Systemic analysis of top-10 attack spells across levels

[Anthrowhale]

Edit; revised to current state with changelog below.

I wanted to analyze the top-10 list (See 0 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?657743-Top-10-cantrips),1 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?657825-Top-10-level-1-spells-at-ECL2-amp-20),2 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658094-Top-10-level-2-spells-at-ECL-4-amp-20),3 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658251-Top-10-level-3-spells-at-ECL6-amp-20),4 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658751-Top-10-level-4-spells-at-ECL-8-amp-20#post25846144),5 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?659463-Top-10-level-5-spells-at-ECL-10-amp-20),6 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?660156-Top-10-level-6-spells-at-ECL-12-amp-20),7 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?660357-Top-10-level-7-spells-at-ECL14-and-20),8 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?661013-Top-10-level-8-spells),9 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?661419-Top-10-level-9-spells#post25892758)) across levels to look for weak points and gaps. There are several systemic elements to look at, so I thought I'd start with attacks. Comments/questions are welcome---the goal is finding gaps and redundancies.

What follows is highly abstracted so it's possible to think across spells without worrying about the details. A few details are left in: Multitarget vs. single target, SR:No, Save:No, range, duration 1 round or more, ranges other than close, and nonstandard casting times.

At a high level, there are roughly 3 kinds of attacks to care about.

Damage. These attacks deal damage which accumulates as the party acts. If sufficient damage occurs, you eliminate all actions.
Action elimination. These attacks eliminate actions. There are three natural flavors at this degree of abstraction:
No move
Limited actions
No actions

Action suborn. These attacks make the enemy act as you wish.

Theoretically there is also debuff, but just as we ignore fixed-size buffs as not to important, we also tend to ignore fixed-size debuffs. Worthwhile spell-based scaling debuffs are hard to come by when action denial is on the table.

Damage:

L0: Launch Item, Ranged touch attack with variable alchemicals, SR:No.
L2@ECL20: Hunter's Eye, caster level/3 d6 sneak attack for 1 round.
L3@ECL6: Fireball, Long range multitarget 10d6 Refl half.
L3@ECL20: Greater Mighty Wallop, Bludgeoning weapon does damage as colossal sized.
L3@ECL20: Love's Pain, Infinite range 10d6, mind-affecting.
L3: Venomfire: Natural poison attack deals additional d6/level acid damage.
L3: Shivering Touch. Touch 3d6 dexterity damage, cold subtype immune.
L4: Wings of Flurry: 40' range multitarget d6/level to enemies only Refl half + no actions 1 round Refl negates.
L8: Frostfell. Full round cast, medium range, no actions Fort negates + 20d6 frostburn damage on save.

Looking for gaps, the only thing I can think of is Erupt, but I'm fairly convinced at this point that we can't squeeze it in at L9.

In terms of weaknesses:

Fireball is clearly a bit sketchy given the low d6 cap. It's there for the range, but is there a good alternate strategy for the range? There's no alternate direct damage spell at this level, but is there an alternate strategy?
Frostfell isn't really there for the damage although it's nice at least that frostburn damage is sticky.


Next, there's action denial which I've broken into single target and multitarget.
Action denial, single target:

L1@ECL2: Heartache. helpless 1 round Will negates, mind-affecting.
L2: Bladesong. Touch no actions, no save.
L4@ECL20: Bloodfreeze Arrow. Arrow ranged attack no actions Fort negates.
L5: Plane Shift. Touch no actions Will negates, plane shift to escape
L7: Amber Sarcophagus. Ranged touch no actions, no save.
L8: Polymorph Any Object. No actions Fort negates.


Action denial, multitarget:

L1@ECL2: Color Spray. 15' range helpless (2-HD), no actions (4-HD), no actions 1 round (5+HD) Will negates, mind-affecting.
L1: Entangle. Long range no move Refl negates, requires plants, SR:No.
L2@ECL20: Kelpstrand. Ranged touch attack limit actions, SR:No, no save.
L4: Wings of Flurry. 1d6/level Refl half to enemies only in 40' radius + no actions 1 round Refl negates.
L4: Wall of Sand. Medium range limit actions, SR:No, no save.
L5@ECL10: Control Winds. 40'/level range, limit moves Fort negates, SR:No.
L7: Crown of Despair. Sight range, helpless Will negates as a passive attack, mind-affecting.
L7: Holy Word. 40' range, HD<=caster level-10 no actions.
L8: Frostfell. Full round cast, medium range, no actions Fort negates + 20d6 Frostfell damage on save.
L8: Unearthly Beauty. 30' range, no actions Will negates as passive attack.

In terms of gaps, I'm presently wondering about a couple things:



Several spells aren't quite up to snuff, but they are on the list for other reasons.

Polymorph Any Object is relatively 'meh' given Amber Sarcophagus has no save. It's better used on allies.
Control Winds is anemic given the Fort save and the weak action removal. It's better used for structure and army removal.
Plane Shift is a little anemic as an attack spell given Bladesong can daze lock at touch range fine. It's better used for actually going places.


Action Suborn:

L1@ECL2: Charm Person. Humanoid is your friend, Will negates, mind-affecting.
L2@ECL4: Suggestion, Follow not obviously harmful course of action, Will negates, mind-affecting.
L2@ECL4: Command Undead. Intelligent undead is your friend, Will negates. Unintelligent undead have no save.
L3: Glibness. Creature believes you tell the truth, no save.
L4@ECL20: Fugue, Medium range, concentrate to force attack nearest (DC40 perform) Will negates
L5: Magic Jar. 10'/level possess creature, Will negates.
L6: Dream Casting. After 1 hour cast, Infinite range sleeping creature is your friend Will negates, mind-affecting.
L9: Mindrape. Rewrite creatures memory, personality, alignment, Will negates, mind-affecting.

Looking for gaps, I see:

Charm Monster at ECL8? It's available for non-combat use later via Dream Casting and of course Greater Anyspell could provide access to it later as well. Level 4 is very contested, but it seems like a potentially important effect beyond Suggestions when level 4 spells are first available. There's also L9 Mindrape which is generally superior.
I'm not sure there are any methods available, but something avoiding a Will save would be good as well.

Looking for duplications, I'm not seeing anything.

Changes:
Removed L0 Acid Splash, Ranged touch attack 1d3 acid SR:No. Swapped for Launch Item since the variable alchemicals appear more versatile.
Wall of Sand was added to the ECL20 list. It pairs beautifully with Kelpstrand since the combo implies a creature cannot move, breathe, see, or cast spells with V or S components. It also blocks line of effect.
Vision of Punishment was dropped in favor of Entangle at ECL20 since Crown of Despair seems to be a superior effect..
Added Love's Pain for L3@ECL20 due to the infinite range damage, a fairly unique and sometimes powerful effect.

Maybe not:
Heaven's Trumpet at level 6 is 120' range multitarget helpless Fort negates that is ally friendly. The archon component is tricky, but this is a serious upgrade in both effect and range over Wings of Flurry. In the end, I'm not going for it since the additional scope beyond Crown of Despair at level 7 (i.e. ooze, vermin, and plants) doesn't seem worth it and handling the archon component at ECL12 seems difficult.
Maybe Command Undead should be on the ECL20 list as well? I decided not---use glibness or invest in Mindworms[Song of the Dead] Mindrape at a high level.

[Chronos]

The better option than Fireball, if all you want is range, is to summon a fast-moving monster and send it to go beat up the enemy.

[Troacctid]

The better option than Fireball, if all you want is range, is to summon a fast-moving monster and send it to go beat up the enemy.
What are you summoning that can deal as much damage, as reliably, at the same range, out of a 3rd-level spell slot? :smallconfused:

[AvatarVecna]

It might be helpful to use Person_Man's Niche Ranking System (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?314701-Person_Man-s-Niche-Ranking-System) to get an idea of what's being covered?

[RandomPeasant]

What are you summoning that can deal as much damage, as reliably, at the same range, out of a 3rd-level spell slot? :smallconfused:

Are we really going to re-litigate fireball in this thread too? The spell is good in the very specific situations of "a lot of weak enemies that are grouped up but not mixed with the party and don't have any resistance to fireball" and "you are able to engage some enemies at really long range". It is on the list at all because Anthrowhale is risk-averse to a frankly absurd degree, and to be honest summon monster III wouldn't make it either. Just learn major image or stinking cloud or great thunderclap any of the half-dozen offensive spells at 3rd level that are good.

Which gets to the broader problem with this exercise: the lists are not constructed in a way that supports doing this. The ten best spells at any given level don't tell you much, if anything, about the best combat spells at that level, or the best combat spells overall. The 9th level list is perhaps the clearest example of this. There is one attack spell on that list (mindrape), and it's not even particularly good as a combat spell, it's just got insane long term upside. There are a few more that you might want to cast in combat (miracle, gate, shapechange), but most of them are long-term strategic options that you couldn't cast in combat if you wanted to because they take longer to cast than combat lasts.

If you want to assess combat spells, you have to assess combat spells, not "combat spells that are good enough to compete with broken downtime spells". You could cast hide life four times in a campaign and be satisfied. But as a Wizard you get four 9th level spells every day of your life, you're going to need to find something to do with them even if that thing can't compete with hide life on raw power level, particularly because hide life provides you with no ability to win encounters.

[Anthrowhale]

I decided to swap Acid Splash->Launch Item as the versatility of items seems to be greater than the versatility of damage riders, and damage riders cost feats. Keeping Acid Splash instead of something else seems possible, but I'm not seeing a case for it at the moment given Launch Item covers a big part of what Acid Splash does.

I'm presently questioning:
L1@ECL20: Vision of Punishment. Crown of Despair eclipses at high level. What do you go for instead? I'm tempted to upgrade Entanglement to ECL20, as it provides a long range movement lockdown effect which is otherwise missing. Another alternative is Hand of the Faithful which provides a situational out-of-combat battlefield shaping mechanism. Comments welcome.
L3@ECL6 Fireball. The long range is situationally nice, but the damage cap is not.

And the nice to have list includes:
L2@ECL20 Command Undead.
L3@ECL20 Love's Pain
L4@ECL20 Wall of Sand
L4 Charm Monster.
L6 Heaven's Trumpet.
Each of these effects looks fairly complementary to the overall list but I'm not sure what to remove. Comments are quite welcome.


The better option than Fireball, if all you want is range, is to summon a fast-moving monster and send it to go beat up the enemy.

What are you summoning that can deal as much damage, as reliably, at the same range, out of a 3rd-level spell slot? :smallconfused:

Are we really going to re-litigate fireball in this thread too?
This is certainly the thread to relitigate attack spells in.

For Chronos, I'm also at "what summons?"


If you want to assess combat spells, you have to assess combat spells, not "combat spells that are good enough to compete with broken downtime spells".
You're welcome to do that elsewhere, if you wish. I'm still going with the original goal of figuring out the top 10 at each level, which means we need to operate in the context of other things spells do as well.


It might be helpful to use Person_Man's Niche Ranking System (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?314701-Person_Man-s-Niche-Ranking-System) to get an idea of what's being covered?
Interesting idea. Here, we're looking at "Battlefield Control" (~= Action elimination), "Dominator" (~= Action suborn), "Melee Damage" (~=Damage), "Ranged Damage" (~=Damage), and "Debuffer". Debuffer is unattractive in my experience. I'm planning to cover other elements later.

[Chronos]

A 5th-level druid using a 3rd-level slot can damage things up to 1835 feet away, by summoning 1d3 air elementals (you summon them at 35', the maximum for short range, then they spend four rounds running for 400' each, and then one round charging, for another 200'). If you merely want to match the range of a Fireball (600' at this level), then they can spend one round running, one round charging, and then three rounds whirlwinding. That's an average of 15 area-effect damage plus 5 to the primary target, compared to 17.5 for the Fireball.

There are certainly situations where Fireball will outperform the elementals, but there are a lot more where the elementals will outperform the Fireball (greater maximum range, or if you don't need the range, they can get in the full five rounds of combat). And Summon Nature's Ally also provides a variety of other options, and you can still get elementals as early as level 3 if you're willing to settle for just one of them.

[AvatarVecna]

A 5th-level druid using a 3rd-level slot can damage things up to 1835 feet away, by summoning 1d3 air elementals (you summon them at 35', the maximum for short range, then they spend four rounds running for 400' each, and then one round charging, for another 200'). If you merely want to match the range of a Fireball (600' at this level), then they can spend one round running, one round charging, and then three rounds whirlwinding. That's an average of 15 area-effect damage plus 5 to the primary target, compared to 17.5 for the Fireball.

There are certainly situations where Fireball will outperform the elementals, but there are a lot more where the elementals will outperform the Fireball (greater maximum range, or if you don't need the range, they can get in the full five rounds of combat). And Summon Nature's Ally also provides a variety of other options, and you can still get elementals as early as level 3 if you're willing to settle for just one of them.

Three major problems with this write-up. Firstly: summon spells have a 1 round casting time. You start casting this turn, enemies get their turn. Next round, your elemental appears, whirlwinds, and moves. This gives you decent AoE coverage, but a lot of that AoE is pretty close to you; it's more like a triple-wide line effect for Medium creatures standing on the ground. The main issue is that a big draw of instantaneous damage spells is that they happen before the enemy gets to go again. Fireball can potentially kill a bunch of weak enemies before they get a chance to do some low-level attack spam, or at least can deal enough damage to change their action priorities when their turn comes.

Secondly:


The elemental can transform itself into a whirlwind once every 10 minutes and remain in that form for up to 1 round for every 2 HD it has. In this form, the elemental can move through the air or along a surface at its fly speed.

Small Air Elementals have 2 HD, so they can transform for 1 round and after that they have a 10 minute cooldown. So it's not three rounds of whirlwind and one round of attacks after running, it's one round of whirlwind and three rounds of attacks.

Thirdly:


Creatures one or more size categories smaller than the elemental might take damage when caught in the whirlwind (see table for details) and may be lifted into the air

The damage and "save vs lifted into the air" only applies to creatures that are Tiny or smaller. About 90% of the creatures in the game are immune, and the remainder are most vulnerable if they're airborne because otherwise regardless of selected whirlwind height, your "area of effect" is a single square on the ground that gets to move 100 ft. So you can affect approximately a 5x4 square area, for one round. The only thing you're doing to most creatures in the game is kicking up dust and thus creating nonmagical concealment in a 10 ft radius area around your whirlwind's current location.

That's...I mean it's not nothing. But it's not competing with fireball by any stretch of the imagination. Against most creatures in the game, you're better off just punching, which is gonna have much worse range and AoE unless you sacrifice damage for speed. Most likely, casting SNA3 for 1d3 small air elementals is gonna give you 10 attacks targeting individual creatures dealing 1d4 damage each. If every single one of those is a hit (dealing a total of 10d4 damage, avg 25), you're competing with a fireball that hit 3 people who all saved (5d6/2, average ~26). This is of course assuming your 9 HP summons don't just get ganked the first turn, which is a distinct possibility, in which case their average damage falls to a grand total of 5.

[Anthrowhale]

Remaining issues:
1) Fireball still seems questionable, but I don't see a good counter-argument to it on the L3@ECL6 list yet.
2) Should Charm Monster be on the L4@ECL8 list?

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On the L1 list, I swapped down Vision of Punishment in favor of Entangle at ECL20. VoP is relatively redundant with Crown of Despair and Entangle at ECL20 providing a situationally useful long range spell at ECL20. "Situationally useful" isn't great, but coming out of an L1 slot it seems decent.

On the L4 list, I upgraded Wall of Sand to ECL8&20 and downgraded Last Breath to ECL8. Last Breath is great as the first cure-death effect, but other approaches are available at higher levels.

I'm swapping L3@ECL20 Scrying with Love's Pain on the theory that Substitute Domain[Oracle, Lust], Greater Anyspell[Scrying], or Miracle[Greater Scrying] are reasonable substitutes. In terms of the relative value of Love's Pain, it widens the attack aperture of infinite range attack spells beyond Dream Casting by also affecting Outsiders and Elementals which typically matters at ECL20.

L2@ECL20 Command Undead---the ability to make undead friendly at ECL20 seems situationally useful and complementary since they are immune to mind-affecting spells. I'm not sure what to drop here. My best guess is Hunter's Eye at the moment, although it's a hard tradeoff as CU is a more powerful effect on a more restricted subset of opponents. At the moment, I'm leaning against because unintelligent undead don't really matter at ECL20 and intelligent undead are at least subject to Glibness. If you are willing to spend a feat slot, then Mindworms[Song of the Dead] Mindrape is even an option.

L4 Charm Monster --- With Power Leech to amplify a casting stat this could even be deployed in combat. It's a very powerful effect, a bit sandwiched between Suggestion (a weaker effect since the creature won't do self-harmful things), Dream Casting at level 6 (longer range, but narrowed to targeting which excludes Elementals and Outsiders and out of combat use), and Mindrape (a more powerful longer range effect). Since Mindrape is essentially strictly better, I believe we can narrow the question to: should Charm Monster be on the L4@ECL8 list? The L4 list is quite difficult to remove from.

L6 Heaven's Trumpet --- 120' of fort or helpless that is not mind-affecting, so it affects Oozes, Plants, and Vermin on top of Crown of Despair at level 7. High level opponents typically are not of these types so the widened scope feels like a nice-to-have. Having it come online a level earlier is quite nice, but it's tricky to satisfy the Archon component earlier. Overall, this seems like a great spell which is just a little to hard to deploy when it first becomes available.


... summoning 1d3 air elementals ...


...

AV's analysis looks sound here. Any other alternatives to fireball?