Everytime I had a problem, I'd cast Meteor Swarm and boom right away I'd have a different problem.
Strategic mastery right there
Jacksonville!!!
Technically correct
The best kind
I once argued with my DM that burning hands should allow me to melt the lock of a door, or burn a hole in the door where the lock and handle used to be at least. Think I ended up just blasting the front off the shop lol
Well wrought iron melts at 1500C, brass and bronze around 1700C. And it would take considerable time at those temps so probably not just 1 cast of the spell. Also Burning Hands is a cone, so at those temps anyways it'd assuredly melt stone walls and floors, set fire to the door, roof, and anything else.
Some Object properties: Iron/steel has an AC of 19, irrelevant since it's a Dex save, and a lock has 5hp. But since it's probably immune to fire damage of this temp, the lock may very well be the only thing that remains after Burning Hands sets everything else ablaze. And the door probably has ~18hp, so 1 burning hands won't obliterate it, but the ongoing fire damage after it's set aflame likely would. Though the roof would probably go first.
and a lock has 5hp
So, punch the lock?
Technically I guess? 5e rules don't make much sense and the actually useful rules are mere suggestions.
I'd probably give it a damage threshold of 10 for iron.
I mean a door has HP. Burning hands would definitely damage it
If you burned a sorcery point with shape spell, I could see turning it into a temporary blow torch, but it still only lasts the one action. Even heat metal doesn’t melt things (except lead or aluminum which melt before they get “red hot”), but it would probably burn the wood around it or weaken the lock enough that it would bust if the door was rammed.
There are very few problems you can't solve with a large enough explosion.
If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
—The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries, maxim 7
But also:
Pillage, then burn.
—ibid., maxim 1
Nice try, Megumin
Helps you sort out which items are magical and which items weren't.
I mean, she's not wrong
"If I had just one WISH, I'd WISH that all gold and weapons I could WISH for would ~~vanish~~ vanWISH from shops nearby and appear before my feet to fulfill my dreams and WISHES. WISH that would work."
WISHWISHWISH
My players are about to hit level 17 sometime soon, send help
The solution is to make your players afraid of a well-practiced DM that knows how to fuck with powerhungry wishes.
"I wish for an invincible unassailable fortress"
it appears... and then falls directly on top of the player
"I wish for true immortality where nothing can kill me ever ever ever"
granted... in a pocket plane with no way in and no way out
"I wish the final boss was already dead""
player is time-skipped to a far future where the boss is dead and so is everything in the campaign they know or care about
To ensure the factor and keep the wishes reasonable, be sure to insist that the wish magic must be spoken out loud, without pause, and more or less be a single sentence like in almost every example given of wishes in antiquity fiction.
Since it’s cast as an action, it’s good to require a six second cap on the wish.
Edit: also, while they’re admiring the limitation of the wish, remind them to roll of they ever get to cast wish again. If it’s not a lower level spell, there’s a chance they lose the power.
Since it’s cast as an action, it’s good to require a six second cap on the wish.
Perfect. 
I love this LMAO. I'd take notes if only my campaigns ever got that far (they never do).
The wish works but there is a nearby weapon manufacturing district. The weapons from the warehouses suddenly appear all around the players. They now have to crawl over a giant pile of pointy weapons. And, the gold landed on the bottom of the pile out of reach.
All of the stuff worth stealing would have a better chance of surviving the Meteor Swarm damage. 
Modern solutions for modern problems
Plague
Not fireball?
I think we can also accept fireball
The shitty part is that last I checked fireball had no explosive properties apart from "rule of cool" from DMs that want it to have explosive properties. It was a dinky little glowy point-and-click dot that goes fwoosh, does fire damage, then vanishes.
I think that's ridiculous, but a rules lawyer could shoot down the fun unless that changed when I wasn't looking.
Huh?
Could you explain this because it's very confusing. Or are we not talking 5E?
It's a fireball.. that has a big AoE. So if it's a roughly hand sized sphere but it deals damage in a big sphere.. logically it has to explode, right?
Beyond that it's got the word "explosion" in the spell description, at least on dnd beyond.
A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame.
but it deals damage in a big sphere.. logically it has to explode, right
It doesn't do any special damage or bypass hardness of objects, so that doesn't sound like an explosion except in "flavor" text. At least it ignites objects, which it didn't do in previous editions.
How i wiped out my first ork occupied fortress in Gothic 3. The chaos was glorious!
Still a better choice than Knock.
Yes, good
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