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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tzarevitch" data-source="post: 586591" data-attributes="member: 1792">I have to disagree with the commentary that the cleric is mighter than the wizard. I play a Ranger1, Paladin1, Cleric 15 and I have seen a wizard in my party totally burn out a foe's Brooch of Shielding and still inflict over a hundred points of damage to his foe through magic missiles and other spells, and the wizard was not even high enough level to cast Timestop. If you use the correct combination of prestige classes (Incantrix, Red Wizard and Archmage in particular) plus the right combo of spells a wizard can generate ungodly damage with very high spell DCs.In terms of spell power, the cleric is pathetic until he can get to 9th lvl flamestrike. Searing light does pathetic damage unless your foe is undead, it is single-target, and it requires a hit roll to boot. The only reason it is a decent spell is it is all you have. Magic stone is not a good spell either. It is ok at 1st-3rd levels because no one is doing much damage then with spells anyway but it looses to Magic Missile regardless of how you slice it. Some domains do improve the cleric's spell damage potential but not by much. Remember you get 1 domain spell per level. The wizard gets as many spells as he chooses to memorize. Normally, the cleric only has a few good damage spells and ALL are high level. Flamestrike is 5th and while it has a bigger damage cap that is only because it is higher level. If you heighten a fireball to 5th level you also get the bigger damage cap AND you have a much bigger area-of-effect AND better range. Harm is always effective but it requires the cleric close and touch his foe. Blade Barrier is an excellent spell but it is hard to employ because it is a damage spell with a save to avoid component. It is also VERY slow to cast. The upside is that the spell lingers for a while.Flamestrike is probably the best cleric spell. It has excellent damage, good range and a HUGE area-of-effect. It is also however quite high level unless you are a druid or get it through a domain. Destruction is probably the cleric's second best spell. It too is quite high level, and is a Save-or-Die and take damage even if you do save. It also however is 7th lvl and is a single-target spell and is subject to Spell Turning. Gate is easily one of the mightiest spells anywhere, but the wizard gets it too so it is a wash for comparison purposes. Miracle - I really don't know what the designers were thinking with this one. It is not as versatile as Wish is but that rarely is an issue because most of the things you'd want to do with it don't cost xp. This spell generally beats Wish hands down unless the DM remembers to enforce the fact that a Miracle is a direct plea to the cleric's god. The deity can and should refuse the plea unless the cleric has a good reason. Commune is better than Contact Other Plane, but remember that Commune only gets answers if the deity knows and feels like answering and you ONLY get 1 per level. With Contact Other Plane you can just ask someone else as often as you like so long as you can make the Int check. I don't rate Commune as powerful by any stretch so I won't include it. Beyond these you are hard pressed to find any trully powerful cleric spell. That is a total of seven powerful spells compared to the wizard's hordes of spells. Also remember that many of the wizard's best combat spells are much lower level so they can be metamagicked easily. A maximized fireball from an 11th level wizard (60 pts of damage from a 6th lvl slot) statistically does more damage than any spell a cleric can cast until he hits 15th lvl and can mazimixe a flamestrike (with an 8th lvl slot). Harm is the only cleric spell that can theoretically do that kind of damage, but only at range touch, to one target and only if you can hit it.  A cleric is hard pressed to put useful metamagic on ANY of his combat spells because they are all so high level. Also remember that bcause the cleric combat spells are so high level the cleric can only cast a few of them. I run out of direct damage spells far faster than our party wizard spells. Clerics in general have much better defensive spells, curative magic and temporally-based divinations (i.e. divinations that see through time). Wizards have far better general combat spells, transport magic  non-temporally based divination magic. They also mave a much wider array of spells in general. Domains can generate a slight exception but at only one extra domain spell per level it is pretty inconsequential over all.Tzarevitch</blockquote>

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