Shocking Spark and other Dragonlance spells

[Gice]

Is it just me or are there quite a lot of powerful damage spells in the Dragonlance books?
One notable example, shocking spark, was a spell the party sorcerer used a lot in yesterday's session.
For people without access to the dragonlance campaign setting:

Shocking Spark
Evocation [Electricity]
Level: Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One creature or object
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes (object)
A powerful, crackling spark of electricity arcs from your hand at the target you designate. Make a ranged touch attack; if you hit, you deal 4d6 points of electricity damage. If the opponent is wearing metal armor (or made out of metal, carying a lot of metal, or similar conditions), you gain a +3 circumstance bonus to attack, dealing x3 damage on a critical.
You create a second spark at 6th level, and a third spark at 10th level (the maximum effect).
Material Component: An iron ring

The party is at level 10 and we were faced against two young adult black dragons. The majority of the damage was the source of this spell. The sorcerer has three levels in warmage which gives him battle magic 2. This ability says that "any spell cast by the War Mage that causes damage gains a +2 bonus hit point per die of damage." This means that the damage (after easily hitting a touch-AC of 9) is 12d6+24.

This really seems like a lot to me for a level 2 spell. the sorcerer can do this spell up to 20 times per day (if he chooses to sacrifice higher level spell slots). What are the playground's thoughts on this?

Note that this spell will not really scale anymore (except for battle magic 3, making it 12d6+36 electricity damage), but still.

[Urpriest]

It's almost exactly the same as Scorching Ray. The fact that it's more powerful is silly, but it's not godly if you're not decked out in metal.

[Essence_of_War]

Isn't the progression for additional rays/sparks a little faster? Scorching Ray is here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/scorchingRay.htm):

You blast your enemies with fiery rays. You may fire one ray, plus one additional ray for every four levels beyond 3rd (to a maximum of three rays at 11th level). Each ray requires a ranged touch attack to hit and deals 4d6 points of fire damage.


4d6 x3 is good for 10th level, but he DOES need to make 3 separate ranged touch attacks.

It actually seems like a major source of the problem is the Warmage battle magic, it's adding about 2d6 worth of extra damage per spark. Effectively, he's nearly empowering for free!

Edit:

Also, is it me, or is this spell templated sort of funnily. It makes ranged touch attacks but it's targeted? Typically those are mutually exclusive aren't they, or at least they certainly are in the case of 'ray' spells...

Moreover, it appears that unlike scorching ray, all the sparks have to hit 1 target.

[Gice]

It is indeed faster progression, I think he didn't have to roll each attack again (so we made a mistake there), but then again, 5 base attack bonus + 2 or 3 dex + maybe some other enhancements vs a touch-ac of 9 is not really a problem.

Does he have to roll against spell resistance for every spark separately as well?

Maybe it is the battle magic that makes it more powerful than it perhaps should be for this spell-level..
War mages get another nice ability called Arcane Aegis:

Arcane Aegis (Su): The war mage may designate one ally within 30 ft and add his Charisma modifier (if positive) as a morale bonus to the ally's AC. Every other level (at 3rd and at 5th) the number of allies so aided increases by 1.
Our DM instantly ruled that: 1) the war mage cannot buff himself in this way, 2) the "designating" an ally takes up a standard action (not defined) and 3) designation may only be done during combat and after the combat is over, the effects fade away immediately. Being a sorcerer, his charisma modifier is +5. So that is a +5 morale bonus to AC for our tank(s) or anyone who needs it (we also ruled that he can switch designated target(s) if desired).

[Essence_of_War]

Yeah...warmage is a pretty good prestige class for direct damage.

5/5 casting, bonus metamagic feats, battle magic, cha to ally AC, and armored casting? Pretty solid.

The spell is good, but I think what you're seeing is Battle Magic being very good, and also likely, other party members that aren't optimized for damage dealing.

Prepare for it to get scarier, he can Empower this spell to get 6d6 + 12 on each orb which is effectively ~9d6 per spark. At Battle Magic III it turns into 6d6 + 18 which is ~11d6 per spark.