Ice Storm: level 4: 23 damage. 1256 sf aoe. (weighted score = 28888) BUT! It's also a 40' high cylinder that can knock flying creatures out of the air, and creates difficult terrain which hinders your opponents movement. I'd say that's worth the 5 hp differential, wouldn't you?
Cone of Cold: level 5. 28 damage. 1885 sf aoe. (weighted score = 52780) Fireball scores just 43982 at level 5.
Sunburst: level 8. 42 damage. 11309 sf aoe. (weighted score = 474,978). Fireball scores just 57,177 at level 8. That makes Sunburst EIGHT TIMES more effective than a Fireball of the same level!
Meteor Swarm! Holy Carp! Really??? Okay, fine. Meteor Swarm: 140 damage. 20,106 sf aoe. (weighted score = 2,814,840). That's FORTY FIVE TIMES more powerful than a 9th level Fireball. And it's got a range of... wait for it... ONE MILE! You can do 45 times more damage from 35 times farther away! You would have to cast Fireball at (and I am not kidding about this) 635th spell level to equal Meteor Swarm.
You need to remember that the area of effect of a spell does not increase in a linear graph with the radius of the spell. It's logarithmic. A 14" pizza is twice the size of a 10" pizza. Remember that next time you order pizza.
AND! And... that's just the two dimensional breakdown! Spell effects are three dimensional! It's too late and I'm too tired right now do redo all this math with another added dimension, but trust me, it only gets worse for your case. Sorry.
Fireball does 8d6 at 3rd level because that's the big boomer for a 5th level caster. But there will come a time (usually around 13th level) when any arcane caster worth a bag of pretzels stops throwing those measly little balls of fire like a sideways bumpkin from the Dalelands. Be grateful for your 8d6 while it lasts.
:-)
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Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Honestly, I think Fireball is fine and what is wrong are the guidelines and in effect the later blasting spells from Evocation school are not powerful enough.
As a quick hot fix I would add at least two extra dies of every Evocation blasting spell 4th level and higher that isn't a wall (except Meteor Swarm) and maybe then someone would actually recommend taking them over nuanced spells that are considered must-have. As of now, aside from Fireball (which, by the way, competes with Counterspell, Haste, Slow, Fly, Dispel Magic), the most powerful and useful Evo spells are the walls.
Honestly, I think Fireball is fine and what is wrong are the guidelines and in effect the later blasting spells from Evocation school are not powerful enough.
As a quick hot fix I would add at least two extra dies of every Evocation blasting spell 4th level and higher that isn't a wall (except Meteor Swarm) and maybe then someone would actually recommend taking them over nuanced spells that are considered must-have. As of now, aside from Fireball (which, by the way, competes with Counterspell, Haste, Slow, Fly, Dispel Magic), the most powerful and useful Evo spells are the walls.
What you don't want in game design is for each level to simply have a "Fireball +X" where it simply increases damage dealt to individual creatures. There are several reasons why it's a bad idea.
If at level 4 there is simply a spell that deals 8d8, and at level 5 there is a spell that does 8d10, and level 6 is 8d12 etc. then each of those spells simply replaces Fireball. A Sorcerer or any class that can't change spells easily is effectively obligated to get it to stay relevant, as the DM will have to put in monsters that are harder each time.
As characters level up, new abilities and health pools increase. Fights should last longer and be more strategic. Simply increasing damage output directly by replacing the big damage spells with even bigger damage spells means that a level 5 fight will look much the same as a level 13 fight, and they shouldn't. At first level, combats might last only a single round if everyone lands their one attack. At level 10 I want to see combats that last 15+ rounds. That won't happen with Super Fireball X in the game.
Fireball seems like it's fun for the first couple of sessions that you have it. And then, after that, it becomes really dreary. There's no real choice about whether to cast it at anything that seems threatening. "Well, I guess they're just gonna Fireball this" is really damn boring for a DM to have to plan for.
If spells simply increase in damage every single level, scaling upwards, then effectively you might as well not level up at all. This is the MMORPG effect, where technically you're level 35, but because you can only get XP from or kill monsters that are level 31-40, you haven't *really* increased in power, you've just been given a key to a new location. This applies to DnD too.
The devs have said that fireball is slightly more powerful than it should be. They left it that way on purpose, mostly because its a long time fam favorite.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
What you don't want in game design is for each level to simply have a "Fireball +X" where it simply increases damage dealt to individual creatures. There are several reasons why it's a bad idea.
That's exactly what 4e got wrong. Everything felt so blandly the same.
My point was that after level 3 when you get Fireball, when you exclude Wall Spells (Wall of Force, Forcecage, Prismatic Wall), there is hardly any blasting spell worth taking over other schools. It's just not viable. In almost every guide (if not virtually every guide) the blasting spells do not get any preference at all. So either they are underpowered or the utlity spells are overpowered. Therefore, instead of going through hassle of redesigning every utility spell in the game, I propose owning up to the blasting and giving it more oompf.
I said a quick fix but even with the quick fix most still will choose spells like Animate Objects, Banishment, Greater Invisibilty, Fly, Haste, Slow, Mass Suggestion, Hold Monster and so on.
I would very much like a specific type of wizard (blaster) to stay relevant. In order for him to stay relevant, blasting spells need to be good enough so that looking at Cone of Cold vs. Force Wall, a player will have a pause and think hard about it. Right now there is hardly any reason for them to do so.
And it is still not cut and dry: you answer me honestly - if Cone of Cold did 10d8 damage, would you take it instead of Wall of Force? If Delayed Blast Fireball did 14d6 (15d6 if delayed one round) would you take it over Forcecage?
Maybe some sort of swapping system where once you get access to higher level spells you are able to exchange one or two spells from lower levels would be a good idea?
Because Fireball is an iconic spell to D&D. From the linked Spell Spotlight:
Those are all factors that a game designer should consider when creating a spell (especially a single-purpose spell like fireball),but none of them are the real reason. D&D's designers have actually revealed to us the reason for fireball's ridiculous damage, and it has everything to do with the culture and narrative of D&D, not its mathematical balance. Fireball is one of D&D’s most iconic spells. The sheer power of fireball is central in many fun D&D stories, as reported by playtest information from the playtests that gave form to fifth edition D&D. The designers saw fireball (and to a lesser extent lightning bolt) as integral to the experience of playing a wizard in D&D, and chose to improve its destructive power to encourage players to learn that spell over other less iconic ones.
1) Cone of cold at level 5 is 8d8 for an average of 36 damage .. not 28. Compared to a level 5 fireball at 10d6 or 35. Cold is less often resisted and cones can sometimes be more easily applied in close combat with a little movement. Cone of cold damage also increases faster than fireball when upcast since it goes up by a d8 rather than a d6.
2) Chain Lightning does 10d8 = 45 average damage/target compared to fireball at 38.5. This is substantially more. It also gives one more target/higher level slot and is much less resisted than fire.
3) Delayed blast fireball STARTS at 12d6 ... equivalent to a regular fireball at level 7 ... but it then increases by 1d6 for each round you concentrate on it to a maximum of 22d6 if you somehow manage to keep it going for the full minute. This makes it potentially much more powerful than fireball in the right circumstances and otherwise equal to fireball if you aren't going to concentrate on it. However, if you aren't concentrating why would you cast it?
4) Sunburst - radiant damage - MUCH bigger area than fireball - 60' radius instead of 20' - undead and oozes have disadvantage on the saving throw - failed saves blind the creatures (which is a big deal). In the right circumstances Sunburst would far surpass fireball in the damage dealing department as well as all the other effects it has. Blasting a horde of undead? Sunburst is a much better spell than fireball.
5e spell design often involves the concept of scaling. As a result, higher level spells don't do exactly the same thing as lower level ones. They may be a less often resisted damage type or they have additional rider effects like difficult terrain or making it more difficult to hit like Synaptic Static (Synaptic static does 8d6 damage at level 5 with exactly the same area of effect as fireball but it does psychic damage and on a failed save also makes it more difficult for the creature to hit. Damage isn't the only consideration.
Basically, fireball is never made obsolete. It will still often be the go to spell for AoE fire damage for a level 20 wizard. Later direct damage spells will usually do more damage than fireball (you missed that most of these are d8 and not d6 spells) as well as being less often resisted and/or having additional effects that increase their overall effectiveness depending on the situation.
As to why fireball is 8d6? I would guess that this number came out of the play testing of 5e as being enough to make the spell seem powerful when you get it without being so much as to make everything unbalanced and, at least in my experience with 5e over the last 3 years, I would say that this design goal was achieved. Fireball is great but it doesn't trivialize encounters against reasonable numbers of level appropriate opponents. It can soften up some targets, but the opponents don't usually stand around in fireball formation, so it can often be difficult to hit more than 1/2 of the opponents in one fireball except perhaps at the beginning of an encounter. Unless you are an evoker, as soon as the opponents get in among your team mates, fireballs become more difficult to position optimally.
Smaller areas of effect are quite often a boon for the caster (less so for Evocation Wizards, but still), because a lot of evocation spells do friendly fire. In combat, a 14" pizza that does 2d8+4d6 is in practice usually strictly inferior to the 10" pizza that does a tighter and more concentrated 8d6, even if the 14" pizza is theoretically capabale of absolutely ruining the day of a tightly packed 40 foot high column of flying goblins.
All the math saying "actually, Fireball does less damage" is just wrong. Fireball is stronger than most of those other spells, and it is stronger by design. This is both to encourage Fireball to be a commonly used spell, since its as D&D as apple pie is american, but also (as Sanvael points out) so that casters are not constantly forced to learn an upgraded version of the same spell at each new slot tier, giving them some breathing room to branch out into other types of spell to round out their character. If you ever play around with building a level 20 "pyromancer" and add every fire spell you can to your sheet, when you step back and then look at the character sheet where it shows spells the up-cast version of each spell side by side for all your slots, you really start to notice how redundant a lot of evocation spells are in everything other than shape and range. Fireball performing well when up-cast enables you to build a Pyromancer with just Fireball and a couple other spells, without feeling like every new spell needs to be the newest shiniest fire-damage spell that comes unlocked.
Cone of cold does: 8d8 (5), 9d8 (6), 10d8 (7) = 36, 40.5, 45 average damage (also simple truth)
Chain lightning: 10d8 (6) 4 targets, 10d8 (7) 5 targets = 45 x4, 45x5 ... the base damage is again larger than fireball though not by much.
These are all slightly larger than fireball.
The math isn't wrong.
On the other hand, fireball is always useful because it does FIRE damage and not much less damage than higher level spells if cast with the same level spell slot. This makes it useful if you want to do fire damage with a 20' radius area of effect. On the other hand, if creatures are lined up in a corridor or at a choke point then cone of cold might be a much better AoE or even lightning bolt.
The point is that fireball doesn't always do the most damage and it certainly isn't always the best choice but it is always useful since the damage isn't that far behind the alternate spells at higher levels and the area of effect and damage type can be very useful depending on what you are fighting. For example, lightning might work much better against demons/devils than fire ... while you might want to avoid lightning if fighting a golem.
Sorry, was referring to Tayn's "weighted score" math further up, which packs huge swaths of the battlefield full of enemies in every square to allow lower damage spells to overtake Fireball's higher-damage-smaller-area.
Yes, while a 60' cone is more square feet than a 20' radius, in practice most of the 60' cone will be wasted. I did fail to notice the spells that are d8s.
If spells simply increase in damage every single level, scaling upwards, then effectively you might as well not level up at all. This is the MMORPG effect, where technically you're level 35, but because you can only get XP from or kill monsters that are level 31-40, you haven't *really* increased in power, you've just been given a key to a new location. This applies to DnD too.
This argument is a non sequitur. One alternative is you have gained a level, but you haven't gained anything useful (i.e. there aren't better options or you haven't scaled in any meaningful way). At that point, your number has gone up, but you are still stuck facing the same challenges (a level 35 MMO character that can only kill level 28 mobs). The other alternative is not having progression, but then the only way to face a new challenge is to reflavor an old one. The feeling of gaining power comes from outpacing the challenges, not from keeping pace or losing ground. Falling behind the challenges simply makes your character feel less effective as you level. This is the actual problem with fireball: you get it and feel super powerful (and it is the only option that does), but it starts to fall behind as monsters outpace it.
As a dedicated fan of blasting, I totally assure you that blasting in 5e is not viable. Even fireball is overrated, 8d6 is not cheap when you first get access to it (it's not great either) but even that fades fast due to enemy hit point inflation. And the worst part is that you can't find any meaningful workarounds except maybe empower spell. There isn't even a good feat about casting (although there are many good ones for casters, like tough, etc. but they do not boost casting, they all do other things) with the exception for war caster, which has to do with concentration spells only. If you have some experience in D&D in general, the effort in making the wizard an utility class in 5e becomes more than apparent. Well, not every wizard fan likes to play an utility character.
Note that the above is true for 5e vanilla. 5th edition has many problems but also the greatest advantage of all - it is highly and easily modifiable! With the right changes (which I have already made in my campaigns) blasting becomes strong again.
Hint: A DM's greatest resource to make every class useful but in a variety of ways (as it should be) is resting. Manage the party's resting capabilities and you are set ;-)
In previous editions, it was generally 5d6 or 6d6 when you first got it, and at 8d6 it somewhat outclasses higher level spells. Compare
At 6d6 (21 damage) it would be more consistent with its level (lightning bolt is also 8d6, but it's generally an inferior shape).
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/177-spell-spotlight-fireball
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Okay. Now the serious answer. Sorry.
Your error is that you focus only on the damage and not on the area of effect. Sure, you mention it, but then you ignore it.
Fireball: level 3. 28 damage. 1256 square feet AOE. (weighted score = 35168)
Ice Storm: level 4: 23 damage. 1256 sf aoe. (weighted score = 28888) BUT! It's also a 40' high cylinder that can knock flying creatures out of the air, and creates difficult terrain which hinders your opponents movement. I'd say that's worth the 5 hp differential, wouldn't you?
Cone of Cold: level 5. 28 damage. 1885 sf aoe. (weighted score = 52780) Fireball scores just 43982 at level 5.
Sunburst: level 8. 42 damage. 11309 sf aoe. (weighted score = 474,978). Fireball scores just 57,177 at level 8. That makes Sunburst EIGHT TIMES more effective than a Fireball of the same level!
Meteor Swarm! Holy Carp! Really??? Okay, fine. Meteor Swarm: 140 damage. 20,106 sf aoe. (weighted score = 2,814,840). That's FORTY FIVE TIMES more powerful than a 9th level Fireball. And it's got a range of... wait for it... ONE MILE! You can do 45 times more damage from 35 times farther away! You would have to cast Fireball at (and I am not kidding about this) 635th spell level to equal Meteor Swarm.
You need to remember that the area of effect of a spell does not increase in a linear graph with the radius of the spell. It's logarithmic. A 14" pizza is twice the size of a 10" pizza. Remember that next time you order pizza.
AND! And... that's just the two dimensional breakdown! Spell effects are three dimensional! It's too late and I'm too tired right now do redo all this math with another added dimension, but trust me, it only gets worse for your case. Sorry.
Fireball does 8d6 at 3rd level because that's the big boomer for a 5th level caster. But there will come a time (usually around 13th level) when any arcane caster worth a bag of pretzels stops throwing those measly little balls of fire like a sideways bumpkin from the Dalelands. Be grateful for your 8d6 while it lasts.
:-)
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Anzio Faro. Lvl 5 Prot. Aasimar Light Cleric.
Honestly, I think Fireball is fine and what is wrong are the guidelines and in effect the later blasting spells from Evocation school are not powerful enough.
As a quick hot fix I would add at least two extra dies of every Evocation blasting spell 4th level and higher that isn't a wall (except Meteor Swarm) and maybe then someone would actually recommend taking them over nuanced spells that are considered must-have. As of now, aside from Fireball (which, by the way, competes with Counterspell, Haste, Slow, Fly, Dispel Magic), the most powerful and useful Evo spells are the walls.
Do keep in mind that fire damage is also one of the most common damage resistances/immunities.
What you don't want in game design is for each level to simply have a "Fireball +X" where it simply increases damage dealt to individual creatures. There are several reasons why it's a bad idea.
The devs have said that fireball is slightly more powerful than it should be. They left it that way on purpose, mostly because its a long time fam favorite.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
That's exactly what 4e got wrong. Everything felt so blandly the same.
My point was that after level 3 when you get Fireball, when you exclude Wall Spells (Wall of Force, Forcecage, Prismatic Wall), there is hardly any blasting spell worth taking over other schools. It's just not viable. In almost every guide (if not virtually every guide) the blasting spells do not get any preference at all. So either they are underpowered or the utlity spells are overpowered. Therefore, instead of going through hassle of redesigning every utility spell in the game, I propose owning up to the blasting and giving it more oompf.
I said a quick fix but even with the quick fix most still will choose spells like Animate Objects, Banishment, Greater Invisibilty, Fly, Haste, Slow, Mass Suggestion, Hold Monster and so on.
I would very much like a specific type of wizard (blaster) to stay relevant. In order for him to stay relevant, blasting spells need to be good enough so that looking at Cone of Cold vs. Force Wall, a player will have a pause and think hard about it. Right now there is hardly any reason for them to do so.
And it is still not cut and dry: you answer me honestly - if Cone of Cold did 10d8 damage, would you take it instead of Wall of Force? If Delayed Blast Fireball did 14d6 (15d6 if delayed one round) would you take it over Forcecage?
Maybe some sort of swapping system where once you get access to higher level spells you are able to exchange one or two spells from lower levels would be a good idea?
Because Fireball is an iconic spell to D&D. From the linked Spell Spotlight:
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Just some small comments -
1) Cone of cold at level 5 is 8d8 for an average of 36 damage .. not 28. Compared to a level 5 fireball at 10d6 or 35. Cold is less often resisted and cones can sometimes be more easily applied in close combat with a little movement. Cone of cold damage also increases faster than fireball when upcast since it goes up by a d8 rather than a d6.
2) Chain Lightning does 10d8 = 45 average damage/target compared to fireball at 38.5. This is substantially more. It also gives one more target/higher level slot and is much less resisted than fire.
3) Delayed blast fireball STARTS at 12d6 ... equivalent to a regular fireball at level 7 ... but it then increases by 1d6 for each round you concentrate on it to a maximum of 22d6 if you somehow manage to keep it going for the full minute. This makes it potentially much more powerful than fireball in the right circumstances and otherwise equal to fireball if you aren't going to concentrate on it. However, if you aren't concentrating why would you cast it?
4) Sunburst - radiant damage - MUCH bigger area than fireball - 60' radius instead of 20' - undead and oozes have disadvantage on the saving throw - failed saves blind the creatures (which is a big deal). In the right circumstances Sunburst would far surpass fireball in the damage dealing department as well as all the other effects it has. Blasting a horde of undead? Sunburst is a much better spell than fireball.
5e spell design often involves the concept of scaling. As a result, higher level spells don't do exactly the same thing as lower level ones. They may be a less often resisted damage type or they have additional rider effects like difficult terrain or making it more difficult to hit like Synaptic Static (Synaptic static does 8d6 damage at level 5 with exactly the same area of effect as fireball but it does psychic damage and on a failed save also makes it more difficult for the creature to hit. Damage isn't the only consideration.
Basically, fireball is never made obsolete. It will still often be the go to spell for AoE fire damage for a level 20 wizard. Later direct damage spells will usually do more damage than fireball (you missed that most of these are d8 and not d6 spells) as well as being less often resisted and/or having additional effects that increase their overall effectiveness depending on the situation.
As to why fireball is 8d6? I would guess that this number came out of the play testing of 5e as being enough to make the spell seem powerful when you get it without being so much as to make everything unbalanced and, at least in my experience with 5e over the last 3 years, I would say that this design goal was achieved. Fireball is great but it doesn't trivialize encounters against reasonable numbers of level appropriate opponents. It can soften up some targets, but the opponents don't usually stand around in fireball formation, so it can often be difficult to hit more than 1/2 of the opponents in one fireball except perhaps at the beginning of an encounter. Unless you are an evoker, as soon as the opponents get in among your team mates, fireballs become more difficult to position optimally.
Smaller areas of effect are quite often a boon for the caster (less so for Evocation Wizards, but still), because a lot of evocation spells do friendly fire. In combat, a 14" pizza that does 2d8+4d6 is in practice usually strictly inferior to the 10" pizza that does a tighter and more concentrated 8d6, even if the 14" pizza is theoretically capabale of absolutely ruining the day of a tightly packed 40 foot high column of flying goblins.
All the math saying "actually, Fireball does less damage" is just wrong. Fireball is stronger than most of those other spells, and it is stronger by design. This is both to encourage Fireball to be a commonly used spell, since its as D&D as apple pie is american, but also (as Sanvael points out) so that casters are not constantly forced to learn an upgraded version of the same spell at each new slot tier, giving them some breathing room to branch out into other types of spell to round out their character. If you ever play around with building a level 20 "pyromancer" and add every fire spell you can to your sheet, when you step back and then look at the character sheet where it shows spells the up-cast version of each spell side by side for all your slots, you really start to notice how redundant a lot of evocation spells are in everything other than shape and range. Fireball performing well when up-cast enables you to build a Pyromancer with just Fireball and a couple other spells, without feeling like every new spell needs to be the newest shiniest fire-damage spell that comes unlocked.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Sorry, but I don't understand this comment.
Fireball does: 8d6 (3), 9d6 (4), 10d6 (5), 11d6(6), 12d6 (7) = 28, 31.5, 35, 38.5, 42 average damage (those are simple truth).
Cone of cold does: 8d8 (5), 9d8 (6), 10d8 (7) = 36, 40.5, 45 average damage (also simple truth)
Chain lightning: 10d8 (6) 4 targets, 10d8 (7) 5 targets = 45 x4, 45x5 ... the base damage is again larger than fireball though not by much.
These are all slightly larger than fireball.
The math isn't wrong.
On the other hand, fireball is always useful because it does FIRE damage and not much less damage than higher level spells if cast with the same level spell slot. This makes it useful if you want to do fire damage with a 20' radius area of effect. On the other hand, if creatures are lined up in a corridor or at a choke point then cone of cold might be a much better AoE or even lightning bolt.
The point is that fireball doesn't always do the most damage and it certainly isn't always the best choice but it is always useful since the damage isn't that far behind the alternate spells at higher levels and the area of effect and damage type can be very useful depending on what you are fighting. For example, lightning might work much better against demons/devils than fire ... while you might want to avoid lightning if fighting a golem.
Sorry, was referring to Tayn's "weighted score" math further up, which packs huge swaths of the battlefield full of enemies in every square to allow lower damage spells to overtake Fireball's higher-damage-smaller-area.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Yes, while a 60' cone is more square feet than a 20' radius, in practice most of the 60' cone will be wasted. I did fail to notice the spells that are d8s.
This argument is a non sequitur. One alternative is you have gained a level, but you haven't gained anything useful (i.e. there aren't better options or you haven't scaled in any meaningful way). At that point, your number has gone up, but you are still stuck facing the same challenges (a level 35 MMO character that can only kill level 28 mobs). The other alternative is not having progression, but then the only way to face a new challenge is to reflavor an old one. The feeling of gaining power comes from outpacing the challenges, not from keeping pace or losing ground. Falling behind the challenges simply makes your character feel less effective as you level. This is the actual problem with fireball: you get it and feel super powerful (and it is the only option that does), but it starts to fall behind as monsters outpace it.
And Fireball does more damage if the target is wood-based, or feather-based, or as fluffy as a doggie.
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
Fireball is an iconic spell in D&D so it is strong. Dragons are iconic monsters in D&D so they are strong.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
As a dedicated fan of blasting, I totally assure you that blasting in 5e is not viable. Even fireball is overrated, 8d6 is not cheap when you first get access to it (it's not great either) but even that fades fast due to enemy hit point inflation. And the worst part is that you can't find any meaningful workarounds except maybe empower spell. There isn't even a good feat about casting (although there are many good ones for casters, like tough, etc. but they do not boost casting, they all do other things) with the exception for war caster, which has to do with concentration spells only. If you have some experience in D&D in general, the effort in making the wizard an utility class in 5e becomes more than apparent. Well, not every wizard fan likes to play an utility character.
Note that the above is true for 5e vanilla. 5th edition has many problems but also the greatest advantage of all - it is highly and easily modifiable! With the right changes (which I have already made in my campaigns) blasting becomes strong again.
Hint: A DM's greatest resource to make every class useful but in a variety of ways (as it should be) is resting. Manage the party's resting capabilities and you are set ;-)
The formula for a sphere is (4/3)πr^3, so it's actually closer to 33,510 cubic feet.