Chromatic orb is one of the most powerful 1st-level spells in Dungeons and Dragons, with the power to do a whopping 3d8 damage of your choice of acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage at a range of 90 feet. If you’re a 1st-level wizard or sorcerer, you should definitely consider learning this mighty damage dealing spell, especially if you plan on joining the School of Evocation or playing a damage-focused character.
Chromatic Orb’s Competition
How does chromatic orb stack up against other 1st-level damaging-dealing spells available to 1st-level wizards and sorcerers? It has a few rivals for damage-dealing potential, but all come with significant drawbacks.
Burning hands deals 3d6 fire damage in a 15-foot cone. As far as game balance is concerned, D&D’s balancing math assumes that this hits two creatures in an average casting. Assuming one creature succeeds on its Dexterity saving throw and one fails, this deals an average of 15 fire damage. That’s pretty good, but its drawbacks hurt it. If you’re close enough to enemies to cast this spell, you’d better make sure this spell kills them. If it doesn’t, now you’re in the line of fire, and most 1st-level wizards don’t have sturdy enough defenses to take very many counterattacks. Also, fire is one of the most commonly resisted damage types in the game. Your garden-variety kobolds and goblins won’t resist this magic, but there are a handful of low-level foes that easily resist fire, like fiends, oozes, and incorporeal undead like shadows and specters.
Magic missile is a spell in almost every 1st-level wizard’s spellbook, and it’s easy to see why. Its missiles always hit, can be spread across multiple targets, can be fired from long range, and deal hard-to-resist force damage. This spell’s biggest drawback is its relatively low damage output; only an average of 10 damage. This is enough to kill some of the weakest monsters with a single casting, but only enough to inconvenience any creature stronger than challenge rating 1/4 or so.
Ice knife is an attractive spell that can be fired from long range and do some area-of-effect damage. If the spell hits its target, the target takes 1d10 cold damage. Then, regardless of if the attack hits or not, the ice knife explodes, forcing the target and all creatures within 5 feet to succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 cold damage. Assuming the spell hits and its area-of-effect affects two creatures and one of those creatures succeeds on its saving throw, this spell deals an average of 12 cold damage.
The spell’s damage type, cold, is resisted by many of the same low-level foes that resist fire damage. Fiends and incorporeal creatures laugh at elemental damage like fire and cold.
The Power of Chromatic Orb
Chromatic orb is a single-target damage-dealing spell best used from long range. For wizards and sorcerers, the power to be far away from enemies is a huge boon. When you cast this spell, you make a ranged spell attack against the target. If this attack hits, the target takes an average of 13 (3d8) damage. The type of damage this spell deals can be chosen from a list of five: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder. This flexibility is chromatic orb’s greatest strength, though its high average damage is impressive, too.
Other high-damage spells like burning hands and ice knife suffer from a restrictive damage type that make them hard to use against certain foes like fiends. Fiends are often resistant or immune to cold, fire, and lightning damage, and with Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus promising some fiend-fighting action, being able to overcome those damage resistances early is a huge boon. In order to get around those resistances, just use acid or thunder damage.
Another treacherously resistant monster type are oozes, and their resistances are hard to predict. Gray oozes are resistant to cold, fire, and lightning, just like fiends—so use acid or thunder! Ochre jellies are weirdly resistant to acid alone, but also immune to lightning—so use fire, cold, or thunder! And black puddings are immune to acid, cold, and lightning, so use fire or thunder!
The reason this flexibility is so important is because the number of spells you can prepare as a 1st-level wizard (or the number of spells you can know as a 1st-level sorcerer) is at a premium. You could learn a different evocation spell dealing a different damage type for every occasion, but chromatic orb allows you to pack all of these different damage types into a single spell, saving your spells prepared list space for more niche spells like detect magic or levitate.
The Cost of Greatness
Chromatic orb isn’t perfect. It comes with one significant drawback: its cost. Unlike most basic evocation spells, chromatic orb has a costly material component. Namely, a diamond worth 50 gp. Fortunately, casting the spell doesn’t consume the diamond—you can use it to cast this spell as many times as you want. Still, 50 gp is a lot to ask a 1st-level character to spend, and you just won’t have this kind of money if you take the equipment and gold offered by your class and background. If you’re a wizard, the Starting Wealth by Class table (in chapter 5 of the Player’s Handbook) starts you off with an average of 100 (4d4 × 10) gp, so this diamond costs half of your starting gold!
This is a bit tricky. If you’re a wizard and roll the average starting gold, you’ll only have enough for your diamond and your spellbook, since both cost 50 gp. You don’t want to go adventuring naked, or without an arcane focus. In order to make this really work for you as a wizard, you’ll need just a little bit extra. 110 gold should do, so a slightly above-average roll will work. If you’re a creating a new wizard and roll at least 110 gp of starting wealth, use this equipment list to outfit your character:
- Small diamond for chromatic orb (50 gp)
- Spellbook, for recording your all-important spells (50 gp)
- No armor (use mage armor instead)
- A staff as an arcane focus (which Jeremy Crawford rules can be used as a quarterstaff in combat!) (5 gp)
- Traveler’s clothes; can’t go adventuring naked! (2 gp)
- Ink pen; no need for ink yet, since you’ll need special arcane ink to scribe spells in your spellbook anyway (2 cp)
That’s just over 107 gp worth of gear. If you roll your starting wealth and get 100 gp or under, or just don’t want to take that chance, consider waiting until you complete an adventure or two. Hopefully you’ll have gained a few extra gold pieces from those adventures, and you can buy a 50 gp diamond in town. If you take the starting gear from your class and background and choose the [background]Noble[/background], you’ll only need to get 25 more gp to afford that diamond.
Things are a bit different if you’re a sorcerer. You only get an average of 70 (3d4 × 10) gp to start, but without that 50 gp spellbook to buy, you can get your 50 gp diamond, a staff as an arcane focus, traveler’s clothes, and an explorer’s kit for all your basic adventuring gear, all for just 67 gp. However, as a sorcerer, you have access to one spell that gives chromatic orb a run for its money—one that wizards will never be able to learn.
The Power of Chaos Bolt
Chaos bolt, a sorcerer-exclusive spell introduced in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, is powerful enough to make chromatic orb look like small potatoes, especially because it doesn’t force you to buy a pricy material component. When you cast this spell, you make a ranged spell attack against the target—and with a range of 120 feet, you have 30 feet more range than chromatic orb. If this attack hits, the target takes an average of 12 (2d8 + 1d6) damage. This attack can deal any type of energy damage, except for radiant or necrotic, based randomly on whichever numbers turn up on the d8s you rolled for damage. You get to choose which number you like best.
However, if the numbers on the d8s turn up doubles, the spell jumps to a new target, potentially doubling your damage. If those d8s from the new bolt turn up doubles, it jumps again, and keeps jumping until it stops showing double d8s. You don’t have control over what damage type this spell deals, which can make it troublesome for dealing with damage-resistant fiends or undead, but the potential for the chaos bolt to leap to a new target is tantalizing.
If you’re a sorcerer and just want to choose starting gear or grab a potion of healing with your starting wealth rather than buying an expensive diamond, chaos bolt may be your best option.
Is Chromatic Orb Right for You?
If you have the money, you can’t go wrong learning chromatic orb. Its single-target damage is practically unrivaled among 1st-level spells, and its flexibility allows you to prepare it as your only damage-dealing spell, giving you room for more interesting utility spells. If money is tight, consider waiting until you’ve completed a few adventures and gained some gold, and then buying its requisite material component.
Have you ever used chromatic orb in D&D? What’s your favorite damage-dealing spell at low levels? Let us know in the comments!
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
This exactly. It's a great spell if you're too poor to start with Chromatic Orb, and honestly remains tempting to keep for all the little tricks a well used catapult spell can do.
Chromatic Orb is one of the few attack spells I would use out of combat. Party members are in a heated argument? shoot a thunder chromatic orb in between to get them to pause while you try to stop the bickering. Door in the way? acid chromatic orb. Trees? fire. The versatility can be very useful depending on the willingness of the DM and the creativity of the player.
For clerics the equivalent would be the power of the Guiding Bolt. Druids do not really have an equal in their list of spells at 1st level.
Although Inflict wounds is still the highest damage dealing first level spell, with an average damage of 16.5
What is the missing tooltip?
I also prefer Catapult. I like to use it with Flasks of Oil. On a following round I follow up with a Firebolt if an ally has not already ignited the oil. Extra fixed 5 damage.
It's a spell deserving of its own spotlight, that's for sure!
This is impressive analysis, but if I ever play D&D with that much data crunching, shoot me. This isn't Everquest. I don't need to grind out every possible ounce of DPS, I want to play a fantasy game with my friends.
Magic Missile is a fine, reliable spell, for sure, but it lacks the hero factor that can make D&D so fun. It never crits, it (almost?) never exploits a weakness in a foe. Casting a chromatic orb tailored to the weakness of a particular foe and rolling a nat 20...that's a bigtime moment that can lead to long-term good memories. 15 points of magic missile just doesn't have that.
That gotta have it now, clutch moment miss also makes for good stories!
I'll take the enjoyment of the experience over the data crunching every time.
it is not just about pure average damage tho. There is also the thought of added effects such as the range of Guiding Bolt and the fact it does a decent amount of damage AND it adds advantage on the next strike against the target. Combine that with the fact that it can crit because it is an attack roll spell and you have a very amazing 1st level spell for a Cleric.
The only catch I came up with as a point (or 2) in favor of Chromatic Orb over Chaos Bolt is that due to the wording of the metamagic ability Twinned Spell, you can't twin Chaos Bolt, whereas you *can* with Chromatic Orb. In addition to that, Chromatic Orb scales better when up-casting it with higher-level slots.
That aside, you could just do what I did and play a Divine Soul, twinning Guiding Bolt with the Spell Sniper feat. ;-)
Magic Missile can be said to be exploiting a weakness if used against anything with a high AC.
Chromatic Orb is definitely a good spell choice, but I absolutely love the Cleric spells that the Divine Soul Sorcerer has access to. Being able to cast a Twinned Guiding Bolt for 4d6 Radiant Damage per target is fantastic (especially if you're in a fight with undead), and using metamagic to extend your Inflict Wounds spell up to 30ft away (or twinned if you're surrounded) for 3d10 makes the DS Sorcerer a damn heavy hitter!
Great article as always! I have never really considered using this spell for any of my arcane casters, but I am trying out the War Mage tradition and I needed a spell like this. Now I have it. Thanks for the amazing article!
Catapult is another strong 1st level Transmutation spell it deals 3d8 bludgeoning damage on a failed save, unfortunately it does nothing if they save. However, the true beauty of this spell lies in the fact that it keeps going until it hits something within its range. Unfortunately this can mean that PC's can become a target of this spell if dodged by an enemy.
I still think this is a great spell if used appropriately it reminds me of a weaker form of lightning bolt.
I once used burning hands to kill 7 goblins at once
Yes that is why James H. stated that this is good for 1st level wizards. At higher level some of the better spells are fireball, Chain Lightning and all of the Prismatics (Wall and Spray.)
This is an excellent point, but it does miss some finer details:
I would say that in most low-level scenarios Magic Missile is the better spell, but my Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer gets to add my CHA modifier to the damage of my fire spells and I plan to twin it.
I love using Chromatic Orb with the Sorcerer Twinned Spell ability. For one spell point I can now fling two orbs at two different targets. Taking the spell sniper feat also doubles the range on it, which is really helpful.
Question, though, about chaos bolt. I've never chosen it because I think I misunderstood the damage potential. If I'm reading this article correctly, when it jumps to a new target, it still does damage to the first target as well?!
wow my sorcerer is gonna pick up chaos bolt when i play balders gate descent to Avernus
This is a great article!
Chromatic Orb is legit one of the best spells in the game, especially early on. The primary reason I love it is the ability to pick a damage type. Even if your foe knows you have it, its nearly impossible to plan for ALL elemental damage.