Magic missle transformed to fire damage + Draconic Bloodline = awesome??

[ironkid]

I'm sorry if this is something that (I'm told) has been discussed to death.

Apparently, RAW you roll once for magic missile and thats the damage for each missile.

Soooo if you were to transform the damage to fire damage damage (say, by the Awakened Spellbook of the order of scribes) you'd get to roll once for all missiles, and if your draconic bloodline element happens to have fire affinity, ad your cha bonus to the roll, AND THATS HOW MUCH EVERY MISSILE WOULD DEAL.

It doesn't seem right to me (like, exploiting a loophole), but seems that RAW it's how it would work.

Agains, sorry if this has been discussed to death, I'm not a fan of loopholes but I dislike running things wrong/frustrating players that want to play this or that even more, so any feedback would be very appreciated.

[Zhorn]

Sounds like it would work, though not that well once you look under the hood.
So Sorcerer6/Wizard2, effectively getting a 2 level jump on what the Evoker Wizard would be doing at 10th level, but with a stunted spells known list (multiclass rules you'll have 4th level slots, but only know up to 3rd level sorcerer spells and 1st level wizard spells), and you'll have to have a fire (or other chosen element) spell in your spell book for each spell slot you intend to use this on, which means just 1st level spells when this build first comes online.
It sounds like a neat little blaster gimmick, though you're then going to have to play catchup with Wizard levels from then on to get the spells into your spellbook for each slot level to match the damage type you are after.

[jaappleton]

As far as I can tell? This works.

Assuming 20 Charisma, this is 1d4+1+5 x3 when you use a first level spell slot. Or 18 plus the d4, whatever it happens to roll.

For single target damage? Actually pretty effective, at least for awhile. It always hits, and lacks any sort of rider effect like causing any sort of condition or anything.

But it works fairly well..... until you come across something resistant to, or immune, to fire damage. But that's why you have other spells.

[Quietus]

Zhorn's covered it better than I was going to, and pointed out some real issues. The requirement of having a Wizard spell with fire subtype in your book for each level, requires that you get a lot of Wizard levels. Yet this setup would really want those 6 levels of Sorcerer, and maybe 6 Celestial Warlock to double dip, leaving 8 levels of Wizard - and you couldn't use your Warlock pact magic to do this, because the Scribes ability only works when you spend a spell slot, I think? It's a neat trick, but I think it's no more impressive than a standard nuclear wizard, would do about the same damage, with a worse damage type, less ability to upcast, and with a desire for both Int and Cha.

Ultimately, you could make it work, it's just not the strongest version of what you're trying to do.

[Avonar]

I'm sorry if this is something that (I'm told) has been discussed to death.

Apparently, RAW you roll once for magic missile and thats the damage for each missile.

Soooo if you were to transform the damage to fire damage damage (say, by the Awakened Spellbook of the order of scribes) you'd get to roll once for all missiles, and if your draconic bloodline element happens to have fire affinity, ad your cha bonus to the roll, AND THATS HOW MUCH EVERY MISSILE WOULD DEAL.

It doesn't seem right to me (like, exploiting a loophole), but seems that RAW it's how it would work.

Agains, sorry if this has been discussed to death, I'm not a fan of loopholes but I dislike running things wrong/frustrating players that want to play this or that even more, so any feedback would be very appreciated.

I don't like doing Magic Missile like that. I've seen it done both ways, but I'll always go with rolling for each dart. It treats it as an attack without the attack roll rather than some super weird AOE that does damage differently to every other spell.

[Alucard89]

Add level of Hexblade for Curse bonus damage to MM.

[heavyfuel]

Add level of Hexblade for Curse bonus damage to MM.

And some Evocation Wizard for Int as well.

Draco Sorcerer 6/Hexblade 1/ Evoker 10. Super late level, but you're casting as a 16th level caster dealing 1d4+1+5+5+6 (avg 19.5) damage per missile. If you use your 8th level slot to cast you deal 214.5 damage that can only be stopped by a Shield or Counterspell.

[Heyboo]

But you don't need levels in order of scribes to achieve this, you can keep it in house with sorcerer (who also gets magic missile) and transmuted spell metamagic at 1 spell point per cast.

Edited to add: <Or, if staying INT based, artificer alchemist gets a feature similar to draconic damage at lvl 5; SAD is better than MAD?>
<Furthermore, order of scribes requires similar spell of the desired damage type shenanigans, and if you want to upcast magic missile (which it sounds like you do since you anticipate multiple damage modifiers) I believe the upcasted slot would have to match the fire damage?!? Meaning: if you wanted 3 missiles your 3rd level slot fireball would be used in its stead. I think. At any rate 1 spell point seems way simpler to me...>

[Kane0]

It wouldnt be that amazing. MM damage output isnt amazing especially when you scale with slots, gettting stat to damage per missile makes it average rather than great. Plus you’re trading the very reliable Force damage type for often resisted Fire damage.

So the biggest benefit is the auto-hit, as it usually is with MM

[LudicSavant]

I'm sorry if this is something that (I'm told) has been discussed to death.

Apparently, RAW you roll once for magic missile and thats the damage for each missile.

Soooo if you were to transform the damage to fire damage damage (say, by the Awakened Spellbook of the order of scribes) you'd get to roll once for all missiles, and if your draconic bloodline element happens to have fire affinity, ad your cha bonus to the roll, AND THATS HOW MUCH EVERY MISSILE WOULD DEAL.

It doesn't seem right to me (like, exploiting a loophole), but seems that RAW it's how it would work.

Agains, sorry if this has been discussed to death, I'm not a fan of loopholes but I dislike running things wrong/frustrating players that want to play this or that even more, so any feedback would be very appreciated.

The key issue is that you would need to have a fire-elemental Wizard spell prepared in your spellbook of the slot level you want to cast at.


And some Evocation Wizard for Int as well.

Draco Sorcerer 6/Hexblade 1/ Evoker 10. Super late level, but you're casting as a 16th level caster dealing 1d4+1+5+5+6 (avg 19.5) damage per missile. If you use your 8th level slot to cast you deal 214.5 damage that can only be stopped by a Shield or Counterspell.

You can't be an Evoker and a Scribe at the same time. If you're thinking of metamagic instead, Transmuted Spell wouldn't work, since you can't transform Force damage.

[Aldo8880]

But you don't need levels in order of scribes to achieve this, you can keep it in house with sorcerer (who also gets magic missile) and transmuted spell metamagic at 1 spell point per cast.

Edited to add: <Or, if staying INT based, artificer alchemist gets a feature similar to draconic damage at lvl 5; SAD is better than MAD?>
<Furthermore, order of scribes requires similar spell of the desired damage type shenanigans, and if you want to upcast magic missile (which it sounds like you do since you anticipate multiple damage modifiers) I believe the upcasted slot would have to match the fire damage?!? Meaning: if you wanted 3 missiles your 3rd level slot fireball would be used in its stead. I think. At any rate 1 spell point seems way simpler to me...>

Transmuted spell can’t change force damage unfortunately, so the Sorcerer only option is out. It can only do elemental damage, acid, cold, fire, thunder, lightning, and poison.

[LudicSavant]

But you don't need levels in order of scribes to achieve this, you can keep it in house with sorcerer (who also gets magic missile) and transmuted spell metamagic at 1 spell point per cast.

That's not true. You can't transmute Force spells with metamagic.

[heavyfuel]

You can't be an Evoker and a Scribe at the same time.

Damn, I can't believe this one went over my head :smallbiggrin:

[Heyboo]

That's not true. You can't transmute Force spells with metamagic.
Doh! As always, you are correct.
Transmuted Spell allows for interchangeability between acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison and thunder only.
So then for the original scenario to work you would need Order of Scribes at the level to cast however many magic missiles you wanted, as well as the upcastable spell slot of the damage you wanted to change it to and either:
Draconic Sorcerer 6 to add CHA dmg (so 13 minimumin INT and CHA and ever how high you want your dragon armor DEX to be)
or
Alchemist Artificer 5 to add INT dmg (13 minimum in INT only, and medium armor+ shield to equal what dragon armor would be anyway- you're only missing out on initiative bonus from DEX).
Good catch.

[TheSnowHatHero]

Unfortunately, this doesn't actually work.
Draconic Sorcerer's Elemental Affinity is:
-
Starting at 6th level, when you cast a spell that deals
damage of the type associated with your draconic
ancestry, you can add your Charisma modifier to one
damage roll of that spell. At the same time, you can
spend 1 sorcery point to gain resistance to that damage
type for 1 hour.
-
(emphasis mine).
And Artillerist's Arcane Firearm is:
-
You can use your arcane firearm as a spellcasting focus for your artificer spells. When you cast an ar tificer spell through the firearm, roll a d8, and you gain a bonus to one of the spell's damage rolls equal to the number rolled.
-
(emphasis mine)

As you can see, each of these features only allow you to add the bonus to one spell damage roll, not all 3-11 of them.

[LudicSavant]

Unfortunately, this doesn't actually work.
Draconic Sorcerer's Elemental Affinity is:
-
Starting at 6th level, when you cast a spell that deals
damage of the type associated with your draconic
ancestry, you can add your Charisma modifier to one
damage roll of that spell. At the same time, you can
spend 1 sorcery point to gain resistance to that damage
type for 1 hour.
-
(emphasis mine).
And Artillerist's Arcane Firearm is:
-
You can use your arcane firearm as a spellcasting focus for your artificer spells. When you cast an ar tificer spell through the firearm, roll a d8, and you gain a bonus to one of the spell's damage rolls equal to the number rolled.
-
(emphasis mine)

As you can see, each of these features only allow you to add the bonus to one spell damage roll, not all 3-11 of them.

Magic Missile is one damage roll (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/109764/how-many-times-do-you-roll-damage-for-magic-missile).

The real issue standing in the way is the "you need a spell of the slot level you expend" bit.

[Zhorn]

As you can see, each of these features only allow you to add the bonus to one spell damage roll, not all 3-11 of them.
Magic missile is a special case, as it has been confirmed by the lead rules designer that it is a single roll applied to all darts.

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/774030989894955008
Q: Magic Missile: Do you roll the same d4 for all darts, or one d4 per dart?
A: Magic missile. RAW: You roll 1 damage die (see "Damage Rolls," PH, 196). RAI: It doesn't matter; you choose.
the specific rules used in RAW can be found

Damage Rolls
If a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target at the same time, roll the damage once for all of them. For example, when a wizard casts fireball or a cleric casts flame strike, the spell's damage is rolled once for all creatures caught in the blast.
Magic Missile
You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4 + 1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously, and you can direct them to hit one creature or several.

The single roll part is also a key component in a well known Evocation Wizard build called the Nuclear Wizard that uses a similarly worded feature.

Empowered Evocation
Beginning at 10th level, you can add your Intelligence modifier to one damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast.
Which also has been confirmed to apply to Magic Missile

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/557820938402947072
Empowered Evocation does benefit magic missile's damage roll.

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/557823175581769729
Q: +x per bolt, even on same target?
A: Yep. It's one damage roll, just like fireball, but that roll can damage the same target more than once.

Now having the darts of Magic Missile as individual rolls per dart is a very common house rule, and some folks are very adamant about that preference and interpretation. But a single roll applied to all darts is a legitimate way to run the spell, and that's where OP is going with the Draconic Bloodline + Order of Scribes build.

edit: curse you LudicSavant, you charismatic ninja you! your succinct writings and speedy responses have foiled me once again.

[TheSnowHatHero]

Ah, didn't realize that. Thank you for the clarification.
I would assume this also applies to Scorching Ray?

[LudicSavant]

Ah, didn't realize that. Thank you for the clarification.
I would assume this also applies to Scorching Ray?

Scorching Ray makes attack rolls and therefore follows the rules for multiple attacks. They're resolved sequentially, rather than simultaneously.

Don't feel bad for Scorching Ray, though. It gets to work with Hex.