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What is your favourite sorcerer bloodline for PF2 so far and why?
Currently I'm really liking the Hag bloodline for its debuffing but I haven't looked in depth at the Occult spell list yet so this may change.
And just to confirm with other people so that my terrible reading comprehension doesn't cause me to make a mistake; You know a number of spells at each spell level that is equal to the number of spell slots you have at that level barring some sort of feat / special ability (including bloodline spells)?
I'm quite fond of Draconic personally. It gets a good Blood Magic bonus and it opens up some interesting possibilities for a melee Sorcerer, which is a build I am quite interested in.
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I'm a big big fan of the Hag Bloodline. As someone currently playing a Changeling Mesmerist in 1e it is super satisfying to say I can remake my pc in core and be a stronger than I was due to being a full caster.
Second to that is the Elemental Bloodline. I like that you can basically play the Avatar and do some consistent blasting. The Sorcerer's free refocusing power is a big boon since their focus powers are so potent.
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I am torn between elemental (Blaster and useful against almost everything) and undead (really good in undead heavy and as backup healer).
Elemental because the bloodline spells are almost all useful as a blaster and would be ones I would already take (thus freeing up choices). Primal spell list is my second favorite. The bloodline magic is just a little extra juice
Undead because of touch of undeath (toss on tank and harm the tank is powerful healing) and frankly flavour (died and came back slightly different is just awesome). Chilltouch with reach metamagic is quite nice. Problem is Divine spell list is the worst for a non-healer. If you take human for the adapted feat (e.g. Ray of Frost, Produce Flame) and then MC, that seems to help
This is just my early take on it though
Elemental is very interesting. You get your flavor of some really good blasting arcane spells and the primal spell list. That is kinda the best of both worlds. Also their focus spells are pretty solid blaster tools. If you get the max of 3 focus thats a fair bit of damage you could lay out without even dipping into your spell slots also combined with pretty solid cantrip access.
I was kinda surprised how many divine bloodlines there are and I am curious how that plays out I have not fully read the divine list and am curious how that works for a sorc especially a more harm focused one.
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Elemental is really cool, though I'm kind of sad that your only options are fire or bludgeoning and there's no way to access stuff like cold or electricity.
Hag or Undead, leaning towards Hag with a heavy appreciation for Undead.
I've loved the Draconic Bloodline since I bought the PHB for 3.5 (but didn't have anyone to play with).
My first character in Pathfinder was Sorcerer/Fighter/Gold Dragon Disciple
In the Kingmaker game by Owlcat, my primary save is a Slayer/Sorcerer/Black Dragon Disciple.
In PF2E, I will make a Draconic Sorc at some point. I still love the abilities and spells it has access to.
But now I'm really looking at the Undead Bloodline. able to heal/harm with the Harm spell is nice, and I just love the idea of slamming my palm on the ground and using Grasping Grave. My only issue is that a lot of Divine spells are diety specific. If my character doesn't worship a diety, these spells can't be taken.
And in PFS2E you can revere a diety without worshiping them, but this means you gain no spells from them. Divine Sorcerers are the closest we can get to clerics of evil dieties who can no longer be worshiped by neutral characters, but we can't take spells like Spiritual Weapon because those require you to have a paton diety.
Multiclassing as a Divine Sorc without a diety is even worse, as not only can you not take such spells, but you don't get signature spells to heighten, so if you want to harm/heal, you have to know the spell at each level, and you only get a couple known spells per level.
/offtopic rant
So, yeah, I like Draconic and Undead. I want to like Imperial, the only other Arcane bloodline, but I really wish it got Silent Spell.
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Elemental and Hag definitely seem the best options to blow four feats on all the bloodline powers and focus recovery. Good options for repeated use in combat, and good one action choices.
Angelic and Imperial are so much more interesting than the rest to me, flavor-wise.
Divine list is actually quite bad since cantrips are quite important since they are unlimited and autoscale.
They are your bread and butter spells with the normal spells being the big event in a fight (assume 3 spell slots/level/3 encounters per day and slot comp is 1/4 defensive-1/4 buffs-1/4 utility-1/4 offensive)
Now, if you play one encounter per day, then that is a different situation
Divine list has 4 offensive cantrips: Chill touch, Daze, Disrupt Undead, and divine lance which are all pretty awful (either niche target or poor damage) as your general attack spells. Compare damage and range to Ray of Frost, Produce Flame, Telekinetic Projectile, Electric Arc, etc and you will see what I mean. Even daze requires a critical failure to stun for 1 round
Divine lance seems okay. d4+ casting attribute is pretty solid consistent damage. The alignment damage it does could potentially be very useful for going after specific weaknesses. Divine is definitely more utility oriented. This likely is fine if you are going for the healer type angel divine bloodline but for things like undead it seems like a bit of an odd fit. I almost would have thought occult for undeath bloodline.
Blood Magic and Dangerous Sorcery both have specific language that exclude cantrips (Blood Magic calls out cantrips as not working explicitly, and Dangerous Sorcery only works on spells cast "from your spell slots" which excludes both cantrips and focus spells).
Just curious does the elemental Bloodline arcana(I know thats not the name but the actual term escapes me at the moment), and the dangerous sorcery feat actually effect cantrips? When I originally read spell level damage my brain automatically did the pf1 5e thing where cantrips=level0 but since they're heightened to half your level rounded up they get the extra damage right?
No. Dangerous Sorcery requires casting from a slot, Blood Magic requires cast from a slot or with a focus point. No cantrip boosting.
Hag bloodline reminds me a lot of the Witch, so that's very cool. Elemental bloodline looks like a good blaster.
Draconic is okay, I guess? It's mostly only interesting because you could build a decent Dragon Disciple facsimile with multiclassing.
At the moment.. Aberrant, Draconic, Elemental.
I would say Undead... but I am not a fan of Divine. But of the Divine it is my fav.
Divine list is actually quite bad since cantrips are quite important since they are unlimited and autoscale.
They are your bread and butter spells with the normal spells being the big event in a fight...
I think you're discounting Focus spells, which can be confidently spammed at least 1/fight (+remainder of Focus Pool, with additional Focus refresh methods allowing more spamming), PARTICULARLY for Sorcerors who automatically Refresh 1/10 minutes without dedicated activity. And Clerics of course have 3+CHA Divine Font max level Heal/Harms which is very combat relevant with 1-3 action flexibility. I think approaching it as just about spell slots and cantrips misses that potential. Good to consider that, but not just stop there.
Personally, I can't deny Aberrant for sheer gonzo flavor with tentacles and all.
But even if subtler, I like what they did with Imperial, with memory/Lore/skills aspect bringing out ancient ancestor/empire.
Really, I just wonder why they didn't also grant the ancient language of empire in question?
At the VERY LEAST why isn't it added to your Common access list (to use with INT bonus)?
The spells/abilities pretty much are about pure casting with very immaterial focus of magic, which is style I appreciate even if "blasting" etc seems to be go-to Sorceror trope.
Also the divine list attack cantrips aren't really worse than the occult ones depending on wht the wording of telekinetic projectile means (hoping for a FAQ on that one).
Hag bloodline seems great for the kind of sorcerer you don't want to raise the ire of because they will curse six ways to sunday. Very fun thematically.
Draconic is another one that's almost there for me. I really like the way you can just use claws all day long pretty much and with the way attack rolls work in PF2 building a functional dragony gish out of them is actually kinda possible.
Never getting expert in your claw attacks sucks though.
Speaking of gish,it appears that martial base class + spell caster dedications are the way to go. Spell casters can almost sorta not suck in melee with form spells but those preclude further sword and sorcery.
Looking forward to Eldritch Knight type of archetypes for primary casters (to bring them a little closer to martials without stepping on toes)
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Didn’t their errata they announced last week in the stream have all unarmed attacks scale to expert? This fixing that issue?Draconic is another one that's almost there for me. I really like the way you can just use claws all day long pretty much and with the way attack rolls work in PF2 building a functional dragony gish out of them is actually kinda possible.
Never getting expert in your claw attacks sucks though.
Yeah, and that post was three and a half weeks ago. Scaling unarmed proficiency is definitely nice.
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I love aberrant just for the tentacular limbs. The other stuff is useful (unusual anatomy making you a less attractive melee target and protect against insta-gibbing is nice), but I would pick this one just for stretching my hands 50 feet to poke someone.
The aberrant tentacular limbs makes it a nice pick up via a multiclass archetype for a "bad touch" cleric (for two feats, granted). Especially since 1) it can extend beyond the 30 ft limit of Reach Spell at higher levels and 2) it sidesteps the "If you use any action (including free actions and reactions) other than Cast a Spell directly after, you waste the benefits of the metamagic action" limit. Taking some of the Sorcerer Spellcasting feats can also add spell options from the occult list.
I've been wanting to play an angelic that maybe devotes into paladin. I'll probably save that for when aasimar is available.
2. A big portion of the divine list, and one of the main points of being a divine caster, is healing. But healing isn't limited to hit points - it's also a matter of condition removal. Unfortunately, PF2 went with the old model of having different spells for almost every single condition (neutralize poison, remove curse, remove disease, remove fear, remove paralysis, restoration, restore senses, stone to flesh), and learning all those is a big ask - particularly with counteracting being level-dependent so you pretty much need to make those your signature spells. And if the sorcerer can't do that, you need some other way in the party of fixing what they can't fix, which is likely going to be another divine caster, or maybe a primal caster.
On thing that helps this is they can use scrolls or wands of those spells as well and it's not too heavy of an investment to have one at relevant levels. (Okay the wand is expensive, but you'll rarely need a once per day casting of the spell)
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Okay I could see that being a problem if you have to have them on hand immediately, but you should be able to purchase them from the amount of money supplied instead of relying on the GM providing them. If you are reliant on the GM to give you the items, there is a side bar suggesting,Scrolls seems to be less of an option in PF2 than in PF1. For example, take remove curse, a 4th level spell. A scroll of remove curse is a 7th level item costing 70 gp. In the process of going from 6th to 7th level you're supposed to find/get two 7th level consumables, and you're getting two more on the path from 7th to 8th. That's total consumables for the whole party - including potions, talismans, and assorted other things. Or if you're doing starting wealth, that's a little under 10% of your lump sum wealth, or a little over half the amount of currency you're supposed to start with in addition to permanent items. And you can't reduce the price by rolling your own - time spent crafting could as well be spent on Gain Income.
And that's for one spell. If you want the whole suite, that's 7 of them (at 4th level - one more comes online as a 6th level spell), and given the counteracting rules you want to use them at top level. That's a really big investment in highly situational stuff that you're not really guaranteed to have a use for by the time it's obsolete.
"Keep an eye on the party’s resources. If they’re running out of consumables or money, or if they’re having trouble in combat because their items aren’t up to the task, you can make adjustments."
Admittedly there is a good deal of reliance on the GM there, but you're reliant on them for quite a few other things as well.
On a different note, reading through the medicine skill and spell descriptions, you probably don't need all 7 spells. Medicine allows you to treat a disease and treat poison, and while it doesn't straight up remove effect if successful the bonus do help. Meaning Cure Disease and Neutralize Poison aren't critical for a healer character. Remove Fear could have it's uses, but few people are going to be dying from those conditions. And finally Remove Paralysis is pretty situational given it only works on magically induced paralysis, though it could be life-saving in said situations. Restoration doesn't require a counteract effect, so just knowing the spell or having a low level scroll of it sjould be enough most of the time (with only drained and doomed needing a higher level version.) So if you need your sorcerer to be the healer/condition remover in the party, then you only truly need three (maybe four) spells known and signature(restore senses, remove curse, and stone to flesh, and possibly heal) and one skill (Medicine, which you should have as a healer anyways to save spell slots) which all of which are different levels, so easily accomplished.