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Is there any way for the Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer’s Elemental Affinity to improve Eldritch Blast, or is the Sage Advice Compendium just wrong?

Role-playing Games Asked on December 3, 2021

The Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer’s elemental affinity ability says:

Starting at 6th level, when you cast a spell that deals damage of the type associated with your draconic ancestry, you can add your Charisma modifier to one damage roll of that spell.

The cantrip eldritch blast deals force damage, and force damage does not appear on the Draconic ancestry table.

Nevertheless, the Sage Advice Compendium ruling on elemental affinity states:

Elemental Affinity benefits one damage roll per casting of a spell, even if the spell allows more than one roll. So, for example, the feature improves one of the rays of a scorching ray spell or one of the beams of an eldritch blast spell.

Is this just a case of using eldritch blast as a contextually incorrect choice of category representative of the type of spells this Sage Advice ruling is addressing, or is there a way to modify the damage type of eldritch blast so that it is an actual use case for this ruling on the elemental affinity ability?

One Answer

This sounds like a mix of example of multi-hit spells and some potential future proofing because subclasses like the Loremaster Wizard from UA may eventually exist officially which allow you to change the elemental type of damage cantrips.

For example,

Taken from Spell Secrets
When you cast a spell with a spell slot and the spell deals acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, radiant, or thunder damage, you can substitute that damage type with one other type from that list (you can change only one damage type per casting of a spell). You replace one energy type for another by altering the spell's formula as you cast it.

This ability does not work on Eldritch Blast as is, but in the future an ability like it might.

At the very least, using Eldritch Blast as an example demonstrates the kind of spell that, were it elemental, would qualify for only adding the damage to one roll.

Answered by Axoren on December 3, 2021

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