| Arakasius |
So in my current campaign I'm a level 5 elf conjurer (Teleportation school) and I'm looking for some options to maximize my damage (and the party as well) the problem is twofold. One is other than a Barb no one in the party is good at dealing damage at all, so enabling them in that sense is out. Second is that conventional crowd control spells so far haven't worked so well since the party is impatient. Making a pit for example if your party goes and jumps in it. Maybe it will work better in the future when wall spells start to appear. Even something like haste is going to have minimal effects since another roll with crappy +hit isn't going to help most of the time.
I considered going down the fireball route, but without being admixture and spending bunches of feats to make sure I don't nuke my party, that also seemed lackluster. My thought was to focus perhaps on some spells that have a good balance of damage and utility such as Ice Spears or Battering Blast. Heck I could even go down the snowball route although I'd prefer not to. I pretty much have access to the full range of spells/traits/feats and can maximize the metamagic stuff if I want, although I doubt I'll have access to a ton of rods since getting time to craft will be hard.I don't mind going all in on a certain spell to be able to spontaneously cast it since that means I can just prep utility stuff and then bust out preferred/greater spell spec spell with metamagic when i need to.
Alternatively I can take the double summon feats (augment/superior) and head down that route. Not sure how viable that is for damage, but with augment it seems decently reasonable. We seem to be fighting a lot in closed areas though, so not sure if multiple bodies clogging things up is going to be great. I'm neutral if that means anything regarding the types of summons I can call (still not sure on the rules on that)
I also do have a familiar and plan to get something nice at level 7. Maybe an imp or the flying cat or one of the fairie Dragons.
So yeah if anyone has some advice on how to make my conjurer wiz prioritize damage dealing that would be great.
Malag
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I always liked Burning Metamagic feat for acid type spells which can usually be found under Conjuration Magic. Acid Fog for example deals 2d6+12 acid damage instead of 2d6 which is more then 150% damage increase. Burning Acid Arrow deals 2d4+4 damage per round instead of 2d4, etc. It's not a lot, but it usually piles up after several rounds.
Adam
Magda Luckbender
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It sounds like the rest of your party consists of both very non-optimized PCs (e.g. multi-classed dex-based TWF rouge? [sic]) and players who don't think tactically. Unless the GM makes weaker foes, and gives them poor tactics, your group is likely to struggle and fail in combat. The GM is probably already doing this, since it sounds like only your PC and the Barbarian are effective in combat, yet the group hasn't already died.
* Do the players who are not contributing to combat know that they are not contributing? Do they care?
* Is it truly hopeless to raise up your allies? Before you take the easy route and ignore them, figuring only the Barbarian and your PC matter in combat, truly consider whether they are as hopeless as they seem. For example, does the group already have Bardsong? Would that help them? [I understand if they are a complete write-off, I've had 'allies' like this. Just asking. ]
* If Bardsong would help them, perhaps encourage the group to agree in advance that the first PC to die returns as a Bard.
* Consider various ways you can fix the composition of the group, aiming for a more balanced and competent party.
* The group faces two problems: weak PCs and poor player tactics. If the GM lets them succeed, despite using stupid awful tactics with weak PCs, they have no incentive to improve. They won't even know that they suck. That's fine, because everyone is having fun! Just be aware of this dynamic.
* Usually it's less effective for a Wizard to blast. With only one competent ally, though, blasting may have to go back on the table.
* Summoning is 'the blast that keeps on blasting'. Summons are comparatively weaker when the other PCs are very powerful. Summoning is at its best when your allies mostly suck.
* Perhaps prepare a combination of effective Summons, punctuated with the occasional blast.
| Arakasius |
Yeah my party is a rogue who doesn't seem to know what he wants to do and usually just attacks with a bow and then a couple healers. Against undead we're fine because cleric, but yeah the damage from the non barbs is very low. I don't mind stuff that makes the barb even more invincible either.
I don't think I'd feel comfortable telling people what they should reroll, so if it comes up I can suggest but prefer not too. No one has died yet so far anyway.
I think I'm leaning towards doing what you said Magda and getting mostly summons along with an occasional blast. Just not sure what to use there. Fireball is fine, but it leaves a lot to be desired without metamagic buffing it. Is there other conjugation type spells that are pretty good for "blasting" groups? Ice spears and acid fog both seem decent though.
| tonyz |
Summoning. Summon flanking monsters who know enough about teamwork to aid the other PC's attacks. A rogue will be much better with a flanking buddy, and even a summon monster I guy can show up, give a flank, and aid another, for a +4 to hit. Plus any time the enemy is killing one of your monsters they're not hurting your friends.
Try combining summoned fire elementals with fireball -- they're immune to the damage.
If your party is racing into melee, though, you may want to be careful with the fireballs. Combine resist energy on the party (cast beforehand) with big fiery balls of doom. Maybe the players will at least start thinking about synergies.
Stockvillain
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Here's an odd combo that might work for you:
Grease + Acid Flask (alchemical power component) + Dazing spell.
The acid component adds 1 point of Acid damage each round to any creature in contact with the Grease spell. Dazing ticks off of that single point of damage, forcing saves for Dazing on top of saves to move around. If you prefer to avoid hurting party members with poor situational awareness, consider using the single target version of Grease.
With that kind of control, even poorly optimized characters can take out foes.
If your barbarian has some form of Acid resistance, he can reenact that grease fight scene from The Transporter (only the grease is hooked up to a tazer).
Stone Call is a good option for damage + a little battlefield control.
Pellet Blast can be useful, if expensive. The trick with that one is to use the False Focus feat with a 100gp-value divine focus for free casting after that initial investment.
Things get easier once you get higher level spells, but those might be good places to start looking.
Magda Luckbender
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'Healer' is not a party role, or so says this advice to a noobish cleric. Having even one dedicated 'healer' is a drag on any group, while having two seems awful. On the other hand, every group wants lots of 'support'. When the players playing a 'healer' change their mindset to instead play 'support' the group will become far more effective. This even applies to Life oracles.
For example, I bet there's nothing preventing those 'healers' from casting Summon Monster spells, except for 'gosh I didn't think of that'. Before you go the route of the dedicated summons, perhaps point out to the other PCs who can also summon that maybe they should start doing so. Summoning only becomes a viable tactic around 5th level, so the 'healer' players might not have considered this option. Perhaps explain to them how, as tonyz points out above, Summon Monster X is a form a pre-healing, thus very worthy of a 'healers' attention. Sure, Augment Summons is a great feat, but even regular summons are not not to be trifled with.
One time I played the 7th level iconic cleric, Kyra , and we had time to rest a day in game. I loaded Kyra up with Summon Monster spells and used them aggressively for Battlefield Control. This worked great, and the other players mentioned they'd never seen Kyra played that way.
| Arakasius |
Yes ey both so have summon monster spells already, which are amongst the best things they can do. Neither I thnik are planning on taking feats that make them better, so I'd probably do a better job at it, especially being a conjurer. Which is why I'd like to not go all in on the summon monster plan, since I don't want to steal the thing they're good at. So that gets back to conjurer spells I can cast that are good bf control but also good damage. Ice spears seems a good choice, but I wondere if there was anything better.
| tonyz |
Damage and control together --
Some o the Pit spells. May not work if your fronds don't do tactics well.
Wall of fire. Blocks LOS, continuing area damage, splits up enemies. You may want to look more at evocation spells than conjuration.
Dazing Spell with anything that hurts, say acid arrow.
Black Tentacles.
| avr |
A particularly fun spell at your current level is Aqueous Orb. Roll it round collecting enemies and doing damage to them. You control it so the party don't get hit.
At the mo Ice Spears does less damage than Snowball for you. If you get Rime Spell, Rimed Snowball is a debuff and damage in one, though it'd chew through your spell slots fast.
| Arakasius |
Geez that last post had tons of spelling errors. Wtb edit. I'm not that hung up on the conjuration spells doing all that much controlling. The main thing is to get some things that do some nice dps. Basically the only thing that I'm locked into now is being a Teleport specced wizard. Everything else I can shift around as needed. I could do fireball or burning arc or one of those but not dipping into Sorc or being admixture is going to be pretty suboptimal. I'll take a look more at some of the cloud type spells.