Lightning Bolt is far inferior to Fireball.

[BoogieMan]

Both spells are the same level, do the same damage, and have the same save so that's a tie. The only difference is element and area of impact. Fireball is a 20ft sphere of damage, Lightning Bolt is a 120ft line.

Going by that, it seems they both have their uses. Occasionally, the elemental type is useful, but when that really becomes an issue in most games, it's later on when you have more tools to deal with that mechanic anyway. However, there are a few things in this game that make Lighting Bolt decisively worse in almost all situations encountered in this game.


1. Level Design. Lightning Bolt shines in long narrow passages where you can blast a lot of enemies with one strike. Such as one may encounter in an actual P&P session in a dungeon, labyrinth, alley, and so forth. I haven't finished this game yet, but this is rare. Bottlenecks aren't common as most fights take place in larger rooms or outdoors.

2. Friendly Fire. Lightning Bolt is inherently more difficult to use in my experience because with Fireball, you just need to be careful where you put the focal point and make sure no one will be in the area of effect once it's it's expected to land. Lightning bolt not only requires you to avoid friendly fire, but usually also requires you to spend time repositioning your mage. This typically involves going out to one side which also makes the mage more exposed and harder to support and doesn't allow for a melee to block incoming enemies as easily.

3. The biggest issue the spell has is an undocumented inaccuracy penalty with Lightning Bolt that I do not see in the spell description, an inaccuracy which I have never seen in any of the many other similar games I've played. The game shows the red line where the spell is to effect, but it's not uncommon for it to completely leave this area and arc off the the side. I've even seen the spell miss by as much as about 12ft (4m) by the mid point of it's travel, which is just absurd. I've seen it completely veer around all the intended enemies and instead hit 2 or 3 of my own people. I don't know if this is a bug, but it's terrible and makes the spell garbage.


Is this inaccuracy intended? I've never known it to exist anywhere else and I don't see any references to it in spell descriptions, nor do any other line spells behave this way. It should be greatly reduced/fixed. For Fireball to suck this hard, it would have to be allowed to impact on obstructions (including party members) before reaching it's destination.

So there you go, Lightning Bolt sucks. Go Fireball. It is generally more effective, reliable, and much safer to use.

[xycotta]

[quote=Graygan;1814296273122368399

Imagine a pet, for instance, with extended Mage Armor, Blur, Bull's Str., Cat's Grace, Heroism, Stoneskin, Prot/Resist energy, Prot/arrows, and Animal Growth on it. That's just stuff a Mage can do. Then while that monster that you used think was a cute and cuddly pet attacks the enemy, you can paralyze, trip, entangle, freeze, nauseate, etc. the enemy, thus making it easy for your mosnter to destroy the enemy. [/quote]

That is way too many spells for a single fight unless you are talking the boss fight and not really a fair comparison against a single fireball spell. If an evoker got all those spell levels off at once it would be some serious damage.

Regardless, Mages that control the battlefield are scarier than nukers or the companion buffers and more appreciated by the rest of the party.

[Brother Falcon]

I'm not overly concerned with which one is better, I just really want to know why there is no tooltip in the game that says:
"Warning: lightning bolt will fire off in a random direction 75% of the time and wipe your party on Hard mode."
I made a bronze dragon bloodline sorcerer with the intention of using lots of lightning bolts/chain lightning, only to find that I can basically NEVER use the spell, because it is actually more likely to annihilate my own party than hit the enemy.

[Red]

fireball can't even hit the enemies in Pitax. ( all reflex saved )

at least lighting bolt did some damage. But then your mage is a nothing but a mass heal buffer at the end - game. ( either enemy is immune or have every high saves )

but of course nothing beats a wall + deadly earth combo (carries risk of dumb AI rushing your own party to fight in the mosh pit , and pretty much killing themselves in 2 rounds though)

[InEffect]

lightning bolt checks the very same reflex save, arcane sorc would disagree about enemy saves and rays/no-save spells are a thing as well.

kineticist can solo all endgame. It's not a fair competition.

[Red]

Originally posted by InEffect:

lightning bolt checks the very same reflex save, arcane sorc would disagree about enemy saves and rays/no-save spells are a thing as well.

kineticist can solo all endgame. It's not a fair competition.

lighting bolt has much higher spell level. That is the diff.
as arcane soceror , your ray cannot even hit at the later game. And the sneak attack only rolls once per spell now. So multi rays useless. ( lots of theoretical calculations for his but in practice plus hotfix/updates, quite useless)

Sicoro still works though, but it's like a cute trick compared to what a kineticist can do in every combat.

[InEffect]

they literally are both level 3 spells. DC=10 + spell level + caster’s ability score. and rays hit just fine with true strike.

[Red]

Originally posted by InEffect:

they literally are both level 3 spells. rays hit just fine with true strike.

chainlighting is level 6.

and i never found a true strike scroll to copy to spellbook . So completely useless. It would be stupid to recommend someone replay a save 30 hours before to choose true strike.

lighting bolt at level 3 like fireball is useless ♥♥♥♥.

balance is completely out of whack in this game / PnP system

[InEffect]

chain lightning is not a lightning bolt. not to mention everything and their dog is immune or resistant to lightning making it a highly questionable choice.

[Red]

Originally posted by InEffect:

chain lightning is not a lightning bolt. not to mention everything and their dog is immune or resistant to lightning making it a highly questionable choice.

which is why everything as a wizard/sorceror is pretty much ♥♥♥♥ in this game.

[InEffect]

no, they are not. rays are potent, AoE's do good damage even if enemies save and control spells are plain insane. Waves of exhaustion alone make keeping a full arcane caster worth it. Octavia is garbage though, I'll give you that.

[Red]

Originally posted by InEffect:

no, they are not. rays are potent, AoE's do good damage even if enemies save and control spells are plain insane. Waves of exhaustion alone make keeping a full arcane caster worth it. Octavia is garbage though, I'll give you that.

all good in theory. In practice, sucks.
save,save,save, immune, immune, immune....sigh. Just blow up my fighters with Legendary Proportions and have them wack each other like a Sunday cartoon (miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss.miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss.miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss.miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss.miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss,miss.miss,miss,miss,miss,miss, hit, hit,hit = dead )

[InEffect]

git gud at building your characters is all I can say. Unironically. If you need to reload due to bad rng anywhere, except for maybe the very beginning of the game on unfair you are just bad at it. same with relying on RNG for hitting enemies.
really though you are either a troll or just a whiner.

[Near Gravity]

Lightning bolt is supposed to bounce, so in theory you can use it to hit more targets in a room. Also, I expect it can and will bounce off collision objects you may not necessarily see, which is where you would see it flying off in the wrong direction.

That being said, it has one major benefit over a standard fireball: It can be used to target enemies in lines that do not intersect party members.

You get the option to pick up a shaped fireball that doesn't affect party members once you pick up level 4 spells, but to be honest, I found it more productive to just cast Protection from Fire on the party before an encounter then let them be stupid and hammer them with fireballs.

For some encounters, that's actually pretty effective, and even if you have access to the other one, there are other spells that are probably better choices given that.