Blood Intensity vs Intensified Spell

[Starocious]

Blood Intensity wrote:

you can increase its maximum number of damage dice by an amount equal to your Strength or Charisma modifier

vs

Intensified Spell wrote:

An intensified spell increases the maximum number of damage dice by 5 levels.

1: Does this mean that a character with a +5 charisma modifier, casting a spell that deals 2d6 damage per caster level would deal +5d6 extra with blood intensity but would deal +10d6 extra if they used intensified spell instead?

2: Do you need additional caster levels to gain a benefit from blood intensity, like you do for intensified spell?

[MrCharisma]

1. Looks like it.

2. Yup. It increases the maximum number of dice, it doesn't directly increase the number of dice.

Blood Intensity does look better for Magic Missile though.

[MrCharisma]

2. Just to clarify, Intensify Spell (and Blood Intensity) gives more dice once you've reached the maximum.

So Shocking Grasp (for example) deals 1d6 damage per level to a maximum of 5d6. Intensify increases this maximum by 5d6, but the spell still only deals 1d6 damage per level. So an 8th level caster with Intensified Shocking Grasp deals 8d6 damage - the Maximum is raised to 10d6, but the damage is still 1d6 per level.

Using Blood Intensity a 12th level Sorcerer with 14 CHA could cast Shokc8ng Grasp for 7d6 damage (14 CHA increases the maximum by 2d6), while a 12th level sorcerer with 28 CHA could cast Shocking Grasp for 12d6 (Blood Intensity increases the maximum by 9d6 to 14d6, but your caster level is only 12 so you're at 12d6).

Disintegrate is 2d6 per level to a maximum of 40d6. With Intensified Spell you would increase the Maximum by 5 levels (to 50d6), but in order to benefit from it at all you'd need a caster level of at least 21.

[Davor Firetusk]

Full text
Whenever you cast a bloodrager or sorcerer spell that deals damage, you can increase its maximum number of damage dice by an amount equal to your Strength or Charisma modifier, whichever is higher. This otherwise functions as—and does not stack with—the Intensified Spell feat. You can use this ability once per day at 3rd level and one additional time per day for every 4 caster levels you have beyond 3rd, up to five times per day at 19th level. This ability replaces the sorcerer’s 3rd-level bloodline power or the bloodrager’s 8th-level bloodline power.

So it does not stack

[Starocious]

Oh good, as i thought. Thanks mr charisma.

Davor Firetusk wrote:

So it does not stack

We know it doesnt stack, the questions weren't asking about stacking.

[Ryze Kuja]

MrCharisma is correct-- they don't stack, but they overlap; they increase your Max die, not actual, so you have to have the CL's to fund it.

The benefit to Blood Intensity vs. Intensify Spell is that if your Cha or Str Mod is 6 or higher, you can really pump up your spells further than Intensify could. And even if you're playing a 15pt buy game or a low GP game and your Str/Cha mod is 5 or lower, Blood Intensity is still nice to have because it's a free Intensify a couple times per day that doesn't cost a higher spell slot, and Blood Intensity is an excellent choice if your particular Bloodline has shapoopy bonus feats or bloodline powers.

[Chell Raighn]

It is also worth noting, that even at +5 Cha/Str blood intensity can provide a better benefit than intensify spell, particularly when dealing with spells that gain +1d6 per 2 levels or other slow progression advancements... with such a spell using intensified spell would only give +2d6 over the maximum while blood intensity is only limited by your caster level, meaning if the spell capped at 5d6 at level 10, you would get +5d6 as a 20th level caster where intensifies spell stopped at CL 15 on the same spell.