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Alright, i have a kobold bloodline sorc, who is kind of a sneaky caster. Blaster and debuffer. later on, he's gonna spend a lot of time earth gliding underground. I'm not sure which spell to take spell perfection or magical lineage with. my ideas are: fireball, battering blast, and dragon's breath. all have their ups and downs, any opinions?
What do you use for seeing while earthgliding? 'cause you may want to pick that spell.
Alright, i have a kobold bloodline sorc, who is kind of a sneaky caster. Blaster and debuffer. later on, he's gonna spend a lot of time earth gliding underground. I'm not sure which spell to take spell perfection or magical lineage with. my ideas are: fireball, battering blast, and dragon's breath. all have their ups and downs, any opinions?
We could use a little more clarity in your question. Looking at the spells you listed tells us you're probably a blaster, and asking about spell perfection tells us you're asking in the level 15+ level range as you can't get that feat until lvl 15, but that still leaves some variables.
If you're wanting us to recommend a good blast to spell perfect, knowing if we're looking at the lower spell levels [3-6] (if you're wanting to use it often and early) or higher spell levels [7-9] (if you're wanting the most bang for your feat buck) will alter the answer.
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more often and early. and i'll have tremorsense to 'see' underground. I'm looking for early level stuff that i can use to stack lots of metamagic on and turn it into a nasty spell. the low-level blasts i'll know are fireball, battering blast, and dragon's breath. fireball is perfect, but does fire damage, which can invalidate it. dragon's breath is supremely versatile, but it requires me to be in melee practically, and battering blast is not AoE, but does force and there's no save.
Shadow EVocation/Conjuration! Gives you versatality. Make sure you have spell focus and greater spell focus Illusion.
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I would definitely say dragon's breath, but only because you're playing a kobold with the Kobold Bloodline, so I'm guessing you have some kind of love for the draconic flavor.
If you're asking which spell is better suited for Spell Perfection over the other, it depends on whether you can spare the feat slot/money for a rod of Elemental Spell. If you can, fireball is the superior choice. Dealing 2d6 fewer points of damage is bad, but that Long range will give you a much better chance of activating your Bloodline Arcana. The ability to easily hit flying targets should not be underestimated either.
If you can't spare the feat slot or the money, then draconic breath is the better choice. The ability to, on the fly, choose what type of energy damage you will be dealing is worth more than the superior range of fireball. Coupling that with draconic breath's higher damage, higher base DC, and ability to hit in a line or a cone, and draconic breath is just the better spell. (No surprise, since it's higher level).
To refrain from reposting, I had some advice you can find here.
If you're wanting us to recommend a good blast to spell perfect, knowing if we're looking at the lower spell levels [3-6] (if you're wanting to use it often and early) or higher spell levels [7-9] (if you're wanting the most bang for your feat buck) will alter the answer.
Lower level spells give you more bang for your buck as well when used with Spell Perfection. Anything above fourth level has diminishing returns when stacking metamagic feats because of the upper effective spell level limit of nine. I did a math-craft example here.
Looking at the spells you listed tells us you're probably a blaster
You don't need to be a blaster to use an Evocation spell with your Spell Perfection. Mostly this is because there are more metamagic feats that can stack on an Evocation spell than there are on most of the other schools. You get more usage out of Spell Perfection if you can use a multitude of metamagic feats.
To get back to the original point, I prefer Fireball because of Quickened Empowered Intensified Fireball. Due to Magical Lineage, this is a possible 9th level spell that will be cast as a 5th. You cannot do a Quickened Empowered Intensified Dragon's Breath.
Dragon's Breath does have more versatility with shape and damage type. I'd consider this if you cannot afford/unwilling to buy a rod of Elemental Spell.
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That's true. My four metamagic feats are silent spell, intensify, empower and quicken. so fireball would let me stack all three of hte important ones on there, and i have craft rod, so getting a rod isnt a problem. in fact, here's my feat layout, so you can have more info, but i'm heavily leaning toward fireball.
1- Skill Focus: Dungeoneering
3- Great Fortitude
5- Eldritch Heritage: Deep Earth
7- Empower Spell
S Improved Initiative
9- Craft Rod
11- Improved Eldritch heritage: Deep Earth
13- Spell Penetration
14S Silent Spell
15- Quicken Spell
17- Spell Perfection: Fireball
19- Intensify spell
S Defensive Combat Training
the feat order is not optimal, but i more or less ran out of room and couldnt fit intensify in there until level 19. the campaign IS going to 20 (age of worms) so it'll see use, but i felt that intensify was inferior to empower in most cases until very high levels.
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Well, i obviously dont have the feats for what you're suggesting, but it's a neat idea for another build.
As for my feats, i've considered dropping craft rod, taking spell pen at nine and intensify at 11. that would make my magic more powerful, but reduce the number of rods i could purchase. I could take rod later, pushing back perfection and other such things. Let's assume i'm gonna go for fireball, what do you think would be the optimal feat order to get the most out of it?
fyi, the bloodline stuff is so i can get tremorsense to use with my earth gliding later.
The most raw power I think you can get out of spell specialization is with Chain Lightning.
Two things. For starters, this is Spell Perfection and not Spell Specialization.
Secondly, you can read my mathematical run-down of why Chain Lightning does not have high raw power here. Dazing works just as well on Fireball with the correctly attached metamagic feats while Fireball puts out more damage.