|
I'm making my 2nd PFS character ever and was really leaning toward an Elven Sorcerer with the Wildblooded (Sage) bloodline so I could help out with dungeoneering and Knowledge skills more, after my spells are kaput.
Plus the longbow proficiency is free, as well as the Arcane Bolt bloodline power for ranged capability after the boomboom runs out.
I may even focus on ray spells to utilize the Dex I hope to raise a bit.
My question, beside is this viable, is what are the downsides to switching to INT instead of CHA? I didn't want to be the face as much on this character, so the switch to INT gives me more skill points to spend everywhere. Decent for a skillmonkey support character?
Anyone with some experience here point me in the right direction?
Playing next Thursday 1/10/13.
Cheers, all!
|
|
Ideas for spells/feats etc would also be helpful. This is all pretty new to me.
I'm thinking about going for these spells:
0 lvl: (4)
Dancing Lights, Detect Magic, Ghost Sound, Prestidigitation
1 lvl: (2)
Some combo of Grease, Silent Image, Color Spray or Magic Weapon
If I go mainly Illusion spells for versatility, would it be worthwhile to grab Spell Focus (Illusion)?
Cheers, again!
The stat change Bloodlines are a pretty powerful options, and each have their perks. I like Empyreal more personally, but that's just because I want to play a dwarf sorcerer just to see peoples reactions.
Anyway, more skill points are always useful and with a good int score you can do knowledges just about as well as a wizard. Just keep in mind only arcana and the one you choose from the bloodline are class skills unless you get it from another source, like a trait, which I would recommend. Other nice skills that many casters pass up are escape artist and acrobatics. Both are based on dex, which you already said your planning on have pretty high, and are useful for getting out of sticky situations. and of course there's craft if you care about dayjob rolls. Sadly you probably want to skip use magic device as your cha is going to be less than stellar.
For feats and spells I think a ray specialist is a good choice. Take archery feats, point-blank/precise shot/ect., and then possibly weapon finesse for use with spectral hand for some nasty touch shenangins abit later on. Apart from that just take castery feats, like spell focus and spell penetration, and survivaly feats like toughness, iron will, and great fortitude. Of course this is quite afew feats and you'll have to pick and choose, as any character has to, but where would the fun be if someone just handed you a build. It's fun to see a build you made do well in game!
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Welcome brother, I see you are looking into the arcane arts without wanting to spend the best years of your life stuffing your face with books and quills and studying. Let me see if I find any variables in your blood before I bring out your inner power.
Be very careful when playing with elves. While they are wise and graceful they seem to be rather, how does one say, soft? Yes, soft. When surrounded by lush grasses and pretty, pretty flowers they thrive, butin the dark of the night they are in need of friends to stay safe. Their low constitution makes them less likely to enter endurance tests, which sorcerers are known to not do well in.
On a positive note those Elvish, (Elvin, Elvyn, Elvis?) you tall pointy eared types have some pretty skilled sages. I have yet to meet many other sorcerers that can untie a knot, tell me about royalty, and notice me coming from a mile away. Hell, most sorcerers I meet can tell me about magic and that's it. Now, I'm not too sure using your brains to craft arcane threads into dainty blankets is better than letting your pretty face do all the work. It may be may vanity but I like the idea of having a nice body giving you magical powers.
Now, the question is is it better to have your brain unravel the strings that bind those non-magical things (people is it?) or do you want to use inherit those good looks from Uncle George the Necromancer, or Great Aunt Tina the Fairy Lady? I heard that those descended from your Great Aunt Tina have Jazz Hands that can even make an Ancient Dragon laugh.
If you want to go blasty rays are a very nice tool to utilize. But Ninja (seriously, what kind of ninja tells you his name?) has a point about Point-Blank Shot. It'll be hard to hit those pesky Aspis agents if Valerose is putting his meaty face directly in the line of fire. There have been SO many times where I have wanted to simply disintegrate the fool so I wouldn't have to worry about him getting in the way but I don't want to spend the money to get him brought back.
I can't really endorse Illusions, mainly because it's one of my schools of opposition, but I've heard from a gnome that Illusionists can be pretty powerful. They did say there was a catch though. They said only those truly skilled can be a good Illusionist, which is why only Gnomes should be Illusionists. Now I don't really follow why he would say such a thing, but I'm assuming it was just him puffing up his chest about Gnome magical theory. Though, as of yet I have yet to find a fellow Pathfinder who was an Illusionist.
Well I hope that helps. If you need any more advice or anything just buy me a beer and we can keep talking.
Actually I don't think this will work all too well simply because Sorcerers have such a limited list of class skills(and only 2 skill ranks per level).
The sorcerer's class skills are Appraise (Int), Bluff (Cha), Craft (Int), Fly (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Profession (Wis), Spellcraft (Int), and Use Magic Device (Cha).
That's pretty limited.
Arcane Bloodline only adds in one extra knowledge, which is pretty underwhelming.
Now granted, with enough Intelligence you'll still have pretty good skill ranks in the knowledges, but still, having class skills is quite nice.
|
I can't recommend this. Even with the higher Intelligence, you are still limited in class skills and skill points. Plus you are hurting your ability with many of the skills sorcerers get as class skills.
If you really want to do this as a sorcerer, pick up the Cosmopolitan feat. However, you would likely be better off with an Oracle - possibly knowledge with the wasting curse so you aren't the Face character. You may be able to do something similar with a bard archetype, but I don't know those as well.
You guys do realize that wizards get the same amount of skill points as a sorcerer, right? Sure, you don't get all of the knowledges, but with the free one from the bloodline and a trait you can easily get the big three and spellcraft, which are the big ones most wizards care about. Some wizards don't want to be knowledge monkeys, why should a sorcerer? You don't need every single knowledge. Hell, if you look at the class skills, there are more intelligence based skills than charisma ones. Granted, most aren't as good, but still.
|
|
I don't feel I'm lacking in skill points. Quite the opposite. I don't want to play a sorcerer face, and this is starting up nicely. It's a cross purpose class is that actually looks like it will work well, especially with high sex and focusing on illusions.
Not interested in the best smile min/max obviously otherwise I would have picked a class and purpose that are standard. I was just looking for the downsides for switching to an Int based Sorcerer, and seemingly they are minimal. This should be fun, and useful.
Thanks all.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
...especially with high sex and focusing on illusions.
I'm going to assume you mean dex. You dumped charisma remember? Then again maybe that's what the illusions are for...
One of the cool things about sorcerers are that they don't have opposed schools, so even if you decide you want to focus on a school, the rest of the spell list is still open to you at no detriment. Keep in mind though, you have limited amount of spells known. Be sure to pick spells you will cast alot and get to know them well, and you'll do great.
You could always use both your traits to get two class skills that you want. Or, you could take your first level in the Lore Warden fighter archetype, which gives you all Int-based skills as class skills, plus good physical skills like Climb and Swim, and would let you pick up a bonus feat (such as Point-Blank Shot/Precise Shot for all those rays). It would also let you start with more HP at first level, and boost your Fort saves.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you're an elf then the Breadth of Experience feat from APG is worth looking at as it gives you +2 to all knowledge and profession skill checks and lets you make them untrained. Handy for a sage, who likely has an opinion on everthing. :-)
|
Though if you are going to multiclass, there is always the Mindchemist Alchemist Archetype. At Level 2 of the class, there is this:
Perfect Recall
At 2nd level, a mindchemist has honed his memory. When making a Knowledge check, he may add his Intelligence bonus on the check a second time. Thus, a mindchemist with 5 ranks in Knowledge (history) and a +2 Intelligence bonus has a total skill bonus of +9 (5 + 2 + 2) using this ability. The mindchemist can also use this ability when making an Intelligence check to remember something.
Double the INT Mod to all knowledge checks is awesome, and having access to bombs and cognatogen that increases your mental ability scores are nice perks too.
|
|
Mechanically the biggest weaknesses of a Sage Sorcerer is that his Bloodline Arcana does not help him with his spells, only skills, and losing the Arcane Bloodline's Arcane Bond. The Bond is pretty powerful, it gives you another spell per day at your highest level.
This isn't to say that the Sage is weak, especially in Society. While there are more "powerful" bloodlines you should be able to hold your own just fine with this archetype. Your Bonus Spells are strong utility spells, and Metamagic Adept is extremely useful. Be sure to buy rods and make full use of it. Just be very careful as an Elf Sorcerer. Death will come easily unless you are careful.
If you go Seeker you will lose Metamagic Adept but you will gain Tinkering. This is relatively an equal trade. Metamagic Adept will allow you to be more useful during combat, and sometimes outside of combat while Tinkering will allow you to be more useful outside of combat and sometimes in combat.
I'm not sure if it's appropriate for someone who isn't actually in the PFS to make suggestions, but here it goes:
Well, for an elven sage sorcerer aiming for skill monkey, how about:
Although still young for your kind, you have a lifetime of knowledge and training.
Prerequisites: Dwarf, elf, or gnome; 100+ years old.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Knowledge and Profession skill checks, and can make checks with those skills untrained.
It's a nice boost to your area of interest.
Also, as someone who had played a couple of sages via PBP, I've started to realize that direct damage spells aren't necessarily the way to go.
Spells that buff your allies and mess with your enemies are a solid choice.
Cheers!
|
|
Yeah, Breadth of Experience is a great feat for skill monkey characters. I'm considering taking it with my gnome bard.
Actually, I thought of a really cheesy idea for a build that's built around maximizing knowledge skills. Elf bard with 20 starting int and Breadth of Experience as his first feat. He'd have enough skill ranks to train all the knowledges immediately, so he'd have +12 in every knowledge skill at 1st level. He'd even have exactly one skill rank left over, which I'd recommend putting in Perform (Oratory), so he'd be an entertaining lecturer when telling people everything he knows. LOL
Of course, I'd never actually build a PC like that, but it's an amusing concept. If you do the same thing with a wizard or sage sorcerer, you'd lose the bardic knowledge bonus and they wouldn't all be class skills, but you could still have +8 or +11 in every knowledge skill at level 1, depending on if it's a class skill for you or not.
|
How would a Gnome Sage Sorcerer work? Gnomes have high INT and CON but low STR, but STR is kind of a dump stat for Sorcerer anyways. The INT based bloodline plays towards the gnome's strong points, and Breadth of Experience would make the gnome the party brainiac while still having some useful 0-level spells to use once the 1-level spells are depleted.
I have a Level 1 Gnome Bard, and I enjoy being the party nerd/skill monkey, but once I'm out of rounds of bardic performance I am pretty much useless!
I'm rockin' a Sorcerer (seeker) (sage) in PFS right now, and just hit level 7. I had to use my traits to get access to the skills I wanted, but I like the character a whole lot. He's versatile and capable of fulfilling the roles he was designed to fill.
I'm part diplomat thanks to Orator, part rogue thanks to a good perception and disable device, and provide good support casting to melee fighters while occasionally sniping from the back. I think dropping racial weapon proficiency for a bonus on caster level checks is pretty sweet (do it at l2 rebuild?).
The bonus spells are relevant, and the seeker's replacement benefits work well with the class (bonus to {all} checks made involving identify and dispel? Ok!)
The most frustrating thing about this character is trying to articulate your capabilities to a party. You're so generally versatile they often get you confused with a rogue (and expect you to be acrobatic, armored, and capable of making reflex saves). Mostly this doesn't matter because you can be sneaky and make friends using nice cheap skill checks while saving your spells for buffing up the party and blasting high-priority targets, but keep an eye out for your party inadvertently putting you in dangerous spots.
You've also got a bit of a dilemma in that you want to augment your skills with utility spells, but have a restricted list of spells known. You can lean on those skills points, or be super-awesome at everything non-combat, or carry a scroll rack around with you.
Generally this last option is what I go with; a couple of scrolls of faerie fire, and a couple of monkey/fish put you in pretty good stead without limiting your ready access to the sorts of spells you are expected to spam.
An Int based Sorcerer may have more skill points to spend, but he doesn't get an explosion of class skills to go with them.
Traits and extra traits more than takes care of that.
Ley Line Witch from OA also ends up similar to the Wildblood Sage with Int full spontaneous spell casting. You have the added benefit of mixing druid, cleric and Wiz/sorc spell lists and the ability to add specific spells with your patron. An Elf enchanter or a gnome shadow patron or go for healing to be the dual healer spellcaster.
A good read, am considering something along the lines of what the original post asked about.I am currently on my second PFS sage sorcerer who has recently hit level 10. The build is absolutely viable although I wouldn't do it with an elf. The extra spells known FCB is simply too good. I went half orc this time for better survivability with the effective +2 to all saves but I am rather missing paragon surge.
Have you checked out the Fey Thoughts Alternate Racial Trait from Heroes of the Wild? I'm going to mention it here because it's perfect for a Sage Sorcerer. It trades the useless Multitalented and gives you 2 additional class skills chosen from a pretty amazing list.