Best spell to Magical Lineage on any spell list

[Perfect Tommy]

Again I suggest magic missile.

How often are you really going to catch 5 enemies in an AoE. And even if so, magic missile allows you to target the bbeg even if separated in distance from mooks. Ie, choice of target.

No miss chance, affected by mirror image, no elemental resistance.

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

Is this a Dazing magic missile? Cause the DC will be terribly low.

[Louise Bishop]

Perfect Tommy wrote:

Again I suggest magic missile.

How often are you really going to catch 5 enemies in an AoE. And even if so, magic missile allows you to target the bbeg even if separated in distance from mooks. Ie, choice of target.

No miss chance, affected by mirror image, no elemental resistance.

And completely Hosed by Shield spell

[Perfect Tommy]

Hardly hosed. One missile is hosed. Out of 5 on your quickened spell. In the very rare times someone has it up. And it is *very* easy to raise the DC of one spell.

Which still lets you cast your standard action.

As for shield.. Chain Lightning, shocking grasped is nerfed by mirror image. Hungry Darkness with 60'radius and virtually guaranteed to nuke your own party. And is an 8th level spell.

Dazing ball lightning is beaten by a lot of choices - EFS, Resist 20, dimensional slides.

Dazing Tar pool does half damage compared to fire ball until you're over 10th level; and still does less damage, at 7th level compared to 4.

Chains of light doesn't do dmg and so isn't qualified for dazing.

As for the DC

Spell Focus, GSF
Heighten Spell
Outlander Lore Seeker
spell perfection
Potent Magic
Eastern Mysteries
Rage Prophet

Getting high DC's isn't really an issue - especially since theres a lot of party debuffs madness domain, prayer, evil eye, misfortune, rerolls

[General Dissa Ray.]

Dazing ball lightning is indeed limited by resist 20, which is where admixture school comes in.

Knowledge checks and/or Arcane sight (and greater) help you know which energy type to utilize.

EFS blocks magic missile as well, correct?

Dimensional slide is pretty good.

The primary benefit I see of ball lightning is twofold:

1) the duration helps get more mileage out of the spell slot

2) move action relocation. If you need to go Nova, swift for a quicken, move your balls, standard for another spell

[shaventalz]

Perfect Tommy wrote:

Hardly hosed. One missile is hosed. Out of 5 on your quickened spell.

How do you figure that? The Shield spell "negates magic missile attacks directed at you." It doesn't say "once per turn", so it blocks every missile.

[Grandlounge]

Shooting them at different targets.

As for using area of effect spell like hungry darkness it is hard, but that's what scouting, and dim door, overland flight and other movement options are for. Far too few people actually set up ambishes.

Ball lighting + elemental spell or admixture gets you way more opportunities to daze. As does tar pool and critiquing it's damage whem advocating magic missle is a nonsensical argument.

Magic missle like hungry darkness leaves the save a will save which is a liability. Ref is consistently weaker. Magic missle provides nothing on a failed save, has no lasting control effect, does virtually no damage, targets a worse save than many of the other options.

Mine was amitibily a silly idea. The point was if you fail a save you are there for 8 rounds, every time you fail after that the duration restarts at 8. A single failed save deals 16 con damage and 32d6 regular damage. It requires creative and skillfully play but it's do able.

[Perfect Tommy]

Sure, efs blocks magic missile.

But if you're going to get blocked, do you want to lose your quickened action or your standard?

More to the point, quickened dazing plus heightened dazing (or empowered dazing) let's you throw out huge numbers of saves.

Aka: your getting two uses of your daze feat in the round. And you're double leveraging your bonuses on the the dc.

So let's take a an example. 15th level.

Sf.
Gsf
Persistent
Heighten
Potent magic
Spell perfection
Karma bead.
+6 headband
Magical lineage
Wayan

Nothing terribly unusual or optimized.

Quickened persistent dazing mm: 6th level. Dc29. If you save, do it again next round.

Dazing heightened, 8th level dc35.

[*Khan*]

Toppling Hungry Darkness !!!!!! (But at that level most opponents CMD is too high)

[Moonheart]

Well, it is not exactly the "most powerful" one, but I also feel that one spell should be absolutly mentioned in this thread neverless, as it is awfuly well suited to Magical Lineage and is quite potent in its own way: Instigate Psychic Duel

The best point of this spell is that you can take the Psychic Duelist archetype which, among other goodies, allows you to acast this spell with every spell level slots

This means that if you pick this spell with Magical Lineage, its bonus will be relevant from level 4 to level 20 and, at level 20, you will be allowed to use it 54 times by day, without even accounting your intelligence bonus.
It also make your trait totaly relevant to your character theme.

Finaly, the choice of metamagics for it as truly varied and interesting:
- The opponent does not have a mind to duel with? Use Coaxing Spell or any such metamagic and you can even mentaly duel an Ooze!
- Lots of creatures around to mess with? Use Bouncing spell, and ALL the creatures around will need to success their will save to actualy make you miss your spell
- Want to be sure to hit that dragon? Persistant spell will make the dragon need to save twice against your instigation

To remember a point: a psychicaly dueled creature is physicaly defenseless, so once you trappe a foe with it, your teamates can sneak attack it without any risk of retaliation every round until you run out of resources.... which make it one of the most powerful single-target control spell.

[Wasum]

Dazing aqueous orb is pretty sweet:

Ata speed of 30ft it covers a huge area of daze effect that can be shaped as needed. No SR, only few enemies are immune to nonlethal and you also have high potential to suck in some creatures which will likely be stuck in the orb the whole time. It can be pulled off qiet early and find great use in persistent spell as well.

Hard to find a better control spell at this level.