Brilliant or Broken?

[Chunk O'Beef]

Cleric2(fire) + Sorc1(crossblooded[orc/red dragon]) + Mages Tattoo + Spell Specialization = CL 2 Burning Hands that does 5d4+10 damage. The cleric is easily beating the evocation wizard's damage output. Is this Brilliant or Broken?

ps The cleric is human and has taken spell focus as his bonus feat.

[Dylos]

I assume you mean Varisian Tattoo, but as you don't have access to Inner Sea Magic you used d20pfsrd which changed the name.

In any case, this doesn't seem to be PFS specific.

[Chunk O'Beef]

A PFS player was using it in PFS mods. Tattoo aside, that would still be 4d4+8 from a level 2 cleric's burning hands.

[andreww]

Wizard2/Sorc1 saves a feat as he starts with spell focus. He also will innately be raising Int, the Cleric has to buy a 13.

Arcanist2/Sorc1 does it even better as with Bloodline Development they can have three arcana. Draconic, Orc and Primal will net you +3 damage per die and an in class means of boosting caster level.

[Ferious Thune]

Chunk O'Beef wrote:

A PFS player was using it in PFS mods. Tattoo aside, that would still be 4d4+8 from a level 2 cleric's burning hands.

It appears to work. Magical Knack for a trait would also raise the CL back to 5. It's a pretty heavy investment in Burning Hands, though. I think taking Spell Specialization is overkill. Intensify Spell would almost be a necessity to keep this relevant and justify the rest of the feats taken just to boost this spell.

I believe everything listed is PFS legal, including Varisian Tattoo.

[Dylos]

Its all PFS legal for sure, and it gets even more ridiculous when the character has Wayang Spellhunter (Burning Hands) and Magical Lineage (Burning Hands) allowing for free Empower, which would allow the character to do even more damage. Is it powerful, sure especially at low levels. Is it brilliant? Well, it's not an original idea, a lot of characters do it. Is it broken? No more then a super DC slumber witch.

[Malag]

Your cleric has a problem also of being able to cast his domain spell 1/day.

[kinevon]

Also note that, against something immune to fire, it goes from great to worthless. Season 5, especially, includes plenty of creatures immune to fire, including at least one swarm.

[FLite]

This feels like one of those things that is brilliant at 3-5 th level. And totally irrelevant at 8-11th. And again, fire gets a lot of the damage boosting feats, but fire also winds up having a lot of creatures immune to it.

[Andreas Forster]

andreww wrote:

Arcanist2/Sorc1 does it even better as with Bloodline Development they can have three arcana. Draconic, Orc and Primal will net you +3 damage per die and an in class means of boosting caster level.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work. The arcanist is an alternate class for wizard and sorcerer, so you can't multiclass arcanist with wizard and/or sorcerer.

[Blakmane]

When exactly was beating an evocation wizard's output considered a mark of brokenness? Evocation is considered the worst specialty for a reason...

Furthermore, the damage isn't even that impressive. A two-hander with 20 strength and power attack gets to roll close to that from level 1.

[andreww]

Andreas Forster wrote:

andreww wrote:

Arcanist2/Sorc1 does it even better as with Bloodline Development they can have three arcana. Draconic, Orc and Primal will net you +3 damage per die and an in class means of boosting caster level.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work. The arcanist is an alternate class for wizard and sorcerer, so you can't multiclass arcanist with wizard and/or sorcerer.

They removed that limitation a while back.

[SCPRedMage]

Andreas Forster wrote:

andreww wrote:

Arcanist2/Sorc1 does it even better as with Bloodline Development they can have three arcana. Draconic, Orc and Primal will net you +3 damage per die and an in class means of boosting caster level.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work. The arcanist is an alternate class for wizard and sorcerer, so you can't multiclass arcanist with wizard and/or sorcerer.

Actually, they announced in this blog post that they are removing that restriction in the final version.

[Jeff Merola]

andreww wrote:

Andreas Forster wrote:

andreww wrote:

Arcanist2/Sorc1 does it even better as with Bloodline Development they can have three arcana. Draconic, Orc and Primal will net you +3 damage per die and an in class means of boosting caster level.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work. The arcanist is an alternate class for wizard and sorcerer, so you can't multiclass arcanist with wizard and/or sorcerer.

They removed that limitation a while back.

Technically they haven't yet, since nothing about the playtest is officially changing for PFS until the book actually releases.

[SCPRedMage]

Jeff Merola wrote:

Technically they haven't yet, since nothing about the playtest is officially changing for PFS until the book actually releases.

True, but it's still relevant when discussing builds, seeing as we know it'll be legal in about a month, when the ACG gets released.

[Altus Lucrim]

I play a Wiz 8 Sorc 1 with orc and draconic bloodlines from Crossblooded Sorceror. I'm Admixture School. I have spell spec, but it's on fireball. Varisian Tatoo, it was a must and magical lineage on fireball. I nuke rooms. Is it the best way to play a wizard? no. But here's what it does do, IF I go first (a sometimes thing) then everything in the room has taken (10d6+24)x 1.5. Empowered Fireball. I pack a staff of fire also. My DC is very high so most things fail, I don't always kill a room, but my melee strikers usually follow it up with 1-hit K.O.'s. It's impressive.

[Akerlof]

Malag wrote:

Your cleric has a problem also of being able to cast his domain spell 1/day.

That's why you do this on a Theologian Cleric.

As others have said, it's not all that special to be able to outdamage a straight evocation Wizard. Rolling all those dice is cool but doesn't translate to all that much damage (5d4+10 = 22.5 damage on average compared to a first level fighter with 18 Str doing 2d6+9 = 16 damage without spending _any_ resources.) It has some glaring weaknesses by relying solely on fire, and it peters out fairly quickly if you put too many resources into Burning Hands, though you can do the same thing to fireball.

Overall it's fun and can wreck some low level scenarios but isn't OP.

Most importantly to me, though, is that it looks like you're pulling things off D20pfsrd instead of actual books. If one of your players is doing this and listing the abilities this way you should probably have The Talk with them about only using resources they own for PFS characters. The way we are doing to you right now. =D

[Dhjika]

Akerlof wrote:

Malag wrote:

Your cleric has a problem also of being able to cast his domain spell 1/day.

That's why you do this on a Theologian Cleric.

I've seen it more often with Flame Oracles that theologians, I think so they can spontaneously add metamagic - if you take Magical Lineage Burning Hands - you can add elemental specialty acid and make it all acid (though -1 damage per die) or half fire and fire acid. Or later make it intensified to go up to 10D4+20.

though waiting until you had fireball at higher level makes incredibly deadly blasters.