Disappointment with high-level spells?

[Mouseferatu]

So, we're coming up on the end of a campaign in which I've been playing a druid. We just hit 17th level, and odds are good we'll hit 18th just before the end of the campaign.

While I've been playing 3E since it came out, this will be the first time I've gotten to play a spellcaster up from low levels to high. And I have to say, I'm actually a bit underwhelmed.

Don't get me wrong, there's some nifty stuff at high level, but it's just not all that impressive. I've found that it's a lot more fun to use, say, 5th or 6th level spells than it is to use higher-level ones, unless you're just going for sheer damage output. (And frankly, even then it's not all that big a difference.) I'm actually having trouble picking my two daily 9th-level spells, just because none of them are really jumping out and yelling "Take me!"

So, am I just being unreasonable? Or has anyone else had this same issue as well?

 

[IceFractal]

Well, Shapechange is pretty potent, but yeah, pure damaging spells get kind of stagnant at high levels. I find the best picks for high level spells are the ones that go totally beyond what you could do before, like Gate, Genesis, or Wish. Although interestingly, those three all have XP costs, making them an occasional rather than daily use spell.

However for Druid specifically, those aren't an option - but Shambler is, and that's a pretty nice spell. Get a shocking weapon and you can have nigh-unkillable bodyguards that you only have to resummon once a week. That and Shapechange are the "big guns" for Druids. Foresight is good ... but you have to know when to cast it, which somewhat misses the point.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Personally I have never played a Wizard or a Sorcerer so take what I say with a whole handful of grains of salt, but I would think that not too many players would have gotten to high enough levels to cast 9th level spells in the first place.

Wish is one spell that I always wanted to cast. It's a lot more detailed in what you can and can't do with it in 3.xE though. For some reason this takes a lot of the magic out of it for me. I'm not quite sure why that is either.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Mouseferatu]

I've thought a bit more about this since I posted the initial thought, and I think IceFractal hit on a lot of the problem, at least for me.

In a perfect game--and yes, I know that any thought that begins with that statement is bound to end in disappointment --but in a perfect game, every time you gain a new spell level, you should be able to do something you could never do before.

For me, at least with this druid character, that hasn't been the case for a few spell levels now. With my 8th and 9th level spells, all I'm finding is that I can do the same stuff better, or with more dice, but I'm not gaining the ability to do anything I couldn't do before. Sure, I can summon shambling mounds, but I could already summon a lot of pretty useful critters. Sure, I can deal damage, but it's just more of the same.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I do agree with you. Where are the city-destroying spells? Few and far between.

What core 9th level spells can a Druid get?

Antipathy. Yeah, right, that's worth it. And its only 8th for wizards.
Mass Cure Critical Wounds. can't see that ever being worth preparing. 8th for Clerics
Elemental Swarm. Not a combat spell, but if you are preparing for an assault all those max-hit point elementals can be good.
Foresight. Far too dependent on the DM. With some DMs it is great, with (more?) it is feeble
Regenerate. Ooh, yeah, that's worth preparing. Not. How often do limbs get severed in a hp based game anyway? And it's only 7th level for clerics.
Shambler. OK.
Shapechange. A killer spell.
Storm of Vengeance. Doesn't actually do that much damage when you look at it.
Summon Natures Ally IX. Grig with fiddle? uh-huh. Elder elemental might be useful, but it isn't much better than the greater elemental you get with elemental swarm, and certainly has less hit points.
Sympathy. Yeah, right. Good job they split it out from Antipathy so it isn't too overpowered or anything.

 

[Huw]

Double your firepower. Fill the 9th slots with quickened spells. Quickened Flame Strike is a blast!

('scuse the bad pun. I've just got into work and it's already looking like a long day . Normal sense of humour (such as it is) will restored in 8 hours. )

 

[Numion]

For a cleric 9th level spells are good. It brings a whole new set of tactics for using buffing spells. Miracle lets mimic lower level spells from any list. That means you can cast the most important wizard, bard and paladin spells. Like Holy Sword is pretty good (double damage), druid had some nice spells, wizard spells like polymorph rock hard.

 

[EricNoah]

Observing high level spellcasters in play in a low-Epic campaign, it seemed to me that hit points (and thus hit point damage) started to become irrelevant. What was more relevant was a) inflicting debilitating conditions on opponents, and b) overcoming spell resistance. I recall a lot of "all or nothing" situations where you either couldn't do a darned thing to them, or you could obliterate them by paralyzing them or otherwise making them helpless.

 

[Plane Sailing]

paladin spells. Like Holy Sword is pretty good (double damage),

Didn't they change that in 3.5e so it became a paltry +2d6 damage?

 

[Rystil Arden]

Observing high level spellcasters in play in a low-Epic campaign, it seemed to me that hit points (and thus hit point damage) started to become irrelevant. What was more relevant was a) inflicting debilitating conditions on opponents, and b) overcoming spell resistance. I recall a lot of "all or nothing" situations where you either couldn't do a darned thing to them, or you could obliterate them by paralyzing them or otherwise making them helpless.

I saw somewhat the opposite in my low-epic game--saving throw bonuses so vastly outstripped the DCs that could be produced that touch attack damaging spells became the order of the day, preferrably heavily metamagicked to cause massive damage. Barring that, things that couldn't be Evasion-ed like Horrid Wilting were fairly popular as well. There were also usually huge amounts of buffs up in every direction and Rings of Counterspelling with Disjunction in them (and/or Reactive Counterspell and Disjunctions prepared specifically to counterspell the other team's Disjunctions). And this Disjunction precaution level is even after I houseruled it to not automatically dispel all spells like the crazy version in the PH but instead to have no caster level cap and set the DC to beat at 1 + the opponents caster level (rather than 11 + )