D&D Beyond shared some stats about the things people are using from Explorers Guide to Wildemount. These are stats from 28 million characters.
I'm still telling you take a gander at those spells. Magnify Gravity for example, is just outright better than any other first-level AE damage spell.
Flip that around and say "balanced" and "well-designed", and your statement is still true. People tend to think that the way something works for their table, is the way it works for everyone else's tables (or worse, the way it should work for everyone). Balanced or unbalanced, fun or not fun, etc. It's kind of pointless to argue about feelings and judgment calls like this. (And I'd try to avoid implying that my fellow readers aren't capable of understanding something.)
The way I look at it: the author feels the Echo Knight was balanced. The playtesters felt it was balanced. The editors and publishers felt it was balanced. So it's probably balanced. It sure doesn't feel that way to me, but my feelings are pretty unreliable.
Also any DM that rules that you can spot the difference between “ A perfect Illusion” and the original, when the player is trying to cause doubt as to which is which, is lousy refereeing, to my mind.
Obviously, even with an effort to police balance between spells, some spells will be better than others. The spells you are referring to are clearly marked as Restricted.
The way I look at it: the author feels the Echo Knight was balanced. The playtesters felt it was balanced. The editors and publishers felt it was balanced. So it's probably balanced. It sure doesn't feel that way to me, but my feelings are pretty unreliable.
Well, no-one except for the author, playtesters, editors, and publishers. ;-)I see no-one is willing to suggest Magnify Gravity is actually fine, which is interesting.
Didn't you read? He said no-one is willing to suggest that!Well, no-one except for the author, playtesters, editors, and publishers. ;-)
I see no-one is willing to suggest Magnify Gravity is actually fine, which is interesting.
I've taken a closer look at it: per the DMG chart, a multi-target Level 1 Spell that does half-damage on a asave would do 2d6, not 2d8, so that is more powerful on first blush. My hypothesis is that they started there, but found in actual play that the Constitution saving throw was too good on targets, so they adjusted upwards. Given what is known of the statistical, bog-data approach of the WotC private playtesting process, this seems most likely.