Magical Artillery

[Ssiauhll]

In previous editions, and with poor parties nothing could beat out a spellcaster (wizard) for maximum damage during one round. And a casual reading seemed to confirm this with out much thought to min/maxing. However after reading some of the D&D forums (and seeing a few battles with a munkin group) it seems that spell casters suck at dealing damage.
Any thoughts about making spellcasters good at dealing hyper but loads of damage in a few rounds. I realize that there are different strategies at different levels and I am most interested at low to mid levels.



<Star Wars revised ed>
on another note if you know of a way to make force lightning do more damage.

[Arbitrarity]

It's not that casters suck at doing damage, it's that doing damage sucks for arcane casters.
Damage? You have enough options for it. Metamagic is good if you can get it for free, so Incantatrix is the broken option here. Sorcerors make good blasters, as do warmages, even though they're weak as far as magic-users go. The lack of flexibility makes them much less useful.

[Person_Man]

Casters have the best scaled damage in the game. If the casters in your game don't deal amazing damage, they obviously didn't bother to take Empower Spell plus Easy Metamagic (Dragon Magazine) or Practical Metamagic (Races of the Dragon). +1 LA to the spell, +50% damage. And they're obviously not paying attention to the numerous PrC that allow all sorts of damage and metamagic chicanery.

Another option: Be a Stormsinger (Frostburn). Go to town and use Diplomacy to gather up as many friends as you can. Cast Unseen Servant (duration 1 hour per level) as much as you can. Animate Dead (permanent until killed) if you're Evil. Animate Object (1 object per caster level) a bunch of times just before combat. Have everyone stand behind you in combat, and use the Aid Another action to assist you on your next Perform action. Everyone who succeeds on their Aid Another roll (DC 10) adds +2 to your next check, and these bonuses explicitly stack. Use your special ability to spend a Bardic music use to cast a special Lightning Bolt, where the damage is equal to your Perform check. The damage is only limited by the number of people/minions you have, so you can kill a Tarrasque in one round, assuming you then have a Wish or Miracle to make it permanent once you reduce it below 868 hit points.

[Arbitrarity]

Fear the awesomeness of nanobots!

[Jasdoif]

Everyone who succeeds on their Aid Another roll (DC 10) adds +2 to your next check, and these bonuses explicitly stack. Use your special ability to spend a Bardic music use to cast a special Lightning Bolt, where the damage is equal to your Perform check. The damage is only limited by the number of people/minions you have, so you can kill a Tarrasque in one round, assuming you then have a Wish or Miracle to make it permanent once you reduce it below 868 hit points.

Wouldn't all the people using Aid Another need to be able to cast a special Lightning Bolt via a Perform check, though? You can only aid another on a task you're able to attempt yourself.

[Damionte]

Actually from my expereince it's not that casters suck at doing damage. It's that damage isn't always as effective as save or die type spells. Particularly at later levels when folks saving throw get a lil higher.

Casters are actually good at doing damage. particularly area effect damage. It's just that sometimes it would have been more effective to cast a polymoprh or a teleport, or somethign else in stead of blasting away.

Or your team mates or some other fragile items is in the way and you can't blast away.

[Gavin Sage]

Caster still have a lot of damage potential. There are builds where a fighter can outdo the magic artillery, but we are talking to a single target, requiring a full round action. A mage can do a lot of damage to ten enemies at once with ease.