Made a couple of minor mistakes. 1. I had text saying "4.5+4.5+4.5+4.5=22.5" but it was meant to be 5 "4.5"s. 2. at 11:30 I said you don't need to use Seeking spell if you roll duplicates. I meant when you DON'T roll duplicates because the spell has already stopped.
This is a great video. It excellently highlights the ups and downs of both sides while also considering the VPR (Vibes Per Round). The excitement potential from Chromatic Orb should not be ignored and you nailed that. But you also highlighted that despite the math, hitting a 0 is just gonna feel bad. Extremely well done!
Just noticed that you are missing Crits, and by reading the spell it would increase the bounce chance. Assuming you're a Sorcerer with advantage, so a 10% crits rate, you'd have a 39% (or there about) chance to bounce up from 34%. A level 2 upcast goes from 60% -> 70% chance to bounce. Basically, every crit of a level 2+ cast will bounce, even a level 1 crit has a 94% change to bouce. Seeking spell (or Eleven Accuracy or using a Heroic Inspiration) increases crit chance too.
I do take crits into account when bouncing in the simulation, but I didn't talk about it in the video. You'll crit a lot with this spell and I love critting with it is so beneficial.
@@DndUnoptimized Ah, looks like your program does, my mistake. Using average numbers I get: Targets Hit for 3rd Level Up Cast: 1 Target = 95.3% 2 Targets = 95.3% * 81.7% * 95.3% = 74.2% 3 Targets = 74.2% * 81.7% * 95.3% = 57.8% 4 Targets = 57.8% * 81.7% * 95.3% = 45.0% A 5d8 Orb with Adv + Seeking has a 81.7% chance to explode to the next target.
Empowered spell metamagic is another great way to improve the odds of rolling doubles. Similar to seeking spell, you only have to use it reactively if you fail to bounce.
Halfling would be good to pad against the bad attack rolls of your characters using Chromatic Orb. Players should double-check with their DMs though, because I've heard of a couple, who when a halfling has advantage, do not allow rerolling the lower die even if it is a 1. (I think that is cruddy, but it is your DMs table so make sure your expectations match theirs.)
Absolutely agree Chromatic Orb does great for Sorcerer. Suprised you didnt include Empowered Spell as well to boost the chance to roll duplicates. It gets expensive but can be a great boost if you dont roll duplicates on the first roll
Yea there are definitely other ways to boost it like empower spell and elemental adept. I don't think it's worth building around, but I probably should have mentioned these two at least. Thanks for bringing it up!
@@DndUnoptimized ooo I hadn’t thought about Elemental Adept, that’s better than if you were rolling d7s for bounce odds…though you would be self-restricting your damage type, partly overcoming that by ignoring resistance…idk probably a good pick if that’s your focus
@@DndUnoptimized Elemental Adept is quite good with Chromatic Orb. Now every 1 and 2 are considered duplicates (unless the DM is adversarial), giving you nice boost to jumping (more than just changing d8s to d7s for the purpose of jumping). Now I know my first 2024 character will be Alvin A. Curacy, halfling wild sorcerer who was struck by lightning and now focuses on harnessing power of lightning, casting Witch Bolt and Chromatic (Lightning) Orb. When casting these spells imagine him as Bilbo Baggins in a scene when he wanted the ring back or like Darth Sideous. Pretty dark character, potentially for some evil campaign.
I wonder what are the theoretical best dice to pick up and reroll for a chance to jump when having both Elemental Adept and Empower Spell. I would not touch 1 or 2, but probably 3, 4, 5 and maybe even 6 depending on how many of these well rolled. Say you rolled 3, 4 and 5. I'm rerolling both 3 and 4 for a chance of them rolling 1 + 2. If I roll 2nd level 1, 3, 4, 5, I might even pick all 3, 4 and 5 to reroll, so the chance of rolling 1 or 2 is higher.
I ran these personally ran these numbers and concluded you’d need 5 targets for CO (cast with a 5th level spell) to be better than fireball (including meta magic and sorcery advantage) to be better than a 3rd level fireball (also targeting 5 creatures which is easy with careful spell meta magic.) Bottom line damage is CO is cool and fun, but expectedly worse than fireball since they don’t happen in a vaccum. Also other ways to improve this spell include elven accuracy and elemental adept, which also improve damage, but neither increase it significantly enough to justify either over warcaster or +2 charisma.
Ooh, I love doing D&D probability simulations in Python! Learning new things about D&D *and* coding today! Chromatic Orb seems much better than I though. Glad you covered Careful and Transmuted Spell, though. They're probably better in most cases...But not nearly as cool! Somehow, in all the Python books and websites I read in middle and high school, I never learned about that bracket notation..."list comprehensions"? Nor about ternary operators...instead they focused a strange amount on serializing objects with "pickling", which I could never quite grasp at the time. I feel cheated. List comprehension and ternary would have made my coding life SO much easier. Thank you for enlightening me, haha.
09:00 and 10:09 You must have forgotten to label the y axis, because no, it's actually not at all apparent that the latter bar is much better than the first one. They're of equal height after all...
Yea I saw his video while making mine and was glad somebody else made content about it because it seemed so crazy that I wasn't sure if I was getting something wrong haha. His was a good video!
One trick you can use with chromatic orb, is that you can hit an object to cause another bounce if no enemy is within range. Could have your familar drop some random object on the ground in whatever spot you would need it at.
Very fun thought exercise! I think it is important to note that you can give some sorcerous love to fireball as well. Not only does the DC of the spell increase by 1, but you can make it much more reliable by using Careful spell to help alleviate the mishmash issues Edit: oops! Should have waited for the ending! Though, the innate sorcery boost is still worth noting!
Interesting video, I'm glad to see other compelling spell options that can hopefully give more variety in combat. Did you include the spell DC bump when comparing fireball against chromatic orb for sorcerer? It would make a much smaller difference than advantage on the chromatic orb attacks but still would be fair to include. The improvement to careful spell means I'd still probably be leaning towards fireball on sorcerer but it depends on your metamagic choices.
This was literally the first build i made when wotc showed the new sorc. Few synergies i used to increase the value of the orb. Elvin accuracy and elemental adept increase chance to bounce/crit. Attacking paralized enemy(spell sniper helps) or adding d8 to the attack(ex. spirit shroud dm ruling) also work great. You already mentioned the meta magic but inspiration also has good synergy. 3 lvls into warlock for hex blade curse is kinda out there but would let you crit on 19. Battle master also lets you add d8 to attacks. Summon undead is also a concentration spell that would let you paralize enemies
I don’t know that I’d ever pick Chromatic Orb over Fireball but I could see myself using both depending on what the battlefield looks like. Daisy chaining attacks to get targets that Fireball normally couldn’t reach is a really interesting strategy.
Thanks to my sorcerer dad's constant reminders, I never forget. "Now son, always remember ta bring your diamond worth at least 50 gold pieces around with you. Better yet, bring one worth a hundr'd gold pieces to account for inflation and all. Don't want to be caught with the economy interfering with yer spellcastin'!"
As someone who usually likes to play melee martials, I don't think I have ever objected to being in the middle of a fireball. Most of the martials can pretty easily tank that damage, and it's definitely worth it to eliminate several enemies at once. If I was wrong and it drops me, its pretty easy to be picked back up anyways with a simple healing word.
Thanks for even more great info. A couple of things that also make chromatic orb a potentially quite powerful spell. Empowered metamagic. You can re-roll up to charisma mod # of dice… usually you would only do this for very low rolls. But with chromatic orb you might decide to re-roll some dice if you had no duplicates. Also, I didn’t see a crit chance of mention. Doubling the dice also increases chances for the spell to bounce :-)
Chromatic Orb also combo's nicely with another sorcerer (or maybe sub class of sorcerer) ability to help increase the likelihood of getting a double (but can't remember if it is RAW or not). Sorcerer got some really nice things out of 5.24
It's worth asking your DM as a Wild Magic Sorcerer if rolling 29-32 on the Wild Magic Surge table will allow you to bounce Chromatic Orb to its maximum number of targets, since it makes your next damaging spell within a minute deal maximum damage. Same question applies to Sorcerous Burst.
chromatic orb also works with spell sniper unlike fireball which is also pretty useful if you grab that feat. Twin spell works, distant spell works. Personally, I'd grab both fireball and orb. edit: this is because chromatic roll is an attack-roll spell and fireball is a saving through spell.
7th, not 6th. You need 7th for 9d8, but yeah, that works. Of course, that's spending a 7th level spell to do a bit over 40 damage to each target which is probably usually not worth it compared to actual 7th level options.
While I handily disagree that this is correct due to you being able to guarantee damage with Fireball which you can't do with the orb, there is one benefit to rolling the orb: Attack rolls can be manipulated more than enemy saving throws. Bless and other spells and effects can make the orb much more likely to hit, and there are ways to reroll failed attacks as well that are more common than forcing enemies to reroll succeeded saves. Not enough in my opinion, particularly with the new edition finally making Careful Spell deal no damage and Sculpt Spells already solving this problem, but it's something.
@@DndUnoptimized I'd say it's a worthy analysis anyway. While Fireball may generally be the meta pick, considering how other spells could have potential makes good practice for understanding the gamestate as a whole!
Man I’ve had a chromatic orb build I’m itching to try ever since the new phb dropped, wild magic sorc with elven accuracy and elemental adept, popping surges as often as possible to high roll into the result that maximizes your next damaging spell. Based on the wording, it should be a guaranteed bounce if you hit, and if you crit you do just a huge whalloping of damage
The bad thing about Chromatic Orb is that you can't afford the material component at first level, and it feels really bad when you waste your turn with a miss. One of the biggest upsides to CO is that it can crit. CO is bad when the monsters have high AC. Which is likely if you have martials in your party for challenge reasons. Spells that always hit are much better in this situation. If they are resistant to fire, you can use Lightning Bolt or Magic Missile.
With just starting gold, you can afford all sorts of stuff. Sorcerers and Wizards don't need to spend much on armor or weapons, so 50 GP is a reasonable amount to have on hand at first level.
@@WolfHreda - You cannot afford it taking the standard equipment. If you roll for starting wealth, you may roll low and not be able to afford it, especially as a sorcerer.
Does elvin accuracy work with innate sorcery? I feel like that would be an easy addition to chance to hit, since you would take it anyways at presumably level 4. You could then save your metamagic, or even use the empower metamagic
Built my newest character around chromatic Orb. The idea is using empowered meta magic and just to start gambling like on a slot machine. Also wild magic sorcerer because gambling.
Chromatic orb also allows you to target vulnerabilities for double damage dice and can also crit due to having an attack roll. Would it double dice again? I believe it would!
Unless I'm mistaken, if the enemy is vulnerable to the damage type then it just doubles the damage, not the dice. So I don't think it would count for rolling duplicates if that's what you were suggesting
When reading the spell, I don't see a reason to not leap the orb between two targets hitting them repeatedly. They would quality as "a different target" and "the new target" each time. (If you have enough leaps and roll enough doubles.) Would you agree?
I have to disagree. In general, aside from low levels, blasting loses significant potency as you level up. I think of what would I rather be doing with that spell slot resource, putting up a control spell of some sort or just using the spell slot to convert into sorcery points and having more 3rd level slots or more slots to cast shield or silvery barbs. Eventually your cantrips overshadow the small 3d8 single target damage and costs zero resources.
I can't disagree that casting a control spell instead would be better! But in my mind fireball and CO are both blast spells and sorcerers for the most part are considered blasters... (But I wonder if they might make the best controllers)
If adding Innate Sorcery into the mix, did you increase the DC fit that fireball by 1? I know it’s only a 5% difference, but apples to apples and all :)
How did you get 14,3%? If you attack with advantage you have a 12.7% chance to miss and be able to use seeking spell and then a 5% chance to crit. So seeking spell would increase your crit chance by 0.635% to a total of 10.635% (but it depends on the AC of your enemy)
Did you account for saves against fireball for half damage? It wasn’t clear to me. Personally I love this spell. It appeals to my gambling nature and it is great for targeting enemies already in combat or spread out. Unfortunately on the three times I’ve up-cast the spell including once with advantage on spell attack rolls, I have missed with the second attack roll! 😫
Oh no! Yea that's definitely one of the drawbacks. Odds are in your favor you jump a bunch of you have adv and seeking spell, but even then, you never guarantee it. As for fireball, yes I did half damage on save
Even as a soceror would fire ball still not be better for the other meta magic you mentioned? With a single sorcery point you can hit all of the enemies for garuenteed damage that is higher than chromatic orb while sparing all of your allies. Its true that fireball is more often resisted but that must be lower amongst the types of enemeies you would cast fireball on right? Meanwhile chromatic orb can miss at any point and can even end up doing no damage, even if you use meta magic.
I don't play D&D for pizzazz & fun WTF? Seriously I am very averse to gambling & losing feels more bad than winning feels good so that's a big negative of Chromatic Orb, for me. I am very much not Timmy. I'd say variance is also objectively worse as it tends to favour the bad guys, as they are usually the underdogs & have to get lucky to win. Sorcerers can choose metamagic to boost the damage of their Fireballs and also cast them carefully - or just caveat emptor if allies get in the way. I guess they can reroll damage on Chromatic Orb too fishing for a jump, I'm not sure how many times they can do this though once per casting I assume? Same with seeking Spell. Hmm actually it may be for every roll not clear. That sure pumps the orb though.
your forgot a 4th reason why it would stop bouncing: No more legal enemies. In order to bounce you need a target within 30ft of the previous target that AS NOT BEEN HIT ALREADY. Chromatic orb cannot hit twice the same target. so even a level 9 chromatic orb cannot simply bounce between 2 target 9 times, hitting each of them 5 times. Then your comparison is unfair. your first comparison with 35% to miss the first target and deal 0 damage was a fair comparison and even you conceded that chromatic orb wasn't that great in that case. So you decided to give Chromatic orb access to innate sorcery and metamagic, but failed to give the same consideration to fireball... Making everything else after that USELESS and unuseable. Then if you are to compare Innate sorcery chromatic orb, at least compare it with inante sorcery fireball (with a DC 1 point higher, reducing the chance the target resist by 5%) Then if you are willing to use Seeking spell metamagic with your chromatic orb, give an equal bonus to fireball, heighten spell (but cost 2 SP) to lower even further the chance the target succeed his saving throw or you could use careful metamagic (same 1 SP cost) and now you can include all 4 target since you don't need to circumvent your allies. Then FALSE again, when you say that you NEED metamagic for fireball and not for Chromatic orb. Sure 65% of the time you don't need seeking spell on chromatic orb because you did it the target, but we are talking about AVERAGE and probability, so you cannot say that you get those high number you shown without seeking spell. You NEED seeking spell to reach those numbers (statistically speaking) But when I'm facing fire resistance (or immune) creatures I can shoot a lightning bolt instead or chain lightning or cone of cold or synaptic static (at high enough level) so I don't HAVE to use transmuted spell. Same goes with careful spell. If my allies are smart and position themself so I can cast my fireball without hitting them or if only the rogue and the monk with evasion are stuck in the middle of the enemy pack, I don't need to use careful spell neither. Even the fire dragonborn (or wearing a magic item granting fire resistance) barbarian with fire resistance and advantage on his des saving throw might not care taking 1/4 of the damage if it kill most of the ennemies and if the rogue in my party took Alert (or anyone took alert) I can trade my low initiate with their higher one and shoot my fireball BEFORE the enemies spread and before the barbarian charge in the middle of the pack. And even with all those benefit you gave Chromatic Orb compare to a basic fireball... fireball still deal more damage... So you are wrong, fireball is much stronger then chromatic orb EXCEPTED in a few situation where a 30ft jump would allowed to hit more target then a careful fireball could get. When I play a sorcerer I NEVER take chromatic orb BECAUSE THE SPELL SUCKS, so yes when I get to level 5 I do grab fireball, because I didn't waste my spell prepare on chromatic orb I already need shield, mage armor, sleep, absorb elemental, I don't have room for weak Chromatic orb. And no I do not need a level 1 damaging spell, because in dnd 5e damaging spell SUCKS. I mean you should know BETTER then anyone else, you are the one who manage to include battlefield control in your DPR calculation... Same with my level 2 spells: between detect though, invisibility, suggestion, tasha mind whip, hold person, web, I don't have room for a level 2 chromatic orb Even at level 3, fireball... I take it for the level 5-9 but I quickly replace it with synaptic static that deal psychic damage and bring an element of control to the battlefield with the 1d6 penalty to ability check and attack rolls and concentration check or a careful cloudkill (if my party have taken blindsight somehow) so I can impose heavy obscurity to the enemies without even a saving throw and potentially burn a few legendary resistance to the BBEG. What is more advantageous for the party at low level casting chromatic orb and dealing low damage to probably just 1 target? or casting Sleep possibly putting up to 4 targets unconscious, granting your ally a free critical hit on eachof them?even if just 1 target get affected and fall unconscious, I mean this result in that target not attacking until it wake up. possibly forcing an other monster to use it action to wake it up or granting your ally a free critical hit. how much extra damage would the rogue deal to the target? how much damage does the cleric will deal instead of using his action to heal someone?
Made a couple of minor mistakes.
1. I had text saying "4.5+4.5+4.5+4.5=22.5" but it was meant to be 5 "4.5"s.
2. at 11:30 I said you don't need to use Seeking spell if you roll duplicates. I meant when you DON'T roll duplicates because the spell has already stopped.
This is a great video. It excellently highlights the ups and downs of both sides while also considering the VPR (Vibes Per Round). The excitement potential from Chromatic Orb should not be ignored and you nailed that. But you also highlighted that despite the math, hitting a 0 is just gonna feel bad.
Extremely well done!
Thanks! Lol Vibes per round! I do think CO syncs up with the sorcerer's identity so well
Just noticed that you are missing Crits, and by reading the spell it would increase the bounce chance.
Assuming you're a Sorcerer with advantage, so a 10% crits rate, you'd have a 39% (or there about) chance to bounce up from 34%. A level 2 upcast goes from 60% -> 70% chance to bounce.
Basically, every crit of a level 2+ cast will bounce, even a level 1 crit has a 94% change to bouce.
Seeking spell (or Eleven Accuracy or using a Heroic Inspiration) increases crit chance too.
I was just going to post this. Crits aren't rare when rolling so many d20s, and would have a pretty big impact on average damage as well.
I do take crits into account when bouncing in the simulation, but I didn't talk about it in the video. You'll crit a lot with this spell and I love critting with it is so beneficial.
@ you didn't though. 34% bounce rate on the base spell is for a non crit, it's about 40% if you include crits if attacking with advantage.
@@DndUnoptimized Ah, looks like your program does, my mistake. Using average numbers I get:
Targets Hit for 3rd Level Up Cast:
1 Target = 95.3%
2 Targets = 95.3% * 81.7% * 95.3% = 74.2%
3 Targets = 74.2% * 81.7% * 95.3% = 57.8%
4 Targets = 57.8% * 81.7% * 95.3% = 45.0%
A 5d8 Orb with Adv + Seeking has a 81.7% chance to explode to the next target.
Empowered spell metamagic is another great way to improve the odds of rolling doubles. Similar to seeking spell, you only have to use it reactively if you fail to bounce.
Halfling would be good to pad against the bad attack rolls of your characters using Chromatic Orb. Players should double-check with their DMs though, because I've heard of a couple, who when a halfling has advantage, do not allow rerolling the lower die even if it is a 1. (I think that is cruddy, but it is your DMs table so make sure your expectations match theirs.)
Yes halfling would be great if you wanted to maximize it
Absolutely agree Chromatic Orb does great for Sorcerer.
Suprised you didnt include Empowered Spell as well to boost the chance to roll duplicates. It gets expensive but can be a great boost if you dont roll duplicates on the first roll
Yea there are definitely other ways to boost it like empower spell and elemental adept. I don't think it's worth building around, but I probably should have mentioned these two at least. Thanks for bringing it up!
@@DndUnoptimized ooo I hadn’t thought about Elemental Adept, that’s better than if you were rolling d7s for bounce odds…though you would be self-restricting your damage type, partly overcoming that by ignoring resistance…idk probably a good pick if that’s your focus
@@DndUnoptimized Elemental Adept is quite good with Chromatic Orb. Now every 1 and 2 are considered duplicates (unless the DM is adversarial), giving you nice boost to jumping (more than just changing d8s to d7s for the purpose of jumping). Now I know my first 2024 character will be Alvin A. Curacy, halfling wild sorcerer who was struck by lightning and now focuses on harnessing power of lightning, casting Witch Bolt and Chromatic (Lightning) Orb. When casting these spells imagine him as Bilbo Baggins in a scene when he wanted the ring back or like Darth Sideous. Pretty dark character, potentially for some evil campaign.
I wonder what are the theoretical best dice to pick up and reroll for a chance to jump when having both Elemental Adept and Empower Spell. I would not touch 1 or 2, but probably 3, 4, 5 and maybe even 6 depending on how many of these well rolled. Say you rolled 3, 4 and 5. I'm rerolling both 3 and 4 for a chance of them rolling 1 + 2. If I roll 2nd level 1, 3, 4, 5, I might even pick all 3, 4 and 5 to reroll, so the chance of rolling 1 or 2 is higher.
@@georgeseed4009 I would think that building around trying to reroll to get lower damage dice might increase the odds but lower dpr
A good reason to play a sorcerer
I ran these personally ran these numbers and concluded you’d need 5 targets for CO (cast with a 5th level spell) to be better than fireball (including meta magic and sorcery advantage) to be better than a 3rd level fireball (also targeting 5 creatures which is easy with careful spell meta magic.)
Bottom line damage is CO is cool and fun, but expectedly worse than fireball since they don’t happen in a vaccum.
Also other ways to improve this spell include elven accuracy and elemental adept, which also improve damage, but neither increase it significantly enough to justify either over warcaster or +2 charisma.
Ooh, I love doing D&D probability simulations in Python! Learning new things about D&D *and* coding today! Chromatic Orb seems much better than I though. Glad you covered Careful and Transmuted Spell, though. They're probably better in most cases...But not nearly as cool!
Somehow, in all the Python books and websites I read in middle and high school, I never learned about that bracket notation..."list comprehensions"? Nor about ternary operators...instead they focused a strange amount on serializing objects with "pickling", which I could never quite grasp at the time. I feel cheated. List comprehension and ternary would have made my coding life SO much easier. Thank you for enlightening me, haha.
Haha glad I could help somehow!
09:00 and 10:09 You must have forgotten to label the y axis, because no, it's actually not at all apparent that the latter bar is much better than the first one. They're of equal height after all...
Ah. Yes that's fair. I'm keep that in mind if I do it again
Game Easy Roll Good did a good video about chromatic orb a couple months ago, happy to see other people seeing the light about it
Yea I saw his video while making mine and was glad somebody else made content about it because it seemed so crazy that I wasn't sure if I was getting something wrong haha. His was a good video!
One trick you can use with chromatic orb, is that you can hit an object to cause another bounce if no enemy is within range. Could have your familar drop some random object on the ground in whatever spot you would need it at.
Very fun thought exercise! I think it is important to note that you can give some sorcerous love to fireball as well. Not only does the DC of the spell increase by 1, but you can make it much more reliable by using Careful spell to help alleviate the mishmash issues
Edit: oops! Should have waited for the ending! Though, the innate sorcery boost is still worth noting!
Interesting video, I'm glad to see other compelling spell options that can hopefully give more variety in combat.
Did you include the spell DC bump when comparing fireball against chromatic orb for sorcerer? It would make a much smaller difference than advantage on the chromatic orb attacks but still would be fair to include. The improvement to careful spell means I'd still probably be leaning towards fireball on sorcerer but it depends on your metamagic choices.
No, I didn't add in the extra DC. It doesn't add much, but it would be something
This was literally the first build i made when wotc showed the new sorc. Few synergies i used to increase the value of the orb. Elvin accuracy and elemental adept increase chance to bounce/crit. Attacking paralized enemy(spell sniper helps) or adding d8 to the attack(ex. spirit shroud dm ruling) also work great. You already mentioned the meta magic but inspiration also has good synergy. 3 lvls into warlock for hex blade curse is kinda out there but would let you crit on 19. Battle master also lets you add d8 to attacks. Summon undead is also a concentration spell that would let you paralize enemies
I don’t know that I’d ever pick Chromatic Orb over Fireball but I could see myself using both depending on what the battlefield looks like. Daisy chaining attacks to get targets that Fireball normally couldn’t reach is a really interesting strategy.
Absolutely true. And an easy material component to remember too!
Thanks to my sorcerer dad's constant reminders, I never forget. "Now son, always remember ta bring your diamond worth at least 50 gold pieces around with you. Better yet, bring one worth a hundr'd gold pieces to account for inflation and all. Don't want to be caught with the economy interfering with yer spellcastin'!"
Man, look at the glow up on Chromatic Orb!
Really excellent video, lots to think about
As someone who usually likes to play melee martials, I don't think I have ever objected to being in the middle of a fireball. Most of the martials can pretty easily tank that damage, and it's definitely worth it to eliminate several enemies at once. If I was wrong and it drops me, its pretty easy to be picked back up anyways with a simple healing word.
Thanks for even more great info. A couple of things that also make chromatic orb a potentially quite powerful spell.
Empowered metamagic. You can re-roll up to charisma mod # of dice… usually you would only do this for very low rolls. But with chromatic orb you might decide to re-roll some dice if you had no duplicates.
Also, I didn’t see a crit chance of mention. Doubling the dice also increases chances for the spell to bounce :-)
That's right! I did double the dice in the simulations for crits but I didn't talk about them in the video. I really should have
Saw the Sorcerer w Chromatic Orb in a game recently and was very impressed. It's fun!
Chromatic Orb also combo's nicely with another sorcerer (or maybe sub class of sorcerer) ability to help increase the likelihood of getting a double (but can't remember if it is RAW or not). Sorcerer got some really nice things out of 5.24
It's worth asking your DM as a Wild Magic Sorcerer if rolling 29-32 on the Wild Magic Surge table will allow you to bounce Chromatic Orb to its maximum number of targets, since it makes your next damaging spell within a minute deal maximum damage. Same question applies to Sorcerous Burst.
Yes that's a really cool option if you get it!
chromatic orb also works with spell sniper unlike fireball which is also pretty useful if you grab that feat. Twin spell works, distant spell works. Personally, I'd grab both fireball and orb. edit: this is because chromatic roll is an attack-roll spell and fireball is a saving through spell.
Casting Chromatic Orb at 6th - 9th level guarantees, if you hit, 6 - 9 8 - 11d8 attack rolls.
7th, not 6th. You need 7th for 9d8, but yeah, that works. Of course, that's spending a 7th level spell to do a bit over 40 damage to each target which is probably usually not worth it compared to actual 7th level options.
While I handily disagree that this is correct due to you being able to guarantee damage with Fireball which you can't do with the orb, there is one benefit to rolling the orb: Attack rolls can be manipulated more than enemy saving throws. Bless and other spells and effects can make the orb much more likely to hit, and there are ways to reroll failed attacks as well that are more common than forcing enemies to reroll succeeded saves. Not enough in my opinion, particularly with the new edition finally making Careful Spell deal no damage and Sculpt Spells already solving this problem, but it's something.
This. Tweaked fireball will always be better.
Yes that is totally fair. Fireball with metamagic is fantastic!
@@DndUnoptimized I'd say it's a worthy analysis anyway. While Fireball may generally be the meta pick, considering how other spells could have potential makes good practice for understanding the gamestate as a whole!
Man I’ve had a chromatic orb build I’m itching to try ever since the new phb dropped, wild magic sorc with elven accuracy and elemental adept, popping surges as often as possible to high roll into the result that maximizes your next damaging spell. Based on the wording, it should be a guaranteed bounce if you hit, and if you crit you do just a huge whalloping of damage
The bad thing about Chromatic Orb is that you can't afford the material component at first level, and it feels really bad when you waste your turn with a miss. One of the biggest upsides to CO is that it can crit.
CO is bad when the monsters have high AC. Which is likely if you have martials in your party for challenge reasons. Spells that always hit are much better in this situation. If they are resistant to fire, you can use Lightning Bolt or Magic Missile.
With just starting gold, you can afford all sorts of stuff. Sorcerers and Wizards don't need to spend much on armor or weapons, so 50 GP is a reasonable amount to have on hand at first level.
@@WolfHreda - You cannot afford it taking the standard equipment. If you roll for starting wealth, you may roll low and not be able to afford it, especially as a sorcerer.
Does elvin accuracy work with innate sorcery? I feel like that would be an easy addition to chance to hit, since you would take it anyways at presumably level 4. You could then save your metamagic, or even use the empower metamagic
That’s the feat where you can’t friendly fire a Simon or Theodore, right? ;)
Yup! If you have Elven accuracy then it gets pretty crazy!
Built my newest character around chromatic Orb. The idea is using empowered meta magic and just to start gambling like on a slot machine. Also wild magic sorcerer because gambling.
*for sorcerers 😊
Chromatic orb also allows you to target vulnerabilities for double damage dice and can also crit due to having an attack roll. Would it double dice again? I believe it would!
Unless I'm mistaken, if the enemy is vulnerable to the damage type then it just doubles the damage, not the dice. So I don't think it would count for rolling duplicates if that's what you were suggesting
When reading the spell, I don't see a reason to not leap the orb between two targets hitting them repeatedly. They would quality as "a different target" and "the new target" each time. (If you have enough leaps and roll enough doubles.) Would you agree?
I have to disagree. In general, aside from low levels, blasting loses significant potency as you level up.
I think of what would I rather be doing with that spell slot resource, putting up a control spell of some sort or just using the spell slot to convert into sorcery points and having more 3rd level slots or more slots to cast shield or silvery barbs.
Eventually your cantrips overshadow the small 3d8 single target damage and costs zero resources.
I can't disagree that casting a control spell instead would be better! But in my mind fireball and CO are both blast spells and sorcerers for the most part are considered blasters... (But I wonder if they might make the best controllers)
Stupid question would a bunch of clock work amulets help with the hit rate? since it averages the dice.
3 weeks ago I did 40 damage (Chromatic Orb) with my Level 1 Sorcerer. It was a nat 20 on both atackrolls (Advantage).
Sick!
If adding Innate Sorcery into the mix, did you increase the DC fit that fireball by 1? I know it’s only a 5% difference, but apples to apples and all :)
No I didn't, it adds a tiny amount of damage, but it is still something.
Did you factor in the 14,3% chance to crit if you use seeking spell?
Oh! No I didn't! Good point. Not a huge change, but definitely a good point
@@DndUnoptimizedit ups the bounce chance of the lower level casts by quite a bit
How did you get 14,3%? If you attack with advantage you have a 12.7% chance to miss and be able to use seeking spell and then a 5% chance to crit. So seeking spell would increase your crit chance by 0.635% to a total of 10.635% (but it depends on the AC of your enemy)
@ they were mistakenly treating Seeking Spell like it was Elven Accuracy which has a 14.26% chance to crit.
Ow I didnt know you could just use seeking spell if you miss.
Is there röy no way to reroll dmg dice with spell attacks? 😁
Did you account for saves against fireball for half damage? It wasn’t clear to me.
Personally I love this spell. It appeals to my gambling nature and it is great for targeting enemies already in combat or spread out.
Unfortunately on the three times I’ve up-cast the spell including once with advantage on spell attack rolls, I have missed with the second attack roll! 😫
Oh no! Yea that's definitely one of the drawbacks. Odds are in your favor you jump a bunch of you have adv and seeking spell, but even then, you never guarantee it.
As for fireball, yes I did half damage on save
Even as a soceror would fire ball still not be better for the other meta magic you mentioned? With a single sorcery point you can hit all of the enemies for garuenteed damage that is higher than chromatic orb while sparing all of your allies. Its true that fireball is more often resisted but that must be lower amongst the types of enemeies you would cast fireball on right? Meanwhile chromatic orb can miss at any point and can even end up doing no damage, even if you use meta magic.
Yup! Definitely true. With metamagic, fireball overcomes those hurdles for sure
Toast
I don't play D&D for pizzazz & fun WTF? Seriously I am very averse to gambling & losing feels more bad than winning feels good so that's a big negative of Chromatic Orb, for me. I am very much not Timmy.
I'd say variance is also objectively worse as it tends to favour the bad guys, as they are usually the underdogs & have to get lucky to win.
Sorcerers can choose metamagic to boost the damage of their Fireballs and also cast them carefully - or just caveat emptor if allies get in the way. I guess they can reroll damage on Chromatic Orb too fishing for a jump, I'm not sure how many times they can do this though once per casting I assume? Same with seeking Spell. Hmm actually it may be for every roll not clear. That sure pumps the orb though.
Definitely fair!
Sorcerer can also use Empowered Spell to re-roll chromatic orb damage dice in order to guarantee a bounce
your forgot a 4th reason why it would stop bouncing: No more legal enemies. In order to bounce you need a target within 30ft of the previous target that AS NOT BEEN HIT ALREADY. Chromatic orb cannot hit twice the same target. so even a level 9 chromatic orb cannot simply bounce between 2 target 9 times, hitting each of them 5 times.
Then your comparison is unfair. your first comparison with 35% to miss the first target and deal 0 damage was a fair comparison and even you conceded that chromatic orb wasn't that great in that case. So you decided to give Chromatic orb access to innate sorcery and metamagic, but failed to give the same consideration to fireball... Making everything else after that USELESS and unuseable.
Then if you are to compare Innate sorcery chromatic orb, at least compare it with inante sorcery fireball (with a DC 1 point higher, reducing the chance the target resist by 5%)
Then if you are willing to use Seeking spell metamagic with your chromatic orb, give an equal bonus to fireball, heighten spell (but cost 2 SP) to lower even further the chance the target succeed his saving throw or you could use careful metamagic (same 1 SP cost) and now you can include all 4 target since you don't need to circumvent your allies.
Then FALSE again, when you say that you NEED metamagic for fireball and not for Chromatic orb.
Sure 65% of the time you don't need seeking spell on chromatic orb because you did it the target, but we are talking about AVERAGE and probability, so you cannot say that you get those high number you shown without seeking spell. You NEED seeking spell to reach those numbers (statistically speaking)
But when I'm facing fire resistance (or immune) creatures I can shoot a lightning bolt instead or chain lightning or cone of cold or synaptic static (at high enough level) so I don't HAVE to use transmuted spell.
Same goes with careful spell. If my allies are smart and position themself so I can cast my fireball without hitting them or if only the rogue and the monk with evasion are stuck in the middle of the enemy pack, I don't need to use careful spell neither. Even the fire dragonborn (or wearing a magic item granting fire resistance) barbarian with fire resistance and advantage on his des saving throw might not care taking 1/4 of the damage if it kill most of the ennemies
and if the rogue in my party took Alert (or anyone took alert) I can trade my low initiate with their higher one and shoot my fireball BEFORE the enemies spread and before the barbarian charge in the middle of the pack.
And even with all those benefit you gave Chromatic Orb compare to a basic fireball... fireball still deal more damage...
So you are wrong, fireball is much stronger then chromatic orb EXCEPTED in a few situation where a 30ft jump would allowed to hit more target then a careful fireball could get.
When I play a sorcerer I NEVER take chromatic orb BECAUSE THE SPELL SUCKS, so yes when I get to level 5 I do grab fireball, because I didn't waste my spell prepare on chromatic orb
I already need shield, mage armor, sleep, absorb elemental, I don't have room for weak Chromatic orb. And no I do not need a level 1 damaging spell, because in dnd 5e damaging spell SUCKS. I mean you should know BETTER then anyone else, you are the one who manage to include battlefield control in your DPR calculation...
Same with my level 2 spells: between detect though, invisibility, suggestion, tasha mind whip, hold person, web, I don't have room for a level 2 chromatic orb
Even at level 3, fireball... I take it for the level 5-9 but I quickly replace it with synaptic static that deal psychic damage and bring an element of control to the battlefield with the 1d6 penalty to ability check and attack rolls and concentration check or a careful cloudkill (if my party have taken blindsight somehow) so I can impose heavy obscurity to the enemies without even a saving throw and potentially burn a few legendary resistance to the BBEG.
What is more advantageous for the party at low level casting chromatic orb and dealing low damage to probably just 1 target? or casting Sleep possibly putting up to 4 targets unconscious, granting your ally a free critical hit on eachof them?even if just 1 target get affected and fall unconscious, I mean this result in that target not attacking until it wake up. possibly forcing an other monster to use it action to wake it up or granting your ally a free critical hit. how much extra damage would the rogue deal to the target? how much damage does the cleric will deal instead of using his action to heal someone?
Why would you use the old version of Sleep with the new version of Chromatic Orb?