Hi guys, I had an idea for a character. I wanted to make a Fey Kitsune Sorcerer utilizing all that they get for the mind affecting abilities, but I also wanted to give it the ability to use some ray spells as back up. I was just hoping for some advice regarding the build and what should be changed. The best way for this to really work would be crossblooded with the Arcane school.
Bloodline Powers:
Arcane Bond (Arcane, Rabbit Familiar)
Metamagic Adept (Arcane)
Fleeting Glance (Fey) - both options are solid for level 9 though
School Power (Arcane, Enchantment)
Arcane Apotheosis (Arcane) - however the Fey one would be great as well
Feats:
1 - Spell Focus (Enchantment)
3 - Greater Spell Focus (Enchantment)
5 - Weapon Focus (Rays)
7 - Point Blank Shot
Bloodline Feat (7) - Precise Shot
9 - Empowered Spell
11 - Maximized Spell
13 - Arcane Strike
Bloodline Feat (13) - Quicken Spell
15 - Spell Perfection (Dominate Person)
17 - Improved Critical (Rays)
19 - Improved Familiar
Bloodline Feat (19) - Improved Initiative
I wanted to fit Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration in there, but I couldn't find any room. Persistent Spell is going to have to come from a Rod, as there is no room for that either.
Traits:
Wayang Spellhunter (Scorching Ray)
Magical Lineage (Dominate Person)
Stats:
Str - 10
Dex - 18 (16 + 2)
Con - 12
Int - 14
Wis - 12
Cha - 20 (18 + 2)
Thoughts? Am I looking to accomplish too much with a sorcerer when trying to optimize 2 different kinds of magic? I really would love some input on this!
Okay, before you get started, you should know the pros and cons of this build:
1) You're going to have massive bonuses on the saving throw DCs of enchantment spells that you are able to augment with Metamagic Feats.
2) You are going to be an entire spell level behind a wizard of the same level. Sorcerers are already one level behind on their spell progression, and taking Crossblooded will knock that back to two levels. This doesn't actually affect your spells per day, however, so you will still have higher-level spell slots on time to use with your metamagic spells.
Its not a terrible trade off if you are willing to effectively suffer one less spell per level.
Here would be my notes:
1) Drop the familiar, take a bonded item. I'm not sure what the rabbit does, as I can't find its familiar stats anywhere in any of my books, but I can assure that it is not as good as having a free spell of your highest level when you need it most. Personally, I would make my bonded item a ring, as it doesn't take up any hand slots and it is rather difficult to disarm you of.
2) Take Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot as your first two feats. You're not going to need the +2 DC bonus to enchantment spells from the get-go as the fey bloodline's arcana gives that to you. Rather, your attack bonus is going to be abysmal. Supplement those rays! Honestly, though, these might be two feats that you simply don't need to worry about. I leave that choice to you, however.
Regardless, if you make Feats 1 and 2 your two ray-focused feats, then at level 5 you take Spell Focus (enchantment), at level 6 you qualify for the kitsune favored class bonus, and at level 7 you can take Greater Spell Focus (enchantment). Not a bad series of levels at all!
3) Arcane Strike is not worth your time as a ray caster, not when you could be tossing Quickened Scorching Rays and Quickened Acid Arrows around. Would you rather spend a swift action to get a +5 bonus on damage rolls at 20th level or get 4 extra rays that do 4d6 points of fire damage each? That's what I thought. :)
4) Personally, I would take Intensified Spell over Maximize Spell any day of the week for damage. Magic Missiles does a maximum of 5d4+5 damage, for an average of 17 damage. Maximized, the spell does 25 damage for a net gain of +8. Intensified, the spell bumps up to 10d4+10, for a net average of 35 damage for a total of +19 damage. However, Intensified only combos with spells that add damage dice based on the spell's level, so it provides no benefits to things like scorching ray (adds rays not damage dice) or acid arrow (adds rounds not damage dice). In short, your mileage may vary.
5) You are a Metamagic Expert. Pick a signature spell and take Magical Lineage. You will be happy you did.
If it were me, I would focus on rays that don't allow saving throws so you can throw all your DC-enhancing feats and abilities into enchantment. You have the potential to get a massive DC bonus here:
+2 from fey bloodline,
+1 from arcane bloodline if metamagic feat is attached,
+1/6 from kitsune favored class,
+2 from Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus
+2 from school power bloodline ability
You're looking at a +5 at 6th level, a +6 at 12th level, a +8 at 15th level, a +9 at 18th level, and then increase all of those values by +1 if your spell has at least one metamagic feat applied to it. This means a maximum of +10 to the spell's DC at 20th level. Before your Charisma bonus. Before the spell's level. That's a minimum DC of 20 at 20th level. Pretty wild.
So for that reason, make sure you pick at least 1 metamagic feat that is compatible with your enchantment spells so you can add the arcane bloodline's arcana to their saving throws. I recommend Extend Spell, personally, as that doubles the duration of your enchantments. Another excellent (and possibly better) choice is Bouncing Spell, which causes your spell to target some other unfortunate opponent if a miracle happens and a creature succeeds on its saving throw against your enchantment.
That said, you are also going to want to take a look at the following feats:
I'm grouping these two feats together because they are similar: Coaxing Spell allows your enchantments to affect oozes and vermin while Threnodic Spell allows your enchantments to affect the undead. In all, you can affect nearly every creature type with your enchantments, and honestly most kitsune sorcerers I see take crossblooded with the Serpentine Bloodline instead of the Arcane Bloodline because of its arcana:
Your powers of compulsion can affect even bestial creatures. Whenever you cast a mind-affecting or language-dependent spell, it affects animals, magical beasts, and monstrous humanoids as if they were humanoids who understood your language.
Another feat you might want to consider is Persistent Spell, which allows your spells a second chance to affect their target. Very useful for a character who focuses on save-or-suck spells, which describes 100% of enchantment spells.
Yea that was my main thing. The Rays would be stuff like Enervation and Scorching Ray. A 9th level Slot used on Maximized Empowered Enervation? I think so. 19-20 Criticals gives like 12 negative levels? mmhmm, approved.
Also Rabbit is a familiar from animal archive. +4 initiative. I can eliminate that all together though and get a bonded item though (suggestion?). I just thought it was thematically fitting that a sylvan person has a pet rabbit.
Also Kitsune enchantment bonus is 1/4 per level so +5 at max.
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I say dont cross blood with arcane. Cross blooding can be very painful, so it's probably better to grab all 3 eldritch heritages to get the +2 to enchantments from arcane.
The big weakness of enchantments are of course their limited targets. It was mentioned above but I want to reiterate. The meta magic feats:threnodic spell and coaxing spell are a must. In addition, if you still want to cross blood, get serpentine! The arcana add more races too!
When you make an attack roll and get a natural 20 (the d20 shows 20), you hit regardless of your target's Armor Class, and you have scored a "threat," meaning the hit might be a critical hit (or "crit"). To find out if it's a critical hit, you immediately make an attempt to "confirm" the critical hit—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made. If the confirmation roll also results in a hit against the target's AC, your original hit is a critical hit. (The critical roll just needs to hit to give you a crit, it doesn't need to come up 20 again.) If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.
A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together. Unless otherwise specified, the threat range for a critical hit on an attack roll is 20, and the multiplier is ×2.
Exception: Precision damage (such as from a rogue's sneak attack class feature) and additional damage dice from special weapon qualities (such as flaming) are not multiplied when you score a critical hit.
Your enervation does not inflict more negative levels on a critical hit, as negative levels are not damage, so therefore the ray has nothing to multiply. A critical hit just assures you that your ray automatically hits. A maximized empowered enervation inflicts 6 negative levels. You can do better than a maximized enervation for a 7th level spell slot, and you can do much better than a maximized empowered enervation for a 9th level spell slot.
Assuming you have 9th level spells, lets look at some of the really crazy stuff you can do. I cast empowered maximized intensified magic missiles. Intensified increases the damage cap to 10d4+10, maximixing to 50 force damage that never misses. Empowered increases it to 75 force damage that never misses. Just so you're keeping track, this is a 7th level spell. For fun, I also cast a quickened intensified maximized magic missiles spell during the same round, an effective 9th level spell. This deals 10d4+10 damage, maximized to 50 damage that can never miss. For a 7th level and a 9th level spell slot, I pulled off 125 damage that my target takes straight to the face with virtually no say in the matter unless it has spell resistance.
You can pull off MUCH better tactics with metamagic feats then just some negative levels, which only really amount to a —2 penalty on everything per level. Natural 20s still happen. :)
You don't need to focus on being Sylvan because you're crossblooded. You focus on being a mix, and that means taking the best goodies from both worlds. The bonded item is better, plus it is weird imagery for a fox person to keep a rabbit as a pet. That's like a shark keeping a pet goldfish.
The thing is, though, that there are completely different metamagic feat requirements to being an effective enchanter and being an effective blaster, which is what a ray expert is. You are probably better off focusing on one or the other ,but crossblooding to be okay at both is possible. But you will lag behind other sorcerers.
I say dont cross blood with arcane. Cross blooding can be very painful, so it's probably better to grab all 3 eldritch heritages to get the +2 to enchantments from arcane.
The big weakness of enchantments are of course their limited targets. It was mentioned above but I want to reiterate. The meta magic feats:threnodic spell and coaxing spell are a must. In addition, if you still want to cross blood, get serpentine! The arcana add more races too!
Going Eldritch Heritage probably isn't worth it either, because a good enchanter is very feat-focused as it is. Plus you miss out on one of the two DC-increasing arcanas.
I do think you should pick one to focus on and dabble in the other. Even if you go full-on blaster kitsune, picking the favored class bonus every levels will still make you better at enchantment than most non-kitsune fey-blooded sorcerers.
I wouldn't mess around with Weapon Focus or Point Black Shot or such with rays. The rays are only your backup, meaning those feats won't see a lot of use, plus Ray spells (generally) use ranged touch attacks, which rapidly become pathetically easy to hit with.
So ignore point blank and Weapon Focus. I still think I should pick up Precise Shot as a Bloodline Feat though so no -4, and I can avoid the pre-req that way. What should I be picking up in their place?
... Intensified increases the damage cap to 10d4+10, maximixing to 50 force damage that never misses. Empowered increases it to 75 force damage that never misses. Just so you're keeping track, this is a 7th level spell. For fun, I also cast a quickened intensified maximized...
I dont think Intensifie does antydning for magic missile and even if it does it cannot give more than 2 extra missiles before level 15 and Spell perfection..