Shocking Grasp is arguably the most useful, but it’s melee only it’s really best as a way to do some damage and still withdraw (presumably to pull out your trusty crossbow). Ray of Frost has some use in the first round of combat or when an enemy if fleeing, interfering with their ability to approach and escape effectively, but its utility is limited during the bulk of combat when significant movement across the battlefield tends to become less important. Fire Bolt is good for environmental effects, like setting an oil slick on fire or lighting a torch, but has no direct effect when used against a target. In short, the effects of these spells are very situational. Spell Effects: Fire Bolt, Ray of Frost, and Shocking Grasp have relatively minor spell effects.
Obviously, the effect is less potent for a 14 Dexterity Wizard, but 1 damage is still significant when the damage values are so low. That’s an average of 2 extra damage, which may not sound like much until you consider that it’s a 36% increase in damage that has less variance, making it much more likely to make the difference between an injury and a kill. With a 16 Dexterity, a wizard does 1d8+3 damage with a crossbow, blowing the 1d10 firebolt out of the water. Damage: A wizard using point buy is often going to have a 14 or 16 Dexterity, depending on their race.My response is that unless they are fighting monsters with vulnerability to fire, cold, or electricity, the crossbow is almost always a better bet until level 5.
A layperson may be forgiven for assuming that a low level wizard doesn’t really need a crossbow after all, they have plenty of cantrips they can fall back on to do a wide variety of elemental damage. They had at least 2 powers they could use over and over again to do solid damage equivalent to a basic melee strike (often with very cool added bonuses).Īlas, in 5e the crossbow comes to the forefront again.
One of the nice things about D&D 4e was that wizards and other spellcasters got to step back from the old routine from previous editions of relying on the crossbow during easy fights or after they expended their paltry assortment of spells at low levels.
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