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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 2889679" data-attributes="member: 2525">EBT covers a 20-ft.-radius spread, and hits everyone in that area.  Surely it's come up in your games, many times, when you cannot use an area attack spell without harming your own party members.Magic Missle does the following things:Hits only the targets you want it to hit, and not your allies;Always hits (except for the cases like total cover);Does force damage so it effects even incorporeal targets;Has no saving throw;Increases both the number of targets and the damage dealt as your caster level increases, up to 9th level;Is a first level spell.Spells that require an attack roll, or a saving throw, or an area instead of precise target(s), just don't hold up in certain relatively common circumstances when compared to what magic missle can do.It doesn't break the game obviously, but that doesn't mean that magic missle isn't overpowered.  The biggest problem with overpowered things is that they make for more boring games.  Overpowered options become almost mandatory options, and therefore get used instead of more interesting options more of the time.  And while it may be difficult to detect that the level of "boringness" is higher than it should be in your game, it does have an impact.You can see a bit of this even in this thread.  When people say that Magic Missle is the arcane equivelent of Cure Light Wounds for a cleric, that's really saying that Magic Missle is required for the arcane caster.  Despite the fact that the theme of the Cleric is intentionally oriented on curing people, and a class ability is to convert spells into cure spells, and many feats and prestige classes and domains and dieties are oriented around cure spells.Magic Missle is not supposed to be a major theme of all arcane casters.  It's not supposed to be the arcane equivelent of cure light wounds for a cleric.  But the fact that some people think it IS the same thing just goes to show how overpowered it is, that people just assume every arcane caster selects that spell and casts it often.</blockquote>

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