No, beguilers do far more damage than warmages. The problem with the warmage is that the only way they have to do damage is by doing damage. But a beguiler can cover a canyon with an illusion of the ground, and do 20d6 falling damage to anything that doesn’t realize it, or dominate a big dumb brute on the enemy side, thereby effectively doing enough damage to kill that brute, plus all the damage it does to its former allies, or put all the enemies to sleep and thereby turn everyone else’s attacks into coups de grace, or whatever. All of those will end up doing more damage than a warmage could ever pull off; it’s just damage dealing with style.
Ah, yes. It was even worse with sorcerors in Runequest v3 IIRC. You had to learn each spell, and the generic magic skills to boost range, duration and effect, separately, so as a low-level wizard it was hard to cast anything at all, and as a high-level wizard you could smite someone stone dead with a high chance of success. One problem though was that you could learn lots of high-level buffs and then needed a plausible reason why, as well as walking around with 20 points of Damage Resistance and Damage Boosting the whole time, you weren’t buffing your party’s Rune Lord who would then have the same as well as being decked head to toe in iron plate and who was well over 100% with his dual-wielded iron bastard swords.
I suppose that’s true if there happens to be a 200 foot deep canyon nearby that the bad guys didn’t already know about and/or fail their saves…
I’m not arguing the Beguiler isn’t effective… I thoroughly enjoyed playing one (and turning one of the bad guys into a good guy for a time is a time-tested great tactic), but damage is not their forte and they don’t stack up to a Warmage for pure damage. No base class does. It’s a simplistic, almost barbaric damage, but there are oh so many varieties of it that it’s unlikely a Warmage will ever be unable to be effective no matter who the enemy is (like, say the undead or a construct).
A Beguiler is far more effective in more subtle ways and outside of combat. A Warmage is just artillery and not much else.
I’ll cede the style points, but you’ve never seen a tricked out Warmage drop a Maximized Fireball on a host of baddies if you think that…
And, Warmages do get Phantasmal Killer 
As for “no base class” doing as much damage directly as a Warmage, that’s not true, either. A well-built warrior-type (barbarian, say) can dish out 200+ damage on a single charge, or deal bonus damage on a very large number of attacks per round. By contrast, a tricked-out warmage will do, what, 73 damage with a maximized fireball? Or 5d6+79 (average 97) if it’s maximized and empowered.
Depends how one were tricked out, but that’s about right, give or take.
Regardless, are we comparing apples to apples here? What level Barbarian would that need to be, because there are nastier spells than fireball in a Warmages arsenal, including several save or dies.
I get the feeling the Barbarian has the totem from Complete Champion that allows a full attack after a charge. Add in the nasty tactical feat from Complete Warrior that allows the holder to take a penalty to AC to offset power attack penalties to attack, and you have some very big damage numbers. Just hope you kill all the enemies, because your AC makes the side of a barn look a hard target. (The side of a 20’ * 20’ barn would have an AC of 1.)
Pounce, perhaps?
Regardless, I think the sentiment of the Fighter type doing 200+ damage is taking my original statement out of context. I said no base class could stack up to a Warmage for pure damage, not necessarily outdo one in one comparative attack… and while I should know better than to speak in absolutes like that, I still stand by it.
No base class that I’ve ever seen can consistently deal death as often, as quickly and to as many targets as a Warmage can right out of the box. I’m open to believing that that has changed since, as I’ve said, I’ve been out of the game for a few years (and never even heard of the Complete Champion supplement), but for my money, I’ll take the Warmage.
Oh, if it’s damage to a large number of targets that you want, then you’re looking for the druid. You can easily wipe out an entire army with a single Control Winds, and you don’t even need to step out of the core rules.
Well, no, actually; it’s pure damage I was talking about. Specifically I was talking about it within the scope of the OP, which a druid is not, but I did make a broad statement so I suppose it’s only natural that someone would want to pick some nits.
However, much like your “illusion hiding a canyon” scenario which anyone who can push or trip someone can also achieve without even wasting a spell, the Control Winds situation is entirely dependent on specific previously existing circumstances to be fully effective.
What I “want” is a base class that can consistently do lots of damage without requiring a nearby canyon or being outside in a windstorm to be effective, which already exists in the Warmage.
I played a Warmage for a while in Living Greyhawk. He was a great artillery piece, but had very little he could do outside of that.
Control Winds can create a windstorm. Once you can boost your effective caster level to 18, you can turn a dead calm into a tornado-strength windstorm anything up to a quarter of a mile across.
Agreed. That was my stance from the beginning. It was just a suggestion for something a little different than the standard Wizard the OP was looking for.
At CL 18 there are lots of neat things casters can do… point was: at CL’s lower than 18 one needs pre-existing wind conditions to enable maximum destructive capacity (which tops out at 6d6 for 1d10 rounds, plus any potential falling damage) whereas a class like the Warmage can dish out lots of damage to lots of targets repeatedly and without the need for specific conditions.
I always liked D&D best in the lvl 3 to 8 range. Lower than that, and fighter types are too powerful. Death is sudden and random most of the time too, as the wizard types might easily die from one hit.
Higher than lvl 8 or so, and you end up with caster types becoming too powerful. The amount of buff spells you can cast gets pretty ridiculous too, and they last long enough to prepare them before a battle. I also like how magic items are actually special and rare at the lower levels, and things like needing a +1 weapon to damage something actually matters.
For playing a low level spellcaster, don’t underestimate the power of utility spells like sleep over pure damage spells. A ranged weapon is also a very good investment.