Unfortunately, this still leaves a rather large disparity between certain damage types, with Acid, Poison, and Thunder still vastly underrepresented and Fire STILL blowing everything else out of the water...
If having seventeen different options for dealing acidic damage to your enemies isn't enough for you then I think that's a you problem. I'm struggling to think of a reasonable acidmancer who, when pondering her spells to prepare for the day, thinks to herself 'Gee, still only seventeen different ways to vomit bile upon my foes. Such a grievous imposition. If only there were an eighteenth! But alas, that will have to remain a fanciful dream for now. One day, Acridia, one day...'
That's 17 Acid options versus 35 fire options. That's 11 Poison options versus that same 35 fire options. That's 14 thunder options versus 35 fire options, and if you combine all the thunder spells with all the lightning spells, the total of that combination is still lessthen all the fire spells! If you think that isn't an absurd discrepancy, I don't know what to tell you because I'm not just pulling things out of thin air, fire spells just vastly outnumber all the rest by an absurd margin.
Unfortunately, this still leaves a rather large disparity between certain damage types, with Acid, Poison, and Thunder still vastly underrepresented and Fire STILL blowing everything else out of the water...
If having seventeen different options for dealing acidic damage to your enemies isn't enough for you then I think that's a you problem. I'm struggling to think of a reasonable acidmancer who, when pondering her spells to prepare for the day, thinks to herself 'Gee, still only seventeen different ways to vomit bile upon my foes. Such a grievous imposition. If only there were an eighteenth! But alas, that will have to remain a fanciful dream for now. One day, Acridia, one day...'
That's 17 Acid options versus 35 fire options. That's 11 Poison options versus that same 35 fire options. That's 14 thunder options versus 35 fire options, and if you combine all the thunder spells with all the lightning spells, the total of that combination is still lessthen all the fire spells! If you think that isn't an absurd discrepancy, I don't know what to tell you because I'm not just pulling things out of thin air, fire spells just vastly outnumber all the rest by an absurd margin.
There are more fire resistant monsters than there are acid resistance monsters though too. What sucks is if you like cold. IIRC there are more cold resistant monsters than fire, AND there are far fewer options to deal cold damage.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Unfortunately, this still leaves a rather large disparity between certain damage types, with Acid, Poison, and Thunder still vastly underrepresented and Fire STILL blowing everything else out of the water...
If having seventeen different options for dealing acidic damage to your enemies isn't enough for you then I think that's a you problem. I'm struggling to think of a reasonable acidmancer who, when pondering her spells to prepare for the day, thinks to herself 'Gee, still only seventeen different ways to vomit bile upon my foes. Such a grievous imposition. If only there were an eighteenth! But alas, that will have to remain a fanciful dream for now. One day, Acridia, one day...'
That's 17 Acid options versus 35 fire options. That's 11 Poison options versus that same 35 fire options. That's 14 thunder options versus 35 fire options, and if you combine all the thunder spells with all the lightning spells, the total of that combination is still lessthen all the fire spells! If you think that isn't an absurd discrepancy, I don't know what to tell you because I'm not just pulling things out of thin air, fire spells just vastly outnumber all the rest by an absurd margin.
Yes, there are fewer of each element than fire spells... and? I'm really struggling to see what difference this could make to you, or any other hypothetical acid-obsessed player. What problem could you possibly be facing with your character such that having 'only' 17 possible acid damage spells is woefully insufficient, and would be alleviated with the addition of yet more bilomancy?
The raw numbers don't matter - there are enough fire spells, enough cold spells and enough acid spells. Complaining about the numbers not being equal is like a person with 3 yachts being jealous of someone with 5 - they both already have far more than enough.
No, it's like comparing a multitool with a full tool box that includes hammers, chisels, and an electric drill with a full complement of drill bits and concluding that they're equally capable of doing a task.
@crazyhawk: And personally, I think that's something of a design flaw; no matter how you look at it, fire is overrepresented both in terms of damage options and monsters that aren't affected by it. Now, I am perfectly willing to concede that that is just my opinion, but when you compare that design philosophy with character options that don't fit that philosophy, such as the Draconic Bloodline sorcerer and the Elemental Adept feat, then that discrepancy skews things a bit.
@doctormackerel: I'm...not sure what your yacht comparison is trying to accomplish? A yacht is a yacht is a yacht: they're all the same thing. A spell in d&d can vary widely from many other spells, even within the same damage type, which is the case with many of these fire types. Plus, as 6thLyranGuard said, these spells aren't shared between all classes, so something that looks adequate on paper ends up being inadequate in application. Also, I'm not sure why you're focusing so much on acid when there's others, like thunder and poison, which have even less options than that...
I think fire is over-represented because people like it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
No, it's like comparing a multitool with a full tool box that includes hammers, chisels, and an electric drill with a full complement of drill bits and concluding that they're equally capable of doing a task.
It's more like comparing a hammer to a slightly differently shaped hammer. We're talking Burning Hands vs Vitriolic Sphere here, not Skywrite vs Enhance Ability.
@doctormackerel: I'm...not sure what your yacht comparison is trying to accomplish? A yacht is a yacht is a yacht: they're all the same thing. A spell in d&d can vary widely from many other spells, even within the same damage type, which is the case with many of these fire types. Plus, as 6thLyranGuard said, these spells aren't shared between all classes, so something that looks adequate on paper ends up being inadequate in application. Also, I'm not sure why you're focusing so much on acid when there's others, like thunder and poison, which have even less options than that...
The analogy is that Jimmy 3 Yachts complaining about Johnny 5 Yachts is behaving quite ludicrously as he has more than enough yachts and isn't affected in any way by how many more yachts his friend has. Similarly, Acridia the bilomancer complaining about Ignacio the pyromancer is also behaving ludicrously as she has more than enough acid spell options and isn't affected in any way by how many more fire spells her fellow wizard can pick from.
I'm using the acid type for my examples because a previous poster highlighted it as an example of a damage type with 'not enough spells', but mainly because I'm really enjoying the mental image of a lunatic bilomancer who can't stomach (geddit?) the idea of learning, preparing or casting a spell that does not deal acid damage, and somehow we're supposed to take their concerns seriously. After all, it's not reductio ad absurdum if you're already at adsurdum!
As I've not had a response to my 'name an actual problem you might face where only having 17 possible damaging acid spells would be a detriment' challenge, I'll start us off:
It's another arid day at Base camp, but the elite Alkaline guardsmen are used to the heat. Commander Borax eyes his troops with a routine demeanour. After all, the war was long over; the chances of an attack by the Acids was practically nil. The bell tolls 12 o'clock, and the guards respond by reorganising from a 20 ft radius circular grouping to a 60 ft, 60 degree cone formation to mark National Sodium Day.
Suddenly, a hullabaloo! A lone interloper charges onto the scene, frothing at the mouth and throwing up arcane hand gestures. A 20 ft sphere of roiling acid crashes down into the centre of the triangle of Alkaline warriors, eliciting tortured screams of 'Noooooo, curse my acid damage vulnerability!'. Mercifully, the unexpected change in formation has prevented a far worse catastrophe, and only ~80% of the soldiers meet their horrible, melty fate. The remainder quickly spring into action, apprehending the attacker and dragging her away to meet their high-pH justice. "If only I'd had time to finish creating it..." she wistfully sighs. A blueprint titled 'Acridia's Cone of Vomit' tumbles from inside her robes and flutters away in the warm breeze.
Which is why in my play group, the kobold bronze dragon sorcerer has Ball Lightning. 3rd level, 8d6 lightning damage in a 20' radius. (Literally just fireball but different damage).
As a DM in non AL games, if someone wants to change a spell, the following two groups of damage types are interchangable:
though technically, poison should be elemental and thunder should be exotic from a monster resistance perspective.
Of course, the same applies to me as a DM with monster resistances.
80ish monsters have necrotic resistance, 63 have immunity while 0 monsters have force resistance, 3 have immunity.
As for poison, over 25% of all monsters in the compendium are immune to it.
If you wanted to do this without messing with game balance, you'd have to have several tiers. The exotic types are all over the place in terms of effectiveness.
No, it's like comparing a multitool with a full tool box that includes hammers, chisels, and an electric drill with a full complement of drill bits and concluding that they're equally capable of doing a task.
It's more like comparing a hammer to a slightly differently shaped hammer. We're talking Burning Hands vs Vitriolic Sphere here, not Skywrite vs Enhance Ability.
No, we're comparing Agganzar's Scorcher, Burning Hands, Chromatic Orb, Dragon's Breath, Fireball, Flame Arrow, Melf's Minute Meteorites, and Scorching Ray to... Chromatic Orb, Dragon's Breath, and Melf's Acid Arrow and you're saying that both damage types are equal in terms of what you can do with them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Again, your yacht analogy doesn't work because it doesn't have relevance; I'm comparing apples to oranges to passionfruits, whereas you're comparing apples to...well...yachts. Also, your question has been addressed (multiple times in fact) in that spells aren't all carbon copies of each other and can work fairly differently from one another, even among those with the same damage type, and that a lot of spells only show up in one or two spell lists, so they end being diluted quite a bit: looking specifically at the sorcerer, they get access to 7 spells that are capable of dealing acid damage, (since that seems to be a theme here; and no, the UA does not count until it becomes official), two of which depend on rolls that are unreliable and another which is dependent on what type of damage you take, so really that's 4 reliable acid spells in total, whearas from that same list we have 18 reliable fire spells (again discounting those three unreliable ones). That is quite a large discrepancy, especially considering how some sorcerer subclass feature (namely those from the draconic bloodline) revolve around choosing a single element and basing their features around that; in that instance, 4 spells is clearly outweighed by 18, especially since those 4 reliable acid spells are all 4th level or lower.
With all that said, it seems like you're not particularly interested in actually hearing what myself and others have had to say on this matter, soooo...I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish here, aside from turning this into a conversation about yachts?
No, we're comparing Agganzar's Scorcher, Burning Hands, Chromatic Orb, Dragon's Breath, Fireball, Flame Arrow, Melf's Minute Meteorites, and Scorching Ray to... Chromatic Orb, Dragon's Breath, and Melf's Acid Arrow and you're saying that both damage types are equal in terms of what you can do with them.
Don't put words in my mouth, thanks. I have not claimed that they're equal, (on the contrary, I've repeatedly acknowledged that fire has more options) rather I've stated that the hypothetical acid-obsessed wizard has enough tools for her purposes. She has access to a selection of acid damage spells for the occasions where she needs to deal acid damage.
Of the spells you listed, it's a whole smörgåsbord of 'deal level-appropriate fire damage in this particular geometrical shape'. I would call a wizard who prepares a different fire spell for every possible geometrical shape an unwise one. There's also one situational utility spell, but the obvious difference is the signature spell Fireball. I notice that you decided to make your comparison at level 3, the only level where wizards have their big fire AoE but don't have the acid version yet. (Quite coincidental, I'm sure!)
I'm yet to hear why even the most single-minded of wizards can't cross their fingers behind their back and prepare one or two spells that deal other types of damage.
I'm yet to hear a non-ludicrous scenario wherein having an acid-based version of Melf's Minute Meteors is a vital necessity.
I'm yet to hear why you think this issue is even remotely important.
Again, your yacht analogy doesn't work because it doesn't have relevance; I'm comparing apples to oranges to passionfruits, whereas you're comparing apples to...well...yachts.
People seemed to be struggling with the concept of 'it is possible for A to have more than B and yet B still has enough for their needs' so I made an analogy. More fool me, apparently.
Which is why in my play group, the kobold bronze dragon sorcerer has Ball Lightning. 3rd level, 8d6 lightning damage in a 20' radius. (Literally just fireball but different damage).
As a DM in non AL games, if someone wants to change a spell, the following two groups of damage types are interchangable:
though technically, poison should be elemental and thunder should be exotic from a monster resistance perspective.
Of course, the same applies to me as a DM with monster resistances.
80ish monsters have necrotic resistance, 63 have immunity while 0 monsters have force resistance, 3 have immunity.
As for poison, over 25% of all monsters in the compendium are immune to it.
If you wanted to do this without messing with game balance, you'd have to have several tiers. The exotic types are all over the place in terms of effectiveness.
Absolutely true. But as they have also said, they're taking the freedom of messing with monster resistances and immunities as well.
It's not possible to talk about the damage types of spells without taking into consideration the given resistances and immunities of monsters (even though they seem to be quite unbalanced anyway).
Which is why in my play group, the kobold bronze dragon sorcerer has Ball Lightning. 3rd level, 8d6 lightning damage in a 20' radius. (Literally just fireball but different damage).
As a DM in non AL games, if someone wants to change a spell, the following two groups of damage types are interchangable:
though technically, poison should be elemental and thunder should be exotic from a monster resistance perspective.
Of course, the same applies to me as a DM with monster resistances.
80ish monsters have necrotic resistance, 63 have immunity while 0 monsters have force resistance, 3 have immunity.
As for poison, over 25% of all monsters in the compendium are immune to it.
If you wanted to do this without messing with game balance, you'd have to have several tiers. The exotic types are all over the place in terms of effectiveness.
Absolutely true. But as they have also said, they're taking the freedom of messing with monster resistances and immunities as well.
It's not possible to talk about the damage types of spells without taking into consideration the given resistances and immunities of monsters (even though they seem to be quite unbalanced anyway).
The tier approach is nearly something I'd endorse, but I would impose the requirement that a spell with a new element is a different spell. Also, force damage is off-limits without a level boost, especially if you rule the way I do, which is that force damage can uniquely strike into the Ethereal Plane. I am annoyed that resistances are so skewed, and even more annoyed that vulnerabilities are vanishingly rare. Vulnerabilities are a great way to reward a character for thinking things through, unlike blanket resistances to BPS damage that simply act as a magic weapon tax.
No, actually I stopped at 3rd level spells because that's a common cutoff point for player groups. If you want to go up to 4th level or higher spells, things get worse for the acid caster because they get Vetriliotic Sphere and then... Illusory Dragon. Meanwhile, the pyromancer gets Fire Shield, Wall of Fire, Immolation, Investiture of Flame, Delayed Blast Fireball, Illusory Dragon, Incendiary Cloud, and Meteor Swarm.
And as to why a single-minded wizard can't just prepare other spells, well obviously they will. But the problem is that if you're trying to build a character who's a specialist, like say a Dragon Sorcerer, and you choose any element besides fire, you're stuck relying on upcasting one or two spells and otherwise being left unable to make use of your class features because you simply aren't given options for doing so. So it's not vitally important that there be an acid version of Melf's Minute Meteors but it sure would be nice if a spellcaster that wanted to specialize in acid damage was actually able to do so instead of being forced to rely on a bunch of other spells simply because there weren't that many acid spells available to learn.
You imply that this isn't important but you're spending an awful lot of time arguing the issue anyway, why don't you explain your reasoning on that?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
No, we're comparing Agganzar's Scorcher, Burning Hands, Chromatic Orb, Dragon's Breath, Fireball, Flame Arrow, Melf's Minute Meteorites, and Scorching Ray to... Chromatic Orb, Dragon's Breath, and Melf's Acid Arrow and you're saying that both damage types are equal in terms of what you can do with them.
Don't put words in my mouth, thanks. I have not claimed that they're equal, (on the contrary, I've repeatedly acknowledged that fire has more options) rather I've stated that the hypothetical acid-obsessed wizard has enough tools for her purposes. She has access to a selection of acid damage spells for the occasions where she needs to deal acid damage.
Of the spells you listed, it's a whole smörgåsbord of 'deal level-appropriate fire damage in this particular geometrical shape'. I would call a wizard who prepares a different fire spell for every possible geometrical shape an unwise one. There's also one situational utility spell, but the obvious difference is the signature spell Fireball. I notice that you decided to make your comparison at level 3, the only level where wizards have their big fire AoE but don't have the acid version yet. (Quite coincidental, I'm sure!)
I'm yet to hear why even the most single-minded of wizards can't cross their fingers behind their back and prepare one or two spells that deal other types of damage.
I'm yet to hear a non-ludicrous scenario wherein having an acid-based version of Melf's Minute Meteors is a vital necessity.
I'm yet to hear why you think this issue is even remotely important.
Again, your yacht analogy doesn't work because it doesn't have relevance; I'm comparing apples to oranges to passionfruits, whereas you're comparing apples to...well...yachts.
People seemed to be struggling with the concept of 'it is possible for A to have more than B and yet B still has enough for their needs' so I made an analogy. More fool me, apparently.
With all that said, it seems like you're not particularly interested in actually hearing what myself and others have had to say on this matter,
I don't believe I'm the one who's been misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting other people's points of view in this thread.
I would say the first disconnect here is that you seem to be laser focused on Wizards, specifically. There's no reason whatsoever that a Wizard would ever want a spell loadout focused nearly exclusively on a single element. And nobody in this thread is arguing that, though you have repeatedly built up that strawman so you can knock it down. Wizards are by their very nature the adaptable generalists able to constantly tweak their build based on what they expect on a given day from by far the most generous spell list (assuming your DM is playing fair and giving you scrolls/spellbooks to rifle through). At this point I have to ask, have you played any magic user other than a Wizard?
Yeah, I'm aware that the spread of damage resistance/immunity is all over the place. But I change monsters occasionally to mix it up. Tiers would make more complicated than I want to deal with.
It's another arid day at Base camp, but the elite Alkaline guardsmen are used to the heat. Commander Borax eyes his troops with a routine demeanour. After all, the war was long over; the chances of an attack by the Acids was practically nil. The bell tolls 12 o'clock, and the guards respond by reorganising from a 20 ft radius circular grouping to a 60 ft, 60 degree cone formation to mark National Sodium Day.
Suddenly, a hullabaloo! A lone interloper charges onto the scene, frothing at the mouth and throwing up arcane hand gestures. A 20 ft sphere of roiling acid crashes down into the centre of the triangle of Alkaline warriors, eliciting tortured screams of 'Noooooo, curse my acid damage vulnerability!'. Mercifully, the unexpected change in formation has prevented a far worse catastrophe, and only ~80% of the soldiers meet their horrible, melty fate. The remainder quickly spring into action, apprehending the attacker and dragging her away to meet their high-pH justice. "If only I'd had time to finish creating it..." she wistfully sighs. A blueprint titled 'Acridia's Cone of Vomit' tumbles from inside her robes and flutters away in the warm breeze.
Since everyone is so furiously invested in making their points, I feel this got unfairly dismissed. I found it amusing, thank you!
I don’t get it. Everybody wants more new spells. I don’t think many people hate it when WotC puts new spells in a book. So what difference is it if proportionally more of them start to be for cold, thunder, lightning, etc.? How many people would even notice if the next book had 10 damage spells and only one of them was fire based?
That's 17 Acid options versus 35 fire options. That's 11 Poison options versus that same 35 fire options. That's 14 thunder options versus 35 fire options, and if you combine all the thunder spells with all the lightning spells, the total of that combination is still less then all the fire spells! If you think that isn't an absurd discrepancy, I don't know what to tell you because I'm not just pulling things out of thin air, fire spells just vastly outnumber all the rest by an absurd margin.
There are more fire resistant monsters than there are acid resistance monsters though too. What sucks is if you like cold. IIRC there are more cold resistant monsters than fire, AND there are far fewer options to deal cold damage.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Yes, there are fewer of each element than fire spells... and? I'm really struggling to see what difference this could make to you, or any other hypothetical acid-obsessed player. What problem could you possibly be facing with your character such that having 'only' 17 possible acid damage spells is woefully insufficient, and would be alleviated with the addition of yet more bilomancy?
The raw numbers don't matter - there are enough fire spells, enough cold spells and enough acid spells. Complaining about the numbers not being equal is like a person with 3 yachts being jealous of someone with 5 - they both already have far more than enough.
No, it's like comparing a multitool with a full tool box that includes hammers, chisels, and an electric drill with a full complement of drill bits and concluding that they're equally capable of doing a task.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
@crazyhawk: And personally, I think that's something of a design flaw; no matter how you look at it, fire is overrepresented both in terms of damage options and monsters that aren't affected by it. Now, I am perfectly willing to concede that that is just my opinion, but when you compare that design philosophy with character options that don't fit that philosophy, such as the Draconic Bloodline sorcerer and the Elemental Adept feat, then that discrepancy skews things a bit.
@doctormackerel: I'm...not sure what your yacht comparison is trying to accomplish? A yacht is a yacht is a yacht: they're all the same thing. A spell in d&d can vary widely from many other spells, even within the same damage type, which is the case with many of these fire types. Plus, as 6thLyranGuard said, these spells aren't shared between all classes, so something that looks adequate on paper ends up being inadequate in application. Also, I'm not sure why you're focusing so much on acid when there's others, like thunder and poison, which have even less options than that...
I think fire is over-represented because people like it.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
It's more like comparing a hammer to a slightly differently shaped hammer. We're talking Burning Hands vs Vitriolic Sphere here, not Skywrite vs Enhance Ability.
The analogy is that Jimmy 3 Yachts complaining about Johnny 5 Yachts is behaving quite ludicrously as he has more than enough yachts and isn't affected in any way by how many more yachts his friend has. Similarly, Acridia the bilomancer complaining about Ignacio the pyromancer is also behaving ludicrously as she has more than enough acid spell options and isn't affected in any way by how many more fire spells her fellow wizard can pick from.
I'm using the acid type for my examples because a previous poster highlighted it as an example of a damage type with 'not enough spells', but mainly because I'm really enjoying the mental image of a lunatic bilomancer who can't stomach (geddit?) the idea of learning, preparing or casting a spell that does not deal acid damage, and somehow we're supposed to take their concerns seriously. After all, it's not reductio ad absurdum if you're already at adsurdum!
As I've not had a response to my 'name an actual problem you might face where only having 17 possible damaging acid spells would be a detriment' challenge, I'll start us off:
It's another arid day at Base camp, but the elite Alkaline guardsmen are used to the heat. Commander Borax eyes his troops with a routine demeanour. After all, the war was long over; the chances of an attack by the Acids was practically nil. The bell tolls 12 o'clock, and the guards respond by reorganising from a 20 ft radius circular grouping to a 60 ft, 60 degree cone formation to mark National Sodium Day.
Suddenly, a hullabaloo! A lone interloper charges onto the scene, frothing at the mouth and throwing up arcane hand gestures. A 20 ft sphere of roiling acid crashes down into the centre of the triangle of Alkaline warriors, eliciting tortured screams of 'Noooooo, curse my acid damage vulnerability!'. Mercifully, the unexpected change in formation has prevented a far worse catastrophe, and only ~80% of the soldiers meet their horrible, melty fate. The remainder quickly spring into action, apprehending the attacker and dragging her away to meet their high-pH justice. "If only I'd had time to finish creating it..." she wistfully sighs. A blueprint titled 'Acridia's Cone of Vomit' tumbles from inside her robes and flutters away in the warm breeze.
80ish monsters have necrotic resistance, 63 have immunity while 0 monsters have force resistance, 3 have immunity.
As for poison, over 25% of all monsters in the compendium are immune to it.
If you wanted to do this without messing with game balance, you'd have to have several tiers. The exotic types are all over the place in terms of effectiveness.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
No, we're comparing Agganzar's Scorcher, Burning Hands, Chromatic Orb, Dragon's Breath, Fireball, Flame Arrow, Melf's Minute Meteorites, and Scorching Ray to... Chromatic Orb, Dragon's Breath, and Melf's Acid Arrow and you're saying that both damage types are equal in terms of what you can do with them.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Again, your yacht analogy doesn't work because it doesn't have relevance; I'm comparing apples to oranges to passionfruits, whereas you're comparing apples to...well...yachts. Also, your question has been addressed (multiple times in fact) in that spells aren't all carbon copies of each other and can work fairly differently from one another, even among those with the same damage type, and that a lot of spells only show up in one or two spell lists, so they end being diluted quite a bit: looking specifically at the sorcerer, they get access to 7 spells that are capable of dealing acid damage, (since that seems to be a theme here; and no, the UA does not count until it becomes official), two of which depend on rolls that are unreliable and another which is dependent on what type of damage you take, so really that's 4 reliable acid spells in total, whearas from that same list we have 18 reliable fire spells (again discounting those three unreliable ones). That is quite a large discrepancy, especially considering how some sorcerer subclass feature (namely those from the draconic bloodline) revolve around choosing a single element and basing their features around that; in that instance, 4 spells is clearly outweighed by 18, especially since those 4 reliable acid spells are all 4th level or lower.
With all that said, it seems like you're not particularly interested in actually hearing what myself and others have had to say on this matter, soooo...I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish here, aside from turning this into a conversation about yachts?
Don't put words in my mouth, thanks. I have not claimed that they're equal, (on the contrary, I've repeatedly acknowledged that fire has more options) rather I've stated that the hypothetical acid-obsessed wizard has enough tools for her purposes. She has access to a selection of acid damage spells for the occasions where she needs to deal acid damage.
Of the spells you listed, it's a whole smörgåsbord of 'deal level-appropriate fire damage in this particular geometrical shape'. I would call a wizard who prepares a different fire spell for every possible geometrical shape an unwise one. There's also one situational utility spell, but the obvious difference is the signature spell Fireball. I notice that you decided to make your comparison at level 3, the only level where wizards have their big fire AoE but don't have the acid version yet. (Quite coincidental, I'm sure!)
I'm yet to hear why even the most single-minded of wizards can't cross their fingers behind their back and prepare one or two spells that deal other types of damage.
I'm yet to hear a non-ludicrous scenario wherein having an acid-based version of Melf's Minute Meteors is a vital necessity.
I'm yet to hear why you think this issue is even remotely important.
People seemed to be struggling with the concept of 'it is possible for A to have more than B and yet B still has enough for their needs' so I made an analogy. More fool me, apparently.
I don't believe I'm the one who's been misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting other people's points of view in this thread.
I am, quite sincerely, sorry to hear that.
Absolutely true. But as they have also said, they're taking the freedom of messing with monster resistances and immunities as well.
It's not possible to talk about the damage types of spells without taking into consideration the given resistances and immunities of monsters (even though they seem to be quite unbalanced anyway).
The tier approach is nearly something I'd endorse, but I would impose the requirement that a spell with a new element is a different spell. Also, force damage is off-limits without a level boost, especially if you rule the way I do, which is that force damage can uniquely strike into the Ethereal Plane. I am annoyed that resistances are so skewed, and even more annoyed that vulnerabilities are vanishingly rare. Vulnerabilities are a great way to reward a character for thinking things through, unlike blanket resistances to BPS damage that simply act as a magic weapon tax.
No, actually I stopped at 3rd level spells because that's a common cutoff point for player groups. If you want to go up to 4th level or higher spells, things get worse for the acid caster because they get Vetriliotic Sphere and then... Illusory Dragon. Meanwhile, the pyromancer gets Fire Shield, Wall of Fire, Immolation, Investiture of Flame, Delayed Blast Fireball, Illusory Dragon, Incendiary Cloud, and Meteor Swarm.
And as to why a single-minded wizard can't just prepare other spells, well obviously they will. But the problem is that if you're trying to build a character who's a specialist, like say a Dragon Sorcerer, and you choose any element besides fire, you're stuck relying on upcasting one or two spells and otherwise being left unable to make use of your class features because you simply aren't given options for doing so. So it's not vitally important that there be an acid version of Melf's Minute Meteors but it sure would be nice if a spellcaster that wanted to specialize in acid damage was actually able to do so instead of being forced to rely on a bunch of other spells simply because there weren't that many acid spells available to learn.
You imply that this isn't important but you're spending an awful lot of time arguing the issue anyway, why don't you explain your reasoning on that?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I would say the first disconnect here is that you seem to be laser focused on Wizards, specifically. There's no reason whatsoever that a Wizard would ever want a spell loadout focused nearly exclusively on a single element. And nobody in this thread is arguing that, though you have repeatedly built up that strawman so you can knock it down. Wizards are by their very nature the adaptable generalists able to constantly tweak their build based on what they expect on a given day from by far the most generous spell list (assuming your DM is playing fair and giving you scrolls/spellbooks to rifle through). At this point I have to ask, have you played any magic user other than a Wizard?
Yeah, I'm aware that the spread of damage resistance/immunity is all over the place. But I change monsters occasionally to mix it up. Tiers would make more complicated than I want to deal with.
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Since everyone is so furiously invested in making their points, I feel this got unfairly dismissed. I found it amusing, thank you!
To sum up what I have read here...
Group A: "I would like more spells to fit within a theme that I want to play."
Group B: "I don't want you to have those spells because I don't like it when other people have fun."
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I don’t get it. Everybody wants more new spells. I don’t think many people hate it when WotC puts new spells in a book. So what difference is it if proportionally more of them start to be for cold, thunder, lightning, etc.? How many people would even notice if the next book had 10 damage spells and only one of them was fire based?
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My point is the spells will get written anyway. Why not vary the damage types a bit, what could it hurt?
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