Help on a gnome fire / illusionist sorcerer


Advice


So some background on the current party, got a towersheild fighter, shadow dancer rogue, a halfling cavalier, and a after last session a dead witch. Lvl 3 and 3 of the 5 members have over 20 ac, kinda to be expected. So our witch died, their went our buffs and debuffs. I do not know what he is bringing back into the game. I play the cavalier and have almost died 3 times, 1 of which a timely 20 saved his life or he would have died. So i had it in my head i was making a new character, and im kinda sure its like this with lots of u. You are all prepared to make a new character, now i wanna make a new character. So i wanna bring in a sorcerer, a blasty battlefield control kinda sorcerer. I picked sorcerer, cuz we need a face for the group, and im against having to pick my spells for the day.

So reading around on the forums today as to not have to write u all a novel. I now want a fire/illusionist sorcerer, gnome for the obvious plus of illusions and the pyro. Where do i start tho? Pretty sure Meta feats, for the blaster part, also feats like spell focus and spell penetration, spell specialization. Wen the illusionist part of the build comes in i really start to draw a blank. So any ideas how i can put 2 and 2 together and get something that works well together?

20 point build to the effect of something like
str 7, dex 14, con 14, int 12, wis 12, cha 18

elemental or arcana bloodline
1st lvl feat, point blank shot
3rd lvl feat elemental focus,fire


You will want spell penetration feats to get past any SR. That and make sure you increase the DC of all your spells.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

The thing you need to look out for in Illusion is that it requires tons of GM buy in. You will need to find out how he rules the different types of Illusions.


Yea while building that sorcerer, i got reminded why i dont like low lvl spell casters. Blaster or illusionist either would suck at lvl 3 even being specialized in 1 i think.


The issue with trying to be good at two things is that when you're faced with an enemy that has 100% invested in one thing, you won't match up to it.

On top of that, trying to fill multiple roles, even as a Spellcaster (who is the easiest to do this with), essentially makes the group turn to you, and it becomes problematic because when both roles come into play, the action economy works against you. For example, if you're faced with two options, of only which one you can take, something bad will happen throughout the round that you couldn't prevent, primarily because the group is throwing too much expectation into one party member. This is the same flaw as to why single-creature boss fights are flawed.

That being said, if you aren't opposed to a "Jack of All Trades" playstyle, take a look at the classic Bard as an example of playstyle to follow: He provides buffs, excels at practically every skill in the game, and can throw some damage out if needed, but outside of those 3 things that he can do, he can only do one of those better than any other class, and that's Skills. (Bardic Performances count too, but that encompasses other things beside skills.)

A spellcaster is a lot more of a blank slate, the Sorcerer even moreso, because the features don't define the class, or the player in this case; the player defines the features (and therefore, the class and niche they want to fill).

With that being said, you declared what you wanted to be able to do, which is Illusions + Fire Blast spells. Depending on what you want to specialize will determine what choices I can present.

For example, the Orc bloodline, at its base, will provide a better benefit for blasting, as it deals increased damage based upon the number of dice you roll for your blast spells, something which outweighs the minor utility and defensive components that the Elemental Bloodline grants.

For Illusions, the Undead bloodline is one of the better choices, as its base benefit allows you to affect Undead (if they were once humanoids, which as far as the all-powerful Liches are concerned, they meet this qualification) as Humanoids for your illusion spells, an effect that not many things can accomplish. Additionally, the later levels provide forms of CC that aren't pure illusions, and this is important to consider as an Illusionist when you're faced with the biggest counter to your school, the True Seeing spell.

As for feats, Point Blank Shot is really only important if you plan on specializing in close-range combat with spells that rely on attack rolls to work, which is a single target Blaster-type feat. Unfortunately, if you really want to make this work with your half-level BAB, you're going to need Precise Shot as well, otherwise you're going to end up missing a lot more, as well as accidentally hitting your friends with your damage spells.

The elemental focus also only matters for spells that have the listed feat in their descriptors (in other words, unless a spell is a [Fire] spell, the feat won't apply). I would actually suggest Spell Focus (Illusion), as several of your Illusion spells that are extremely powerful, such as your Color Spray (and later on, the Prismatic spells), are usually going to be Save or Suck/Die. Making those work more often will be more important as far as consecutively doing something worthwhile each round is concerned.

But again, this all boils down to if you want to specialize in one thing, or be a Jack of All Trades.

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