![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickRight now I'm listening to a song that I kind of like. It's catchy and funny and honestly resembles a lot of D&D campaigns that I have not played but have watched from the sidelines.
Of course I'm going to link the song. I'm not a monster.
In the song, which I am sure you have all given a listen, someone's Adventuring Party is running a dungeon or whatever. The Adventuring Party has sent a scout forward, who comes back and reports "Tiny-ass room, it's a damn crawl space. There's twenty cultists packed wall to wall" (This is an actual quote from the song.)
Now, "tiny ass room" is not anything we can work with, but later on, we get NUMERIC DIMENSIONS. "It was eight by eight, barely space to stand."
I initially thought that this "eight by eight" was in "squares" -- eight squares by eight squares -- because this is a D&D song and graph paper is frequently involved in old-school D&D. A common scale for the graph paper is 5 feet = 1 square on 1/4 inch graph paper, but this would indicate a 40' by 40' room and twenty cultists are not even remotely "packed wall to wall" in that kind of space so my vote is not squares.
The room seems like it's probably eight feet by eight feet by a reasonable ceiling height like 8' or similar (this can be imagined, by Americans, as 2 full sheets of 4'x8 plywood or drywall). Singers sound American, D&D was invented by Americans using Imperial units so... eight by eight is probably feet. That's tight, about 5.94 square meters, for twenty cultists. Is there room in an 8x8 space for twenty cultists (and, presumably, some cult-accoutrements like a wall-mounted altar and some dribbly candles and weird diagrams on the wall and so forth? Yes! Twenty cultists in an 8' square space is a density of approximately 3.36 cultists per square meter. This is comparable to a busy college bar. It's not to "dangerous" levels, but it's definitely crowded. I think it's eight feet by eight feet with a non-excessive ceiling height.
Our Adventuring Party is likely in the hallway outside of the door because there's not room for them inside the door. How many people are in the Adventuring Party? Well, let's see. The song mentions the following people:
Scout. Barbarian. Paladin. Druid. Rogue. Ranger. Mage. Warlock. Tank. Cleric. Dwarf.
That's 11 different mentions but I don't think all of those things are classes (this is D&D-speak for "job") so some of the words might be referring to the same person twice. Like, Tank is not a class -- it's a role in the party -- but a Barbarian COULD be a Tank, so maybe that's not a separate person.
In D&D, a class is what you do and a race is what you are, so Dwarf is also not a class.
According to 3rd Edition, everything in that list is a class except for Scout, Mage, Tank, and Dwarf. Because (a) the Mage is a main character in the song and (b) casts fireball, I'm gonna SAY Mage is the name of the Wizard because wizards are well-known for fireball. That whittles it down to Scout, Tank, and Dwarf being "different words for some other person already noted as being in the party".
I think the scouting job is being handled by a legit classed party member who would be skilled at sneaking and hiding in shadows and checking for traps and shit. I'm putting Rogue into the scouting position. I feel like Rogue is thief-adjacent (I think they renamed thief for optics) and probably would be useful at this style of thing, given that there isn't any backstabbery or second-story work needing to be done at the moment. I'd have gone with Ranger but this song is set indoors, so the more urban build is a better choice for scouting.
Tank is not a class but it is a role in an Adventuring Party handled by a tough person with the stats to absorb hits and draw aggro. (I am genre-savvy.) Lacking further information, I could assign this role to either Paladin or Barbarian without any problem.
Dwarf, obviously, is a race and not a job but Dwarves can be almost anything of any alignment, so probably someone in the party is a dwarf. Could be the Paladin. Nothing wrong with a Dwarf Paladin.
Lower end of the party is 8, which seems reasonable if somewhat poor odds for our Adventuring Party. Of course, they are up against twenty lightly-armed cultists dressed in robes with a shitty ass armor class who are also trapped in a room with very little space to maneuver and no decent ranged weapons. (Ceremonial daggers are generally too full of twisty carved bits to fly well when thrown. If they were practical, they'd just be called daggers and not ceremonial daggers. Here, ceremonial means not practical.)
Mage casts fireball. We all know (I'm sure) that this is a spell. What I didn't know before going down this rabbithole with that banger of a song on repeat via the magic of YouTube, was that there are fucking INSTRUCTIONS for how fireball works. Well, fuck me. I thought all ya'll D&D people were just MAKING SHIT UP but it turns out that fireball has actual rules.
I have read an actual (fairly) scholarly reddit article on fireball where a nerd talks about nerd stuff, basically the history of how fireball works in various editions of D&D rules. (The rules change from edition to edition but people doing this sort of thing typically settle on an edition that they can live with with house rules added as required to make their group happy. I am picking ONE rule to look at because ain't nobody got time to commentary on how fireball works for every iteration of D&D rules except, perhaps, the aforementioned author of the reddit article.)
Here's the Fireball rule, from 5th Edition. Because I like this one, is why. Yes, I did pull classes from 3rd. I don't want to talk about it. I am on a Curiosity Journey and I am having a fucking good time.
Fireball
3 Evocation
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 150 feet
Target: A point you choose within range
Components: V S M (A tiny ball of bat guano and sulfur)
Duration: Instantaneous
Classes: Sorcerer, Wizard, Spellblade
A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame. Each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target takes 8d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The fire spreads around corners. It ignites flammable objects in the area that aren’t being worn or carried.
At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 3rd.
I am, for what it's worth, now getting to math-adjacent problems. Thank you for your patience. There was some preliminary mathing (about crowd densities and what "cultists packed wall to wall" might mean) but now it's kind of getting to be time for actual math. Yay! I'm sure you are all as excited as I am.
I read for meaning in the description above so that I know enough about fireball to ask some serious questions. I've pulled the stuff I think might be needed for the questions to come.
1. casting range is 150 feet
2. wizard (mage) can choose point of ignition
3. AoE is a 20 foot radius sphere centered on that point.
4. Fireball goes around corners.
Question 1: Is there anywhere that the mage (located at the threshold of the room since he just "tripped and kicked in the door") can set the starting point of Fireball to not get his party set on fire?
No. For a mage standing at the threshold of an 8x8 room, there is nowhere to put a 20 foot radius ball of fire (capable of going around corners) that does not somewhat damage the party. This is a friendly fire event in progress.
Question 2: How are the party members probably arranged in the hallway? (I need to get some spacing for them to double-check that everybody is in the blast radius.) Here I need to make some guesses. Now, I want the Exciting Cult Ritual Room to be at the end of a scary dark hallway because nobody is going to put the Costco sized bale of bathroom tissue in the closet at the end of the hall and the Exciting Cult Ritual Room in some random doorway along the hallway, right? Right?
Except... the MAGE trips and kicks in the door. Song says so. Even idiots know that mages are not front line troops. They're just... not. They tend to be glass cannons and they are not what you put in the front of the party for any kind of combat adjacent situation like, say, dungeon of deranged cultists or whatever. Scout (if exploring or whatever) then Tank goes in the front. Other melee combat goes after tank. Ranged fighters (including most mages) next, then squishy healers at the back. So I don't know what is going on with party discipline or how long the mage tripped on the edge of his annoyingly nonfunctional robes, like was this a Three Stooges quality trip? *sigh* Probably not.
I'm thinking that maybe a side door in the hallway with half the party past the doorway and half the party not yet to the doorway... That seems more in line with the narrative we're given. Fine. Cult ritual room is in hallway, along one wall.
Hallways are needed for ritual processions and getting unwilling ritual participants to ritual room, so they won't be super tight. A 4' hallway seems like a reasonable compromise between "roomy" and "cost-effective". I don't care how beloved your demonic overlord is, hallways still need to be tunneled or constructed and that shit takes money. Betcha a demonic overlord has zero patience for cost overruns in sect hq construction.
And what's the order of our party?
Front to back: Rogue (doing scouting, so still at the "front"), Barbarian (tank), Paladin (dwarf), Druid, Ranger, Mage, Warlock, Cleric. Mage is at the door threshold.
We're using 1.5 people per square meter (A lot of my information about crowd spacing comes from this site. I am not completely making shit up over here.) for spacing, which is equivalent to 1.5 people per (approximately) 11 square feet or about seven squares to one person on a "1 square = 1 square foot" grid. Happily I have graph paper handy and drew the little blocks representing each party member's personal space and everything.
I also used a ruler to measure the "blast radius" (20 feet is 5 inches of squares at 1/4 square = 1 foot) of a 20-foot radius fireball located on the wall opposite the door of the tiny ass room with the adventuring party in position in the 4' hallway outside the tiny ass room. If I were a cool DM, I would have (to scale) clear colored circles of red to plunk down centered on the caster's point-of-ignition, but I am not Brennan Lee Mulligan and a ruler worked fine. Each party member, at the designated spacing, is 100% within the 5 inch blast radius of the fireball. The furthest party member (Rogue) is approximately 3.5" from the blast center. Everybody gets hit. So do all the cultists, obvi. (For what it's worth, if you are "really" playing "real" D&D, everybody who is even a little bit hit gets hit.)
Now, it's time to roll dice to see who lives and who dies. Here once again I am going to have to Make Up Some Things because we do not yet have enough fucking information to Do The Math. Damn it. What level are these people? (There is no way I am generating 20 cultists at level *mumble* and murdering them for your entertainment. Nobody cares about the cultists. Look. The cultists all die, okay? They all die. Forget about the cultists.)
The wizard (mage) has to have a level 3 spell slot available to have fireball as a pre-loaded spell. This is part of the rules. Level 3 spell slots come online at Wizard level 5 formageswizards. Also the druid can shapeshift into a bear, a feat not possible before the druid hits level 4. Based on this information, I am assuming our party is a level 5 group.
I have used an online utility (there are several) to roll up characters with stats (and backstories and stuff they are carrying and loot and all kinds of shit, like, way more than we need for this exercise) so that I can continue with this shitposting that was supposed to be quick and fun and has become three days of non-continuous effort at Learning How D&D Works. The details about the characters were auto-generated but I got to pick the level, race, class, and names on my own.
Here's our party:
Rouge (lol) the Rogue
Barbie the Barbarian (He/Him)
Paladin Paladin
Edwin Druid
Ranger Rick
Mage the Wizard
Kid Rock the War Lock
Eric the Cleric
When in range of a cast fireball, your PCs and NPCs have to roll a Dexterity saving throw to see how much damage they take. The Dex saving throw is a 1D20+(modifier)+(proficiency if any). The modifier and proficiency numbers are helpfully included in the character sheets provided by the internet character creator thing. Paladin Paladin is, as I said above, a dwarf. :) Edwin Druid and Eric the Cleric are Wood Elves. Everybody else is human.
The Dex saving throw number (the dice roll plus bonuses) has to meet or exceed the DC for the PC or NPC to be "saved" against the fireball effect. (I had to do yet more reading to learn what a DC was. Please to be appreciating my efforts in shitposting.) DC is "difficulty class", a number derived by adding 8 to the wizard's spellcasting ability modifier (his what?) and his proficiency bonus. *sigh* I gotta say, this D&D shit is looking more and more like it's just... spreadsheets with a story kind of draped over it as an evil veil of deception to make it appear enjoyable.
The spellcasting ability modifier for a wizard is derived from the wizard's Intelligence. To determine the spellcasting ability modifier, subtract 10 from the Intelligence and divide by 2, rounding down if it's odd.
Mage the Wizard has an Intelligence of 20 (this is as high as it goes), minus ten and divided by 2 is 5 for the spellcasting ability modifier. Mage the Wizard, as level 5, also has a proficiency bonus of +3, so the DC for this fireball is (5+3+8) or 16.
The Adventurer Party Members need to roll a 16, 17, 18, 19, or 20 to achieve "half damage" under the rules. They have a 75% chance for "Full Frontal Toasting" and a 25% chance for "Half Toasted" on a D20 roll. Their base roll is modified by their individual add-ons for Dex saving throws, which is added (or subtracted) to come up with the "answer" to tell if they take full damage (failure) or half damage (success) from the fireball. There is nothing they can do to get out of suffering at least half fireball damage. Everybody is gonna get dinged for at least half the fireball damage.
Here's everybody's add-ons for Dex saving throws. This number gets added or subtracted from the dice roll to get the result for the Dex save.
Rouge the Rogue: +7
Barbie the Barbarian: +1
Paladin Paladin: -1 (I guess dwarves do not dodge well.)
Edwin Druid: +2
Ranger Rick: +7
Mage the Wizard, who has to dodge his own dipshittery: +2
Kid Rock the War Lock: +2
Eric the Cleric: +0
So now the adventurers roll the 1d20, which I am doing online with a fake online dice roller thing because I do not own a 1d20, and compute their Dex save.
Rouge: 19 (+7) = 26. Half damage
Barbie: 17 (+1) = 18. Half damage
Paladin: 11 (-1) = 10. Full damage.
Edwin: 13 (+2) = 15. Full damage.
Rick: 15 (+7) = 21. Half damage.
Mage: 11 (+2) = 13. Full damage.
Kid Rock: 6 (+2) = 8. Full damage.
Eric: 19 (+0) = 19. Half damage.
A spreadsheet would really make this easier.
Now that I know who gets hit for how much, I can do the math for the actual damage. Fun! This is fun. We are having fun. (I honestly am having fun but that is because I enjoy the pain of reasonably authentic shitposting efforts.) The damage done by a fireball on a level 3 spell slot is 8d6 (Roll 8 regular six sided dice and add up the number to get the "total damage" but since I have a magical internet dice box, I just press the button that says "roll" after telling it to roll 8d6.) When it's a single attack, even if it hits many people at once, you roll once and apply that same damage (with modifiers as appropriate) to each person being hit.
I rolled a 37. Half of that is 18 (rounding down)
Now, look at each character's hit points to see if they're almost-dead or not. Asterisks are for the half-damage crowd.
Rouge*: 33 - 18 is 15 left.
Barbie*: 65 -18 is 47 left.
Paladin: 44 -37 is 7 left.
Edwin: 38 - 37 is 1 left.
Rick*: 36 - 18 is 18 left.
Mage: 37 - 37 is 0 left.
Kid Rock: 31 - 37 is 0 left.
Eric*: 38 - 18 is 20 left.
This is, I feel moved to point out, a shit ton of math and charts so I am not sure how it is supposed to be fun but it's still not a TPK (total party kill) event. Two adventurers are doing death saving throws (Mage and Kid Rock) but everybody else is more-or-less still standing. Good thing all the cultists died and there is no chance for further damage, or Edwin would be in real trouble.
The song description says it's a TPK. This... this is not a TPK. Yeah, some of the people are pretty fucked up, but nobody is dead (yet). (When you reach 0 HP, you have to make death saving throws until you collect 3 of a kind (fails or successes) OR you roll a 1 or a 20. Three successful rolls makes the character "unconscious but stable" and they will heal slowly even without a cleric. Three failed rolls makes them dead. Getting a 20 is "you get 1 HP and wake up" and getting a 1 counts as "two failures". Godspeed but I'm not interested in that shit.)
Could the adventurers die instantly from a fireball and skip the whole 3 of a kind saving throw dance? Yes, but the fireball has to do enough damage to take their current HP to zero and then another amount of damage left over that is the equal of their full HP or more. That's a lot of damage.
Could there BE a TPK event with 8d6 of damage and a level 5magewizard for this party? No. See, 8d6 for all 6's is 48. Half of that is 24. In a relatively unlikely (1 in 5.95374e-7) perfect roll of 8d6 (with everybody failing the Dex saving throw and taking full damage), Barbie would still be standing but everybody else would have to go ride the death saving throw Merry-Go-Round. Nobody is all-the-way-dead if they come in to this combat with full HP.
The song says it's a TPK song. How? There needs to be enough damage to single shot all the characters into oblivion. Good. How much is that?
If everyone is at full HP, it's 2X Barbarian HP, or 130, assuming everybody has shit Dex saving throws. If the party has already encountered some other cultists and stuff and been "softened up" by way of prior damage, there can be TPK for lower amounts of damage, said amount being (highest HP of any party member right now + HP of Barbie). Depending on how the party is faring, this could be as low as 66. (Everybody is currently at 1 HP.) So, Mage the Wizard's fireball needs to generate 66 at the low end for a TPK. At his current level, Mage's fireball can only do 48 damage. There is no possibility of TPK under these circumstances.
Now, fireball scales with the wizard upcasting. Fireball is a level 3 spell which means that the earliest it can be cast is by a level 5 wizard (who has a level 3 slot open for the fireball spell). But, a higher level wizard can totally slot fireball into a higher spell slot and generate MOAR PWR that way.
Just a note, this is turning out to be more fucking reading than I ever cared to do for a shitpost about D&D math, btw. Probably more reading than you wanted, too. Sorry.
The higher the spell slot a wizard puts fireball in, the more damage it does inside its consistent 20ft radius AoE. Spell slot 3 gives 8d6, the initial damage of fireball, but this damage can be increased to a max of 14d6 if fireball is put in spell slot 9. Could 14d6 damage TPK the adventurers?
14d6 gives a max of (perfect roll) 84 damage. This is stunningly unlikely (1 in 1.276093e-11, but odds of 66 or higher are about 4 in 1000) and still not a TPK for Barbie or Paladin if they started at full HP. However, it could totally wipe the team if they were softened up a little first and had shitty Dex saves.
Now, there isn't a great reason for a level 17 wizard to be slumming it with level 5 adventurers unless, say, the wizard is a gigantic asshole / loose cannon / somewhat firemad. It's not my song about fireball and I don't know how the wizard got there.
Full disclosure: You can do some seriously broken shit with fireball if you multiclass as a draconic bloodline sorcerer and have a DM willing to go along with your metric ton of rules lawyering. For more information you can start with this video. I did not do this because the fucking song did not say that the mage was a "draconic bloodline sorcerer" and I feel like this was not actually in line with the intent of the song.
Of course I'm going to link the song. I'm not a monster.
In the song, which I am sure you have all given a listen, someone's Adventuring Party is running a dungeon or whatever. The Adventuring Party has sent a scout forward, who comes back and reports "Tiny-ass room, it's a damn crawl space. There's twenty cultists packed wall to wall" (This is an actual quote from the song.)
Now, "tiny ass room" is not anything we can work with, but later on, we get NUMERIC DIMENSIONS. "It was eight by eight, barely space to stand."
I initially thought that this "eight by eight" was in "squares" -- eight squares by eight squares -- because this is a D&D song and graph paper is frequently involved in old-school D&D. A common scale for the graph paper is 5 feet = 1 square on 1/4 inch graph paper, but this would indicate a 40' by 40' room and twenty cultists are not even remotely "packed wall to wall" in that kind of space so my vote is not squares.
The room seems like it's probably eight feet by eight feet by a reasonable ceiling height like 8' or similar (this can be imagined, by Americans, as 2 full sheets of 4'x8 plywood or drywall). Singers sound American, D&D was invented by Americans using Imperial units so... eight by eight is probably feet. That's tight, about 5.94 square meters, for twenty cultists. Is there room in an 8x8 space for twenty cultists (and, presumably, some cult-accoutrements like a wall-mounted altar and some dribbly candles and weird diagrams on the wall and so forth? Yes! Twenty cultists in an 8' square space is a density of approximately 3.36 cultists per square meter. This is comparable to a busy college bar. It's not to "dangerous" levels, but it's definitely crowded. I think it's eight feet by eight feet with a non-excessive ceiling height.
Our Adventuring Party is likely in the hallway outside of the door because there's not room for them inside the door. How many people are in the Adventuring Party? Well, let's see. The song mentions the following people:
Scout. Barbarian. Paladin. Druid. Rogue. Ranger. Mage. Warlock. Tank. Cleric. Dwarf.
That's 11 different mentions but I don't think all of those things are classes (this is D&D-speak for "job") so some of the words might be referring to the same person twice. Like, Tank is not a class -- it's a role in the party -- but a Barbarian COULD be a Tank, so maybe that's not a separate person.
In D&D, a class is what you do and a race is what you are, so Dwarf is also not a class.
According to 3rd Edition, everything in that list is a class except for Scout, Mage, Tank, and Dwarf. Because (a) the Mage is a main character in the song and (b) casts fireball, I'm gonna SAY Mage is the name of the Wizard because wizards are well-known for fireball. That whittles it down to Scout, Tank, and Dwarf being "different words for some other person already noted as being in the party".
I think the scouting job is being handled by a legit classed party member who would be skilled at sneaking and hiding in shadows and checking for traps and shit. I'm putting Rogue into the scouting position. I feel like Rogue is thief-adjacent (I think they renamed thief for optics) and probably would be useful at this style of thing, given that there isn't any backstabbery or second-story work needing to be done at the moment. I'd have gone with Ranger but this song is set indoors, so the more urban build is a better choice for scouting.
Tank is not a class but it is a role in an Adventuring Party handled by a tough person with the stats to absorb hits and draw aggro. (I am genre-savvy.) Lacking further information, I could assign this role to either Paladin or Barbarian without any problem.
Dwarf, obviously, is a race and not a job but Dwarves can be almost anything of any alignment, so probably someone in the party is a dwarf. Could be the Paladin. Nothing wrong with a Dwarf Paladin.
Lower end of the party is 8, which seems reasonable if somewhat poor odds for our Adventuring Party. Of course, they are up against twenty lightly-armed cultists dressed in robes with a shitty ass armor class who are also trapped in a room with very little space to maneuver and no decent ranged weapons. (Ceremonial daggers are generally too full of twisty carved bits to fly well when thrown. If they were practical, they'd just be called daggers and not ceremonial daggers. Here, ceremonial means not practical.)
Mage casts fireball. We all know (I'm sure) that this is a spell. What I didn't know before going down this rabbithole with that banger of a song on repeat via the magic of YouTube, was that there are fucking INSTRUCTIONS for how fireball works. Well, fuck me. I thought all ya'll D&D people were just MAKING SHIT UP but it turns out that fireball has actual rules.
I have read an actual (fairly) scholarly reddit article on fireball where a nerd talks about nerd stuff, basically the history of how fireball works in various editions of D&D rules. (The rules change from edition to edition but people doing this sort of thing typically settle on an edition that they can live with with house rules added as required to make their group happy. I am picking ONE rule to look at because ain't nobody got time to commentary on how fireball works for every iteration of D&D rules except, perhaps, the aforementioned author of the reddit article.)
Here's the Fireball rule, from 5th Edition. Because I like this one, is why. Yes, I did pull classes from 3rd. I don't want to talk about it. I am on a Curiosity Journey and I am having a fucking good time.
Fireball
3 Evocation
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 150 feet
Target: A point you choose within range
Components: V S M (A tiny ball of bat guano and sulfur)
Duration: Instantaneous
Classes: Sorcerer, Wizard, Spellblade
A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame. Each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target takes 8d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The fire spreads around corners. It ignites flammable objects in the area that aren’t being worn or carried.
At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 3rd.
I am, for what it's worth, now getting to math-adjacent problems. Thank you for your patience. There was some preliminary mathing (about crowd densities and what "cultists packed wall to wall" might mean) but now it's kind of getting to be time for actual math. Yay! I'm sure you are all as excited as I am.
I read for meaning in the description above so that I know enough about fireball to ask some serious questions. I've pulled the stuff I think might be needed for the questions to come.
1. casting range is 150 feet
2. wizard (mage) can choose point of ignition
3. AoE is a 20 foot radius sphere centered on that point.
4. Fireball goes around corners.
Question 1: Is there anywhere that the mage (located at the threshold of the room since he just "tripped and kicked in the door") can set the starting point of Fireball to not get his party set on fire?
No. For a mage standing at the threshold of an 8x8 room, there is nowhere to put a 20 foot radius ball of fire (capable of going around corners) that does not somewhat damage the party. This is a friendly fire event in progress.
Question 2: How are the party members probably arranged in the hallway? (I need to get some spacing for them to double-check that everybody is in the blast radius.) Here I need to make some guesses. Now, I want the Exciting Cult Ritual Room to be at the end of a scary dark hallway because nobody is going to put the Costco sized bale of bathroom tissue in the closet at the end of the hall and the Exciting Cult Ritual Room in some random doorway along the hallway, right? Right?
Except... the MAGE trips and kicks in the door. Song says so. Even idiots know that mages are not front line troops. They're just... not. They tend to be glass cannons and they are not what you put in the front of the party for any kind of combat adjacent situation like, say, dungeon of deranged cultists or whatever. Scout (if exploring or whatever) then Tank goes in the front. Other melee combat goes after tank. Ranged fighters (including most mages) next, then squishy healers at the back. So I don't know what is going on with party discipline or how long the mage tripped on the edge of his annoyingly nonfunctional robes, like was this a Three Stooges quality trip? *sigh* Probably not.
I'm thinking that maybe a side door in the hallway with half the party past the doorway and half the party not yet to the doorway... That seems more in line with the narrative we're given. Fine. Cult ritual room is in hallway, along one wall.
Hallways are needed for ritual processions and getting unwilling ritual participants to ritual room, so they won't be super tight. A 4' hallway seems like a reasonable compromise between "roomy" and "cost-effective". I don't care how beloved your demonic overlord is, hallways still need to be tunneled or constructed and that shit takes money. Betcha a demonic overlord has zero patience for cost overruns in sect hq construction.
And what's the order of our party?
Front to back: Rogue (doing scouting, so still at the "front"), Barbarian (tank), Paladin (dwarf), Druid, Ranger, Mage, Warlock, Cleric. Mage is at the door threshold.
We're using 1.5 people per square meter (A lot of my information about crowd spacing comes from this site. I am not completely making shit up over here.) for spacing, which is equivalent to 1.5 people per (approximately) 11 square feet or about seven squares to one person on a "1 square = 1 square foot" grid. Happily I have graph paper handy and drew the little blocks representing each party member's personal space and everything.
I also used a ruler to measure the "blast radius" (20 feet is 5 inches of squares at 1/4 square = 1 foot) of a 20-foot radius fireball located on the wall opposite the door of the tiny ass room with the adventuring party in position in the 4' hallway outside the tiny ass room. If I were a cool DM, I would have (to scale) clear colored circles of red to plunk down centered on the caster's point-of-ignition, but I am not Brennan Lee Mulligan and a ruler worked fine. Each party member, at the designated spacing, is 100% within the 5 inch blast radius of the fireball. The furthest party member (Rogue) is approximately 3.5" from the blast center. Everybody gets hit. So do all the cultists, obvi. (For what it's worth, if you are "really" playing "real" D&D, everybody who is even a little bit hit gets hit.)
Now, it's time to roll dice to see who lives and who dies. Here once again I am going to have to Make Up Some Things because we do not yet have enough fucking information to Do The Math. Damn it. What level are these people? (There is no way I am generating 20 cultists at level *mumble* and murdering them for your entertainment. Nobody cares about the cultists. Look. The cultists all die, okay? They all die. Forget about the cultists.)
The wizard (mage) has to have a level 3 spell slot available to have fireball as a pre-loaded spell. This is part of the rules. Level 3 spell slots come online at Wizard level 5 for
I have used an online utility (there are several) to roll up characters with stats (and backstories and stuff they are carrying and loot and all kinds of shit, like, way more than we need for this exercise) so that I can continue with this shitposting that was supposed to be quick and fun and has become three days of non-continuous effort at Learning How D&D Works. The details about the characters were auto-generated but I got to pick the level, race, class, and names on my own.
Here's our party:
Rouge (lol) the Rogue
Barbie the Barbarian (He/Him)
Paladin Paladin
Edwin Druid
Ranger Rick
Mage the Wizard
Kid Rock the War Lock
Eric the Cleric
When in range of a cast fireball, your PCs and NPCs have to roll a Dexterity saving throw to see how much damage they take. The Dex saving throw is a 1D20+(modifier)+(proficiency if any). The modifier and proficiency numbers are helpfully included in the character sheets provided by the internet character creator thing. Paladin Paladin is, as I said above, a dwarf. :) Edwin Druid and Eric the Cleric are Wood Elves. Everybody else is human.
The Dex saving throw number (the dice roll plus bonuses) has to meet or exceed the DC for the PC or NPC to be "saved" against the fireball effect. (I had to do yet more reading to learn what a DC was. Please to be appreciating my efforts in shitposting.) DC is "difficulty class", a number derived by adding 8 to the wizard's spellcasting ability modifier (his what?) and his proficiency bonus. *sigh* I gotta say, this D&D shit is looking more and more like it's just... spreadsheets with a story kind of draped over it as an evil veil of deception to make it appear enjoyable.
The spellcasting ability modifier for a wizard is derived from the wizard's Intelligence. To determine the spellcasting ability modifier, subtract 10 from the Intelligence and divide by 2, rounding down if it's odd.
Mage the Wizard has an Intelligence of 20 (this is as high as it goes), minus ten and divided by 2 is 5 for the spellcasting ability modifier. Mage the Wizard, as level 5, also has a proficiency bonus of +3, so the DC for this fireball is (5+3+8) or 16.
The Adventurer Party Members need to roll a 16, 17, 18, 19, or 20 to achieve "half damage" under the rules. They have a 75% chance for "Full Frontal Toasting" and a 25% chance for "Half Toasted" on a D20 roll. Their base roll is modified by their individual add-ons for Dex saving throws, which is added (or subtracted) to come up with the "answer" to tell if they take full damage (failure) or half damage (success) from the fireball. There is nothing they can do to get out of suffering at least half fireball damage. Everybody is gonna get dinged for at least half the fireball damage.
Here's everybody's add-ons for Dex saving throws. This number gets added or subtracted from the dice roll to get the result for the Dex save.
Rouge the Rogue: +7
Barbie the Barbarian: +1
Paladin Paladin: -1 (I guess dwarves do not dodge well.)
Edwin Druid: +2
Ranger Rick: +7
Mage the Wizard, who has to dodge his own dipshittery: +2
Kid Rock the War Lock: +2
Eric the Cleric: +0
So now the adventurers roll the 1d20, which I am doing online with a fake online dice roller thing because I do not own a 1d20, and compute their Dex save.
Rouge: 19 (+7) = 26. Half damage
Barbie: 17 (+1) = 18. Half damage
Paladin: 11 (-1) = 10. Full damage.
Edwin: 13 (+2) = 15. Full damage.
Rick: 15 (+7) = 21. Half damage.
Mage: 11 (+2) = 13. Full damage.
Kid Rock: 6 (+2) = 8. Full damage.
Eric: 19 (+0) = 19. Half damage.
A spreadsheet would really make this easier.
Now that I know who gets hit for how much, I can do the math for the actual damage. Fun! This is fun. We are having fun. (I honestly am having fun but that is because I enjoy the pain of reasonably authentic shitposting efforts.) The damage done by a fireball on a level 3 spell slot is 8d6 (Roll 8 regular six sided dice and add up the number to get the "total damage" but since I have a magical internet dice box, I just press the button that says "roll" after telling it to roll 8d6.) When it's a single attack, even if it hits many people at once, you roll once and apply that same damage (with modifiers as appropriate) to each person being hit.
I rolled a 37. Half of that is 18 (rounding down)
Now, look at each character's hit points to see if they're almost-dead or not. Asterisks are for the half-damage crowd.
Rouge*: 33 - 18 is 15 left.
Barbie*: 65 -18 is 47 left.
Paladin: 44 -37 is 7 left.
Edwin: 38 - 37 is 1 left.
Rick*: 36 - 18 is 18 left.
Mage: 37 - 37 is 0 left.
Kid Rock: 31 - 37 is 0 left.
Eric*: 38 - 18 is 20 left.
This is, I feel moved to point out, a shit ton of math and charts so I am not sure how it is supposed to be fun but it's still not a TPK (total party kill) event. Two adventurers are doing death saving throws (Mage and Kid Rock) but everybody else is more-or-less still standing. Good thing all the cultists died and there is no chance for further damage, or Edwin would be in real trouble.
The song description says it's a TPK. This... this is not a TPK. Yeah, some of the people are pretty fucked up, but nobody is dead (yet). (When you reach 0 HP, you have to make death saving throws until you collect 3 of a kind (fails or successes) OR you roll a 1 or a 20. Three successful rolls makes the character "unconscious but stable" and they will heal slowly even without a cleric. Three failed rolls makes them dead. Getting a 20 is "you get 1 HP and wake up" and getting a 1 counts as "two failures". Godspeed but I'm not interested in that shit.)
Could the adventurers die instantly from a fireball and skip the whole 3 of a kind saving throw dance? Yes, but the fireball has to do enough damage to take their current HP to zero and then another amount of damage left over that is the equal of their full HP or more. That's a lot of damage.
Could there BE a TPK event with 8d6 of damage and a level 5
The song says it's a TPK song. How? There needs to be enough damage to single shot all the characters into oblivion. Good. How much is that?
If everyone is at full HP, it's 2X Barbarian HP, or 130, assuming everybody has shit Dex saving throws. If the party has already encountered some other cultists and stuff and been "softened up" by way of prior damage, there can be TPK for lower amounts of damage, said amount being (highest HP of any party member right now + HP of Barbie). Depending on how the party is faring, this could be as low as 66. (Everybody is currently at 1 HP.) So, Mage the Wizard's fireball needs to generate 66 at the low end for a TPK. At his current level, Mage's fireball can only do 48 damage. There is no possibility of TPK under these circumstances.
Now, fireball scales with the wizard upcasting. Fireball is a level 3 spell which means that the earliest it can be cast is by a level 5 wizard (who has a level 3 slot open for the fireball spell). But, a higher level wizard can totally slot fireball into a higher spell slot and generate MOAR PWR that way.
Just a note, this is turning out to be more fucking reading than I ever cared to do for a shitpost about D&D math, btw. Probably more reading than you wanted, too. Sorry.
The higher the spell slot a wizard puts fireball in, the more damage it does inside its consistent 20ft radius AoE. Spell slot 3 gives 8d6, the initial damage of fireball, but this damage can be increased to a max of 14d6 if fireball is put in spell slot 9. Could 14d6 damage TPK the adventurers?
14d6 gives a max of (perfect roll) 84 damage. This is stunningly unlikely (1 in 1.276093e-11, but odds of 66 or higher are about 4 in 1000) and still not a TPK for Barbie or Paladin if they started at full HP. However, it could totally wipe the team if they were softened up a little first and had shitty Dex saves.
Now, there isn't a great reason for a level 17 wizard to be slumming it with level 5 adventurers unless, say, the wizard is a gigantic asshole / loose cannon / somewhat firemad. It's not my song about fireball and I don't know how the wizard got there.
Full disclosure: You can do some seriously broken shit with fireball if you multiclass as a draconic bloodline sorcerer and have a DM willing to go along with your metric ton of rules lawyering. For more information you can start with this video. I did not do this because the fucking song did not say that the mage was a "draconic bloodline sorcerer" and I feel like this was not actually in line with the intent of the song.
