Fireball - lighting up your encounters since 1974 Crewneck Sweatshirt

D&D depicted Fireball as “a missile which springs from the finger of the Magic-user” that will “explode with a burst radius” of around twenty feet. The original rules warn that “in a confined space the Fireball will generally conform to the shape of the space (elongate or whatever)” and early play reports are full of hilarious blunders resulting from Magic-users casting the spell in narrow dungeon corridors only to torch half of their own party. Since D&D pioneered the whole concept of experience levels, we shouldn’t be surprised that D&D introduced the idea that Fireballs grew more damaging with the level of the spellcaster.