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take either the elemental (Primal) Or the Draconic bloodlines and choose an energy type. Every time you cast a spell of that energy type, you add 1 point of damage per damage die
Incidentally, if you pick elemental, you get scorching ray as a bonus spell at lv5, and that ray is ALWAYS your energy type. You can select electricity for instance, and make it an electric scorching ray.
For levels 3 to 5, you get Burning hands (Electric) so you can deal 5d4+5 Reflex for Half.
You can make out your Dex and Cha, and use Weapon Finesse if you plan on doing touch spells (Mostly for Shocking Grasp, so idk if it's worth it)
Anyway, you're going to be spamming that (Electric) Scorching Ray and capping its damage at level 12 dealing 12d6+12 damage. You can also get Lightning bolt as your level 3 spell for a line attack of 10d6+10 Reflex half (DC of 13+CHA for half)
For your level 4 spell, you can take Dragon's breath, which works a lot like the bolt, except now you can also do a cone...and since you get to choose the energy type, just stick to electric
Also, get a rod of empower spell at some point so you can make Scorching Ray 18d6+18. Yay!
And of course, Fly and Overland Flight (when you get around to it)
Feats? probably toughness, combat casting, if you plan on using a lot of save or half spells take spell focus (Evocation), Greater Spell Focus (Evocation) and maybe Elemental and Greater Elemental Focus...Idk if it's worth all those feats, but giving your save DC a +4 against evocations is pretty interesting. (Assuming 18 cha, your lightning bolt has a DC of 10+4+4+4 = 22 reflex)
Play an alchemist you'll get a similar feel and won't do pathetic damage.
I'm doing something similar. An orc/elemental (primal) crossblooded sorcerer focusing on cold. With those two bloodlines, my cold spells deal an extra 2 points per dice rolled, or just 1 point for every other damaging spell. In addition, I will be taking the Intensify metamagic feat to boost the power of my lower level blasting spells. Something else to look at is the Toppling spell metamagic feat; mix with magic missiles, and you now have a solid damage 1st level spell that never misses and will knock enemies prone.
My character is 7th level currently, but I plan on getting Craft Rods at 9th level to start making my own metamagic rods.
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Play an alchemist you'll get a similar feel and won't do pathetic damage.
As far as damage is concerned, a grenadier alchemist has nothing on a sorcerer at higher levels.
For the OP:
First, you start with a half-orc sorcerer with the Crossblooded/Wildblooded (draconic [brass dragon], elemental [primal fire]) bloodlines. That, in conjunction with your favored class bonuses gives +2 damage per damage die of any fire spell you cast, plus an additional +10 damage for any fire spell you cast.
Stack that with Empowered, Intensified Spell, Maximize Spell, Quicken Spell, and Spell Perfection (along with the Magical Lineage trait) and you can launch two fireball spells in a round that deal...
First Fireball: 130 + (15d6+30)/2 = ~171.25 damage; empowered, intensified, maximized; Uses a 6th-level slot
Second Fireball: 15d6+30 + (15d6+30)/2 = ~123.75; empowered, intensified, quickened; Uses a 6th-level slot
Before defenses, that comes up to ~295 damage in a single round to potentially dozens of targets.
It becomes ~235 damage if the enemy is using certain 2nd-levels spells, still enough to kill most.
Can't speak for monsters, but if you use my build above against on par CR classed opponents, you are likely to kill them outright or at least put the fear into them.
Those with high HP (barbarians, fighters, paladins, rangers, etc.) are likely to survive the opening salvo, but everyone else faces a real chance of dying. Only the lucky or prepared ones ever survive the second salvo in round 2.
My level 15 was once surrounded by nearly a dozen level 15 NPCs. I won initiative and turned them all into ash with my heavily metamagic'd fire snake spell.
My GM, who had intended for me to be captured, went into a fit of shock and (I suspect) had to ad hoc more enemies arriving to keep the story on course.
Still got the XP of course. :D
EDIT: The above example was using a 20th-level sorcerer build, but you can do comparable damage as early as level 15. With metamagic rods you can increase the damage even further (or deal equivalent damage well BEFORE level 15).
EDIT: The above build uses fire as its chosen element. Using another energy type will reduce damage somewhat, but will often come with a host of other advantages (such as coming up against immunity less often and having more versatility in general).
EDIT: I'm sure someone can eek out more damage with their own build (such as by finding a more efficient use of spells/metamagic or by interpreting that UMD and a ring of revelations would allow access to Burning Magic revelation, for example), but getting the most damage wasn't the point. Showing that their ARE good blaster builds comparable to other classes was (and even then, I think I shot over the top by a fair margin).
Id rather try and play a sorcerer I have never played one before and I would like to give it a shot.
You're not going to how much damage you do. you'll roll pathetic dice damage, the damage can be negated or halved a lot of the time, a lot of monsters have fire resistance, and your allies often are within your blast radius.
Play an alchemist you'll get a similar feel and won't do pathetic damage.As far as damage is concerned, a grenadier alchemist has nothing on a sorcerer at higher levels.
For the OP:
First, you start with a half-orc sorcerer with the Crossblooded/Wildblooded (draconic [brass dragon], elemental [primal fire]) bloodlines. That, in conjunction with your favored class bonuses gives +2 damage per damage die of any fire spell you cast, plus an additional +10 damage for any fire spell you cast.Stack that with Empowered, Intensified Spell, Maximize Spell, Quicken Spell, and Spell Perfection (along with the Magical Lineage trait) and you can launch two fireball spells in a round that deal...
First Fireball: 130 + (15d6+30)/2 = ~171.25 damage; empowered, intensified, maximized; Uses a 6th-level slot
Second Fireball: 15d6+30 + (15d6+30)/2 = ~123.75; empowered, intensified, quickened; Uses a 6th-level slotBefore defenses, that comes up to ~295 damage in a single round to potentially dozens of targets.
It becomes ~235 damage if the enemy is using certain 2nd-levels spells, still enough to kill most.
Can't speak for monsters, but if you use my build above against on par CR classed opponents, you are likely to kill them outright or at least put the fear into them.
Those with high HP (barbarians, fighters, paladins, rangers, etc.) are likely to survive the opening salvo, but everyone else faces a real chance of dying. Only the lucky or prepared ones ever survive the second salvo in round 2.
My level 15 was once surrounded by nearly a dozen level 15 NPCs. I won initiative and turned them all into ash with my heavily metamagic'd fire snake spell.
My GM, who had intended for me to be captured, went into a fit of shock and (I suspect) had to ad hoc more enemies arriving to keep the story on course.
Still got the XP of course. :D
EDIT: The above example was using a 20th-level sorcerer build, but you can do comparable damage as early as level 15. With metamagic rods...
That damage still seems lame, There are dozens of monsters that can completely ignore that sorcerer and higher levels because of resistances, evasion, and on top of that you're not going to be able to take out significant targets as a blaster because you'll end up hurting some of your allies half of the time. Alchemists have ways around resistances, have better dpr because they don't have damage halved or completely negated because of reflex saves, and don't threaten the party. besides why are you trying to do damage as a caster at higher levels anyway when you can just make targets useless in combat?
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Crossblooded means you don't get your spells until 1 level later.
So you don't get fireball until level 7. It's pretty rough in some cases. Also keep in mind later on, there's not a lot of new fire spells other then Delayed Blast or Wall of Fire.
Elemental resistance or immunity completely kills any fun. My last 6 games with my ifrit sorcerer in PFS had fire immunity, high SR, or fire resistance. I wasn't doing much of anything in those games. As much damage as you are doing, keep in mind this is extremely 1 trick, and when it is shut down, there's nothing to do since you have so few spells.
That damage still seems lame, There are dozens of monsters that can completely ignore that sorcerer and higher levels because of resistances, evasion, and on top of that you're not going to be able to take out significant targets as a blaster because you'll end up hurting some of your allies half of the time. Alchemists have ways around resistances, have better dpr because they don't have damage halved or completely negated because of reflex saves, and don't threaten the party. besides why are you trying to do damage as a caster at higher levels anyway when you can just make targets useless in combat?
Allow me to educate you my young friend on why blasters do not suck.
The first and foremost thing to remember is that a blaster build does not have to rely exclusively on blasting.
An effective blaster WHO CAN ALSO USE control spells, save or suck spells, buff/debuff, summons, etc. effectively will always be more powerful than someone who has all those spell types in his repertoire, BUT OTHERWISE SUCKS AT BLASTING.
Human all the way imo
Blasting is not so bad in a real game.I think the controlling fans out there are theorizing to much.An empowered 12th level scorching ray does 63 average damage when you hit with all three rays , 75 if draconic,primal or orc, and 87 if crossblooded.Even a normal scorching ray does 42 damage average or 54/66 with bloodlines.And magic has its advantages too,you ignore damage reduction,you can attack at range and its easy to increase damage when you really need it with metamagic rods.
Just make shure your Caster level is always above your character level.That is easily achieved, with spell spec, varisian tatoo and an orange ioun stone you get +4 caster level on your scorching ray ,thats a maxed out scorching ray at level 8.And with a lesser rod of quicken you can shoot 2 of them in the same round 3 times per day.
Is it caster lvl that scorching ray works off of the prd listing just says level.
When a spell mentions level, it's always caster level. Otherwise, it will say "character level."
That damage still seems lame, There are dozens of monsters that can completely ignore that sorcerer and higher levels because of resistances, evasion, and on top of that you're not going to be able to take out significant targets as a blaster because you'll end up hurting some of your allies half of the time. Alchemists have ways around resistances, have better dpr because they don't have damage halved or completely negated because of reflex saves, and don't threaten the party. besides why are you trying to do damage as a caster at higher levels anyway when you can just make targets useless in combat?Allow me to educate you my young friend on why blasters do not suck.
The first and foremost thing to remember is that a blaster build does not have to rely exclusively on blasting.
An effective blaster WHO CAN ALSO USE control spells, save or suck spells, buff/debuff, summons, etc. effectively will always be more powerful than someone who has all those spell types in his repertoire, BUT OTHERWISE SUCKS AT BLASTING.
Let me tell you why you're wrong. Blasting is so conditionally good that justifying a spell slot for it is stupid. There is no point in blasting if you can just stop the other characters from being effective and having other party members whack on the enemy. This is a team game and justifying a blaster wizard with specific scenario's is pointless considering that you will end up trying to cast spells that are very conditional. There are other things you can be doing with your time then trying to cast spells that hurt your friends and don't doing anything that benefits your party.
Where is this stated in rules ( not argueing just know that it will be asked, as I am thrilled to take spell specilzation and verisan tatoo and go to town.)Is it caster lvl that scorching ray works off of the prd listing just says level.When a spell mentions level, it's always caster level. Otherwise, it will say "character level."
Spells depend on Casterlevel, its a very basic thing.I can´t actually point you to the rule but trust me thats how it works:)
Otherwise having a caster level as a seperate thing from your character level and class level would be nonsense
Let me tell you why you're wrong. Blasting is so conditionally good that justifying a spell slot for it is stupid. There is no point in blasting if you can just stop the other characters from being effective and having other party members whack on the enemy. This is a team game and justifying a blaster wizard with specific scenario's is pointless considering that you will end up trying to cast spells that are very conditional. There are other things you can be doing with your time then trying to cast spells that hurt your friends and don't doing anything that benefits your party.That damage still seems lame, There are dozens of monsters that can completely ignore that sorcerer and higher levels because of resistances, evasion, and on top of that you're not going to be able to take out significant targets as a blaster because you'll end up hurting some of your allies half of the time. Alchemists have ways around resistances, have better dpr because they don't have damage halved or completely negated because of reflex saves, and don't threaten the party. besides why are you trying to do damage as a caster at higher levels anyway when you can just make targets useless in combat?Allow me to educate you my young friend on why blasters do not suck.
The first and foremost thing to remember is that a blaster build does not have to rely exclusively on blasting.
An effective blaster WHO CAN ALSO USE control spells, save or suck spells, buff/debuff, summons, etc. effectively will always be more powerful than someone who has all those spell types in his repertoire, BUT OTHERWISE SUCKS AT BLASTING.
Saying that blasting is conditional is the same as to say doing damage is conditional.A good blaster always keeps up with martial classes in damage output,and there are various things that can stop a sword like damage reduction high Ac etc.
Just because Save or Suck Spells are good doesn´t mean every magic user has to make them his main thing.
Just make shure your Caster level is always above your character level.That is easily achieved, with spell spec, varisian tatoo and an orange ioun stone you get +4 caster level on your scorching ray ,thats a maxed out scorching ray at level 8.And with a lesser rod of quicken you can shoot 2 of them in the same round 3 times per day.Wouldnt that max out at 7
7+4= 11 scorching ray states. You may fire one ray, plus one additional ray for every four levels beyond 3rd (to a maximum of three rays at 11th level).
? Did I miss somthing ( sorry for all the questions. )
Yep you´re right my fault
Where is this stated in rules ( not argueing just know that it will be asked, as I am thrilled to take spell specilzation and verisan tatoo and go to town.)
I can't find a direct rules reference for that--it's just implied in every spell in every Pathfinder product. It's the way it's always been. I can't imagine that being challenged.
Tell you what, if they challenge you, then make a multi-class character and see if they let you use your full character level or your caster level to determine the effects of your spells.
Saying that blasting is conditional is the same as to say doing damage is conditional.
No, it's not. It's more like saying, "I'd almost always rather have a $20 bill than a $1 bill." Yes, there are conditional times when $1 would be more useful--perhaps something requires exact change, or a machine doesn't take $20s, or something like that. But in the vast, vast majority of times, I'd rather have $20. It's kind of an obvious choice.
And that's the thing--dealing damage is great, it is. But when you can do things that are better than dealing damage, anytime you stop doing those things to deal damage instead, you're hurting your value.
A good blaster always keeps up with martial classes in damage output
I'm really not sure I believe this at all, but even if I take it as fact, a good caster who is not a blaster could add even more value than that to the party by doing something else.
For example, the oft-mentioned Black Tentacles. 90% of the time, casting that spell is going to be better than blasting. It's a fight-winner, it just is. Hell, I'd wager it's better more than 90% of the time, but I figured there'd always be someone to contrive a crazy situation that it doesn't work, so 90% it is.
Just because Save or Suck Spells are good doesn´t mean every magic user has to make them his main thing.
Of course not--and just because a dagger deals 1d4 damage and can't be power attacked with doesn't mean a Fighter with high Strength can't use one. It does, however, mean that it is a sub-optimal choice, and that doing so will prevent you from being as powerful as you are capable of being.
Stuff
If you want to blast you want to do damage with your spells,its that easy.
Damage is the domain of martial characters,so you have to measure yourself against them,and nobody else!A Blaster mage can keep up with an archer ,period.I know what Spellcasters can do if they choose but ending the fight at round 1 before the other members even had a chance to react(Hello diviner Wizard:-))isn´t the most fun way of playing,maybe it is for you but probably not for the rest of the group.Besides that there is nothing stopping you from taking black tentacles for the times when you really need it.
Of course not--and just because a dagger deals 1d4 damage and can't be power attacked with doesn't mean a Fighter with high Strength can't use one. It does, however, mean that it is a sub-optimal choice, and that doing so will prevent you from being as powerful as you are capable of being.
You *can* power attack with a dagger.
can we go back about discussing blaster builds (As the OP had originally asked, even after establishing that he understands it's a weaker version of caster) instead bashing blasters?
Anywho...you should also consider getting ahold of some metamagic rods of elemental spell (Each of the elements) so that you can be prepared in case you find something immune to fire. Considering that Scorching Ray and Fire are lv 2 and 3 spells, you can wing using the 3k ones for a while.
With that being said, I also suggest a glove of storing at some point, maybe keeping a rod of empower spell.
BTW, I am aware that there's a difference between ray caster and blaster. But I don't think hat you should dismiss a few rays just in case you fight stuff that can evade your spells.
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Do not let anyone dissuade you from being a blaster. After 2 years of PFS play, I have witnessed that blasters end the encounter sooner than controllers. This is what save lives.
While in ivory towers controllers might appear better, nothing surpasses a good beat-down with fire (or electricity, or force, etc.)
Plus, its just fun to blow stuff up (or freeze it to death).
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PFS isn't the proper way to judge caster's power. Capping at 12 levels stops a lot of caster power.
True, it is capped. But the nature of organized play allows you to match up with a wide variety of (mostly) impromptu party compositions. This gives you a large sample size on the effectiveness of different classes and how they work in various scenarios.
It is from this experience of which I speak. Besides, I imagine that the vast majority of campaigns are below this level anyways. Not that I have any empirical evidence ... just seems most parties fizzle out before they reach the 15+ level range.
well at least you can make your bonus spells Mage Armor, Scorching Ray, and Fly. I dont know if the tattoo is that useful...but that's just me.
I'm assuming you're getting empower spell as a bonus feat. Else just use a rod. (Alternatively, you can buy a rod of empower spell, get Imp. Init. as a bonus feat, and have a free feat to work with)
Oh yeah, what Shadowcat said. The trait is magical lineage.
Personally, I like to put Magical Lineage on Magic Missile
Toppling Spell + Magic Missile + Spontaneous Metafocus (Magic Missile) = TRIP TRIP TRIP TRIP (Spontaneous Meta is so i dont need to use up my move action ofc)
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For the first few levels of play the a gnome with the pyromaniac alternate racial trait trumps a half-orc sinking favoured class bonuses into extra fire damage, but that starts to shift in the half-orc's favour around level 8 or so.
The Irrisen Icemage Feat (Cities of Golarion page 62) is great for Sorcerers focused on cold damage spells (Draconic with white or silver dragon lineage, for example) as it adds +1 CL to cold spells at the penalty of -1 CL to other energy type spells, but also lets you deal cold damage instead of another energy type 3x per day (and get your CL bonus for the spell being of a cold type too). With the Rime Spell metamagic Feat being one of the more interesting ones available, it could be worth a look.
For example, a level one human (Draconic - silver) Sorcerer with the Irrisen Icemage and Rime Spell Feats, and the Magical Lineage (burning hands) trait is a very interesting level 1 blaster type - doing 2d4+2 cold damage and a round's worth of entangle to all the targets of his cold-converted burning hands spells (freezing hands?). More powerful builds are certainly possible, especially if you start looking at high levels and not building from level one (in which case a trait spent on enhancing a level one spell which will eventually hit a damage cap is probably a waste), but it's certainly the sort of thing to be looking at, IMHO.
I use Pyromaniac Gnome for my sorcerer/rogue/arcane trickster.
That +1 to CL is Mad useful when you're a level behind in caster already (other 2 levels are from magical knack). The +4 to stealth is also amazing...and then you add the eternal hope racial trait (Once per day reroll a nat 1)...oh yes.