Tony Vargas
Legend
Prettymuch like always, then.Given the Skills and Abilities discussion and Class discussion from DDXP it would seem that the designers are shooting for;
Wizard can be spectacular once and a while.
This balanced against, say, the fighter doing a consistent good job.
You're leaving out one thing (OK, two things, there's also weapon damage, which can be pretty trivial at high level). Hitting. A high level fighter has to hit each time to do that damage, and he has to pile it onto one target to do damage comparable to the spell.(3.5e rules). You are now looking at +25 damage per attack.
Multiply by the four main attacks of the fighter at level 16 and you have 100 points of damage without rolling a die for the type of weapon held.
A spell rolling 16d6 will average out to 56 damage or roughly a third but usually spread over a group of targets that can attempt saves to reduce the 56 to half or 28 damage.
If the spell engulf 4 enemies, all of whom save, that's still more than 100 damage. Assuming worst case (all saved) vs best (all attacks hit).
And, Full Attack is the fighters best option. Blasting spells are typically the casters' worst options.
And sit out large swaths of game time. The balance of boredom.Balance in the new set of rules looks like it is being compared on a mixture of Combat, Exploration, and Role-play expressions. This is good as this allows for different characters to have a chance to practice and use a variety of things and shine in different ways.
Can't argue too hard about that. D&D has generally gotten better with each ed, and degraded slowly within each ed. (making the next one almost welcome, some of the time -though not so much this time, it hasn't even been 4 years yet). Sure, there was a lot of broken stuff in the PH1 in 3.5, and Blade Cascade and split-primary classes in the 4e PH1. But still, it only got more broken as you added to it.Actually, the biggest breakers of balance are not the game designers but it is the fan/freelance writers that produce the support books.