The issue is most battles do not last long enough to validate it being used over a resource costing spell (level 1+). So the validity of "it has no costs" is not accurate. Additionally, you still have the option to scroll on top of this, which means by default you will never cast the spell, because you can simply stack higher damaging scrolls.
it definitely needs a buff in the early game, at least to 1d12, but a damage over time effect will make it "competitive" option to the alternatives. The only other real reason you'd have to cast it is some sort of resistance based advantage, which would potentially require a lot of development resources (time/effort) to make what you can make with a simple damage buff more viable, and that is not practical on a business level unless there is other larger things at play.
No, I just have a "throw some of the rules out of the rule-book" approach to this, because some of the dnd rules are not "mandatory" and should be renamed from "rules" to "suggestions". The moment he design team realizes this and commit to it, the moment the classes in this game become far more enjoyable, and the game far more popular.
This ultimately is a design choice for the game and we are not in general removing dnd rules, just altering some small things about it, and largely enhancing the classes "fun factor" for what? a "rule" that says you cant cast summon companion in combat? lets be serious about this.
With respect, I completely disagree with this approach, its game development not life and we don't have to use rules we don't want to. When its your game, you make the rules.
So you're just going to ignore the part where I said Firebolt is going to receive a buff at level 5 anyway?
Quite frankly, what you're suggesting means Larian shouldn't have made BG3 at all, and just went on with developing D:OS3 or finishing Divinity: Fallen Heroes instead. A lot of your suggestions read like a lack of understanding of the source material rather than improvements to the system (especially in regards to what I said about your Cure Wounds suggestion, which you also conveniently ignored). What's the point of BG3 if you're not even going to put in the effort to understand some of its systems, and preach about how 'the source material is holding back this game's popularity' as if
fans of the source material don't know what's good for the system they are most familiar with?
I feel some people in the BG3 community are so used to the free-form system that D:OS2 had to the point where some are just completely unable to adapt to actual limitations, and even then BG3 doesn't even have that many limitations compared to the source material outside of certain features like player choice reactions and ready actions being missing to begin with. There are balancing problems in BG3, but they are more with how Larian implemented things rather than problems with the source material itself. For example, Firebolt being weaker than Magic Missiles would be a lot more justified if you weren't allowed to spam rest everywhere, and I'm pretty sure those summoning abilities ARE supposed to be able to be used in combat.
