There isn’t. I wasn’t aware it was necessary! It applies to area of effect damage spells. What are you finding unclear about the feature?
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- Thread starter Morrus
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I was running it, and he asked me if it affects the damage from black tentacles. It's an area spell, and it does damage, so it could be considered an area of effect damage spell, but it seems unclear if it was intended to affect the damage that the tentacles do on each creature's turn. Spike growth, wall of fire, and other non-instantaneous effect spells are really what we're wondering about.
In short: is the spell "Black Tentacles" an area of effect damage spell, for the purposes of this feature? If not, what about wall of fire, which I believe does do damage immediately? Or is it intended to work only on spells that do their damage instantaneously to everyone in the area?
Edit: it's since been pointed out to me that Black Tentacles doesn't have a cube shape, so it wouldn't fit the requirement anyways, but then I would instead ask if it applies to Cloudkill.
In short: is the spell "Black Tentacles" an area of effect damage spell, for the purposes of this feature? If not, what about wall of fire, which I believe does do damage immediately? Or is it intended to work only on spells that do their damage instantaneously to everyone in the area?
Edit: it's since been pointed out to me that Black Tentacles doesn't have a cube shape, so it wouldn't fit the requirement anyways, but then I would instead ask if it applies to Cloudkill.
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Tessarael
Explorer
I'd argue that a spell that only does damage "when a creature starts its turn in the area, or enters the area for the first time on its turn," is not doing area of effect damage. By the rules as written (RAW), I think that area of effect damage is when all creatures in the area of effect take damage at the same time. I'd also argue from a combat simplicity and speed standpoint that I don't as a DM or fellow player want to deal with Battlefield Blaster for ongoing effects each round - by the rules as intended (RAI), it is intended essentially for use once per round when the Warmage casts a spell blasting an area with damage.
Now that said, is it going to break game balance if you permit it to apply to spells like Cloudkill or Black Tentacles? No. But my recommendation if you want to go down that path is to have it apply a flat damage increase (the average based on the statistics for number of die and type of die) to avoid the additional rolls slowing down combat.
As an aside, I have the same issue with things like the Great Weapon Fighting style. A flat damage bonus is easier to factor in ahead of time, and hence is faster to handle in combat / avoids being forgotten, than a reroll that only triggers on certain occasions, namely a damage die roll of 1 or 2 for Great Weapon Fighting. It would have been much more simply implemented as say a flat +2 damage bonus for melee two-handed weapon use, similar to the Dueling fighting style.
Now that said, is it going to break game balance if you permit it to apply to spells like Cloudkill or Black Tentacles? No. But my recommendation if you want to go down that path is to have it apply a flat damage increase (the average based on the statistics for number of die and type of die) to avoid the additional rolls slowing down combat.
As an aside, I have the same issue with things like the Great Weapon Fighting style. A flat damage bonus is easier to factor in ahead of time, and hence is faster to handle in combat / avoids being forgotten, than a reroll that only triggers on certain occasions, namely a damage die roll of 1 or 2 for Great Weapon Fighting. It would have been much more simply implemented as say a flat +2 damage bonus for melee two-handed weapon use, similar to the Dueling fighting style.
There's no requirement for instantaneous damage only in the feature, no, and there was no intention for one. I definitely envisaged battlefield control as encompassing walls and terrain features. The feature is intended to affect any spell which (a) does damage and (b) has an area entry in its stat block.
I can see that, and I think that interpretation would be fine. It's not the one I use, but I don't think either interpretation breaks anything.
Mark Essel
Villager
Thanks all for the conversation and RAI. We're big fans of the system.
Tessarael
Explorer
For those who might want to use a flat damage bonus instead for Battlefield Blaster, here's the damage increase by damage die type:
If you roll 6d6 for Fireball, your average damage increases to 6d6+4.
If you roll 14d6 for Meteor Swarm, your average damage increases to 14d6+10.
If you roll 8d8 for Cone of Cold, your average damage increases to 8d8+5.
If you roll 6d10 for Blade Barrier, your average damage increases to 6d10+4.
So as a rule of thumb instead of doing the math, you get +1 damage per damage die rolled. It is a little on the generous side, but much simpler to handle in combat to save time.
- d2: 1.5 + 0.500 + 0.375 + 0.188 ... = 3.00 average, +100% damage
- d3: 2.0 + 0.667 + 0.222 + 0.074 ... = 3.00 average, +50% damage
- d4: 2.5 + 0.625 + 0.156 + 0.039 ... = 3.33 average, +33% damage
- d5: 3.0 + 0.600 + 0.120 + 0.024 ... = 3.75 average, +25% damage
- d6: 3.5 + 0.583 + 0.097 + 0.016 ... = 4.20 average, +20% damage
- d8: 4.5 + 0.562 + 0.070 + 0.009 ... = 5.14 average, +14% damage
- d10: 5.5 + 0.550 + 0.055 + 0.006 ... = 6.11 average, +11% damage
- d12: 6.5 + 0.542 + 0.045 + 0.004 ... = 7.09 average, +9% damage
- d20: 10.5 + 0.525 + 0.026 + 0.001 ... = 11.05 average, +5% damage
- d100: 50.5 + 0.505 + 0.005 ... = 51.01 average, +1% damage
If you roll 6d6 for Fireball, your average damage increases to 6d6+4.
If you roll 14d6 for Meteor Swarm, your average damage increases to 14d6+10.
If you roll 8d8 for Cone of Cold, your average damage increases to 8d8+5.
If you roll 6d10 for Blade Barrier, your average damage increases to 6d10+4.
So as a rule of thumb instead of doing the math, you get +1 damage per damage die rolled. It is a little on the generous side, but much simpler to handle in combat to save time.
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Mark Essel
Villager
that's great Tessarael, we're using foundry so it handles it in the vtt
lichmaster
Hero
While these formulas are correct and may be applied when time is an issue (i.e. rolling these exploding dice all the time) or when the VTT platform does not support exploding dice, they only compute the average result.
Single realizations of exploding 6d6 may however result in way more than an expected +4: with 6d6+4 one can roll up to a maximum of 40 damage, and there's only (1/6)^6 chances for this to happen (approx 0,002 %).
However, there's really no upper bound to damage when actually rolling exploding dice.
So I'd personally keep the "fun" aspect of relatively unlikely but potentially very very high results instead of just getting a "boring" flat bonus.
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