Can My Wizard NOT Learn Fireball Right Away?

[Amaril]

In my current Pathfinder game, we're fast approaching the level when my wizard starts gaining 3rd-level spells. He's a transmuter, and his favorite spells are things like Spider Climb and Bull's Strength that give him and the rest of the group all kinds of crazy superpowers. The thing is, once he gets his first two automatic 3rd-level spells, his first choices--in-character and my favorites in real life--would be Beast Shape I and Fly. But my dad keeps telling me (jokingly, it's true, but there does seem to be some truth to it) that any wizard who isn't just waiting to get Fireball has something wrong with them. Is Fireball such an absolutely essential spell, on the level of Magic Missile, that I just can't get away with not taking it right away?

[TerrickTerran]

You can definitely skip Fireball. It's nice, but a wizard can take out enemies in many ways.

[JustPlayItLoud]

I'm playing a 5th level conjurer in Pathfinder right now. I don't know Magic Missile or Fireball. Matter of fact, I don't have ANY spells dealing with direct damage. We have yet to have an encounter where I felt like my spell selections were inadequate, and I've never felt the need to use the Acid Darts feature I get from being a conjurer. The first two third level spells I took were Stinking Cloud (had to have a conjuration spell) and Slow, and last night they combined to completely shut down a large party of Orcs with PC class levels.

[Slipperychicken]

It's a fun spell, but by no means mechanically essential. I bet your dad means that Fireball is so awesome conceptually (like an artillery strike you shoot from your hands!) that's 25-50% of the reason Wizards are cool.

Mechanically, prioritizing Haste is stronger. A Haste will always outdamage a Fireball (unless you have absolutely no damage-dealers, which is strange, to say the least), even if it won't have the same primal thrill of creating an explosion the size of a house.

[Vultawk]

Ultimate Magic (I think) lists Fireball as a benchmark spell for low-mid level AoE damage spells. It's good for its purpose, but not absolutely necessary.

It IS one of the "classics" though.

[Deaxsa]

I think he just means that it's iconic. also, you could just buy a scroll of it and put it into your spellbook...

[The Glyphstone]

Any wizard who does learn Fireball right away has something wrong with them. If you need to deal HP damage, that's why you drag a fighter along with you.:smallcool:

[ericp65]

it's always good fun to throw a house of fire at someone/something and shout "Roast 'em!" ;)

[Vaz]

Any wizard who does learn Fireball right away has something wrong with them. If you need to deal HP damage, that's why you drag a fighter along with you.:smallcool:

I thought the fighter was to carry your loot while you summoned Monsters?

[Demorden]

For anyone having played old D&D as a child (like me), Fireball is so iconic that there's something wrong in those who willingly skip it.

Ah, the marvels of generational gap!
My father for example constantly criticizes my taste about music.
Apparently, he's more traditional.

If I can ask, how old are you two?
'cause I imagine a similar discussion with my son, if I'll ever have one lol.


Bah! I really don't understand you boys, with your fancy Baleful Transposition and Abrupt Jaunt. When I was your age, we blasted goblins like real men. Battlefield control! Puah! Sissies! That's what you are!
Oh, but the fabulous sound of an exploding little sun... THAT'S MAGIC!
I like the smell of Fireballs in the morning. It smells like victory!
And you?!
Next level what are you learning?! Expelliarmus?! Man up!

[dspeyer]

Mechanically, prioritizing Haste is stronger. A Haste will always outdamage a Fireball (unless you have absolutely no damage-dealers, which is strange, to say the least), even if it won't have the same primal thrill of creating an explosion the size of a house.

Not always.

If you're facing a large number of weak enemies, fireball is pretty optimal. I recall a campaign in which we stood outside a 40 ft diameter circular room packed as densely as possible with kobolds wielding slings. Our 5th level wizard didn't know fireball. Or stinking cloud. Or anything else useful. What should have been a one action curb-stomp turned into a hard battle.

The extreme of this is facing swarms. Your more violent friends may find themselves essentially useless. And if it's a construct or undead swarm, fireball may be the only effective option.

Not all campaigns include things like this. Fireballing a single enemy is pretty weak. And haste is a very powerful spell under many circumstances.

[Eldariel]

It used to be amazing in older editions when it dealt the damage but people had less HP, and saves didn't scale so save-or-X spells, even the ones that apply penalty, would eventually grow useless. So anybody with older D&D background is going to assume Fireball is amazing. Indeed, it became the quintessential Wizard-spell back then.

3.5 changed those parameters: things have tons more HP to the tune of 3-10 times more & save DCs scale with your stats. For example, AD&D Great Wyrm Black had under 100 HP (94?) while in PF/3.X it has 350+. This of course completely throws the calculations on the value of your spells over on its head. Fireball still does some damage but is far less likely to significantly damage things; 35 out of 90 is a lot more than 35 out of 350, and even 17 (successful save) is significant for 90, trivial for 350.


This leads to people who come from olden editions heavily overrate Fireball. It still does a decent job against hordes but by and large it's not a spell you want to prepare every day.

Wizards banning Evocation are very strong in 3.X and PF; in AD&D it was much harder (I mean sure, you had Skull Traps and what-not, and Lower Resistance/Malison to actually affect people with your save-spells but it was a lot of trouble). Of course, the rest comes to style; some people like showy, blasty spells while others (yours truly, for example) prefer subtle utility.

For me, the fact that damage spells aren't that good in 3.X is a blessing since that means the type of Wizard I prefer to play is much stronger while for the showy people, well, you can still work on damage to make it strong but it takes much more effort than in AD&D.


But yeah, by no means do you need Fireball or Magic Missile. Learn it if you want it.

[Gavinfoxx]

You should read the handbooks... you've got some preconceptions about Wizards that are likely wrong.

IE, that Fireball is powerful for Wizards to take (it isn't, generally; there is a LOT better)

Here's a 3.5e handbook for wizards:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=394

Note how little it devotes to blasting...

Here's a 3.5e handbook for blasting sorcerers:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19868534/The_Mailman:_A_Direct_Damage_Sorcerer

Here's a Pathfinder handbook for wizards:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=6462

And here's a Pathfinder handbook for sorcerers:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qUkVlonpJHQhy9jqicCuJDw-kmc1S3eY98GANjIlDkI/edit?pli=1

Note these aren't ALL the handbooks on these two/four (depending on how you are counting) classes, if you want the full list, go look at these lists of guides:
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=399.0
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1932.0

[Deophaun]

If you're facing a large number of weak enemies...
You've already won. That's a single battlefield control spell. Even a lowly silent image of a wall (I prefer a thick, opaque fog, to deal with the lack of any sense other than visual) will mess up low-level range-attacking hordes, as they still need to expend standard actions to study it to make a (relatively high) Will save to disbelieve, or they're shooting blind. Kobold slingers are not something you should be using a third-level spell against. Your wizard was just bad.

[Alefiend]

It used to be amazing in older editions when it dealt the damage but people had less HP, and saves didn't scale so save-or-X spells, even the ones that apply penalty, would eventually grow useless. So anybody with older D&D background is going to assume Fireball is amazing. Indeed, it became the quintessential Wizard-spell back then.

This is not entirely true. Fireball and other spells did not have individual save DCs; each class had 5 categories of saves that improved at different rates. By 10th level, everybody was saving at least 50% of the time against spells, and it got worse for casters from there. A higher level character or monster was pretty much guaranteed to save against your fireball, and there was no practical way to make the saves tougher, but lots of ways to make them easier.

[JusticeZero]

The other thing is that since "Every Wizard gets Fireball", it's trivially easy to acquire and scribe later. The more interesting but less iconic spells, not always as much.

[Eldariel]

This is not entirely true. Fireball and other spells did not have individual save DCs; each class had 5 categories of saves that improved at different rates. By 10th level, everybody was saving at least 50% of the time against spells, and it got worse for casters from there. A higher level character or monster was pretty much guaranteed to save against your fireball, and there was no practical way to make the saves tougher, but lots of ways to make them easier.

Ah, sorry, I must've been unclear. I meant "Save DCs did not scale". So everybody saved everything later on, exactly as you said. Well, again, Malison existed but that presents a massive investment just to land one spell.

Fireball did do damage on a successful save, which is the big selling point; in general, spells that did something on successful saves and spells that didn't offer relevant saves were the ones that worked vs. higher level opponents (though then there was the whole Magic Resistance to deal with...), since you always expect them to make the save.

[FleshrakerAbuse]

Still, right now, we're talking about Pathfinder/3.5. Basically, direct damage spells like fireball are outclassed by other battlefield control and debuffs that have damage as a secondary thing. Like stated, you travel with melee/ mundanes for a reason: spell slots are limited. You want to do something with them that normals can't normally do. Anyone can do damage, whether through a fireball or arrow storm. It's the people who do long lasting effects that help mundanes and blasters do damage that truly win fights. There are alternatives that do damage and debuff... And melee do damage better than most aoe blasters.

[CombatOwl]

You can choose not to learn fireball, but prepare for people not to believe you're a wizard.

Actual In Game Conversation:
"So, you're a wizard, right?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, show us how good you are. Cast a fireball."
"But I don't do fireballs..."
"Alright, how about dispel magic?"
"I don't have that one either!"
"You're not really a wizard, are you?"

Incidentally, the "wizard" was an enchanter... in an undead campaign.

[Jack Zander]

I don't think I've ever bothered to learn fireball as a wizard.

[CombatOwl]

I don't think I've ever bothered to learn fireball as a wizard.

I don't think I've ever played a wizard at a high enough level that didn't have either fireball or shadow evocation for pseudo-fireballs. It's just too iconic to pass up, and too easy to boost to crazy levels.

[Darrin]

Smart wizards stay away from direct damage spells. Direct damage is a meatbag job.

Even if you do decide to take some direct damage spells, the smart wizards avoid anything that says "Saving Throw: Ref half". Hence the popularity of the Orb spells and various rays.

As others have said, spells like dispel magic, fly, and haste should take precedence over fireball.

If you really want fireball on your spell list, take it as a 2nd level spell (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/fx20020227wn). Or buy a scroll and carry it around in your haversack.

[Amaril]

Okay, I guess I'm giving Fireball a miss then. For my new spells at 5th level, I still think I'll probably take Beast Shape I and Fly--for 6th level, I'll probably want Dispel Magic and Haste, but is Haste a transmutation spell? 'Cause I'm trying to take at least one transmutation every level.


If I can ask, how old are you two?
'cause I imagine a similar discussion with my son, if I'll ever have one lol.

I'm 16, and my dad is in his 40s, a D&D veteran from the days of THAC0. He's never been much of a wizard fan, though--right now he's serving as our group's fighter/cleric.

[Slipperychicken]

Okay, I guess I'm giving Fireball a miss then. For my new spells at 5th level, I still think I'll probably take Beast Shape I and Fly--for 6th level, I'll probably want Dispel Magic and Haste, but is Haste a transmutation spell? 'Cause I'm trying to take at least one transmutation every level.


Don't forget you can buy additional spells, and learning/scribing takes a lot less time in PF (hour/spell-level?) than in 3.5 (48 hours).

EDIT: Yes, Haste is absolutely a Transmutation.

[Vaz]

Ah, Pathfinder.might be different.

Still, try Baleful Polymorph. Its only wotc who can make a debuff a utility spell.

[Amaril]

Don't forget you can buy additional spells, and learning/scribing takes a lot less time in PF (hour/spell-level?) than in 3.5 (48 hours).

Yeah, that's not really a common option in our setting--it's pretty low-magic (there are still casters, but we're really rare). In four levels, I've found all of two spells as loot--Message (which I already knew), and Gust of Wind (which I have now learned from the scroll it was on). Hopefully our DM will introduce some ways I can learn new spells outside of leveling up, but one of the things he apparently placed great priority on in his world design was that uncovering new spells and magical knowledge would take a lot of time and effort on the part of casters. Come to think of it, he probably did that just because I told him I wanted to play a wizard, and he wanted to make things more balanced than usual :smallannoyed:

[Demorden]

I'm 16, and my dad is in his 40s, a D&D veteran from the days of THAC0.
Oh, THAC0... don't even name it! I have struggled with that abomination too, for several years! Your dad is a HERO! You should learn Fireball, just to make him proud of you! lol

And say hello to him by me! :smallbiggrin:

Jokes apart, Fireball can be situationally useful. It should not be a priority, but it's worth the money needed to buy a scroll, when you have some money to spend. :)

EDITED to add suggestion:
there's always research, if you need more spells and you don't find them as loot. Is that a viable solution for your setting?

[Amaril]

EDITED to add suggestion:
there's always research, if you need more spells and you don't find them as loot. Is that a viable solution for your setting?

Maybe...I'm not super familiar with the rules for research, but I'll definitely learn them if it'll get me more spells. It's not as if my character doesn't have the time for it--we actually spend a remarkably small portion of our time adventuring compared to just messing around at home.

[eggynack]

Eh, there really aren't many rules of research to be super familiar with. To some extent, it comes down to, "Hey DM, here's a spell I made up. It looks about level appropriate. What do ya think?" and he says, "Yeah, sure I guess. It doesn't look like it'll unbalance the game," or, "No, that's stupid. Stop researching spells, because there are plenty of spells in the books already." And there are. So, I guess if you have a lenient DM it could work, but you'd probably be better off just porting in some spell compendium stuff or something, and maybe calling it research. I dunno how hard it is to push some of those spells into pathfinder, but it's gotta be easier than making up spells and eyeballing their power level.

[CombatOwl]

Smart wizards stay away from direct damage spells. Direct damage is a meatbag job.

Sometimes the enemy just has a high will and fort save but ****ty reflex save. It's always good to have direct damage spells available, just like you ought to have some fort and will save spells too. Plus being able to ignite stuff is useful too.


Even if you do decide to take some direct damage spells, the smart wizards avoid anything that says "Saving Throw: Ref half". Hence the popularity of the Orb spells and various rays.

Orbs and rays are popular because they often bypass SR; wizards don't hit very well, even if it's just touch ACs.


As others have said, spells like dispel magic, fly, and haste should take precedence over fireball.

Haste is okay, but the fights my groups seem to encounter are always a bit too... dynamic to rely on full round attacks.

[icefractal]

The thing you have to watch out for, going the "screw direct damage" route, is that the rest of your party is there to do the damage. Usually, they are. However, sometimes everyone else also goes control/debuff/defense, or they're just trying some combination that needs more levels to be effective, and it turns out that nobody actually does damage.

[eggynack]

The thing you have to watch out for, going the "screw direct damage" route, is that the rest of your party is there to do the damage. Usually, they are. However, sometimes everyone else also goes control/debuff/defense, or they're just trying some combination that needs more levels to be effective, and it turns out that nobody actually does damage.
I guess that's slightly possible. It feels like with an all battlefield control party, you'd have some kind of inevitability on your side though. Like, there's this point where the legion of demons is being grappled by black tentacles, are trapped in an acidic fog, and have had enervation cast on them a few times or something. At some point, you can just take out your crossbow and plink away for a few hours, while the demons flail around futilely.

I don't think that really happens much though. Both the acidic fog and the black tentacles are doing damage, so the demons are going to die eventually. Wizards often have spells that deal damage, but not as their only effect. Look at the polymorph or summoning line for examples. The former is good for becoming a beat stick, or enabling crazy amounts of mobility, or just about anything. With summoning, you could summon one of the guys with lots of SLA's, or one of the guys who can beat face. Also, unless the party is actually just wizards, a member of the party probably has some way of dealing damage intrinsically. Whether it's a fighter charging away, a cleric beating face with his mace, or a druid eating face with his face, there's often good ways to deal damage, and each of those ways is replaceable with each of the other ways to some extent. Having a dedicated guy to instantly kill each of the enemies one by one while they're separated by walls is still probably a good idea though, even if it's just one of the wizards loading up on a couple of buffs.

[dspeyer]

You've already won. That's a single battlefield control spell. Even a lowly silent image of a wall (I prefer a thick, opaque fog, to deal with the lack of any sense other than visual) will mess up low-level range-attacking hordes, as they still need to expend standard actions to study it to make a (relatively high) Will save to disbelieve, or they're shooting blind. Kobold slingers are not something you should be using a third-level spell against. Your wizard was just bad.

An illusion or fog cloud would slow them down, not shut them down. We'd then need to either wade into it and chop them up, taking significant damage despite miss chances, or pass them by and wait for them to charge our rear while we fought the dragon in the next chamber.

I really don't see anything 2nd level that takes them out safely. Sure Black Tentacles would do it, but that's 4th level.

[TuggyNE]

An illusion or fog cloud would slow them down, not shut them down. We'd then need to either wade into it and chop them up, taking significant damage despite miss chances, or pass them by and wait for them to charge our rear while we fought the dragon in the next chamber.

I really don't see anything 2nd level that takes them out safely. Sure Black Tentacles would do it, but that's 4th level.

Fireball is a third, if that matters. :smalltongue: So even direct damage doesn't necessarily have a good second-level solution.

[Waspinator]

If you're fighting one guy, you can probably do more damage with Summon Monster III (Celestial Bison) than a Fireball. A Fireball does your caster level in d6s, the Bison gores people for 1d8+9 for your caster level in rounds.

[137beth]

Is Fireball such an absolutely essential spell, on the level of Magic Missile

Yes, fireball is comparable to magic missile, in that they are both direct damage spells. I'm assuming your dad also told you that magic missile is really important. He is mistaken. Magic missile, like fireball, is a direct damage spell. Like almost all other pure damage spells, magic missile and fireball are really poor choices. There ARE good damage dealing spells, but only if they do something else as well.

[Arundel]

You know, as a older edition player at one point in my life there is one thing I really miss about old school fireball. Fireball was a complete gamebreaker, as in measures-on-the-henderson-scale gamebreaker. For the youngsters around:

Once upon a time fireball included the following line:


The burst of the fireball creates little pressure and generally conforms to the shape of the area in which it occurs. The fireball fills an area equal to its normal spherical volume (roughly 33,000 cubic feet--thirty-three 10-foot × 10-foot × 10-foot cubes).

So I want you to picture a tunnel that is one foot wide, one foot tall, and infinitely long. Cast a fireball in it. What happens?

You have a tube of fire 6 miles long.

At least in my experience, there was a fair portion of a campaign that was defined by finding ring of fire resistance (a far harder task in the old days) then using fireball to solve every problem that involved close quarters. One of my favorite D&D memories is telling my DM I cast fireball into a Ankheg hole and watching his face slowly fade into hatred.

[evil-frosty]

You know, as a older edition player at one point in my life there is one thing I really miss about old school fireball. Fireball was a complete gamebreaker, as in measures-on-the-henderson-scale gamebreaker. For the youngsters around:

Once upon a time fireball included the following line:



So I want you to picture a tunnel that is one foot wide, one foot tall, and infinitely long. Cast a fireball in it. What happens?

You have a tube of fire 6 miles long.

At least in my experience, there was a fair portion of a campaign that was defined by finding ring of fire resistance (a far harder task in the old days) then using fireball to solve every problem that involved close quarters. One of my favorite D&D memories is telling my DM I cast fireball into a Ankheg hole and watching his face slowly fade into hatred.

And lightning bolt use to bounce off of surfaces which made it a lot more fun. Fireball when some physics are applied can be a lot of fun, though if you are not careful your party might get weary of you.

Now, yes a 3.5 wizard can do better things with his spells than fire or lightning bolt or most of the evocation school. But rolling a handful of d6's is still fun at times. I at least personally enjoy blowing things up when being subtle isn't working fast enough. Direct damage, while yes sub optimal, is just another option like how BFC is an option. And both are fun which is the point.

[Waspinator]

I'm honestly in favor of bringing back fixed-volume fireballs and bouncing lightning. They make awesomely hilarious situations.

[eggynack]

Indeed. I wonder how viable fireball would be as a spell if you could use it to hit anyone within a ton of miles, so long as you have a tube thin and flexible enough. It's a bit unwieldy, trying to slip a series of straws you've attached together into the villains window, but it'd be cool. It could also be useful as a way to defend against siege. The spell already has a long range, but if you had a collection of tubes that led underground, before coming up in various places at the surface, that could work. Maybe something with a telescoping design would be ideal for the window thing, particularly if it were magical.

[Marnath]

Yes, fireball is comparable to magic missile, in that they are both direct damage spells. I'm assuming your dad also told you that magic missile is really important. He is mistaken. Magic missile, like fireball, is a direct damage spell. Like almost all other pure damage spells, magic missile and fireball are really poor choices. There ARE good damage dealing spells, but only if they do something else as well.

Sort of an unfair comparison since magic missile never misses and can reliably harm incorporeal enemies.

[TuggyNE]

Someone should homebrew an old-style "flameburst" spell or something, using mechanics similar to older versions of fireball. (Although, of course, it would still have the problem of doing damage that doesn't scale as well as in previous editions.)


Sort of an unfair comparison since magic missile never misses and can reliably harm incorporeal enemies.

And fireball can hit multiple targets with no diminution of damage. :smallwink:

[eggynack]

I just thought of another cool thing to use this tube assisted fireball on. imagine a guy in a tiny room with two thin tubes as the only way for the fireball to go. Either that, or you could shoot the fireball into the center of a tube, leading off into two places. Either way, what you'd get is two fireballs of half regular size, that could go to two completely different places. Extending this to its natural conclusion, imagine if there were one tube that branched out. These branches would go to many different places on the battlefield. What you'd get is one fireball powering a nigh-infinite number of flame pillars that would strike everywhere on the battlefield. You could even use this to increase the natural size of a fireball. How much of a person has to be touched by a fireball for them to be effected? The answer is that there's no rule for it, because that would be ridiculous. Imagine a battlefield in which every five foot square had a tiny tube poking out of it, connected to the wizard's fireball. Each tube would have a tiny gout of flame that would deal full damage. Given an infinitely small tube, and infinite time to construct a crazy underground network of these infinitely small tubes, you could use one fireball to hit everyone in the world simultaneously. That sounds like an action almost worthy of a 3rd level slot.

[Psyren]

And fireball can hit multiple targets with no diminution of damage. :smallwink:

Don't forget swarms too.

I almost always go for lightning bolt instead of fireball though. Fewer enemies resist it, no poop-flinging and easier to avoid hitting allies.


You can choose not to learn fireball, but prepare for people not to believe you're a wizard.

Actual In Game Conversation:
"So, you're a wizard, right?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, show us how good you are. Cast a fireball."
"But I don't do fireballs..."
"Alright, how about dispel magic?"
"I don't have that one either!"
"You're not really a wizard, are you?"

Incidentally, the "wizard" was an enchanter... in an undead campaign.

I can forgive you the fireball but no Dispel? What do you do if the cleric gets ensorcelled?

[tiercel]

As others have said, you can get by without fireball... but it is iconic, and its "special use" comes up often enough that it is awfully handy to have around sometimes.

AoE battlefield control is often preferable to straight damage, but the first time you walk into a cavern with a full-on stirge hive, or when you face the BBEG across his roomful of minions -- you don't want to delay the inevitable, you want to take out the trash right now before you start taking Con damage/the BBEG starts buffing himself all to Gehenna.

As much as people trash-talk direct damage as an arcane role, fireball is an example of direct damage that is a worthy option -- being able to inflict AoE damage on a large number of smaller opponents, quickly removing them. Doing damage against single opponents duplicates what partymates can do, but most of the rest of the party doesn't have the ability to put the hurt on multiple monsters the same way an arcanist can.

If your DM tends to heavily favor single or small numbers of opponents, then fireball isn't so useful. If your DM favors encounters that always take place at close range (e.g. indoors/dungeon) or in flammable environments (towns, forests, undergrowth) or with civilians who can get caught in the crossfire, then fireball has poor utility in those situations. (Assuming you're not Evil. Even so.)

Still, it's a common sort of encounter to run into a numerically superior but individually weaker foe, and being able to hurt (or eliminate!) them all in one go is a handy tool. I wouldn't necessarily say that fireball is a must have, and certainly not necessarily as one of your first 3rd-level-spell choices... but I would say that there are a lot of wizards who are a little too hipster about fireball ("eh, I used to like throwing fireballs but they got all popular and mainstream, now any kid with a wand or a staff and half a rank in UMD can throw them around, ugh, sellouts").

[Demorden]

I just thought of another cool thing to use this tube assisted fireball on. imagine a guy in a tiny room with two thin tubes as the only way for the fireball to go. Either that, or you could shoot the fireball into the center of a tube, leading off into two places. Either way, what you'd get is two fireballs of half regular size, that could go to two completely different places. Extending this to its natural conclusion, imagine if there were one tube that branched out. These branches would go to many different places on the battlefield. What you'd get is one fireball powering a nigh-infinite number of flame pillars that would strike everywhere on the battlefield. You could even use this to increase the natural size of a fireball. How much of a person has to be touched by a fireball for them to be effected? The answer is that there's no rule for it, because that would be ridiculous. Imagine a battlefield in which every five foot square had a tiny tube poking out of it, connected to the wizard's fireball. Each tube would have a tiny gout of flame that would deal full damage. Given an infinitely small tube, and infinite time to construct a crazy underground network of these infinitely small tubes, you could use one fireball to hit everyone in the world simultaneously. That sounds like an action almost worthy of a 3rd level slot.

You're stretching things a little too much imho.
It was already cool enough.
As is today, I have to discuss even it's tridimensionality whenever I cast it.

Damn 2D battle grid!

[eggynack]

Well yeah, if by "things" you mean the fireball, and by "too much" you mean "too little". The next step is using the fireball of insanity to break planets in half somehow. Does dealing 5d6-10d6 to every five foot square on a planet do anything in terms of destroying it? It'll definitely be consumed in a conflagration of awesomeness, so that should be enough. You could create a planet sized web of tubes custom made to fit right around a planet in particular. And then, fwoom, you can destroy the alien enemy's home planet Ender Wiggin style.

Still, although it seems absurd, a network of tubes that runs under the battlefield in front of a castle sounds both theoretically plausible, and rules legal. You wouldn't even have to get the tubes that thin. Straw thickness would probably work, especially if you had the branches start as close to the end of the tube as possible. The best part of it is, that this is just the effect of a single fireball. Imagine several wizards, working in tandem, shooting a fireball down the chute on their initiative. You could probably stop whole invading armies by that point. There might be some shenanigans you could pull off with regular fireballs, that involves portals of some kind, but it would be both less cost efficient and less effective.

[Demorden]

Well yeah, if by "things" you mean the fireball, and by "too much" you mean "too little". The next step is using the fireball of insanity to break planets in half somehow. Does dealing 5d6-10d6 to every five foot square on a planet do anything in terms of destroying it? It'll definitely be consumed in a conflagration of awesomeness, so that should be enough. You could create a planet sized web of tubes custom made to fit right around a planet in particular. And then, fwoom, you can destroy the alien enemy's home planet Ender Wiggin style.

Still, although it seems absurd, a network of tubes that runs under the battlefield in front of a castle sounds both theoretically plausible, and rules legal. You wouldn't even have to get the tubes that thin. Straw thickness would probably work, especially if you had the branches start as close to the end of the tube as possible. The best part of it is, that this is just the effect of a single fireball. Imagine several wizards, working in tandem, shooting a fireball down the chute on their initiative. You could probably stop whole invading armies by that point. There might be some shenanigans you could pull off with regular fireballs, that involves portals of some kind, but it would be both less cost efficient and less effective.

It's limited to its spherical volume. I tried to do some math, but I'm so unsure of my calculations that I won't post them. It seems that you could fill a ridiculuos lenght of 1mm-wide straws though, I admit it.

But when I said that you were exagerating, I was mainly speaking about your DM's insanity. Your PC lives in a world where phisics have an independent will, exerted via fiat. Personally, I'll set as a limit "if I can do the math without a calculator, it's ok".

[ericgrau]

Besides fireball, your first level 3 spell should be one of these: sleet storm, stinking cloud, deep slumber or haste. I'd be the first to defy the forums and say sometimes fireball is the best option and that it's almost always good. But there are 4 others that are just as good and so you gotta figure 4 out of 5 times one of them will be better.

Displacement, major image, ray of exhaustion, empowered magic missile and empowered ray of enfeeblement are ok.

Beast shape I and fly are pretty bad to start with though. They only let you move not attack. Since most level 1 and 2 spells are so bad at attacking, you really need your 1st 3rd level spell to attack with. Then you can take fly too.

For that matter I wouldn't ever take magic missile at level 1. You almost need it for tricky foes like ghosts later, but at level 1 the classic spell to take is sleep. Or after it got nerfed there's color spray too.

For your goals I would take haste, fly and gaseous form. A 2nd spell from the top list would be better, but if you enter a lot of dungeons you'll be amazed at how well gaseous form fits with your character goals. If you don't do a lot of dungeons, then it's still handy but not as good. It may be worth it to be slightly weaker.

[eggynack]

It's limited to its spherical volume. I tried to do some math, but I'm so unsure of my calculations that I won't post them. It seems that you could fill a ridiculuos lenght of 1mm-wide straws though, I admit it.

But when I said that you were exagerating, I was mainly speaking about your DM's insanity. Your PC lives in a world where phisics have an independent will, exerted via fiat. Personally, I'll set as a limit "if I can do the math without a calculator, it's ok".
It might take some logistical work, and impossibly thin tubes, to get the planet-wide attack to work, but a battlefield strike would take considerably less effort. With one foot by one foot tubes, presumably leading to much more thin exits so the fireball isn't just being shot regularly to the open surface, you already have 6 miles worth of tube to work with. If you make the tube an inch thick, you're effectively multiplying the length of tube you have to work with by a lot. My initial thought was 12 times, but really that should be squared for 144 times. With an inch thick tube, you'd therefore have a tube length of 864 miles. That's a lot of tube. A battlefield one mile long would require 1,115, 136 tiny tubes, sticking out of the ground. I'm not necessarily sure that it's possible, but with some detail work, you could probably make it happen. I think that what you'd want to do, is have a central area where you shoot the fireball from, underneath the ground, which is attached to only a few tubes that head towards the perimeter of the battlefield. Each of those tubes would be what branches out towards the surface. That way, you avoid the problem where every tube that goes towards the outer are is half a mile. I don't know the amount of degrees of branching required, or the optimal method of constructing the behemoth, but it's likely possible to work out the mile wide fireball.

Still, even if it's highly difficult to achieve these goals, there's definitely a point of plausibility out there where you've effectively raised the radius of the fireball by a pretty good amount. It'd be a pretty big project, working out the details of the tube thing, but I think that it's doable. Also, you can definitely send mini fireballs to various strategic points on the battlefield, so there's always that.

[Demorden]

It might take some logistical work, and impossibly thin tubes, to get the planet-wide attack to work, but a battlefield strike would take considerably less effort. With one foot by one foot tubes, presumably leading to much more thin exits so the fireball isn't just being shot regularly to the open surface, you already have 6 miles worth of tube to work with. If you make the tube an inch thick, you're effectively multiplying the length of tube you have to work with by a lot. My initial thought was 12 times, but really that should be squared for 144 times. With an inch thick tube, you'd therefore have a tube length of 864 miles. That's a lot of tube. A battlefield one mile long would require 1,115, 136 tiny tubes, sticking out of the ground. I'm not necessarily sure that it's possible, but with some detail work, you could probably make it happen. I think that what you'd want to do, is have a central area where you shoot the fireball from, underneath the ground, which is attached to only a few tubes that head towards the perimeter of the battlefield. Each of those tubes would be what branches out towards the surface. That way, you avoid the problem where every tube that goes towards the outer are is half a mile. I don't know the amount of degrees of branching required, or the optimal method of constructing the behemoth, but it's likely possible to work out the mile wide fireball.

Still, even if it's highly difficult to achieve these goals, there's definitely a point of plausibility out there where you've effectively raised the radius of the fireball by a pretty good amount. It'd be a pretty big project, working out the details of the tube thing, but I think that it's doable. Also, you can definitely send mini fireballs to various strategic points on the battlefield, so there's always that.

I get your point, I'm just saying that this is such a broken use of the old RAW, that no DM would allow it. And still, it doesn't apply to 3.5/PF (not sure about PF though) unless houseruled that the old description applies.

To the OP: ask your DM if he considers Fireball to be 3D (by 3.5 RAW he could say no). If it is spherical rather than flat, its usefullness increases esponentially.

[TuggyNE]

To the OP: ask your DM if he considers Fireball to be 3D (by 3.5 RAW he could say no). If it is spherical rather than flat, its usefullness increases esponentially.

Actually, no, by 3.5 RAW fireball is nothing but spherical:
The default shape for a burst effect is a sphere, but some burst spells are specifically described as cone-shaped. […] A spread spell spreads out like a burst but can turn corners.

Fireball is a spread.

[Demorden]

Actually, no, by 3.5 RAW fireball is nothing but spherical:

Fireball is a spread.

Hey thanks for pointing that out! I remembered the spell description not telling anything explicit, I suppose that's why! With my group we never checked that, so we thought ours was just an interpretation! :)

[Corundum Dragon]

Get a sprayer and oil.

a cursed rod of flame extinguishing (15,000 gp)
has 10 charges, renewed daily
burning hands spell expends 1 charge
fireball, flame strike, or wall of fire expends 2 charges
If the device is used upon a cold. ice creature (a melee touch attack), it deals 6d6 points of damage to the creature. This use requires 3 charges.

a lv 5 spell solar window
10 ft. sphere of flame on a point in space, with 20 ft. radius of pull
1 round/level
1d6 fire to 10d6 no save
On a failure they are unable to move away and are dragged 5 ft. closer to the sphere (and an additional 5 ft. for every 5 points they failed the DC). A success means they may move, but the area of pull counts as difficult terrain costing 2 squares of movement. Stability, such as from dwarf or many legs, applies to the saving throw, and airborne creatures take a -4 penalty.
tongue of flame swift action 1 point fire damage per lv to any one creature in pull radius.
Sheds light as the Daylight spell while burning.
Yea there are other lv5 spells I'd rather have first, but I like the idea of ripping a hole into the elemental plane of fire and making a star.
I would like to make a higher lv version where you make 1 window per lv, so at lv 20 you would raise your hand above your head and send out 20 in a circle around you.

[ArcturusV]

Right away? Yeah. You can slide. There's so much good stuff coming online at level 3 for spells that honestly there's far too many "Must Have" choices. Fireball isn't really one of them.

That's not to say you shouldn't get it eventually. I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but one thing I do love about Fireball is that it's so mutable. As in Metamagics do lots of wondrous, silly, funny, good things to it. Fireball by itself (Which is all you really could do barring silly cheeses at level 5), is okay, not great. Fireball plus Metamagics? Becomes a lot more interesting. Always seemed to get more mileage out of my Metamagic with it than I would with something like the usual Save or Fail spells.

Of course, if you're not taking up metamagics... then you don't have that consideration. Still it's nice to have at least one ace up your sleeve eventually if a fight comes down to the wire and you absolutely, positively, need to deal some damage (I've seen parties wipe a lot over silly things like that. If the Wizard has a Magic Missile to do that last bit of HP damage instead of a utility spell/buff, they'd have won), it's not a terrible option to have. But there's lots of spells out there that can serve your "It absolutely, positively, MUST DIE NOW" role without resorting to Fireball. Magic Missile, as mentioned. Sometimes you just want some Homing Force Damage to finish someone off.

[Deophaun]

An illusion or fog cloud would slow them down, not shut them down.
Low level mooks. All you need to do is slow them down. Their threat is that they will overwhelm you with numbers, and they can't do that if they're slowed down.

It's the difference between trying to stand against a fire hose versus a garden hose.

Other advantages: You do not need to rely on your DM positioning the bulk of the enemy within a single fireball radius. You let the player running the beatstick play the game. The spell you memorized can be used for things other than killing. Oh, and it's a first level spell slot, not a third. Yes, you could spend a third level spell slot to do marginally better in tactically more favorable conditions, but that's a waste.