Pathfinder 1E A guide to sorcerers

StreamOfTheSky said:

So once again...how are you doing this at level 7?

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Who said you are? You should really try to avoid strawman's fallacy and refute what I've actually said, not what you find cool to refute regardless of what I've said.

14000g is possible to have at lvl 7th. So it's a valid point to show how much damage you *could* do at 7th level, as a benchmark.

Actually, in the campaign I played my draconic sorcerer, at 7th level I had an empower rod, which cost 9000, then I sold it and built a maximizing one at 9th, taking the empower feat.

Then, there's a different argument: the rod actually costs 7000 if you craft it yourself, at 9th. It's so damn cheap, that I carry three of them at 14th level.

ryeookin said:

@ triqui: Thanks. That explains it!
I guess what confused me was I always played when using empower, instead of adding dice, just multiply the damaged rolled by 1.5. Both ways work.

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StreamOfTheSky said:

Multiplying by 1.5 works better for damages like 5d4+5 or 7d6. If it's just an even amount of dice, multiplying the dice themslves by 1.5 works fine and is the "fairest" way to do it. More dice rolled to pull towards average result, rolling less and multiplying creates greater chances of the result skewing higher or lower.

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You multiply the effect by 1.5. However, when you are also maximizing, you dont multiply the maximum effect by 1.5. You get the maximum effect in the first 100% of the dice, then roll for the other 50%.

Ahnehnois said:

I don't agree with the first part about socerers having a bad rep; my first 3.0 character was a sorcerer and my players have preferred sorcerers over the years; spontaneous casting beats Vancian any day.

That being said, I think the sorcerer is one thing PF really got right, and I am a guide fan in general, and this is a good guide (couldn't give XP so a compliment will have to do).

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I'm happy to see I'm not alone in my love for sorcerer, but I think you, your group and me are the "black sheeps" in the crowd. The sorcerer had a very bad rep in 3.0 days in the forums. They were regarded as inferior wizards (that rep being deserved or not, is a different thing)

triqui said:

I'm happy to see I'm not alone in my love for sorcerer, but I think you, your group and me are the "black sheeps" in the crowd. The sorcerer had a very bad rep in 3.0 days in the forums. They were regarded as inferior wizards (that rep being deserved or not, is a different thing)

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The sorcerer's lack of class features has been rightly derided (which is what PF fixed). Its later spell acquisition is also bizarre and unfortunate (I unified the casting progressions so that doesn't happen). So its class design is a problem.

But I suspect the part where we are not alone is the preference for spontaneous casting over memorization, especially given the plethora of late 3.5 spontaneous casters with fixed spell lists. I've been running all non-wizard casters as spontaneous for years.

They were considered poor not because of spontaneus magic, but because they had a bad progression and they had a very limited number of spells. PF gives them one extra spell per level with the bloodline, and extra spells if you are human, so this is no longer true.

In 3.X, they were lackluster item crafters too (you need the right spell to build the item).

But spontaneous magic rocks, that's for sure.

triqui said:

If you read the guide, that was an example about how to maximize the damage soon. 14000 gold means 7000 if you craft it yourself, by the way, and doing 95 hp to a CR7 creature is much better than dazing it. At CR7, most creatures die with 95 damage (go and check your Bestiary, a Young Black Dragon is CR 7, and has 76, and only Elasmosaurus an Black pudding have 105), and "dead" is a far worse condition than "dazed". I think too much people dismisses blasting, because they do it wrong. They just slap fireball in the wrong build, without backup, and say it sucks. Sure, 7d6 at 7th level isnt that great. But 5d6+75? That wipes out the entire encounter at 7th level.

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As a DM, how would you deal with a sorcerer who can one-shot anything of his CR once to several times per day with metamagicked fireball?

throw things with resist fire? throw bigger things? throw more things? just let him nova and try to wear him down with multiple encounters? just let him be awesome?

psiphre said:

As a DM, how would you deal with a sorcerer who can one-shot anything of his CR once to several times per day with metamagicked fireball?

throw things with resist fire? throw bigger things? throw more things? just let him nova and try to wear him down with multiple encounters? just let him be awesome?

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I'd do exactly what my DM did with me. Talk with the player, and ask him not to steal too much of the spotlight, and allow other players to do their thing and be awesome too. My character has only a few blasting spells (fireball, scorching ray, and dragon breath). I also have Haste, Dispel magic, Improved invisibility for the party rogue, Dimensional door to move people around...
In some encouters, I totally dominated (specially when facing big mobs of creatures below CR, obviously). In some others, I couldn't do jack (I remember being Feebleminded in a fight vs a black dragon in turn 1, for example). Most the time, I mixed haste, Enlarge person, fly, and other stuff before going wild in fire, or I casted a fireball to clean most of the "mooks" and then buff my party so they have an easier time with "tank and spank the boss".
On a side note, there are a lot of situations where you can't simply go wild with the fireballs. There are allies in the area, there aren't that much targets nearby, you don't want to burn the furniture, you are surprised and surrounded, the monster is fire inmune (fire resistance isn't really an issue most the time, if you do 90+dmg, having FR 10 won't help that much), you are fighting in a small room... That's where, Imho, a blaster sorcerer beat a blaster wizard. As a wizard, you have memorized a lot of fireballs (or whatever is your blasting spell of choice), and when you can't use them, you are hosed. A sorcerer simply start to spam any other spell (haste, dispel magic, slow, fly, whatever) and be happy with it.

triqui said:

If you take +3 caster levels to fireball, at 7th, you cast 10d6 fireballs. With Draconic bloodline, thats 10d6+10. Maximized, it's 70. If you empower it too, it's 5d6+5, for a total of 5d6+75.

You empower it at +1 level thanks to magic lineage background, making it a 3rd level spell that uses a 4th level slot. With a lesser maximizing rod, you can maximize 3rd level spells (not slots).

Hope this helps

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I still am not sure this adds up.

The Orc bloodline (or Draconic for that matter) reads:

Whenever you cast a spell that deals damage, that spell deals +1 point of damage per die rolled.

When you Maximize a spell, you do not roll the damage die.

So the maximized part would be 60 (10d6)

The next part of the equation I could see going either way. Half of the 10d6 would be 5d6. Since this is technically "damage per die rolled" I could see the arguement for adding the +5 damage from the Orc bloodline.

That or just roll (10d6+10)/2 if you want to be technical about it

RigaMortus2 said:

I still am not sure this adds up.

The Orc bloodline (or Draconic for that matter) reads:

Whenever you cast a spell that deals damage, that spell deals +1 point of damage per die rolled.

When you Maximize a spell, you do not roll the damage die.

So the maximized part would be 60 (10d6)

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That's a very very very personal way to interpret it, I think. You add your Con bonus to the hit die roll for hit points. And you do so in the maximized first level too

That you have some perk that allow you to roll de damage twice and pick higher (or lower) does not make you to add twice the Draconic Bloodline bonus, just because you are *rolling* the dice twice. If you happen to fight in some monster aura that make you minimum dice, you still should add the draconic bloodline. If you have some perk that allow you to take average damage, you still should add the bonus.

I'm not sure it makes sense that a maximized fireball does less maximum damage than a non maximized fireball.

RigaMortus2 said:

I still am not sure this adds up. <snip>

Whenever you cast a spell that deals damage, that spell deals +1 point of damage per die rolled.

When you Maximize a spell, you do not roll the damage die. <snip>

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You still get 10d6 (or however many). It's just that Maximize makes sure that they all come up 6. Yes, technically you aren't rolling the die and you are correct in a purely literal interpretation but I think it's going against the intent.

I'm still trying to figure out where the +3 caster levels come from to get a 7th level caster up to a 10d6 fireball. And that is my greatest complaint with this guide: statements are made that aren't fully explained so that someone who needs a guide like this one won't find it as useful as they might.

Another complaint: flipping back and forth in examples from 7th to 14th level gives the impression that 7th level sorcerers can do things that really aren't feasible for a character of that level. Clarifying this might help prevent arguments like the 7th level sorcerer and crafting metamagic rods that occurred upthread.