Highest possible damage for an instantaneous spell?

[Max Caysey]

So, reading about some fireball thing doing 600 dam i was wondering what is THE highest possible damage an instantaneous spell can do?

I’m thinking avasculate is technically unlimited but what is the most damage one can get out of a more normal damaging spell?

[AvatarVecna]

So, reading about some fireball thing doing 600 dam i was wondering what is THE highest possible damage an instantaneous spell can do?

I’m thinking avasculate is technically unlimited but what is the most damage one can get out of a more normal damaging spell?

The un-fun answer is that epic rules scale forever. Enhance Spell (and, depending on reading, Reserves Of Strength) means most any spell that deals damage is capable of dealing NI damage if you're putting in enough effort. We're gonna need to put some limits on what people can do.

Additionally, we should probably decide is we're factoring AoE into things? Fireball deals less damage to a person than Disintegrate does, but Fireball deals more damage total to people in general than Disintegrate does, since Fireball could hit 5 people and deal 10d6 each, while disintegrate is trapped at 40d6 to a single target.

[Maat Mons]

Well, there's the good old Locate City bomb.

[Anthrowhale]

In the nuke thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?621105-The-best-nuke), we reached 10K damage with a single casting of Repeat Empower Enervate Energy Admixture[Fire] Erupt (with a bunch of other spell modifiers from items and other spells).

[remetagross]

We should also set up a CL limit, else the winner will be Wings of Flurry with CL shenanigans to hit CL 100. Say, up to CL 25? Quite some high-level spells have a built-in CL 25 damage cap (like Polar Ray).

Up to a single target? If psionics is on the table, then a Dominant Ideal ACF Ardent with Disintegrate can pull off quite something. Having Metapower (Empowered Disintegrate), Metapower (Maximised Disintegrate), Metapower (Twinned Disintegrate) and bam, by spending 19 PP you're dealing 2*(1.5*40d6+40*6) = 900 points of damage to a single target with a single standard action.

[Gruftzwerg]

Imho it is all just a question about how much optimization you apply and for which "combo/trick" you aim. A few examples have been named (e.g. Locate City Bomb, Wing of Flurry..) and I add one of my TO builds: Dvati Sorcerers of the Arcane Legion (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?639734-Cooperative-Dvati-Sorcerers-of-the-Arcane-Legions)
Create a legion out of BoB clones and share your (greater) Arcane Fusion with all of em. Cooperative Casting ensures that the enemy will fail the save and that you can easily penetrate the SR.
So in the end, we share our Arcane Fusion with our legion of 781.250 clones. No matter which 2 spells you did pick, the enemy with be toasted by 1.562.500 spells.

Does this satisfy your needs?^^
May I ask what your intention is? Or is this just a question out of curiosity?

[Elenian]

Not an instantaneous spell, but the damage is instantaneous. I wanted an answer that is not dependent on caster level or metamagic or any character optimization - it's just the best case damage of a normal dnd 3.5 spell, though cast in somewhat unusual circumstances. First we need to ensure that our target is immobile at the centre of an empty volume 30ft on a side or so. This is left as an exercise to the reader. We will also need 1700 metric tonnes of mid-sized iron spheres, so be sure to have those handy.

Ghorus Toth's magnetism (UE) says, among other things:
"Unattended metal objects of 50 pounds or less in the zone of attraction (including items voluntarily released, as well as metallic projectiles fired through the zone) fly with great force and strike the target, dealing 1d6 points of damage per 5 pounds of weight (maximum 10d6)." Since the damage cap is per projectile rather than in total, the instantaneous damage of the spell is limited by the amount of mass we can distribute in the form of individual metal objects across a sphere 30ft in radius (!).

A 30ft radius sphere (let's ignore DnD geometry for now) has a volume of about 113100 cubic feet, give or take. If we assume spherical projectiles (which is not optimal), the sphere packing theorem says that we can use the space with about 74% efficiency. Let's say 66% to account for leaving a bit of space around the target in the middle and other such irritating inefficiencies. Then we have 74646 cubic feet of metal spheres available. Multiplying by the density of iron gives 3.67e+7 lbs of iron, for a damage of 7,340,000d6.


NB: I'm aware that this is both highly impractical and highly dubious (wouldn't the projectiles just collide with each other pretty much immediately?) and no sensible DM would let it fly. That said, a pile of a few hundred iron cannonballs or whatever combined with GT's Magnetism should still make for a devastating nuke, with no need at all to invest seven feats in blasting metamagic!

[Seward]

You can get an arbitrarily large amount of damage with explosive runes.

One way to detonate them is to cast dispel magic and fail to dispel them.

A caster with arcane mastery can ensure CL is too low on dispel magic to dispel his own stuff, so he can craft an arbitrary number of explosive runes spells, wait until some poor schmuck is in the area and fail to dispel them all. 6d6 force damage times the number of scraps of paper you scribbled runes on.....

(you can also do this in pure core with the basic dispel magic spell voluntarily cast at CL5 and a level 15 caster, you can't roll high enough to dispel it. But it's cooler to have a L5 caster with arcane mastery who casts the runes at level 5 and the dispel at level 5 with "take 10" to always fail. Because doing so much damage everything in a 10' radius is absolutely vaporized at level 5 is just more fun than having a L15 guy who can probably do similar things a half dozen other ways.....)

If your victim isn't walking into your trap, you could have it all in a bundle and have your familiar (you do have a flying familiar right?) drop the leaflets on them before doing the explosion (from 15' up of course).

Also what makes it cool is it is the Abjurer who is able to do all this the easiest (both spells are abjuration). All those Evokers and Conjuration specialists who mocked him for his lack of direct damage will PAY! *BOOM* WHO IS LAUGHING NOW! HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!

[sleepyphoenixx]

A caster with arcane mastery can ensure CL is too low on dispel magic to dispel his own stuff

He actually can't since you automatically succeed at dispelling your own spells.


You automatically succeed on your dispel check against any spell that you cast yourself.

You can get around that by having one of your party members or a familiar perform the dispel though.

[Gruftzwerg]

A caster with arcane mastery can ensure CL is too low on dispel magic to dispel his own stuff, ...

Sorry to disappoint you, but...

You automatically succeed on your dispel check against any spell that you cast yourself.

edit: sleepyphoenix was faster.. seems I'm the sleepy one here

[Seward]

He actually can't since you automatically succeed at dispelling your own spells.



You can get around that by having one of your party members or a familiar perform the dispel though.

Fine. Take leadership at level 6. Once the cohort hits L5 he can spend all his time crafting explosive runes for you and his flying familiar delivers on target and you fail to dispel on your action. (if you plan for leadership, you may not want a familiar of your own unless you intend to have a base or be really nice or famous or something or just invest *gasp* attribute points into charisma. But you can figure out how to be a +0 on your leadership score by L7).

Anyway once you are level 7, you can kill anything that doesn't have spell resistance that you can drop leaflets on (and make a spherical 10' hole in anything material nearby whose hardness isn't at adamantine level...that might be just battered a bit depending on just how many leaflets you drop)

[Elenian]

Surely ten thousand castings of explosive runes (plus a dispel magic) is not 'an instantaneous spell'

[pabelfly]

I'm sure this can be optimized by quite a bit, but I thought I'd come up with a starting point

Cleric with Cold Domain (Cleric now has Polar Ray as an 8th-level spell)
Presume caster level of 25

Feats: Quicken Spell, Empower Spell, Maximize Spell, Divine Metamagic

So we use Divine Metamagic to quicken our 8th-level spell Polar Ray, to cast instantly, and add Empower and Maximize spell.

So (25 + 12.5) x 6 = 225 damage

There's plenty more metamagic to add to this, and add extra Turning pools to the build, but is this more along the lines of what you had in mind, TC?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

We should also set up a CL limit, else the winner will be Wings of Flurry with CL shenanigans to hit CL 100. Say, up to CL 25? Quite some high-level spells have a built-in CL 25 damage cap (like Polar Ray).

Up to a single target? If psionics is on the table, then a Dominant Ideal ACF Ardent with Disintegrate can pull off quite something. Having Metapower (Empowered Disintegrate), Metapower (Maximised Disintegrate), Metapower (Twinned Disintegrate) and bam, by spending 19 PP you're dealing 2*(1.5*40d6+40*6) = 900 points of damage to a single target with a single standard action.There is no limit to how many times you can apply a metapsionic feat (unlike other meta- feats), except psionic focus, and Dominant Ideal nixes that limit. So applying Metapower'd Empower to any Dominant Ideal damaging power gives you NI damage -- literally as much as you want, with no maximum until you choose to stop applying Empower.

[ben-zayb]

Even something like Sonic Snap can deal an arbitrarily high damage, if not nigh infinite, because there are ways to cheese such bonus to damage rolls. Depending on cheese, it may or may not need an arbitrarily long amount of setup time too

[Seward]

Surely ten thousand castings of explosive runes (plus a dispel magic) is not 'an instantaneous spell'

It is an instantaneous EFFECT.

But I do agree, it takes quite a lot of preparation.

[Jay R]

If you use a wand of dispel magic that you did not create yourself, do you still automatically dispel your own spell?

[Jack_Simth]

If you use a wand of dispel magic that you did not create yourself, do you still automatically dispel your own spell?

You're still considered the caster, so yes. But someone else (like your familiar) using a wand you made? Nope.

[Seward]

If you use a wand of dispel magic that you did not create yourself, do you still automatically dispel your own spell?

Scrolls are "activated". They do not cause the original caster to cast the spell. That's why they have their own caster level, don't get your feats, warmage edge, metamagic rod, spell penetration or metamagic reducing feats, whatever, not the person activating it, not the person who scribed it. Relevant text:



Spell Completion

This is the activation method for scrolls. A scroll is a spell that is mostly finished. The preparation is done for the caster, so no preparation time is needed beforehand as with normal spellcasting. All that’s left to do is perform the finishing parts of the spellcasting (the final gestures, words, and so on). To use a spell completion item safely, a character must be of high enough level in the right class to cast the spell already. If he can’t already cast the spell, there’s a chance he’ll make a mistake. Activating a spell completion item is a standard action and provokes attacks of opportunity exactly as casting a spell does.

Activate the Spell

Activating a scroll requires reading the spell from the scroll. The character must be able to see and read the writing on the scroll. Activating a scroll spell requires no material components or focus. (The creator of the scroll provided these when scribing the scroll.) Note that some spells are effective only when cast on an item or items. In such a case, the scroll user must provide the item when activating the spell. Activating a scroll spell is subject to disruption just as casting a normally prepared spell would be. Using a scroll is like casting a spell for purposes of arcane spell failure chance.

Determine Effect

A spell successfully activated from a scroll works exactly like a spell prepared and cast the normal way.


That last line might cause some GM to interpret your own scroll will autodispel your own things, but it opens the door to a bunch of other problems. If your GM should rule that way the solution is simple. Save yourself 3xp and a day of work, go to the local scroll shop and pick up a scroll of dispel magic for an extra 187gp. I'm sure by level 5 this is affordable for ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION!

You do waste a certain number of the explosive runes because you'll dispel some of them by the d20 roll on each one. With arcane mastery you can solve that problem, but with a CL5 wand or scroll of dispel magic you have to basically craft 2x as many to get the same effect.

Which granted means you can actually get the combination off by L5 if you are patient, since wizards get scribe scroll for free, and you don't need to spend a feat on arcane mastery.

1. Scribe twice as many explosive rune spells as you could possibly need for overkilling your opposition

2. Have flying familiar familiar deliver the leaflets to the target, probably in some kind of net rig that keeps them more or less together but still provides line of effect for the dispel

3. Cast dispel at CL5 via the scroll. If explosive runes are CL5 half will be dispelled, the other half will go off.

Going the L7+L5 cohort route, you get twice the boom plus the cohort does the boring part of making a zillion explosive rune scraps of paper and you can risk his familiar instead of yours. But in many ways the L5 caster just making 2x whatever he imagines he needs is more elegant.

given that dispel magic works on a 20' radius, if you can trick your opposition into moving onto a killing field, you can prepare it ahead of time and not be limited to that 10' radius leaflet burst. If you arrange it carefully you basically can obliterate a nearly 30' radius area, if you scribe enough all over the place. Of you can hand the scroll to somebody gullible and tell them "wait until the king's carriage passes the statue and cast the spell, it'll dispel the illusion on the area and show him his birthday gift!"

I might have spent too much time getting into the heads of Imaskari Vengeance Taker's during the Dec-Jan Iron Chef...

[AvatarVecna]

Let's go for single-target, and something that's not going NI like the rune stuff. I don't think arguing "dispel magic is the instantaneous spell dealing all that damage, the fact that we cast 9000 other spells to make it work is incidental" is engaging with the question properly. Personal opinion.



Black Lore Of Moil: Necromancy only, +1d6 (+1d6 per two spell levels) negative energy damage. +0 metamagic.

Blistering Spell: Fire spell only, +2 fire damage per spell level. +1 metamagic.

Born Of The Three Thunders: Electricity or Sonic spell only. Electricity/Sonic damage is now split between them. +0 metamagic.

City Spell: Elemental spell only, turns half the damage to city damage. +0 metamagic.

Earth Spell: +1 level of Heighten for free when on solid ground. Not a metamagic.

Empower Spell: +50% damage. +2 metamagic.

Energize Spell: +50% damage vs undead, -50% damage vs non undead/objects. +1 metamagic.

Energy Admixture: +100% damage. Can be up to five different energies. +4 metamagic.

Fiery Spell: Fire spell only. +1 fire damage per die of damage. +1 metamagic.

Flash Frost Spell: Cold spell only. +2 cold damage per spell level. +1 metamagic.

Ghost Touch Spell: affects ghosts normally, doesn't affect non-ghosts at all. +0 metamagic.

Heighten Spell: Raises actual spell level to 9th. Not affected by Arcane Thesis. +3 metamagic.

Invisible Spell: spell has no visual component. +0 metamagic.

Lord Of The Uttercold: Cold spell only. Half cold damage is cold, half is negative energy. +0 metamagic.

Maximize Spell: Damage is maximized. +3 metamagic.

Metanode Spell: Reduce total metamagic increase by node level (6 for our purposes, which also gives +6 CL). Not a proper metamagic, for the purposes of other metamagic reducers.

Piercing Cold: [Cold] spells +50% cold damage to creatures of the [fire] subtype (stacks with existing cold vulnerability). +1 metamagic.

Purify Spell: Against evil creatures, the scaling is increased by one dize size (so 2d6/CL becomes 3d6/CL). +1 metamagic.

Sanctum Spell: +1 spell level (as heighten spell) within sanctum. +0 metamagic.

Searing Spell: [Fire] spells +50% fire damage to creatures of the [cold] subtype (stacks with existing fire vulnerability). +1 metamagic.

Song Of The Dead: Mind-Affecting only. Allows MA aspect to affect intelligent undead. Turns spell into necromancy spell. +1 metamagic.

Twin Spell: Casts the spell twice on target. +4 metamagic.

............

Reserves Of Strength: +3 CL, spell becomes totally uncapped.

Elder Giant Magic: +3 CL.

Snowcasting: make any spell [cold].

Cold Spell Specialization: [Cold] spells deal +2 damage per die in extremely cold areas.

Frozen Magic: [Cold] spells at +2 CL in extremely cold areas.

Arcane Thesis: -1 metamagic reduction for all feats (no minimum). +2 CL.

Bloodline Of Fire: +2 CL for [Fire] spells.

Elemental Spellcasting: +1 CL for [Fire] spells.

Spell Thematics: +1 CL for selected spells.

Storm Magic: +1 CL during storms.

Aerenal Half-Life: +1 CL for necromancy spells.

................

Consumptive Field: CL +[half CL]. We'll leave this one capped.

..............

Wizard 5/Incantatrix 10/Archmage 5: -1 metamagic reduction for all feats (minimum +1). +5 CL.

Spellgifted (necromancy): +1 CL for necromancy spells.



First, Limited Wish --> Consumptive Field. CL:
Base 20
Archmage 5
Spellgifted 1
Arcane Thesis 2
Snowcasting/Frozen Magic 2
Earth Node 6
Reserves Of Strength 3 (not uncapping, no NI here)
Elder Giant Magic 3
Spell Thematics 1
Storm Magic 1
Aerenal Half-Life 1
Energy Substitution (Fire)/Bloodline Of Fire/Elemental Spellcasting 3

Total CL 48. CL +24 for other spells.

Base spell will be Disintegrate for it's 2d6/CL scaling. Fell Frighten makes it MA, Song Of The Dead makes it necromancy, for necromancy-only stuff. Snowcasting makes it a [cold] spell, and from there we can Energy Substitution/Energy Admixture our way into every element.

CL:

Base 20
Archmage 5
Spellgifted 1
Arcane Thesis 2
Snowcasting/Frozen Magic 2
Earth Node 6
Reserves Of Strength 3 (uncapping)
Elder Giant Magic 3
Consumptive Field 24
Bloodline Of Fire 2
Elemental Spellcasting 1
Spell Thematics 1
Storm Magic 1
Aerenal Half-Life 1

Total CL 72.

Maximize and Empower have a specific interaction that makes their damage stack weird, but this is not true for other metamagic, even if those other metamagic work similarly to Empower.

Scaling has been turned to 3d6/CL by Purify Spell. Base damage is 216d6 that is normal damage type for Disintegrate. This is 100%.

Energize is +50% of the same damage type.

Energy Admixture is +100% five times of different damage types.

Vulnerability+Searing Spell is +100% fire damage to [cold] creatures.

Empower Spell is another +50% of base damage type, that won't be affected by maximize.

Black Lore Of Moil gives 4d6 negative energy damage.

Current Damage:
432d6 [disintegrate] damage
216d6 acid damage
216d6 cold damage
216d6 electricity damage
432d6 fire damage
216d6 sonic damage
4d6 negative energy damage

Since we're applying all those metamagic, it ends up being an 11th lvl spell (actual level) cast in a 6th lvl spell slot (due to so much metamagic reduction). Actual spell level matters for some of the metamagic, which is why I'm doing that step now. Anyway...

Blistering Spell gives +22 fire damage.

Fiery Spell gives +864 fire damage.

Flash Frost Spell gives +22 cold damage.

Cold Spell Specialization gives +432 cold damage.

Maximize maximizes everything except the +50% [disintegrate] from Empower.

Lord Of The Uttercold turns half the cold damage to negative energy damage.

City Spell turns half of all damage types to City damage.

Current Damage:
54d6+972 [disintegrate] damage
648 acid damage
438 cold damage
648 electricity damage
1739 fire damage (ignores ER, half damage vs normally fire immune targets)
648 sonic damage
449 negative energy damage
54d6+5542 city damage



Current Damage:
54d6+972 [disintegrate] damage
648 acid damage
437 cold damage (ignores ER, half damage vs normally cold immune targets)
648 electricity damage
1739 fire damage (ignores ER, half damage vs normally fire immune targets)
648 sonic damage
450 negative energy damage
54d6+5542 city damage

108d6+10865 damage (avg 11243) of various types that are difficult to resist. This is under extremely specific circumstances. You are standing in your sanctum (which is at the center of a lvl 6 Earth Node), which is currently experiencing a blizzard. You have cast a fully-maxed out Consumptive Field via limited Wish, and proceed to cast this god spell on an evil incorporeal undead with the [cold] subtype. Both those spells cost you three turns of actions on both sides of them (so three turns before, and three turns after, doing nothing). The ghost takes all the extra fire damage, and only takes half the cold damage (instead of none).

I'm sure I've missed a bunch of CL boosts, and we're just gonna breeze on by the fact that you'd have to cheat pretty hard to get this many feats pre-epic.

[loky1109]

Reserves Of Strength: +3 CL, spell becomes totally uncapped.
This is questionable part.

[AvatarVecna]

This is questionable part.

You're not wrong, but it's also not that weird a reading. Designer intention is pretty obviously not in line with this, but at the same time, "you can exceed the normal level-fixed limits with this feat" isn't exactly restricting what it applies to. I'm using the feat on the spell, so I can exceed the normal level-fixed limits of the spell. I agree that the feat would be more in line with designer intent if it clarified that only the CL bonus from the feat itself is allowed to break the CL limits, but that kind of restriction isn't actually laid out in the feat as it exists.