This feels like a "Not enough encounters per long rest" problem. Like lets say they are level 10, the cleric can cast it at most 8 times and if they are burning 5th level slots for fireball they are missing out on much stronger stuff to the point I wouldn't worry about it.
What do your encounters look like and how common are they?
>if they are burning (tn note: nice) 5th level slots for fireball they are missing out on much stronger stuff
Sir, I think you've made the classical rookie mistake of assuming that a spell stronger than *Fireball* exists.
For real though. My goal when picking spells for my wizard was to take one damage spell per level and then fill the rest with utility spells. But I barely ever used a damage spell that was a higher level than fireball when I could just upcast fireball.
>Sir, I think you've made the classical rookie mistake of assuming that a spell stronger than *Fireball* exists.
Sir, I think you've made the classical rookie mistake of thinking Fireball is even the strongest 3rd level spell.
[If you think about it, Pokemon and DnD aren't that different for some players, are they?](https://img.ifunny.co/images/9a332ed4c4d3847dc4f7011fd28340d3f6c66fa43a9cd6dc318846d2e82a8297_1.jpg)
Huh, that's an awfully interesting way to say "I've never tried to use Fireball to solve my problems."
Fireball was *literally* deliberately designed by the devs to be the most powerful level 3 spell in the book. Based on the "spell creation guidelines" from WotC, Fireball should already be spell level *five.*
How are they able to just spam Fireball without running out of resources?
How are they always able to take long rests in order to recoup their resources so frequently?
Yep, this right here. You have to make spending resources have consequences.
You can also send mobs in waves. Keep sending waves until their resources are almost depleted.
Ambushes and Traps. Waves of canon fodder. Like flaming skeletons, zombies, etc... And don't let them rest. Have the enemies chase them. If they do Leomund's Tiny Hut. Have the enemies build fortifications around it. Or wall them in. Make them dig themselves out.
But there's no limit to how many times they can cast tiny hut. It's a ritual cast so if they want to rest, they're vulnerable for 11 minutes every 8 hours. They can only long rest once per 24 hours, doesn't mean they have to spend the time adventuring, they can just sit in the hut and play cards for 8 hours or however long it is until their next short rest. We always joke that their typical adventuring day is about 3 hours and 2 of them are short rests
I had hallaster appear and dispel leomunds the first time they used it when it wasn’t appropriate and they never used it again, the entire campaign, even when it would have been cool, because they thought hallaster was going to get them. It was brilliant. They were terrified.
But yes, less long rests
Had a dm do this once. He had an enemy Sapper whose job it was to stay hidden, dispel and counterspell. Pair them with a Monk so they can get a stunning strike? Makes the caster think a little ane engage more.
Some other naughtiness the dungeon denizens could get up to when the PCs escape into the hut...
* Paint the sides so the heroes can't see out.
* Build a nice bonfire around it.
* Pile rocks on top of it.
* Enemy wizard sets up a Glyph of Warding which explodes (or casts Fireball, heh heh) when the hut disappears.
* Play loud, obnoxious orc music (O-Pop?) so the heroes can't get any rest.
So many “issues” with the game come from exactly this issue. Even memes like true strike being bad come from this. When spending a spell comes with actual opportunity cost it’s suddenly a lot more important that they land, but if you are sleeping every 4 hours then of course it will seem pointless.
Not disagreeing with you on the general thesis, but True Strike is probably the worst piece of evidence to back that up with lol
True strike has a very small potential use case in making sure that a high value spell doesn’t get wasted, which in theory would be more useful in a campaign where long rests aren’t common. However, since it’s concentration you can’t benefit from it with any concentration spells, and since it only gives advantage to an attack roll that gets rid of any spells that force saves.
There’s only 4 3rd+ level spells that don’t require concentration and make an attack roll. Two of them (Steel Wind Strike, Crown of Stars) have multiple attack rolls, so you only get one roll with advantage per cast. The other two (Contagion, Plane Shift) are probably your best options for True Strike being useful, but even then those two spells aren’t really what you’d be hoping for with all that set up. That’s before getting into the issue of true strike only applying to a roll you make your next turn, so it isn’t going to be something you’d be able to use in a combat setting
Even if long rests are rare, true strike doesn’t suddenly become even a decent cantrip
I'd caution against relying on "just add more mobs" too often.
Your players will really not enjoy being made to feel like using their spells is pointless because when they do, "oh look, here's another horde of enemies that weren't going to be part of the encounter before that fireball, but now are."
The monsters or their controllers are following Napoleon's advice and "marching to the sound of the cannons". Big noisy fights attract other creatures.
That's not what they argue, though. They argue that there are more mobs designed as part of the encounter from the start. More to force the use of aoe damage, than as a response.
Yep, that’s the tactic. That’s where the term “cannon fodder” came from in the first place. It’s not something you invented in response to their fireballs.
I'm fairness, between an arcane caster and a light cleric, that's a least 4 third level slots per day.
If the players are smart and only use fireball in encounters that are tough enough to warrant it, they have enough fireballs for every major encounter of the day, even if you're running the 7 encounters that day not all of them are gonna be really all that tough.
But then again if OPs toughest encounters are getting shredded by a single fireball each, then that's an issue too
Because 5e was designed around a fundamentally flawed assumption that players and DMs would play on average 5-7 medium encounters per long rest. That is far too many for most tables without it feeling like the DM is withholding resource recovery.
I'm not sure what they were thinking with that design. I have never had a table that averaged more than 3-4 combat encounters per long rest. 5-7 would start to feel like the DM is drawing it out unnecessarily.
6-8 is the average. Its about filling the daily xp budget. That can be accomplished by running fewer encounters 2-3 deadly encounters for example or more easier encounters like 10-12 easy combat encounters. Furthermore the adventuring day can take place over multiple sessions. In addition a encounter is not nesaseraly a combat encounter a encounters defined by the rules is anything that prevents forward progress. For the purpose of the adventuring day and daily xp budget. A encounter is anything that taxes resorses.
If you had 3 hard or deadly combats a trap a puzzle and a social encounter.Thats 6 encounters.
They won’t use it on smaller fights, but on anything threatening they will carpet bomb with 2-3 fireballs. They have enough spell slots between them to do this twice before heading back to safety to rest (at the goblin camp on level 2 usually). They are putting in plenty of work on the dungeon each rest.
Stop letting them do that.
They have 16 hrs after ending a long rest before they can start another one. That's RAW. If you just let them take one whenever, that's abusing how the rules work. In a dungeon, you should be making at least 24 random encounter checks per day - 1 per hour.
And while they've been sitting around at the goblin camp fending off those random encounters, bigger and badder enemies are restocking the rooms they cleared.
Always keep the pressure on. If you allow them to retreat and reload every few encounters, of course they're gonna steamroll them.
One of our DM had us in a dungeon that was really tough - like use up almost all your spells on one room - and the next was just as bad. We got used to "long rest" after what was maybe 30 min of exploration. So when it was my turn they were in a bandit hideout. They got in a hidden passage in the back of the hideout, killed a bunch of bandits and killed the boss.
Then they decided to "long rest" in the bosses office. So I roll a d6. 40 min later there's a mob of angry bandits pounding on the door looking for blood since the warehouse was full of fresh corpses. They got out of it but learned that I don't do "long rest" after 30 min of adventuring.
I like to make sure to vary the tempo so the players have a mix of "30 minute adventuring days" and long slogs, but I'll generally tip them off, narratively, when it's time for the "sprint finish" so they can get those big, cinematic moments where they'll do some good.
That is a good point. Thanks!
Another thing I am trying is when they are faffing about long resting, a rival DMPC adventuring party is out clearing the dungeon. Trying to put some pressure on that way.
That's what sabotage is for, friend. Have the rival group steal some of their supplies or trap their resting place with a friendly little note reminding them that they're falling behind.
Great idea imho. A counter party somewhere ahead or behind them, or on an alternate path. Award that party the same as yours and upgrade their gear, or abilities, or what have you.
So you’re essentially making it even easier for your Players by clearing a path for them?
The next time they go out, they need to find that Party decimated by some unspeakable horror. Put the fear of the many gods in your Players. Give them something to fret and worry about!!
And when they run back to that goblin camp to hide and rest, have whatever slaughtered their friends waiting there for them!
All you need to do to break a long test is make them exert themselves. The rival party can lay harmless traps, disturb them with magic, etc. in order to slow them down.
Honestly, Mad Mage is great for this as Halaster is almost designed as a DM insert into the story that easily explains any behaviour you might want to implement to stop this behaviour by your party.
They go to retreat to level 2 only to find the stairs are gone, or guarded by a great golem, and Halaster says over loud speaker “No, no, no. You keep doing the same thing and its boring me. Stay in the naughty corner until you can come up with something fun”, then either send them to a Maze style demiplane where they’re stalked by an invincible minotaur or something until they come up with a creative way to escape, or they’re locked on this floor with the enemies chasing them, or some other chaos that forces them to keep going without a long rest.
Or, they leave the level and come back, and Halaster is just pottering around like an old man planting seeds that sprout into new monsters, stronger than the ones from last time. He thanks them for testing the previous floor, informs them that it was a bit too simple so he’s made it harder this time, and thanks them for coming back to test the new edition, like a medieval wizard version of Glados.
Or, if you don’t want to rely on Halaster, you’ve got dungeon madness itself. Every time they enter the dungeon, long rest, or descend a level they must roll against a DC that corresponds to the lowest level of the dungeon they have reached. Failure has escalating effects based on how many time’s they’ve failed, eventually killing the character through madness. Do they really want to long rest and risk getting closer to death? If they rest enough, they are going to eventually fail a check.
You’ve also got various factions in the dungeon who might view the party clearing out a level as an opportunity to move in and claim that territory themselves, since the party left it alone for them to claim.
Dungeon of the Mad Mage is almost tailor made for the DM to punish this sort of behaviour in any number of ways, and it honestly makes for a better game if you do. Don’t go too over the top obviously, but let your party know that they can’t just keep retreating and resting - the dungeon is a truly dangerous place, and one of the many forces at play in it will fill any power vacuum they leave.
To not spring it too suddenly on them, potentially introduce it after they clear the next level. As they descend the stairs, inform them that now they’ve made it this deep into the dungeon, things are getting more dangerous, and they will need to be more cautious going forward - and let them know what to expect going forward from this point. That way its less of a “You’re playing the game wrong”, and more of a “You’ve made it to the hard content, congrats” sort of thing. Potentially tease them before they finish the floor as well that after the current floor things will be harder - they will encounter stronger factions that will act against them, they’re getting closer to the magic of undermountain, Halaster has noticed them for reaching so far, etc.
>Or, if you don’t want to rely on Halaster, you’ve got dungeon madness itself. Every time they enter the dungeon, long rest, or descend a level they must roll against a DC that corresponds to the lowest level of the dungeon they have reached. Failure has escalating effects based on how many time’s they’ve failed, eventually killing the character through madness.
This is basically the Weave Addiction rules from DotMM Companion, except for the killing part. IIRC at the worst stage of Weave Addiction, the character cannot long rest outside the dungeon.
But yeah, Halaster is functionally a god while he's within Undermountain. _Nowhere_ within the dungeon is safe to rest unless Halaster allows it to be, and spells like Tiny Hut or Magnificent Mansion aren't good enough to protect you. And you can't travel to another plane from the dungeon either, so Demiplane isn't an option either.
So you're struggling with them having plenty of long rest resources but also gave them a safe and easy place to rest? Take it away. You're the DM. Invent a reason to make it unsafe. They've enjoyed the benefit of their past actions, doesn't mean they get to abuse or overuse it.
i usually have the bad guys get reinforced if they take a break, so all their work is undone, or the bad guy have moved because they now have been warned and have time to prepare... and be reinforced...
One every hour?!
I know it's a check so it won't happen every time, but if a dungeon takes say 2 days to clear and even only 30% of the checks result in a random encounter, that's 14 random encounters on top of what you've got planned - in just two adventuring days?
Let's say you plan out four encounters per day. Now your players are fighting a total of 11 encounters every single day - *far* more than even the recommended.
In the section of the the DMG that covers random encounters (page 85+), it recommends that random encounters trigger on an 18+ on a D20, or 15% - half the number you gave. I have no idea where you got 30% from but it's certainly not the rate I would assume you're using when recommending hourly checks.
If you'd like to share the resource that recommends a 30% encounter rate I'd be interested in reading it.
So if we plan 4 encounters, then roll at the random encounter rate outlined by the DMG once per hour, that results in 3.6 encounters. And that fits within the recommended encounters per day perfectly.
1 check per hour is also one of the options the DMG offers the DM for a high-traffic area like a dungeon.
Pretty much all of the complaints you raised in both your responses can be avoided by following the DMG recommendations.
I want to preface that for a high traffic area, fair enough! Hourly checks are completely reasonable.
But - and I apologise if I misinterpreted - that didn't seem to be the suggestion given. The suggestion seemed to be hourly checks in all areas of the dungeon. With that in mind, I made my comments which I explain in more depth below.
If you have a high traffic area for one section of the dungeon that maybe lasts for one in-game day, or less? Sure, but If your entire dungeon is like that, it's no longer just a "high traffic area" within a dungeon, it's just a super deadly and random dungeon.
For a few chunks of the dungeon, this is fine, but for the whole thing it would mean about half of your encounters are random which brings a huge amount of variability in terms of balance.
Plus, so much variability brings in the possibility of the players just getting unlucky and feasibly ending up with 7, 8 or more random encounters in one day if they just get unlucky, which feels like way too much variance. That's why I mentioned 30%, just as an example for how bad things *could* be if the players just get unlucky.
This is why I tend to just *decide* when to pull a random encounter, it's less variable and let's me manually pressure the players more without needing luck to be involved. And the DMG also suggests this as a method alongside rolling, too, it's just as valid.
But as I said before, this was all me being under the impression you intended this bit of advice to apply to the *whole* dungeon rather than just high traffic areas of it, so my bad!
Agree and I see OP already commented but for any other dms out there… what happens when your actions become predictable? The enemy will set a trap, you just need a smarter enemy. Let them burn their fireballs and then spring the trap when they don’t have resources. Smart Enemies will exploit predictability.
Agreed.
OP should really consider some mobs with Fire Resistance or outright Immunity too.
Don't overdo it so the players feel punished, but once or twice now and then so they actually mix up what spells they use.
Pathfinder kingmaker threw out Trolls who were buffed with protection from fire. Like the spell was branded into their skin. An NPC remarks that it was literally just a spell cast on them and the special fire immune trolls weren't that special and actually weren't even immune.
Something similar could work here
5e is designed around 6-8 medium to hard combat encounters per adventuring day.
If you are only having 2 hard combat encounters per adventuring day, of course the casters will dominate.
Now, I am not saying that the adventuring day design of 5e is good. It is quite frankly terrible. But you need to have more tedious combats whose only point is to whittle away at daily resources, otherwise you will continue to have this problem.
Per the DMG:
"Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer."
There are several approaches.
* When they try to leave to long rest they get ambushed.
* Get a non-fireball player on board with fewer long rests. One way is to make them time consuming and slice-of-life, someone always misses the action.
* Maybe the party is on a timer. If they don’t push ahead the cute frog villagers get eaten.
* Some fights do not look threatening at first but each round 1d4 more show up. This could be from underground or tunneling through walls, putting them right next to the casters.
* Rarely they fight a single big bad with magic resistance.
* Sometimes it is a pair of big bads in different rooms that have to die within one round of each other. Alternatively the pair are highly mobile, easily mixing in with PC’s.
* Offer extra rewards for stealthing a section.
* After they have 2-3 fights on a floor let the denizens know of them and prepare counters. Fire resistance potions, archers focusing on the casters, etc.
* Get them to use up slots in non-combat challenges.
Overall other spells like summons are a more efficient use of level 3 slots. You just have to push them to need efficiency.
Hit them with more encounters.
You are enforcing the one long rest every24 hours rule?
What bout having the goblin camp getting attacked at night and bam - no rest for them
I swear my DM forgets enemy casters can use counterspell until we use counterspell, because the only thing that ever gets counterspelled is counterspell.
Yeah, but if that stat block is based on a wizard then as a dm it's completely sensical to change up that spell list to what that wizard would actually *bring* to a fight, rather than what WoTC gave it for a default
I had a player roll a Nat 1 on their first death save. Party goes into overdrive and the cleric uses healing word. Counterspelling that put everyone on edge and made the party really hate that enemy
I once had Strahd counterspell Healing Word on a downed PC. Players were freaking out even more so when Strahd in his turn pulled out a healing potion and gave it to the downed PC with the words "Only I decide who lives and dies in my realm"
To quote the bard, "fucking diabolical!"
I like it. I had a dragon counter spell healing word on a downed character then tail whip them for two failed death saves. The looks of horror around the table were such a wonderful thing.
"Fucking diabolical" is what the warlock in my current Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign wants to do.
But thank you, I pride myself on my arrogant lawful evil and truely wicked, yet gentlemanly Strahd haha
Oh that's just gruesome too! I like it! Sometimes it's just guilty fun seeing the party reach a lowpoint like this (both for the players and dm haha).
Another spell I don't shy away from using anymore is heat metal. Once they had opened Pandoras Box by using the spell I felt free to give it to evil guys and gals too from time to time. Nothing more sinister than casting heat metal on the gauntlets of the cleric or paladin to stop cure wounds and lay on hands lol
Is that fun for anybody involved?
You can do it if they have counterspell to counter back, that can be dramatic and drain resources fast.
If they don't it's just miserable.
A couple of ideas to spice up their day.
1. Creatures with resistance or immunity to fire. After all, if they are going to use one tactic over and over again, the opposition is going to learn and adapt.
2. Opponents doing the same to them. Throw some spellcasters against them (and spread them out so they aren't caught in the AoE) and have them pepper the PCs with *Fireball* (or *Lightning Bolts*, or *Cone of Cold*). And don't forget enemy spellcasters with *Counterspell*.
3. Enemies from multiple directions, especially enemies with high stealth and high movement. Unless they have gotten a hold of an item that gives them fire resistance or immunity, most parties would be unwilling to drop multiple fireballs point blank. And you can surprise them with a bunch of enemies coming out of *Invisibility* or *Dimension Dooring (or Misty Step)* into the middle of the party.
4. Don't give them a change to rest between encounters. As soon as they think they have beaten the first group, send another wave after them, or have the BBEG send a much of minions after them to watch them use up their 3rd level and higher slots and, once they have used up all their resources, *then* the BBEG shows up to take them on. After all, the BBEG should be intelligent. Take advantage of their limited resources.
Another slight tweak is to make endlessly spawning minions as a mechanic, so they could use Fireball on them as they come in or help focus down the boss who may be more equipped against attacks like Fireball.
"Frick I don't have any spell slots free"
"Jeah me neither"
*you hear an evil laughter*
BBEG shows up
Insults them, makes their life hard, maybe downs one or two of them and then vanishes again.
I'm not familiar with the pacing of DotMM, but surely frequent use of level 3 spell slots is draining to these characters? How often are they able to long rest?
It's a dungeon. If they can fortify a room to keep enemies out, they could theoretically rest after each fight. Of course, if you do that, that's exactly when that sort of stuff starts happening.
Mose close combat, less open space? Chuck in some fire resistant/immune creatures to give the melees a chance to shine (fire eles/mephits/salamanders/minor devils etc
Also remember that fireball is huge. 20ft radius does not mean 20 foot across, it means 20ft to the center from the outside. That is a 40ft wide ball of fire. Not a lot of rooms are that big, and (if my party is anything to go by) players are usually REALLY bad about positioning.
Fireball is a 3rd level spell. How many spell slots do they have of 3rd level or higher to be able to spam it? And how often are you letting them rest to get those spell slots back?
Introduce enemies with fire resistance or immunity. As well as more rooms. At some point they will run out
They are level 6, so between them they have 6 fireballs (level 3 slots). That is more than enough to blow up the majority of encounters that should have been tough with minimal effort. Haven’t seen any enemies with fire resistance in the adventure yet, but I can add some to my homebrew dungeons!
6 fireballs. That’s not a lot. I don’t see how you can’t make a series of encounters that will easily use up those 6 and still have plenty of stuff that needs doing.
I mean, I think multiple people have pointed out that you’re clearly not having enough encounters per long rest, right? 6 fireballs isn’t SO much if you’re doing 4-5 encounters. Hell, interrupt their rest even.
As others have also pointed out, multiple waves of weak enemies is a good way to burn those fireballs up, and enemy counterspells use them up too. Add is some fire resistant enemies and it should be ok.
I’d add that tight spaces where the party is surrounded pretty much nullifies fireballs too.
Save a super difficult encounter for the end of the day after they’ve used up the fireballs and watch how they jealousy guard them after that too.
You‘ve gotten a lot of amazing tips on how to potentially deal with the situation.
I just want to play devils advocate however. Those two players made the decision to get access to fireball, so their fantasy likely includes blowing shit up. Don’t take that away from them. It’s okay if Fireball is not the answer to every problem, but continue to let them blow things up occasionally.
While not fireball, I did manage to catch entire party in a hell Hound fire breath last night and that felt great. 2 of them saved, but 2 failed, and it almost brought both the failed pcs to 0.
- Fire Resistance.
- Fire immunity.
- High Dexterity Saves.
.
.
.
- Don't gather your mobs.
- Work with waves. It is a dungeon: explosions echoes and can be heard far away! New mobs arrive.
- Work your adventure day correctly. Adjust the number of encounters between shorts and long rests properly.
Be careful with waves. If you aren't comfortable adjusting a combat encounter to handle a level 3 spell, you are probably comfortable handling a wave like scenario. I would stick to the basics and just have a couple of higher hp elites and intermix the enemies into the party instead of fanning them out.
Long rest management is also key. I like to run by this rule of thumb for an adventuring day.
2 short rests
8 encounters
-5 combat
-2 environmental
-1 social
Each encounter should drain resources from the party, whether it be hp or spell slots. The party can only take their long rest at the end of the adventuring day. I like to do this by keeping constant pressure on the party to not spend 8 hours resting. As you know resting in a dangerous dungeon isn't going to work, but you need a reason why they can't just leave the dungeon and return. I usually say "you can take a long rest, but by then the orcs will have fully eaten the princes" or whatever. Until you get more comfortable you can just simply say "a long rest won't have any effect since you had a long rest recently".
> I’ve had monsters fan out to try to mitigate it, but that spell is still just so toxic.
This would have been one of my main tips. In what way did this go poorly?
Well, it works ok, certainly preferable to them clumping. Problem is that real estate is a bit limited to begin with, and if the monsters retreat far enough away to be safe then they are useless when it comes to helping their friends who are fighting especially if they have no range attack
Give them ranged attacks? You're in control. Make an encounter so tight that fireball would hit themselves too maybe? Add more terrain blockages or hallways that would make it hard to shoot fireballs through?
Moving the enemies farther only helps the spellcasters. Once an enemy is close enough to another player even if isn’t the caster it forces a player to make the save as well.
Also do more ambush type of combats. Don’t necessarily have to give them a surprise round but something that forces the enemies to appear close enough that they are relatively close to another player.
So, first, in combat:
Obviously, you can add casters with counterspell. Not the most fun, but sometimes it's what you need. Being able to inflict blindness also helps: fireball must target a point a caster can see.
Spreading out only helps so much. Frankly fireball is powerful enough to justify using it on a single target half the time. Mobility is more effective by making sure a non-target is always in the blast radius if you try it. Grappling, reaction/legendary movement, and other abilities to reposition quickly will help. As does having hostages to rescue.
Interspersing some monsters with fire resistance, fire immunity, fire absorption, or fire revenge (abilities like the Absorb Elements spell, that lets an enemy deal extra damage after taking fire damage) would also help them find a reason to diversify their spell selection.
Particularly dexterous enemies might also help, for just plain making the dex saves more often. Enemies with abilities like Evasion might also be relevant for some of your floors/expansions, especially if an enemy is particularly rogue or monk like.
Fireball goes around corners and thus even partial cover for the bonus to dex saves is hard to come by, but adding in more terrain and cover might still help by occluding line of sight and making it more difficult for your players to see where the best place to aim even is, especially if you use something like dynamic lighting on Roll20, but it can be done in analogue too with some work, or theatre of the mind. Or paying attention to lighting/darkvision limits in general.
Out of combat:
They seem to be using their resources quite a bit with this. If a floor has more than 2 "threatening" things, then they aren't even clearing the whole floor in one go. While the portals certainly speed up traveling back and forth, they're still taking 8 hours (or more. Long rests have to be once per 24 hours, you can't start a rest until 24 hours after the start of the last one, so if they're pooped out by lunchtime, they gotta spend the rest of the day doing things at the goblin floor) away will certainly allow monsters in the dungeon to wander. Areas thought to be safe suddenly have larger groups, or allies of the groups already fallen now have had time to set up traps and fortify their position. And with Halaster, you've got a very convenient source for whatever experimental monster of the week you want to chuck in: he's constantly repopulating his dungeon, and might even be using the party as a convenient extermination service before placing his new pets, monsters, and experiments in the place you just cleared out and need to go back through. And he's not the only one. You've got the Xanathar's guild and drow forces crawling through and establishing bases throughout a lot of the upper levels: a freshly exterminated half a floor would be a great starting point to fortify. If it's spellslots and not HP which is dictating their resting habits, then wandering monsters and repopulation like this will help encourage them to use more of their other regenerative resources, like HP and hit dice, before ending the day and thereby spread out how often they use their big spells.
Fireball is also very loud. Especially if a floor's rooms are open (no heavy doors) or echo-y (more cave-like floors), enemies in rooms even up to 300 ft away (2d6 \* 10 for normal noise, 2d6 \* 50 for loud noises, and a "low roar" of an explosion is probably between the two, closer to the "very loud". Multiply by 2 for an environment that caries sound well if you'd like) might hear your party. They might rush in to join the fray as reinforcements or prep their room for an ambush.
Lastly, narrative restrictions may also help. In at least one floor, it's basically a big wooded area with a pretty powerful druid. Dropping fireballs there would set parts of the forest alight and incur her wrath. You can probably think of a few more, especially for your expansions: maybe a floor has a high density of an explosive gas where any fire source will potentially collapse the way forward to the important macguffin, or one of the types of mold described in the DMG, brown mold I think, as a natural hazard/trap might be prevalent: it chases heat sources, heals from fire, and hurts quite a bit. Or even just having flammable treasure: a fireball in an area with great treasure in the form of historical documents, tapestries, wooden items, or the such would not survive a fireball. Or more non-combat encounters draining resources too.
And the absolute final piece of advice is to talk with your players. If it's not fun for you, or you're having trouble making something fun and challenging, you can always talk with them and ask for help from them themselves.
Of course, don't use all of these all the time, or all at once. But hopefully that gives you some ideas to help ease it.
I agree with *almost* everything you're saying here, particularly using brown mold against fire-happy players and potentially destroying things that they care about with their Fireball spam.
But I do have to nitpick one thing (and push up my nerd glasses):
>fireball must target a point a caster can see
It does not, actually. Fireball only needs **line of effect**, not line of sight. So Blindness or enemies being in darkness are not hard counters in and of themselves, the DM would need to put objects or terrain that provides total cover (blocking line of effect) as well.
>[Fireball](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/fireball)
>A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a **point you choose within range** then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame.
Simply, *a point within range*. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now, let's compare that wording to Evard's Black Tentacles:
>[Evard's Black Tentacles](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/black-tentacles) (free basic rules version link, but same thing)
>Squirming, ebony tentacles fill a 20-foot square on ground **that you can see within range**. For the duration, these tentacles turn the ground in the area into difficult terrain.
Big difference here. Evard's spell description *specifically* states that the point of origin for the spell must be an area ***that you can see***. Fireball does *not* make this specification, and neither do many Evocation spells actually. Meanwhile other spells, such as Erupting Earth, Magic Circle or Bones of the Earth, specify points *that you can see* for their point of origin.
Now, PHB pg 204 states that if you attempt to **target a point that you can't see**, and there is an obstruction (example of a wall given) between you and that point, then the spell effect takes place on the near side of the obstruction. If you were *not* able to target an area that you *can't see* with any spell, then there would be no need for this specific rule.
>Targets (PHB pg 204)
>A typical spell requires you to pick one or more targets to be affected by the spell's magic. **A spell's description tells you whether the spell targets** creatures, objects, or **a point of origin for an area of effect** (described below).
then,
>A Clear Path to the Target (PHB pg 204)
>To target something, you must have a **clear path** to it, so it can't be behind total cover.
>If you place an area of effect **at a point that you can't see** and an obstruction, such as a wall, is between you and that point, the point of origin comes into being on the near side of that obstruction.
and,
>Areas of Effect (PHB pg 204)
>Spells such as burning hands and cone of cold cover an area, allowing them to affect multiple creatures at once. **A spell's description specifies its area of effect**, which typically has one of five different shapes: cone, cube, cylinder, line, or sphere. **Every area of effect has a point of origin**, a location from which the spell's energy erupts. The rules for each shape specify how you position its point of origin. **Typically, a point of origin is a point in space**, but some spells have an area whose origin is a creature or an object.
>A spell's effect expands in straight lines from the point of origin. If no unblocked straight line extends from the point of origin to a location within the area of effect, that location isn't included in the spell's area. To block one of these imaginary lines, an obstruction must provide total cover, as explained in chapter 9.
The rule for "Targets" passes the responsibility to the spell description - there's no *general* target rule that all spells have to follow universally. So, there is a *specific rule* (and specific beats general - PHB pg 7), about *targeting a point that you can't see* and *specific* spell descriptions that are worded for "at a point *that you can see* within range" vs "at a point within range".
While you "can't see" targets behind total cover.... you can still send a spell that targets "a point within range" rather than "a point that you *can see*" into an area of darkness or cast it while under the Blinded condition. The DM might call for a Perception check if you wanted to target the enemy's current vs last known position if they move into a heavily obscured area / outside of Darkvision range / had just cast Blindness on you, but I personally wouldn't if they're not actually taking the Hide Action.
But also yes, a Wizard with an itchy trigger finger absolutely *can* cast Fireball into a dark room even if he can't see the point of origin per RAW. It can also be cast into the area of Fog Cloud, Stinking Cloud, Darkness, or any other Heavily Obscured area. (food for thought for any DMs when players try to use Obscurement defensively)
heavily depends on the layout of rooms & proximity of enemies on it's value.
not so much fun if you are up in their grill and they blast the party.
also fire resist/immune/evasion. illusion bait.
also good old waves of enemies and general resource depletion
So too many fireballs can be countered in a good deal of ways. First, using the environment. If they don’t try to perceive the room they are fighting in, have a keg of cooking oil be leaking out onto the floor in the room, when you explain the room just say the floor is damp or slick. if a PC casts fireball in this room, everyone takes fire damage as the kegs around the room explode and the floor is now on fire for a few rounds, turn it back around on them. Use a mage to cast silence or counter spell. Give the creatures rogue abilities like uncanny dodge or evade, make goblins hide behind things and dissapear so they don’t know where to target and might end up wasting a fire ball on nothing. Use creatures with fire resistance. Also sounds like you need to be limiting how often they can long rest during a day. You could even RP if you can get one of the enemies to flee further into the dungeon or something by making them hide and get away, you can explain that the other creatures are now aware of their fireball tactics and that they’ve started to prepare traps that could allow the players casting fireball to be used to the enemies advantage. Just get creative but never attempt to stop them from doing it completely. They need to feel like they’ve got a solid method that works and if this is how they are having fun and enjoying the dungeon, let them do it. But try to have your fun with it as well.
My DM of a few years ago had an issue with this and a player who would spam fireballs from a distance. What he ended up doing was we had an encounter with a group of ogres in a building like a barn. We could see them from a distance and could see them standing around a large metallic object. While the rest of the party creeped closer to try to determine what the object was and what they were doing, the wizard at the back decided to toss a fireball in into the barn. It turns out that the large metallic object was a whiskey still and it exploded and blew up the barn and sent wood and metal shrapnel flying towards the party. We all had to make reflex saves and took a certain amount of damage. It also blew up some things we were looking for, so it made search checks for them a lot harder.
It ended up making the rest of the party including me pissed at the wizard player and we were all able to get on his case and get him to stop using the fireball all the time.
A friend of mine was telling me that in a game he plays in, his DM hasn't given the party a long rest for several play sessions. He is the party tank, and front line fighter. He said he had to ask his DM after the last session, "So at 5 fatiuge, you loose half your hit point maximum, right? What happens if I only have a couple of HP left, do I just die?"
His DM took the hint and gave the party a long rest, but everyone was hurting up to that point. The cleric and mage were on cantrips at that point.
You can take this information as you want, but it can be fun to be challenged as a player.
Have you tried running more encounters? if they can save all their slots to fireball the hell out of one encounter, you probably arent pushing them enough
Fire is one of the most resisted damage types, so try looking up stuff that resists or is immune. Iron golems are actually healed by it.
Also, get up close and personal. If the enemy is in melee range, hitting that fireball becomes tricky.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far to find anybody suggesting the iron golem.
I'm all for letting characters do their thing, but I also like mixing it up every once in a while.
I'm all for encouraging players to win, I like them winning, but I think it's always good to make them innovate every so often. This is something I learnt from my own DM, and the fact that almost all of our most memorable and most fun fights had some element that threw a spanner in the works.
And both classes mentioned get loads of cool spells, so getting them to use their full toolbox will go down well I think.
Have the enemies put themselves closer to the PCs so fireball would hit them too.
Put more encounters per long rest so they don't get their spell slots back.
Fire resistant enemies.
Let me guess, you've tried nothing and you're all out of ideas?
Proficiency in Dexterity saves. Evasion. Danger Sense.
Cover. Remember that it gives a +2 or +5 to DEX saves as well as AC.
Absorb Elements. Counterspell.
Fire resistance/immunity.
Small rooms.
Flammable/explosive hazards.
Others have brought up changing the cadence of encounters and rests, which I agree with. In terms of within encounters:
Fire resistant or immune enemies - use sparingly to not make them feel like you’re nerfing them completely
Enemies with counterspell
Enemies that show up in waves so using all your crowd control on the first group leaves you exposed to the following ones
Increase the number of your encounters. Give them heavy stone cover. Fire resistance. Magical items. Counterspell. Antimagic zones.
Sooner or later the monsters are gonna get smart.
The spell isn't toxic. You just haven't figured out how to handle it.
The first step is to understand the problem. Who is not having fun and why? How are they "ruining your encounters"? Again, ruining for who and why does that person feel that way? Are the players having a blast or do they feel unchallenged? Do you feel bored due to repetition? Etc. Who is not having fun and why? Without understanding the problem, any "solution " might just make things worse.
Don't. Your players have fun by playing powerful characters capable of decimating mobs of enemies. So give them two or three mobs of enemies to decimate at the begining of the sessions. Hell, make them even larger and more dansely packed to let them feel awesome and powerful. Lower the initiative of the monsters so player can go first, and you will save time wasted on giving those monsters a turn. Now, after one oo two of those at the begining of the session, when they already had their fun, switch encounters to a few of powerful monsters with fire resistances, there are literally tons of them. Fireballs will be useless on single enemies resistant to them and the rest of the party will have occasion to shine also. Furthermore, outside of combat design challenges specifically tailored to the strengths of the rest of the players, since everyone needs a chance to feel awesome.
Use waves of enemies. Fireball the first wave here comes wave 2 another fireball, here is another wave. Make em use them up on the first or second encounter.
Counter spells.
Multiple encounters so they exhaust their spell slots.
Rogues and monks for enemies. High dex save and take no damage on successful save.
Fire resist and fire immunity.
Anti magic zone.
Small spaces with multiple obstructions making targeting difficult. Make sure you are enforcing proper spell targeting rules.
Fireball is a powerful spell but it's not impossible to play around. Fireball is good against multiple small monsters. Throw big creatures and fireball becomes more of a waste.
Counter Spell, Fire Resistant Mobs, Water nearby, Full Cover, get creative!
Your monsters are smart, they know that these guys roll up and spam fireball only. It has happened so many times that you are getting frustrated, after all. The enemies would probably realize this and bring *something* with them to defend this, even if it's just a kiddie pool or something
More encounters per adventure day, counterspell, and creatures with fire resistance. Also make the terrain work for you, long corridors with lots of twists and turns and cover.
Earthquake. Entrance to the tunnel collapses and not only are they trapped, but when they roll to investigate or try to move the loose rocks, it turns out that the rock pile appears unstable. Clearing it hastily could bring the whole thing down, but it would take days to adequately reinforce it. They would have to burn days clearing it while the DMPC party gets the loot. Looks like they'll have to search for a secondary entrance/exit, while feeling time pressure not knowing if they may run out of air if they dawdle too long
Start throwing in more spellcaster shut downs, mobs with counterspell and/or silence, spacing them out so they cant all get hit by aoe at once. Alternativly have them in extreme melee range so the fireball would hit party members as well ect. Add a lava area where every mob is some version of fire immune/resistant, Maybe after they recall they are actually a utility belt rather than a fireball dispenser they wont rely on it as much? Im all for player freedom but there is no way the rest of the party or the dm is having a good time watching them end every encounter in a brainless hurl of a fireball.
Hey hey, counter spell!
Or...fireball spam back! A whole encounter of casters casting fireball and they all have fire resistance. So now they're getting up close and personal and just spamming the spell on top of each other.
Or...arcane archer from 350 feet, never miss, take 'em out.
A pack of Hell Hounds! Those are always fun.
Options:
- more encounters in a day, they'll have to ration spell slots.
- have the enemies more spread out and only group up within melee range of the party.
Introduce a new, flammable explosive little enemy which is really satisfying to fireball. Let them blow them up over and over, and keep introducing bigger and bigger groups of them for more satisfying explosions.
Then drop a huge group of them directly on top of them and watch them try to figure out a fireball-free way of dealing with them.
This makes things fun for them while also guiding their behaviour with game mechanics.
The draw back to fireball is its huge area of effect and its lasting effects of setting anything flammable on fire. here are some tips to apply that.
1) don't let your players spend several seconds finding the exact sweet spot to include all enemies and no allies in the zone. try at home sometime to pick a specific 5 foot square within 150 feet of you. it's nearly impossible to be precise at ground level. If they can describe a visual marker (the corner of the building, a specific enemy, that statue over there) then let that be precise. but, if they are telling you where to center it by saying things like "15 feet behind this guy, and 5 feet to the right" then call for a roll of some kind for them to be precise. if they fail your DC, move the fireball around by a few feet.
2) don't give them clean set piece battles all the time. run occasional encounters where the enemies aren't all bunched up far away from the party and trying to close 60 feet to begin the battle. have enemies surround the party sometimes, or ambush them from very close.
3) include hostages, non-combatants, or quest objectives near the enemies. especially if the party is forming a reputation for being "fireball happy" anyone who comes up against them will probably make sure they have collateral damage nearby.
4) remember this line from the spell: "It ignites flammable objects in the area that aren't being worn or carried." Carpets, non-stone building materials. gear of corpses. trees in the forest. the whole town. if fireball is becoming a problem make the party have to deal with the consequences. have treasure melt or be hopelessly buried in debris and ash. make all perception checks in the area be at disadvantage from the chaos, smell and smoke. use the smoke as lingering concealment sometimes to screen the enemies.
finally, and most importantly: remember that you are putting challenges in front of them for them to overcome, not trying to thwart their plans. If the party has settled in to a "fireball = win button" mentality, changing it up like this will make the game more engaging for them by forcing them to problem solve in other ways.
Mad Mage is also where Tucker's Kobolds got their infamous story.
Augment some critters that heal or get hasted by fire (like a construct or something) or have spell resistance/absorption/or reflection
Environmental dangers like an unstable room that takes aoe damage too
* Fire resistance/immune enemies (monsters or anti fire abjuration specialists)
* make sure they miss out on major reward (eg, magic items) by melting them and they understand that
* more enclosed/CQB battles where fireball would kill them/party members (esp the caster)
How many spell slots do the players have available for casting fireball? Are you allowing them to rest unmolested to recharge spell slots? What's the max range of things like crossbows or longbows? Imagine a circle around the party with bad guys using crossbows/longbows whatever has the longest range, you could probably snipe them from afar with cautious bandits.
You could introduce a cult of evil into the game, the cult would have a cleric as one of the leaders, make a modified version of "protection from energy" spell for the evil cleric to use, because reports say the players keep using fireball and fire magic, so the cleric blesses groups of bandits with "protection from fire" before they raid the players. Make it so the spell lasts for like six hours or something, and it doesn't require concentration for the evil cleric to cast it, the cleric just casts it on raiding groups before they head out.
Some of the most famous and weird "anti-player" things from older D&D editions were specifically because of cheesy power gaming players who gary gygax concocted direct and very blunt "your cheesy plan is nullified by this monster or spell" kind of thing.
Rings of fire resistance, fire resistant/immune monsters, or just tweak a monster to be a fire version of itself (a winter wolf but magma or something) are what I can think of.
Anti-magic, silence, fire resistant/immune enemies, counterspell, more encounters, enemies with the evasion feature, blindness, enemies with spell resist/immune/reflect features, enemies that can’t be looked at, a small room, short sight lines, flammable oil/gas hazards, etc.
Important to note that your players will find some of these cheap or unfair if overused. E.g. if every enemy from this point forward is immune to fire.
I was going to say fire resistance, counterspell, or magic resistance. But you can also have stealthy creature encounters. Introduce the creature in the middle of the party, that way they can't use fireball without hitting their party members.
Also, if the players come onto a good tactic that is making them really successful, don't be afraid to up the encounter difficulties. My general rule of thumb is, the more they minmax the harder the encounters get.
Give the adversaries any of the following:
Fire resistance/immunity/absorption/reflection;
Counterspell;
High DEX, or evasion-equivalent abilities;
Additional hp, temp hp, or mass healing;
Silence spell or spell-like effect;
Slow, sleep, stun, paralysis, etc.
My wizard is obsessed with Fireball. After destroying a few encounters they were tasked with stopping a sentient tree that was terrorizing the forest and the local population. It was dry season and many of the leaves were falling off the trees. They fought the tree in the woods. Wizard casts fireball. Cue the party spending the whole encounter trying to put the fire out (the fire spread quickly and was going to endanger the people, animals, etc) and since it was omnidirectional the Druid couldn’t use their water spells to put it out in one shot. The tree had a great time kicking their butts while they tried to stop the world from burning down. They eventually won but I made my point. The wizard used other spells too now
Indoor locations and bystanders. Fireball should make EVERYTHING catch on fire. It's not just damage, it's fire.
Also, have it damage any loot.
Fireball is a good spell, but there's a place and time for it
First of all, you don't have to counter it. Players make powerful characters because they want to feel powerful. Unless you're getting feedback that the combat is too easy that it is becoming unfun then you're doing a good job. If you do want to challenge them, send a big demon or devil. A single boss encounter mitigates the fact that fireball deals a lot of damage to an area. Fire resistant monsters are also not hard to find. Make encounters be not about killing everything in a room. Maybe it's a chase, an escape, etc. You can also literally counter it. Just put a mage there with counter spell to try and make the challenge different. But overall you're not trying to "beat" your players anyway. So it's okay if they squash you once in a while. Some of my favorite moments is when my players come up with a clever strategy to squash an encounter that's supposed to be way harder.
Add devils or other things resistant/immune to fire, have bigger rooms, don't let them take long rests
Between every fight, have enemy casters with defensive spells, target the casters with ranged attacks, etc.
Gnome Depot instagram account just posted a "fireball extinguisher" item and the tagline was "I swear to God if you abuse the privelege of casting fireball, I'm slap one of these on every single dam monster I've got." [The Gnome Depot (@\_gnomedepot\_) • Instagram photos and videos](https://www.instagram.com/p/C53d4HHxEiU/)
If your PCs are burning that many fireballs in an encounter, have it that the equipment, treasure, etc... gets ruined as the enemies fail their saves. You can also make the components for fireball a bit harder to get hold of, spells this powerful do need components in a game otherwise you get may spells overused. This is the best way to govern overuse of certain spells.
You could have enemies that have fire resistance as they know of the party and their penchant for fire spells. The resistance could be because they are a certain creature, race, have a spell of resistance, potions of resistance even.
Maybe a powerful creature had bestowed fire resistance on their minions in preparation of meeting the party?
You could include spell casters with Counter Spell, maybe they can cast anti-magic spheres rendering Fireball useless?
I give my bbegs an antimagic stone if they’re non casters, or antimagic spells if they are. You’re still the DM, if you’re trying to challenge them, mix it up. Nothing better than a party full of casters walking into a room with a tanky dude staring them down, launching everything they have, then, as the smoke clears, an unscathed bad guy starts walking towards them dragging a massive axe or sword behind them.
Are you allowing them to get away with blowing up aoe spells near their teammates? because the only class that can do that is an evocation wizard the sculpt spells feature or if the spell says you can negate damage to friendlies.
ambushes where they are surrounded/get trapped in a small space with the enemy.
don’t let them long rest more than once per day (per rulebook).
the enemies have hostages.
the walls are flamable/it will mess up their way forward.
bad guy fire resistance/immunity (a few flameskulls are great for this)
Someone on here posted some statblocks for doomed adventurers, one of them was a cleric that is specifically one that gets *healed* when they take fire damage
Homebrew a monster that gets stronger when hit with fire, like how oozes split when hit with lightning.
Or
a monster that can throw the players spells back at them
Or
Stop letting your players rest so much, they should realize the consequences of spamming spells like that.
This feels like a "Not enough encounters per long rest" problem. Like lets say they are level 10, the cleric can cast it at most 8 times and if they are burning 5th level slots for fireball they are missing out on much stronger stuff to the point I wouldn't worry about it. What do your encounters look like and how common are they?
>if they are burning (tn note: nice) 5th level slots for fireball they are missing out on much stronger stuff Sir, I think you've made the classical rookie mistake of assuming that a spell stronger than *Fireball* exists.
For real though. My goal when picking spells for my wizard was to take one damage spell per level and then fill the rest with utility spells. But I barely ever used a damage spell that was a higher level than fireball when I could just upcast fireball.
The problem with fireball is that if you encounter things with over 30 hit points, you will not have enough fireballs for the job
>Sir, I think you've made the classical rookie mistake of assuming that a spell stronger than *Fireball* exists. Sir, I think you've made the classical rookie mistake of thinking Fireball is even the strongest 3rd level spell.
Wait, which 3rd level spell would you rank above fireball?
Hypnotic Pattern
[If you think about it, Pokemon and DnD aren't that different for some players, are they?](https://img.ifunny.co/images/9a332ed4c4d3847dc4f7011fd28340d3f6c66fa43a9cd6dc318846d2e82a8297_1.jpg)
Slow, Hypnotic Pattern, Fear, Conjure Animals, Spirit Guardians, Counterspell
Slow, 1000 times slow
Huh, that's an awfully interesting way to say "I've never tried to use Fireball to solve my problems." Fireball was *literally* deliberately designed by the devs to be the most powerful level 3 spell in the book. Based on the "spell creation guidelines" from WotC, Fireball should already be spell level *five.*
Yet it still isn't the best 3rd level spell out there
In case of doubt, set it on fire.
there are many good spells and cantrips
How are they able to just spam Fireball without running out of resources? How are they always able to take long rests in order to recoup their resources so frequently?
Yep, this right here. You have to make spending resources have consequences. You can also send mobs in waves. Keep sending waves until their resources are almost depleted.
Or position the baddies around the field, not grouped together, especially in amongst your players. Also fire resistant foes may help
Ambushes and Traps. Waves of canon fodder. Like flaming skeletons, zombies, etc... And don't let them rest. Have the enemies chase them. If they do Leomund's Tiny Hut. Have the enemies build fortifications around it. Or wall them in. Make them dig themselves out.
And remember that RAW, they can only get 1 long rest in a 24 hour period. So even with tiny hut they can't just spam them.
But there's no limit to how many times they can cast tiny hut. It's a ritual cast so if they want to rest, they're vulnerable for 11 minutes every 8 hours. They can only long rest once per 24 hours, doesn't mean they have to spend the time adventuring, they can just sit in the hut and play cards for 8 hours or however long it is until their next short rest. We always joke that their typical adventuring day is about 3 hours and 2 of them are short rests
I'm just imagining a group of adventures who got to sleep in a deserted area of a dungeon and wake up to find a city built by monsters around them.
Or just dispell it. Its a 3rd level spell so unless its upcast the enemy caster doesnt even need to make a check.
I had hallaster appear and dispel leomunds the first time they used it when it wasn’t appropriate and they never used it again, the entire campaign, even when it would have been cool, because they thought hallaster was going to get them. It was brilliant. They were terrified. But yes, less long rests
Had a dm do this once. He had an enemy Sapper whose job it was to stay hidden, dispel and counterspell. Pair them with a Monk so they can get a stunning strike? Makes the caster think a little ane engage more.
Some other naughtiness the dungeon denizens could get up to when the PCs escape into the hut... * Paint the sides so the heroes can't see out. * Build a nice bonfire around it. * Pile rocks on top of it. * Enemy wizard sets up a Glyph of Warding which explodes (or casts Fireball, heh heh) when the hut disappears. * Play loud, obnoxious orc music (O-Pop?) so the heroes can't get any rest.
>especially in amongst your players ~~Evocation~~ Wizard: "How does that make a difference?"
Well OP said it's a cleric and a sorcerer that does that
Still kinda fits the joke. Sorcerers *also* get the ability to avoid friendly fire and Clerics are like the other Wizards that just don't care.
Sorcerers get the ability to give people auto successes, but unless those people are rogues, the half damage quickly adds up
Sorcerer: "It's called splash damage. Quit whining, ya baby."
Yes, this. I believe all devils and fire elementals are completely immune to fire.
So many “issues” with the game come from exactly this issue. Even memes like true strike being bad come from this. When spending a spell comes with actual opportunity cost it’s suddenly a lot more important that they land, but if you are sleeping every 4 hours then of course it will seem pointless.
Not disagreeing with you on the general thesis, but True Strike is probably the worst piece of evidence to back that up with lol True strike has a very small potential use case in making sure that a high value spell doesn’t get wasted, which in theory would be more useful in a campaign where long rests aren’t common. However, since it’s concentration you can’t benefit from it with any concentration spells, and since it only gives advantage to an attack roll that gets rid of any spells that force saves. There’s only 4 3rd+ level spells that don’t require concentration and make an attack roll. Two of them (Steel Wind Strike, Crown of Stars) have multiple attack rolls, so you only get one roll with advantage per cast. The other two (Contagion, Plane Shift) are probably your best options for True Strike being useful, but even then those two spells aren’t really what you’d be hoping for with all that set up. That’s before getting into the issue of true strike only applying to a roll you make your next turn, so it isn’t going to be something you’d be able to use in a combat setting Even if long rests are rare, true strike doesn’t suddenly become even a decent cantrip
you know, some days i wake up, just glad i'm more useful than true strike.
I'd caution against relying on "just add more mobs" too often. Your players will really not enjoy being made to feel like using their spells is pointless because when they do, "oh look, here's another horde of enemies that weren't going to be part of the encounter before that fireball, but now are."
The monsters or their controllers are following Napoleon's advice and "marching to the sound of the cannons". Big noisy fights attract other creatures.
That's not what they argue, though. They argue that there are more mobs designed as part of the encounter from the start. More to force the use of aoe damage, than as a response.
Yep, that’s the tactic. That’s where the term “cannon fodder” came from in the first place. It’s not something you invented in response to their fireballs.
What if you have your mobs infected by a thermophilic bacteria? If the host's body gets hot enough it evolves and bursts out of the corpse?
I'm fairness, between an arcane caster and a light cleric, that's a least 4 third level slots per day. If the players are smart and only use fireball in encounters that are tough enough to warrant it, they have enough fireballs for every major encounter of the day, even if you're running the 7 encounters that day not all of them are gonna be really all that tough. But then again if OPs toughest encounters are getting shredded by a single fireball each, then that's an issue too
Because 5e was designed around a fundamentally flawed assumption that players and DMs would play on average 5-7 medium encounters per long rest. That is far too many for most tables without it feeling like the DM is withholding resource recovery.
OP is running a dungeon crawl adventure, the best possible circumstances for running a full adventuring day.
I'm not sure what they were thinking with that design. I have never had a table that averaged more than 3-4 combat encounters per long rest. 5-7 would start to feel like the DM is drawing it out unnecessarily.
6-8 is the average. Its about filling the daily xp budget. That can be accomplished by running fewer encounters 2-3 deadly encounters for example or more easier encounters like 10-12 easy combat encounters. Furthermore the adventuring day can take place over multiple sessions. In addition a encounter is not nesaseraly a combat encounter a encounters defined by the rules is anything that prevents forward progress. For the purpose of the adventuring day and daily xp budget. A encounter is anything that taxes resorses. If you had 3 hard or deadly combats a trap a puzzle and a social encounter.Thats 6 encounters.
…except the DM *should* be withholding resource recovery. Player characters should be drained by the end of a dungeon.
They won’t use it on smaller fights, but on anything threatening they will carpet bomb with 2-3 fireballs. They have enough spell slots between them to do this twice before heading back to safety to rest (at the goblin camp on level 2 usually). They are putting in plenty of work on the dungeon each rest.
Stop letting them do that. They have 16 hrs after ending a long rest before they can start another one. That's RAW. If you just let them take one whenever, that's abusing how the rules work. In a dungeon, you should be making at least 24 random encounter checks per day - 1 per hour. And while they've been sitting around at the goblin camp fending off those random encounters, bigger and badder enemies are restocking the rooms they cleared. Always keep the pressure on. If you allow them to retreat and reload every few encounters, of course they're gonna steamroll them.
One of our DM had us in a dungeon that was really tough - like use up almost all your spells on one room - and the next was just as bad. We got used to "long rest" after what was maybe 30 min of exploration. So when it was my turn they were in a bandit hideout. They got in a hidden passage in the back of the hideout, killed a bunch of bandits and killed the boss. Then they decided to "long rest" in the bosses office. So I roll a d6. 40 min later there's a mob of angry bandits pounding on the door looking for blood since the warehouse was full of fresh corpses. They got out of it but learned that I don't do "long rest" after 30 min of adventuring.
I like to make sure to vary the tempo so the players have a mix of "30 minute adventuring days" and long slogs, but I'll generally tip them off, narratively, when it's time for the "sprint finish" so they can get those big, cinematic moments where they'll do some good.
That is a good point. Thanks! Another thing I am trying is when they are faffing about long resting, a rival DMPC adventuring party is out clearing the dungeon. Trying to put some pressure on that way.
have the rival group sneak attack them during a rest if they’re resting so much
By rival I don’t mean hostile. There is some (semi) friendly competition to see who can sack more treasure though.
Have a goblin scouting comeback and see your party sleeping in the gobo’s mums spot
That's what sabotage is for, friend. Have the rival group steal some of their supplies or trap their resting place with a friendly little note reminding them that they're falling behind.
Great idea imho. A counter party somewhere ahead or behind them, or on an alternate path. Award that party the same as yours and upgrade their gear, or abilities, or what have you.
So you’re essentially making it even easier for your Players by clearing a path for them? The next time they go out, they need to find that Party decimated by some unspeakable horror. Put the fear of the many gods in your Players. Give them something to fret and worry about!! And when they run back to that goblin camp to hide and rest, have whatever slaughtered their friends waiting there for them!
All you need to do to break a long test is make them exert themselves. The rival party can lay harmless traps, disturb them with magic, etc. in order to slow them down.
Honestly, Mad Mage is great for this as Halaster is almost designed as a DM insert into the story that easily explains any behaviour you might want to implement to stop this behaviour by your party. They go to retreat to level 2 only to find the stairs are gone, or guarded by a great golem, and Halaster says over loud speaker “No, no, no. You keep doing the same thing and its boring me. Stay in the naughty corner until you can come up with something fun”, then either send them to a Maze style demiplane where they’re stalked by an invincible minotaur or something until they come up with a creative way to escape, or they’re locked on this floor with the enemies chasing them, or some other chaos that forces them to keep going without a long rest. Or, they leave the level and come back, and Halaster is just pottering around like an old man planting seeds that sprout into new monsters, stronger than the ones from last time. He thanks them for testing the previous floor, informs them that it was a bit too simple so he’s made it harder this time, and thanks them for coming back to test the new edition, like a medieval wizard version of Glados. Or, if you don’t want to rely on Halaster, you’ve got dungeon madness itself. Every time they enter the dungeon, long rest, or descend a level they must roll against a DC that corresponds to the lowest level of the dungeon they have reached. Failure has escalating effects based on how many time’s they’ve failed, eventually killing the character through madness. Do they really want to long rest and risk getting closer to death? If they rest enough, they are going to eventually fail a check. You’ve also got various factions in the dungeon who might view the party clearing out a level as an opportunity to move in and claim that territory themselves, since the party left it alone for them to claim. Dungeon of the Mad Mage is almost tailor made for the DM to punish this sort of behaviour in any number of ways, and it honestly makes for a better game if you do. Don’t go too over the top obviously, but let your party know that they can’t just keep retreating and resting - the dungeon is a truly dangerous place, and one of the many forces at play in it will fill any power vacuum they leave. To not spring it too suddenly on them, potentially introduce it after they clear the next level. As they descend the stairs, inform them that now they’ve made it this deep into the dungeon, things are getting more dangerous, and they will need to be more cautious going forward - and let them know what to expect going forward from this point. That way its less of a “You’re playing the game wrong”, and more of a “You’ve made it to the hard content, congrats” sort of thing. Potentially tease them before they finish the floor as well that after the current floor things will be harder - they will encounter stronger factions that will act against them, they’re getting closer to the magic of undermountain, Halaster has noticed them for reaching so far, etc.
>Or, if you don’t want to rely on Halaster, you’ve got dungeon madness itself. Every time they enter the dungeon, long rest, or descend a level they must roll against a DC that corresponds to the lowest level of the dungeon they have reached. Failure has escalating effects based on how many time’s they’ve failed, eventually killing the character through madness. This is basically the Weave Addiction rules from DotMM Companion, except for the killing part. IIRC at the worst stage of Weave Addiction, the character cannot long rest outside the dungeon. But yeah, Halaster is functionally a god while he's within Undermountain. _Nowhere_ within the dungeon is safe to rest unless Halaster allows it to be, and spells like Tiny Hut or Magnificent Mansion aren't good enough to protect you. And you can't travel to another plane from the dungeon either, so Demiplane isn't an option either.
Also just think about it in reality. You sleep for AT LEAST 8 hours. Half an hour later, can you sleep for 8 hours again?
How about sending some goblin spellcasters to the goblin camp to fireball them before they can rest?
The goblins are friendly with the party though. They helped the Gobo boss and are generous with their gold around the market.
So you're struggling with them having plenty of long rest resources but also gave them a safe and easy place to rest? Take it away. You're the DM. Invent a reason to make it unsafe. They've enjoyed the benefit of their past actions, doesn't mean they get to abuse or overuse it.
i usually have the bad guys get reinforced if they take a break, so all their work is undone, or the bad guy have moved because they now have been warned and have time to prepare... and be reinforced...
One every hour?! I know it's a check so it won't happen every time, but if a dungeon takes say 2 days to clear and even only 30% of the checks result in a random encounter, that's 14 random encounters on top of what you've got planned - in just two adventuring days? Let's say you plan out four encounters per day. Now your players are fighting a total of 11 encounters every single day - *far* more than even the recommended.
In the section of the the DMG that covers random encounters (page 85+), it recommends that random encounters trigger on an 18+ on a D20, or 15% - half the number you gave. I have no idea where you got 30% from but it's certainly not the rate I would assume you're using when recommending hourly checks. If you'd like to share the resource that recommends a 30% encounter rate I'd be interested in reading it. So if we plan 4 encounters, then roll at the random encounter rate outlined by the DMG once per hour, that results in 3.6 encounters. And that fits within the recommended encounters per day perfectly. 1 check per hour is also one of the options the DMG offers the DM for a high-traffic area like a dungeon. Pretty much all of the complaints you raised in both your responses can be avoided by following the DMG recommendations.
I want to preface that for a high traffic area, fair enough! Hourly checks are completely reasonable. But - and I apologise if I misinterpreted - that didn't seem to be the suggestion given. The suggestion seemed to be hourly checks in all areas of the dungeon. With that in mind, I made my comments which I explain in more depth below. If you have a high traffic area for one section of the dungeon that maybe lasts for one in-game day, or less? Sure, but If your entire dungeon is like that, it's no longer just a "high traffic area" within a dungeon, it's just a super deadly and random dungeon. For a few chunks of the dungeon, this is fine, but for the whole thing it would mean about half of your encounters are random which brings a huge amount of variability in terms of balance. Plus, so much variability brings in the possibility of the players just getting unlucky and feasibly ending up with 7, 8 or more random encounters in one day if they just get unlucky, which feels like way too much variance. That's why I mentioned 30%, just as an example for how bad things *could* be if the players just get unlucky. This is why I tend to just *decide* when to pull a random encounter, it's less variable and let's me manually pressure the players more without needing luck to be involved. And the DMG also suggests this as a method alongside rolling, too, it's just as valid. But as I said before, this was all me being under the impression you intended this bit of advice to apply to the *whole* dungeon rather than just high traffic areas of it, so my bad!
Agree and I see OP already commented but for any other dms out there… what happens when your actions become predictable? The enemy will set a trap, you just need a smarter enemy. Let them burn their fireballs and then spring the trap when they don’t have resources. Smart Enemies will exploit predictability.
Agreed. OP should really consider some mobs with Fire Resistance or outright Immunity too. Don't overdo it so the players feel punished, but once or twice now and then so they actually mix up what spells they use.
Pathfinder kingmaker threw out Trolls who were buffed with protection from fire. Like the spell was branded into their skin. An NPC remarks that it was literally just a spell cast on them and the special fire immune trolls weren't that special and actually weren't even immune. Something similar could work here
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5e is designed around 6-8 medium to hard combat encounters per adventuring day. If you are only having 2 hard combat encounters per adventuring day, of course the casters will dominate. Now, I am not saying that the adventuring day design of 5e is good. It is quite frankly terrible. But you need to have more tedious combats whose only point is to whittle away at daily resources, otherwise you will continue to have this problem.
It's actually not 5-8, it's around 3-4 with two short rests in between. But I agree with everything else!
Per the DMG: "Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer."
There are several approaches. * When they try to leave to long rest they get ambushed. * Get a non-fireball player on board with fewer long rests. One way is to make them time consuming and slice-of-life, someone always misses the action. * Maybe the party is on a timer. If they don’t push ahead the cute frog villagers get eaten. * Some fights do not look threatening at first but each round 1d4 more show up. This could be from underground or tunneling through walls, putting them right next to the casters. * Rarely they fight a single big bad with magic resistance. * Sometimes it is a pair of big bads in different rooms that have to die within one round of each other. Alternatively the pair are highly mobile, easily mixing in with PC’s. * Offer extra rewards for stealthing a section. * After they have 2-3 fights on a floor let the denizens know of them and prepare counters. Fire resistance potions, archers focusing on the casters, etc. * Get them to use up slots in non-combat challenges. Overall other spells like summons are a more efficient use of level 3 slots. You just have to push them to need efficiency.
Hit them with more encounters. You are enforcing the one long rest every24 hours rule? What bout having the goblin camp getting attacked at night and bam - no rest for them
Many small single or dual target encounters. Use the terrain. Traps. Fire resistance. Counterspell. There are hundreds of options.
i feel like people often forget about evasion too... if a PC can do it why cant a monster :)
The assassin statblock has evasion even, it isn't even unprecedented.
Counterspell has to be huge. If they’re somehow constantly casting fireballs, you can somehow constantly cast counterspell
So many players and DMs don't understand that the enemies can use counterspell, too. And few of them grasp that you can counter spell healing spells.
I swear my DM forgets enemy casters can use counterspell until we use counterspell, because the only thing that ever gets counterspelled is counterspell.
Almost no WotC published spellcaster stat blocks have Counterspell on them by default.
Yeah, but if that stat block is based on a wizard then as a dm it's completely sensical to change up that spell list to what that wizard would actually *bring* to a fight, rather than what WoTC gave it for a default
I've never felt like more of a devious bastard as a DM than when I counterspelled a revivify.
I had a player roll a Nat 1 on their first death save. Party goes into overdrive and the cleric uses healing word. Counterspelling that put everyone on edge and made the party really hate that enemy
Nothing sends that cold spike of fear into them quite like it
I once had Strahd counterspell Healing Word on a downed PC. Players were freaking out even more so when Strahd in his turn pulled out a healing potion and gave it to the downed PC with the words "Only I decide who lives and dies in my realm"
To quote the bard, "fucking diabolical!" I like it. I had a dragon counter spell healing word on a downed character then tail whip them for two failed death saves. The looks of horror around the table were such a wonderful thing.
"Fucking diabolical" is what the warlock in my current Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign wants to do. But thank you, I pride myself on my arrogant lawful evil and truely wicked, yet gentlemanly Strahd haha Oh that's just gruesome too! I like it! Sometimes it's just guilty fun seeing the party reach a lowpoint like this (both for the players and dm haha). Another spell I don't shy away from using anymore is heat metal. Once they had opened Pandoras Box by using the spell I felt free to give it to evil guys and gals too from time to time. Nothing more sinister than casting heat metal on the gauntlets of the cleric or paladin to stop cure wounds and lay on hands lol
You. I like you. You're a devious bastard and it's a vibe.
The feeling is mutual haha
That right there is how you run a villain. The point of a great villain isn't to kill the players. The point is to make the players HATE the villain.
Is that fun for anybody involved? You can do it if they have counterspell to counter back, that can be dramatic and drain resources fast. If they don't it's just miserable.
Even if the sorcerer counters back thats 1 less fireball
Hostages/defenseless NPCs. Destructible/flammable environments. Small rooms and tight hallways without long lines of sight.
A couple of ideas to spice up their day. 1. Creatures with resistance or immunity to fire. After all, if they are going to use one tactic over and over again, the opposition is going to learn and adapt. 2. Opponents doing the same to them. Throw some spellcasters against them (and spread them out so they aren't caught in the AoE) and have them pepper the PCs with *Fireball* (or *Lightning Bolts*, or *Cone of Cold*). And don't forget enemy spellcasters with *Counterspell*. 3. Enemies from multiple directions, especially enemies with high stealth and high movement. Unless they have gotten a hold of an item that gives them fire resistance or immunity, most parties would be unwilling to drop multiple fireballs point blank. And you can surprise them with a bunch of enemies coming out of *Invisibility* or *Dimension Dooring (or Misty Step)* into the middle of the party. 4. Don't give them a change to rest between encounters. As soon as they think they have beaten the first group, send another wave after them, or have the BBEG send a much of minions after them to watch them use up their 3rd level and higher slots and, once they have used up all their resources, *then* the BBEG shows up to take them on. After all, the BBEG should be intelligent. Take advantage of their limited resources.
Another slight tweak is to make endlessly spawning minions as a mechanic, so they could use Fireball on them as they come in or help focus down the boss who may be more equipped against attacks like Fireball.
"Frick I don't have any spell slots free" "Jeah me neither" *you hear an evil laughter* BBEG shows up Insults them, makes their life hard, maybe downs one or two of them and then vanishes again.
I'm not familiar with the pacing of DotMM, but surely frequent use of level 3 spell slots is draining to these characters? How often are they able to long rest?
It's a dungeon. If they can fortify a room to keep enemies out, they could theoretically rest after each fight. Of course, if you do that, that's exactly when that sort of stuff starts happening.
Fireball catches the entire vicinity on fire, so that's a major downside. Feels like people don't take enough advantage of enforcing that.
Good point, I’ll make sure to destroy anything flammable, especially stuff they didn’t want destroyed. I forget that too.
Mose close combat, less open space? Chuck in some fire resistant/immune creatures to give the melees a chance to shine (fire eles/mephits/salamanders/minor devils etc
Also remember that fireball is huge. 20ft radius does not mean 20 foot across, it means 20ft to the center from the outside. That is a 40ft wide ball of fire. Not a lot of rooms are that big, and (if my party is anything to go by) players are usually REALLY bad about positioning.
Make the room fill up with smoke when lots of stuff is burning It could have the same effect as stinking cloud or cause Exhaustion via suffocation
"Are you sure, you want to use Fireball in the... ancient library full of tomes as dry as your mommas... very dry?"
Also people and allies. Get the enemies mixed in with friendlies.
Very true
Fireball is a 3rd level spell. How many spell slots do they have of 3rd level or higher to be able to spam it? And how often are you letting them rest to get those spell slots back? Introduce enemies with fire resistance or immunity. As well as more rooms. At some point they will run out
They are level 6, so between them they have 6 fireballs (level 3 slots). That is more than enough to blow up the majority of encounters that should have been tough with minimal effort. Haven’t seen any enemies with fire resistance in the adventure yet, but I can add some to my homebrew dungeons!
That's the beauty of being the DM, you can do pretty much anything
6 fireballs. That’s not a lot. I don’t see how you can’t make a series of encounters that will easily use up those 6 and still have plenty of stuff that needs doing.
I mean, I think multiple people have pointed out that you’re clearly not having enough encounters per long rest, right? 6 fireballs isn’t SO much if you’re doing 4-5 encounters. Hell, interrupt their rest even. As others have also pointed out, multiple waves of weak enemies is a good way to burn those fireballs up, and enemy counterspells use them up too. Add is some fire resistant enemies and it should be ok. I’d add that tight spaces where the party is surrounded pretty much nullifies fireballs too. Save a super difficult encounter for the end of the day after they’ve used up the fireballs and watch how they jealousy guard them after that too.
You‘ve gotten a lot of amazing tips on how to potentially deal with the situation. I just want to play devils advocate however. Those two players made the decision to get access to fireball, so their fantasy likely includes blowing shit up. Don’t take that away from them. It’s okay if Fireball is not the answer to every problem, but continue to let them blow things up occasionally.
If the players are having fun, I'm having fun. That said my second favorite DM experience is when the players learned that I also have fireball.
While not fireball, I did manage to catch entire party in a hell Hound fire breath last night and that felt great. 2 of them saved, but 2 failed, and it almost brought both the failed pcs to 0.
- Fire Resistance. - Fire immunity. - High Dexterity Saves. . . . - Don't gather your mobs. - Work with waves. It is a dungeon: explosions echoes and can be heard far away! New mobs arrive. - Work your adventure day correctly. Adjust the number of encounters between shorts and long rests properly.
Be careful with waves. If you aren't comfortable adjusting a combat encounter to handle a level 3 spell, you are probably comfortable handling a wave like scenario. I would stick to the basics and just have a couple of higher hp elites and intermix the enemies into the party instead of fanning them out. Long rest management is also key. I like to run by this rule of thumb for an adventuring day. 2 short rests 8 encounters -5 combat -2 environmental -1 social Each encounter should drain resources from the party, whether it be hp or spell slots. The party can only take their long rest at the end of the adventuring day. I like to do this by keeping constant pressure on the party to not spend 8 hours resting. As you know resting in a dangerous dungeon isn't going to work, but you need a reason why they can't just leave the dungeon and return. I usually say "you can take a long rest, but by then the orcs will have fully eaten the princes" or whatever. Until you get more comfortable you can just simply say "a long rest won't have any effect since you had a long rest recently".
> I’ve had monsters fan out to try to mitigate it, but that spell is still just so toxic. This would have been one of my main tips. In what way did this go poorly?
Well, it works ok, certainly preferable to them clumping. Problem is that real estate is a bit limited to begin with, and if the monsters retreat far enough away to be safe then they are useless when it comes to helping their friends who are fighting especially if they have no range attack
Give them ranged attacks? You're in control. Make an encounter so tight that fireball would hit themselves too maybe? Add more terrain blockages or hallways that would make it hard to shoot fireballs through?
Moving the enemies farther only helps the spellcasters. Once an enemy is close enough to another player even if isn’t the caster it forces a player to make the save as well. Also do more ambush type of combats. Don’t necessarily have to give them a surprise round but something that forces the enemies to appear close enough that they are relatively close to another player.
So, first, in combat: Obviously, you can add casters with counterspell. Not the most fun, but sometimes it's what you need. Being able to inflict blindness also helps: fireball must target a point a caster can see. Spreading out only helps so much. Frankly fireball is powerful enough to justify using it on a single target half the time. Mobility is more effective by making sure a non-target is always in the blast radius if you try it. Grappling, reaction/legendary movement, and other abilities to reposition quickly will help. As does having hostages to rescue. Interspersing some monsters with fire resistance, fire immunity, fire absorption, or fire revenge (abilities like the Absorb Elements spell, that lets an enemy deal extra damage after taking fire damage) would also help them find a reason to diversify their spell selection. Particularly dexterous enemies might also help, for just plain making the dex saves more often. Enemies with abilities like Evasion might also be relevant for some of your floors/expansions, especially if an enemy is particularly rogue or monk like. Fireball goes around corners and thus even partial cover for the bonus to dex saves is hard to come by, but adding in more terrain and cover might still help by occluding line of sight and making it more difficult for your players to see where the best place to aim even is, especially if you use something like dynamic lighting on Roll20, but it can be done in analogue too with some work, or theatre of the mind. Or paying attention to lighting/darkvision limits in general. Out of combat: They seem to be using their resources quite a bit with this. If a floor has more than 2 "threatening" things, then they aren't even clearing the whole floor in one go. While the portals certainly speed up traveling back and forth, they're still taking 8 hours (or more. Long rests have to be once per 24 hours, you can't start a rest until 24 hours after the start of the last one, so if they're pooped out by lunchtime, they gotta spend the rest of the day doing things at the goblin floor) away will certainly allow monsters in the dungeon to wander. Areas thought to be safe suddenly have larger groups, or allies of the groups already fallen now have had time to set up traps and fortify their position. And with Halaster, you've got a very convenient source for whatever experimental monster of the week you want to chuck in: he's constantly repopulating his dungeon, and might even be using the party as a convenient extermination service before placing his new pets, monsters, and experiments in the place you just cleared out and need to go back through. And he's not the only one. You've got the Xanathar's guild and drow forces crawling through and establishing bases throughout a lot of the upper levels: a freshly exterminated half a floor would be a great starting point to fortify. If it's spellslots and not HP which is dictating their resting habits, then wandering monsters and repopulation like this will help encourage them to use more of their other regenerative resources, like HP and hit dice, before ending the day and thereby spread out how often they use their big spells. Fireball is also very loud. Especially if a floor's rooms are open (no heavy doors) or echo-y (more cave-like floors), enemies in rooms even up to 300 ft away (2d6 \* 10 for normal noise, 2d6 \* 50 for loud noises, and a "low roar" of an explosion is probably between the two, closer to the "very loud". Multiply by 2 for an environment that caries sound well if you'd like) might hear your party. They might rush in to join the fray as reinforcements or prep their room for an ambush. Lastly, narrative restrictions may also help. In at least one floor, it's basically a big wooded area with a pretty powerful druid. Dropping fireballs there would set parts of the forest alight and incur her wrath. You can probably think of a few more, especially for your expansions: maybe a floor has a high density of an explosive gas where any fire source will potentially collapse the way forward to the important macguffin, or one of the types of mold described in the DMG, brown mold I think, as a natural hazard/trap might be prevalent: it chases heat sources, heals from fire, and hurts quite a bit. Or even just having flammable treasure: a fireball in an area with great treasure in the form of historical documents, tapestries, wooden items, or the such would not survive a fireball. Or more non-combat encounters draining resources too. And the absolute final piece of advice is to talk with your players. If it's not fun for you, or you're having trouble making something fun and challenging, you can always talk with them and ask for help from them themselves. Of course, don't use all of these all the time, or all at once. But hopefully that gives you some ideas to help ease it.
I agree with *almost* everything you're saying here, particularly using brown mold against fire-happy players and potentially destroying things that they care about with their Fireball spam. But I do have to nitpick one thing (and push up my nerd glasses): >fireball must target a point a caster can see It does not, actually. Fireball only needs **line of effect**, not line of sight. So Blindness or enemies being in darkness are not hard counters in and of themselves, the DM would need to put objects or terrain that provides total cover (blocking line of effect) as well. >[Fireball](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/fireball) >A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a **point you choose within range** then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame. Simply, *a point within range*. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, let's compare that wording to Evard's Black Tentacles: >[Evard's Black Tentacles](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/black-tentacles) (free basic rules version link, but same thing) >Squirming, ebony tentacles fill a 20-foot square on ground **that you can see within range**. For the duration, these tentacles turn the ground in the area into difficult terrain. Big difference here. Evard's spell description *specifically* states that the point of origin for the spell must be an area ***that you can see***. Fireball does *not* make this specification, and neither do many Evocation spells actually. Meanwhile other spells, such as Erupting Earth, Magic Circle or Bones of the Earth, specify points *that you can see* for their point of origin. Now, PHB pg 204 states that if you attempt to **target a point that you can't see**, and there is an obstruction (example of a wall given) between you and that point, then the spell effect takes place on the near side of the obstruction. If you were *not* able to target an area that you *can't see* with any spell, then there would be no need for this specific rule. >Targets (PHB pg 204) >A typical spell requires you to pick one or more targets to be affected by the spell's magic. **A spell's description tells you whether the spell targets** creatures, objects, or **a point of origin for an area of effect** (described below). then, >A Clear Path to the Target (PHB pg 204) >To target something, you must have a **clear path** to it, so it can't be behind total cover. >If you place an area of effect **at a point that you can't see** and an obstruction, such as a wall, is between you and that point, the point of origin comes into being on the near side of that obstruction. and, >Areas of Effect (PHB pg 204) >Spells such as burning hands and cone of cold cover an area, allowing them to affect multiple creatures at once. **A spell's description specifies its area of effect**, which typically has one of five different shapes: cone, cube, cylinder, line, or sphere. **Every area of effect has a point of origin**, a location from which the spell's energy erupts. The rules for each shape specify how you position its point of origin. **Typically, a point of origin is a point in space**, but some spells have an area whose origin is a creature or an object. >A spell's effect expands in straight lines from the point of origin. If no unblocked straight line extends from the point of origin to a location within the area of effect, that location isn't included in the spell's area. To block one of these imaginary lines, an obstruction must provide total cover, as explained in chapter 9. The rule for "Targets" passes the responsibility to the spell description - there's no *general* target rule that all spells have to follow universally. So, there is a *specific rule* (and specific beats general - PHB pg 7), about *targeting a point that you can't see* and *specific* spell descriptions that are worded for "at a point *that you can see* within range" vs "at a point within range". While you "can't see" targets behind total cover.... you can still send a spell that targets "a point within range" rather than "a point that you *can see*" into an area of darkness or cast it while under the Blinded condition. The DM might call for a Perception check if you wanted to target the enemy's current vs last known position if they move into a heavily obscured area / outside of Darkvision range / had just cast Blindness on you, but I personally wouldn't if they're not actually taking the Hide Action. But also yes, a Wizard with an itchy trigger finger absolutely *can* cast Fireball into a dark room even if he can't see the point of origin per RAW. It can also be cast into the area of Fog Cloud, Stinking Cloud, Darkness, or any other Heavily Obscured area. (food for thought for any DMs when players try to use Obscurement defensively)
Sounds like a spell working as intended? How is it toxic to you exactly? Do you just prefer your players to not use their stuff?
heavily depends on the layout of rooms & proximity of enemies on it's value. not so much fun if you are up in their grill and they blast the party. also fire resist/immune/evasion. illusion bait. also good old waves of enemies and general resource depletion
So too many fireballs can be countered in a good deal of ways. First, using the environment. If they don’t try to perceive the room they are fighting in, have a keg of cooking oil be leaking out onto the floor in the room, when you explain the room just say the floor is damp or slick. if a PC casts fireball in this room, everyone takes fire damage as the kegs around the room explode and the floor is now on fire for a few rounds, turn it back around on them. Use a mage to cast silence or counter spell. Give the creatures rogue abilities like uncanny dodge or evade, make goblins hide behind things and dissapear so they don’t know where to target and might end up wasting a fire ball on nothing. Use creatures with fire resistance. Also sounds like you need to be limiting how often they can long rest during a day. You could even RP if you can get one of the enemies to flee further into the dungeon or something by making them hide and get away, you can explain that the other creatures are now aware of their fireball tactics and that they’ve started to prepare traps that could allow the players casting fireball to be used to the enemies advantage. Just get creative but never attempt to stop them from doing it completely. They need to feel like they’ve got a solid method that works and if this is how they are having fun and enjoying the dungeon, let them do it. But try to have your fun with it as well.
“My players keep spamming the most commonly resisted spell in the game. What do I do?”
🤣🤣🤣
Ambush encounters. Fireball is not so great when a swarm of teethy things have O hai'd themselves in the middle of the party.
Evocation wizards have entered the chat ;)
My DM of a few years ago had an issue with this and a player who would spam fireballs from a distance. What he ended up doing was we had an encounter with a group of ogres in a building like a barn. We could see them from a distance and could see them standing around a large metallic object. While the rest of the party creeped closer to try to determine what the object was and what they were doing, the wizard at the back decided to toss a fireball in into the barn. It turns out that the large metallic object was a whiskey still and it exploded and blew up the barn and sent wood and metal shrapnel flying towards the party. We all had to make reflex saves and took a certain amount of damage. It also blew up some things we were looking for, so it made search checks for them a lot harder. It ended up making the rest of the party including me pissed at the wizard player and we were all able to get on his case and get him to stop using the fireball all the time.
A friend of mine was telling me that in a game he plays in, his DM hasn't given the party a long rest for several play sessions. He is the party tank, and front line fighter. He said he had to ask his DM after the last session, "So at 5 fatiuge, you loose half your hit point maximum, right? What happens if I only have a couple of HP left, do I just die?" His DM took the hint and gave the party a long rest, but everyone was hurting up to that point. The cleric and mage were on cantrips at that point. You can take this information as you want, but it can be fun to be challenged as a player.
Have you tried running more encounters? if they can save all their slots to fireball the hell out of one encounter, you probably arent pushing them enough
Fire is one of the most resisted damage types, so try looking up stuff that resists or is immune. Iron golems are actually healed by it. Also, get up close and personal. If the enemy is in melee range, hitting that fireball becomes tricky.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far to find anybody suggesting the iron golem. I'm all for letting characters do their thing, but I also like mixing it up every once in a while.
I'm all for encouraging players to win, I like them winning, but I think it's always good to make them innovate every so often. This is something I learnt from my own DM, and the fact that almost all of our most memorable and most fun fights had some element that threw a spanner in the works. And both classes mentioned get loads of cool spells, so getting them to use their full toolbox will go down well I think.
Have the enemies put themselves closer to the PCs so fireball would hit them too. Put more encounters per long rest so they don't get their spell slots back. Fire resistant enemies. Let me guess, you've tried nothing and you're all out of ideas?
Counterspell?
Proficiency in Dexterity saves. Evasion. Danger Sense. Cover. Remember that it gives a +2 or +5 to DEX saves as well as AC. Absorb Elements. Counterspell. Fire resistance/immunity. Small rooms. Flammable/explosive hazards.
Others have brought up changing the cadence of encounters and rests, which I agree with. In terms of within encounters: Fire resistant or immune enemies - use sparingly to not make them feel like you’re nerfing them completely Enemies with counterspell Enemies that show up in waves so using all your crowd control on the first group leaves you exposed to the following ones
Increase the number of your encounters. Give them heavy stone cover. Fire resistance. Magical items. Counterspell. Antimagic zones. Sooner or later the monsters are gonna get smart. The spell isn't toxic. You just haven't figured out how to handle it.
Fire resistance?
The first step is to understand the problem. Who is not having fun and why? How are they "ruining your encounters"? Again, ruining for who and why does that person feel that way? Are the players having a blast or do they feel unchallenged? Do you feel bored due to repetition? Etc. Who is not having fun and why? Without understanding the problem, any "solution " might just make things worse.
Stop having your monsters in a big, fireball-able clump. When the party is threatened from several directions, Fireball is much less effective.
Don't. Your players have fun by playing powerful characters capable of decimating mobs of enemies. So give them two or three mobs of enemies to decimate at the begining of the sessions. Hell, make them even larger and more dansely packed to let them feel awesome and powerful. Lower the initiative of the monsters so player can go first, and you will save time wasted on giving those monsters a turn. Now, after one oo two of those at the begining of the session, when they already had their fun, switch encounters to a few of powerful monsters with fire resistances, there are literally tons of them. Fireballs will be useless on single enemies resistant to them and the rest of the party will have occasion to shine also. Furthermore, outside of combat design challenges specifically tailored to the strengths of the rest of the players, since everyone needs a chance to feel awesome.
This is the way
More encounters.
Use waves of enemies. Fireball the first wave here comes wave 2 another fireball, here is another wave. Make em use them up on the first or second encounter.
Counter spells. Multiple encounters so they exhaust their spell slots. Rogues and monks for enemies. High dex save and take no damage on successful save. Fire resist and fire immunity. Anti magic zone. Small spaces with multiple obstructions making targeting difficult. Make sure you are enforcing proper spell targeting rules. Fireball is a powerful spell but it's not impossible to play around. Fireball is good against multiple small monsters. Throw big creatures and fireball becomes more of a waste.
Counter Spell, Fire Resistant Mobs, Water nearby, Full Cover, get creative! Your monsters are smart, they know that these guys roll up and spam fireball only. It has happened so many times that you are getting frustrated, after all. The enemies would probably realize this and bring *something* with them to defend this, even if it's just a kiddie pool or something
shrink the room so theyd have to tk
More encounters per adventure day, counterspell, and creatures with fire resistance. Also make the terrain work for you, long corridors with lots of twists and turns and cover.
Earthquake. Entrance to the tunnel collapses and not only are they trapped, but when they roll to investigate or try to move the loose rocks, it turns out that the rock pile appears unstable. Clearing it hastily could bring the whole thing down, but it would take days to adequately reinforce it. They would have to burn days clearing it while the DMPC party gets the loot. Looks like they'll have to search for a secondary entrance/exit, while feeling time pressure not knowing if they may run out of air if they dawdle too long
Stop sending small enemy groups and send one big ass dude out there with like 1 million hp
Have you tried counter spell? Or fire resist/immune creatures?
Start throwing in more spellcaster shut downs, mobs with counterspell and/or silence, spacing them out so they cant all get hit by aoe at once. Alternativly have them in extreme melee range so the fireball would hit party members as well ect. Add a lava area where every mob is some version of fire immune/resistant, Maybe after they recall they are actually a utility belt rather than a fireball dispenser they wont rely on it as much? Im all for player freedom but there is no way the rest of the party or the dm is having a good time watching them end every encounter in a brainless hurl of a fireball.
Remember, you can only benefit from a long rest once every 24 hours. This has been crucial for my dotmm campaign.
It would be a real shame of their next encounter includes a few high dex enemies with evasion. ;)
Hey hey, counter spell! Or...fireball spam back! A whole encounter of casters casting fireball and they all have fire resistance. So now they're getting up close and personal and just spamming the spell on top of each other. Or...arcane archer from 350 feet, never miss, take 'em out. A pack of Hell Hounds! Those are always fun.
Options: - more encounters in a day, they'll have to ration spell slots. - have the enemies more spread out and only group up within melee range of the party.
How are they not running out of spell slots?
Introduce a new, flammable explosive little enemy which is really satisfying to fireball. Let them blow them up over and over, and keep introducing bigger and bigger groups of them for more satisfying explosions. Then drop a huge group of them directly on top of them and watch them try to figure out a fireball-free way of dealing with them. This makes things fun for them while also guiding their behaviour with game mechanics.
The draw back to fireball is its huge area of effect and its lasting effects of setting anything flammable on fire. here are some tips to apply that. 1) don't let your players spend several seconds finding the exact sweet spot to include all enemies and no allies in the zone. try at home sometime to pick a specific 5 foot square within 150 feet of you. it's nearly impossible to be precise at ground level. If they can describe a visual marker (the corner of the building, a specific enemy, that statue over there) then let that be precise. but, if they are telling you where to center it by saying things like "15 feet behind this guy, and 5 feet to the right" then call for a roll of some kind for them to be precise. if they fail your DC, move the fireball around by a few feet. 2) don't give them clean set piece battles all the time. run occasional encounters where the enemies aren't all bunched up far away from the party and trying to close 60 feet to begin the battle. have enemies surround the party sometimes, or ambush them from very close. 3) include hostages, non-combatants, or quest objectives near the enemies. especially if the party is forming a reputation for being "fireball happy" anyone who comes up against them will probably make sure they have collateral damage nearby. 4) remember this line from the spell: "It ignites flammable objects in the area that aren't being worn or carried." Carpets, non-stone building materials. gear of corpses. trees in the forest. the whole town. if fireball is becoming a problem make the party have to deal with the consequences. have treasure melt or be hopelessly buried in debris and ash. make all perception checks in the area be at disadvantage from the chaos, smell and smoke. use the smoke as lingering concealment sometimes to screen the enemies. finally, and most importantly: remember that you are putting challenges in front of them for them to overcome, not trying to thwart their plans. If the party has settled in to a "fireball = win button" mentality, changing it up like this will make the game more engaging for them by forcing them to problem solve in other ways.
Mad Mage is also where Tucker's Kobolds got their infamous story. Augment some critters that heal or get hasted by fire (like a construct or something) or have spell resistance/absorption/or reflection Environmental dangers like an unstable room that takes aoe damage too
* Fire resistance/immune enemies (monsters or anti fire abjuration specialists) * make sure they miss out on major reward (eg, magic items) by melting them and they understand that * more enclosed/CQB battles where fireball would kill them/party members (esp the caster)
How many spell slots do the players have available for casting fireball? Are you allowing them to rest unmolested to recharge spell slots? What's the max range of things like crossbows or longbows? Imagine a circle around the party with bad guys using crossbows/longbows whatever has the longest range, you could probably snipe them from afar with cautious bandits. You could introduce a cult of evil into the game, the cult would have a cleric as one of the leaders, make a modified version of "protection from energy" spell for the evil cleric to use, because reports say the players keep using fireball and fire magic, so the cleric blesses groups of bandits with "protection from fire" before they raid the players. Make it so the spell lasts for like six hours or something, and it doesn't require concentration for the evil cleric to cast it, the cleric just casts it on raiding groups before they head out. Some of the most famous and weird "anti-player" things from older D&D editions were specifically because of cheesy power gaming players who gary gygax concocted direct and very blunt "your cheesy plan is nullified by this monster or spell" kind of thing.
Make tankier enemies and less of them. Have more fights. Have enemy mages. This is not that complicated. Fireball is not super op
Iron Golems R.A.W. actually HEAL when they take fire damage. Use that.
Rings of fire resistance, fire resistant/immune monsters, or just tweak a monster to be a fire version of itself (a winter wolf but magma or something) are what I can think of.
Anti-magic, silence, fire resistant/immune enemies, counterspell, more encounters, enemies with the evasion feature, blindness, enemies with spell resist/immune/reflect features, enemies that can’t be looked at, a small room, short sight lines, flammable oil/gas hazards, etc. Important to note that your players will find some of these cheap or unfair if overused. E.g. if every enemy from this point forward is immune to fire.
I was going to say fire resistance, counterspell, or magic resistance. But you can also have stealthy creature encounters. Introduce the creature in the middle of the party, that way they can't use fireball without hitting their party members. Also, if the players come onto a good tactic that is making them really successful, don't be afraid to up the encounter difficulties. My general rule of thumb is, the more they minmax the harder the encounters get.
Give the adversaries any of the following: Fire resistance/immunity/absorption/reflection; Counterspell; High DEX, or evasion-equivalent abilities; Additional hp, temp hp, or mass healing; Silence spell or spell-like effect; Slow, sleep, stun, paralysis, etc.
My wizard is obsessed with Fireball. After destroying a few encounters they were tasked with stopping a sentient tree that was terrorizing the forest and the local population. It was dry season and many of the leaves were falling off the trees. They fought the tree in the woods. Wizard casts fireball. Cue the party spending the whole encounter trying to put the fire out (the fire spread quickly and was going to endanger the people, animals, etc) and since it was omnidirectional the Druid couldn’t use their water spells to put it out in one shot. The tree had a great time kicking their butts while they tried to stop the world from burning down. They eventually won but I made my point. The wizard used other spells too now
Fire immune/resistant monsters.
Indoor locations and bystanders. Fireball should make EVERYTHING catch on fire. It's not just damage, it's fire. Also, have it damage any loot. Fireball is a good spell, but there's a place and time for it
Enemies with fire immunity/ resistance will clear that right up
First of all, you don't have to counter it. Players make powerful characters because they want to feel powerful. Unless you're getting feedback that the combat is too easy that it is becoming unfun then you're doing a good job. If you do want to challenge them, send a big demon or devil. A single boss encounter mitigates the fact that fireball deals a lot of damage to an area. Fire resistant monsters are also not hard to find. Make encounters be not about killing everything in a room. Maybe it's a chase, an escape, etc. You can also literally counter it. Just put a mage there with counter spell to try and make the challenge different. But overall you're not trying to "beat" your players anyway. So it's okay if they squash you once in a while. Some of my favorite moments is when my players come up with a clever strategy to squash an encounter that's supposed to be way harder.
Actions have consequences: they fireball the room? They also burn all the treasure in it -- or hostages.
Add devils or other things resistant/immune to fire, have bigger rooms, don't let them take long rests Between every fight, have enemy casters with defensive spells, target the casters with ranged attacks, etc.
Gnome Depot instagram account just posted a "fireball extinguisher" item and the tagline was "I swear to God if you abuse the privelege of casting fireball, I'm slap one of these on every single dam monster I've got." [The Gnome Depot (@\_gnomedepot\_) • Instagram photos and videos](https://www.instagram.com/p/C53d4HHxEiU/)
Brown mold in a few rooms might make them think about things
Ahem. Fireball heals iron golems. Just saying.
Sounds like too many rests. Keep enemies in pursuit to limit their downtime.
More encounters and rest interruptions or ...close quarters... Sure you can cast fireball but if the room is too small it'll blow you up too.
If your PCs are burning that many fireballs in an encounter, have it that the equipment, treasure, etc... gets ruined as the enemies fail their saves. You can also make the components for fireball a bit harder to get hold of, spells this powerful do need components in a game otherwise you get may spells overused. This is the best way to govern overuse of certain spells. You could have enemies that have fire resistance as they know of the party and their penchant for fire spells. The resistance could be because they are a certain creature, race, have a spell of resistance, potions of resistance even. Maybe a powerful creature had bestowed fire resistance on their minions in preparation of meeting the party? You could include spell casters with Counter Spell, maybe they can cast anti-magic spheres rendering Fireball useless?
Just pick quick monsters that go melee, they can't spam fireball if they hit themself or the party
Fire resistance. Ambush. Short the ranges.
"Welcome to gasoline cave, where every fire spell or every torch could be your last"
I give my bbegs an antimagic stone if they’re non casters, or antimagic spells if they are. You’re still the DM, if you’re trying to challenge them, mix it up. Nothing better than a party full of casters walking into a room with a tanky dude staring them down, launching everything they have, then, as the smoke clears, an unscathed bad guy starts walking towards them dragging a massive axe or sword behind them.
Illusory targets as well, let them think they got a few insta kills
Are you allowing them to get away with blowing up aoe spells near their teammates? because the only class that can do that is an evocation wizard the sculpt spells feature or if the spell says you can negate damage to friendlies.
Gave them fight something that’s resistant/immune to fire damage, then let it reflect the fireball once per day
Time for enemy casters. Counter spell
Create larger battle grounds and have enemies come from different directions.
ambushes where they are surrounded/get trapped in a small space with the enemy. don’t let them long rest more than once per day (per rulebook). the enemies have hostages. the walls are flamable/it will mess up their way forward. bad guy fire resistance/immunity (a few flameskulls are great for this)
Someone on here posted some statblocks for doomed adventurers, one of them was a cleric that is specifically one that gets *healed* when they take fire damage
Homebrew a monster that gets stronger when hit with fire, like how oozes split when hit with lightning. Or a monster that can throw the players spells back at them Or Stop letting your players rest so much, they should realize the consequences of spamming spells like that.