Fury of the Small and Magic Missile

[Expected]

The Goblin Feature, "Fury of the Small" allows you to apply damage to a creature equal to your level, but only once per SR/LR. Am I correct in assuming that this has good synergy with an Evoker Wizard's upcasted Magic Missile and Hexblade's Curse? By RAW, Magic Missile's damage (1d4) is rolled once and the terminology of Fury of the Small states:


When you damage a creature with an attack or a spell and the creature's size is larger than yours, you can cause the attack or spell to deal extra damage to the creature. The extra damage equals your level.

If this works how I think it does (I could be mistaken), then Goblin Wizard Evokers are the ideal race for the Nuclear Wizard.

[sithlordnergal]

It does have excellent synergy with the Evoker's ability. Just keep in mind it only effects a single target.

[Damon_Tor]

*sigh*

I guess.

[sithlordnergal]

*sigh*

I guess.

Hmmm? Why the sigh? Seems like a perfectly good build to me, and could be really good with burst damage at high levels, but it wouldn't be too broken since you could only add 26 damage at most.

Considering an average PAM Paladin/Sorcerer using a Quarterstaff can easily have AC well over 20 and do 2d6+1d4+15d8 in a single round, this seems fine.

[Expected]

While the damage increase 1x SR/LR for just a single instance of the 20 damage (at level 20) is respectable, I was wondering if the bonus to damage is applied to every Magic Missile dart? Meaning each dart would apply the damage bonus from Fury of the Small. If this is inaccurate, please correct me, but I don't see how this doesn't work by RAW as it specifies "creature" meaning a single target, and "spell", which could mean the entire spell because it didn't specify like it did with the targeting.

I will admit that I am attempting to see if this 1x/day almost literal nuke will work. Either way, playing a Goblin kind of sounds like fun.

[BarneyBent]

I would argue this only works for one missile. The reason Magic Missile shenanigans work is that you are modifying the damage roll. Magic Missile has one damage roll, which you use multiple times, so modifiers to the damage roll get multiplied.

This doesn’t modify the damage roll. It allows the spell to do extra damage (separate to the damage roll) to a single creature.

Unless there’s textual evidence to suggest that “causing the spell to do extra damage” is strictly equivalent to “add extra damage to the damage roll”, I’d say that yes, you can do the damage, no you can’t do the extra damage 3-12 times.

[Fable Wright]

I thought this would work too, but no. Fury of the Small does not affect the damage roll in the slightest, and modifying the damage roll is what allows the Nuclear Wizard to make each dart do so much damage. Remember, if you fireball twelve ogres, only one of them takes the extra damage—because the damage roll that the ogres share is not what's being modified.

[Chronos]

You apply the extra damage once per rest to one creature. If you applied it to three magic missiles, you'd be applying it three times. You can't do that unless you can somehow take two rests while the missiles are in the process of impacting.

[LudicSavant]

While the damage increase 1x SR/LR for just a single instance of the 20 damage (at level 20) is respectable, I was wondering if the bonus to damage is applied to every Magic Missile dart?

My understanding is that Fury of the Small would only apply once, rather than per-dart, for the same reason it only affects 1 creature when you use it with Fireball.

Edit: Managed to find a Crawford comment on it, which seems to confirm this: https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/1050087546418384897?lang=en

[Master O'Laughs]

The same goes for the Protector Aasimar Radiant Soul feature. Since the wording states when you deal damage to a creature, it is applying to the creature and not the damage roll.

From a pure damage perspective, Aasimar may be better than the Goblin for a boss fight since it will apply 1/turn, but it does carry the cost of using an action to turn on.