Hm, don’t like the max damage being taken out.

Yeah seems like an unnecessary nerf... though I suppose the idea was to just make the spell cleaner and more concise. They did at least make sure that the plant automatically fails instead of just having disadvantage, so it's not strictly worse.

note to self: don't make living plant structures unless the plant is magical on its own.

I would rather take the old Inflict Wounds and upcast it to get a similar effect, but not rely on saving throw.

Only plants need to fear this :D

Quote from Nereze >>

Hm, don’t like the max damage being taken out.

 The trade-off of the plant creature always failing the save is a good trade-off. Especially if said creature has legendary resistances they aren't allowed to use for this spell.

This is so much worse than Fireball. It only does an extra 8 damage on average and only targets 1 enemy instead of being AOE + it as a shorter range and costs a level 4 spell slot instead of level 3.

Quote from Mikeim520 >>

This is so much worse than Fireball. It only does an extra 8 damage on average and only targets 1 enemy instead of being AOE + it as a shorter range and costs a level 4 spell slot instead of level 3.

If you find yourself up against a lot of plant creatures it might be a better choice, but in general Fireball is pretty overpowered compared to almost anything.