Im planning on designing an rpg with a very detailed and creative magic and combat system, and looking back on other games for ideas on fire-based spells (or rather, magic in general) theres surprisingly not much to choose from.

Using skyrim for example, the only fire spells are "fireball" "fire storm" "flames" and an elusive fire wall spell that comes on staffs.

What different and unique spells can anyone think of that are more creative than the standard "fireball"

Im going for a bada$$ ultra destructive feel for fire magic, and each "classical" element having two counter parts for its spells, like fire/ash, and water/ice. Water would be a more soothing and flowing magic, while it could instantly be flash frozen into a more deadly ice.

List:

- Boost power of all fire magic within 5 ft of caster for 1 minute
- Explosive blast of fire centered on caster knocks back enemies
- A linear blast of fire sets enemies ablaze
- A Cloak of heat melts ice 5 ft around and prevents cold damage to caster
- An Area of fire 5 ft around the caster is doused, creating ash.
- A Blast of ash cuts nearby enemies and leaves a thin smokescreen.
- Summon a swarm of fireflies, setting fire to everything they touch
- A gout of flame leaps from enemy to enemy, setting them on fire
- Douse a flaming enemy, overcharging next fire spell
- Douse flames around caster, replenishing health and magic.
- Summon Fire orbs, which float in place and explode when disturbed.
- Summon a goblin from ash.
- Summon a pheonix, which may resurrect as long as there is enough ash nearby.
- Summon a fire elemental.
- Summon an Ash Drake.
- Summon a fire dragon. the Legendary incarnation of destruction.
- Summon a Fire imp, with basic combat and magic capabilities.
- Fire a charged fireball at an enemy, with an explosion radius of 2 ft/second charged, to a maximum of 5 seconds.
- A shockwave of fire blasts outwards from the caster, knocking back and setting enemies on fire.
- a circular wall of fire centered on the caster prevents enemies from entering, or leaving, without burning.
- Instantly turns water and ice to steam, burning enemies.
- A storm of fire and ash wreaks havok around the caster.
- Cover the caster and allies with a coat of ash, making them harder to see in darkness, and providing some defense bonus.
- Sets blood on fire as if it were oil, creating pools of fire and burning "too close" enemies from the inside.
- trap an enemy inside a sphere of insatiable fire, burning forever or until the target is nothing but ash.
- cleanse infection/poison
- lava geyser minefield
- re-ignite ashes
- Immunity to fire %
- [Enchant] fire damage
- [Enchant] extra damage/defense vs ice
- [Enchant] resistance to fire
- [Enchant] Ash Cover (darkens the material making the user harder to detect in darkness)
- summon ash orbs, similar to fire orbs but exploding into dark thiock smokescreens instead.
- create a fountain of fire and/or ash
- summon fire wisp, like a miniature low-level elemental
- summon hellfiend/ashfiend, similar to imps but more pwerful and larger, with more advanced magic.
- possible crafting usage spells?
- possible spells unique for hand to hand combat?
- scorch earth in a straight line (or an area around the caster) for a specified distance.
- heat/melt a weapon, causing some damage to its weilder if they are not wearing addequete gloves, and a chance to disarm them.
- heat/melt armor, (only works on metallic armors) brings down the defense of an armor, making it easier to cut through, and burns the enemy over time.

Fire walls, meteors, flamethrowers, fire dragons (ie. fire in the shape of dragons) are off the top of my head.

Essentially any kind of weapon or projectile you can think of can be turned into a fire based spell. How about conjuring up a sword made of fire? Or a volley of fire arrows?

so far i've come up with several fire-based chain lightning like spells, and various spells involving ash that require there to be enough ash nearby to use them, Im hoping to make the spells combo together nicely, for example, a wave of fire explodes outwards from the center, setting enemies on fire, then another spell douses the fire, creating ash, and a smokescreen is made from the ash, i'll make a list of what i have come up with when i have time. but keep fueling ideas please :D

Summoning a fire elemental?

thats in the list, theres like 30% summoning spells. any other ideas for summoning?

- Healing Flame

- several Spears of Flame stabbing up from the ground around the caster.

Would fire-as-cleansing be off-topic to this? I'm talking about phoenixes that have healing powers, burning out poisons or bad plants, purifying undead or other creatures of the night, possibly archangels because light which is intense enough becomes fire. Light has a lot of other possibilities - confusion, illusion, blinding the opponent.

For summoning suggestions, hell hounds or flame horses (as summonable mounts or for knocking down barriers?).

OK, I'll do some improvising.
A spell that...:

• increases fire damage dealt by you, but deals damage to you over time (or nukes you when a spell is cast)
• conjures a large scythe of flames to damage everyone in an area around you (deals extra damage to Plant type enemies; the farmer's scythe is their greatest fear!)
• conjures a fire 'geyser' that spews flame/lava upwards; also consider a variant of the spell that summons an array of 'geysers' scattered across a large area, if you want something less predictable
• conjures a miniature volcano that lava will pour out of for a duration, forming streams of lava across the ground around the volcano
• conjures a pool of ashes on the ground for a duration, slowing enemies in the area. If a fire spell touches the ashes, they will all ignite, burning enemies in the area for damage over time (or just nuking them once, if that's what you would prefer)
• spits a cone of ashes in front of you, blinding/stunning/knocking back/slowing/whatevering enemies it touches
• summons a whip of flames that repeatedly flings in a circle around you for a duration, damaging enemies it touches and having a chance of burning/slowing/stunning them
• summons a circle of fire around a location that gradually grows smaller; if an enemy touches the fire, they begin burning, increasing the damage they take to fire magic and damaging them over time; once the circle of flame forms a ball in the center of the targeted location, it explodes outwards, nuking enemies in range.
• burns all poison or other negative buffs off of you; for each effect removed, you are nuked for some damage and are buffed to deal a percentage of extra fire damage for a duration.

Great ideas, but for a clarification, im thinking that you cannot create ash, and that it is created as a biproduct of the fire spells, forcing the player to be destructive with their fire to use the spells requiring ash.

Hell hounds and mounts are great ideas too. and im having trouble coming up with many non-combat spells, so cleansing poison is a possible addition.

As well, because of the complexity the magic system will have (rather than selecting spells to use) you will be required to expiriment with different "patterns" some of which will cause negative effects to the player, or simply be variations to other spells, making expirimentation with higher level spells dangerous, but highly profitable.