Sure, and how many of those rounds to you expect creatures to not actively avoid it? Unless the terrain is very cramped grease is easy to avoid for everything but the enemies you cast it on.
...that is literally the fundamental benefit of the spell. Area denial. As I specifically said earlier.
'Without an action' isn't how you should be comparing these things. Fighters don't use a whole action to prone something. They use a single attack. And they can do that 100 rounds in a row while still attacking with the remainder of their attacks.
But they have to take
some kind of action to do it. The
grease spell just...works. It doesn't need anyone attending to it. It doesn't need the Wizard to spend one of his
fire bolt dice. It just
happens.
I'm not exactly sure how that point is related to what a Fighter's Action as a spell would look like. It's almost like you are conflating this point with Fighters are inferior (and at high levels I would agree). But that's due primarily to a lack of versatility (with certain strong effects unavailable to them) and not due to their abilities not making strong spells if stated out as such.
I wasn't--and as far as I could tell, you weren't--talking about that. You were talking about comparing damage outputs, and treating both the casters and the Fighter as having identical accuracy. This is not true, because casters have a choice: they can attack AC, or they can target any save for which they have an appropriate spell. Most saving throw bonuses are significantly lower than AC bonuses. This is recognized by the rules themselves; it's precisely the reason why big bad nasty creatures have Legendary Resistance, because if they
didn't, they'd get squished by stuff based on saving throws (usually debuffs/conditions, because these tend to be much more powerful than merely inflicting damage, but that's a separate issue). Pretending that spellcasters definitely always have the same accuracy values is false, and will lead to mistaken analysis, because most of the time, a reasonably-prepared caster has at least one option that target's a monsters bad save, whereas (just as I said) the Fighter has no choice but to target AC (or Athletics/Acrobatics, for Shove, or, if a Battle Master, a Strength or occasionally Wisdom saving throw).
Think about that. I mean really let that sink in!
I have.
The fact that you think I
haven't is very frustrating.
I don't think your understanding the argument. It's not about what a single effect does. It's about what the whole Fighter's turn does. What level of spell is that (as spells generally require your only action to do whatever it is they are going to do).
Then I dispute the argument as fundamentally in error. A caster can do
most of those things, if we make the Fighter's mechanics into a spell. And then the next round, if it suits them, they can do something much better than the Fighter. Or they can do something about half as good, safely at range.
I keep telling you what '2nd wind' looks like. It's an ability that does 4d6+10 damage on a hit and heals yourself for 1d10+5 (assuming you are 5th level). That's a pretty awesome spell for a caster. It'd be like a very strong level 2 spell - but not quite a level 3 spell.
And how many times per day do you get that "2nd wind" effect? How many spell slots are we talking about?
Even if I granted this (which I don't, I still think you're pretty heavily over-weighting things and ignoring maintenance-action costs), even if I gave you that it was legit actually the equivalent of a 3rd-level spell (which I emphatically do not), you're talking about three-ish 3rd-level spells per day at 5th level (depending on number of short rests). You know how many 3rd-level spells a Wizard has at 5th level? Two (potentially three, via Arcane Recovery--every other spellcaster has two). A mere one level later, and all casters have three such spell slots. So the Wizard is
already matching a clearly favorably-viewed version of the Fighter's special powers, even without considering cantrips, rituals (if applicable), and 1st and 2nd level spells. With some 20ish spells a day, and several of those spells being dramatically more powerful than anything in the Fighter's arsenal,
I'm not seeing the power you talk about. I'm seeing a Fighter that gets some reasonably good stuff early on, which mostly scales poorly (a very common problem with Fighters across editions), and which the Wizard can reasonably match
at level 6.
Plus...don't forget the Wizard's class features. Spell Mastery at 18th level literally DOES let you cast a (chosen, but changeable) 2nd level spell at-will. So even that is something the Wizard eventually gets for free, albeit at quite high level (but still two levels before the Fighter gets a third extra attack!)
Your trying to make specific abilities into spells and that's never what I meant.
Then you shouldn't have said...
I really think if we created wizard spells of some of what the fighter could do at will that those things would get called OP. It's almost like if you list something out as a spell, that makes it 10x stronger than if you list it out as something a martial can do. There's an instant difference in perception around such effects regardless of how strong they really are.
You were very specific about turning these things into actual spells, back then. That specifically rendering these effects
as spells would create an "instant difference in perception." I've done the described task, and did not see the described result. Now you're saying you meant some other task. That's very frustrating to me. (Particularly since the actually-powerful things, like Second Wind and Action Surge,
are not at-will.)
Being able to replace one attack with an
attempt to knock a single target prone is not a powerful effect. If that were an at-will spell, it would be pretty bad.
Sapping sting, as mentioned earlier, attempts to knock prone
and do damage, just as the Fighter's shove already can. It's, admittedly, relatively light damage (d4 per tier), but...it already fits the bill, there's
already a spell that does very nearly what you're talking about, and nobody's freaking out about it. Attempting to do 5 damage (2d4, take half damage on a save) and simultaneously knock prone is certainly less than doing 13.33 damage and separately attempting to knock prone, but not a vast gulf. I would not be looking in shock and confusion if
sapping sting was based on d8s instead of d4s (frankly, I actually think d4 is a little
weak, but since I appreciate spells that are weaker than non-spell options, don't take that as a complaint).
Doing 13.33 damage with a single melee attack instead of (about) 6 damage with a single ranged cantrip attack is, likewise, not a
huge deal. Is it
better? Yes, certainly. But don't forget that the Warlock can do 1d10+5 damage per hit at-will by spending something innate to their class (exactly like choosing a maneuver or a fighting style). Some people dislike that spellcasters (mostly Bard and Sorcerer) can
dip for
eldritch blast + Agonizing Blast, but you aren't hearing people throwing a fit because there's a cantrip that can deal 10.5 damage per hit at range and throw an opponent back 10 feet per hit, or slow each hit target by 10 feet (non-stacking), or the like. It may not be absolutely perfectly 100% identical to doing 13.33 damage on a melee hit and being able to trade doing that damage for knocking the target prone, but it's NOT worlds apart from what the Fighter does, and there isn't, and has never been, a chorus of voices complaining that
eldritch blast is ridiculously OP plz nerf.
The Shove action, presented as a spell, is weak. Plain and simple. The Shove action, presented as a rider on top of a cantrip you can already cast at the cost of reduced damage, would be...situational, even as a ranged attack. It certainly wouldn't be seen as horrendously overpowered--nor "10x stronger" than what the Fighter does.
I meant the things the Fighter can do on his turn. Make those effects into spells. There's plenty that the fighter does on his turn that if turned into a spell would be very powerful and i've named off numerous examples that you flat out reject already. Until you stop rejecting the examples provided I don't see this conversation going anywhere.
Again, I have yet to see a single thing that does so. People have often bellyached--we literally had a thread about it just recently!--at how cantrips make Wizards do comparable damage to Fighters and that that's dumb because Fighters should be unparalleled AWESOME at fighting.
You're arguing I've missed something. This is entirely possible, I'm human and make plenty of mistakes. Given this, would you be willing to point back to the specific posts where you did so, so I can re-read them and try to find what I missed?
