Question Regarding Spell Extended Effects

Abdel_Adrian

My confusion stems from comparing spells like Magic Missiles and Fireball. As you level, magic missiles increases from one to five missiles while fireball increases its damage die. For every level there is a change, there is a corresponding extended header. For example, Fireball has 6 headers, the 4th has an OPcode that does 4d6 damage while the 5th header has an OPcode that does 5d6 damage. The damage increased but the number of fireballs didn't.
So what I don't understand is how magic missiles works. Instead of increasing 1d4+1 damage per header, every header is identical - only firing a single 1d4+1 missile - and they seem to be adding up so that a 9th level caster would fire 5 missiles, one from every extended header. I understand the animation actually changes with each additional magic missile, but so do the number of times the enemy gets hit. This obviously is intended, but it doesn't happen with spells intended to increase in damage but not projectile number. Things like lightning bolt and Melf's acid arrow are good examples too. Does anyone know what I'm missing to make extended effects cumulative or not?

Grammarsalad

It's tied to the projectile.

Are you asking how to do this with other spells? Well, you can make variations of the different magic missile projectiles, and then use them

Grammarsalad

For example, try just changing the fireball projectile to the magic missile one, and mm to fb. The mm will now explode doing its dam to everything, and fb will be devastating to a single target (if a creature is targeted)

Grammarsalad

Or, give hold person the fireball projectile. Every enemy in the blast radius will have to save or be held

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IchigoRXC

subtledoctor said:

Specifically, in the case of MM, that projectile knows to use a different animation based on the number of headers, up to five.

Other projectiles don't do that. Put two headers in Fireball with the same min level and it will shoot two fireballs at the enemy (I think!) ... but they will be on the same flight path and you won't be able to see a difference,visually. The MM projectile is special.

But you could technically unpack the fire ball animation and then double it up (maybe make them arc left and right) to create a new animation where you could see two fireball projectiles yeah?

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Abdel_Adrian

Oh okay this is all making a lot more sense. I love the potential of changing single-target spells to aoe and vice versa.
I was starting to think the animation determined more than just aesthetics, but I was still having trouble manipulating it the way I wanted.
You've all been very helpful, thank you.