D&D (2024) Can A Spell Caster Out Damage a Martial Consistently?

[EzekielRaiden]

No but what I said was Fear can end an encounter, and it can. Not all encounters, and some that it can end it can't end reliably, but others it can do it reliably.

Precisely.

Nobody here is saying Wizards can just perfectly no-sale encounters trivially or whatever. That degree of stupidly OP design has been left behind with 3.x/PF1.

What we are saying, @Ashrym, is that Wizards really do still have the ability to Just End Fights. With perfect reliability? Hell no! But what, praytell, does a Fighter have that could even come close to "I have a 20% chance of ending this fight before it begins"? Especially when that also comes with "I also have a 50%+ chance of turning this fight into a cakewalk"? Because incapacitating or dispersing half the enemy force is kind of an enormous impact on a combat.

Being a spellcaster definitely means you need to be prepared for your spells to sometimes fail, and that you need to accept that a 30% chance of bupkis is worth a 70% chance of phenomenal success. Because, mathematically, it is.

 

[FrogReaver]

I looked at the beasts in the 2024 monster manual, the best 2 for CME are scorpions and lions, but both are a bit underwhelming for high tier 2 due to their lower attack bonuses.

 

[Zardnaar]

The damage difference is huge. Even if they die, they likely outdamaged your hex+scorching ray (for a wizard, since that's what we are explicitly talking about). *Hex can lose concentration as well.

I kept losing concentration. Hex is level 2 bonus action to renew.

3rd tome I had concentration broken my enthusiasm for summons went down.

 

[ECMO3]

It also doesn't hurt that you've decided to interpret Fear spell in a way that hugely buffs it.

"A Frightened creature takes the Dash action and moves away from you by the safest route on each of its turns unless there is nowhere to move. "

I and every DM I have played with interprets that as: The creature must take the Dash action [regardless of situation] and moves away from you unless there is nowhere to move.

It is perfectly legit to interpret it as: The creature must take the dash action [unless there is nowhere to move] and moves away from you unless there is nowhere to move.

I agree that 2nd interpretation is valid, however it hardly changes the power of the spell in play. All the caster has to do is move slightly to give the affected creatures somewhere else to run that is further away.

I am in 30x30 room with one door in the center of the south wall, I am in the doorway. I cast fear and the enemy takes the dash action and runs to the northeast corner as far away as possible. On my turn I simply move to the southeast corner, now the bad guy has "somewhere to run" - the northwest corner. So they take the dash action and run there. Then next turn I move to the southwest corner. This ends up working like a washing machine, with them moving back and forth but does not change the overall effect of the spell unless I play not smart.

The difference between the first and second interpretation is I have to move in a dead end situation, which is not generally significant, especially when you have party members that can do things like block enemy movement paths.

I might be wrong, but I think most play it that when a creature is cornered that it doesn't use it's action for dashing. I know for sure that's how I play it.

IME most do not play it that way, but it is a valid interpretation, although not one I have seen.

But they need to be actually cornered as far away as they can possibly get from the caster at the start of their turn and that should never be the case unless the caster is not smart or there is some other highly situational effect in play.

There are some corner cases where this might happen; like if the caster gets grappled or restrained. Even in this case though they still can't move any closer to the caster, so unless they have ranged attacks/abilities they are useless and even if they do have ranged attacks those are at disadvantage.

With an Arcane Trickster multiclass I once hit enemies with Fear in a rather large room with exits on both ends. They dashed away from me and I used action dash and bonus action dash to run past them and make them turn around and run the other way and did this for several turns in a row while my allies stood in the middle and made ranged attacks and AOOs on them as they ran past (and I got AOOs too), and that works with either interpretation.

 

[Zardnaar]

How is it not? I showed that you could functionally double or more your total HP, while having (with Blade Ward) 20-23 AC.


See post #93. Also, things like weapon attack cantrips, chromatic orb (3d8 flexible-type single-target damage with a 1st level spell, Wizard/Sorcerer), ice knife (slightly worse, but AoE, and available to Druids), burning hands (same as chromatic orb but fixed-type and AoE), guiding bolt (Cleric, Radiant, also acts as a self-buff in the right conditions). For 2nd level spells, you've already mentioned scorching ray, and I got lots of good use out of flaming sphere. Heat metal is conditional but powerful when it applies ("cook & book"). Cleric's spiritual weapon basically lets you conjure up a pre-5th level Fighter for free.

There are options. Not all of them will work with the uber-tank Bladesinger build I mentioned, so don't interpret this as blending all of those things together. Just saying, it's not like casters are somehow totally beholden to martial characters to do damage...especially at levels 1-4, when nobody has Extra Attack yet.

Different thread it's can spellcasters consistently out damage martials. Not can they out tank a barbarian.
They would also have to do both and how long can they sustain it?

Treantmonks video which did crunch scorhing ray did 4 combats, 4 rounds, 1 short rest. Sorcerers can have advantage on every attack every combat, every round.

You tun out of shield spells 1 combat 2 with arcane recovery

 

[ECMO3]

The damage difference is huge. Even if they die, they likely outdamaged your hex+scorching ray (for a wizard, since that's what we are explicitly talking about). *Hex can lose concentration as well.

The damage difference is huge if you make it to the second round with the spell up with enemies close to you that individually still have a ton of hit points. In other situations it is not huge and in many situations (perhaps even most situations) it will actually be lower damage than if you just went with Hex and a Cantrip on round 1 and scorching ray on round 2.

Hex is concentration but it does not have the range limit of CME, making it generally easier to maintain concentration.

At the end of the day CME is so situational that it is not really relevant in these max damage comparisons. Yes with a high level slot it mathematically is more damage than other options over 2 rounds if the stars align. But on round 1 (the most important round where there are the largest number of hit points available to drain) it is usually 0 and there has to be a specific set of circumstances to really get a lot of damage out of it going forward on round 2+.

 

[Zardnaar]

The damage difference is huge if you make it to the second round with the spell up with enemies close to you that individually still have a ton of hit points. In other situations it is not huge and in many situations (perhaps even most situations) it will actually be lower damage than if you just went with Hex and a Cantrip on round 1 and scorching ray on round 2.

Hex is concentration but it does not have the range limit of CME, making it generally easier to maintain concentration.

Casting hex via fae touched you can use scorching ray as well.

Sorcerers also proficient in con saves.

 

[Ashrym]

Precisely.

Nobody here is saying Wizards can just perfectly no-sale encounters trivially or whatever. That degree of stupidly OP design has been left behind with 3.x/PF1.

What we are saying, @Ashrym, is that Wizards really do still have the ability to Just End Fights. With perfect reliability? Hell no! But what, praytell, does a Fighter have that could even come close to "I have a 20% chance of ending this fight before it begins"? Especially when that also comes with "I also have a 50%+ chance of turning this fight into a cakewalk"? Because incapacitating or dispersing half the enemy force is kind of an enormous impact on a combat.

Being a spellcaster definitely means you need to be prepared for your spells to sometimes fail, and that you need to accept that a 30% chance of bupkis is worth a 70% chance of phenomenal success. Because, mathematically, it is.

Casting fear and then having opponents save means the spell slot is gone and there's still a fight that will cost more spell slots. Casting fear and then having opponents fail, flee, and then eventually no longer be affected to return costs a slot and delays combat. That ends a combat and then the combat can take place later with one less spell slot.

My point was that we cannot pretend that spell slots are always available. They run out and casters without spell slots to use tend to be a poor choice for defense, damage (which is what this thread is about), or some of their utility.

Pointing out that about a third of the targets will save mean that the we also cannot assume that 15 spell slots will be effective because we know they won't be.

I'm not saying spellcasters don't have options. I'm saying they can run out of gas, and trying to showboat speeds that up.

 

[Zardnaar]

Casting fear and then having opponents save means the spell slot is gone and there's still a fight that will cost more spell slots. Casting fear and then having opponents fail, flee, and then eventually no longer be affected to return costs a slot and delays combat. That ends a combat and then the combat can take place later with one less spell slot.

My point was that we cannot pretend that spell slots are always available. They run out and casters without spell slots to use tend to be a poor choice for defense, damage (which is what this thread is about), or some of their utility.

Pointing out that about a third of the targets will save mean that the we also cannot assume that 15 spell slots will be effective because we know they won't be.

I'm not saying spellcasters don't have options. I'm saying they can run out of gas, and trying to showboat speeds that up.

Alot of control spells don't end the combat. They give the martials the tempo to power through.

 

[Ashrym]

Alot of control spells don't end the combat. They give the martials the tempo to power through.

Exactly. The damage spells don't keep up to hit point inflation and a lot of control spells don't actually end combats. The "but spellcasters" characters spinning their wheels without the martial support to work with.