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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 818019" data-attributes="member: 2013">Re: Re: In support of "overpowered..."*grins* No, it doesn't.Why?Because the cleric's blast power (roughly 110% of the wizard's) is spread over 150% as many spells.  That means each spell is getting, on average, only about 75% as much power as a wizard spell.  But in terms of raw hitting power, yeah, the cleric is overpowered (a contention that has been made on these boards before, no?).A mystic theurge's blast power is spread over 167% as many spells as the cleric.  That means, on average, he gets about 75% as much blast power as a cleric out of any given spell - or roughly 55% as much blast power out of any given spell as the wizard does.Is this balanced?  For the purposes of a single encounter, probably - the Mystic Theurge LACKS pop compared to the other two.But in a "no rest for the weary" scenario - or a classic dungeoncrawl - or any other scenario that does not assume the PCs get to "re-stock" after every encounter, the "staying power" of the Mystic Theurge wins out.I guess it's a matter of campaign style - I don't give my players a lot of chances to recover... they usually have to go 4 to 8 encounters (depending on difficulty) before they get a chance to rest... which means, on average (6 encounters at their level), I stretch their abilities (since, in theory, each encounter should sap them of about 20% of their resources and in theory I'm requiring them to pull 120% of their resources out of their backsides over 6 encounters).This may be the "wrong" perception, but my perception was that a typical D&D game should have roughly 4-5 encounters between rest periods... not 1-2.  This is where the theurge makes a HUGE difference... instead of having to rely on burning hands and magic missiles on encounter 4 or 5 (like the wizard), he's still got a couple of fireballs, a flame strike, and an ice storm tucked away - and that makes a HUGE difference."Handwaving" the balance issue by saying, "yes, he'll kick butt over time" is just that... handwaving.  The game was built to drain PCs' resources... and I hope the classes that exist weren't balanced with "one encounter when fully rested" in mind!Yes, the mystic theurge will be outgunned in his first encounter of the day.  But around the third encounter, he holds his own, and by the time the 5th rolls around, he's worth his weight in gold.This is a valid point... but there's no easy way to quantify that, IMO... I then have to do second-order analyses based on spell DC by level, then third-order analyses based on spell DC by prime attribute.  It's not worth the extra bother to me.Again, my main point of contention is that "yes, he lacks the raw firepower right off the bat" but that a well-balanced D&D game should challenge the PCs' abilities by requiring them to use ~100% of their resources - IOW, it should be about 5 encounters before the reload period - the "he can keep blasting long after everyone else stops" argument IS and SHOULD BE a compelling one.Run the Clr16, Wiz16, and Theurge through 5 consecutive encounters (as a party of 3; maybe add a 16th-level fighter too) and let me know how it turns out.  Better yet, run them through 10 such encounters non-stop - the Wiz should be "spent" after about 5, the Clr "spent" after about 7, but the Theurge likely will STILL have some wallop for the 10th encounter.  THAT is a huge boost.--The Sigil</blockquote>

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