the power of cleric vs druid mage vs sorc pal vs ranger
zur312
Member Posts: 1,366
which class is more powerfull
i think it for bg1 and bg2
druid >= cleric
mage > sorc
pal >= ranger
druids higher level spells are a bit better and subclasses are way better than clerics
clercis 1-3 spells are better
maybe a ranger/cleric? but this defeats the purpose of this discussion:P
mage because of multi with gnome and dual classes
pal better subclasses but ranger/cleric is sooooooooooo imbalanced that it may be a tie in bg2 with archer and stalker stuff
i think it for bg1 and bg2
druid >= cleric
mage > sorc
pal >= ranger
druids higher level spells are a bit better and subclasses are way better than clerics
clercis 1-3 spells are better
maybe a ranger/cleric? but this defeats the purpose of this discussion:P
mage because of multi with gnome and dual classes
pal better subclasses but ranger/cleric is sooooooooooo imbalanced that it may be a tie in bg2 with archer and stalker stuff
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Mage and Sorcerer are on par too. The Mage class is so versatile but there is no doubt that a sorcerer approaches godlike power once key spells are gained while still being very competitive at low levels due to extra casts per day.
Cleric and Druid is easier. Druid is better in BG1 mainly due to accessing level 5 spells while cleric is better in BG2.
Clerics are missing out on key spells like Ironskin and insect plague. But they still got a better spell list. And turn undead can make some areas of the game trivial. Full plate also helps.
Wild mage -> Sorcerer -> Mage (BG1-2)
Wild mage is the most powerful of the ones there, after that sorceror and last mage. But any of the three there can easily go through the game without any problem alone and naked.
Paladin -> Ranger (BG1-2)
The paladin kits are better than the ranger one. The vanilla paladin is better than the vanilla ranger. Paladins can get level 4 spells while rangers only get level 3 spells. Paladin get DUHM (Draw upon holy might) that can put their strenght / constitution / dexterity to 25 on their own, rangers don't get this. The rangers have nothing compared to Carsomyr.
* The druid is better in BG1 because they can get level 5 spells, which the cleric can't.
Though clerics lack some spells and awesome elemental summonings, they get better stuff overall, raise in levels higher at the point where it counts, can use better armor and weapons, and turning undead is vastly superior to cruddy animal transformations. Shapeshifter is an okay kit, though - at least if the shapechanging works, which I'm still not quite sure if it does. Multiclass-wise, ranger/cleric is better than fighter/druid by a long shot, exploits or not: dual-wielding Crom Faeyr with some other awesome hammer still murders everything. There's also no real reason to not pick up a cleric kit.
BG1: Wild Mage >>> Sorcerer > Wizard
BG2: Sorcerer > Kensai/Mage > Wild Mage >> Wizard
Wild mage is ridiculously powerful on low levels, what with being capable of throwing around more higher level spells than they could ever cast otherwise, which is pretty broken early on. Later, though, I feel that sorcerers catch up significantly, and are more powerful of the two overall once they have acquired 9th level spells legitimately, not to mention high level abilities. In the end, the only thing the wild mage has is the randomness, which can be a curse as much as it can be a blessing. Wizards are by far the weakest of the three when single-classed, but a kensai ---> mage can murder everything on high levels almost as well.
Inquisitor >>> Undead Hunter > Stalker = Cavalier > Archer > Pure Paladin > Pure Ranger > Beastmaster
Ranger has pretty lousy kits, less and worse spells (not that spells matter much with this class anyway), can't turn undead (also admittedly kind of superfluous), nor wear very good armor if he also wants to put sneaking around to use. Stalkers are pretty good on higher levels: they can backstab worse than pure thief, but hit better and wield better weapons. Archer is sheer slaughter on ranged, but a lot of high-level opponents are immune to arrows. However, beastmaster pretty useless, and all three paladin kits are pure awesome - especially the Inquisitor, which makes even the most powerful and annoying wizards, of whom there are a lot in BG2, a joke. Plus, Carsomyr is better than dual-wielding Celestial Fury with some other good stuff.
If it hasn't change anything you can throw as many level 9 spells as you have Nahal's Reckless Dweomer in your spellbook.
With high level + Improved Chaos shield the wild surges won't be a problem.
They are by far the most powerful out there, even end game.
Mage and Sorcerer are more or less even, as Mage gets more spells to build a specialized set from per fight while Sorcerer gets to throw a lot more spells per day.
Paladins by themselves are not all that powerful, as a fighter they are tied with Rangers other than the fact that Rangers start with 2 points in Two Weapon Fighting. As casters, Paladins win due to cleric spells once again being more useful and being able to access 4th level spells while Rangers only get 3rd... For kits, well Rangers get one of the weakest kits with Beastmaster, but Archer and Stalker are not all that bad, Paladins kits all are decent, Though Undead Hunter is only at certain parts and Blackguard is one of the more powerful kits in the game...
Then there's Carsomyr... Which is a +5 Weapon... Which means it will go through anything short of the Absolute Immunity or Protection from Magical Weapons, it does have an upgrade which will make it +6 allowing it to pass Absolute Immunity too... Though if you really want to get the most out of this sword, it would prolly be with a Fighter with Grand Mastery in Two Handed Swords dualed into a thief and then equipped with Use Any Item.
A sorcerer can get far more out of Time Stop and Improved Alacrity: basically infinite Magic Missiles and Acid Arrows with zero casting time can hurt even at the end game.
A sorceror have 5 level 9 spells.
A wild mage with ring of wizardry have 18 level 9 spells.
The wild mage is a sorceror and mage in one. He can memorize any spell he wants, and at high level he can throw three times as many level 9 spells as the sorceror can.
The big flaw the wild mage have are the wild surges, and failing them. But at level 30+ with Improved chaos Shield you'll rarely see them.
As long as you have one of the spells memorized in your book, you can throw them up to 12 more times. This means 1 Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting can turn into 8 if you want and have 4 Nahal's to spare. So you need some more AoE? Ah it's alright i'll just grab 5 of my nahal's and bomb everyone around me with 5 Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting.
The wild mage has so many random factors in it, but the roof of power is much higher than the sorcerer.
Yes a sorcerer can spam wish to get new spells, but that requires you having a high wisdom and actually getting the correct resting.
If i could put them on a power scale i would make one like this.
Rogue 50%
Fighter70%
Cavalier with Carsomyr 90%
Blade 105%
F/M 115%
Mage 130%
Sorcerer 170%
Wild mage 240%
Anything over 100% starts getting redundant. You don't need that much fire power to complete the game unless you're doing SCS With tactics and ascension.
Also, don't forget that there are so many other spells than level 9. Horrid Wilting that you mentioned, for instance, is level 8: if you bring in a number of other incredibly useful (i.e. broken) spells from other spell levels - Project Image from level 7, Protection from Magical Energy from level 6, Lower Resistance from level 5, etc. - the initial bonus the wild mage has with Nahal's Reckless Dweomer diminishes a great deal, while the sorcerer's higher number of castable spells becomes all the more prominent. If you focus only on level 9 spells, sure, the wild mage still has more of them - but bring even level 8 spells along and suddenly the advantage disappears.
Wild Mage gets six or seven extra spells in total, with Reckless Dweomer, but he must spread them to any high-level spell he would want to cast. Sorcerer, meanwhile, gets a bunch of extra spells on all levels, which means he actually does get more of them in the end, even if more evenly spread.
And once again, I value the little first-level spell Magic Missile a great deal, but that's really just me.
In BG1 you can also get away more easily with a pure caster, while in BG2 you really need some sort of sustained damage, i.e. weapon damage, to be competitive with other alternatives.
The power of dual class also rises in BG2, and multi-classes as always scale directly with party size.
For BG2 I definitely want a fighter in my class combination if in any way possible; in BG1 that doesn't matter too much, really.
@SionIV I assume that full-on mods are a given for the discussion, because a naked half-orc mage with 3 INT could beat the vanilla game with two arms tied behind their backs.
But that also means that pure casters are somewhat weakened, as enemies are a lot more resilient. It's one thing when you can just level the entire zone with two spells, and quite another when any city ambush lives through your Horrid Wilting bomb.
I do agree that Wild Mage is still underrated by many people, but unfortunately it's in a difficult spot because it can't be dualed into, only from. Sorcerer can't dual at all.
Don't get me wrong, it's obviously possible to comfortably beat even a SCS/Tactics/Ascension game on Insane with any class/spec combination; but that still doesn't change the fact that other classes will do better in the same environment and under the same conditions.
There just isn't much of a way around physical damage if you want to be most effective. Even with open-ended spell scaling (I do use the Spell50 mod myself), magic will have a lower DPS than attacks simply due to the cast time. They can make up for it only in AoE, but that doesn't happen too often. Not to mention that anything with MR ruins your day (Golems anyone?).
That is, of course, counting offensive damage potential only. It's easy to measure that, as you can just compare output to output. It's much harder to compare the defensive potential of spells. How much of a gain is Iron Skins? How beneficial is Protection from Evil? These things can't really be properly quantified.
Divine casters in particular are tricky to compare. Druids have good debuffs, clerics have good buffs. Some buffs can be done without, some have more impact. Both can be combined with fighters equally well - and then there is the special case of Ranger/Cleric (or Ranger->Cleric).
I've tried it out, and while I see its appeal especially in BG1, I just don't think they're that good in BG2. I find myself casting cleric spells most of the time anyway; the only real exception being the various insect spells. Unfortunately, SCSII makes it so that fire shields protect from insects (makes sense), and every mage and their brother use those shields. When you're at a point where you're dispelling the shields, you're dispelling their other protections too - so might as well kill them instead of sending out insects.
There's other useful and convenient druid spells, too, like Nature's Beauty, but I never really found a good niche for them. If you have suggestions, go ahead! But in my experience access to druid spells does not warran losing offensive power from being a ranger and not an actual fighter, so fighter/cleric or fighter->cleric will remain my choice for divine casting.
2.) The wild mage has the same amount of spells as the sorcerer. 6 casts for each level. They can just turn 6 level 1 spells into level 7,8 or 9 if they want to.
3.) It's been gone through many times in solo runs with difficulty enhancing mods. The Wild Mage is more powerful and gives you more options.
I've been trying to google it, but with no results.
1.) Mage spells will do much more damage than any melee fighter. And if a fighter ends up facing a mage he can't touch them if they have mantle or protection from magical weapon on them, while a mage can simply strip the protection buffs and kill them right out.
2.) A solo fighter couldn't survive SCS + Tactics + Ascension . He wouldn't make it to the end game, and if he somehow did (0.0001%) He has no chanse to survive melissan Ascension with SCS. Arcane casters are much more powerful than all the other classes.
3.) A level 40 sorcerer with full buffs and shapeshifted into a golem wll destroy a fighter even in melee combat. There is really nothing that a fighter or any other class in the game can do against an arcane caster.
4.) You can polymorph yourself and destroy golems. Or you can use Melf's Minute Meteors on them.
5.) A fighter will always end uptaking some damage, it's impossible not to. While a mage can be completely immune to everything in the game, and they have unlimited amount of spells with Wish. You could be fighting 20 dragons at once as a mage, and still make it out of the fight without any life lost.
It's sad but in Baldur's gate 2 the arcane caster is the undisputed king.
Just an example: MM deals what, 5d4+5 damage at lvl9+? That's 10-25, or 17.5 average damage - for an entire round. Just one hit with an endgame weapon deals that much, or more, depending on the weapon. And you have TEN attacks per round with 5 APR and IH.
That means even spells like Dragon's Breath (20d10, or 110 average damage) are eventually outclassed. And that's not accounting for magic resistance, or interruptions.
2), 3) Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about pure fighters here (they can totally survive by the way, it's been done many times. Google for solo runs of SCS/Tac/Asc on Insane and you'll find pretty much any class), I'm talking about multi/dual classes.
There is no denying that spell casters are powerful; it's just that they lack a sustained source of no-questions-asked damage output. The main damage you put out is from melee attacks, not spells - at least not directly.
A fighter/mage dual or multi uses spells primarily for buffing, not for damage output. Stoneskin, PfMW, and similar spells make them nigh-invulnerable in combat, while Improved Haste is the biggest contributor to increased damage (and requires good melee capabilities for maximum efficacy). Dispels etc. take care of the rest. Timestop for super fun time.
The only actual damage spells I ever use are MM because there is nothing else to take on lvl1 and you can use it to snipe; Horrid Wilting for AoE; Dragon's Breath for AoE. There's some niche applications for other spells at certain points in the game (Sunfire), but mostly they are pretty useless (from a powergaming perspective).
4) I'm not saying you can't kill them. I'm saying your damage output tanks whenever you're faced with an MR mob. There is only one enemy I know of that is immune to physical damage (Magical Sword). Physical defenses are rampant, of course, but far more easily dispelled than MR; not to mention that most enemies that bother to put up physical defenses also put up magical ones so you need to dispel either way.
5) Everyone will end up taking damage at some point. Fighters at least have the HP pool to survive most of it. While it's definitely possible to make a mage immune to everything, keep in mind that this further reduces DPS - any time spent buffing is time lost dealing damage. You don't need to survive with 100% - you need to survive with at least 1 HP. Health is a resource.
But again: I'm not, nor was I ever, talking about pure fighters. I'm talking about how ridiculously good fighter/caster combinations are (and there are several that are viable), and how much more damage you deal with weapons compared to spells.
Protection from magical weapons or mantle (Absolute immunity) screw over the fighter. MR doesn't do anything to the mage. Either you remove it with lower resistance, and if it's immune to magic you can summon up 5 skeleton warriors and haste them or just throw a planetar on them. You can also turn yourself into an iron golem and deal 40+ damage a hit. Not to mention you can Timestop + shapeshift mind flayer and kill anything in the game in 4 hits.
As you can see here damage doesn't matter if you can kill someone with 10 000 health in 3 seconds with shapeshift mindflayer. You don't even need damage spells as a mage to kill someone, i have gone through many hard fights by lowering their saving throws + finger of death or other instant kill spells.
2.) Until you have shown me a pure fighter that have killed Draconis on SCS with tactics or Melissan with SCS and ascension (Which is impossible) then that is wrong. We already had this discussion on the old forum. Alesia one of the most experienced players (Done no reload Insane SCS tactics with a naked sorcerer) couldn't finish Melissan with her beast master because it just wasn't possible to survive through it. Same goes for a fighter, you can't heal and deal enough damage to survive Ascension melissan.
3.) This game isn't about damage and it never was. You don't need any damage if you can go through with a mindflayer and kill everything with 3-4 attacks. Also if you look at a solo SCS/tactics sorcerer build they have almost no damage spells. They have all the buffs to make them immune to damage, and then the spells that can instantly kill the enemy or things like Abi, dragon's breath and skulltrap that you can chain and deal 300 damage with one spell. A chained Abi will literarly kill everything in the room, dealing over 200+ damage to everything around you. There is no way a fighter will ever come close.
4.) It doesn't matter if the mob has MR. You can kill it in many other ways without spells. Every single high level mage in the game is immune to physical damage, and got 20 layers of stoneskin and mirror images you have to get through. Mages are the hardest enemies in the game, and as a fighter you can do nothing against them unless you're chugging potions and scrolls like crazy. The inquisitor and if you're lucky with carsomyr is the only way to get through this.
5.) No you're wrong here. It's possible to get immune to every single thing in the game as a mage. You can get immune to all elemental damage, all physical damage, complete immunity to all spells and everything else. With the wish spell you can refresh all your spells and put them up again so it's possible to be immune to everything for as long as you don't get bored when you're playing a mage.
Let me make this clear.
A fighter can do nothing against an enemy that has protection from magical weapon, mantle or absolute immunity.
A mage can conjure summons to take care of enemies that are immune to magic. Or timestop and mindflayer to kill them in 5 seconds.
Also you're mentioning Improved haste on your fighter. It's kind of amusing because that is a mage spell and has nothing to do on your fighter. Or are you saying that you can't do it without it? Because a mage doesn't need anything to blow shit up.
A mage can be totally naked and beat the game, now try the same on a fighter.
Also, maximums don't really matter; DB can be 200 damage, but it has exactly the same chance to be 20 damage, too. Not to mention it allows save for half. And remember that you are limited to 1 spell per round, unless under IA - which in itself takes time to cast, and more importantly a lvl9 spell slot.
While chaining under TS is nice, keep in mind that a) it doesn't work against Ascension bosses and some others (Demogorgon, Eclipse), and b) it further reduced damage output of the party because only the caster can act. I doubt you do as much damage as the other party members combined. This doesn't matter when flying solo, but solo is a special case anyhow.
I'm also getting the feeling that you are forgetting that I'm NOT talking about PURE fighters here. I'm just saying that physical damage > spell damage, and that for that very reason you want your casters to be dual/multi with a fighter part.
And again: I'm not saying that things can't be done. This is not what this is about. It's about how it's done BEST.
MF-Shapechange is powerful, but almost requires TS (for auto-hits). Several bosses/hard encounters include immunity to TS (and instant-death, since you mentioned it), see above. Outside of TS, your THAC0 is a problem, as are your defenses. Spending time buffing reduces damage output, I think I've mentioned that before.
2) Google it. There's tons of threads and videos out there about solo runs. I'm pretty sure I saw a thread about fighter solo Ascension on Insane, and one about cleric. Pure class of course. But AGAIN: this is not about PURE fighters.
3) Killing things as a MF effectively still translates to DPS; mob health/time, in this case. This isn't done for absolute values, but for comparison of different approaches. As for AoE spells, that is pretty much the only time spells trump melee damage, as their output proportionately increases with the number of enemies. There are very actual instances, though, where you face a large number of mobs that aren't irrelevant to begin with. And keep in mind that chaining Horrid Wiltings does take time, too.
4) Yes, they have tons of physical protections. And what, they don't have any magical ones or what? I'm pretty sure I've seen loads of those... And once you dispel, you rarely dispel one at a time - you're dispelling in bulk. And when you've dispelled the mage, might as well hack it down. Stoneskin isn't particularly effective, by the way - any form of elemental damage pierces right through it to interrupt spells.
5) I didn't mean literally anything. Anything relevant. Anything you need for a given fight, with meta-knowledge. But as you rightly said, it's mostly redundant anyway.
And because I haven only mentioned it about ten times already: I am NOT talking about PURE fighters. I don't know how you keep ignoring that, but I've said it many times, both in this post and in the previous one.
who is better
fighter/mage or mage?
F/M has an easier early game than a Mage. And it's more 'Comfortable' and easier to play with one as you can buff up and go melee. But end game there really is no difference, F/M for solo game Mage for party. 1.) I'm not measuring DPS because this isn't WoW where you fight enemies with several million health that take over 15 minutes to kill, where you have to make sure your playing efficient to hold your DPS.
In Baldur's gate 2 one spell or rather one chain can destroy the whole enemy team. So you won't have time to check DPS (Damage per second) as they instantly die the second you release your chain with Abi. Also the mindlfayer doesn't do any real damage so it doesn't have any DPS. But after 4 hits of no damage it kills the target.
Dps really isn't important and doesn't belong in a game like Baldur's Gate 2 where buffs and defense keep you alive instead of damage. A fighter can be hitting a lich for 2 minutes without doing any damage. That would be 0 dps for the fighter during the whole fight if he doesn't land a hit.
A chain is instant and doesn't take time to cast. There are very few things in the game that can survive that chain.
You don't have to chain under timestop, and i'm not talking about a party now. I would never use timestop when fighting melissan if had a party, ofcourse i'm talking about the mage alone.
Chain 3x Abi -> Mind flayer -> Instant kill (finger of death, power word kill) -> Physical damage -> Fireball -> Magic missile.
The sorcerer is a better and more powerful choise than the F/M as you don't need the fighter levels to kill stuff. And the sorcerer lets you pick spells that you wouldn't be able to get scrolls of before much later in the game.
Very few enemies are immune to timestop. And you can still drain the with a mindflayer, it won't be as quick or reliable but it's possible. Now for the enemies that aren't immune to it (Yaga shura) you eat them up much faster than any fighter or melee could. Not to mention most enemies that are immune to timestop are going to destroy a fighter or melee class.
2.) Link me a fighter that does solo ascension with SCS or tactics. It's that simple really. I haven't heard or seen it be done and would love to see it myself. You can't heal enough and the ascension fight with Melissan is not one battle, but several after eachother that won't let you rest (Divine casters can't win this solo either, an arcane caster got wish so he can refresh his spells and that's the only reason it's possible for them.
3.) You're wrong here. The term DPS is mainly used and crowned from MMORPG (WoW is the reason it got famous, the term that is) And DPS stands for 'Damage per second' . Mindflayer hits around 4-8 damage so it wouldn't have much more than 3-4 damage per seconds but it can still kill someone in 4-5 seconds. What you don't understand is that Abi will still deal 200 damage to the main target. The highest damage you will deal per hit as a fighter is 50 and that's with all buffs and Critical strike HLA.
I'll say this again. Very few enemies in Baldur's gate has over 200+ health. So if you instantly kill it with a chain of Abi or finger of death, DPS doesn't mater.
4.) Every single magical protection in the game can be gotten around by the mage. Summons or shapeshift yourself. There is no protection that you can't get around as a arcane caster. The fighter can't do anything against the spells i mentioned, while the mage will still kill the target. Stoneskin is one of the best spells in the game, yes elemental damage will interrupt your spells but for the next 20 attacks you'll deal almost no damage to the mage with stoneskin up.
Mantle / Absolute immunity / Protection from magical weapon
Mirror image
Stoneskin
-24 AC
There is no way for a fighter to get through that quickly.
5.) The arcane caster is king in Baldur's gate 2. The blade is only as powerful as he is because he got magic. The reason F/M is powerful isn't because he got a weapon and grand mastery with it. It's because he can protect himself with the magic.
Chain Contingency can be set so that it releases the second you see an enemy. So it's not only instant, but it's the instant a red circle pops up on the screen.
3. If you're running a Wish-exploit arcanist or a 15-year-due-to-resting-run-of-BG2 (obviously exaggerated), sure non-magical damage doesn't matter.
4. Fighter with one of the usual +6 Weapons/Non-magical weapons + Greater Whirlwind Attack/Ring of Gaxx, as mantle-like spells (Absolute Immunity is included) and Pfmw are mutually exclusive.
If it's pre-Abyss, pre-level-9-spells: Improved Mace of Disruption or any similar enchanted weapon.
If you're implying that you took the good path in the abyss to snag yourself immunity to normal weapons, state it please.
Moreover, you're obviously not mentioning various spells here, or how do you get that -24 AC?
As an interesting fact, +6 weapons are not limited to:
- Ravager+6
- Ixil's Spike +6
- Carsomyr +6
- Staff of the Ram +6
they also include the following attack items from spells:
- Black Blade of Disaster (mentioned in spell description)
- Melf's Minute Meteors (mentioned in spell description)
- Cause Critical Wounds
- Harm
- Slay Living
- Fire Seed
- Cause Serious Wounds
- Searing Orb
10th
are you suggesting that kensai/mage is weaker than pure caster?
is he overrated? every bg player on earth is wrong!!!
It's far from "no difference", though. A F/M has a lot of sustained damage, while a mage relies entirely on spells. See the entire argument above We're measuring "DPS" for the same reason people in other games do it: to have an objective value by which to compare game decisions.
Since this game features instant-kill mechanics, you have to amend DPS a bit; it still retains its meaning, though. All you do is measure effective damage - if you instant-kill something in 2 seconds, then it's exactly the same, for the purpose of theoretical comparison, as dealing 100% of the mob's HP in damage over 2 seconds. The same goes for MF-drain attacks. Obviously you're not looking at the actual damage for such special cases, you're looking at what effectively happens.
You mean sequencers? Chain-casting is something different (back-to-back manual casting of spells). Sequencers can be quite effective, but they do also take time to set up. That time is spent not dealing damage so, assuming all other factors equal, you do less damage than you think.
Also, while MF certainly still works, all relevant enemies with SCS/Tactics/Ascension are immune to instant-death. Dragons used to be susceptible in vanilla, but not anymore. Liches are naturally immune to death magic. That doesn't leave a lot of enemies...
I don't understand your reasoning. You mean if you dual-class? Using scrolls, you basically start as a lvl5 mage, or even higher in smaller parties - more than able to kill the sort of mobs you meet during the early stages of the game. You want to go toe-to-toe with Melissan, or the entire Ascension pantheon, or Eclipse? Yeah, good luck with that... not to mention that with your THAC0 you won't hit anything. What do you mean they are going to destroy a fighter? Why? You have higher AC, the same buffs as a mage, and more HP - how is it a problem? Just google it, there's tons of threads and videos about it. There's several strategies to go for, Mind Flayer Circlets and such, I don't remember the details. Look it up if you really want to know, it's easy to find. Assuming no extension mods, Horrid Wilting will do a maximum of 20d8. Even with extensions, you won't reliably do 200 damage, not even close; not to mention that several enemies have resistances to magic damage, so the actual number is even lower.
And that is once per round. In one round, a fighter has 10 attacks. Fighter average damage is usually higher than 20, which would come out as 200 in the end. Of course, you don't always hit... but you also can't be interrupted, and can just keep doing it all day long. It seems you are playing with your settings too easy. Melissan has 500 base HP for me. Melanthium has 600. I'm not sure if they get CON bonuses (some have 25 CON), but it's still a lot of HP - not to mention they have rampant resistances against everything, so you do even less damage.
At that point, it actually matters what you do. Things don't just keel over. Try setting your mods higher (max HP rolls for enemies) and see how you fare. At the risk of repeating myself: I'm not talking about pure fighters. All the dispels are the same. Blade is quite overrated. But you are right, arcane casting is king, because of the buffs - not of the damage. That is my whole point - for damage, you take weapons. For buffs, you take spells. Spells just won't do as much damage as weapons, period, with the exception of substantial AoE scenarios (which are quite uncommon).
Liches are a problem, though. I'd be interested in how solo straight fighters deal with liches, who will be using PfMW.
Against non-Liches you can use Firetooth loaded with non-magical bolts; that will deliver fire damage right through PfMW *and* Stoneskin.
where it breaks down is the fact that so long as a fighter has hit points, he can keep on trucking along where the wizard falls flat out of gas.
I almost always play a wizard as Charname when I play BG. If I were to compare the contribution of damage by NPC, it is usually Minsc or Keldorn who have the highest contribution by orders of magnitude. But I'd bet that they wouldn't do anywhere near as much damage if Charname weren't in the background foiling the enemies strategies with sleep or hold or combo reduce magic resist/insta-kill spells.
At the end of the day, "for me" the game is designed to be a group effort so I throw out "Who is more powerful". The answer quite simply is what's the situation? And how prepared are you for it? I could describe a situation where the wizard would always win. you in turn could describe a situation where the fighter would always win. I don't personally think that either class is so borked that they are un-playable. I agree that multi-classing definitely wins though. Just plain more abilities wins the day and once you get beyond a certain point, the loss of XP due to splitting between classes simply doesn't amount to any difference and then multi classes rule the roost.
Obviously a pure fighter is easily stopped cold through spells. That's why I never, ever use pure fighters. On the other hand, pure mages are hampered by their lack of easy to use, sustained damage output. That's why I never, ever use pure mages either. I always use a combination of fighter and mage, either multi or, preferably, dual class. That way you combine the highest damage output with the highest resilience.
So, again, this is NOT and has NEVER BEEN about pure fighters. Only about fighter/caster combinations over pure casters.