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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sirot" data-source="post: 5799462" data-attributes="member: 6688700">Converting things into terms of equivalent damage is a useful metric. For example, let's say I have a third level spell to summon a giant laser spider to fight alongside me. I can look at the other third level spells and see that they roughly, on average do about 60 points of total damage (we can say fireball does on average 15, but in a usual encounter you will hit 4 enemies). Now that giant laser spider during its lifetime should roughly do 60 points of damage. Since it's a summon it will be able to attack one creature at a time consistently throughout the fight (compared to fireball, which hits multiple and does all the damage at the same time) and be able to tank a few hits for the party. However, you risk the giant laser spider being killed before it does its expected 60 points of damage. So fireball and summon giant laser spider can be considered to be equivalent in strength even if they do wildly different things.</blockquote>