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Mastering Magic / Designing Spells / Benchmarks

5th Level

Source Ultimate Magic pg. 139
Cloudkill: This spell is key because it automatically kills weak creatures, deals poison damage each round to stronger creatures in the area, persists for several rounds, and moves.

Cone of Cold: This spell is an interesting benchmark because it’s actually a weak spell for its level; at the level you gain it, fireball does just as much damage and at a longer range, and cone of cold's damage cap is only 5 dice higher than fireball. If your 5th-level attack spell is weaker than this spell, you should increase its power or consider making it a 4th-level spell.

Dominate Person: This is the lowest-level spell that allows you to utterly control a hostile intelligent creature (with the exception of self-destructive orders).

Wall of Stone: This is the lowest-level spell that creates a large-scale, permanent (instantaneous) object out of nothing (compare as well to fabricate, which permanently reshapes raw materials into finished goods).

Archives of Nethys

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5th Level