A Wizard (Usually) Fires Precisely When He Means To
The Dungeon: #5
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On the Many Varied Uses of Fireball
Few things are more exciting than when a spellcaster unlocks fireball. And once they can cast it, they always want to cast it. It’s a hammer and nail scenario.
Fireball is also one of the few places you have to consider friendly fire. The deliberation isn’t whether or not to cast, but determining the acceptable amount of collateral damage.
True story: I once created a Cleric aligned to the Sun Domain.1 That decision was at least 80% driven by the fact that I got to cast Fireball. Does a Cleric casting Fireball make sense? It does not. It’s also a suboptimal choice that doesn’t have the party’s best interests in mind. On the other hand: Fireball.
This may come as a shock, but Clerics are like Wolverine—they’re the best at what they do. And what they’re supposed to do is administer succor in polyhedral-shaped increments. Spending your entire turn nursemaiding other characters so they can do awesome stuff is not very exciting. Channeling a ball of liquid fire out of thin air and lobbing it at a convenient cluster of foes? That just hits different.2
Ironically, I don’t mind playing support classes in video games. I spent 90% of Battlefield 1 sprinting around with bandages and syringes.3 It’s like I was cosplaying Hacksaw Ridge. If I shot someone, it was only because they were between me and a dying squad mate. The only thing missing was a bag of morphine, a cool washcloth to lay across sweaty brows, and a cigarette to relieve the stress.
I guess what I’m saying is, I might play a traditional Cleric if D&D employed implements of healing. Let me do something. Clerics are just conduits for divine power, through which the healing flows. Being the middle man in the transaction is not exactly my fantasy.
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The fact that you draw divine power from worshipping the sun tells you everything you need to know about gods in D&D. It also begs the question: If you treat anything like a god, will you be blessed with related powers? Is there a Cleric of Outhouses? What kind of magic would I get if I worshipped boogers? Can I turn my favorite loincloth into a god through sheer quantity of prayer?
That Cleric ended up multi-classing into Monk and Wizard (briefly) so I could create a quasi-Jedi. Mind trick, Force push, Force jump… he even has a lightsaber analogue. He will heal—Jedi do that, too—but would rather leap about dramatically and make prophetic statements about fear.
I cannot explain how satisfying it was coming up to someone bleeding out and giving them exactly what they need to get back on their feet. Often while under enemy fire! Sometimes you had to belly crawl to the wounded and conduct the healing as the earth exploded around you. Fortunately, we didn’t have to worry about infection.