Sorcerer Ray Build


Advice

Scarab Sages

Thanks for reading. My current goal is to make a level 1 sorcerer that is able to help the party in fights without depending on a crossbow. No matter what I have done in the past hitting with touch spells has been near impossible and the damage laughable.

Do I need a charisma attribute above 18? My current stats gimp everything. It is my belief this character would be unplayable for RP reasons. There are a few older posts about this topic but I decided to create a new one.

Currently my GM's do not allow literature outside of the main Paizo rule books. It is my intention to play this or a heavily modified version in PFS.

What are your thoughts?

Ray
Male Human sorcerer 1
None Medium humanoid (human)
Init +6, Senses Perception -2
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DEFENSE
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AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 10 (+4 Dex, )
hp 7 ((1d6)+1)
Fort +0, Ref +4, Will +0

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OFFENSE
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Speed 30 ft.

Sorcerer Spells Known (CL 1st; concentration +5)
1st(4/day)-color spray(DC 15), mage armor(DC 15)
0th(at will)-detect magic, light, prestidigitation(DC 14), ray of frost

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TACTICS
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STATISTICS
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Str 7, Dex 18, Con 11, Int 10, Wis 7, Cha 18,
Base Atk +0; CMB -2; CMD 12
Feats Eschew Materials, Point-Blank Shot, Precise Shot
Skills Knowledge (Arcana) +4, Spellcraft +4, Use Magic Device +8,
Traits Magical Lineage (Scorching Ray), Reactionary,
Languages Common
SQ arcane bloodline, arcane bond, bloodline arcana, bonded object, bonus feat, cantrips, humanoid traits, skilled,
Combat Gear
Other Gear 0.0 gp
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SPECIAL ABILITIES
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Arcane Bloodline Your family has always been skilled in the art of magic. While many of your relatives were accomplished wizards, your powers developed without the need for study and practice.

Arcane Bond (Su) You have selected to establish a powerful arcane bond with an object.

Bloodline Arcana Whenever you apply a metamagic feat to a spell that increases the slot used by at least one level, increase the spell's DC by +1. This bonus does not stack with itself and does not apply to spells modified by the Heighten Spell feat.

Bonded Object Objects that are the subject of an arcane bond must fall into one of the following categories: amulet, ring, staff, wand, or weapon. These objects are always masterwork quality. Weapons acquired at 1st level are not made of any special material. If the object is an amulet or ring, it must be worn to have effect, while staves, wands, and weapons must be held in one hand. When attempting to cast a spell without your bonded object worn or in hand, you must make a concentration check or lose the spell (DC 20 + the spell's level). A ring or amulet occupies the ring or neck slot accordingly.

Bonus Feat Humans select one extra feat at 1st level.

Cantrips You learn a number of cantrips, or 0-level spells. These spells are cast like any other spells, but they do not consume any slots and may be used again.

Eschew Materials

Humanoid Traits (Ex) Humanoids breathe, eat, and sleep.

Magical Lineage (Scorching Ray) One of your parents was a gifted spellcaster who not only used metamagic often, but developed many magical items and perhaps even a new spell or two--and you have inherited a fragment of this greatness. When you apply metamagic feats to Scorching Ray, treat its actual level as 1 lower for determining the spell's final adjusted level.

Reactionary You were bullied often as a child, but never quite developed an offensive response. Instead, you became adept at anticipating sudden attacks and reacting to danger quickly. You gain a +2 trait bonus on Initiative checks.

Skilled Humans gain an additional skill rank at first level and one additional rank whenever they gain a level.


My advice was kind of rambling but it is one of those days. HOpefully something is useful. Also note. I kept writing burning ray but i meant scorching ray.
You've had trouble hitting touch AC? that is.. surprising.

Those are some really geared up stats with dumps. I would honestly lower both cha and dex for that. but I am the player who will not go below 10. So your thought may vary there.
I would note that most ray spells aren't the most ranged of ranged attacks. usually short ranged. So you don't really want no hp. Since you will get hit.

CHA is something you will have to decide. Are you wanting to be a ray specialist? i.e. burning ray, ray of frost (cantrip), elementally altered burning rays, etc. Then most if not all of the ray spells do not actually have any saves involved. So you don't need insane high Cha initially. You'll only need Cha up to the spell level. So I would look at what this game will be, if its low level game, medium or looking to go to 20. Then adjust your Cha accordingly. 16 isn't a bad idea, you can cast spells just fine, and if the game goes higher you can put in level up bonuses/headband into it. Yeah more Cha gives you more spells per day, but with that str and that HP you are going to have serious trouble carrying anything at all, even clothing, and getting hit.

Granted there are ray spells (such as ray of enfeebling) that does have DCs. so you'll want to look at those and decide if you want them in your build then adjust for the DC stuff.

Unless your GM is building people with some crazy touch AC's 14+later on getting dex belt would probably do you fine. 16 if your worried + belt later.

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I would suggest picking up magic missle at some point. More so if you were worried about actually hitting things. Additionally its force damage so it can hit things. Sure it isn't amazing damage at all, but in a bad situation it can be very fun.
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Also if you want to be a ray specialst. You should go through all the spells of every level and look at which ones are actually rays. Take note of them. Decide if they are varied and enjoyable enough for you to play a ray blaster.
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Are you taking Arcane bloodline for rp reasons, or because you want the metamagic ability?
I made a ray specialist, and I realized that I wanted to be a ray blaster specialist. This was also "core paizo" line (i.e. on the pfsrd paizo.com site) several years back before adv race or adv class guide. I snagged Draconic bloodline. Because of the damage boosting and the utilty. I went into Dragon Disciple as well. WHy? Because it significantly boosted my abilities for what I was doing. It gave mroe a lot more HP, natural AC (from bloodline and DD), breath weaons (bloodline and DD) wings, arcana damage boosts, stat increases (so I was able to start with a bit lower str and just had to deal with it until the boosts came in).

This character I made, was a switch hitter ray specialist though. So you'll want to adjust the idea more to your speed. Since i had precise/pbs, weapon finesse, was Dex, Cha and Con based (more or less in that order for me). I got an amy of many fists for my claws and bites. Also had a rapier but I didn't use it much. Since I only melee when the situation requried it (my str was't amazing only like 14 or 16 after the DD boosts, so the bonus damage wasn't much. Though these days you could lower the str more, for dex and pick up a level in swash buckler, snag weapon focus and slashing grace in a long sword or something. This is what I'd do if I remade that character.. but I was building the Breath of Fire guy). It worked pretty well over all as a fun character. I was mostly magic but it was nice to have the growable nat attacks. Granted I used them FAR more often for utility. Scaring some captured guy, chewing my way out of manticles or rope or something.

If you were wanting to be a damaging ray blaster I would look at DD or Eldrtich Knight for extra living ability.
or even at Arcanist over Sorcerer. WIth the right archetype you can gain a lot of the benefits. Also you can daily memorize metamagiced other elemental versions of scorching ray. So you can fight fire resistant/immunes.
The arcanist's elemental sla blasts aren't hoorriblle not the best though at all. but if you like them as I do. There is a pretty decentish archetype focusing on them.
PRetty sure there is actually a arcanist archtpe or discovery thingy that gets you a bloodline. So in theory you could probably combine it with DD.. I should look into that actually.. There is a nifty archetype that comes with a growing intelligent sword that if I can combine with DD I can make the breath of fire guy even better than before.

That is in the advanced class guide. So it is paizo main line.

My advice was kind of rambling but it is one of those days. HOpefully something is useful.


You've built a lot around Scorching Ray but your character doesn't actually know Scorching Ray in that which is listed above. Is this by design?

There are very few rays in comparison to other methods of spell so beware.

It's weird that you are having trouble hitting touch AC, the above build should hit Touch just fine though. Are you fighting an inordinate number of dexterity heavy opponents? Is your GM calculating touch AC correctly?

Dex 18 for ranged touch should be fine, PBS and Precise Shot will allow you to fire into melee. Cha 18 should be fine for DC's and bonus spells per day.

All in all I would say this build is good if a little too dump stat heavy. However you've made a heavy investment in Rays so you need to commit to them for the build to continue to function and since damage rays are going to run into resistance and immunity it's best if you can find a way to switch elements. If you feel you need to you can take Weapon Focus (Ray) for bonus to hit.


Use the Draconic - Red, Brass, or Gold bloodline instead. That will give you substantial extra damage on your Scorching Ray spells.

Also, I agree - no need for an 18 in charisma. Instead, aim for a 20 in Dexterity and like a 13 or so in Charisma. You'll get a headband to get yourself up well before you're casting 4th level spells.

Also, you should be fine with hitting touch AC. At first level, you should be hitting touch AC all the time with an 18 dexterity. If you're close in, you're hitting on like 6s or 7s against most enemies.

Scarab Sages

My post was misleading, older builds I used had 14 dex. Te older builds also did not have point black shot or precise shot. Thanks for all the feedback you vets.


Oh, only the main books? Too bad, they actually released something that would have been perfect for you in Occult Adventures- the Kineticist. Well, it might not work for your home game, but you seems that you will move onto PFS with this later, so I might as well suggest it.

The class is interesting, since it plays like a sturdy Con based caster in light armor. No proper spells, but you get a blast that you can use at will (and you can add fancy stuff on later, like entangling, grappling, AoE, etc., but this uses your limited resource). So you can shoot away all day with fairly decent damage (yeah...being the caster that resorts to a crossbow feels lame... this lets keep to your whole 'POWER OF A THOUSAND SUNS!' feel)

They are allowed to use Con as their 'casting' stat because their limited resource, burn, basically eats away at your HP for the day. 1 nonlethal damage per hit dice, and it can only be cleared by sleeping. So if you get really fancy with your abilities, you are as squishy as a normal arcane caster. But you can lower how much 'burn' you use with various abilities, and burn actually has advantages- your attack/damage/stat boosting mechanic scales with how much burn you have. So using a little and skimping afterwards can be preferrable (with the constitution of the SAD-est character in game, you can stand losing some of your health)


A note.

In theory and by rumor Occult Adventures will end up on the main site.
Which I assume is how your gm (like one of mine) determines "main paizo stuff". I don't know how long it might be if it is actually going up sometime.

Silver Crusade

Do you really feel like you need the human bonus feat so you can get both Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot at 1st level?

Because if not, I was going to suggest going halfling. The racial bonuses are to dex and cha, so it'll be cheaper to get them both up to high numbers, and you get a +1 size bonus to your AC and all attack rolls.

Scarab Sages

Fromper wrote:

Do you really feel like you need the human bonus feat so you can get both Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot at 1st level?

Because if not, I was going to suggest going halfling. The racial bonuses are to dex and cha, so it'll be cheaper to get them both up to high numbers, and you get a +1 size bonus to your AC and all attack rolls.

Oh my... I might be racist. The thought of playing a halfling really grinds my gears. I have only ever played a human or elf :-)

Would a 16 dex allow me to utilize this build? My end goal is to be able to utilize ray spells but still be able to to be a blaster sorcerer later into the campaign and RP. All of my old build always missed a majority of the time.

So much to ponder thanks.


16 dex is plenty. Remember that almost certainly you'll obtain a dex belt later. (unless you have plans or prefer con I guess).

Touch AC gets easier to hit as the levels go up. Excluding specific entties like Dex heavy based characters (rogue etc) or things made specifically to dodge more. but most humanoid enemeies and most creature enemies tend to end up with "more str more size" pathway. So their touch ac never gets that big.

An example is some dragons (that you fight after lv 15) have a touch AC of like 16 or so. and by that time your to hit won't be too bad.

Basically touch ac tends to be easier, because it rarely goes up (except in said exceptions) where as your stats and your bab tend to go up.
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Your old builds. Did you miss because you kept rolling low? or did you roll high and the bonus wasn't enough? If the latter then it may be that your game is "tuned up" difficulty. I've had a ray specialst with only 14 dex to start out with, he hit fine and only got better as I got a dex belt (and weapon focus Ray).

in an average game 16 is plenty. If you have trouble with it you could always put the level up bonuses into it. Dex or Cha is normallly what those will go to anyway.
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A note on being tricky with point buy. You gain a level up bonus at 4, 8 12 16 and 20(i think 20). dependning on how high level your game is likely to go you can use this to your advantage.
for instance the extra points from dex 15 instead of 16 (or 17 instead of 18) is not small. So if you want more even stats you could leave something on an odd number and put the first bonus at level 4 into it to raise it up. Often you can get more varied stats by doing so. Depends on how the game looks.

spellslinger thought:

Oh. something that might help.. Spell slinger dip. If you were going super focused in your build. You lose A LOT but then you an enchant a gun and fire ray spells through it for a bonus enhancment bonus to hit and on damage Or save DC.
You really do lose a lot though, so be sure you consider it deeply. Though there are some RAW debate as to whether or not the downsides for spellslinger actually affect another casting class. Raw wise it states it makes it harder to prepare the spells but as a sorcerer you won't. and the boosting ability only specifies "spells" not "school spells" or "wizard spells" so there is some weird fuzziness there. but that would give you some decent extra damage buffs, that when combined with the right sorcerer bloodline can help with some specific builds.


for a general blaster, draconic bloodline is preferable.

for a ray specialist, I'd go Eldritch Knight, due to extra BAB and hp. You need the BAB, because eventually you want Improved Critical (Ray). Because Critical Hit Enervation!!! That's 2d4 negative levels. (~3d4 if empowered)
You get higher spells two levels later with your Fighter dip and EK, but you're not going for high DC spells anyways.

For feats, take spell penetration and greater. That's actually your main concern for hitting rays. One reason for going Elf btw (maybe with Sage Wildblooded Bloodline).

Late game you should do all fights while buffed with Elemental Body (Fire). This increases Dex, Con and NA.

e.g., Elf with Magical Knack:
1) Sorcerer: PBS, Eschew Materials
2) Fighter: PS
3) Sorcerer: Toughness
4) Sorcerer
5) Sorcerer: Combat Casting
6) Sorcerer
7) Sorcerer: Spell Penetration
8) EK: Weapon Focus (Ray)
9) EK: Empower Spell
10) EK
11) EK: Quicken Spell
12) EK: Improved Critical (Ray)
13: EK: Greater Spell Penetration

will eventually end at 9th level spells and BAB 15

Scarab Sages

Zwordsman wrote:


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Your old builds. Did you miss because you kept rolling low? or did you roll high and the bonus wasn't enough? If the latter then it may be that your game is "tuned up" difficulty. I've had a ray specialst with only 14 dex to start out with, he hit fine and only got better as I got a dex belt (and weapon focus Ray).

in an average game 16 is plenty. If you have trouble with it you could always put the level up bonuses into it. Dex or Cha is normallly what those will go to anyway.
-===--------------
A note on being tricky with point buy. You gain a level up bonus at 4, 8 12 16 and 20(i think 20). dependning on how high level your game is likely to go you can use this to your advantage.
for instance the extra points from dex 15 instead of 16 (or 17 instead of 18) is not small. So if you want more even stats you could leave something on an odd number and put the first bonus at level 4 into it to raise it up. Often you can get more varied stats by doing so. Depends on how the game looks.

** spoiler omitted **...

My misses might have been due to cover and not having point blank shot, and precision shot. I will add those feats my next attempt and switch arcane bloodline for draconic bloodline.


I have seen this problem with the sorcerer in the RotRL game I am running.

The very first encounter of the AP involves a bunch of goblins raiding the town. They aren't very powerful or organized but they are small, have good DEX, and leather armor. Their touch AC is 13.

My party sorcerer had a DEX of 16, meaning that he had a to hit bonus of +3. So normally he would need a roll of 10 to hit.

But once the goblins get into melee with the other guys the sorcerer gets -4 to hit (he doesn't have precise shot) and most of the time another -4 for cover (since the other player characters are in the way). So for many of his attacks he needed a roll of 18 to hit.

Touch AC for many low-level monsters is very close to their actual AC, and doesn't become a big bonus for ray casters until higher levels.

Silver Crusade

Peet wrote:

I have seen this problem with the sorcerer in the RotRL game I am running.

The very first encounter of the AP involves a bunch of goblins raiding the town. They aren't very powerful or organized but they are small, have good DEX, and leather armor. Their touch AC is 13.

My party sorcerer had a DEX of 16, meaning that he had a to hit bonus of +3. So normally he would need a roll of 10 to hit.

But once the goblins get into melee with the other guys the sorcerer gets -4 to hit (he doesn't have precise shot) and most of the time another -4 for cover (since the other player characters are in the way). So for many of his attacks he needed a roll of 18 to hit.

Touch AC for many low-level monsters is very close to their actual AC, and doesn't become a big bonus for ray casters until higher levels.

Yeah, but everyone misses a lot at low level. Even the party fighter is frequently missing things with a 10 on the die at 1st level. You can't get upset about being a ray caster missing at low levels - low level characters just suck.


It's also true that low-level ranged touch attackers are in a really rough spot.

You expend spell slots to use your attacks, and they don't deal much more damage than if you'd just shot a crossbow instead - and significantly less than the archer guy who can just keep firing his longbow all day.

Until you hit level 4 or so, you'd really be better off just picking save-or-die spells, like sleep and color spray, but also things like grease, and take point blank and precise shot for the future. Even something unorthodox, like going elf and taking Gravity Bow for one of your first level spells will probably be better than trying to make a 1st level ranged touch sorcerer.

Then, once you get some levels under your belt, you can pick up Schorching Ray and enervation and stuff like that.

Don't try to do it at level 1. It'll suck hard, and the way you're trying to circumvent the suckage in your above build will gimp you later on.


just use ray of frost. you can do about as much as a crossbow


Chess Pwn wrote:
just use ray of frost. you can do about as much as a crossbow

Ehh. RoF deals 1d3 damage, light crossbows 1d8. There's a serious difference there.

You have maybe effectively +3 to hit compared to firing the crossbow.


there's a cheap item to make it 1d3+1
Dragon or Orc bloodline makes it 1d3+2
Crossblooded makes it 1d3+3

and the increased accuracy is pretty big for DPR


Li'l Zotz the Human Sorcerer

S: 10 D: 16 C: 12 I: 13 W: 10 Ch: 16 (20 pt human)

Sorcerer
- Bloodline: Elemental
- Archetype: Wildblooded (Primal)

Traits:
- Reactionary
- Magical Lineage: Scorching Ray

Feats:
- Point Blank Shot (human)
- Precise Shot (1st)
- Spell Focus: Evocation (3rd)
- Spell Specialization: Scorching Ray (5th)
- Empower Spell (7th)

Spells:
0th: Ray of Frost
1st: Reduce Person (gives +2 to hit)
1st: Ray of Enfeeblement
2nd: Scorching Ray
3rd: Heroism

@ Level 1:

+4 to hit (+0 BAB +3 DEX +1 PBS)
1d3+2 Ray of Frost (+1 PBS +1 Liquid Ice)
1d6+1 Elemental Ray (+1 PBS) 6 per day

@ Level 5:

+6 to hit (+2 BAB +3 DEX +1 PBS)
1d6+3 Elemental Ray (+1 PBS) 6 per day
4d6+5 Scorching Ray (+1 PBS +4 Bloodline Arcana) 5 per day

It's a painfully slow boot strap for a ray spell sorcerer. Around level 7, you are starting to hit hard, but that's very late in the game play for PFS to start. You are typically better off focusing on non-targeting options to boot strap faster.

Have you considered making an Arcanist? You can be a decent ray specialist starting off at level 1 with a nice 1d6+3 Acid Jet that can sicken foes as a secondary effect. That goes up as you level fairly nicely.

Even a wizard can help you boot strap faster. They get Spell Focus at level 1 and get a bonus Metamagic feat at level 5. You could be hitting foes with 2 rays from Empowered Scorching Rays at level 5 as a wizard. Further, you can prepare 4x Empowered Scorching Rays and 4x Scorching Rays at level 5, compared to the Sorcerers 5x for level 2 spells.

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