Have you ever seen someone's brain after prolonged Fireball exposure? Keep that nasty shit away from me!
I now perceive the world in 40 foot radiuses. When I walk into a room I immediately assess the potential xp gain of a fireball. When I choose a table at a restaurant I ensure that I am outside the blast radius of the point any logical wizard would target. When planning my wedding I ensured there would be a counter spell prepared by every member of the wedding party (I distributed enchanted flasks to the martial classes.) My home is a series of right angled hallways and all bedrooms are only accessible by ladder.
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I toyed with allowing my players to use the fireball by volume incorrect rule (as it's not all that well defined in the 3.5 ed we play)
It is as dangerous to the caster as the enemies, especially in a group that neglects to check the ceiling height of dungeons
I like to do this for my veteran players too, after filling the room with explosive gas of course
Lol. I can't recall if I've ever had to actually award the bonus treasure from this setup.
The most memorable case was a crit 20 on an investigate roll, well after the aftermath of the fireball.
And even then, the party member who figured it out just shrugged and said "worth it".
The party at least got to cash in the ruined scraps for a little extra cash, as a reward for the bothering to make an investigate roll.
Baby steps. Haha.
You keep doing that to older DnD players too, except you drop hints that the enemies are in a cult that has been giving them power and when the wizard does fireball them, the wizard gets hit by a dozen hellish rebukes from all the young warlocks they just hit.
Does hellish rebuke activate after though? Cause if the caster is likely to be killed I would take that bet
But then you also give them terrain that would allow a clever wizard to position themself such that they can see the epicenter of the fireball without having line of sight to the targets themselves
Honestly, if they caught the hint, understood what it meant, and took action, that would be a miracle and would totally be worth some cheese.
Counterpoint: the first enemy we faced after I got fireball was an enemy with fire resistance. My DM had a good laugh when I discovered that and I'm still mourning that spell slot.