I played a cleric to level 14 ish and now have an arcane castor level 13. Clerics destroy undead heavy adventures. My arcane castor is ok now. I use/d stoneskin on both, my saves are suckyer as arcane, but I get rerolls as arcane. I liked my cleric on undead more than my arcane castor now. Evil outsiders also felt wrath of turn undead with spell. There isn't a comparable Mage ability to the turn undead that I've found with my eldrich knight.
I played a cleric to level 14 ish and now have an arcane castor level 13. Clerics destroy undead heavy adventures. My arcane castor is ok now. I use/d stoneskin on both, my saves are suckyer as arcane, but I get rerolls as arcane. I liked my cleric on undead more than my arcane castor now. Evil outsiders also felt wrath of turn undead with spell. There isn't a comparable Mage ability to the turn undead that I've found with my eldrich knight.Yes there is. It's called Blast Them To Smithereens With My Intensified Empowered Fireball.
I think that was an OOTS episode. ;-)
I personally have never played either, but I have seen both done to the point of broken. from what I can tell you are not wrong but given the right spells, items, and feats an arcane caster can out do any member in the party except the healer.
Actually, it's more like...
from what I can tell you are not wrong but given the right spells, items, and feats an arcane caster can out do any member in the party including the healer.
:3
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The way I see it, they are balanced in 3 ways.
1.) Arcane spellcasters have early access to offensive spells. Clerics have to wait a while before gaining actually useful combat spells, but a level 1 sorcerer can cast magic missile easily and often.
2.) Arcane magic has far greater versatility than divine magic. There are far fewer spells for fewer things. A wizard can unlock doors (with knock) turn invisible, spontaneously create extradimensional spaces, teleport, disintegrate items by pointing at them, shoot lightning from their fingertips, etc, etc. Whereas clerics, druids, and the like must content themselves with buffs and debuffs, healing and harming, and a small group of battlefield control or blast spells, but little variety.
3.) Arcane spellcasters (particularly sorcerers) have very little dependance on anything to gain their powers. They need not follow or conform to any belief system. Their power comes from their own blood, or from their own knowledge. Heck, even witches don't need to even so much as pay lip service to their patron. They still get the benefits. While this is basically fluff in most cases, the difference is enormous. Clerics, druids, paladins, inquisitors, and yes, even oracles, must follow certain beliefs and codes of conduct, and slipping up causes them to lose their class abilities. This puts their effectiveness, and all of their powers, at the mercy of the DM. A mistake costs much more to a paladin than to a magus. A magus can play around with his alignment like a see-saw and suffer no penalty other than the obvious, but an inquisitor or a paladin stand a chance to lose all of their powers and become glorified NPC warriors. And a cleric? They essentially become experts with fancy robes. Even a witch can replace her familiar if she screws up? A cleric? They have to find someone to grant them a 5th level spell just for starters to get their powers back. So yes, divine magic is stronger. But as they say, easy come, easy go. Its strong, true, but mis-use it...and you can kiss your powers good-bye.
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Infernal Healing is the best out of combat healing spell in the game. A 1st level slot for 60hp (a minute of fast healing). A a wand of it can heal 3,000hp for 750gp - and its on the Sorc/Wiz spell list so arcane casters can heal now as well, and can heal really well.
Though there are probably immediate repercussions to use fiend blood...so only arcane spellcasters south of alignment border can do that. Though, again, that's less of a penalty for an arcane caster, so...yeah.