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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7212033" data-attributes="member: 4937">Errr... unless I'm greatly mistaken magic missile does hit point damage.  The whole point of 'save or die' or 'save or suck' effects is that they bypass the normal ablative protection of hit points, winning the fight without having to erode hit points or making the ability to deal and avoid damage trivial.   That is to say, 'save or die' effects are win buttons that make the entire combat trivial.Or to put it technically, 'save or die' or 'save or suck' spells are powerful because they dominate the action economy.  Any effect that involves trading an action for a limit amount of hit point damage is not comparable to 'save or die' by definition.  To bring up magic missile in this context baffles me, given the trivial amount of damage that it inflicts and the fact that it acts as straight forward combat that just abrades hit points from the target.  I mean, you are aware right that the whole deal with hit points is that until they are depleted you suffer no penalties for their depletion and in general remain just as potent and dangerous after receiving the wound as before it.   Effects like 'magic missile' are essentially magical replacements for swinging a sword or shooting a bow, and are balanced with that.  If the sum total of D&D magic was just attack replacers that dealt damage, then D&D combat would be a more or less predictable damage race.   But it's not.  You can't compare direct damage to battlefield control.   One works within the normal framework of draining the opponent's hit points, and the other subverts that framework and renders it largely meaningless.As for "save or be sidelined", if "sidelining" in this case means that you are incapable of replying to attacks for the duration of combat, then it is "save or die" in the same way that any "save or suck" that steals all your remaining actions through some means is basically "save or die".  Sure, I still have to make the to hit rolls and inflict the damage, but the fight is now over and inflicting that damage over the duration of the effect is trivial for average PC parties.The OP is correct that levitate when used offensively does not have the normal limits we'd expect with 4e or later battlefield control.  It allows only one save, and if that save is failed since its duration is not extremely limited against a sizable percentage of foes it steals every meaningful action remaining in the combat.  It's probably more narrow than 3e era Hold Person, but conceptually it's very similar.Indeed, the main limitation of Levitation as written seems to be that isn't scalable.   If you could boost the weight limit or the number of targets by using a higher level spell slot, it would indeed be highly competitive with telekinesis for battlefield control.  And it is also important to call out that this represents one of the few spells that is more powerful battlefield control than it was in older editions, since for example in 3e levitation only effected willing targets.   I think the OP is making a good call out, and thinking about it, I'm a bit surprised to see Levitation bucking the general highly conservative trend with respect to "save or suck" because by now we understand the game enough to know how powerful dominating the action economy actually is.</blockquote>

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