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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5840389" data-attributes="member: 54877">There is a way to give wizards (and other such) certain powerful magic, that feels powerful, but somewhat self-balances: Make it something that affects creatures over time, starts relatively weak, and grows in power each round.&nbsp;The summoned creature is rather wispy at start, and merely dings things (but is hard to kill, too). The more &quot;solid&quot; it becomes, the harder it hits, but the more it can be hit. &nbsp;A cloud of gas that damages each round, and is balanced under that criteria, deals only a little damage at first, but grows steadily more menacing and dangerous as it floats there.&nbsp;A spell that animates dancing blades to attack targets in the area can animate an additional blade each round. &nbsp;If you look at only damage/round and expected damage outputs over the course of fights, then you still can't perfectly balance these, for the reasons Kingreaper gives. However, if you balance them rather conservatively, towards the longer fights, then most of the time they will be balanced enough. If most fights are expected to last around 6 to 8 rounds, then have the damage increase so that it is roughly balanced over 5 rounds of combat. The first couple of rounds, it is distinctly substandard. By its third round of operation, it is about average. By round five, it is hitting hard.&nbsp;Thus, the wizard will need to get it going early to get maximum benefit, and only occasionally will blow the fight out of the water with it.&nbsp;But that isn't the most important reason this will work better than flat amounts. If the fight is going a lot longer than normal, the party can probably use the wizard really dealing it out. Or, if the fight is well under control, and the wizard cleans up during the mop up stage--then no thunder was left to be lost. It was only mop up. Nothing wrong with letting the wizard go beserk after everyone has had a chance to shine. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5840389, member: 54877"] There is a way to give wizards (and other such) certain powerful magic, that feels powerful, but somewhat self-balances: Make it something that affects creatures over time, starts relatively weak, and grows in power each round. The summoned creature is rather wispy at start, and merely dings things (but is hard to kill, too). The more "solid" it becomes, the harder it hits, but the more it can be hit. A cloud of gas that damages each round, and is balanced under that criteria, deals only a little damage at first, but grows steadily more menacing and dangerous as it floats there. A spell that animates dancing blades to attack targets in the area can animate an additional blade each round. If you look at only damage/round and expected damage outputs over the course of fights, then you still can't perfectly balance these, for the reasons Kingreaper gives. However, if you balance them rather conservatively, towards the longer fights, then most of the time they will be balanced enough. If most fights are expected to last around 6 to 8 rounds, then have the damage increase so that it is roughly balanced over 5 rounds of combat. The first couple of rounds, it is distinctly substandard. By its third round of operation, it is about average. By round five, it is hitting hard. Thus, the wizard will need to get it going early to get maximum benefit, and only occasionally will blow the fight out of the water with it. But that isn't the most important reason this will work better than flat amounts. If the fight is going a lot longer than normal, the party can probably [B]use[/B] the wizard really dealing it out. Or, if the fight is well under control, and the wizard cleans up during the mop up stage--then no thunder was left to be lost. It was only mop up. Nothing wrong with letting the wizard go beserk after everyone has had a chance to shine. ;) [/QUOTE]

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