apparently @Cap'n Kobold decided to go with 3x fireballs but did it in a way that quote won't work. Those aren't bad spells either & I'm not bothering to check your math beyond eyeballing the numbers in the post for "I think that's probably plausible." Keep in mind though that the fighter is doing 39/round with 20 strength no fighting style no feats no crits & no archetype abilities for a total of 39-78/round depending on if he uses short rest recovering action surge or notSince I don't expect he will answer - I'm figuring something like Animate Objects + Disintegrate + Disintegrate = 227 Damage over 3 rounds.
Featless and Magic Weaponless Paladins and Fighters should be able to get pretty close to that (at least 180 but probably 200+)
Barbarians fall behind here.
Monks can't keep up in direct damage but they can stun alot at that level. This is probably more impressive than damage.
A Druid using conjure animals can keep up depending on the animal he can summon. Wolves would do about 270.
A typical cleric does much less. Maybe 150ish (some of that is AOE though)
- Fireball is 8d6 with +1d6 per slot above 3rd save for half
- 7th level fireball: 12d6 average 42 damage, save for half +1
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zero damage but only 2 more legendary resists
- Greatsword with 20 strength making three attacks with no feats no fighting styles no archetype features & no crits average 39 damage.
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- 6th level fireball: 11d6 average 38.5 damage
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zero damage but only 1 more legendary resist
- Greatsword with 20 strength making three attacks with no feats no fighting styles no archetype features & no crits average 39 damage.
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- 5th level fireball: 10d6 35 average damage
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zero damage but no more legendary resists
- Greatsword with 20 strength making three attacks with no feats no fighting styles no archetype features & no crits average 39 damage.
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Here's where it starts to change. First you have those 3 level 4 slots he picked up at levels 7 8 & 9. Those fireballs are doing 9d6 for an average of 31.5 to the fighter's continued 39 average damage. Next you have the three third level slots he has had since level six that each deal8d6 for a total of 28 average damage. As before these spells do zero damage when meeting with legendary resist.
But fireball is aoe! It certainly is but we never discussed the specific encounters & this thread is literally about the number of encounters per adventuring day which is currently 10.7% 21 encounters 18.7% 2 encounters & 25.3% for 3 encounters. Factor in two short rests & the fighter has gone from one action surge(av39) to two action surges(avg another 39) while the wizard has gained an extra level 5 slot(avg 35 or zero with legendary resist).
I haven't forgotten about the AOE & that whole action surge point was relevant here. If we look at dmg249 in "adjudicating areas of effect" fireball should typically hit 20ft radius/5=4 targets. That however assumes that A: there will be 4 targets not 1-2 badass hard/deadly encounter monsters & B: that those 4 monsters will be politely clustered together in a 20ft radius sphere with their necks out... That's a lot of assumptions especially when you figure how many hard/deadly encounter monsters for a level 13 wizard will be sporting fire resist magic resist or legendary resist. If you look at the final boss for wotc's HC adventures that end around level 10-12 for guidance on an average encounter it's probably going to be 1-2 maybe 3 creatures with a very high chance of legendary resist magic resist and/or fire resist on one or all of the creatures who could trivially just decide not to stand in a 20ft radius sphere.
With all of that factored in, the theoretical lead the wizard had from condensing the adventuring day down with fewer more dangerous encounters just shrunk to something unrealistically difficult to measure if it hasn't dissolved entirely. Not only that a wizard tends to be at their best when they are doing things that don't involve damage like buff/debuff/control spells that are almost universally concentration in 5e meaning that a wizard focused on their most optimum role will see absolutely no shift in power until factoring in the higher likelihood of magic resistance & legendary resistance on those fewer more dangerous fights to actually make them less effective.