Lot of player hating going on against my favorite spell from way back in AD&D. I can't believe the hate.
I don't think the spell is broken, what I think is broken is how some classes can break the spell, like the sorcerer for instance. Anyway, you all got me fired up so I apologize ahead of time if I go a bit far on defending the spell, but I have to make a lot of comments against the player haters.
I do ask that those that have a problem with the spell ask themselves if the problem is with it cause the spell is broken or from the way it was used. I think if you reflect back on the situations where you think the spell is broken, you will 9 times out of ten find that a sorcerer was causing all the problems.
So me a 9th level wizard with all magic missiles and I will show you someone who doesn't understand how to play a wizard.
Bad Paper said:
MM is too powerful because it's an automatic hit, not because of its damage. There are so few automatic hit spells out there (even 8th-level Polar Ray requires an attack roll).
MM has that weird can't-target-an-object rule:
"Is that thing over there a golem or merely a statue?"
"Dunno. Let's see what MM does..."
Too powerful, not too weak. Your piddly first-level spell makes the fighters look like chumps when fighting incorporeal opponents.
Uh, not sure what you are saying here. Plenty of spells are automatic hits. Almost every evocation and necromancy spells are automatic hits, fireball, lightning bold, cold of cold.
I think what you mean to say is that ALL ray spells require a ranged touch attack, which they do, just like the PHB says under ray effects.
Notice, magic missile is not a ray spell, so yes, like all other non ray spells, it automatically hits
Now, I could see you being pissy cause it doesn’t offer a save, but since it will most likely only target one creature, even at higher levels, and has a low damage cap, even compared to other 1st level spells, it is fairly balanced.
Benimoto said:
It's problematic comparing magic missile damage to that from a human fighter with a greatsword. Many have mentioned that there's no hit roll, no DR, no incorporeal chance. Also, often there's no real possibility of retaliation.
You're better off comparing it to a bow than a greatsword, and it there that you see magic missile become better in comparison. Magic missle does 1 point less damage than a regular bow per missile, and you get more missiles slightly faster than the archer gets more arrows. If the archer got a ghost touch bow that always hit and ignored incorporeal and DR at 1st level, that would be overpowered, no?
Magic Missile is so powerful because it's an automatic choice. You can nearly always do damage with it. It scales up to 9th level, when most other 1st level spells are forgotten or of otherwise limited utility. 17.5 damage at 9th level is nothing great, but from another perspective, it's 2 more damage than you do with a fireball against enemies that make their saving throw, and 17.5 more than you do against things immune to fire or with evasion.
I think it is important to note that you are most likely going use it against only one target, even though you can target up to five, so it is weaker in the respect that it only does really good damage to one creature.
Deset Gled said:
No matter how you crunch the numbers, an automatic hit with no chance of energy resistance or damage reduction will always have an advantage. Not necessarily a great advantage, and not necesarily in all (or even many) situations, but it is always valuable. Even a range touch attach against a giant redwood fails 5% of the time.
Magic Missle: When it absolutely, positively has to cause damage.
You do realize that it is only a first level spell, thus also subject to higher SR failure and also subject to many common protections like Globe of Invulnerability. A simple shield spell kills the spell and brooches of shield absorb them like made. Sure, force gets by DR and hardness and is one of the most useful descriptors, but that was an add on for 3.0 and 3.5. If anything, WOTC made it more useful by changing the way magic works.
Jedi_Solo said:
Magic Missile: when you absolutely, posatively have to kill that wraith in the room; accept no substitute.
Hmm, I guess the cleric would do nothing against it, or any other properly made character. For christs sake, if your world about a fighter getting on even ground with a spellcaster against a wraith, then get a ghost touched weapon, I'm sure the spellcaster would be happy to make you one, if ya would stop whining about his ability to do a max of 5d4+5 to a wraith. I realize you weren't the original poster for this, so apologies for that, just needed the quote.
green slime said:
The point is, the spell MM keeps those 1st level spell slots useful even later in the game. Low level wizards don't need to be dealing humungous amounts of damage. They have sleep, charm person, jump, feather fall, and a myriad of other spells which, together with scribe scroll, means they can contribute meaningfully to the party's adventuresome success.
They shouldn't be doing what the fighter does. Does the fighter leap about expecting to charm people, (or fascinate them), and determine if found loot is magical?
If your game entails a lot of fight, and some players are feeling that the low level wizard is "boring" or being left out of the action too much, perhaps they should try some of the variant spellcasters?
Well, I guess once you get to be, hmm, what, 10th level all your first levels spells should just suck and be unuseful. Tell me what kind of sense that makes. Magic Missile and Burning Hands were staples of AD&D, since the begining and with the 3.0/3.5 stat scores easier to get a CON bonus to hit points, these spells are actually weaker that 1st edition cause on average everything has more hit points.
I don't think it is a matter of characters thinking that low level wizards are boring, cause they know, or should know, that things get better for them very quickly. I can't believe that so many people on this thread think that Magic Missile is the second coming of the anti-christ.
Li Shenron said:
For a Wizard, it's just balanced.
For a Sorcerer, it's definitely a powerful spell, especially at higher levels when you have lots of slots per day. It somtimes happens to me, that when better spells are blocked by some immunity or protection, maybe Magic Missile isn't blocked (of course, it could be the other way around too...). In that case, you can even afford to use higher level slots to cast more MM.
So IMHO it's truly powerful for sorcerers, and yet that does NOT make them overpowered, but rather keeps them balanced with Wizards.
I agree that Sorcerers are just plain broken in general. You get way more spells, incredible flexability when casting spells, including meta magic flexability. The only down side to playing a sorcerer is that you know fewer spells, which is not that big of a deal, if you do enough research to take the good ones, which in the case, magic missile happens to be.
It really doesn't matter what spell you have, if you can cast it over and over and over, it is good, for the most part.
Ridley's Cohort said:
Magic Missile is not too powerful at any level. What it has going for it is consistency, both in effect and usefulness as you climb to higher levels.
Unless you are fighting something highly weird or incorporeal, Grease and Ray of Enfeeblement are more effective in most combats.
99% of the time my mid-level Wizard casts MM, it is because he does not have a great ideas what to do and does not think it is worth bothering to Delay. 17.5 points damage is pretty boring when you are an 11th level Wizard.
I concur.
Whenever I play a wizard I always have a few magic missiles in store, but I use them mainly as a last resort since there are far better spells that deal a lot more damage to many more targets. Really, at higher levels, the only time I cast magic missile is when I run out of fun spells and have to rely on lower level staple spells.
Mistwell said:
The way I knew Magic Missle was overpowered was when our party sorceror, for the first ten levels, used it almost every single combat, usually multiple times.
In fact she used it so often that she found the need to calculate how many times she could use it, assuming she was converting higher level spell slots into magic missles.
She ROUTINELY used 4th level spell slots to cast magic missle.
When a spell becomes so all-encompassing that you are willing to forget about most of your charaacter's other abilities so that you can zap a person behind cover while they are grappling, then yeah it is probably overpowered.
You are making an unfair comparison since you are talking about a broken class. Your typical wizard won't memorize every spell as a hieghtened Magic Missile. It is the Socerers ability to convert other spells into 1st level spells that breaks the spell, not the spell itself.
Mistwell said:
And WOTC knew this going in. That's why they included magic items to defend specifically against this spell, and other spells that protect against this spell. They admitted in playtesting that magic missle dominated a lot of combats.
Monte Cook's fix recently to make it an exotic spell was a good one.
For the record, they had magic items to protect against Magic Missile in AD&D too, WOTC didn't come up with them. But, MM was more powerful back then, cause things had fewer hit points and of course MM dominated play testing, I'm sure many of them played sorcerers to test the new class, which happens to be a class that can and will abuse it.
Monte Cook have some very interesting ideas for magic, I like the different levels of spells, how they can be made stronger and such, but really, I think his magic system is more geared towards a lower magic setting. That is fine and all, but I think that helps explain some of his theorys on things like MM.
Quasqueton said:
How does magic missile compare to a warlock's eldritch blasts? People say the warlock is fine and balanced with his unlimited blasts. Without crunching the numbers myself, at a glance, it seems that a sorcerer throwing out magic missiles is about the same.
Quasqueton
I this this is a vaild point. I don't understand everything about the warlock cause I think the premuse for the character class is broken and won't read further into it, but Warlocks do get eldritch blasts as many times as they want and they get invocations, and from my understanding, as many times a day as they want too.
Not only do they get eldritch blasts an umlimited number of times a day, they also can add to the blast effects like, every time someone is hit with one, they are sickened and stuff.
Both the blasts and the invocations are spell-like abilities so with a quicken spell like ability feat, you can use each quickened once a day. I think if you guys want to complain about a broke spell like ability, pick on the warlock blast. Personally, I would cast a teleport spell if confronted by a warlock, cause the shear number of blasts they can cast will always out weigh a wizard and even a sorcerer, doesn't matter if it is not a force effect like magic missile. Eventually they will get you.
Deset Gled said:
Orb spells may also be hard to come by if you are playing in a core-only game, or if your DM has banned them for being horribly written (as I have when I DM, which I admit isn't much these days).
That seems to be a popular opinion. The orb spells are broken, mostly cause of no SR, but other reasons as well. I even agree they should be stricken from the record. I won't let players use them either.
