Talk:Jack-o'-lantern Bomb (3.5e Spell)

If spells could feel jealousy, fireball would be green with envy

This does everything fireball does, and it ignores cover? Sure, negative energy damage is useless against undead and constructs, but other than that, why would you ever use fireball instead of this, aside from having necromancy as a prohibited school? (And considering that a wizard's main advantage over a sorcerer is versatility, being a specialist wizard is an utterly stupid move anyways; the benefits are not worth completely cutting yourself off from part of your spell list.) Long story short, this is a just plain better version of fireball. Since fireball is meant to be a 3rd-level spell, that means that this spell is not 3rd-level. Probably 4th, or maybe 5th. But as is, this spell makes fireball obsolete, especially if the DM doesn't bother to accurately track the players' encumbrance (seriously, pumpkins are freakin' heavy). --Luigifan18 (talk) 15:23, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Well that's because fireball is generally seen as a very meh spell. However, this really doesn't have that much benefit over fireball. Cover does not actually do anything with regards to fireball, so I'm not sure what the point of negating it is. And the half negative energy thing is...an upgrade, I guess. It makes it slightly more situational (you don't want to use it against undead) in exchange for placing an upper limit on what fire resistance can do. But if you're using a spell at reduced effectiveness (since it still does succumb to some resistance), you're better off choosing a different spell -- whereas if you're fighting something with no fire resistance, there is no benefit above standard fireball. I would actually prefer to learn fireball over this, because it's useful in more situations.

For the half-negative-energy thing to benefit you, the target's fire resistance must be greater than half the damage you deal. At level 5, when you get this spell, there are 9 CR-appropriate fire immune monsters (average 9.0 damage, 9.0 higher than fireball), and 4 CR-appropriate monsters with resistance 5 (average 9.2 damage, 1.7 higher than fireball). So 13/107 (12.1%) monsters are better fought with this than with fireball -- only 9/107 (8.4%) to any significant degree. On the other hand, there are 7 CR-appropriate monsters with the Undead type (average 0 damage with this, average 17.5 fireball), at least 4 with fire vulnerability (average 21.9 damage with this, average 26.3 damage with fireball), and the Mummy with both (average 4.4 damage with this, average 26.3 damage with fireball).

So that's:

• 7.5% No preference. These cases have a very slight preference to one side or the other, so small that the difference doesn't matter. (And if you really care about these cases, there are an equal number on each side anyway.)
• 8.4% Do not use either spell. These cases are fire immune, and have a strong preference for this spell because this one does half damage while fireball does none. But you're better off using neither spell, because half damage is pretty bad.
• 7.5% Use fireball. These case have a very strong preference for fireball because this averages at or near zero while fireball does (at least) full damage.

The result is pretty clear -- fireball is a better spell, surprisingly. There are cases when you do not want to use fireball, but in all of those cases you also do not want to use this spell. There are also cases when you do not want to use this spell, and in most of those you do want to use fireball. This is not even accounting for what DMs are likely to actually throw at you -- I, for one, have faced far more undead than I have faced any of the things on the fire-immune list. --DanielDraco (talk) 18:07, 20 December 2012 (UTC)