I looked at the two of these, like em both, have a conjuror sorc to which I'm thinking of adding fiery shuriken. Thing is I can't really see a huge difference there. scorching ray does more damage, but fiery shuriken doesn't have the "w/in 30 feet" restriction and is conj and you can keep them around a while. But does all that really mean more than the quite a bit more damage ( at 7th level 2x4d6 versus 4d8). Just wondered what people thought about that. (wish fiery shuriken had medium range, easy win for me then!)
I looked at the two of these, like em both, have a conjuror sorc to which I'm thinking of adding fiery shuriken. Thing is I can't really see a huge difference there. scorching ray does more damage, but fiery shuriken doesn't have the "w/in 30 feet" restriction and is conj and you can keep them around a while. But does all that really mean more than the quite a bit more damage ( at 7th level 2x4d6 versus 4d8). Just wondered what people thought about that. (wish fiery shuriken had medium range, easy win for me then!)
Fiery shuriken is a very scarry spell, especially if you have acces to sneak attack. If you have acces to a nasty metamagic feat that adds a debuff - fiery shuriken is better. On the other hand if fire resistance becomes a factor, a crature with fire resist 5 is almost immune to the shuriken.
On the other hand if fire resistance becomes a factor, a crature with fire resist 5 is almost immune to the shuriken.
This is the entire reason I chose to go an Admixture Evoker Wizard instead of Foresight Diviner for my Arcane Trickster. All for this one spell. >:] (Don't judge me. I couldn't resist the allure of 8d8+56d6 coming in my choice of flavors. Lol.)
Fiery Shuriken is nasty with an arcane trickster
If your sorcerer is a conjurer specifically then Fiery Shuriken may be better since it is a conjuring spell. Scorching Ray is evocation.
Long-term, fiery shuriken tops out at 15th level whereas scorching ray tops out at 11.
Fiery shuriken is best though when you can add some extra effect to it (like sneak attack, as above).
Scorching ray is better at dealing raw damage if you don`t have a way to buff the base spell by adding something to each attack.
Consider burning arc also.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/burning-arc
Fiery Shuriken. You get to deal damage while casting other spells.
This is the entire reason I chose to go an Admixture Evoker Wizard instead of Foresight Diviner for my Arcane Trickster. All for this one spell. >:] (Don't judge me. I couldn't resist the allure of 8d8+56d6 coming in my choice of flavors. Lol.)
On the other hand if fire resistance becomes a factor, a crature with fire resist 5 is almost immune to the shuriken.
Any shuriken launched as part of a single action are going to fall under the 'one action, one bonus damage' effect, much like multi-shot and scorching ray have to put up with. You can break this up by using a swift action to launch one, and then a standard action to launch them all, but the odds you are going to get sneak attack damage for every single shuriken is actually pretty low.
While both have their good points, scorching ray is ranged touch, MUCH longer range, and if you are close enough gets SA damage as well. It also advances in damage faster. Fiery Shuriken's best feature is actually the fact you can spend a swift to send out one shuriken every round...but it's also largely irrelevant, because the damage of just one shuriken is extremely low.
Basically, an optimized Fire SHuriken would be to hit multiple targets with SA damage with a surprise attack, win initiative, and hit them all again with SA damage. Against single targets, you lose cumulative SA, and sending out one shuriken against an enemy isn't going to do anything substantial after the first round.
==Aelryinth