Irresistible Caster


Advice


In the sense that he is always effective and can't be resisted not that he is necessarily supper sexy.

In both PFS and my home games, I have been finding that somewhere around level 9-11 most of the serious opponents are all but invulnerable to my casters. Now don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem buffing up the martial characters and letting them take most of the risks. But sometimes there are too many opponents, a second wave from behind, the martials have been incapacitated, etc… and I need my caster to start taking out the enemy bosses.

My primary caster (sorcerer) has a 24+ casting stat, spell focus, and greater spell penetration. However between super high saving throw bonuses (has to roll a 1-5 to fail on its worst save), energy resistances, hardness, high spell resistance, super high AC and HP, and various immunities most of my spells have been relatively useless. Not always, but often enough that I am finding it ircksome.
The most effective casters I have seen have been builds that concentrate almost everything on one trick. But then they are always using only one or two tactics all the time and that is incredibly boring. A fire spell with so much damage that even if they make the save and have resistance they are still hurt badly. Or everything to jack up the save of baleful polymorph that they then spam on every single encounter. Yeah that is lots of fun... Not.

So my next primary caster (probably an arcanist) I want to give much more careful thought to my offensive spells for future use at higher levels against these nearly invulnerable opponents.

Some of my thoughts are:
Concentrating on force and/or sonic for damaging spells since almost nothing has any bonus, resistance, or immunities to either of these.
Many ray attack spells like Acid Arrow don't allow a saving throw.
There are a small number of spells like Waves of Exhaustion that don't allow a saving throw.
Some more spells aren't affected by spell resistance.

What spells can you think of that fit these strategies?
Have you ever tried a build specializing in these types of spells?


Conjuration. Occultist and summon and throw out conjuration spells. Or go traditional teleportation subschool conjurer.


The problem is not you, and is not your characters. It is your GM. He is intentionally giving +8-10 to all his monsters saves.

A CR say 15 dragon is going to have say 12-18ish on their saves, and you say you target their worst. Fine so +12. I should note that dragons have very good saves for their CR.

Lets say you are level 10, really you shouldn't be facing a cr 15 dragon, but whatever it's an example and it helps illustrate how much your gm is giving you the shaft. So you are using 5th level spells, and have 24 to your casting stat, this is I'd say average for that level for a dedicated caster. You also have spell focus. This is all good. Without anything else your spell has a DC of 23, but lets say you have some ability or something (perfectly reasonable) that gives you another +1 so DC24. The super tough Dragon fails his save on a 11.

I'd talk to your GM about this, I'm almost certain he's countering you personally, or he hates casters in some way. Either way something is wrong, and he should have told you ahead of time that he would be running things this way.

edit if things change take persistant spell at higher level. Very good.


So while Hogeyhead is probably right, we can't assume that for sure. It is unfortunately far too common among GMs, especially with Save or Die or Save or Suck spells. Their numbers look right too. My experience with such a GM wasn't that they added to the monster saves, they'd instead just use the d20 roll itself to decide whether it passed or failed. If that's the case there's really nothing you can do about it, if your numbers are high the GM will just make up new ones. Unfortunately usually extends to attacks, AC, and skills. In that case you really need to talk with them.

Now, if you still want spellcasting I swear there's a build out there that maximizes Snowball. Havoc of Society (adds force damage) + Toppling Spell, Rime Spell (entangle), Winter Witch (to bypass cold resist), I forget the rest. The goal was to stack as many effects on Snowball as possible. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable (or with better google-fu) can find it. Another fun one I saw was "I throw a rock at it", I think there's a more pure oracle build in there somewhere. It's mostly about self-buffing (polishing?) so there's no need for good DCs/spell penetration.


Well, this has also been happening in PFS so I don't think it is just the GM intentionally shafting me. That has to be run as written. In home games, one of the GM's does use higher CR creatures but doesn't use some o f the highest abilities or use the highest powers. The other GM has to buff things because most of the group does try to optimize their characters pretty hard.


I'd say, at least for wizards and arcanists, that your best bet is knowledge. There aren't many creature with all three high saves and high spell resistance. If you know your enemies weaknesses, you won't fire as many duds. And if it is strong on all these fronts, you can always summon.
Beyond that, I'd say look at some melee touch spells and get reach spell or a reach metamagic rod. A lot of the touch spells are pretty resilient to saves and such. A personal favorite of mine is Calcific Touch. Having trouble with a monster? Cast fly and\or mirror image to make sure you're not hit, and then spend ten rounds turning the enemy to a nice pile of rocks.


Might be a few more spells than I expected that fit into this strategy.

Just from a quick scan based on word searches I've come up with the following for a level 10 caster:

Bard (no surprise that bard has a bunch of sonic attacks):
Ear-Piercing Scream
Distracting Cacophony
Distressing Tone
Piercing Shriek
Pilfering Hand
Sonic Scream
Sound Burst
Thundering Drums
Discordant Blast
Shout

Cleric/Oracle:
Dread Bolt
Pilfering Hand
Shatter
Sound Burst
Spiritual Weapon
Chain of Perdition
Glyph of Warding
Searing Light
Forceful Strike
Spiritual Ally

Druid:
Frostbite
Produce Flame
Snowball
Frigid Touch
Vengeful Comets
Blast Barrier
Rusting Grasp

Arcanist/Sorcerer/Wizard (yep, the biggest list):
Chill Touch
Corrosive Touch
Ear Piercing Scream
Magic Missile
Shocking Grasp
Snowball
Acid Arrow
Elemental Touch
Fiery Shuriken
Frigid Touch
Kinetic Reverberation
Pilfering Hand
Scorching Ray
Sonic Scream
Spectral Hand
Touch of Idiocy
Battering Blast
Blast Barrier
Chain of Perdition
Force Punch
Twilight Knife
Vampiric Touch
Calcific Touch
Enervation
Shout
Corrosive Consumption
Interposing Hand
Sonic Thrust
Telekinesis
Wall of Forceful
Wall of Sound

Any good ones that I missed?


Well im playing a home game pretty similar to you right now , also playing a sorc in a game where the GM makes bosses of such high CR that there is almost no chance they are failing for my DC even if i literally maxed them out completely be it with items/deats/stats...

What i do is accept that the boss spellresistance and saves are so high , it is honestly a waste of time to spend power trying to break them.

So i would just think out of the box how to disable the second wave even if for just a turn.

So wall spells , deep darkness...


There are plenty of spells that either ignore saves or at least still cause severe damage even when the target succeed on their saving throws... Cloudkill comes to mind.

Additionally, Kitsune Sorcerers can have really freaking high save DCs for Compulsion spells.


Lemmy wrote:
Cloudkill comes to mind.

2d2-2 Con damage is not "severe."

It's more along the lines of a mild nudge.

"You might want to leave soon, or you could experience pain and suffering approximately equivalent to a commoner hitting you with a shovel."


Avoron wrote:
Lemmy wrote:
Cloudkill comes to mind.

2d2-2 Con damage is not "severe."

It's more along the lines of a mild nudge.

"You might want to leave soon, or you could experience pain and suffering approximately equivalent to a commoner hitting you with a shovel."

Considering the save is made every round and Con is the worst attribute to be lost, it's still pretty bad. You just have to find a way to keep them in place for a while... Black Tentacles and Wall of Stone could do it.

There is also the always lovely Enervation...


Persistent Spell is probably the single biggest statistical save-breaker, being theoretically equivalent to around a +5 to the DC - though it gets slightly less effective as saves increase.

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