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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrogReaver" data-source="post: 8407055" data-attributes="member: 6795602">Agreed.  But then we get into the issue that doing a bunch of damage to a single target until it dies and doing some AOE damage to a bunch of targets without killing them doesn't have the same effect in combat.  That is total damage caused by an AOE is not directly comparable single target damage numbers.  You only have 1 level 6 and 1 level 7 spell slot.  You can't cast a level 7 animate objects + disintegrate + disintegrate in a single encounter.  I chose a level 5 animate objects for that reason.Also I used 65% to hit and 65% chance for a failed save.  That's what yielded the 227.  Fighter was doing 120 over 4 rounds at level 6.  Add on an extra attack and he should be able to easily reach 180 since going from 2 attacks to 3 is a 50% damage upgrade.  I anticipate it can be a little higher since comboing maneuvers on your action surge round leads to somewhat increased efficiency.Though, I think there's been a subtle change from 4 round encounter in my example to 3 round here.  So in a 3 round fight I would only expect about 12/15 (80%) as much.  So yea, 150 - 170ish in a 3 round encounter is about right.Wizards have pulled ahead a little here, however - Add in a single +1 magical weapon and that goes up quite a bit - which is all but guaranteed by that level.  Add in a single level multiclass dip into warlock for hex and the damage ramps up even higher.  Add in feats and damage ramps up even higher.  It's pretty easy to push Fighter damage at this level much higher.  Wizard's 227 damage is all but capped and relies on concentration - which can easily be disrupted, especially without feats and it also relies on enemies not having magical/legendary resistance.So I go to some trouble to show how I expect a 4 round adventuring day to play out at level 4 and all I got back is - 'that's not my experience'.  No additional explanation or clarification.  You don't see how incredibly dismissive that was?AgreedI picked evoker wizard in my example for that reason.  He's generally party safe.Well, Forcecage may not help with 1 enemy.  But let's say 2 - which is it's best case scenario.  The wizard's damage gets cut nearly in half doing that.  1 less disintigrate and 1 less use of animate objects (i'm assuming you would open with forcecage here).  Anyways the point is that the creature not being forcecaged is likely to get an extra round.  In order to maintain our 3 round victory the First creature would have died in maybe 1 round with the damage focused wizard.  There's a good chance it lasts 2 now.  The 2nd creature would likely have taken 2 since the 1 round KO assumes everyone burning their better abilities to accomplish that.  The party has taken 4 enemy turns with forcecage.  The party would have taken 4 enemy turns without it (condensed to 3 rounds instead of 4 rounds).  At least this is a plausible scenario.  So I'm not sure forcecage typically that much here.  If the fight was longer maybe, but to get a longer encounter the enemy squad would need to have a ton more hp/defenses to chew through.</blockquote>

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