Most Damaging Spell in the game?

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I was thinking it would be Horrid Wilting, seeing as I could knock out Isair AND Madae with three or four of these babies in the second phase of the fight with two of my lvl 21 sorcerers.

Meteor swarm looks powerful too with a 24d6 damage range, but I dunno, Horrid Wilting has a Fort. save so hits for full damage more times.

What are your opinions guys? I'd have made it a poll, but I couldn't remember all the neat damaging spells, and then people would flame me for not including all of them so...

Anyway, leave your posts here

 

Circle of Death and Finger of Death can do a fair amount. Cirle of death weeds out any weaker enemies like the Yuan-ti.

 

And I forgot to add earlier, I'm talking about raw damage you know...stuff like Isair takes 105 magic damage from XXX. If we counted Finger of Death, etc etc, then we'd have to take into consideration Wail of the Banshee, and Executioner's Eyes...especially Executioner's Eyes...because when three fighters pummel on bad guys, and every other hit is a critical...that around [(60-70)*3*10] damage per round which is like 2100 hp...sooo...back to the topic guys...

 

At 30th level, Horrid Wilting does 30-240 damage (if they fail their fort. save, of course). A damaging spell I was thinking of would be Mordenkainen's Force Missiles. At 25th level, they do, lemme check ...
1 missile: 2-8 dmg
1 missile at 25th level: 27-33 dmg (+25 concussive blast dmg)
At level 25, there are 7 missiles, so
27*7-33*7:
189-231 pure magic dmg.

It would deal more than horrid wilting "usually" because of the small difference between min & max dmg. It only hits one, though. But imagine doing this with 2 sorcerers over and over...

 

Yikes Imost, I had no idea Mordy's Force Missiles were that awesome!!

Way cool! This is the stuff I'm talking about!!

Anymore guys?

 

The main problem with the Force Missiles is that they are the same spell level as Improved Invisibility and Stoneskin. If your Sorcerer is the only one who can cast those Level 4 spells then he usually can't spare any Force Missiles in case he needs those useful buffing spells.

 

Hehe, then that's why you have at least two mages. Currently, I have 3 mages in my party ;o. Anyone saw a barrage of Force missles? =P

 

First of all, listing the damage of a spell like Horrid Wilting as 25-200 is misleading (that's the highest it can do, since it maxes out at 25d8). The chance of doing 25 damage or 200 damage is 1/8^25, which is such a ridiculously small number that you can basically ignore it. With a spell like Fireball at lower levels, you can say 5-30 instead of 5d6 since the chance of rolling a 5 (a small chance still) is not incredibly small. If you have to go with an approximation in the case of so many dice, go with the statistical average. Unless otherwise specified, the damage listed is an estimate of the statistical average, rounding to the nearest integer.

Firestorm:
20d6*1.20(spirit of flames)*2(hits twice over two rounds)=48-288 fire damage per enemy in a 20' radius.

Delayed Blast Fireball:
30d8*1.20(spirit of flames)=36-288 fire damage per enemy in a 30' radius.

Average damage:
For Firestorm, it's 70*1.20*2=168 damage per enemy in a 20' radius, probably doing over 1500 damage in HoF mode per cast. For DBFB, it's 135*1.20=152 damage per enemy in a 30' radius, also most likely doing over 1500 damage per cast.

Now add a Tymora's Loop to each case:
1. The statistical average of Firestorm becomes 110*1.20*2=264 fire damage per cast per target in radius.
2. The statistical average of DBFB becomes 195*1.20=224 fire damage per cast per target in radius.

Best per round damage: Delayed Blast Fireball
Best per cast damage: Firestorm

My personal favorite is Firestorm. You can get it as soon as L11 (the Lathander domain spell) for 11d6*1.20*2=86 damage per target per cast (although at this point you can't stack another on it on the second round unless you another another Morninglord, so the damage is a bit slow, though you do match sunfire each round). You hit your highest damage as soon as L20, which means you get to do ungodly damage to those pesky mobs throughout most of HoF instead of maxing out damage 2 minutes before the last battle. Since it maxes at L20, you get 10 levels to multiclass without eating up Firestorm damage, whereas any multiclassing will hurt potential DBFB damage.

Metero Swarm gets an honorable mention for not being resistable and for reaching its maximum potential immediately.

[edit] I actually didn't use the definition to calculate the statistical mean of of the damage in the case w/o Tymora's Loop, since I'm lazy. What I did was to add the minimum damage and the maximum damage and divided the result by 2. I believe the two works out to be the same if you are selecting from the set [a,b], increasing by 1 each time until b.

[ December 24, 2003, 20:26: Message edited by: Hojo Jojo ]

 

Aha..... I like straight up min-maxing better . Keep in mind the small difference between min damage and max damage, and it's not too bad. Another nice spell to use is Harm. Okay, so it doesn't do "damage", per se, but it will reduce an enemy's hit points to 1d4. Think of it as damage, and you'll be surprised. Dragon of Chult, here I come .

 

The most objective way of reporting damage in a topic such as this is to report the actual method of calculation and including a brief statistical analysis. Any other way will be biased toward the particular argument made.

Here's a good example of straight min-maxing making a setup look worse than it actually is: "Tymora's Loop narrows the range of DBFB to 4-8 on each dice. Instead of getting a result in [1,8], I get one in [4,8]." Since Tymora's Loop actually adds to your roll, you are getting a result in [1,8] then adding 3 to it. In reality, you are 4 times as likely to get 8 than you are of getting 4, 5, 6, 7. A less than careful look at that statement will either make the reader think that the average damage per dice is 6=[(4+8)/2]=[(4+5+6+7+8)/5]. In reality, the average damage per dice is 6.75=[(4+5+6+7+8*4)/8]. If either mistake is made, you robbed the spell of 0.75*30*1.2=27 damage on average.

Here's a good example of just reporting the average making a spell looking better than it is: "Sol's Searing Orb does an average of 46=[(6+72)/2*1.2]damage." Well, you are rolling only 6 times on 12 sided dice. The chance of getting the statistical average isn't all that high, especially since you are not all that likely to cast Sol's Searing Orb all the time.

[ December 24, 2003, 20:27: Message edited by: Hojo Jojo ]

 

Hojo Jojo-- do you enjoy playing IWD 2? Just asking . I think Faraaz understands what we're all *trying* to say, I think.

 

Back to the topic, I agree to Faraaz. Horrid Wilting and Meteor Swarm are powerful spells, however, they must be used with caution or they might fry/dry the party

 

Also the Preist spell Wave of Crushing or something like that can do a fair amount of damage. It's good against hordes because it either crushes them all or severly injures them.

 

Smashing Wave? That's a druid spell.

 

OKay the druid spell Crushing Wave, it still does some wicked damage.

 

Meteor Swarm!
My favorite!

Once, my wizard made 109 damage to someone who failed his saving throw and 46 to someone who was successful. This spell rocks.

Horrid Wilting is second and third comes Wail of the Banshee.

 

I LOVE the Smashing Wave spell! I made a druid just for it! I think it's my favorite spell to use! I don't do much min/maxing for itme s or spells, I go with the sparkly effects! Bring the wave!!

 

Where are we going if players make characters for spells?
But at least it is fun.
Anyway, I have never tried Smashing Wave, but it could be fun if so many people like it...

 

If time is no issue, then the most damaging spell is Incendiary Cloud. 10 rounds of damage at 6d6 each gives 60d60 for a damage range of 60-360. With the Spirit of Flame feat this becomes 72-432, if all saving throws fail.

Wail of Banshee does even more, especially in HOF mode, as its damage is based on the enemy HPs and there are several monster types with over 400 hit points..

 

Of course there are spells, included the Incendiary Cloud as the most powerful, that do the most damage. Although it takes many rounds, and speed is often important. That's why the instant-damaging spells such as Horrid Wilting are so popular too.