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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 5470353" data-attributes="member: 5834">reIn general blasters don't keep up with melee or ranged. With crits and feats like Power Attack and Deadly Aim, melee and ranged damage far outstrips caster damage on single targets. It's been this way since 3.5. 3.0 was balanced because Haste allowed a second spell to be cast which was great for blasters. They removed this because casting two spells in many circumstances other than damage was overly powerful, especially when you factor in Quicken Spell. But they still haven't reigned in feats like Power Attack and Deadly Aim when it comes to crits.DR is fairly meaningless in D&D past say lvl 8 to 10. Toss in spells like Versatile Weapon and enhancement bonuses cutting through DR and you have melee and ranged attackers ripping through enemies while blaster casters don't do much. I play an evocker using empowered Scorching Ray with Point Blank Shot. I managed to do 40 points of damage in a round unloading on a creature. That's pretty good with a 2nd lvl spell at lvl 9. That was one and 1/3rd melee hits with Power Attack. And less than half a crit hit by the Great Axe wielder whoaverages 100 points a crit with his +1 thundering Greataxe. I'm never sure what game designers are thinking of when they work so hard to reign in arcane caster damage and not bother to reign in melee and ranged damage. It seems like they are always adding ways for melee and ranged damage dealers to do more. While always making sure the arcane casters can't match their damage output with blast spells.So arcane casters have to rely on effect spells that take the target out rather than do damage. As levels rise those type of spells are more effective than damage spells. Spells are limited resource, whereas melee and ranged attacks are for the most part not. So why bother unloading blast spells for meager damage compared to the melee and ranged physical attackers when you can feel those slots with powerful effect spells that take something when they hit rather than do damage. Especially with saves being weaker than hit points.</blockquote>

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