Originally Posted by Stabbey
I kept close track of what happened when an enemy Fire Bolt hit me in a recent battle.

- The initial hit, the d6 rolled 2 fire damage. All the remaining dice are d4's.
- The hit inflicted burning, another 4 damage.
- The surface underneath me rolled a 1, but we're already up to 1d6 and 2d4.
- Finally, my turn again.
- I lost the burning condition, but the surface beneath me was still on fire.
- Walking off the surface inflicted burning on me again and did another 2 damage.
- When the burning status rolled around again, another 3 damage, then the status expired.
- The damage total from the single Fire Bolt was 12, but the total dice rolled were 1d6 and 4d4. Total range of damage is 5-22.

Some people might argue that the last 2 d4's were avoidable, if you use jump, but even if you want to keep the surface, it should not tick not tick twice. It's a cantrip.


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Originally Posted by Limz

Dipping weapons in a fire source is fucking freely available if you actually play the game, it's called a candle, and can be freely dropped and lit.


Thinking about it for a moment, this defense is ridiculous. Are you seriously going to carry around candles all the time, and spend all those extra seconds in every battle to put a little bit of fire on your weapon?

Maybe you are, but you are comparing having to tediously drop and dip candles in every battle with the simplicity of select cantrip, click on enemy. You're spending a lot more effort to get that flaming weapon than the mage is to cast Firebolt.


You're moving the goal posts, we're now talking about the amount of effort? You know what's actually effortless? Just running up to something and smacking it with melee weapons and giving zero fucks because there are no limitations on rests. Or you know just casting level 2 magic missiles with the magic amulet that adds 1d4 per. Zero ground effects, zero waiting around for burning to do its thing, pure damage and zero requirements to hit.

The only reason that was brought up was an example of melee output, since I thought you were actually going to post a discussion and action economy was important here. But you're not, you're here to bitch about ground effects 24/7 and complain about something is being OP yet being unable to prove that it is anything other than competitive.

But let's put this to rest and point out something:

Originally Posted by Stabbey

My 1d10 cantrip actually deals 1d6 direct, plus 1d4 from the instantly created fire surface, plus 1d4 burning, plus an additional 1d4 - without any saving throw - on the creature's turn when they try to move out of the fire surface, for a range of 4 to 18. And if there is more than one creature in the radius of the fire surface created, they take damage from the surface as well. Oh, and when you miss, you still deal 1d4 surface damage.

Meanwhile those characters using physical weapons are dealing 1d6 or 1d8. It's completely unbalanced.


Pay attention to the last bit where you say physical weapons are dealing 1d6 or 1d8. That's why you're argument is stupid, you're literally comparing damage over time plus initial hit plus status effect to base weapon damage without modifiers while also factoring in essentially two turns. Stop defending that point and own up to it. There's actually a better thing to point out AGAINST having environments. Let's also take your stupid example up top where you deliberately run over the surface to take damage, you might as well have just expended all your movement in it to produce the most amount of damage to make a point.

And you know what? There's a good argument there unlike the rest of the shit you spew. But I don't think you have the honesty (nor capacity) to differentiate between the cantrip and the environment so I'll do your work for you. All environmental effects like burning, grease, etc. should tick once when entering and once if you end your turn on it. I believe grease doesn't follow this and ticks per set amount of move just like burning ground. I think that's an actual issue over cantrips creating terrain.

But by all means keep railing on the cantrips just don't say that physical dps is constrained to 1d6 or 1d8 and don't talk about math either since you haven't factored in advantage/disadvantage, feats, etc. As I have said many times there are going to be breakpoints where one thing is going to be better than the other, and to figure out balance you actually need to look at them sim them and then see if it's still far out of expectations. And, again, I don't think you're here for an actual discussion because you actually tried to compare things in such an uneven fashion that's blatantly incorrect.