Theologian Fire Cleric Fireball Metamagic Question


Advice


Howdy. I've got a theologian fire cleric, and I'm looking at metamagic feats to apply to fireball to keep it relevant throughout the levels. It just kinda fits with my character, and I've read it's possible to keep it a decent spell for higher slots with metamagic.

I'm currently 5th level, and a human. These are the feats I've chosen so far:

1 Spell Focus (Evocation)
H Spell Specialization (Burning Hands) --- That'll obviously change when I'm able
3 Combat Casting
5 Selective Spell (We're adventuring in a small small crypt, and figure this is gonna be necessary for both fireball, and making burning hands more useful for the lower level spell slots)

I also picked Fireball as my intensified spell for the theologian ability.

Any advice on future level feats? I was thinking of the following progression.

7 - Additional traits (To get magical lineage, my DM didn't allow traits at 1st level)
9 - Burning Spell
11 - Greater Spell Focus
13 - Maximize Spell
15 - Spell Perfection (Fireball)
17 - Spell Penetration
19 - Greater Spell Penetration

We haven't played yet since leveling up, so even the level 5 choice is still up for change. Any advice on feat choices, and how to stack them onto fireball at what levels would be appreciated!


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Have you looked at Brewer's guide to the Blockbuster wizard? The guide is more or less all about how to make fireball blow shit up with impunity. I believe there's also a metamagic guide out that could be helpful.

Your current feats are definitely solid. As for your future ones, burning spell isn't that good of a feat. The extra damage is just too little for what you're paying for it.

What you're really going to want is a way of changing the element of your fireball. You don't want to be stuck not being able to do anything when you run across a fire immune enemy. Another thing you'll want to keep in mind is metamagic rods. Some metamagic feats are only situationally helpful, or you may find they spell level increase too high for regular use. Think of them like feats you can buy.

Feats you may want to look into:

Persistent Spell (making your enemy have to save twice is really mean)

Elemental Spell (Seriously, you want to be able to bypass fire immunity and resistance. You'll know better than me what enemies you face tend to be immune to. Pick something that isn't commonly resisted. Acid tends to be pretty safe)

If you can spare the space, Dazing and quicken spell can be fun, but these can also be good candidates for rods, plus you've got cold ice strike for swift action casting fun without the metamagic.

Rods You'll want to look at:

Dazing Spell (You'll only get 3 uses per day, and this item is expensive, but a dazing persistent fireball with all of those DC boosts you put on it will really ruin your enemies' day. This one might even be worth making room for as a feat)

Quicken Spell (You know what's better than one explosion? Two explosions! Make your enemies quake at the the sight of your divine fury! This one's more optional, because of cold ice strike, but still helpful.)

Elemental Spell (Being good at elemental rock paper scissors is always good. The nice part about the rods is that you can pull out which one you need at a moment's notice to adapt. This is less needed if you took the feat, but still worth considering.)

Brewer covers metamagic stacking onto fireball pretty extensively in his guide. Because of how variable the game can be, it's hard to suggest exact combinations for mixing the metamagic, since it can vary quite a bit. If you'll be in a lot of enclosed areas, selective is invaluable. If not, don't bother preparing many of them and instead focus on damage. If you're fighting a lot of enemies resistant to fire, make sure you're preparing lightning/frost/caustic balls instead. A little scouting, either through an actual scout, divination, or good ol' fashioned information gathering about your mission really helps here. Eventually, you'll find a formula that works best for your game.


You cannot take selective at 5th, for some inexplicable reason it has a 10 spellcraft ranks prerequisite.

As a cleric you have very few feats to play with. Generally there are two ways to go with this sort of character, massive damage or hideous control. The first requires caster level boosts combined with empower and intensified spell and a level dip into crossblooded orc/draconic sorcerer. The second requires a combination of dazing and persistent spell.

If you expect to get to higher levels then both are probably done better by flame strike or blade barrier.

Whichever route you go you do not want combat casting, burning spell or maximise. Combat casting is just bad, it remains sort of relevant at the very early levels but quickly ceases to be so as concentration checks become auto pass. You are never likely to make any concentration check in a grapple so that part is irrelevant. Later on freedom of movement renders it completely irrelevant. Burning Spell is just a terrible feat all round. It causes a pathetically small amount of damage the next round (6 for fireball) for a 2 level increase. You could have added persistent or empower for the same adjustment but far greater effect. Maximise is not a good investment. A Maximised CL10 fireball is doing 60/30 damage. An Empowered one is doing, on average, 52/26.

The difference is really too small to justify the extra spell level. When you add in extra's it gets even worse. Apply the crossblooded dip and a goblin fire drum and you are looking at 90/45 for maximise or 1.5*(10d6+30) for an average of 97/48 damage. You are getting more damage from a lower level spell slot.


Trade combat casting for heighten if you can. otherwise take heighten.
Burning is terrible.

You want preferred spell. this will let you prepare any spell you want and spontaneously cast fireball instead.

Additional traits to get magical lineage is great, try to get wayang spellhunter too.

Greater spell focus is kinda weak for your limited feats.

you need quicken spell as your level 13 feat so you can use it with your level 15 feat spell perfection.

Dazing spell makes fireball a save or die spell.


I can't believe I missed that requirement for selective. Thank you! Argh.

As far as the other advice, thank you. I didn't know about the wayang spellhunter (though it's metamagic master in the D20PFSRD for some reason).

As far as changing elements, I'm afraid I can't. My GM ruled, and I kinda agree, that a zealot of fire like my character is wouldn't blaspheme the holy fire by changing it to something else. He's fine with using a spell that's already another element, but can't change it.

As far as the sorcerer dip, again my GM's decided that an ability like those would only work on sorcerer spells. So wouldn't help my cleric any. Besides, he's too faithful to take another class :)

One thing with the theologian archtype is he's going to be applying Intensify Spell to his fireball for free, so that'll help.

I'll take the rest of the advice an run with it though. Thank you all for the help!


Rylar wrote:

Trade combat casting for heighten if you can. otherwise take heighten.

Burning is terrible.

You want preferred spell. this will let you prepare any spell you want and spontaneously cast fireball instead.

Additional traits to get magical lineage is great, try to get wayang spellhunter too.

Greater spell focus is kinda weak for your limited feats.

you need quicken spell as your level 13 feat so you can use it with your level 15 feat spell perfection.

Dazing spell makes fireball a save or die spell.

I am fairly sure theologian allows you to spontaneously cast your domain spells making preferred unnecessary.


Theologian doesn't let you spontaneously cast domain spells, just let's you cast them in regular slots.

Here's what I went worth. Got permission to drop combat casting. Took greater Spell focus instead, then elemental focus at 5th. Then plan to do the following

7 sacred flames (3rd party makes half a spells fire damage Holy, 1 level metamag8c)
9 greater elemental focus
11 dazing spell
13 quicken spell
15 spell perfection
17 spell Penetration
19 greater Spell Penetration

With spell perfection doubling the focus feats, he'll have a heck of a dc for the dazing save.

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