How deadly can scorching ray be?

[Aleister VII]

Okay I was fooling around with my dragon sorcerer, like most people I pick gold/red draconic ancestry to boost my fire spells and I usually cast fire bolt like crazy at every living thing that stands in my way but then I began to think and compare fire bolt and agonizing eldrich blast, the later is superior because it creates multiple beams and the extra CHA damage is applied to each beam... I already knew that but then I realized that scorching ray create multiple beams too! each ray deals 2d6 instead of 1d10, the minimum number of rays are 3, I can increase the number of rays using higher spell slots and don't forget the +5 damage (Max. CHA) to each beam due to your dragon affinity...

In any case I'm not good at maths so what will be the possible/average/whatever damage of a scorching ray casted using a level 9 spell slot by a fire dragon sorcerer? Is it deadlier than a full power agonizing blast against a single target?

And yeah I already know that it isn't a cantrip, consumes resources and a level 9 spell slot isn't worth it and those kind of stuffs.
Also I'm not considering Hex, hexblade's curse or any other thing that the warlocks use to boost their damage even further into the equations, I just want to know how much can I overkill a boss casting scorching ray at full power.

[hymer]

At ninth level, you make 10 rays, each dealing 2d6 damage. Assuming 20 charisma, you'd deal a maximum of 245 damage. That's if every ray crits and deals maximum damage. Under the same circumstances, eldritch blast with charisma modifiers would deal 100 damage.

On average, the 9th level scorching ray would deal 75 if all of them hits but none crits. Under those circumstances, the EBs deal 42 damage.

Assuming a 70% chance to hit (hitting on a 7 or better on d20) and normal crit chance (on a 20), the Scorching Rays would deal 57.5 on average (rounding up for the risk of not hitting even once, and so not getting the charisma to damage - a painfully small number), while the EBs would deal 30.5 on average.

[strangebloke]

Depends if your DM pays attention to errata or not.

The charisma to damage actually only applies once per spell, so it's not crazy.

9th level is 10 rays. Each ray averages to seven damage. So 70+5 damage using errata, or 70+50 damage ignoring it.

Eb/ab is 42 a round.

Either way, not really the most overpowered use of a ninth level spell. But fun, potentially.

[hymer]

Depends if your DM pays attention to errata or not.
No need in this particular case. The PHB says you get to add your cha mod to 'one damage roll of that spell'.

[Dualswinger]

No need in this particular case. The PHB says you get to add your cha mod to 'one damage roll of that spell'.

My phb doesn’t. Some don’t have the right errata

[hymer]

Scorching ray with 9th level spell slot: 10 rays

Maximum per ray: 12 damages

Average per ray: 6 damages

Well, the average of 2d6 is 7. The average of 1d6 is (1+2+3+4+5+6=21)/6=3.5. So 2d6 is twice that.


My phb doesn’t. Some don’t have the right errata
I see. Thanks!

[JackPhoenix]

No need in this particular case. The PHB says you get to add your cha mod to 'one damage roll of that spell'.

Errata changes were added to the later printings. Those of us with 1st printing have the original, un-errata'd version. Some changes showed up as late as in 6th printing, so there could possibly be up to 6 different version of PHB floating around (I'm not sure if each printing had some errata applied or not).

[JakOfAllTirades]

Oddly enough, an Evocation Wizard can do slightly better. At 10th level, they add their Int mod to the damage of Evocation spells, so +5 damage there. At 14th level, they can Maximize an Evocation spell of up to 5th level. Scorching Ray upcast to 5th level gives you 6 rays. Maximized they do 12 damage each for 72 damage, +5 for the Int mod = 77 total.

I don't think the Overchannel ability can go any higher than this. PHB p201: When a spellcaster casts a spell using a slot that is of a higher level than the spell, the spell assumes the higher level for that casting. So no Overchanneling a Scorching Ray cast at 6th level or above. Which is too bad cuz that would be fun.

[Aleister VII]

I see... I wasn't aware of the errata o.o

And yeah, looks like evocation wizard can make the best out of scorching ray o.o

[Shades of Gray]

While it says you can add it to "one damage roll of the spell", I thought that there was another rule that says that you use the same damage roll for all aspects. If they wanted to have that desired effect, they would have added the damage to a single target of the spell, not to a single roll.

[MaxWilson]

While it says you can add it to "one damage roll of the spell", I thought that there was another rule that says that you use the same damage roll for all aspects. If they wanted to have that desired effect, they would have added the damage to a single target of the spell, not to a single roll.

The PHB says that when you cast one spell that affects multiple targets (like Fireball), you roll damage only once. JeremyCrawford takes this as a core rule instead of just a convenience, and extrapolates it to mean that since Magic Missile's missiles all strike "simultaneously", they get treated like Fireball, even if more than once missile hits the same target. Thus, Empowered Evocation adds +Int to one roll of Magic Missile (1d4+6 usually), times the number of missiles.

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/47140/how-does-empowered-evocation-work-with-magic-missile

Since Wands of Magic Missile are actually pretty cheap to make by Xanathar's rules, if a DM goes by Crawford's ruling, Evokers with a gunbelt full of fully-charged Magic Missiles launching Magic Missile VII every round (for 76.5 auto-hit force damage per wand) should totally be a thing at that table. 5% of the time you'll burn out a wand, but eh, they're cheap and quick to make more of. Or you could just cast Magic Missile VI for 68 damage and 0% chance of burning out a wand.

Alternately, you could just rule that it's goofy for a rule that's obviously mostly for convenience to have large implications on balance and effectiveness, let players roll damage together or separately as they prefer (like you can allow them to take average damage or average HP, if they want to), and just let Empowered Evocation and/or dragon sorc bonuses (elemental affinity?) to apply to every discrete application of a given spell on a turn, no matter how the rolling is mechanically done at a table. It's not like it's going to make Scorching Ray overpowered, and it's not like we want to encourage players to get hung up on technicalities.

[MeeposFire]

Heck even before the errata came out you could read the sorc ability as once per spell due to how it was worded and it was worded differently than say agonizing blast. The big difference back then was that as a group we did not realize that designers were actually expecting us to read the rules in such a technical manner since many of us took "common English" to mean that unless made really clear things that were written in a similar but not exact fashion should be taken to be used the same hence why at that time you saw people arguing that agonizing blast and the sorc ability worked in a similar fashion, arguments on warlock invocation levels to be character based due to how cantrips work (essentially cantrips only talked about level and invocations only say level so shouldn't they be the same was a common argument back then), and questions on magic initiate and its first level spell when used by a caster with actual spells (as it turns out the true RAW answer is very detail oriented and it was a surprise to essentially everybody at the time). The later errata on the sorc made it a whole lot clearer though which in and of itself was nice rather than having to prove the RAI using RAW through a very technical reading lens.