I accidentally killed the DM's unofficial character who was a rogue with a fireball. Said rogue was a party member that had been hired early in the campaign, and stuck around reasoning that a wizard as an employer was more profitable than being a tax collector.

We had been given a task to go deal with 3 trolls that turned out to be 5 trolls. Fehldar specifically pulled my wizard aside and said not to worry if he's in the mix, he'd seen me cast multiple fireballs and lightning bolts, and said, "I can dodge your fireballs easily, they aren't that big."

Fast forward to us finding the trolls and all 5 get within range of each other with one fireball, and no party member was gonna get hit, except Fehldar and he was on the edge of fireball. I cast and roll rather high on damage. Like close to 54 points of damage which was the most I could have done. Great!

DM rolls Fehldar's dodge save and critically fails taking either full or half damage, but enough to outright kill both him and all 5 trolls. We raced back to the closest temple and I personally paid for a Ressurection.

Once he was raised and recovering, the party went into the tent, and my character looked at him and asked, "I thought you could dodge my fireballs?" To which he just flipped me off.

I was rather irritated because that hurt my Leadership score.

I understand some people like to play at tables like this, but I'd be annoyed at this type of dm'ing.

To be fair, if the party can’t handle the heat they should get out of the kitchen.

Assuming this is either dnd or pathfinder, if by the time a rando cultist can cast fireball, 6-30 (and half of a save) damage kills your whole party you really shouldn’t be in meele :D

If you don't like getting TPKed because you're out of position and you didn't use knowledge skills to determine what "out of position" is, then you should not be using D&D's combat system. It's a waste of admin effort to have all those systems without being willing to use them.

I think if you just cast it immediately then you’re a bad person, but if you show them “charging up” for a turn then the party gets to decide their own next steps.

Upcast Fireball.

Hypnotic Pattern.

Manages the enemy as well as Fireball without endagering your own party.

And if you simply want better explosions: Open a portable hole then toss a bag of holding into it. Don't even need to be a spell caster.

Tiltowait! (/s?)

Cool story nonetheless