A suitable nerf for orb spells?

[Fizban]

Note: Force Missile is a no-save, no-SR, auto-hit spell. (It's Evocation, but still no-SR.)
Heck, the Orb of Force was Evocation for about 2 months (since the release of Dragon Compendium and until the Spell Compendium was published) while still being no-SR
What's you will say about it?

Force Orb was printed in Unapproachable East in May 2003, Spell Compendium is December 2005. Complete Arcane is November 2004. Tome and Blood is July 2001. So the original X Orbs existed for nearly two years before a Forgotten Realms (a source of many spells, initially problematic or made so through many "revisions" by other people) book put out a Force version, which was the same but with lower max dice and no extra status effects. Then Complete Arcane creates the uber orbs a year after that, and then, finally, another year after that, Spell Compendium make the uber force version. That's three different "revisions" by three different groups of people over four years.

Force Missile, uh, allows SR, at least in the Spell Compendium version. I couldn't tell you about the original Dragon Mag version but I'd bet it does there too. It also deals guess how much damage? 1d6/2 levels (same average as Magic Missile but with a higher cap), or more specifically, 2d6/4 levels. Not a spell that is going to justify the uber orbs.

Correction - RAW says: "Each creature in the area takes 1d4 points of fire damage per caster level (maximum 15d6)."

A spell that poorly written continues to fail to support much of anything, though as I already pointed out, the cap on the dice already has a "RAW" response you could use that doesn't require a justification.

To be clear, it was you who brought up the number of dice in the spell, in response to Vaern:

Direct damage spells that ignore spell resistance, outside of the orb spells, are few and far between. None of them are especially powerful and all of them that I'm aware of are acid

Also, most of them caps at 15 dice - just as Orbs (couple of 10s "compensated" with couple of 20s)

I have responded by pointing out that all the spells you listed which cap at 15d6 worth of damage, which was your own reading of the meaning of "power," were in fact higher level spells. This is not disputable.

Since that damage isn't instant, it may be mitigated or negated (or wounded enemy may just kill your PC first)

And the number of foes with that ability is quite small, and you yourself would consider turns wasted preventing such "little" damage a win anyway, and you just gave all combats (hah) a 3 turn duration. Which is enough to get all the damage out of it.

Oh, come on!
One spell per round, three rounds per encounter, three encounters per day. What kind of full caster is unable to cast 9 spells per day at level 6+?

3.5 DMG p49. It's four to five encounters per day. On average, which means any day you only fight three should eventually be balanced by a day you definitely fight five, or even six. (Or more specifically, each level-appropriate encounter should consume about 20% of the party's resources).

And let's actually check that: Wizard 6 has 4/3/3/2, with normal int progression improves to 4/4/4/3. That's 7 spells above 1st level, and no, I don't consider Sleep/Grease/Color Spray to be encounter crushing at that level, because actual monsters of that level will break the HD limit, hop over it, or are something that I'd love you to be within 15' of. And they have 4+ encounters to be ready for, not 3.

At 5th, since you did say 5-6, they lose two spells, so only 5.

And remember this thread is about uber orbs, not save-or-lose.

1. Tree spells per encounter. Three! Even if one or two spells wouldn't work, at least one solid hit is a given.
2. "Golden staples." Color Spray, Glitterdust, Grease, Fog Cloud, Web... Pretty much infallible choices
3. Rest of the party. Even if Wizard failed sometimes, it doesn't mean the fight is lost. It's not a sole adventure. (And even sole Wizard may have pets, cohorts, or hirelings)

If you have to admit that the rest of the party matters, I already consider that a win. The fact that spells don't always work and spell slots are limited is the only thing which "balances" those borked 2nd-3rd level spells.

Death Ward is 4th-level spell;
Silence - 2nd-level;
Protection from Evil - 1st-level.
"Less impact", ne?

You do realize that the first two of those are Cleric spells, and Silence is only the counter for a couple monsters, right? And the orbs are Sor/Wiz spells? You keep trotting out spells from other characters' lists as if they make a difference when considering the addition of a spell to the Sor/Wiz list.

My English is, apparently, insufficient to understand what's you're trying to say there

Can't say it much more simply, though apparently part of it is the 1st level spells which you view as so powerful that they are on par with 3rd level spells in a level 5-6 fight. So it's not that you're saying you have "enough" high level spells, but rather that you don't view lower level spells as weaker at all. Under that interpretation then sure, all spells should deal 1d6/level max 10, starting at 1st level (and should give more dice per level at higher levels). I have already addressed the possible argument where Scorching Ray would signify this as a shift in design for 3.5, and found it insufficient.

Which wouldn't even come online until - what, 9th level?

Yes, this particular disagreement is that you think spell slot limits stop mattering at 5th, while I read them as remaining significant until a minimum of 10th, at which point adventure design may or may not present an extra drain which keeps them limited anyway. And I'll also note that I take the spell progression of 5e, which has no bonus slots and massively truncates slots above 5th, as a sign that someone was paying attention (I'd compare the spell tables of 2e, but I don't have access to those- I expect the available slots were similarly lower).

I presuming "actually Cleric" spells would be cast by the actual Cleric...

Indeed, one would think so, but that's the whole point of my sticking that comment in there all the time: many of the "wizard" spells can be covered by the cleric, and yet people expect the wizard to cast them. And the wizard who is covering themselves with personal protection buffs and spamming Fly or Overland Flight everywhere has fewer attack spells to spread over the day. Of course a Cleric casting those spells has less room to cover healing and status effects, so the wizard will need to make sure threat go down fast enough they don't need the healing. . .

• Negative Energy Ray (Necromancy)
• Ray of Deanimation (Abjuration)
• Ray of Stupidity (Enchantment)
• Ray of Retaliation (Abjuration)
• Rust Ray (Transmutation)

Those all do certain damage

Only one of which is actually normal damage, let alone specifically "elemental" energy damage. Deanimation is a specific construct-only effect, Stupidity is barely even "damage", Retaliation is a fancy immediate counterspell, and Rust only works on metal.

You have defeated my apparently ill-considered suggestion that rays are all evocations (by bringing up a bunch of splatbook spells printed long after the PHB and uber orbs, but still). Unfortunately none of those spells actually work for proving the idea that magical energy damage can be non-magical, as none of them deal energy damage (except for negative energy, which does not exist in real life and thus has a hard time saying it can be produced by non-magical means).

Hence my comment about “shouldn’t every monster with significant SR have its CR lowered?” In a game with Assay Resistance and the like, and Orbs and the like, SR is more of a speed bump than a defense, and thus the foe is less challenging than its CR would purport.

Indeed. I haven't gone over them looking for SR/no-SR, but my go-to example is always MM3, "the book of overpowered monsters," in which I expect plenty of monsters do have SR thrown on as an afterthought. Many of the monsters considered "par" by more powerful characters, the likes of which would employ Assay Resistance, are found in that book, or came out at a similar time I'd wager. I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the sentiment comes from extremely high level/epic play, where pretty much everything does have SR, because it's all greater demons and demigods- and the monsters need two layers of defense because PCs have 9th level spells and winning with one spell is lame.

Adjusting the CR of other monsters to match those you consider to be the true baseline should be obvious and common, if one understands that the MMs vary in power level. Of course since I take a baseline approach, I advocate PHB and MM1, not Assay Resistance and MM3.