32-56 damage Fire Bolt

[Orion Invictus]

I never expected Draconic Sorcerers would be so powerful.

[kbiz]

Originally posted by The_Dipl0mat:

I'm gettin close to takin this advice myself

It's never good to put your head in the sand, Diplomat. Do what I do - scroll past instead.

[id795078477]

Originally posted by kbiz:

Originally posted by id795078477:

Wait, that's bs. Sorry. Lifedrinker adds damage to melee, not cantrips. Didn't properly play warlock (or rather - never took a pure one). So woops, it's not so cool. Although still 37-69, not too shabby.

P.S. Dang, why everything cool in this game revolves around weapon attacks..

Same premise though as 3x attacks per round. Juice up each attack dmg. Damage then grows geometrically.

Well.. no. Even when it comes to multi-target things, martials STILL have an upper hand. Because if a fighter does action surge, they double the amount of their attacks - albeit at the expense of a resource. Then why the heck a Sorlock cannot do the same for the beam? Try as you can, but double-casting the Eldrich blast will not make it 6 beams. Which is honestly stupid - because that costs sorcery points. I really don't get why martials are allowed to double their attacks per round and it's just fine to attack 6 .. 9 times, but 6 beams for a caster (each with weaker damage than a weapon attack) - noooope, OP, it is not allowed.

[The_Dipl0mat]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Originally posted by The_Dipl0mat:

Plus like, Mudkip superiority

Look at my profile pic very carefully and say that again.

I stand firm by my statement. Praise be the Mudkip
But thats just for me, praise be your own superiority

[The_Dipl0mat]

Originally posted by kbiz:

Originally posted by The_Dipl0mat:

I'm gettin close to takin this advice myself

It's never good to put your head in the sand, Diplomat. Do what I do - scroll past instead.

Eh, blocking makes the scrolling easier. Plus, would be nicer to not see people who tell me what to do

[kbiz]

Originally posted by id795078477:

Originally posted by kbiz:

Same premise though as 3x attacks per round. Juice up each attack dmg. Damage then grows geometrically.

Well.. no. Even when it comes to multi-target things, martials STILL have an upper hand. Because if a fighter does action surge, they double the amount of their attacks - albeit at the expense of a resource. Then why the heck a Sorlock cannot do the same for the beam? Try as you can, but double-casting the Eldrich blast will not make it 6 beams. Which is honestly stupid - because that costs sorcery points. I really don't get why martials are allowed to double their attacks per round and it's just fine to attack 6 .. 9 times, but 6 beams for a caster (each with weaker damage than a weapon attack) - noooope, OP, it is not allowed.

Agreed. Sorcerers are not powerful if you build them around a cantrip - like Orion did. I guess it's fun.

Yeah, I haven't been able to cast a Twinned Scorching Ray either - even though it looks like I should. Oh well.

Agree about martials. They can't be beat at baseline dmg output over time (given the items in the game). A Fighter with 9x baseline attacks per turn is awesome (with an Elixir and Haste). Better than 1x or 2x or 3x attacks with a Sorcerer.

The most powerful thing about a Sorcerer is their ability to wield almost unlimited spells per day (starting at level 7).

It really comes down to how you want to comparable variables in the game. How do we define powerful?

[kbiz]

Originally posted by The_Dipl0mat:

Originally posted by kbiz:

It's never good to put your head in the sand, Diplomat. Do what I do - scroll past instead.

Eh, blocking makes the scrolling easier. Plus, would be nicer to not see people who tell me what to do

I would never tell you to do something. You'll want to do it. Because it makes sense.

[id795078477]

Originally posted by kbiz:

The most powerful thing about a Sorcerer is their ability to wield almost unlimited spells per day (starting at level 7).

.. which is pointless when I'm resting after near every battle at the max rest cost multiplier (i.e. 120 for one rest) and still manage to run a big surplus of supplies in the stash. This is why we can count stuff like action surge as "always available". Yes, it benefits casters too - in the sense that spell slots are not the issue, but those spell slots are usually spent supporting the martials anyways because trying to do that nonsense damage with those spells is plain wrong.

[kbiz]

Originally posted by id795078477:

Originally posted by kbiz:

The most powerful thing about a Sorcerer is their ability to wield almost unlimited spells per day (starting at level 7).

.. which is pointless when I'm resting after near every battle at the max rest cost multiplier (i.e. 120 for one rest) and still manage to run a big surplus of supplies in the stash. This is why we can count stuff like action surge as "always available". Yes, it benefits casters too - in the sense that spell slots are not the issue, but those spell slots are usually spent supporting the martials anyways because trying to do that nonsense damage with those spells is plain wrong.

Elixirs aren't free or ubiquitous. So economizing rests is valuable - in my opinion.

It's nice to always have haste -and- your favorite elixirs going at all times. A Sorcerer allows for that.

[Steffan]

Originally posted by id795078477:

Yes, casters are somewhat gimped.. at least in comparison with martials. A lot of which comes down to BG3's itemization which favors martials on top of 5e already favoring them. It is still possible to play casters effectively .. out of academic interest and some RP itch. But the power? Nope, that's all martials.

Yes and no.

Sorcerer/wizards have a good utility while able to deal a good amount of damage as well. Or debilitate.

Is arcane trickster a martial or a caster? Is a paladin a martial or a caster?

Astarion basically trivialized Raphael's fight in my last run with hideous laughter (Cazador's Rhapsody + Helm of Acuity) and Minthara alone dealt more then 200 damage in a single round to the last boss on Tactician. And she was not even hasted!

For me, my new love are those hybrid casters. Good in melee and also good at casting. But it boils down to your personal preference.

[id795078477]

Originally posted by steffan8:

Originally posted by id795078477:

Yes, casters are somewhat gimped.. at least in comparison with martials. A lot of which comes down to BG3's itemization which favors martials on top of 5e already favoring them. It is still possible to play casters effectively .. out of academic interest and some RP itch. But the power? Nope, that's all martials.

Sorcerer/wizards have a good utility while able to deal a good amount of damage as well. Or debilitate.

What is that "utility" pray tell me?

-- The infamous "CC"? Why "CC" when you can just kill them with the martial character? I say death is the best CC.
-- Buffing other characters? Oh yes, being a haste workhorse is really exciting because it's the martials that go brrrr.
-- So, why would I pick arcane trickster over thief with that extra bonus action? Or eldrich knight over battle master?

Outside of fairly niche situations that rely on borderline bugs - like hunger of hadar + arcane lock on the doors in some boss rooms, casters damage is just worthless. See above - I counted 123-177 damage for just the basic attack for the martial build. Average 150. And I wasn't even trying. If we add action surge and haste, it's triple this damage again, so 369-531, just from the base stuff. Add elixir of bloodlust and we're cruising at 492-708

Again - what hope there is for casters? Even double-casting that circle of death and catching say 6 enemies clustered will do a whopping 48-288 damage. For a top-tier spell slot. Which also can be saved for 1/2 damage. Average 168, provided nobody rolled a save.

Yay! So it takes only 6 tightly clustered together enemies to be hit and nobody rolls the save and the damage also doesn't roll abysmally into the min range to .. just be on par in average, i.e. 150 vs 168. Again, for a price of a top spell slot + 6 sorcery points vs for the price of nothing on for martials. All of those conditions - are possible.. maybe once or twice through the entire campaign.

I tried to make a good caster build that would be on par with that pally smite or action surge or that swords school bard. I just couldn't. I admit, maybe I'm just too shallow to understand how to build casters. But so far the math said a resounding "no".

[Giganx]

That's what cantrips should do, honestly; casters should be able to do something useful without blowing spell slots. That's still crap damage compared to basically every physical damage class.

[kbiz]

Originally posted by Giganx:

That's still crap damage compared to basically every physical damage class.

HAHA! Put more sugar on the pill

[The_Dipl0mat]

Originally posted by Giganx:

That's what cantrips should do, honestly; casters should be able to do something useful without blowing spell slots. That's still crap damage compared to basically every physical damage class.

That's why you give casters a pocket knife to get some extra damage in

[id795078477]

.. looking something up in NWN 1 I realized how off BG3 balance is. In NWN 1 you can do a maximum of .. 7 attacks. That's haste + 4 main APR + 2 off-hand APR. And you will only do the hasted attack + the first MH attack + the first OH attack at a full AB. Your 2nd attack will be at -5 AB, 3rd at -10 AB and 4th at -15 AB. Oh and you also get -2/-2 AB at least for dual-wielding, assuming you took 3(!) feats for that (or you're ranger 9+)

And by the way, in NWN 1 the 4th attack only appears at level 16 if you're playing a full BAB class (like a fighter). BG3 allows to make 9 attacks at the full AB at level 11. In NWN 1 not even level 40 characters will pull this off. This is insanity.

[yahboi1988]

Originally posted by id795078477:

.. looking something up in NWN 1 I realized how off BG3 balance is. In NWN 1 you can do a maximum of .. 7 attacks. That's haste + 4 main APR + 2 off-hand APR. And you will only do the hasted attack + the first MH attack + the first OH attack at a full AB. Your 2nd attack will be at -5 AB, 3rd at -10 AB and 4th at -15 AB. Oh and you also get -2/-2 AB at least for dual-wielding, assuming you took 3(!) feats for that (or you're ranger 9+)

And by the way, in NWN 1 the 4th attack only appears at level 16 if you're playing a full BAB class (like a fighter). BG3 allows to make 9 attacks at the full AB at level 11. In NWN 1 not even level 40 characters will pull this off. This is insanity.

It's really just how 5E is. First off the levels are different. You said level 40? 5E caps at 20. At level 20 a fighter without haste has Extra attack (3) and 3 uses of Action Surge. that's 9 attacks in 1 turn vanilla.