The Draconic Bloodline sorcerer class offers additional spells based on their Dragon Ancestor. When active, any spell with the same elemental affinity as the dragon ancestor gains a bonus to its damage rolls, with the Charisma Modifier added to it. At level 12, a maximum bonus of +5 can be obtained from the Charisma Modifier. This boost is particularly beneficial for low-level spells like Burning Hands, allowing them to continue being significant damage dealers.
At certain levels in this class, players learn additional spells, such as Fey Touched and Shadow Touched, which are spells that are likely to be used at low levels. Fey Touched is the preferred option due to its effectiveness. All dragon types learn the spells listed under the Draconic Spells table. Bloodline bonus spells are only mentioned in Blood of Dragons, and only for Sorcerers.
The spell listed under Draconic Spells is known as a bonus spell known. At each listed level, players can cast an additional spell they know from each spell level they have access to up to 5th level spells once. Starting at 6th level, when casting a spell that deals damage of the type associated with their draconic ancestry, they add their Charisma modifier to that damage.
As a Draconic Bloodline sorcerer, the innate magic of dragons flows within their veins, granting them their spells and a variety of draconic powers. However, non-sorcerers specifically gain bloodline powers, not bonus spells.
📹 You Might Be a Draconic Bloodline | Sorcerer Subclass Guide for DND 5e
Heart of a dragon. Mind of a mage. Booty of a GOD #dnd #draconicbloodline #sorcerers PATREON right here!
What is the draconic bloodline bonus?
The Dragon Bloodline subclass, Sorcerer, offers a bonus at level 6 by adding a Charisma modifier to spell damage. However, the damage types are uneven, with Fire having 4 spells, Poison having 2, and Acid having zero. The Fire type also has the best spell for this purpose, Scoring Ray, as it receives the full Charisma modifier for each Ray it fires. The Sorcerer class needs to be rebalanced to make the choice between Dragon Bloodline types more viable and interesting.
What bonuses do Dragonborns get?
Dragonborn traits increase their ability score by 2 and their Charisma score by 1. Young dragonborn grow quickly and tend to make conscious choices in the cosmic war between good and evil. The D and D 5E Free Basic Rules only contain a fraction of the races, subclasses, backgrounds, feats, items, monsters, spells, and other content available on Roll20. Players can explore the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual for more options and unique creatures to fight. Your draconic heritage manifests in traits you share with other dragonborn.
What is the best draconic ancestry in BG3?
It is recommended that players select the Gold and Silver Draconic Ancestries, as they offer a combination of utility spells, such as Disguise Self and Feather Fall, which remain useful throughout the game.
How does draconic bloodline work?
Your innate magic comes from draconic magic mixed with your blood or ancestors, often traced back to ancient sorcerers who made a deal with a dragon or claimed a dragon parent. Some bloodlines are well-established, while others are obscure. At the first level, you choose one type of dragon as your ancestor, and the damage type associated with each dragon is used in later features. You can speak, read, and write Draconic, and your proficiency bonus is doubled when you make a Charisma check when interacting with dragons.
Is Draconic or Storm sorcerer better in BG3?
Dragon Sorcerers are able to achieve a high armor class without the need for armor due to the protective qualities of their draconic scales. In contrast, Storm Sorcerers are able to utilize the Mobile Feat at level 1, enabling them to fly away without the risk of provoking an attack of opportunity.
What is the best spell for draconic ancestry?
Draconic Bloodline sorcerers focus on D and D 5e’s area-of-effect damage spells, as they have limited known spells. The primary choice for a Draconic Bloodline sorcerer is damage spells with a type matching their Dragon Ancestor. Red, Brass, or Gold Draconic Bloodline sorcerers have clear options, such as Firebolt, Burning Hands, Scorching Ray, Fireball, Fire Storm, Incendiary Cloud, Lightning Bolt, Storm Sphere, Chain Lighting, and Chromatic Orb.
Other Dragon Ancestor options, like Bronze, should consider Lightning Bolt, Storm Sphere, Chain Lighting, and more. Chromatic Orb ensures that a D and D 5e Draconic Bloodline sorcerer always has something to cast. However, no damage type has an effective spell at every level, so Draconic Bloodline sorcerers should consider spells like Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Cone of Cold, Finger of Death, and Magic Missile. Magic Missile is one of D and D 5e’s most reliable spells, even if a creature is almost completely immune to a sorcerer’s arsenal.
Which dragon is best in BG3?
For Baldur’s Gate 3 Dragonborn Sorcerer, the White Dragon ancestry is recommended due to the Armor of Agathys spell’s effectiveness. The Red Dragon ancestry is suitable for the Burning Hands spell and increased fire elemental damage later in the campaign. Baldur’s Gate 3 is filled with activities and secrets, making it an adventure that can take hours to complete. For more tips, visit the BG3 guides hub.
What is the rarest type of Dragonborn?
Dragonborn are typically descended from metallic or chromatic true dragons, with rarer subraces like brown, gray, purple, adamantine, mithral, and steel. Dragonborn descended from dragon turtles, mirage, fey, and shadow dragons also exist, though rare. The adamantine subrace represents scale color and racial traits. The ability score increases by 1 when the choice of Constitution or Charisma score is made. Dragonborn descended from adamantine dragons of the Underway also exist.
What is the best sorcerer subclass in BG3?
The Draconic Bloodline is the best Sorcerer subclass, providing an extra HP boost at every level and allowing you to choose a Draconic Ancestry. Red (Fire) is recommended for its powerful Burning Hands spell, which increases the power of spells causing fire damage at Level 6. Fire damage is common in Fareun and can be used to burn enemies. Sorcerers start the game with four cantrips and two Level 1 spell slots, with spell levels increasing with character level. The best Sorcerer cantrips include:
What is the best class for a dragonborn?
The Sorcerer class is considered the best class for the Baldur’s Gate 3 Dragonborn race due to its powerful Metamagic feature, which allows for the modification of spell effects. The Draconic Bloodline subclass offers extra hit points and a base armor class of 13. Dragon Ancestor grants a spell during character creation and increased elemental damage and resistance at level 6. The categories follow similar sub-races but differ in extra spells, such as Fire, Cold, Lightning, Acid, and Poison. Fire can be Brass for sleep, Gold for disguised self, Red for burning hands, Silver for feather fall, White for armor of Agathys, Blue for witch bolt, and Green for a Ray of Sickness.
How do bloodline spells work?
Bloodline Arcana allows you to customize the type of energy damage and spell type to match your bloodline type. You can also use one of the four elements infusing your being, which you must choose at first level. Certain abilities grant resistances and deal damage based on your element.
Elemental Movement: You can fly, burrow, fire, swim, or swim based on your element energy type. Starting at 1st level, you can unleash an elemental ray, which deals 1d6 points of damage of your energy type and 1 for every two sorcerer levels you possess. This ability can be used up to 3 times per day, with a Charisma modifier.
📹 (D&D 5e) The Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer: A Guide
This video is a discussion of The Innkeeper’s list of favorite feats for sorcerers. It is not a top 5 list of most powerful feats, rather a …
You can actually get a lot of milage out of multiclassing a martial class into Draconic Bloodline. One character I made was mainly a fighter but with a few levels of sorcerer. That natural AC and the ability to cast the shield spell a few times made it basically impossible to hit him until later into the campaign.
Back before Sorcerers were a thing in D&D, one of my players basically invented dragon bloodline sorcerers. He played a golden skinned High Elf Wizard who had a habit of walking around naked. The secret back story was that he was a gold dragon who had lost a magical duel while shape-shifted as an elf and had lost most of his abilities. As he grew in levels, that was just him recovering himself. The player’s goal was to find a polymorph spell so he could “return” to his true form.
This is my favourite sorcerer, and the one that I’ve played the most (I’ve made a blue, white, and copper ancestry thus-far). Yes it might not be as powerful as some of the newer subclasses, but along with the dragon flavor, I love the Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer for how reliable it is. Your early abilities basically make you a sorcerer who is a bit more survivable (more HP and no need for Mage Armor), and the elemental themes make for a really good blaster character. It’s just always a good subclass I find myself going back to and having fun with.
I think a really cool idea could have been allowing Draconic Sorcerers to be almost like Hexblade Warlocks, being able to dish out potent physical damage that scales off your Charisma with some added elemental might for spice it up. Makes sense when you consider dragons are extremely powerful both physically and magically.
I only played Baldur’s Gate 3, but still my favorite playthrough was as a Dragonic Bloodline Sorcerer, reflavoring every spell in my head to make sense with fire or heat. Sleep was them messing with the temperature of the air around the target to make them pass out, like that chick from Fire Force could do. Minor Illusion and Disguise Self were mirages. Overall, fun time!
As some comments mentioned, this is one of the best to multiclass into a Martial Class. Fighter as always, excellent, goes with everything, especially with Eldritch Knight for more spell slots or Battle Masters. Rogue gets infinitely better with the utility spells and extra durability. But my favorite and Hot Take Pic is Monk Astral Self Monk + Draconic Bloodline makes a bulky combatant that never has to actually use their hands to do damage, focus on Dex and Cha and you get an 18 AC Monk/Sorcerer at Level 3 with the capacity of using Shield and no equipment. But of course, Draconic Blood & Soul Combo is almost too perfect for flavor. A Dragonborn Draconic Monk/Sorcerer build (although not incredibly high in the damage output) gives you incredible synergy between all of your abilities, locking a giant crowd with your road while you center an empowered Fireball on yourself that you’re going to take ZERO DAMAGE due to Evasion, while your enemies are afraid of you and can barely hit you is one of the most Badass things you can do.
On the Draconic Bloodline two points are good to know with this first this quintessential Sorcerer subclass (seriously this was the first Sorcerer back in the day too). In RP- Draconic Sorcerer is great as that linage is something that does not have to be big dragon kidnapped mom but it can be “We never knew that Grandma was a polymophed Silver Dragon until she showed us how to freeze a fool with a Ray of Frost” This class burns with flavor. On the new edition many of these mid teir weaknesses seem to have been addressed. So if you still have Watchers of the Caves on your okay to buy from list it is very worth it as they now have better armor (now Charisma + Dexterity + 10 so you get better ac as you grow) and more spells. You get Command, Fear and Summon Dragon. Is that more dragon in your dragon more to your taste. ((By the way, this may be in the free version of 5e revised so keep an eye out).
This subclass should have been updated in Fizban’s with subclass spells (like the many, many cool draconic spells in that book), gem dragon ancestry, and something else to tide the players over in the mid-levels (e.g. bonus action blade ward for those with metallic ancestry, cheaper transmuted spell – if you choose your own element as the target – for chromatic, and the ability to add your CHA modifier to WIS and INT saves for gem, just from the top of my head).
Does it weird anyone else out that Sorcerers don’t get True Polymorph or Shapechange? You can be this powerful magic person infused with Draconic/Aberrant/Celestial/Shadow/Storm/Order powers yet when you hit level 17 you cannot turn into that thing that gave you or was the origin creature of your powers. A 17th Level Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer cannot turn into a Dragon- sure they can summon one with Summon Dragon or Illusory Dragon (via Wish) but they themselves can’t become one without help from a Wizard or Bard. Same issue with an Aberrant Sorcerer not being able to change into an Illithid, Divine Soul not being able to change into an Angel, Shadow not being able to turn into a Undead or Monstrosity, Storm into an Elemental or Storm Giant, and Order into a Modron or Inevitable. All of which would have been possible through simply giving the Sorcerer access to True Polymorph and Shapechange.
One of my favorite character builds I’ve ever made and played in a oneshot was a level 14 draconic bloodline sorcerer/lever 6 Bladesinger Wizard White Dragonborn. I could pop Bladesong, then on the next turn fly up higher into the air than normal with my higher walking speed, all with an insanely high AC. I could take the attack action and substitute both weapon attacks with my natural breath weapon and a high level attacking cantrip, Or I could summon cast Draconic Spirit and Quicken Spell Blink to completely disappear from the field and make enemies fight my summon. She was insanely fun to play.
I’ve actually been tinkering with some Draconic Bloodline Sorcerers that are flavored to not have anything to do with Dragons. One being a Hexblood deriving her icy magic from her Bheur Hag heritage, and another being a Hill Dwarf. The Dwarf I’m flavoring as “becoming one with his forge” but, really, it’s just an excuse to combine the Hill Dwarf, Draconic Bloodline, and Tough abilities to create a Sorcerer who gains 4 free Hit Points with every level (plus 1d6+Con of course). Should be one very chonky Sorcerer.
I have an idea for a Draconic Sorcerer. They are a living puppet “reflavored autognome btw.” and they were created using the heart of a dragon as their heart. This gives my puppet both their magical powers and some personality quirks. Like a love for shiny things and a tremendous, perhaps too tremendous, amount of courage.
Topaz dragonborn Sorcerer here with Amethyst Draconic Bloodline/ Sorcery. Necrotic+Force is.. interesting and FUN! Slot in Gem dragon Ancestries as my groups GM do and I aswell totally allow in the groups I am GM for, and this.. sub class is COMPLETE. 👌🤝 Something WotC completely glossed over/ forgot, such a simple in-written thing they could have done in Fizban but didnt😂 In the VERY same book they introduced gem dragonborns and reintroduced gem dragons! Official written material always have a weight in sayso even we GM/ DM do thr final say. The gem elemental types of Force, Necrotic, Psychic, Radiant and Thunder is NO worse or better than Fire, Cold, Poison, Acid and Lightning. Nothing OP and its easly balanced. Having both breath attack, resistance and affinity ofca element IS a double edged sword. Like sure you deal force damage few resist BUT while you resist force damage… few monsters and npc deal that back, making other elements more advantageous vs you.
My first character that I levelled from 1-20 was mostly draconic sorcerer. By the end, he was Sorc17/Hexblade2/Knowledge Cleric1. Thanks to feats and magic items, he had an AC of 26 (before casting shield or any other spells) and over 200 hit points (Tough is really cool). I had Crossbow Expert so I could eldritch blast in melee, and I was the party’s tank, lol.
Resistance is futile ….with the elemental adept feat! I agree it is most useful with the Draconic Sorcerer. You’d be surprised how many times the DM says “Oh that’s right, your spells ignore resistance.” I’m looking forward to more articles, I really like your takes on spells, I feel as if your insight is next level. I have learned a lot from your articles.
I’m a relatively new player, and certainly no expert, but I’ve been really enjoying my lightning based draconic sorcerer. As far as elemental adept damage resistance not synergizing well with elemental affinity damage, I have two little tricks there. I play a Glasya Tiefling, so I also have fire, and in any big combat I’m summoning draconic spirit for a third damage resistance. That gives me some pretty decent, and flexible options to keep me a step ahead. Lightning is limiting relatively to fire because of the lack of spells, but I’ve found the straight line lightning tends to SAFELY capture more targets than most AOE, which usually either don’t hit many enemies, or also hit friends. If I have my draconic spirit roaming the battle zone, and add in a twinned orb here and there, with a fire bolt or lightning bolt, I’m usually doing a lot of damage, even if some misses the +5 bonus. All with a decent AC, a few extra HPs, and stacked resistances. Is it optimized? I don’t know – but it’s been plenty fun and plenty effective.
Asking your dm to allow you to change certain damage types of spells is probably the best bet. Just changing the flavor of the spell without any mechanics also works. If you say that tidal wave drops a giant pool of acid instead of water and you keep the mechanics the same then you still stick to your theme. Also on a sidenote I’m a bit confused why you wanted to leave out damage over time spells. Sure you don’t double dip on them but you still benifit from the bonus damage. A poison affinity cloudkill placed over 5 enemies is still going to do 30 more damage then a normal one even if it won’t do more in following rounds
the Wild sorcerer IS a troll class even today, even in the 2024 remake here why: on the Wild magic table, you got about 33% bad outcome (like becoming a potted plant), 33% funny but without actual mechanic effect (skin become blue) and 33% “good” outcome (like recovering all your SP) EXCEPT, the bad outcome are always bad. Becoming a potted plant is always a bad thing. Their is very few occasion where you would hope to become a potted plant. Neutral effect are always neutral. it’s difficult to figure out a situation where having blue skin, or a feather beard that disappear as soon as you sneeze will benefit or hinder your character. But the “good outcome” they are not always good. Free reincarnate if you die within the next minutes, cool, that a super good feature, a free high level spell that automatically happens when you die. it’s awesome. But you have no control over when it will happen. If you do not die within the next minutes, might has well have rolled nothing, since nothing happens. Same goes with recovering your SP. I don’t know about you, but personally I tend to keep my SP for the difficult fights. So if I roll to recover all my SP early in the adventuring day, I will recover very few or even none of my SP. And once I used a lot of SP later in the adventuring day, we are usually about to take a long rest and the big difficult fight are already done. Sure you could use up your SP early since you could recover them, but you have 2% chance to recover them, not like you can control it, even with the feature that allows you to choose 1 out of 2 outcome, it only bring your probability under 4%.
I’m playing a fire sorcerer and am wondering what spells I should take for transmuted spell. Specifically I’m looking at thunder wave and thunder step for the utility of pushing people away and having a stronger teleport than misty step. Any other good suggestions? The cold spells seem a bit lackluster and I’m unconvinced of the poison spells Thanks!
Wow the not optimizer is using BAD math to proove his point lol: in the optimization community we use AVERAGE which let us see what we can expect from an ability on the long run, not in a once rare scenario where you happened to roll exactly 4 low scores. So a d6 on average will deal 3.5 damage. We obtain that avereage by adding 1+2+3+4+5+6 then dividing the total by 6 If you can reroll that dice using empower metamagic that mean you could reroll 4 of the 8 dice from fireball. let’s say I’ll reroll if I roll a 1,2 or 3 (since those 3 option are lower then the average) it means that now my new average for an empower d6 is 3.5+3.5+3.5+4+5+6 for a total of 4.25 So a regular fireball deal on average 8d6 = 8*3.5 = 28 damage on average A Fire dragonic sorcerer fireball will deal on on average 8d6+5 = 8*3.5+5 = 32 damage on average An empowered fireball will deal 8d6 with 4 empowered dice= 4*3.5+4*4.25 = 14+17 = 31 An empowered fireball will deal 8d6 with 4 empowered dice +4 so 35 damage. But as I sated in a previous comment, if you are throwing those fireball on Kobolds, you can deal a maximum of 7 damage each. so any fireball dealing at least 14 damage is sure to kill all the kobolds even if they succeed on there saving throw to half the damage. Making the extra damage from dragonic affinity and empowerment useless. and against creature bigger then Kobolds… well…. AoE spell in 5e deal very low damage and monster HP scale super quickly. So the AoE spell are mainly use to clear the horde of minion so the martial character can reach the main target.
No elemental adept is NOT a good option and here why: The change 1 to 2 option is meaning less. a d6 average is 3.5; with elemental adept the average become 2+2+3+4+5+6= 3.67 Then if you create a fire dragon sorcerer and your DM keep sending you fire resistance creature, maybe your character isn’t the right one for this adventure. Remember we are playing a STORY BUILDING game. We are building an epic fantastique. So if you are building a team who’s story will be to delve in the infernal realm where everyone is resistant or immune to fire, having a fire focused character might not be a great theme for this adventure, unless you wanted to explore the difficulty and how the character would evolve and adapt (in which case he should learn cold spell and force spell, especially since that level 6 feature is meaningless anyway as stated previously. The extra HP, the increase AC and the fire resistance should be feature for such an adventure.
Personally for 2024 I wish that they do a simple chance on ALL sorcerer subclass. at level 3 (when sorcerer gain there subclass in 2024) give all subclass a list of known spell (exactly like aberrant mind and clock work sorcerer work) and when you cast those spell using your SP you got an additional benefit similar to a metamagic (but that doesn’t count as a metamagic) that applies. For example Dragonic sorcerer would have the dragonic spells: at each level he can change one of those spell for any evocation or transmutation spell (evocation for the elemental power of dragon, transmutation since dragon are know to change shape often) choosen from the wizard sorcerer or druid spell list (druid for their affinity with the elements) When he uses his SP to cast one of those spell, if the spell deal damage it deal the damage type of the dragon ancestry 1- Burning hand and Absorb element (yes I know it’s an abjuration spell, but not all spell offer on the aberant mind are divination or enchantment) 2- Dragon breath and Melf Acid Arrow 3- Fireball and Fly 4- Polymorph and Fire shield 5- cone of cold and Immolation Then our sorcerer if he spend 3 SP to cast fireball but his ancestry is Acid, he then cast an “Acidball”
30:55 it also cost sorcery points… I do prefer getting a few lightning and/or force spells, especially the ever reliable magic missile 34:00 because our campaign will involve fighting some devils which are invulnerable to fire… so I’ll be outta luck there, even if I were to take Elemental Adept… so yeah some variety is the way for me I mean, in terms of theme, idt it’s that wack to have a few other damage type in your arsenal. CR’s fire wizard Caleb did have other tricks up his sleeve, for exactly that type of issue
Guys this subclass isn’t for blast characters. Sure it could be but not only for that, this helps you to play an elemental thematic character that is different. If you choose Cold, don’t try to be a cold blaster, because doesn’t makes sense, try to be a character that uses cold thematically spells and when you will do damage to enemies with that spells you will deal even a little extra damage but that’s all, for example on the “frost” theme build there are amazing and strong combos that are worth to be played like sleet storm+ ray of frost cantrip, the movement speed of enemies would become close to 0 and is an amazing control and damage choice. And each element has a sort of affinity with other damage types too, for example I think that cold looks great with necrotic (for that winter vibes) so could be a nice choice to keep a backup necrotic damage spell if you want, radiant for fire type is amazing and looks like the purest form of fire, poison and psychic crazy good combination for mindblow enemies and diseases both, lightning and thunder, you understood me. This subclass helps you to create a unique playstyle choosing the best thematic options too and isn’t just a reflavouring fireball that’s a poor idea really, don’t do it.
i think other websites say that (and i agree) because it’s becoming more of a common trend that DMs send combat encounters with less minions and more bbegs. so that dmg is not multiplied as much on aoe effects when there’s just like 2-3 beefy targets on the field (this also makes blasting less worthwhile). i’m like this when i DM as well and my DMs are like this as well. minions are just additional bookkeeping that just tends to get wiped out in a turn before they do anything. it’s less clutter on the board too when there’s no minions. like an encounter with 2-3 red dragons is much more challenging than 1 red dragon with a bunch of minions.
My Druid and my friends pyromancer once killed a Kraken by me casting control water and him casting fire storm. Not sure if the DM was just letting us take the win, but it was like a 300 damage round. The way the DM figured it, the kraken was big enough for 8 cubes of fire storm, so we just roasted him! Mechanics-wise, it didn’t seem right at the time, and it still doesn’t, but I sure enjoyed pretending to be Moses!!
I guess this is a typical case where you really want to talk to your DM. A good DM will likely make sure they don’t run monsters that are resistant to your damage type all the time. I think I’d also allow to modify an existing spell’s damage type. It’s also totally ok for a highly specialized character with a focused theme to have the occasional fight where they aren’t very effective, it could even lead to some good narrative moments. The defensive benefit of basically being able to get resistance to a common damage type for free by firing a cantrip at an object (if rules/DM will allow targeting it) is also nice. It lasts for an hour so you’ll also frequently be able to get it by targeting a minion at the beginning of the dungeon and have it for the big fight later on.
I really feel like the real weakness of this class is that it pushes players to play sub-optimally. Blasting is not usually very good in 5e, as most spells don’t deal enough damage. Fireball is good for lv 5-9, but the rest of blasting spells severely drop off after that. Sorcerers will be much better off using control spells like hypnotic pattern and such. Sadly, this subclass makes you feel like you don’t have a subclass at all unless you blast. It also doesn’t help that the evocation wizard completely invalidates this subclass if you just want to blast.
yeah you are NOT an optimizer. Yes +5 damage on fireball so it deal 8d6+5 is cool. yes multiply by 20 target caught in your blast that 100 extra damage it’s awesome… EXCEPT and their is where all the wanabe optimizer and roleplayer fail to understand… in 5E AoE spell do very low damage. Even Meteor Swarm dealing 140 damage on average (145 if fire dragon affinity) compare to a fighter/paladin dealing 500+ damage on Tiamat or DemoGorgon (saw it happens multiple times) it’s weak. The AoE spell in 5e are good at clearing the weak minion in order to open the path to the martial character who will deal the killing blow in a single round to the BBEG. So at level 5 you are facing a young dragon as the BBEG with 20 kobold servant. yeah go ahead fireball those kobolds. But let’s see how it happen in a REAL game: 1- Did the DM cluster all 20 kobolt around the dragon allowing you to easily cast fireball centered on the dragon and catching all 20 kobolds? do you have to chose between catching the dragon with 5 kobolds, or catching 10 kobolds but no dragon. I know My DM rarely cluster his monster all together to allow me an easy 20 kobolds score (unless we lay a trap like sending the barbarian first, then all the kobolds swarm him and now I could maybe catch 15 Kobolds AND the barbarian (let’s hope he is bear totem or a race that gave him fire resistance) 2- Your allies. Do the barbarian patiently wait and let you throw your fireball on 10 kobolds, or did he rush in yelling to attack those kobolds and now you have to choose between 15 kobold+barbarian, 8 kobolds or 5 kobolds+dragon 3- We are talking about Kobolds here, 7HP creature.