What are the highest damage spells in the game for each spell level? Any spell list is fine. All help is appreciated. Thanks!
Based on my experiences:
1.-Shocking gasp
2.-Scorching ray
3.-Firebolt and Lightning bolt
4.-Dragon´s breath
5.-Cone of cold
6.-Chain Lightning and disintigrate
9.-Wail of the banshee
About 7 and 8 level spells, im' not quite sure, but theese ones are pretty good for my personal taste
Define highest, please.
Do you mean highest damage to a single target in a single round, or highest potential damage over an entire spell duration? Example, 9th level spells, meteor swarm can dish out a decent chunk to a single target in a single round, but a prismatic sphere can affect a huge number of potential creatures over its duration and if it affects the maximum number of creatures per round, will deliver vastly more total damage.
1: Enlarge Person
3: Haste
4: Dimension Door/Telekinetic Charge
5: Telekinesis/Dominate Person
6: Disintegrate
Define highest, please.
Do you mean highest damage to a single target in a single round, or highest potential damage over an entire spell duration? Example, 9th level spells, meteor swarm can dish out a decent chunk to a single target in a single round, but a prismatic sphere can affect a huge number of potential creatures over its duration and if it affects the maximum number of creatures per round, will deliver vastly more total damage.
Both are fine, honestly. Nothing wrong with having both at the ready, right?
5: Flamestrike. Not higher damage than Cone of Cold, but easier to target and half of it is irresistible.
Fire Snake. Also easier to target than CoC.
Suffocation. Failed save basically deals 100% of enemies HP as damage.
8: Stormbolts. Up to 20d8 damage and can stun foes.
Wall of Lava. Damage is a bit unpredictable. Theoretically, a level 20 caster could deal 500d6 damage over time. And that's only the touch attacks. I'm not counting damage from direct contact with the wall or the radiated heat.
9: Meteor Swarm. Up to 32d6 damage, rgardless of caster level.
Caustic Blood, level 4-5 depending on list. CLd6 damage (Reflex half) per attack hitting you can get very large fast. It's got a 1 round/level duration too. Something to reduce the damage suffered would be recommended of course.
1st spell level:
Burning hands from a 1st level human draconic (brass) tattoed (evocation) sorcerer with Spell Focus(Evocation) and Spell Specialization (Burning Hands) as a human bonus feat.
Your burning hands deal 4d4+4 fire damage right from the bat.
Spell Level 5:
Summon Nature ally V with augment summoning. Bring up a Cyclop, use his flash of insight on your 1st strike for 9d6+42 dmg on a confirmed powered up critical strike.
Dmg goes like this with a critical strike(X3), 25 FOR (+7), two handing (+3) and power attacking (+4): 3X3d6+(10+4X3)= 9d6+42
Then land a second hit. If opponent is down with 1st or 2nd hit, great cleave applies.
Cyclop is still alive, contributing to the fight on subsequent rounds (no more flash of insight though) adding more damage to the grand total.
Alright this is already pretty sweet for a 9th level druid I guess, but then...
Spell Level 6
Summon Nature ally VI with augment and superior summons.
Bring up to 4 (1d3+1) Cyclops. They all use flash of insight on their first power attacking strike for a total up to 36d6+168 dmg on combined first cyclops confirmed critical hits. Add subsequent damage from great cleave and second strike.
Cyclops are still alive, contributing to the fight on subsequent rounds, adding more damage to the grand total.
And then:
Spell Level 7
Summon Nature ally VII with augment and superior summons.
Bring up to 6 (1d4+2) Cyclops around your battlefield.
Make them all use flash of insight on first strike for up to 54d6+252 points of damage if you happen to have 6 cyclops confirming their critical strike with power attack.
Great cleave and each cyclops' remaining strike will add more damage after the first hit.
And they're still on the battle field to soak up opponent's hits or add some of their own, adding more damage to the grand total.
4th- detonate (10d8, avg. 45, max. 80) does a bit more damage than dragon's breath (12d6, avg. 42, max. 72) and also affects a larger area; most useful if you have high resistance or for an arcane archer (using Imbue Arrow).
I'd rather avoid summons if possible. One of my first characters was a summoner wizard, so I've had my fill on summoning.
4) Wall of Fire does dmg = 2-12+Level for either 1 rd/level or concentration.
8) Lightning storm - if it's cloudy and stormy, 15 5d10 bolts, 1 every 2 rounds, up to 15 bolts, is 75d10 dmg with impressive range.
If you're doing 3e, Nystul's Radiant Arch - 5th - 2-7 per caster level, with no dice cap, before bloodline etc modifiers.
if you start using 3e metamagic reducers, you can start stacking a lot of metamagic for some very sick results. For instance, you can modify Split Ray down to +0 modifier.
==Aelryinth
Technically, PK does no damage at all. It's a save or die. There's a difference!
There's also huge variation by level and resources. A DD sorc with orc and dragon/elemental bloodlines gets +2 dmg/HD to the right element. metamagic feats and energized spells with MM buyoffs beat damage of higher level spells, etc.
==Aelryinth
Alright, it can turn an infinite number of hitpoints to 0 or less.
use it against a wall or construct or ooze or undead.
Nope, does no damage at all.
==Aelryinth
Harm is great.
Heal, mass is amazing against undead.
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4: wall of sound
5: piercing wall of sound
6: empowered wall of sound
7: empowered wall of sound
8: maximized wall of sound
9: quickened wall of sound"You may have been wondering why I've been carrying around a bag of holding full of pinto beans. Speaking of which, please take 15,551,739 points of sonic damage."
And yes, I did the math.
I actually had to go and re-read the decription of the spell, just to make sure your point was not to...err...fart'em to oblivion.
I'll throw in the spell Thorny Entanglement. [3rd]
1 minute per level
40' radius spread [automatic hit]
55' radius effective area [attack roll needed]
2d6 damage per hit
This can pile up the damage. You cover 253 squares with the spell, and everyone in the area could take 2d6 damage per round. Keeping them in the area is a different problem, but hey, if they are stuck, you can get some big numbers.
At minimum caster level, you can have a maximum of 151800 hp damage if you keep every square filled and make every hit.
/cevah
4: wall of sound
5: piercing wall of sound
6: empowered wall of sound
7: empowered wall of sound
8: maximized wall of sound
9: quickened wall of sound"You may have been wondering why I've been carrying around a bag of holding full of pinto beans. Speaking of which, please take 15,551,739 points of sonic damage."
And yes, I did the math.
That's pretty funny, though personally, I'd say (and I think the intent is pretty clear) that an entire bag would only count as one instance of loose debris.
I'll throw in the spell Thorny Entanglement. [3rd]
1 minute per level
40' radius spread [automatic hit]
55' radius effective area [attack roll needed]
2d6 damage per hitThis can pile up the damage. You cover 253 squares with the spell, and everyone in the area could take 2d6 damage per round. Keeping them in the area is a different problem, but hey, if they are stuck, you can get some big numbers.
At minimum caster level, you can have a maximum of 151800 hp damage if you keep every square filled and make every hit.
/cevah
Combine it with Wall of Thorns to make sure they can't leave in any reasonable amount of time. Druids crowd control hard.
That's pretty funny, though personally, I'd say (and I think the intent is pretty clear) that an entire bag would only count as one instance of loose debris.Well, then fill the bag with thrushes. Surely each creature to hit the wall must be counted individually?
Lol, you're welcome to try it at your table, but I certainly wouldn't give it to you :) It is clever, though.
Lol, you're welcome to try it at your table, but I certainly wouldn't give it to you :) It is clever, though.That's pretty funny, though personally, I'd say (and I think the intent is pretty clear) that an entire bag would only count as one instance of loose debris.Well, then fill the bag with thrushes. Surely each creature to hit the wall must be counted individually?
I'm in the same boat, the less hate I draw from the DM, the better.
Ah. I see. No, you just dump them out... really, really, loudly.
As for beans, that was just for their small size, the convenience of finding statistics, their availability as a trade good, and their incredibly cheap price - the entire bagful only cost 30 gp.
You can not quicken a maximized spell or have multiple of the same metamagic feat on the spell. Also How? I fail to see how beans pertain to this spell. Sorry Avoron, but i call BS.
4: wall of sound
5: piercing wall of sound
6: empowered wall of sound
7: empowered wall of sound
8: maximized wall of sound
9: quickened wall of sound
"You may have been wondering why I've been carrying around a bag of holding full of pinto beans. Speaking of which, please take 15,551,739 points of sonic damage."
Every time a wall of sound reflects an object it deals sonic damage.
I think how Avorons plan works is pretty obvious. Whether a GM would approve it or not is one thing but not BS
Also at no point does he suggest using multiple uses of the same metamagic on one spell.
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I would think an empowered disintegrate would be top of the list for single target. That would be 60d6 from a lvl 20 caster.And it involves a to hit roll ... i.e. which means it can score a critical. It's also untyped meaning no worrying about elemental resistances.
20th level foresight wizard with quickened true strike... Oh, prescience rolled a 20? Quick true strike, cast an empowered disintegrate, confirm the crit, and enjoy a 120d6 blast.
Sure there's easier ways to force a crit (cyclops helm, for example) but this would be one of those "oh nice, combat is over with the BBEG turned to ash" situations.
You can not quicken a maximized spell or have multiple of the same metamagic feat on the spell. Also How? I fail to see how beans pertain to this spell. Sorry Avoron, but i call BS.Ah. I see. No, you just dump them out... really, really, loudly.
As for beans, that was just for their small size, the convenience of finding statistics, their availability as a trade good, and their incredibly cheap price - the entire bagful only cost 30 gp.
First, Avoron posted that 3 years ago, so there's angood chance that message wasn't received (I checked and Avoron hasn't posted anything in ~6 months, so not that active these days).
Second, I think you were reading that wrong, those were listed metamagic feats to be applied seperately to higher level spell-slots.
Third, you absolutely can quicken a maximized spell:
Multiple Metamagic Feats on a Spell: A spellcaster can apply multiple metamagic feats to a single spell. Changes to its level are cumulative. You can't apply the same metamagic feat more than once to a single spell.
A Quickened-Maximized spell would take up a slot 7 caster levels higher than it usually does, but it's doable.
Quickened Maximized Wall of sound would take up an 11th level spell-slot, but there are ways to reduce that (I'm not quite sure if that specific combo is possible, but there are people who know more combos than me).
A Quickened Empowered Wall of Sound does almost the same damage and only takes up a level 10 spell-slot. With MAGICAL LINEAGE it's only a 9th level spell, which also makes it a valid choice for SPELL PERFECTION. This brings it down to a 5th level spell-slot, perfectly spammable by a 15+ level wizard.
