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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 9209335" data-attributes="member: 9053">Long post incoming! So I am just going to call shenanigans on the "casters have too many high level slots" argument, since I'm living it right now. In the game I'm playing, after next session, we are going to be hitting level 14, which I would say qualifies as "high level play." Here's what my and my cleric friend's slots will look like at that point:[ATTACH=full]336426[/ATTACH]What you see there is that we each have one level seven slot. One level six slot. And two level five slots. An interesting thing to note is that we received no extra spell slots for reaching that level, something that will also be true when we hit level 16.Our game sessions typically have 3-4 encounters in a typical adventuring day. With the arcane recovery I can push to having two level six slots in a day (which I typically don't do, using them instead to replenish a ton of lower level spells for my 'bread and butter' adventuring spells: shield, silvery barbs, misty step, and counterspell).Now let's look at my spell preparations for levels 5-7, where my "high power" options are:[ATTACH=full]336484[/ATTACH]Those are some powerful options, but ... once you look across three or four encounters, you're seeing that those high level slots go fast. And my character can control a couple of encounters really well. Does it make the session trivial or not fun for the other characters? It could, but the other players built their characters to do things that mine really doesn't. And that's do a lot of damage. And make all the skill checks to notice things and disarm dangerous things. And talk to things.And just looking at those spells doesn't explain where some of those slots are really likely to go. We are in a dungeon (Oblivion from Shackled City) where we have to get through doors that are exceptionally difficult to open without having specific spells at our disposal. The DM is allowing me to use Transmute Rock and then have another characters summons "Kool-Aid man" through the walls, which I am not sure is technically in the spell's ability, but the location we're in is designed with 3.5 in mind, so the DM is letting us work around that to continue the adventure. The cost with that is that my most go-to levels of spells for changing the game are being used to continue the adventure. And that's really what being a high level spell caster is. You can do things that the martial characters can't. And our warlock/bard/paladin can smite things into the ground, so that all works out in the end.I still see a lot of challenges that high level D&D has in play, the biggest being that at high levels if you aren't built to make a kind of check and need to do it, you're kind of out of luck, but others are there as well. What isn't there is that I just force cage or teleport or wall of force around everything and the DM hates me.</blockquote>

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