Quote Originally Posted by Man_Over_Game View Post
Well, I dunno about that.

At level 11, a single spell slot, at 6th level spent on your example of Chain Lightning, will afford that Wizard about 3-4 turns of a Fighter hacking away. That's without spending a single other spell slot.
hmmm, i can see what you mean. on the other hand that assumes a particular style of play. i.e. very short adventuring days. and while i agree that that is a fairly common way to play the game, its not what the game is balanced around. sure, 1/day the caster can do 3/4 turns worth of the fighters at-will damage. But it also makes sense that expending a daily resource should get more out of it than an at-will resource.

meanwhile, as you point out, passively the fighter has significantly more HP than the wizard. and in order for the wizard to keep up, they need to expend even more resources.

Now im not trying to argue that spell casting at high levels is *actually* balance. especially when you consider that most games probably dont do the 6-8 encounters per day thing. However, using a comparison of a 1/day resource to an at-will attack is a pretty poor argument.