Fire Damage 5e
by Prince Phantom
If I was a betting man, I’d wager that fire is probably the most built-around damage type. It’s not hard to imagine why, everyone has a bit of pyromania somewhere inside them, and it certainly helps that some of the best damaging spells in the game deal fire damage. It’s not all forest fires and arson, fire damage has quite a few problems that need considering before building a character around it. It’s also one of them most common damage types dealt by monsters, so let’s get into a full breakdown of how good and how dangerous this damage type really is.
Resistance, Immunity, and Vulnerability in monsters (out of 2624 printed monsters)
Resisted: 256
Immune: 180
Vulnerable: 41
These are not great numbers. We’re looking 436/2624 (about 17%) monsters that we really shouldn’t be targeting with fire damage. That equates to almost 1/5 encounters on average. It’s also worth noting that almost all fiends are outright immune to fire damage, making it terrible in a campaign that centers around fiends. Resistance and immunity also become much more common at higher levels, so fire damage will generally become less reliable as you level up. For these reasons, you need to be very careful and talk to your DM before you decide to commit yourself to being a pyromaniac. There is an upside however. Fire damage has the most creatures vulnerable to it of all the damage types. 41 printed monsters still isn’t a lot, but it’s a nice upside to counteract all the creatures that resist or are immune to fire damage.
Spells that Deal Fire Damage
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrip | Create Bonfire, Fire Bolt, Green Flame Blade, Produce Flame |
| 1st | Absorb Elements*, Burning Hands, Chaos Bolt*, Chromatic Orb, Hellish Rebuke, Searing Smite |
| 2nd | Aganazzar’s Scorcher, Dragon’s Breath, Flame Blade, Flaming Sphere, Heat Metal, Scorching Ray |
| 3rd | Ashardalon’s Stride, Elemental Weapon, Fireball, Flame Arrows, Glyph of Warding, Melf’s Minute Meteors |
| 4th | Conjure Minor Elementals, Elemental Bane, Fire Shield, Summon Construct, Summon Elemental, Wall of Fire |
| 5th | Conjure Elemental, Flame Strike, Immolation, Summon Draconic Spirit |
| 6th | Investiture of Flame, Summon Fiend |
| 7th | Delayed Blast Fireball, Fire Storm, Prismatic Spray* |
| 8th | Illusory Dragon, Incendiary Cloud |
| 9th | Meteor Swarm, Prismatic Wall |
| (Spells with a * can deal fire damage, but only randomly.) | |
*these spells can deal fire damage, but it is random
Fire gets more damaging spells than any other elemental damage type by a country mile, only physical damage types like bludgeoning come anywhere close to matching it. Fire also gets the best damaging spells in terms of how much damage they deal on average. This means that you do have plenty of options for good fire damage spells at nearly every spell level, and of course Fireball is a standout spell serving you well until it falls off around level 10-13. Please do remember however, just because a spell does fire damage doesn’t mean it’s good. Immolation, Searing Strike, Aganazzar’s Scorcher, Flame Strike, and Flame Arrows are all horrible spells that you should never pick up.
How worried should we be about fire damage?
75/711 monsters in the Monster Manual and Mordenkanin’s Monsters of the Multiverse can deal fire damage.
This is over 10%, meaning you should expect to face fire damage fairly consistently. Obviously there are exceptions to this. A seafaring campaign will be very lacking in enemies wielding fire, but a trip to the nine hells will see you facing it near constantly. It’s also worth noting that fire is a very common environmental hazard, from actual fires to even lava. Plenty of DMs also love to use fire in their trap design, for example, a tripwire hooked to a flamethrower. This makes fire resistance one of the most desirable resistances in the game.
How do we get fire resistance?
Spells: Absorb Elements, Protection from Energy, Fire Shield, Investiture of Flame (immunity)
Class and Subclass Abilities:
Artificer: Resistant Armor Infusion
Cleric: Forge Domain Soul of the Forge, Saint of Forge and Fire (Immunity), Nature Domain Dampen Elements
Monk: Ascendant Dragon Aspect of the Wyrm
Ranger: Drakewarden Bond of Fang and Scale
Sorcerer: Draconic Bloodline Elemental Affinity
Warlock: Fiend Fiendish Resilience, Efreeti Genie Elemental Gift
Wizard: Transmutation Transmuter’s Stone
As we can see, resistance and even immunity to fire damage is readily available to almost every class of you want it. The big standout option is Absorb Elements, and it is so good that it actually makes other forms of fire resistance less useful. The flexibility of Absorb Elements being able to apply to many damage types means that basically every character that can take it should, which makes other forms of fire resistance less valuable. Still, I will never complain about having it on my sheet.
Synergies with Fire Damage:
Feats: Elemental Adept, Flames of Phlegethos (Tiefling only)
Class Abilities:
Artificer: Alchemist Alchemical Savant (Lv 6)
Cleric: Light Domain Corona of Light (Lv 17)
Sorcerer: Draconic Elemental Affinity (Lv 6)
Warlock: Celestial Radiant Soul (Lv 6)
There are a decent number of potential synergies with fire damage, with most coming online at level 6. That’s early enough to build a character around, but the question of whether or not it is worth it is a bit more complex. It’s also worth noting that basically all of these trigger off of casting a spell that deals fire damage, so subclass abilities, summons, and magic items won’t help you much. Elemental Adept is a terrible feat and is basically never worth it, but Flames of Phlegethos isn’t to bad, and meaningfully buffs a spell like fireball. That feat plus one of these level 6 subclass abilities isn’t a bad basis for a blaster build, but my cautions about the high number of resistant and immune monsters still apply. Of these, I’d say the best subclass ability is probably the Draconic Bloodline’s Elemental Affinity. The subclass isn’t very good when compared to other sorcerer subclasses, but it’s the only one of these options that gets Fireball, and I reckon it’s hard to call yourself a pyromaniac build without Fireball. They also get all of the other best fire spells.
To summarize, Fire is the most common elemental damage types and one of the most common damage types in general. It’s one of the easiest damage types to deal, one of the easiest to get resistance to, and one of the few types you can get outright immunity too. It has a few synergies to work with, but it’s also heavily resisted and many are even immune to it. This makes fire damage something you need to prepare to face, and something that you might want to structure your build around, but I’d highly recommend a backup plan like Transmute Spell or a different type of damaging spell.
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