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Hence the Dragon Disciple. It can melee, blast, battlefield control, and as you see how he likes to develop and play his character you can guide him down some of the different paths a dragon disciple can be. That lst part is the key: the flexibility of the class, which to me should be the real seller for a new player. It's pretty good at a whole slew of roles, and is a great way to learn the different aspects of the game without getting overrun by them.
Oh, yeah. If he gets that far with this guy, and still is into the whole "Dragon" theme, I'm certainly going to encourage him to go DD. Thanks for the guide you linked to, BTW. I'm still reading through it, but it almost makes ME what to play one...
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That makes more sense. In that case, I'd still make him an abridged list to choose from as he plays - you might want him to be able to choose between blasting and control, but he really doesn't need to worry about niche spells like Emblazon Crest or Sculpt Corpse.
What I think I'm going to do is make this as transparent as possible. I'm going to give him a "familiar" who appears as a small red dragon (his bloodline). The thing is, no one else can see the dragon, nor can it directly interact with the world. Rather, it's just a representation in his mind of his character's magical power.
So, he asks the dragon to, say "burn that guy". If he's positioned right, I'll cast burning hands, and add it to his known spells (if he has room). Or, I could cast flare, and describe it as a blast of bright, cool flame to his face. Something like that.
uriel222, may I ask you one question? Does your new player want you to do that for him? If yes, great, and I haven't said anything.
If not, however, please let me offer my point of view (from the player side): I would want to build my Sorcerer. I might ask for help, or for explanations of certain things like bloodline power or spells, but I would want total control of my character. Yes, I might make mistakes, but I'd learn from them and try to avoid them in the future.
The way you describe it, I as a player would probably feel treated like a small child incapable of learning, of trying things out. And honestly, I would probably leave the group after the very first session because it wouldn't be my character but the GM's.
Another thing: If you don't let your player build his Sorcerer, choose his spells, etc., how do you expect him to learn the mechanics and improve?
Again, please don't take my post the wrong way, I'm not trying to criticise you. I think it's great you're worried about him having fun with his character. Take my post as a player's POV (and your player could be completely different, for all I know) and as something to think about or, even better, talk to your player about.
Best,
your crazy gnome lady from next door
Hence the Dragon Disciple. It can melee, blast, battlefield control, and as you see how he likes to develop and play his character you can guide him down some of the different paths a dragon disciple can be. That lst part is the key: the flexibility of the class, which to me should be the real seller for a new player. It's pretty good at a whole slew of roles, and is a great way to learn the different aspects of the game without getting overrun by them.Oh, yeah. If he gets that far with this guy, and still is into the whole "Dragon" theme, I'm certainly going to encourage him to go DD. Thanks for the guide you linked to, BTW. I'm still reading through it, but it almost makes ME what to play one...
I think I will take that as a compliment. And I would encourage you to try it out. There are many, many options.
Should I stop eating the food I like just because you think there is better food out there?
Nope. But you're talking about taste, not say, health optimization.
Should I stop making the rookie mistake of driving car brand "A" just because you think car brand "B" offers superior options?
If you had the choice between buying a power wheels pick up truck or a real pick up truck for the same price (and long term maintenance cost), you should pick the real truck. The difference, at low levels, between Burning Hands and Color Spray is literally that extreme.
Of course, the difference is that by level 4 or 5, Color Spray becomes totally worthless, whereas Burning Hands maintains its "really weak" status, so the tables turn, sort of. In general, though, I don't think you are using your 1st level spells aggressively (except probably Grease) much by the time you're level 6+.
Should I quit my job just because you might think mine is inferior to yours?
More about taste. This is not a question of taste. This is about picking the most effective spell.
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I'd advise letting the player make a normal sorcerer, not some Schroedinger's type. Choice overload is a real danger for beginning players. Sorcerers are actually nice because the number of choices is limited.
Also: accept that the character won't be optimal. It'll probably be a blaster, not a controller. Blasters aren't that hard to make, and not very hard to make them passable.
Yes, a more sophisticated sorcerer, with battlefield control instead of just pure blasting, would be stronger. But it takes some experience in the game before you can even begin to do effective battlefield control. It won't make any sense for the first five game sessions. Only after watching the warriors do their thing does it start making any sense.
So be a bit more forgiving with the retraining of spells. By the time a spell isn't working anymore (color spray), another spell will be getting better (magic missile).
Also, be (as a GM) forgiving of this suboptimal sorcerer. If the sorcerer has only fire spells, wait quite a while before you should the fire-resistant critters; take critters with low fire resistance, to make it annoying but not stumping. Try to do it 1-2 sessions before a new level with new spells, so that the player can then pull in a second element.
If the sorcerer is best at dealing with large heaps of weak monsters (big AoE spells rather than strongly focused SoD/S or battlefield control), inject lots of mooks, enough that the warrior classes appreciate it when the sorcerer burns the battlefield so they can get to the BBEG without having to wade through all that.
TL;DR - set the player up to succeed by making encounters a bit more like the ideal adventuring day for the build, rather than expecting a build that can handle any situation. (That's for the advanced course, "wizards" :P) )
More about taste. This is not a question of taste. This is about picking the most effective spell.
...and as I pointed out several reasons why, in my experiences, Color Spray is not the most effective spell over the two.
Like many things in this game and all role-playing games, GM and campaign are variable and mileage may vary. If you play a heavy goblinoid low level, Color Spray will be remarkable. If you play with skeletons, swarms, or PC class foes, Color Spray is the worst spell out of your spell list.
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As to the OP, it is your game and your friends and truly only you can best answer these questions. Sorcerer's have enough versatility on builds and style that there are many solutions to your dilemma with a new player.
I have been the GM of many new players and from my perspective the best advice is to not do anything different in game at all. After the first gaming session, have a good long conversation to feel out how it went for them, then tailor to fix. You will meet a consensus if one was possible eventually and everybody will be happier for it.
(Also, with Oterisk's guide as a starting reference, I was very fond of my Dragon Disciple build and feel like there are many ways to build a DD that can be both workable and fun.)
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Unless the GM is planning on fudging things in the player's favour a lot, spells like colour spray are terrible choices for newbie players. It simply does nothing at all against whole groups of bad guys (undead, constructs, plants, ooze, vermin) many of which are very common low level foes. It does nothing against any bad guy who makes the save (so the character needs to be looking at optimizing their spell DCs too, which isn't really a newbie-friendly task). It does nothing much against the BBEG who can be affected and fails his save, 'cos he's over 4 Hit Dice and ignores all the really good effects of the spell. Very few things put a newbie off the game quicker than playing a character they end up perceiving as 'useless'.
Until you start meeting bad guys who are resistant or immune to fire, or are rocking Evasion, burning hands does something to everything. As long as the GM describes it well (and doesn't ignore the 'ignites flammable materials' part of the spell, which many blaster-haters seem prone to doing...) a newbie who's interested in playing a flashy spell-caster is going to do much better with that sort of spell. After all, who doesn't like setting a bunch of [insert bad guys of choice here] alight and watching them run around in a panic as they try to extinguish themselves?
Compared with colour spray, where the GM needs to fudge in the player's favour to make it effective and cool, with burning hands the GM would need to go out of his way to pick on the player to make the spell ineffective (fire resistent / immune bad guys, or bad guys who ignore the fact they're now on fire so that they can kill the Sorcerer in melee, for example).
IMHO, natch! ;)
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@ProfPotts: I disagree. Burning Hands does relatively little damage; a spell that always does "something but not enough" isn't really better than a spell that either doesn't work, or works really well (color spray).
Burning hands will almost never kill anything on the first shot, unless that thing was so weak that you could've handled it with a Ray of Frost. It may scare some animals that are afraid of fire, but almost any spell can be used to scare such animals.
Color spray works on most creatures you're likely to face at levels 1-3. Undead are the big exception; it's rare to fight constructs, oozes or plants at level 1-3, just check the challenge ratings. By far the most common opponents will be (monstrous) humanoids, animals and magical beasts. When Color Spray becomes less good around level 4, trade it in for Magic Missile, which doesn't really get good anyway until you get multiple missiles.
I realize that it's a matter of taste: cause a few points of damage every time (but it takes about five rounds of casting Burning Hands before any CR=APL critter drops), or have a spell that works 75% of the time and in that case actually wins the encounter in one casting. I'll take the color spray.
You talk about GM fudging; I disagree. Unless the GM bins an undead-only adventure, you don't really need to fudge a lot to make color spray a good spell at low levels. To make Burning Hands an effective spell however requires fighting very specific (many many many low low low HP) enemies.
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I would also feel a bit nervous about the dragon helper, as it makes it very obvious he's not playing by the usual rules and also takes away ownership of his character's ability. Talk with the player about how much help he wants and how much information he would like. If he wants to read through all the rulebooks, let him, and be there to answer questions (I learned from rulebooks first). However, he might prefer to learn by playing rather than read all the spell descriptions, in which case it's a good idea to ask him what he'd like his spells to do and point him at the right spells, or describe in general terms some common useful spells and let him pick. Make sure the rule information is available if he wants it - cheat sheets are a great idea - and don't obscure what he's doing - it'll make it harder to learn.
Generous retraining allowance is also a good idea.
TL;DR - set the player up to succeed by making encounters a bit more like the ideal adventuring day for the build, rather than expecting a build that can handle any situation. (That's for the advanced course, "wizards" :P) )
Also a good idea.
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TL;DR - set the player up to succeed by making encounters a bit more like the ideal adventuring day for the build, rather than expecting a build that can handle any situation. (That's for the advanced course, "wizards" :P) )
Of course, some of us feel that the entire reason that the wizard is considered the "advanced course" is because GMs cater to it too much, designing encounters entirely around it's build, and modifying them for it's spell selection of the day. That's of course assuming the GM actually bothers to make the Schroedinger's wizard declare a build or a spell selection before the encounter begins.
I suggest using the Linnorn Wild-Blooded Variant. It trades out the claws, which are a tactic not very suited to Sorcerors, for a ranged attack (which is), and the Arcana lets them grow scales when they uses energy-appropriate spells, which seems an appropriate and easy visualized ability.
A build that is melee effective going into Dragon Disciple is just very different than a full caster build.
having to worry both about melee combat AND spellcasting is just going to be more difficult.
I usually say that a simple melee class like Fighter is the best for a new player (not clear to me if this player has already played such a class), but there is an argument for going for a simple caster like Sorceror... IF they can generally avoid melee combat and just focus on using spells/BL abilities. Running out of spells and then having Claws just means they will be quickly entering the Melee Combat Chapter of learning the game, when they barely learned spellcasting yet.
To help the player, I would just copy-and-paste the Variant abilities for Wildblooded/Linnorn into the normal Class/Bloodline, and print it out so they have a direct reference to use when levelling up and don't have to cross-reference (even if you're helping them level up, it would help them follow along). Having THEIR bloodline ALONE with the class itself also helps remove confusion with other bloodlines which are normally in the Sorceror class write-up. You aren't really changing anything, you're just consolidating and removing non-relevant material (i.e. Bloodline they don't have), so it isn't 'closing their eyes to options they have, or how the class really works'. Point out that the real book has these other bloodlines, etc, and most other sorcerors have one of them besides the Draconic one, and if they want they can go Eldritch Heritage to have 'a touch' of another Bloodline as well... (Arcane BL enabling Familiars, and eventually Dragon Familiars)
The whole idea of an imaginary friend dragon helper is bizarre IMHO. Anybody it would help, it would later confuse about real Familiars. Instead of having an in-game cartoon helper, why not just YOU THE GM explain things as it goes along? How is it a strange idea that one's Sorceror character who can innately cast magic spells, can in fact cast magic spells, as opposed to asking their my little dragonpony friend to cast spells for them? When their dragonponyfriend is 20' away, non-threatened, while they themself are threatened (or vice-versa), do you want to deal with resolving Defensive Casting and/or AoOs from Casting?
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@Ascalaphus: don't forget vermin - also common low-level fodder - are in the list of things colour spray can't effect. And the whole 'it does nothing, absolutely nothing, if the save is made' aspect of the spell. Burning hands sets people (or their stuff at least) on fire...
... Plus, if the guy's interested in the Draconic Bloodline it seems a little strange to not recommend he take a spell or two which actually benefits from his Bloodline Arcana, instead of telling him that blasting is naff and all Sorcerers should go SoS only... :/
I'm not going to weight in on what 1st level spells are 'best' or whatever, every level after 1st they will be learning more, so should be able to cover the bases pretty quickly.
I do think it's important to remember Cantrips. Note, if they are Human, they can get the extra spell known (not of highest level), which will be a Cantrip at 1st level.
Help them choose good ones (they should get an extra one from Human if applicable). These may not seem 'amazing' to powergamers, but they are something the character can constantly do, and for a new player, this can feel like they are being very useful, especially if you the GM emphasize that fact... Just using Light can be emphasized as being useful, especially when creatively employed. Resistance is a nice one, they can 'buff up' everybody in the party by +1 to Saves, not much, but it gets them into the spirit of 'pre-combat buffs'... Which will quickly be a very good usage of their 1st level spells as well. Disrupt Undead is also a good Cantrip if they worry about Undead at low levels.
Personally, I am partial to the houserule of giving Sorcerors more skill points, and a higher HD than Wizards, since without arcane studies their time was more free for different things.
if the save is made' aspect of the spell. Burning hands sets people (or their stuff at least) on fire...
People's unattended stuff, sure. People's attended gear, no.
Unless the descriptive text for the spell specifies otherwise, all items carried or worn by a creature are assumed to survive a magical attack.
If a creature rolls a natural 1 on its saving throw against the effect, however, an [single] exposed item is harmed (if the attack can harm objects).
Refer to Table: Items Affected by Magical Attacks: Items Affected by Magical Attacks. Determine which four objects carried or worn by the creature are most likely to be affected and roll randomly among them. The [single] randomly determined item must make a saving throw against the attack form and take whatever damage the attack dealt.
Attended gear isn't affected by spells unless the spell specifies otherwise, or the character rolls a Nat 1 on a Save (in which case a single item is affected, but still gets it's own Save, even if not magical).
... Plus, if the guy's interested in the Draconic Bloodline it seems a little strange to not recommend he take a spell or two which actually benefits from his Bloodline Arcana, instead of telling him that blasting is naff and all Sorcerers should go SoS only... :/
I would agree, with the only difference being that I think Linnorn is a better idea, but that just changes the benefit, from a modification of elemental spell damage, to gaining Natural Armor when you cast such spells. At low levels, that is going to be of minimal effect though. And the relevance of this to Burning Hands all depends on whether he selects a Draconic Bloodline with Fire Affinity, right? I hadn't seen that mentioned yet, so he may well have Cold, Acid, Electricity, etc.
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A cone of searing flame shoots from your fingertips. Any creature in the area of the flames takes 1d4 points of fire damage per caster level (maximum 5d4). Flammable materials burn if the flames touch them. A character can extinguish burning items as a full-round action.
Emphasis mine. Specific overides general, right?
EDIT:
Catching on Fire
Characters exposed to burning oil, bonfires, and non-instantaneous magic fires might find their clothes, hair, or equipment on fire. Spells with an instantaneous duration don't normally set a character on fire, since the heat and flame from these come and go in a flash.Characters at risk of catching fire are allowed a DC 15 Reflex save to avoid this fate. If a character's clothes or hair catch fire, he takes 1d6 points of damage immediately. In each subsequent round, the burning character must make another Reflex saving throw. Failure means he takes another 1d6 points of damage that round. Success means that the fire has gone out—that is, once he succeeds on his saving throw, he's no longer on fire.
A character on fire may automatically extinguish the flames by jumping into enough water to douse himself. If no body of water is at hand, rolling on the ground or smothering the fire with cloaks or the like permits the character another save with a +4 bonus.
Those whose clothes or equipment catch fire must make DC 15 Reflex saves for each item. Flammable items that fail take the same amount of damage as the character.
The above (emphasis mine again) is the argument against burning hands actually setting stuff on fire... but note the use of the word 'normally', and that, again, the burning hands text is calling out a specific exception to the rule that instantaneous fire spells don't normally set things on fire.
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TL;DR - set the player up to succeed by making encounters a bit more like the ideal adventuring day for the build, rather than expecting a build that can handle any situation. (That's for the advanced course, "wizards" :P) )Of course, some of us feel that the entire reason that the wizard is considered the "advanced course" is because GMs cater to it too much, designing encounters entirely around it's build, and modifying them for it's spell selection of the day. That's of course assuming the GM actually bothers to make the Schroedinger's wizard declare a build or a spell selection before the encounter begins.
Eh, sounds like you've had bad experiences with less-than-honest wizard players?
I play a wizard and I have to say, spell selection really is difficult sometimes. For example, most of the time Glitterdust is one of my best battlefield control spells, but recently we seem to be fighting earth elementals with tremorsense, which also foils my Invisibility unless I use Fly - and I'm not looking forward to a three-round self-buff sequence. So I'm trying to come up with a new spell selection that deals with this set of enemies without leaving me too wide open to normal enemies.
specific over-rides general, but nothing in the spell is over-riding ATTENDED items not being affected by spells.
if you think it's worthy then please FAQ it, but i just don't think the RAW for Burning Hands is sufficient to justify an exception to the rules: it doesn't say anything about items carried or worn, so i don't see why it should be expected to be talking about that. fireball also mentions flammable objects burning, this isn't any different in that regard. saying that flammable objects burns doesn't necessarily indicate a 'rules exception', that is just saying what the spell normally does. the rule about attended-objects not being affected by area damage only kicks in when there IS area damage that would affect them in the first place, so instead of reading that as an exception you can read that as the normal rules before that rule kicks in (and as describing what happens to objects when you DO roll a Nat1 and they DO have to save vs. fire damage AND catch on fire).
burning hands WOULD ignite other objects in the area, e.g. straw on a barn floor, which is it's own hazard, and could create on-going fire damage or smoke effects. that alone does indeed increase the value of the spell, and shouldn't be ignored. but again, if they aren't a Fire-affinity Draconic BL, i don't see the rationale here...
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again, i don't think DD is a good idea for a new player, they need to have a decent understanding of both melee tactics and spell usage. worrying about both, and needing to make good judgement calls as to when each is appropriate, is just more complication. if they are starting out as a sorceror, which the OP stated, that just makes it worse. AFAIK, the OP didn't mention DD, it was brought up by posters here.
yes, claws are a good idea for DD, but unless this player is set on DD, which i think is a bad idea, i don't think they are good for a full caster build: char-op type posters have complained about that fact for full casters. the +1/damage die can be nice for blaster caster builds, but if the player can hardly play the game themself, i don't think they are really so attached to a specific mechanical benefit that isn't necessary for most usages of full casters. claws don't even compare all that well to a high-crit-range weapon, so linnorn's AC boost is quite usable even for DD's.
the Linnorn's 1st level power of ranged touched attack energy rays is useful for normal caster tactics of disengaging from melee range, lets them RELIABLY hit when they aren't casting (touch AC), is tied into their BL energy affinity, and the arcana will give them a nice AC boost when they use energy affinity spells.
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Eh, sounds like you've had bad experiences with less-than-honest wizard players?TL;DR - set the player up to succeed by making encounters a bit more like the ideal adventuring day for the build, rather than expecting a build that can handle any situation. (That's for the advanced course, "wizards" :P) )Of course, some of us feel that the entire reason that the wizard is considered the "advanced course" is because GMs cater to it too much, designing encounters entirely around it's build, and modifying them for it's spell selection of the day. That's of course assuming the GM actually bothers to make the Schroedinger's wizard declare a build or a spell selection before the encounter begins.
Not really. What I'm talking about is pretty much the default assumptions here on the Paizo boards, though. People talk so much about how overpowered wizards are, but when you press them, it often turns out that they're ignoring most of the things that balance that power. It's pretty much the equivalent of me saying that fighters are overpowered, and then you finding out that I have house ruled that fighters automatically make any Will saves.
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@ProfPotts: I think you're reading a bit too much into that text from Burning Hands. Setting on fire carried items is a very major thing, if the developers really meant that I think they would've written "and can set on fire carried flammable objects" or something like that - to explicitly point it out, rather than hiding it in suggestive text.
I mean, how flammable does an item need to be to be set on fire?
Do you really think that BH has a higher chance of igniting things carried than the other, higher-level fire AoE spells?
First level characters are supposed to be rather simple, but this would be the single spell in the game where any possible exposed item on a character is vulnerable? So if the spell is used the game grinds to a halt as every target needs to be looked over to see which gear was carried exposed, item by item?
They've got a table to pick exposed items for '1' saving throws - that's obviously there to simplify such a situation. So why would a spell at a supposedly simple level use a much more elaborate protocol?
If it really had such an amazingly hefty ability, they would've spelled it out explicitly.
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Not really. What I'm talking about is pretty much the default assumptions here on the Paizo boards, though. People talk so much about how overpowered wizards are, but when you press them, it often turns out that they're ignoring most of the things that balance that power. It's pretty much the equivalent of me saying that fighters are overpowered, and then you finding out that I have house ruled that fighters automatically make any Will saves.Eh, sounds like you've had bad experiences with less-than-honest wizard players?TL;DR - set the player up to succeed by making encounters a bit more like the ideal adventuring day for the build, rather than expecting a build that can handle any situation. (That's for the advanced course, "wizards" :P) )Of course, some of us feel that the entire reason that the wizard is considered the "advanced course" is because GMs cater to it too much, designing encounters entirely around it's build, and modifying them for it's spell selection of the day. That's of course assuming the GM actually bothers to make the Schroedinger's wizard declare a build or a spell selection before the encounter begins.
Ah, right. By "advanced", I meant that wizards are trickier because you need to actually get it right when selecting spells for the day. After all, knowing more spells is pointless if that means you prepare the wrong spells. So sorcerers are more newbie-friendly because you don't have so many decisions to make all the time.
I'm a bit confused by the OP. Let the player play a sorcerer. He knows a few cantrips and 2 1sts. No 1st level caster can do all that much.
Talk to a new player, and advise him about the themes of your campaign. Make sure he's familiar with the spells he chooses and their parameters.
If, for example, there are lots of undead in the early levels, disrupt undead is a great cantrip. If they aren't a big part of the campaign, then there are better choices.
It's true of all classes. As the GM, you owe it to new players that they should be able to do their jobs effectively at least part of the time.
Let him play his character. He can switch out spells later. Drop sleep and take magic missile or grease or something. The class is made for self-correction.
But if we just let the player make a character, they might not choose the spells that our lord and savior Treantmonk says they should! And since sorcerers are a low-tier class that require optimization just to achieve basic competence, the player will be screwed for life. Maybe you should force the player to play a class for babies like Fighter instead?
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But if we just let the player make a character, they might not choose the spells that our lord and savior Treantmonk says they should! And since sorcerers are a low-tier class that require optimization just to achieve basic competence, the player will be screwed for life. Maybe you should force the player to play a class for babies like Fighter instead?
I keep reading "Maybe you should force the player to play a class that eats babies like Fighter instead?" every time I look at that. I don't know why that happens.
I'm not sure fighters are easy mode, I'd go with barbarians for easy mode.
I think Roberta was being sarcastic
