In my opinion, wound penalties do not belong in a heroic fantasy type game like the latest editions of D&D. They work fantastically in gritty games or "realistic" games, but D&D is neither of those. I feel like D&D is closer spiritually to the superhero genre, but set in a medieval/high fantasy world. In such settings, the characters and villains alike can withstand obscene amounts of punishment without breaking a sweat, and wound penalties run counter to that idea.
I agree with you.
D&D is neither of those. Superhero genre exists and we know whats meant by that as a standard. Regardless of the fact that there are regenerators like "The green knight" in arthurian legend, thats not the "Rule" like it is in "random comic book land" D&D is superheroing which is why that type of wound system isn't in the game. You can make another D20 game that incorporates such things but so many changes would be made there that it wouldn't be acceptible to sit down with people who've come to play D&D and then spring a wound system on them. I ... I can't remember if theres a game that already does something like this though.
To the op. If you want a sytem by which blasting is as good as sod's/s battlefield control... then the question that I gather from the begining's of your post is: Is it okay for a wizard to blast the encounter to death himself X times perday.
If thats okay then you can theoretically see how much damage it takes to be level appropriate and do that, though there are spell effects that are way more powerful that are hard to equate with simple blasting.
Example: Hold Monster, Mass.
Has its drawbacks I know... but in a bubble right, in a bubble if this spell goes off it ends the encounter. Doesn't work on undead etc blah blah blah, but still...
So if you made an uncapped fireball that did that, how much damage would be acceptable to end an encounter all by itself, because thats ultimately being asked when someone says make evocation equal to other magics, "ON SOME LEVEL"
Paladin House Blues (relevant stuff)
We ran into this problem at home with paladin smites, I had a player that wanted to play a paladin even though the tome of battle crusader was available, he hadn't played in years and wanted to play a paladin "Not the paladin lite". After seeing what the crew was talking about in practice he asked if I couldn't do something to fix the class. One of the things we (the party) came up with with was smite damage increasing and it went like this.
Paladin levels
1-4 Smite adds 1 dmg/chr level
5-9 Smite adds 2 dmg/chr level
10-14 Smite adds 3 dmg/chr level
15-16 Smite adds 4 dmg/chr level
17-20 smite adds 5 dmg/chr level.
It put it in line with a warblade using +100 damage strike etc. I wanted to add that we did some other work with the class as well, one of the things was putting riders on the smites, usable but turning the smite into an X action (depending on what we thought appropriate at the time) couple other things but it worked out well for the guy.
I posit therefore that a similar tactic be used with evokers/ or rather D/D spells. I'm pretty sure psionics (for all its other flaws) already shows that you can add +1 dmg safely, so adding more wouldn't instantly throw you off the rng if you're JUST looking at BLASTING v. God magicks. If you feel like doing the math.
If a 20th level caster throws a fireball (and of course this has to be uncapped) throws a fireball for 20d6+100 its somewher in the neighborhood of 170 hp assuming the save is failed, and you've spend resources to overcome sr (a feat most likely)
You still haven't killed a titan, balor (fire resistance notwithstanding), but the minions are likely all dead.
The number by which your fireball kills things dead in a "RAID!!!" on roaches like snese, can be found but I'm certain thats not what the desirable outcome for this is.
Still, lobbing a fireball at the average level 10hd monster just doesn't cut it, since they have pretty much massive con bonuses. Doing 35 damage save for half just isn't enough vs your basic cr 10 monster.
Therefore, regardless of the fix you decide to you, the acknoledgement that there is a deficency there is pretty paramount.
I see the popular solution right now is turning all blasting spells in to some variation of "Wings of Flurry" and that ... that works, in some way but still you've made evocation in to basically a save or suck brand of magic. Which isn't much different from playing "God" except that the theortical caster would potentially have to cast 2 spells where as God might only have to cast 1 more often that not (depending on the lighting at the moment, aka the enemy)
The 2 problems I see that are non-starters imho is
1. to increase the damage of blasting spells you have to take away their eligibility for "shennanigans" via metamagic as the op calls it. Thats a reasonable thing in actuality, because while I'm not from a school of banning much, I've met, read about, and encoutered many a Gm who would take grievance with a mailman type build. So if you're making a "BETTER" evocation then one of the thing that has to be removed is the "Ways we've bent and stretch to make it work before"... people w/system mastery will resist that idea in my experience, but you can do better, if you want.
2. "What about when the mosnters use these new spells on players" a particularly misleading question, because... well the question is how do we make evocation equal to "God spell" if god spells are already being used against the players for an" auto-win like" scenario then it doesn't matter WHAT Was cast. Unless the gm is relying on evocation to be a threatning-yet-non-effective magic, in which case they genuniely wouldn't want evocation increased in power no matter WHAT solution you brought to the table.
So really, the "New bad spells used vs players" is no different from "Current bad spells used vs player" or is shouldn't be.
Sorry so long winded, started streming consciouness there...
