” and not for everything.
We tend to play with more optimized characters anyway, I wasn’t out of place at all in that campaign.
Oh man… I want you to know how hard I’m pushing up my glasses right now, lol.
ACTUALLY: https://twitter.com/JasonBulmahn/status/1092932560978509824
If it worked in your campaign though, that shit’s legit. Even Bulmahn is only an opinion. Dude isn’t going to swing through the window on a rope and knock the excess azata to the floor.
One of my favorite characters was an “old” (per 3.5 rules) gray elf druid, who at level 5 has a wisdom of about 22. In this case the party was attacking a pirate ship. The ship was described as being a little decrepit with some moss/algae growing over it and a group of 10 or so pirates aboard.
As our fighter gets to the gang plank our grumpy old elf casts “entangle” which lasts minutes per level. It has a 40ft radius and it’s an 80ft boat…everybody is entangled. It’s a DC 17 reflex save to avoid and move at half speed, DC 20 strength check or escape artist check to break free for 1 round. Yeah…no mooks are moving. I then use flaming sphere while our other ranged attackers pour fire into the trapped pirates. Poor fighter just stands there…though he then helped found the rule in our gaming group of “ALWAYS bring a ranged weapon…even if you can only plink people with it. Still better than doing 0 damage a round.”
A like to imagine seaweed climbing up the sides of the ship to make this mess happen. Nicely done!
Most of my AoE tales involve friendly fire.
Early in my major campaign, the party had a Cleric of Sarenrae who got Fireball, and it generally proved pretty useful. There was a fight where, because of angles, to get maximum enemy coverage, she ended up blowing up herself and the party Monk (though they were both fine). That incident is dramatized in this glorious tale I made after that particular session: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hVmcJFcN_5ATaFEOdJ-rfUQFsL-bdo5iAFL-ygXPIPo/edit?usp=sharing
Later on, our mindscrew Sorceress picked up Fireball as a backup spell, and it ended up being one of her most common ones (though Create Pit and Spiked Pit still took the lead, earning her the title “The Holeymancer” in addition to her titles “The Diplomancer” and “Nicest/Scariest In The Party”). She once blew up the party’s Barbarian because it was the only way to finish off a fleeing boss (who was already around a corner by that point). As that encounter was literally our fourth run-in with said boss (she’d hit us over her career with two Lightning Bolts, three Stinking Clouds, one Stone Call and one Confusion), everyone agreed that there was no sacrifice too great to put her down for good.
With both the Cleric and Sorcerer having moved on in real life and my Magus having shifted from “the party Fighter” to “the party Wizard”, I’ve begun leaving a Fireball prepared every day for emergencies. I think of it like the team’s single anti-tank missile. Or one of Jango Fett’s wrist rockets.
I look at Fireball as one of those staple spells, like wall of force or dimension door. I’m never sorry to have it prepared, and I’m usually happy to spend a turn casting it. I think that’s the mark of a good spell.
Olaf Olafsson, skald and general badass, went out crashing an airship into an undead fetus-god. The airship contained thirty tons of gunpowder. So, I guess my biggest fireball was 60,000d6 and spontaneously ascending to godhood.
I hope there was an Olafssonson to carry on the tradition.
20 days late to this party, but I have to share for this one. We’re playing in a home-brewed world our DM is creating for us and it’s been a blast so far. We were out in this horrid desert travelling along what may have once been a road or dried out creek bed a thousand years ago, and we got ambushed by a large group of what are essentially hairless gnolls.
After throwing fire at their archers and taking a few arrows in return, my wizard watched with glee as the rest of the gnolls lined up in a nice little five foot wide parade while going after the rest of the party. The smart thing to do would have been to run, as those arrows hurt. A lot. But I had just learned Agannazar’s Scorcher, and well by god they were just standing there in a line. I had to.
Moved around to the front of the line and cast my spell with a grin on my face. There were about ten of the bastards lined up, and I think three of them were still standing when the flames stopped. My DM just stood aghast, while the rest of the party attacked the three survivors with abandon.
That one felt pretty good.
There are “better” and “more efficient” spells out there. I bet they don’t leave you grinning quite so broad after you’ve cast ’em though. 😀
Ah, the traditional dungeon author who doesn’t understand how surprise works. Unless the ghouls had a magic mirror that let them see the party on the other side of the door, there’s no surprise round when the door gets opened – combat just begins. It’s true that the ghouls may have heard “something”, but that’s not enough to get a free surprise round.
As for the actual question, it’s interesting how much fun can be had in a mega dungeon when you add 2nd Ed rules for bouncing lightning bolts to the 3.5/pathfinder version..
I can’t be sure, but I suspect Monte Cook understands how surprise work. The 3.5 rule reads, “When a combat starts, if you are not aware of your opponents and they are aware of you, you’re surprised.” There’s a lot of wiggle room in that sentence, especially if you’re a module writer setting up the conditions of a specific encounter.
double arty in a dungeon crawl oneshot. kept nuking rooms because someone was clever enough to hanfd me a necklace of fireballs on top of my existing ability to cast fireball. Plus the extra d8 from arcane firearm. Not to mention I could already do fireball-level damage (6d8 vs 8d6) by full-rounding my eldritch cannon. I killed many things, and between that and my 24 ac because artificer gets stupid with it I was the last survivor as the others got picked off one by one
So like… What mysterious entity picked them off? (As if I didn’t know.)
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/artillery