Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
The name's more for legacy, at this point, I'm afraid, as this is more likely to be a sporadic thing than a regular feature. In this case, I just happened to have a mostly-finished writeup ready and happened to be discussing this very problem with another player, so I figured, why not put something new(ish) up?
As usual for the showcase, these builds are intended to spur discussion and perhaps inspire a few people in the spirit of the old CO boards. They come from members of my gaming group - me, Radical Taoist, DisposableHero_, Andarious, Sionnis, and Seishi - and I'll always identify who wrote the build at the start, so do not assume I'm the guy behind all of them (because I'm not!).
Unless otherwise noted, showcase builds use 28 point-buy, and have their snapshots evaluated using fractional base attack / saves (because it simplifies the math). None of them actually rely on fractional to be built, though. The format I use showcases their progression at key levels rather than just presenting the build and showing off a few tricks at level 20; most of these are capable of being played 1-20 if you so choose.
With that out of the way, let's get started. This week, we’re getting one of mine.
EDIT: The first stab at this had two pretty serious errors, which I'm fixing now. Thanks to Scraggled for catching them. In all honesty, I like this version better. Further revisions occurred thanks to discussion in this very thread, with Luna Trigger.
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HOLY FIRE
Just getting warmed up!
Required Books: Eberron Campaign Setting, Five Nations, PHB2, Complete Divine, Complete Champion, Spell Compendium, Races of the Dragon, and Complete Mage. Most of these only hold one or two spells, or one feat, required to pull this off.
Unearthed Arcana used: None!
Background: This started out as a simple challenge: Could I take the classic “fire mage” archetype and make it not suck? It turned out to be more interesting than I thought.
We’re all familiar (or should be familiar!) with the Mailman(x), the archetype for a direct-damage sorcerer. (If you haven’t read it, read it now; consider this showcase a tutorial on how to build a mailman using different design priorities. I'm just giving credit where credit is due!) The higher levels here are similar in terms of spell strategy. However, the Mailman had a weakness in that Force damage, while hard to resist, is actually pretty easy to outright block (Forceward from the Spell Compendium). Granted, a good Mailman can properly knock that defense down (one of many reasons you pack Dispels), but doing so takes time, and even then there’s rare creatures that are completely immune to force to begin with (thankfully, these are CR You're-Never-Fighting-This-Ever, but it does mean there's still a few places that the mailman cannot Deliver The Mail). Additionally, blaster builds usually have a "slow start" problem - most of the ways to resist damage (energy resists and SR in particular, high HP as well) begin to be a problem around level 6 or so, while most of the really good ways to punch through all that (action economy boosts and metamagic cheese) usually shows up much later than this. Blaster builds, including the Mailman, often have problems scaling if they're being played from low levels, especially if they're sorcerers (who are already a spell level behind their wizard companions).
This build, on the other hand, made one key observation: Once you get past the resistance / immunity issue, several fire spells are actually quite good at what they do (example: even the Mailman uses Combust, and of the Orb of X spells, fire has the best rider effect), and there’s a few ways to boost fire spells specifically (probably because they are so commonly resisted). The trick then is to find an inexpensive way to make the energy damage even more irresistible than Force damage. One way of doing this is to simply change the spells’ damage type to something that basically nothing resists - and the only damage type I know of that has this property is divine damage (think Flame Strike). In fact, I only know of a single ability open to non-deities that can block it (and it belongs to the Defiant, an obscure, semi-setting-specific, and not-all-that-amazing prestige class from the Planar Handbook), without delving into “total immunity to all damage” realms. There’s at least three ways I know of to convert half of your fire damage into divine damage already (and some allow 100% divine damage), so it’s not like this is an impossible goal. Some of them can even come online reasonably fast, helping with the "slow start" problem quite nicely.
One simple example advantage for fire spells is that fire vulnerability is a thing. The traditional Mailman build could not exploit energy vulnerabilities, but if we're sticking to fire damage, we can. There's a couple ways to do this, such as Energy Vulnerability or Energy Substitution (Fire) + Creaking Cacophony. If you can take the time during a big encounter to set up a vulnerability, do it - not only does it dramatically increase your damage output, it also saves you spells: you need fewer spells to dish out the same damage, which also means that the battle ends a few spells early. It can also remove an immunity - and since one of the ways we're dealing divine damage goes half-and-half with fire damage, stripping a fire immunity away can be quite important, particularly in the mid levels (it's effectively doubling your damage). Don't do this all the time, but if you need a really big gun and you think you can get your vulnerability set up, do it. However, since fire vulnerability (probably) won't apply to divine damage, and since it will usually only matter on foes with overpoweringly high amounts of hit points, and is more useful the greater the enemy's resistance to fire, I'm fine relegating establishing vulnerability to equipment, instead of a spell known. We shouldn't forget about it, but it isn't central to our tactics most of the time.
Of course, you still need some method of dealing with incorporeality (a key benefit to Force spells), but this also has a statistical observation: The overwhelming majority of incorporeal foes are also undead. In the SRD, all of the incorporeals are undead. Expanding the list to every 3.5 published source(x) (except for non-Eberron setting-specific material), we find that the comprehensive list of non-undead incorporeals is disturbingly small. Thus, if you’re packing an anti-undead ability that bypasses their incorporeal miss chance, you’re set against incorporeality in all but the most rare of cases (and when we see a gap that rare cases can squeeze through in D&D, we usually plug that gap with equipment). We’ll still pack a small number of Force effects as they remain good choices in general, but you don’t need to go for broke on them if your main worry is relatively rare non-undead incorporeal miss chances.
Finally, we have a personal observation: I think the Incantrix is stupidly powerful, and consider its use unsporting. I’ve also seen it flat-out banned in a few places, probably also for its immense power boosts. For this reason, it’s worth trying to assemble a blaster without Incantrix. (We’re also using Eberron material, and I’d rather not mix settings if a single-setting solution exists.)
Put these three observations together, and a new build idea practically writes itself. It’s just a matter of tuning from that idea, and then presenting the results.
The basics of the build involve classic Mailman action-economy / defense-breaching tactics, but with all of the damage being all but completely irresistible divine damage, with the option of switching (either completely or halfway) back to fire on the fly if your foe isn’t immune and you want a few extra fire-specific synergies to kick in. It also attacks foes’ actions while it does this, but that’s not its main goal.
The Basics
Skill Notes: Your first skill points go to Spellcraft (max it, until at least 9 ranks) and to Knowledge skills: 5 in Arcana, 5 in The Planes, and 8 in Religion. Once you become a paragnostic apostle, put 5 more ranks in The Planes (and eventually squeeze at least 2 more into Arcana). Once you hit the Knowledge requirements, the rest of the skill points go to Concentration; Spellcraft and Knowledge can be boosted to taste. After this, your skills are more or less open, although you might want to consider pumping Tumble cross-class, especially if you adventure in close quarters (again, the classic dungeon crawl).
Basic Equipment: It's hard to get less equipment-dependent than the Sorcerer. It doesn’t matter whether you’re decked to the nines or wearing a fig leaf so long as you’ve got at least one component pouch. That said, once you can turn undead, definitely invest in a Flametouched Iron holy symbol; it’s dirt cheap and the extra turning level helps.
Magical Gear Goals: This section got a little long in the revision, so I've switched to a list format.
Equipment that boosts turning level
[sblock]Unless otherwise noted, these are persistent effects, sorted by price.
Flametouched Iron Holy Symbol (EbCS, +1, 750, slotless, nonmagical)
Ephod of Authority (MIC, +1, 800, Torso*)
Talisman of Undead Mastery (MIC, +2/+3/+4**, 3000, Throat)
Scepter of the Netherworld (LM, +3, 9000, Held)
Phylactery of Undead Turning (DMG, +4, 11000, Throat)
*Part of the Vestments of Divinity set, marketed to paladins or clerics. Some of the set might interest you but it isn't a must-have.
**Charged item, 3 daily charges, swift action to use.
There's also the Sacred armor/shield ability (BoED, +2, +2 enhancement cost), but this is almost certainly too expensive for our purposes. Similarly, some effects that might be useful for actually Turning Undead (such as the MIC's Rod of Defiance, which treats nearby undead as having fewer HD) won't be useful for us, since our preferred uses for turning level never reference the enemy undead HD.
Without eating into actions or conflicting with slots, you can get +9 to your turning level pretty cheaply. This boosts our build up to 20th effective turning level for a little over 21k, which could be a useful investment if you're fighting lots of undead or making frequent use of Turn Anathema (see below).
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You also have access to the entire paladin spell list, as well as the (surprisingly good, but not standout) Exorcism domain through spell trigger items, so you may want to invest in a staff or a few wands. (The actual "domain staff" from Complete Champion won't work, since it's divine-spell-only, but a normal staff holding the desirable spells is a possibility.) There are three paladin spells in particular you'll want to buy: Lesser Restoration (it's a damn useful spell in general, but as a paladin spell, it's 1st level), Favored of the Martyr (you need this if you want to unleash your full power late game; thankfully, the need to set this up acts as a natural leash, preventing you from breaking the action economy all willy-nilly), and, surprisingly, Turn Anathema (from Complete Champion; if you invest in +Turning gear anyway, this wand allows you to turn (but not destroy) [Evil] or [Chaotic] creatures as if they were undead. This is noteworthy in that undead tend to have higher HD than their CR, while most non-undead [Evil] or [Chaotic] creatures, such as outsiders, tend to have HD comparable to their CR (and they lack turn resistance), in effect being much easier to turn, and lack any immunity to the Turned condition (it's not a fear effect). It's also kind enough to let you make one such turn attempt during the spell's casting.). None of the wands are terribly critical to the core strategies, but can add some cost savings or unique options to the build’s actual gameplay.
Unique: Fire Sub shenanigans
[sblock]If you pick up a metamagic rod of Energy Substitution (Fire), you should also look into staffs, runestaffs, or drake-helm dragonshards containing non-Fire energy spells, both offensive and support. This can be used to pull non-Fire support spells onto your Fire blasts with ease, or to apply your divine-damage conversion effects to a wider range of energy spells.
The best of these for you is probably Creaking Cacophony (Bard 3; the Drake-Helm is not limited by spell list, so it will work), which adds a no-save Sonic vulnerability to a large area, in addition to forcing Concentration checks on enemy casters - swapping this to a Fire vulnerability can produce truly amazing effects. Vulnerabilities multiply damage, but they do so in a way that causes everything, including bonus dice and per-die bonuses like Raging Flame, to multiply normally, unlike standard D&D damage multiplication (i.e. against a vulnerable target, normal spells deal 150%, Empowered spells deal 225%, and Empowered Smiting spells (see below) deal 300% damage, and that's after all other modifications to damage dealt are applied). Vulnerabilities also cancel out immunities, which can be quite useful before you get your full divine damage abilities.
If your DM dislikes cross-list Drake-Helming or if you can't find Cacophony, a passable alternative is Energy Vulnerability (SpC, Sor/Wiz 3); unlike Cacophony, it can be blocked, so it will eventually go stale.
Another noteworthy choice is Acid Sheath (SpC, Sor/Wiz 5). Not so much for its retributive damage, but rather because it adds +1 damage per die to your [Acid] spells, and thus +1 damage per die to your [Fire] spells if subbed. This is cumulative with Raging Flame, and since it affects you instead of an area, it works better if you're on the move. (If a fire version of this existed naturally, it would probably replace one of the other 5ths in the main build.)
You can get a similar effect with Caustic Mire (CMag, Sor/Wiz 4), which, like Raging Flame, is an AoE effect that adds +1 damage per die to fire damage (though it doesn't last as long and isn't as big an area). Unlike Raging Flame, this one also affects ignition damage (so if you set someone on fire within both Raging Flame and Caustic Mire, they take 2d6+2 damage each round the ignition lasts), deals some damage of its own (1d6 per square entered, or 1d6 if they don't move), and slows ground movement within the area. Fire subbing this sets the damage type to Fire (which you can switch over to divine damage in time), and the damage is also no-save, SR:No. However, unlike vulnerabilities, it specifically references fire damage, and not [Fire] effects.
DeAnno (the author of the original Mailman) noted, downthread, that there's a few other nifty spells to pick if you take this route. Perhaps the niftiest, to me, is Boreal Wind (Frostburn, Sor/Wiz 5), which is natively Cold. It's a 20-foot-wide, 20-foot-high, out-to-Long-range Gust of Wind effect with a decent duration that deals 15d4 damage per round in the line (and can be redirected as a move action); a Fire-substituted version of this is a good candidate for all of your metamagic, divine damage conversion, and your Smiting Spell effect. As an emanation, it moves with you, so it's pretty easy to keep this damage flowing as you approach defended positions or hold the high ground.
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The Build.
Build Stub: Sorcerer 6 / Paragnostic Apostle 3 / Sacred Exorcist 6 / Silver Pyromancer 5.
1 – Sorcerer – (Metamagic Specialist) (Education, Arcane Disciple: Exorcism) (Magic Missile OR Nerveskitter, Sleep)
*
[sblock]Both of these feats are taxes that make the PrC prereqs simpler to meet, aiding with the "slow start" problem. Thankfully, they're at least fluff-consistent: an Educated individual would be more welcome in the Paragnostic Assembly, and exorcism is a logical area of study for arcanists of the Silver Flame.
Sleep is the usual long-range game-ender spell at level 1, so there's no arguments about including it. If you really want to, you can swap it for Color Spray, but I appreciate the longer range, particularly given how fragile starting sorcerers are.
Magic Missile is more for the Medium range than for anything else, and it still helps to have at least some force damage available when dealing with ethereal targets in particular, and all things considered you could do worse, especially early on. This is still a spell you can drop if you don’t like it - Nerveskitter is the ideal choice otherwise, as +5 Initiative is often an I-Win button in a way that Magic Missile can never be. However, because Nerveskitter will only be cast, at most, once per battle, it doesn't help much in your later combat options (such as Arcane Fusion), and can probably be handled just as well through a chambered wand. (That said, the wand can be dispelled or stolen, while your spell list is safe - if you're in a no-holds-barred environment, actually knowing Nerveskitter is the better option.)
Of course, nothing stops you from retraining between Nerveskitter and a combat spell as you see fit...
Originally I opened with Lesser Orb of Fire, which brings the fire mage theme online sooner, but the low Dexterity score makes that less reliable at this point. Plus, it's kind of poetic opening up with the standard PHB sorcerer starting package spells, don't you think?
[/sblock]2 – Sorcerer
3 – Sorcerer – (Empower Spell) (Lesser Orb of Fire)
*
[sblock]You can take this at 1 if you'd like, particularly if higher point-buy is on the table and you can get your Dexterity up there. The only reason to do so otherwise is if you want a fire spell at level 1. [/sblock]4 – Sorcerer – (Scorching Ray)
*
[sblock] Early on, Scorching Ray packs a decent punch and metamagic fodder; late-game you’ll be using it as tracer rounds to test for SR, Ray Deflection, or fire resistances on several targets. [/sblock]5 – Sorcerer – (Combust, Raging Flame)
*
[sblock] Raging Flame is an example of those nifty fire-only synergy effects: it causes your fire spells to deal +1 damage per die, and doubles the damage from being lit on fire. This little boost is enough to make a Raging-Flame Empowered 1d6/level fire spell deal more damage than a non-Raging-Flame Maximized 1d6/level fire spell - look at the Player's Handbook for clarifying text on Empower that's missing from the SRD which makes it clear how this works. Additionally, it’s a 1st level spell (meaning it can easily be squeezed into an Arcane Fusion later on) with a duration (meaning once it’s up it boosts each fire spell you sling at no extra cost, unlike Firey Spell). Noteworthy, it alters Fire-descriptor spells, not fire damage – a crucial distinction later on. Sadly, it’s an area effect and not a personal buff, so it works best in tight quarters.
Raging Flame is also cumulative with other +1/die effects, some of which you can handle later on through equipment alone. Examples include Caustic Mire (4th), Fire-Subbed Acid Sheath (5th), and Firey Spell (+1 metamagic). All of these per-die damage increases are applied before Empower multiplies the overall damage, and Empower is applied before vulnerabilities further multiply the overall damage. Stack on enough of these and prepare to be amazed.
Combust was picked as a powerful metamagic seed in the original Mailman for a reason (a 2nd level spell that deals a lot of dice of damage with no save is just begging for metamagic); here it just gets more support from fire effects, such as Raging Flame (A single touch isn’t all that impressive with Raging Flame, but its effect compounds as your spell-slinging efficiency improves.) Remember that you can deliver the touch attack for a melee touch spell at any point during the round you cast it, rather than simply as part of the casting itself.
[/sblock]6 – Sorcerer – (Practical Metamagic: Empower Spell) (Body Blaze OR Fireball, True Strike (replaces Sleep))
*
[sblock] A +1 level Empower is kickass for a blaster, and True Strike goes a long way to making sure one of your killer rays doesn't fall victim to a bad roll or high touch AC. (It's a swap at this point because you'll probably lack the spare spell slots to cast it before this - but now that 3rd level spells are available, your 1sts are free to serve as support.)
Body Blaze was picked over typical long-range damage choices because, in my experience, tight spaces and shorter ranges (i.e. dungeon rooms) are more likely to see combat than wide-open spaces, and if you’re in a place where you can’t fly, you’ll need as much help as you can get. Sadly, it’s mostly flat-damage instead of dice-damage (2d6+CL), and it’s technically a buff, so none of your spell support effects really synergize with it directly, which prevents it from being an obvious choice.
That said, it has its advantages and indirect synergy: curiously for an AoE effect, the damage it deals is no-save and SR: No, and it expands freely as you move (allowing you to “kite” monsters through tight spaces as you move and sling other spells, or deal damage with your move action (i.e. tumbling through enemy spaces). Tactically, your other spells support this, as you’re tumbling between targets (close-range rays and Combust) and this blankets the area between them with DoT effects.
If you're in a large, open campaign instead of a common traditional dungeon crawl, though, you'll want a long-range spell, which is the only real reason Fireball's considered at all. It's also a spread, so if you are in a dungeon, it can technically reach around corners, even pulling 180-degree turns if need be. However, since it allows SR and an Evasion-compatible save, it's a backup choice most of the time.
[/sblock]7 – Paragnostic Apostle – (Holy Texts, Lore, Manifest Ethos: Good) (Dispel Magic, Glitterdust, True Casting)
*
[sblock] As mentioned above, blaster builds tend to have a "slow start" problem - during the early mid-level game (i.e. around now), hit points expand beyond what damage can reasonably deal in one spell, and you lack the spell slots and high-level spells needed to compensate. More to the point, this is also when resistances start coming online. That's where Manifest Ethos comes in. Against any evil target (the majority in most heroic games), your fire spells deal half divine damage at no extra cost to you. This is also the same level where clerics start tossing around flame strikes, for what it's worth. Furthermore, these spells all retain the [Fire] descriptor, so they'll still work with Raging Flame.
The ability to start ignoring all resistances at this early point in the build is a huge benefit, even if it is somewhat limited at the moment (only to evil targets). On the positive side, the most deadly foe type that's completely immune to fire would be demons and devils - beings which always fall victim to Manifest Ethos.
Later on, you'll get the Sacred Flame ability, which does everything this does except against all targets. Manifest Ethos will remain useful only if you're planning on using non-Fire energy spells, which is a corner case. If you're not interested in this, and can retrain or rebuild at all after that point, replace this with Energy Supremacy (Fire) for an extra +1 caster level.
Oh, and Glitterdust? You can switch it for See Invisibility depending on your opponents or personal preferences. I like Glitter since it works on guys who are merely hiding, but against truly invisibile targets, See Invis is better.
[/sblock]8 – Paragnostic Apostle – (See Through The Veil) (Dismissal) *
[sblock] The closest you're getting to a "dead level" apart from the oh-so-awful Sorcerer 2.
You're getting Dismissal through the Exorcism domain, which is why the build has 14 Wisdom - you can't cast Dismissal without it. You won't actually be casting Dismissal for its intended purpose - it's a dead weight prerequisite used to get the real prestige classes online early enough. Curiously, it appears that if you picked up a staff containing Dismissal, you'd be able to cast it using your Charisma (as it is a sorcerer spell, just a higher level one). Such a staff may also contain other spells from the Exorcism domain which you might consider useful as well - they're usually not top-shelf picks, but most of them are pretty darn good on their own (and in some cases, such as getting Magic Circle as a 2nd level spell, you're getting a bargain.)
Also, See Through the Veil might be a weird choice now, but check back in two levels.
[/sblock]
9 – Sacred Exorcist – (Turn Undead, Exorcism) (Arcane Thesis: Orb of Fire) (Orb of Fire, Fly, Dimension Hop)
*
[sblock] Orb of Fire is, quite obviously, your mainstay from this moment on. It has a high damage cap (15d6), doesn't allow SR, and lacks a saving throw to reduce its damage. As an Instantaneous Creation effect, you can even hurl these things into antimagic fields and they'll continue to keep the damage flowing. Additionally, it has the potential to Daze a target, meaning your primary blast is also an action-denial machine. Pairing it with Arcane Thesis and Practical Metamagic: Empower Spell means that you can Empower it at an effective +0 metamagic cost; later on it will work quite nicely with your other metamagic options as well.
It's not perfect, though - the wording on Mettle will cancel the damage even though it doesn't allow a save against the damage. (It will still deal damage to undead and objects, subject to the usual energy damage interactions; it's Mettle specifically that will negate the damage.) So, if you're fighting enemy crusaders, hexblades, vigilantes (ha!), hellreavers, kinslayers, argent fists, or Deneith wardens, or anyone equipped with a Tabard of Valor (CChamp, only operates at half HP or less), you will need to fall back on an alternate spell.
Fly is a great support spell for everyone, but (depending on how vulnerable your gear is) might eventually become obsolete. If that's the case, alternative 3rd level support or specialist spells can be chosen instead. Examples include Alter Fortune or Shivering Touch - I consider both to be overkill and Fly to be a solid baseline, though, hence he main-build choice.
Dimension Hop is not entirely necessary here; you can pick a different 2nd if you wish. It's just my favorite standby among the second-level sorcerer spells. If you went with Shivering Touch instead of Fly, though, you might want to rotate Dimension Hop with Spectral Hand. Because Reasons.
[/sblock]10 – Silver Pyromancer – (Pyromancer, Purge Undead)
*
[sblock] Purge Undead is deceptively potent if combined with +turning, +arcane levels (like Sacred Exorcist and Paragnostic Apostle), in effect becoming an AoE, +2d6/level, +1 DC/level, uncapped blast with selective targeting against undead and ignoring undead incorporeal miss chances (and unusually for AoE damage effects, its saving throw type is Will, so Evasion does nothing, unlike, say, Wings of Flurry). Remember that observation that most incorporeals are undead? This is what lets you fry them with ease. If you’re fighting lots of undead early on, this is why you took See Through The Veil earlier, as it boosts your turning level. The biggest problem with Purge Undead later on is that it’s a separate standard action instead of something you can metamagic and squeeze into an Arcane Fusion, so once the action economy enhancers kick in you might have to do some juggling to pull it off.
Experienced optimizers might wonder why I’m taking Silver Pyromancer instead of Sanctified One of Kord if the goal is to deal divine damage with fire spells, as Sanctified One of Kord can pull that off with a one-level dip and is much easier to qualify for. It’s because of other synergies in the Silver Pyromancer, including Purge Undead, the free boosts from Smiting Spell, and the ability to use paladin wands without UMD. The three most noteworthy for you are Favored of the Martyr (most useful in a few levels), Turn Anathema (useful now, particularly with +Turning gear), and Lesser Restoration (since you can get it as a 1st level spell), as well as the generically useful Cure Light Wounds wands (although your team has probably been using these for several levels already).
[/sblock]11 – Silver Pyromancer – (Sacred Flame (half)) (Arcane Fusion)
*
[sblock] This is an absolutely essential spell, and an absolutely essential ability, online at the same time. Fusion can be used to squeeze out True Strike, Raging Flame, or True Cast along with Orb of Fire, Body Blaze, Empowered Scorching Ray (three rays at this point thanks to the Pyromancer ability), or Empowered Combust, all as a single standard action (Metamagic Specialist is needed to employ metamagic in an Arcane Fusion). Half of that fire damage is now pretty much unblockable (even against non-Evil targets now!), but it retains the [Fire] descriptor, meaning effects that alter fire spells (such as Raging Flame) remain useful, while things that specifically alter fire damage does not.
While I’m almost certain vulnerabilities fall in the second category (i.e. a [Fire] spell that deals divine damage would not have its output multiplied), it's possible to argue the reverse (as the description for vulnerability mentions energy effects, not specifically energy damage). If your DM rules the latter, keep your Vulnerability spells in mind; otherwise, now is about the right time to shelve them unless you have nothing better to do or want to strip an immunity.
At this point, Manifest Ethos is worthless to you unless you decide to use an energy spell that isn't fire-related. A few of them are listed below (in the variants section). If that's not up your alley, do what you can to switch around the paragnostic apostle's choices. Energy Supremacy (Fire) is a great fallback, and you did meet the requirements back when you entered the class.
[/sblock]12 – Silver Pyromancer – (Smiting Spell) (Twin Spell) (Firebrand, Celerity, Chain Missile, Spectral Hand)
*
[sblock] There’s a lot going on; let’s take it in order.
Smiting Spell is a free, stackable Empower (limited to your fire spells, but it’s not like you’d want to empower anything else), along with a few other sundry benefits. You can double up on its effect by using it to alter a Twinned fire spell, or by adding it on to another Empowered effect.
Firebrand was picked to give some useful longer-range AoE damage, as it scales rather efficiently and has some truly spectacular targeting for a nuke spell. It does allow a save (and it’s an Evasion-enabled save too) and SR, though, so you’ll probably want to combine it with a Truecast (carried over from a Fusion Orb / Truecast on the previous round) and generally only use it against weaker targets. (It deals damage – with a separate save – on the following round as well, which lets it double as a minor area deterrent. Interestingly, a handful of your effects, such as Smiting Spell, add a rider effect to a failed save (note: any failed save, even if Improved Evasion kicks in), and since Firebrand forces two saves on anyone caught in the initial blast, it gives two chances for such effects to take hold.)
Celerity is of obvious use here. Use your standard to cast Arcane Fusion, link Celerity to some other spell, and then within the Celerity toss out another standard action (possibly even another Arcane Fusion, which can itself contain another Celerity, and so on). While technically you can do chain Fusion/Celerity effects like this until your slots run dry and only get dazed once (at the end of the chain), in my experience it’s much more useful to be able to throttle down and toss these spells out as needed without having to press the “nova” button. That's where the Pyromancer's other well-known ability kicks in: pull out a paladin wand of Favored of the Martyr. Among other benefits, that spell renders you immune to Daze.
Chain Missile (thanks, DeAnno!) is a natural evolution from your Magic Missile, and will be used in largely the same manner (since it's also long-range, no-save, and Force-typed, capable of hitting those rare non-undead incorporeals). You're kind of lacking for good long-range damage, and this spell fits in like a charm. With Metamagic Specialist it can also be Empowered and chucked out of an Arcane Fusion, so if you detect a target at long range with less than 70 HP or so, you can down it with a barrage of force missiles as a single standard action without caring about aiming your rays. Once you get closer, though, your fire abilities will outstrip it.
As you might have gathered, I didn’t have a lot of amazing options for 2nds. Spectral Hand is perhaps your best choice, even though you don't have a lot of touch effects. It lets you deliver Combust (a strong single-target blast) and Dimension Hop (on your allies) at up to Medium range (so Combust now out-ranges Orb of Fire), and it lasts for quite a long time. It also appears to operate off of actual spell level instead of metamagic slot level, so you can use your metamagic freely on that Combust. (If your DM says that it works like Arcane Fusion, and looks at final slot level instead, you're fine: you can still deliver Empowered Combusts via a Spectral Hand.) Notably, this does NOT drain your actions, once you have the hand up: you simply touch with it as if it were you. If you're enjoying this, you should also look into magic items with other touch spells - the dragon-slaying Shivering Touch is the usual preference here.
Basically, Spectral Hand lets you pull off a different flavor of Ocular Spell hijinks on the cheap. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner.
My original choice (and a passable fallback in some games) was Ray of Stupidity. Use it against targets that have immense hit points but relatively low intelligence and no immunity to Int damage; it will either roflstomp targets or be all but useless. It can be barrels of fun if your enemy is mounted but didn’t properly defend their mount.
[/sblock]13 – Silver Pyromancer – (Persistent Fire) (Greater Dispel Magic)
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[sblock] Persistent Fire is largely a cosmetic ability that can be forgotten about, but I’m bringing it up here because at all because it actually synergizes with Raging Flame, which you’re probably already using for other reasons, and with Firebrand (since it forces two separate saves for each target). That said, ignition damage isn’t altered by Sacred Flame, nor is it actually spell damage, so the best it’ll get is 2d6, unmodified – and unlike most ignition sources, it extinguishes itself automatically, so it won’t even have a real chance to hinder their actions. You’ll appreciate this ability if your enemy lacks fire resistance (i.e. if your Vulnerability spell worked), but otherwise it’s just a bookkeeping thing. [/sblock]14 – Silver Pyromancer – (Smiting Spell (Blind) 3/day, Sacred Flame (full)) (True Seeing, Teleport, Dimensional Anchor)
*
[sblock] Full divine damage (plus Raging Flame – it looks to the descriptor, not the damage type) on all of your workhorse spells (which are nearing their caps), plus a huge host of useful support spells.
I’m honestly surprised the original Mailman didn’t mention Dimensional Anchor – I know there’s a lot of good 4ths out there, but the ability to flat-out deny emergency exits without a save certainly merits a mention, especially if you’re already fighting using ray spells. It seems that every single high-CR opponent, particularly among the evil outsiders that you happen to be really good at fighting, has such a teleport available, so being able to shut them down with a single spell (and a spell that you can throw out through either of your Fusion spells, at that) is quite valuable.
If you're not getting Dimensional Anchor, my preferred fallback would be Enervation.
Depending on how secure your equipment is, you might want to replace Teleport with a cheap Belt of Wide Earth (MIC). This limits you to casting it just twice per day, but often that will be sufficient. If you do, you can learn another 5th level spell (such as Acid Sheath, if you have a Fire Sub metamagic rod) in its place. I prefer having Teleport available "as needed", so it's the main build choice.
Also, curiously, this is one of those levels where having a spell that allows a save is better than having spells that don’t. The blinding effect from Smiting Spell ONLY applies if the target fails a save against the base spell; if you throw out a Smiting Combust, for instance, the target won’t be blinded. Orb of Fire has a save (to avoid the daze effect, not to avoid the substantial damage), as does Firebrand (against multiple targets, and it actually forces a save twice, giving you two opportunities to blind, potentially against different targets as people move around.), and both cap at the reasonably high 15d6, so they're both good candidates for your smites.
[/sblock]15 – Paragnostic Apostle – (Penetrating Insight) (Practical Metamagic: Twin Spell) (Arcane Spellsurge)
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[sblock] More textbook Mailman stunts here. Unlike the standard Mailman you don’t have Invisible Spell to alter your support spells to standard actions while under Spellsurge, which changes the dynamic of gameplay a bit – however, you can use Twin Spell on Arcane Fusion itself, which allows it to be tossed out as either your swift or your standard while Spellsurge is up.
Paragnostic also double-stacks for Purge Undead, which should be dealing damage on par with Disintegrate at this point without any real equipment.
Finally, Penetrating Insight helps punch through SR just a little more (even on non-Fire spells), and as a nice bonus augments all your dispels. Check with your DM - as I'm reading this, it modifies the dispel check even if you're hitting the CL cap (i.e. Dispel Magic could dispel at 1d20+6).
[/sblock]16 – Sacred Exorcist – (Detect Evil, Resist Possession) (Limited Wish, Contingency, Wall of Force)
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[sblock] Read up on the Mailman for the proper use of these again; you can use Surge of Fortune with Limited Wish, Contingency is amazeballs with any sort of proper planning (your team should have some method of scrying ahead at this level), and Wall of Force is a surprisingly useful battlefield control spell for those times when your blasting simply won’t work.
Interestingly, Contingency: Arcane Fusion does not require you to specify in advance the spells you’ll cast through the Fusion, making it a very compelling choice. Pick the right trigger and you can trigger any two Fusion-compatible spells you wish on the fly without costing you an action, even if the spells you put in the Fusion aren’t normally compatible with Contingency. If you're not using Arcane Fusion, a fun alternative Contingency pick is "if I am dazed, cast Favored of the Martyr" - you store the companion spell in advance, so you don't need to dig out a wand mid-battle if you employ this.
[/sblock]17 – Sacred Exorcist – (Chosen Foe +1) (Greater Arcane Fusion)
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[sblock] You're probably picking Evil Outsider for your Chosen Foe. Against undead, you've got Purge Undead and your usual fire blasts; the things Chosen Foe boosts are more useful against those tricky outsiders and their frequent SR. Plus, the most common incorporeal non-undead (i.e. the only things that give your divine fire spells a run for their money) are all Evil Outsiders, so you may as well stock up on effects that counter them.[/sblock]18 – Sacred Exorcist – (Dispel Evil 1/wk) (Ocular Spell) (Moment of Prescience, Forcecage)
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[sblock] Noteworthy in that Greater Arcane Fusion can be used to toss out a Dimensional Anchor and a Forcecage at the same time, which is one hell of a shut-up-and-sit-down combo against the right targets. Its expensive material component prevents it from being overused.
Ocular Spell can be kind of bizarre, though it certainly helps with a blaster for obvious reasons, in particular its free-action trigger (which can be “cheated” on to metamagic spells if you load your eyes up while under the effect of Arcane Spellsurge; Metamagic Specialist will work here too, but is better conserved for actual battles) and ability to deploy just about any spell at a distance (notably Orb of Fire or Combust on the straightforward front, or nearly any spell via Limited Wish.). At this level the demand on your actions is intense, so Ocular’s ability to unload a double-barreled doom gaze as a free action make it an outstanding choice.
A possible alternative is Transdimensional Spell, but the foes you’d want to use it against (enemy mages that employ ethereal jaunts for tactical reasons) would need to be common enough to justify the feat choice over an equipment choice (i.e. a runestaff with Ethereal Jaunt, in this case). Ocular’s more of a generalist pick.
However, another alternative exists if you want something more straightforward - Firey Spell. It's a no-nonsense metamagic that I'd really like to have brought online sooner - +1 level for +1 damage/die on fire spells. With Arcane Thesis, this turns Orb of Fire into a wrecking ball even before pairing it with Raging Flame, and it pairs well with Firebrand and Combust as well. If you consider Ocular to be cheesy, Firey is perhaps your best alternative. (I consider Ocular cheesy myself, but a level 18 full caster can't afford to be too picky. I'm already ignoring Incantrix!)
[/sblock]19 – Sacred Exorcist – (Consecrated Presence) (Foresight)
20 – Sacred Exorcist – (Chosen Foe +2) (Mage's Disjunction, Greater Celerity)
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[sblock]Disjunction is both a natural development of your dispels and a useful way to even the playing field at the high levels - though at the range you prefer to operate, it's also a bit risky for you![/sblock]
Sorcerer spells known
[sblock]1. Magic Missile OR Nerveskitter, Lesser Orb of Fire, True Strike, Raging Flame, True Casting
2. Scorching Ray, Combust, Glitterdust, Dimension Hop, Spectral Hand
3. Body Blaze OR Fireball, Dispel Magic, Fly, Chain Missile
4. Dismissal, Orb of Fire, Celerity, Dimensional Anchor
5. Arcane Fusion, Firebrand, Teleport, Wall of Force
6. Greater Dispel Magic, True Seeing, Contingency
7. Arcane Spellsurge, Limited Wish, Forcecage
8. Greater Arcane Fusion, Moment of Prescience, Greater Celerity
9. Foresight, Mage's Disjunction
Plus, as mentioned above, anything you can find on a Drake Helm, Knowstone, Runestaff, or wand (including paladin wands and anything on the Exorcism domain). Good examples include Energy Vulnerability, Ethereal Jaunt, Shivering Touch, or Turn Anathema. If paired with an Energy Substitution (Fire) metamagic rod, also consider Creaking Cacophony, Acid Sheath, Caustic Mire, or Boreal Wind.
[/sblock]
Snapshot: Armed only with +6 items on Cha, Con, and Dex, with +5 Cha, +4 Con, and +4 Dex tomes, we’re looking at 208 HP, +11 base attack (+15 starting point with rays), and saves of +12/+9/+16 for the chassis, and CL 19 (20 for fire spells (or 21, if you managed to swap in Energy Suprmacy), with Penetrating Insight / Chosen Foe / Smiting Spell / True Cast / etc. to take out SR), and DC 20+level sorcerer casting (6/9/9/8/8/8/8/7/7/5 base spell slots). Your baseline turning level is 11; with no equipment, there's also a 30d6, Will DC 36 AoE Purge Undead effect over a dozen times a day; reasonably inexpensive gear can get that much stronger (anything that boosts your arcane caster level (for all purposes, not just fire spells, sadly) or your turning level will improve this pretty dramatically; a Ring of Arcane Might and the permanent turning gear listed above will raise this to 40d6, DC 41 for about 40k - half of that cost is for the ring - and that equipment sees use elsewhere through CL boosting or Turn Anathema, respectively).
With a +1 cost Empower, a +2 cost Ocular, and a +3 cost Twin (-1 to each of those for your Arcane Thesis: Orb of Fire) to employ with 5/day Metamagic Specialist, plus (Greater) Celerity (and the ability to bypass daze immunity via Favored of the Martyr if you need to go nova) and several other spells based around action economy ((Greater) Arcane Fusion, Arcane Spellsurge, Contingency, Moment of Prescience) and specific support for fire spells (Raging Flame, Manifest Ethos (early on, too!), 3/day Smiting Spell, Persistent Fire, and of course Sacred Flame), this build has quite a lot of support for its fire blasting. The main workhorses have no save or SR ((Lesser) Orb of Fire; Body Blaze shares these properties but is largely for show lategame; Combust is no-save but does allow SR) as well as bypass all immunities and resistances short of universal damage immunity, and occasionally have action-economy effects that usually don’t show up on a classical Mailman ‘for free’ (example: Orb of Fire may also daze the target (or blind a target through Smiting Spell), although that’s not the main reason you’re using that spell).
Finally, to combat your more exotic foes (including several evil outsiders, dark mages, and intelligent undead), you've also got some pretty powerful dispels (standard, Greater, and Disjunction, with Penetrating Insight - this appears to actually raise the check even if it's capped out; you can stretch this even further with equipment from the Dispelling & Counterspelling Compilation(x)) and a few spells designed to take out foes capable of teleportation or planar travel (Dimensional Anchor, Wall of Force, Forcecage), plus a few longer-range unavoidable Force blasts (Magic Missile and Chain Missile) to help you tag incorporeal or ethereal foes - or to simply add a bit of variety to the game.
Overall Strengths: On top of the typical “actually able to deliver damage regardless of AC, saves, or SR” aspect of a Mailman blaster? The damage output is higher (a large part of this is how Raging Flame and, more rarely, vulnerability interacts with Empower and Smiting Spell), and the spells often carry special effects at no real cost to you (Dazing, Blinding, Igniting (also augmented, but largely cosmetic), and so on). The major PrC lifting comes from Sacred Exorcist as well, which offers a much better (cleric-based) skeleton than your typical (wizard-based) PrC choices, on top of superfast scaling of Purge Undead and a few sundry class features. Additionally, the use of Manifest Ethos at the first available opportunity helps with the slow start to the early mid-level game discussed earlier. It's not a total solution (as this only helps with resistance or immunity, not raw damage, and even then only against evil targets), but it's a definite leg-up on the traditional blaster approaches.
Also, interestingly, virtually all of the fire support here isn’t actually a “buff” in the traditional sense (the only buffs are Favored of the Martyr, which is only needed if you're pulling out all the stops on a sustained massive nova strike, and Arcane Spellsurge, which is in the same broad category). You could be hit with a Disjunction and you’d still blast more or less as powerfully as I’m describing here. Thus, you don’t need to be quite so paranoid about incoming dispels, as realistically they'd only hit your equipment and/or Spellsurge.
Plus, come on. Fire mages capture the imagination, and it’s downright painful to see how hard they usually suck in standard gameplay. This one actually works. And even the secondary effects all fit well together.
Overall Weaknesses: There's a dearth of long-range spells here (basically, just Chain Missile and possibly Fireball). It was designed for dungeon crawling, not for long-range army-levelling artillery. The reliance on Favored of the Martyr to bypass Celerity's daze effects is a little annoying as well, particularly in the very late game (although I would be tempted to view this as a gentlemen's agreement of sorts: being able to bust open the action economy like that is something that you don't want to take lightly.) Additionally, you only have 5 uses per day of Metamagic Specialist (unless you pick up some hand-me-down +Int gear), which limits your craziest metamagic assaults to significant targets only.
I’m also deliberately holding back in some ways, as I’m not using Incantrix or some of the more obscure methods of making metamagic cheaper, and there’s no +0 slot universal metamagic available to monkey with casting times during Spellsurge (you have to tap into Metamagic Specialist to do that). Enervation is also missing, despite being a useful debuff.
There’s also a hidden weakness in the Silver Pyromancer, in that it loses its class features and needs to atone for any deliberate evil acts you may perform. This isn’t usually that much of a drawback (just think of yourself as an arcane paladin with a much more lax code of conduct and no grim trigger), but it did impact some spell choices. Notably, Avasculate is missing. It’s a spectacular spell for dealing with immense walls of hit points as a blaster (often capable of axing away hundreds of hit points without any arguments, and possibly also hitting their actions), but it’s also an [Evil] spell. (Then again, one could legitimately argue that if any foe has enough HP to endure more than one, or at most two, rounds from a team with a Mailman-styled blaster even without Avasculate, you should probably be fighting it using something other than HP damage anyway. This is why there’s the Greater Fusion (Dimensional Anchor / Forcecage) stunt – it lets you “seal away” your foes for a while.)
Finally, the Paragnostic Assembly has an oft-overlooked restriction of requiring a tithe to remain in good standing, and failure to cough it up will result in expulsion. While the Assembly's granted benefits don't actually help you at all (except potentially borrowing powerful magic items for short-term quests for knowledge), you need to be an active member to use your paragnostic apostle class features, which are essential to the build pre-Pyromancer and quite nice to the build post-Pyromancer. It's not too hard to keep your affiliation score low enough to keep the tithe at 5%, though, and while this does require payment, Wealth By Level rules explicitly ignore this sort of thing (they reflect the value of your actual equipment, not the total amount of money you've received over the course of an adventuring career).
Variants: There’s a lot of flex in the 2nd level spell choices, and the 4th level ones are tight to begin with (I opted for Dimensional Anchor rather than Enervation, for instance, as even though Enervation is an awesome spell, Dimensional Anchor prevents them from escaping, meaning it's you, not them, who sets the time of their death), and they can largely be tailored around as you see fit. I also didn’t really exploit the paladin or Exorcism domain spells: you might want to actually learn Favored of the Martyr as a spell known yourself, so you won't rely on wands. You don't really want Daze immunity until level 12 (when Celerity shows up), and that's also the same level you can start casting Favored if you can squeeze it in to a spell known, Drake Helm, or wand.
If you don't want the Dragonblood subtype, all it will cost you are your Practical Metamagic feats, which hurts a bit but isn't insurmountable. It does open up one of my original ideas, which was to use a dragonmark - any Least Dragonmark and the Mark of the Dauntless feat (Dragonmarked) will render you completely immune to stunning, confusion, and, most importantly, dazing, meaning you can cleanly unload chains of (Greater) Celerity spells without any drawback whatsoever. There's a bit of RP juggling here (usually, people with dragonmarks are under social pressure to work for their House, while this build requires you to work for the Church of the Silver Flame), but this shouldn't require more RP work than fitting a silverbrow human into an Eberron view of dragons.
Another useful feat to consider is Firey Spell (Sandstorm, it's +1 slot for +1/die to your fire spells). With Arcane Thesis, it's free for your preferred Orb of Fire (which has a generous number of damage dice with which to benefit), and is still quite useful for your other major blasts (Firebrand, Combust, and possibly Scorching Ray or Fireball). Adding this on top of Raging Flame makes Empower astonishingly strong - a simple Raging Flame + Firey Empowered Orb of Fire costs a 4th level slot and a 1st level slot (not coincidentally, this is exactly what a 5th level Arcane Fusion can cast, though you need to burn a Metamagic Specialist use on it or pair it with a regular Orb of Fire, with the Firey Empowered orbs coming next round) and deals 124 damage pre-vulnerabilities, which compares favorably to the Mailman's Twin/Maximize Orb of Force trick and is significantly cheaper. (Since Raging Flame has a duration, subsequent Firey Empowered Orbs of Force don't suffer any extra cost to get this benefit.) Depending on your preference, it might be worth replacing Practical Metamagic (Twin) or Ocular Spell to pick this up, and if you're dropping Dragonblood or if flaws are available this should definitely be your choice. (Without Practical Twin, Twin itself becomes, well, impractical; it's in the main build because of synergy with Arcane Fusion as well as the blast effects, even though it's expensive. Without Practical Twin, you might consider an alternative feat in place of Twin itself. Maximize Spell comes to mind, as does Energy Substitution (Fire), for all the rod reasons listed above.)
(In general, +damage/die is always worth considering. I found at least four such things that work with fire available to sorcerers: Raging Flame, Caustic Mire, Fire-subbed Acid Sheath, and Firey Spell. It's thus possible to get +4 damage per die on fire spells, which is added in before Empower multiplies things, which is calculated before a vulnerability kicks in. Stack all of that up and you can get a simple Orb of Fire to dish out over 250 damage from a 4th level spell slot, which is still low enough level to be Twinned. It's nearly 170 damage without the vulnerability, which can be reached with completely irresistible divine damage if you'd like.)
For that matter, if flaws are on the table, you can freely switch around your race into anything else with the Dragonblood subtype that can hit the ability score requirements (i.e. Spellscale). In some cases, this might be liberating fluff-wise: a dragonborn lesser aasimar dedicated to Bahamut and wielding platinum-laced celestial dragonfire against the dark forces of Tiamat would work perfectly here, rather than being a militant arcane templar and exorcist of the Silver Flame.
There you have it. A fire mage archetype brought to life in a way that, I think, doesn't suck and doesn't rely on Incantrix. I'm curious what you all think.
More of these writups to come, as I finish them (read: find time during procrastination / waiting-for-simulations-to-finish to put these together.)
Originally posted by aelryinth:
Tempest, I may be misremembering, but isn't there a feat in Sandstorm that bypasses fire immunity to cause half damage? I'm assuming it would stack with any other half damage feat, meaning you wouldn't need to take the pyromancer all the way through.
..which frees up levels for upping raw damage.
What you really want is some feat that adds +x/die, so your metamagic multiplies higher. Raging Flame is one of those effects. Acid Sheathe altered to fire is another one.
I can't think of any feats off the top of my head that add +x/die. I know there's a feat that adds +2/Spell level, so its a smaller bonus.
Note that there's two anti-evil/undead feats out there, both from Exalted Deeds. ONe is a +1 level stacking Empower against undead (Energize Spell?), the other is a +1 One Die Size Bigger against Evil outsiders (purified or consecrated, I forget). Now, that might not seem much, but combine it with a Maximize, and you're doing 8 pts/die+ other bonuses, which is QUITE respectable. I believe the Exalted wizard PrC gets enough feats to grab both of these.
Just throwing out nuggets for you.
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by NineInchNall:
There are two Sandstorm feats: Fiery Spell and Searing Spell. Fiery Spell adds +1/die damage. Searing Spell makes the spell ignore resistance entirely and half of immunity. Both are +1 slot level.
I'd prefer to avoid the whole thing entirely: Just take advantage of the fact that the Silver Pyromancer's ability is worded thus:
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Except the energy types, according to the DMG, are clearly acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic, and every other instance of divine damage simply says "power", not "energy". I imagine you'd have a harder time getting that to fly with any given DM than you'd have getting the DM to approve the Incantrix - and the Incantrix' cheese is already so strong that I went out of my way to avoid it.
Aelryinth:
I considered Firey Spell for a while, but ultimately having Raging Flame do the same effect but not much up metamagic slot costs or spellcasting timing turned out much better. It's generally not worth it as a +1 level, and anything that lowers metamagic to +0 would trip my cheese radar. Energy Subbed Acid Sheath was suggested as well, but it proved difficult to squeeze it in; it'd be prime drake helm + metarod material though. (All of these are examples of support for fire spells that's hard to find in other spell types: +1 damage per die is rather uncommon, except among psionic powers.)
Searing Spell likewise raises metamagic costs to avoid just a bit of immunities, when I'm interested in free modifications. That's why I avoided any extra metamagic that didn't actually amplify output dramatically; a decent damage spell becomes a lot less decent at +1 metamagic, hence why so many of the feats are Practical Metamagic.
There are other half-divine-half-fire effects out there (eg. Manifest Ethos on the Paragnostic Apostle; its only because of the prerequisites in assorted skills that I didn't do this), and even one very-likely-misprinted full conversion ability (Sanctified One of Kord), but I opted for the pyromancer because of the incorporeality issue (namely, if you can fry undead, you can handle most of the incorporeals you'll ever face) and for other little goodies (Smiting Spell adding more to save effects, for instance, plus being a free stackable Empower).
Regarding the other goodies: Turns out +1 per die often pushes Empower to be better than Maximize. Consider Orb of Fire: 10d6 (35) by default. Empowered orbs deal 10d6*1.5 (52.5); maximized orbs do 60. But, if they're used with Raging Flame, Empowered orbs do (10d6+10)*1.5 (67.5), while maximized orbs do 70. One extra spell level for +3.5 damage is piddly - and that's just with one +1/die effect added on there.
Originally posted by Andarious-Rosethorn:
I hope your cheese radar ignores Metamagic School focus as an exception. Actually even Arcane Thesis while it allows you to do some insane stuff is pretty easily circumvented by making oneself immune to the spell directly rather than attempting to circumvent the energy damage it's causing. Speaking of cheese radar, wow Nail, that interperitation of Elven Spell Lore? Classy.
Originally posted by piggyknowles:
Hmm. I know that Orb of Fire is kind of the gold standard for a reason, but since you're already using RotD, what about Wings of Flurry + Energy Substitution (Fire)? Uncapped damage in a sizable area with a daze rider and no friendly fire concerns is pretty nice.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Evasion. Plus Energy Sub only works on spells with energy descriptors, and Force is no more an energy descriptor than Fear. And since most incorporeals are undead, in most cases, Purge Undead is actually much better (Will, so no Evasion; 2d6/level with any casting/turning class (better than Empower) and is also uncapped; DC increases with CL and turning level, no SR, and only a friendly fire risk if you have undead on your team... Plus tuning level is dirt cheap to enhance after you've got the usual CL booster gear). I do like Wings of Flurry, but 4ths are very tight here (in part because Sacred Exorcist needs Dismissal).
Originally posted by NineInchNall:
But anyway, doing it all through class levels and without using wonky feats like ESL is a worthy challenge.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
The Quick Recovery method is possible as well, although it monkeys with the feat timing (i.e. you'd have to grab Empower and/or Twin long before you have any business actually using Empower and/or Twin) and isn't quite as finessable in terms of the nova throttle (due to the unusual way Arcane Fusion's spells resolve, you can squeeze a Fusion into a Celerity, and cast both spells before the dazing. If one of those two spells is itself another Celerity, you can take a different standard action, perhaps tossing out another Fusion, and so on and so forth until you run out of useful actions to take. Then, all of the dazings come at once. If you're hit with five or six separate "You're dazed for 1 round" effects, you're still only dazed for 1 round).
Fluffwise, I think I'm actually more drawn to the dragonborn variant at the end than the dragonmark/dauntless version, even though this requires Favored of the Martyr. On the plus side, this is one of the few Celerity builds that can actually cast Favored of the Martyr without resorting to UMD or custom/artificer items (probably relegating Dimensional Anchor to a runestaff or drake helm or similar).
(Aside: Arcane Fusion is one of the few places where errata actually did something sane. Until I noticed that, I was terrified of the thought of using Sanctum Spell with this build, turning Arcane Fusion into a 4th level spell and going recursive: Yo dawg, I heard you like fusion, so we put a fusion in your fusion so you can cast while you cast and all that.)
Originally posted by New-Shadow:
You can also qualify with Dispel Evil, which can come from the Good domain through 1 of 2 ways: Arcane Disciple: (any good deity) or the first level of Rainbow Servant from the same book (CD). There are probably other ways to get it, but those are the 2 off of the top of my head.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
It's unorthodox, but my first stab at this emphasized the "holy" part and actually used the domain access CChampion variant. Turns out the Exorcism domain gives access to Dismissal as a 4th as well as a few other cleric-y goodies along the way (including Magic Circle as a 2nd level spell, which is surprisingly potent; while not an absolute standout, it's not bad as far as domain spell lists go, particularly if you're dealing with evil outsiders as your villains), plus it's a perfect thematic fit. However, it proved to be cumbersome in that it stole *way* too many spells known, and for some bizarre reason the exorcism domain ability and the sacred exorcist's exorcism ability are completely independent. Overall, it wasn't worth it.
Originally posted by ObsidianConspiracy:
I do really like this build Tempest, it's just a slight shame Sanctified one gets you the same ability for a one level dip. I'm considering doing a Sanctified one with Holy scourge and the Warmage prc in Age of Mortals.
Still I see the synergy in the abilities and the silver pyromancer abilities do mean you need less in the way of spell longevity in undead heavy situations. Certainly solid and looks like good fun too
Originally posted by NineInchNall:
Favor of the martyr is ... I think it's actually more on the iffy side. After all, it does say that the subject is immune to any effect that would daze. Celerity is the effect that would daze, so ... Yeah. Overall, the dragonmark version is preferable. For many, many reasons.
Every time I see Mark of the Dauntless, though, I can't help but be tempted to go nab Born of the Three Thunders, too. It's a +0 slot level effect, too, and adding prone+stunned to every spell is pretty awesome. It is, unfortunately, incompatible with the fiery design goal of this build. You'd need to pick up Energy Sub(electricity) qualify, and Energy Sub(fire) to change the spell back to fire so it could be used with the Pyromancer ability. Far too much of a feat investment, which makes me sad.
I don't see how the erratum fixes that for a character who has Rapid Metamagic, unfortunately. Unless you mean that "adjusted spell level" prevents it.
Yeah, it's trivial to come up with effective builds relying on equipment, paying NPCs to do the DCFS for you, or abusing the level loss difference engine. The most elegant builds use the fewest possible sources, and they're also the ones least likely to send the DM's BS detector into the red. As you stack source onto source, most DMs' tolerance wears thin. Three non-core books is probably the practical limit for getting things approved.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I don't think the "drawback != good for the game" observation gets enough publicity, but this example shows it perfectly.
(EDIT: Despite the feat intensity, I didn't mention that his build did not use flaws (rather, he was rather creative with dipping to "snipe" feats wherever he could while keeping his casting going). With them, it could probably pull the whole thing off by... about the same time Holy Fire gets its divine damage.)
I've seen him use Mark of the Dauntless on a wilder, which is similar in theme to this except the dazing is less common and it takes fewer feats to pull off. (He used the remaining feats for a Link Power trick that could easily be altered into "Wild Surge nearly any power twice" if we didn't consider that an obvious bug.) Since said wilder prefers electricity on his energy stuns as well, I can't help but think this is where he got the idea from.
Also, it says a lot that this level of feat intensity is downright painful on a wizard... but anyone doing a non-ToB melee build is conditioned to accept about this same degree of feat dependency. This is the nasty converse of the other bit of melee/casting feat conditioning, where melee sees +2 damage as an acceptable prerequisite feat while wizards see "roughly quadruple the number of spells compatible with your build" in the same light.
Originally posted by NineInchNall:
Ah, I thought that's what you meant, but the errata said "spell level" so I thought I should check. I really, really wish that the 3.x authors had taken the time to be clear about spell level vs. slot level. It would have resolved sooooo many confusions regarding metamagic interactions. I feel like more than half of the rules disputes that come up during game time are due to lazy writing like this.
Or from when they decided to write some parts of the game as though for total beginners, eschewing precise game terms (e.g., animal companion hit die advancement). Or when they felt the need to recap some rule when introducing a new one (e.g., invocation casting time). Or when they did the spell inheritance "as X but blah" without being clear which parts were overridden (e.g., the alter self chain).
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
IT LIVES
Quite a nice build. The classe mesh well with the flavor which is extra nice for themed builds.
I really like how you use Turn Undead (well, Purge Undead but it's fueled by TU) to actually fight undead instead of using it to fuel DMM or something
.
Originally posted by DeAnno:
Kudos. This is a wonderful twist on my old build and I agree with a lot of the things you said here; crippling overspecialization tends to be a weakness of most common Mailman builds (a good reason to either avoid Arcane Thesis or take it twice) and you handle that pretty well with some intruiging backup options (Purge Undead
, who would've thought?). Problems of area vs single target, differing ranges, and other problems or boons with various spells really make the selection of actual blasts much more difficult than typical Battlefield Control specialists would guess. Working without the Incantatrix and only in the Ebberon setting instead of Faerun is interesting; Mark of the Dauntless is definitely cleaner than the Rapid Recovery dance I popularized, and iirc I mostly avoided it at the time due to a reluctance to mix campaign settings (that, and being a Kobold already ingame).
Forceward and similar is most certainly a pain, and while I often relied on a non-Force attack for such situations, the difficulty in pre-detection of Forceward is a complex problem convolved with the low duration and general obnoxious limitations of Greater Arcane Sight. Holy Fire is much more difficult for a paranoid or prepared enemy to no-sell and doesn't beg quite as loudly for an inefficient Dispel or Disjunction off the bat simply to remove the possibility. Ray Deflection however is still a giant pain, and puts you in the same kind of situation with Orb of Fire (though ironically, the close range instead of medium means you can at least consistently rely on Greater Arcane Sight if you want with it).
Looking at your spell loadout, you have a lot of goodies but you are hurting for range quite a bit, relying on Firebrand, Magic Missile, and nothing else serious at Medium and out of luck for Long. No enlarge either means you're fairly constrained to operate in close and hot, never as a sniper. That can be just fine, but it might be something to look at in the future (one of the reasons one might tolerate the mediocrity that is Fireball is the Range). Another thing to watch out for on Orb of Fire aside from the range is that sometimes the save effect can be a detriment, since a successful save allows a creature with Mettle to no-sell all your damage as well in a similar manner to Evasion.
On the topic of 9ths, I have fallen out of love with Time Stop and Vortex of Teeth types of shenanigans lately. Mordenkainen's Disjunction is disproportionately useful since most casters with large buff stacks who do not wish to be displelled will be very difficult to beat with Dispel checks due to asymetrical investment of gear, and on a 20th level battlefield those hard Dispel checks can be life and death rolls, rolls you do not have to make with Disjunction. The gear destruction is unfortunate, but often the types of people you will be using it on have very high will saves in any case. Even if one should be lucky enough to pick up a 3rd 9th, I'm actually a little enamored of the utility of the non-calling functions of Gate. It's a glamourous taxi and a one-way 20 foot diameter wall all in one! Using it as a wall in battle probably requires the investment of Sonorus Hum at 3rd, but that also has utility in supporting a free action 1/turn Telekinesis maneuver habit (maybe switching for Teleport, with Gate covering transportation). I know, Gate is often the type of spell that makes a build sort of irrelevant, but using it just for its non-XP draining functions can be a fun inversion.
Back on a more practical topic, the slow start heavy blaster builds have has always been an irritation for me, and I'm glad you mentioned that issue too. War Mage out of the quasi-3rd-party Age of Mortals is worth mentioning in this vein, simply because it is a fairly reasonable PRC to sell that happens to be especially proficient at blasting; many DM's allowing Mark of the Dauntless could probably let it into their hearts. Force Missile Mage is another quick money option, though that has significant problems with punch; if you can lawyer the excellent spell Chain Missile to work with FMM it becomes an interestingly servicable, if probably overspecialized, idea (you might look into including Chain Missile in this build in place of VoT actually, it solves your range and Force issues combined.)
Anyways, this was a fun thread to read, and I hope to see more like it in the future to bring back to mind the old glory days of the 3.5e physics engine.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
And as for Purge, RadicalTaoist observed that pyromancers effectively change it from turn undead into burn undead, fittingly. I was also pleasantly surprised that the Sacred Exorcist I was already using to enter Pyromancer happened to double-stack for this ability, and came with a better class chassis - probably the only case I've ever had where I pick a class for a niche ability and it turns out to be pretty much the perfect fit for almost a majority of the build's open levels.
Interestingly, it's also the only time in an optimization context that I've seen Silver Pyromancer used for its clearly-intended purpose instead of as a way to assimilate the paladin spell list into more powerful casters (the arcane equivalent to the Prestige Paladin). There's even a legit reason to do so: if you're fine with buff rounds, Favored of the Martyr allows this build to work without Mark of the Dauntless (which you honestly don't need until Celerity comes online), and thus allows it to work with any race that can still hit the skill requirements. This effect also allows Turn Anathema to work, which is kind of odd if you have a reasonably high turning level (which you're probably boosting for Purge anyway, since doing so is rather inexpensive; it's natively 10 without any gear): evil outsiders, unlike undead, tend to have HD more in line with their CR and lack anything resembling turn resistance (example: CR 17 Nightcrawlers have 25 HD and an anti-turning aura; CR 20 Pit Fiends have 18 HD and, while they have several defenses against magic (i.e. Unholy Aura's laundry list of defenses), none of them work against turning), so you might actually be able to scare some devils into submission with a basic turn attempt. (I did look for other spells that interacted with turning for this reason, but only Turn Anathema was interesting. There is a paladin spell that lets them turn undead at a much higher level, but it's specifically referencing paladin level instead of caster or character level, so it won't work here.) And this is on a build that wasn't intended to optimize Turn Undead in any case!
What really startled me about this is just how much of a surprise Smiting Spell was, in the context of your usual game against evil foes. A Smiting Firebrand has the DC of a 9th level spell, punches through SR at CL+14 (with the aid of a True Cast (which you'd want against multiple foes, instead of Assay, in this case) and nothing else; considering how native SR averages about CR+10, this is pretty reliable), hits everyone you initially blast with it twice, hits everyone who moves through its area before your next turn again, and blinds just about anyone it hits even before you consider the free Empower (on a spell that caps at 15d6, no less). Evasion will negate the damage, but won't protect against the blinding. It's not spectacular (especially since, oddly, you can't use it unless you're doing half fire and half divine), but for a blast effect, that's still enough to turn heads.
Similarly, working with fire had the fun little advantage of nicely solving the usual empower/maximize arguments, since there's at least three separate ways of getting +1 damage per die on your fire spells (I'm using Raging Flame for all kinds of reasons, but Firey Spell and an energy-subbed Acid Sheath are quite possible with equipment). Normally, even blasters would look over these tiny effects, but even one of them is enough to make Empower nearly as good as Maximize and a whole level cheaper, while two of them puts the average Empower significantly above Maximize. (This is not to knock the Mailman's favoring of reliability with Maximize's fixed value; just an interesting observation.)
That's a good observation on Orb of Fire - I actually forgot the wording on Mettle for this! Thankfully, Mettle itself is only available on a small list of sources - and all of them, I think, are PC class abilities (with only the crusader being common - and let's be honest, if you're trying to kill a crusader with damage, you're in for a fight anyway). Rings of Evasion exist; rings of Mettle do not (to my knowledge).
Gate literally rips the game a new one, but all of that tends to be its summoning ability; as a portal I agree with you it's rather interesting. (The size helps a lot.)
My first stab at this build was an extension of an earlier low-level trick I'd been using involving Firey Burst (which due to sorcerer spell level progressions is almost as awkwardly timed relative to feat slots as Psionic Meditation is!), until I settled on the divine damage approach and realized that higher level fire spells were eating space that could be occupied by valuable support. It turned out to be nearly impossible to pull off, timing-wise, anyway, so it's probably for the best. (It's a feat I really want to like, and think could be actually useful in really low-level or casual formats, but there always turns out to be so much against it in secondary costs that it just never works out for me.)
I hadn't heard of War Mage, but now that I look it up, it does look like an interesting little package. Shame about it requiring three reasonably useless feats to enter and having ability score synergy that rewards sorcerer-style casting (when I see requirements like that, I naturally think duskblade, but that's Int-based), but that's not entirely unworkable - and it also grants a rather spectacular +3 damage per die over five levels. I'm kind of curious now and might play around a bit.
As for Chain Missile, that's a good observation. I honestly hadn't noticed it - spelldiving is not my idea of a good time, so I often miss things like that - and think it'd be a much better fit, overall, than Vortex of Teeth. I'll make the relevant change and credit shortly.
EDIT: In it goes. It'll need a bit of extra support to be a mainstay (as even empowered, it only dishes out a little over 50 damage or so at levels when critters usually average around 200), but it does fit a lot nicer than flying force fish on both a theme and a power front.
Originally posted by aelryinth:
There was errata on the war mage that limited how much you could use the +x/die of damage ability. You might want to look it up. nerfed it hard for blaster builds, as I recall.
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by DeAnno:
For someone willing to invest in Energy Substitution and higher level damage spells, Boreal Wind (Frostburn, 5th) is a strategic scale nuclear weapon which will be greatly improved by the save DC enchancer here, and as always Lightning Ring (Spell Compendium, 8th) is tempting with its free action speed but disasterously inefficient in terms of spell levels and damage.
Lalala, Towers of High Sorcery, I can't hear you, because you aren't on the wizards errata page! I'm aware this is a little hypocritical.
Originally posted by Slagger_the_Chuul:
Originally posted by samcifer:
Cool build. I'll look it over in more detail after the solstice.
Originally posted by Luna_Trigger:
Wow, this is pretty interesting.
I will say, though, that it strikes me as a bit out of the way. It's really cool, but isn't Searing Blistering Fiery easier than the PrC-hopping? I admit it becomes a bit more difficult without flaws, Incantatrix, and/or metamagic storm, but maxed, searing, blistering, fiery orb of fire seems easier and has higher damage, unless I'm missing something. Unless it's carriers you're going for, in which case isn't the Stormcaster abusing descriptor-changers easier?
Finally, on empower vs maximize, isn't maximize superior? As I understand it, Empower with Raging Flame is (Xd6 x 1.5) + X, as the +X is not a variable numeric. Thus, as best I can tell, maximize is strictly superior.
Either way, it's quite cool. I've never seen anyone work with Silver Pyromancer like this before.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Plus, look at the variants - if flaws are allowed (or if you are willing to drop Mark of the Dauntless, and thus are free to switch around the initial feat spent on the dragonmark itself), the build uses Education, which can get the half divine online as early as level 7 with . Honestly, I think this is more "optimal", but it depends on flaws (or giving up Mark of the Dauntless, which I'm not quite willing to do as a main build).
For example, an empowered magic missile deals 1-1/2 times its normal damage (roll 1d4+1 and multiply the result by 1-1/2 for each missile).
The flat damage modifier is multiplied. It's not (Xd6)*1.5 + X, it's (Xd6+X)*1.5. (Or, if you prefer it old-school, in the Magic Missile example above, the random numeric result from a Magic Missile is from 2-5.) With that in mind, check the math - with +1/die, Empower's biggest gap relative to Maximize on an Xd6 spell is a whole 5 points of damage (at 20d6; most damage spells cap long before this, where the gap is even smaller), assuming average rolls. While Maximize is slightly better at every point, it's not "one entire spell level" better at any point - particularly because I'm getting the +1/die from Raging Flame (a single level 1 spell that applies to all fire spells aimed in the area, easily cast from an Arcane Fusion) rather than Firey Spell (an extra +1 spell level per casting). (Remember the context: I was designing this guy for a dungeon crawl.)
Things get even sicker if there's other tricks used (i.e. Acid Sheath + Energy Substitution for direct +X, or vulnerabilities from Energy Vulnerability (or Creaking Cacophony + Energy Sub, which is better but hard to squeeze in to a build like this)). Since Empower is a multiplier instead of a die-fixer, it continues to get stronger if you happen to get these "would be nice" effects, while Maximize doesn't. (Little quirks like this are well-known to fans of psionics, oddly enough, since per-die modifiers with flexible die numbers are kind of the order of the day there.)
Maximize is a great feat in general, but here, the ability to save a spell level without draining extra feats was worth more.
Originally posted by Luna_Trigger:
Also, I'd, rather than argue that it spoils optimizers, I'd say that it helps compensate for the horrid design of the Sorcerer, even if it does go a bit too far in that direction.
Thing is, though, Raging Flame and Fiery/Blistering Spell stack
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I'm with DeAnno (and you) in that I think Arcane Thesis is narrow and encourages overspecialization. On a Mailman build (the classic one or this one), which single spell would be worth the Arcane Thesis? Also, Thesis is more useful with multiple metamagics, and blaster builds are a little starved on that front (especially without Incantrix).
(The rest of your reply I largely agree with. I was trying something different from your typical stormcaster (see reply 14). I concur about stacking other +/die effects, but others can be squeezed in with equipment in all likelihood. And I'm actually more fond of the Education variant than I am of the main build, but I prefer writing these articles for lowest-common-denominator (which is why there's only barest-of-the-bare, only-numeric equipment present in the snapshots).)
As for my remark about 'laziness', I tend to gravitate towards Tier Three as a balance point preference - an intelligent group of players with a team of characters that conform to tier 3's expectations will never be lacking (on their own or as a team) unless the DM sucker-punches them (which realistically should happen occasionally, if only to keep up narrative tension), and won't encourage the kind of arms-race madness that Tier One tends towards. Incantrix - particularly with the Otyugh Hole in play - is so powerful that its use is more or less exclusive of this power level preference. If incantrix is allowed, its use is almost a no-brainer, and if you're using it, you tend to ignore all the sublter, more delicate interactions that it would steamroll. Example from here: You can look at this build and go "wow, that's interesting, I didn't expect that" in regard to the Pyromancer or, to a lesser extent, the Exorcist levels. Or, if Incantrix is allowed, you can just go "Nope, MORE METAMAGIC" and wind up both more powerful and less interesting.
I see limitations on your materials to be true fuel of the fires of creativity. There's no excuse for not knowing what's possible with a full set of tools, but if you limit yourself to actually using only a smaller set of methods, you'll find yourself getting creative. That's why I almost always prefer practical over theoretical builds, and why I'm honestly more fond of the Iron Chef builds on giant than I am of some of the "textbook" builds here. Boring Yet Practical is, well, boring - I prefer keeping things interesting as practical.
Originally posted by Luna_Trigger:
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
It's the subtle, yet important, distinction between having every tool, and using every tool.
Originally posted by Luna_Trigger:
Now, it may not have the dumb, raw power of a straight Incantatrix, but Incantatrix 3 gives you what you really need, being free persists. Everything beyond that is gravy, albeit incredibly delicious gravy. Mindbender for Mindsight because Mindsight is so useful I don't think it needs any introduction. ScM makes up for some of the raw power your forfeiting, as well as adding versatility. Divine Oracle has some nice toys, but you're really here for the rerolls on CoP, and can be cut if you don't feel it.
Basically, the idea behind this build is to do everything better and with incredible flexibility. Metamagic Effect lets you Extend/Persist every buff, so you have a rotating buff routine and have a more flexible list. Depending on your mood, you can choose AbjChamp, Sacred Exorcist, Master Specialist, or really anything else, including more Incantatrix if you feel so inclined, although I don't think it's worth it at this stage.
It's worth noting that I like the adaptions of ScM, just because I have a personal distaste for gnomes, but it doesn't really matter.
Originally posted by aelryinth:
A note that Maximize Spell works better when you increase the die size/type. For instance, Consecrate or Blessed or Sacred (?) Spell increases your die size against Evil Outsiders. In effect, it's +1/die of damage. With Maximize, however, that's +2 per die over a d6 spell, which is substantial once you start stacking dice up.
For Magic Missile, however, Maximize loses -2/die, and is literally .25 hp/die better then Empower, which is to say, not at all.
Also, for undead killing love, another 'sacred Meta' (Consecrate (?) Spell) is a free Empower for spells, that does NOT have Empower's "I don't work with Maximize" language, so it's a straight out +50% buff for +1 Metacost.
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
. Any particular favorites?
And yeah, I agree with that whole post. Classes like Abjurant Champion and Druid aren't my preferred bases for optimization at all.
Originally posted by Gazzien:
Wonderful to see these back again (and congratulations on being cancer-free~)!
I really like the focus of this build; I had a Sorcerer metamagic-abusing Firebrand a while back, but it fell into the "Yeah, it'll kill anything in one shot, but it's boring..." trap. I like this far more!
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Firebrand has a few surprises here beyond its amazing targeting. It's pretty bland on face value (SR: Yes, Reflex Half, fire damage, the trifecta of "nonono"), but when you look at it as a Smiting Spell, it can hypothetically blind the people it hits as well as anyone who moves through the area you hit between now and your next turn; these people are also likely to be set on fire (augmented by Raging Flame - I sincerely wish Persistent Fire wasn't 1-round limited, as this would allow fire spells to continue to drain HP until the target took an action to put the fires out, but I digress) as well. Adding on other metamagic only makes this harsher (Twin is even better than most here).
DeAnno's suggestion of considering Boreal Wind via Energy Substitution is another interesting one, particularly if you're alone against a number of foes. Consider casting that from a staff (so it benefits from everything you've got) with a metamagic rod (switching it to fire) and set it up just before combat. This'll not only dish out pretty impressive divine damage (a literal divine wind, if you will) but will also interfere with all forms of mundane movement (it's a sustained gust of wind, which is equivalent to a severe wind, which checks (blocks) the movement of all Medium-sized creatures and knocks down all Small creatures) and, if you set it as a Smiting Spell, will also continually attempt to blind them every round. If you're using Holy Fire as a BBEG-styled fight (Eberron can easily use misguided Lawful Good types as villains), this is going to be an interesting hurdle.
Originally posted by Scraggled:
I've got a couple of questions about the build. How do you get Dismissal as a 4th level Sorcerer spell? Also: How do you qualify for Practical Metamagic without the Dragonblood subtype?
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
The first version of this used Domain Access (from Complete Champion) to get the Exorcism domain, which has Dismissal as a 4th. (It also brought a few other cleric-style effects to the table, which are nice, but since that ACF, for some reason, completely locks in your first spell choice of each spell level, it really ate into spells known late-game, which is why I ended up dropping it). It looks like when I dropped it, I didn't correct for dismissal's level change.
As for the Practical Metamagic bit, that's a literal slip-up on my part. I've been working off of my notes, and I didn't write down that this required dragonblood.
EDIT: This table will be the corrected build. It uses Silverbrow Human (dragonblood + bonus feat), and needs 14 Wisdom. It drops the dragonmark (use a wand of Favored of the Martyr; you'll be able to activate it without any checks by the time Celerity is available) in exchange for Arcane Disciple (lowers the spell level on Dismissal) and an extra level of Paragnostic Apostle (which gives you half divine damage against evil targets much earlier, which should really help with the slow start DeAnno and I discuss above.)
Sadly, the lack of a bonus skill point also means that it still requires 14 Intelligence to have enough skill points to hit the requirements on time, which either means that Dexterity drops to 8 (on a ray blaster - this is painful early on) or the point-buy increases.
On a positive note, the narrative gets even more coherent, and the Exorcism domain is surprisingly good in terms of what spells you gain (time to shop for a staff). The spell progression is identical (except for Mage's Disjunction; it's problematic but it really is the best choice both mechanically and thematically), so the altered writeup will be almost unchanged.
Originally posted by Scraggled:
Another little thing that I noticed: Rapid Recovery, mentioned in the Variants section, isn't the feat you're looking for, I don't think. Rapid recovery lets you use Vestige abilities slightly more often. The feat you're looking for is Quick Recovery, ff I'm not mistaken, from Lords of Madness.
Sorry to poke mostly-meaningless holes in things, but I'm a stickler, and had a helluva time trying to find a "Rapid Recovery" that did what was advertised.
Edit: I do, however, really like the build. It's refreshing to see a working fire mage, something that I'd been messing around with recently myself. I was going with Sanctified One, but I much, much prefer this build, and the flavor that comes along with it.
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Also, your feedback has allowed me to figure out a way to correct the build - I've edited the table in my previous reply to show how it worked out. It gives up the dragonmark in exchange for being Silverbrow Human, but it also manages to keep the original spell progression and work in an extra level of Paragnostic Apostle earlier, meaning access to half divine damage (against evil foes) at level 7 (and an extra turning level, which boosts Purge just a little more). That should help with the blasters' slow start quite nicely. (And I sincerely hope DeAnno sees that.)
The main post has been updated to account for this. I really like how it's been tweaked, by the way.
Originally posted by DeAnno:
Some of these nitpicks are things I should have seen, sorry about that. In particular the whole racial tangle is an annoying dance I've danced before, with no real good solution to simultaneously wanting Dragonmarks and the Dragonblood subtype (in theory a Silverbrow Human could be Dragonmarked but it stretches the rules uncomfortably.)
I always found Arcane Disciple to just be unbelievably painful. Casting off wis, not getting known spells, only getting the stupid spells once per day, etc etc. Maybe consider Axiomatic or Celestial bloodline from Dragon Magazine Compendium? You still get Dismissal as a 5th, but don't have to learn it and get a bunch of other spells known too, and they both fit with the fluff. I know Dragon Mag is always ugh but I view the Compendium as a cut above.
Axiomatic is particularly awesome actually, with Dismissal, True Seeing, Forcecage, and Discern Location all lined up just like that for the taking. Most of my castle in the sky Sorcerers these days take a DMC Bloodline feat, if only because the low amount of Sorcerer spells known in 3.5 is pretty punitive. (Air Bloodline is 75% of the reason I am so excited in general by the whole Telekinesis/Sonorous Hum thing, especially because it also comes with an option on Summon Monster VIII/Summon Elemental Reserve feat). It does cause a delay in Sacred Exorcist but really Arcane Disciple of all things is a huge amount of pain to go through for early entry by 2 levels, even with the whole ponderous slow blasting build problem. Taking Dismissal as your first actual 4th level spell is toxic enough to those middle levels anyway in my opinion, making the speeding ahead thing even less palatable.
EDIT: Some stealth editing happened while you were quoting, where I mainly moaned some more about Dismissal and gushed about Axiomatic Bloodline.
And yeah, Boreal Wind is insane. It's balanced sort of due to not being great at symmetric warfare, but still.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Still, I'll look into them for interest's sake.
Also, the main post has been updated. Dropping the dragonmark (using Favored of the Martyr whenever daze immunity is needed - I'd view this as a gentleman's agreement not to break the action economy open unless your team is in waaaay over their heads) opened way to getting an extra Paragnostic Apostle level, and getting it in earlier. This enables Manifest Ethos at 7th level - in other words, you get the ability to deal half divine damage with your fire spells against all evil targets (read: devils and demons, particularly) right around the same time that damage builds tend to slow down. (It also solves the fluff problem of why a marked heir would be this heavily involved with the clergy instead of with house business.) Later on, once Sacred Flame comes online, you can either argue to retrain that to Energy Supremacy (Fire), or you can continue to use Manifest Ethos on other energy spells from a staff (such as Boreal Wind - great suggestion, by the way). And as sweetener, that's an extra turning level.
Originally posted by Scraggled:
Edit:
Unless I'm mistaken, you've got 1 too many 1st level spells known. I might be missing something, but a Sorcerer only ever gets 5 spells known for 1st level.
The name's more for legacy, at this point, I'm afraid, as this is more likely to be a sporadic thing than a regular feature. In this case, I just happened to have a mostly-finished writeup ready and happened to be discussing this very problem with another player, so I figured, why not put something new(ish) up?
As usual for the showcase, these builds are intended to spur discussion and perhaps inspire a few people in the spirit of the old CO boards. They come from members of my gaming group - me, Radical Taoist, DisposableHero_, Andarious, Sionnis, and Seishi - and I'll always identify who wrote the build at the start, so do not assume I'm the guy behind all of them (because I'm not!).
Unless otherwise noted, showcase builds use 28 point-buy, and have their snapshots evaluated using fractional base attack / saves (because it simplifies the math). None of them actually rely on fractional to be built, though. The format I use showcases their progression at key levels rather than just presenting the build and showing off a few tricks at level 20; most of these are capable of being played 1-20 if you so choose.
With that out of the way, let's get started. This week, we’re getting one of mine.
EDIT: The first stab at this had two pretty serious errors, which I'm fixing now. Thanks to Scraggled for catching them. In all honesty, I like this version better. Further revisions occurred thanks to discussion in this very thread, with Luna Trigger.
------------------
HOLY FIRE
Just getting warmed up!
Required Books: Eberron Campaign Setting, Five Nations, PHB2, Complete Divine, Complete Champion, Spell Compendium, Races of the Dragon, and Complete Mage. Most of these only hold one or two spells, or one feat, required to pull this off.
Unearthed Arcana used: None!
Background: This started out as a simple challenge: Could I take the classic “fire mage” archetype and make it not suck? It turned out to be more interesting than I thought.
We’re all familiar (or should be familiar!) with the Mailman(x), the archetype for a direct-damage sorcerer. (If you haven’t read it, read it now; consider this showcase a tutorial on how to build a mailman using different design priorities. I'm just giving credit where credit is due!) The higher levels here are similar in terms of spell strategy. However, the Mailman had a weakness in that Force damage, while hard to resist, is actually pretty easy to outright block (Forceward from the Spell Compendium). Granted, a good Mailman can properly knock that defense down (one of many reasons you pack Dispels), but doing so takes time, and even then there’s rare creatures that are completely immune to force to begin with (thankfully, these are CR You're-Never-Fighting-This-Ever, but it does mean there's still a few places that the mailman cannot Deliver The Mail). Additionally, blaster builds usually have a "slow start" problem - most of the ways to resist damage (energy resists and SR in particular, high HP as well) begin to be a problem around level 6 or so, while most of the really good ways to punch through all that (action economy boosts and metamagic cheese) usually shows up much later than this. Blaster builds, including the Mailman, often have problems scaling if they're being played from low levels, especially if they're sorcerers (who are already a spell level behind their wizard companions).
This build, on the other hand, made one key observation: Once you get past the resistance / immunity issue, several fire spells are actually quite good at what they do (example: even the Mailman uses Combust, and of the Orb of X spells, fire has the best rider effect), and there’s a few ways to boost fire spells specifically (probably because they are so commonly resisted). The trick then is to find an inexpensive way to make the energy damage even more irresistible than Force damage. One way of doing this is to simply change the spells’ damage type to something that basically nothing resists - and the only damage type I know of that has this property is divine damage (think Flame Strike). In fact, I only know of a single ability open to non-deities that can block it (and it belongs to the Defiant, an obscure, semi-setting-specific, and not-all-that-amazing prestige class from the Planar Handbook), without delving into “total immunity to all damage” realms. There’s at least three ways I know of to convert half of your fire damage into divine damage already (and some allow 100% divine damage), so it’s not like this is an impossible goal. Some of them can even come online reasonably fast, helping with the "slow start" problem quite nicely.
One simple example advantage for fire spells is that fire vulnerability is a thing. The traditional Mailman build could not exploit energy vulnerabilities, but if we're sticking to fire damage, we can. There's a couple ways to do this, such as Energy Vulnerability or Energy Substitution (Fire) + Creaking Cacophony. If you can take the time during a big encounter to set up a vulnerability, do it - not only does it dramatically increase your damage output, it also saves you spells: you need fewer spells to dish out the same damage, which also means that the battle ends a few spells early. It can also remove an immunity - and since one of the ways we're dealing divine damage goes half-and-half with fire damage, stripping a fire immunity away can be quite important, particularly in the mid levels (it's effectively doubling your damage). Don't do this all the time, but if you need a really big gun and you think you can get your vulnerability set up, do it. However, since fire vulnerability (probably) won't apply to divine damage, and since it will usually only matter on foes with overpoweringly high amounts of hit points, and is more useful the greater the enemy's resistance to fire, I'm fine relegating establishing vulnerability to equipment, instead of a spell known. We shouldn't forget about it, but it isn't central to our tactics most of the time.
Of course, you still need some method of dealing with incorporeality (a key benefit to Force spells), but this also has a statistical observation: The overwhelming majority of incorporeal foes are also undead. In the SRD, all of the incorporeals are undead. Expanding the list to every 3.5 published source(x) (except for non-Eberron setting-specific material), we find that the comprehensive list of non-undead incorporeals is disturbingly small. Thus, if you’re packing an anti-undead ability that bypasses their incorporeal miss chance, you’re set against incorporeality in all but the most rare of cases (and when we see a gap that rare cases can squeeze through in D&D, we usually plug that gap with equipment). We’ll still pack a small number of Force effects as they remain good choices in general, but you don’t need to go for broke on them if your main worry is relatively rare non-undead incorporeal miss chances.
Finally, we have a personal observation: I think the Incantrix is stupidly powerful, and consider its use unsporting. I’ve also seen it flat-out banned in a few places, probably also for its immense power boosts. For this reason, it’s worth trying to assemble a blaster without Incantrix. (We’re also using Eberron material, and I’d rather not mix settings if a single-setting solution exists.)
Put these three observations together, and a new build idea practically writes itself. It’s just a matter of tuning from that idea, and then presenting the results.
The basics of the build involve classic Mailman action-economy / defense-breaching tactics, but with all of the damage being all but completely irresistible divine damage, with the option of switching (either completely or halfway) back to fire on the fly if your foe isn’t immune and you want a few extra fire-specific synergies to kick in. It also attacks foes’ actions while it does this, but that’s not its main goal.
The Basics
- Race: Silverbrow Human. You need the Dragonblood subtype and a bonus feat. On a fluff note, this at least keeps the slight affinity between dragons and sorcerers that the game seems to love, although you might need to get creative given how dragons work in Eberron.
- Ability Scores: 8/8/14/14/14/16 with 28PB is our starting point. Unsurprisingly, every ability score pump goes into Charisma. 14 Wisdom is required for a prerequisite, which hurts, but also qualifies us for the Paragnostic Assembly. You need 13 Intelligence for our skill requirements, and since Metamagic Specialist is also fueled by Int, we may as well go for 14. The low Dex will hurt your ray casting early on, but at least you're aiming at touch AC. Higher PBs put more into Dexterity (can get it to 12 with 32 PB), lower PBs might get away with lowering Charisma (reduce it to 14 for 25 PB).
- Alignment: Lawful Good. You also need to belong to the Paragnostic Assembly (Int or Wis 13, 3 ranks in two Knowledge skills – plus you need to set a place for it in Eberron. I’d suggest the Twelve or the Library of Korranberg), worship the Silver Flame, and have the sanction from the church to work as an exorcist. Pretty much all of this is pretty consistent with a smart Silver Pyromancer’s stock flavor. The Silver Pyromancer itself also has a mild code of conduct that bars deliberate Evil actions, which impacts your tactics slightly.
Skill Notes: Your first skill points go to Spellcraft (max it, until at least 9 ranks) and to Knowledge skills: 5 in Arcana, 5 in The Planes, and 8 in Religion. Once you become a paragnostic apostle, put 5 more ranks in The Planes (and eventually squeeze at least 2 more into Arcana). Once you hit the Knowledge requirements, the rest of the skill points go to Concentration; Spellcraft and Knowledge can be boosted to taste. After this, your skills are more or less open, although you might want to consider pumping Tumble cross-class, especially if you adventure in close quarters (again, the classic dungeon crawl).
Basic Equipment: It's hard to get less equipment-dependent than the Sorcerer. It doesn’t matter whether you’re decked to the nines or wearing a fig leaf so long as you’ve got at least one component pouch. That said, once you can turn undead, definitely invest in a Flametouched Iron holy symbol; it’s dirt cheap and the extra turning level helps.
Magical Gear Goals: This section got a little long in the revision, so I've switched to a list format.
- Initiative gear (Belt of Battle, Ring of Anticipation, +1 Warning gauntlet chambered with a Nerveskitter wand, Sandals of the Vagabond, etc.)
- Vision effects (especially at lower levels - the Scout's Headband or Raptor's Mask are bargains from the MIC. You need to be able to notice and target things that are trying very hard to not be noticed or targeted.)
- Horizon Goggles (Complete Mage, 8k). Unlike the classic Mailman, many of our rays are close range. These cheap goggles provide the impossibly good benefit of doubling all your ray ranges. You didn't misread that - and you will be buying these.
- CL boosts (important, indexed here(x), but since several of your spells are instantaneous, SR:No, and capped, you don't need to be as crazy with this as most mages. The best generalist choices are the Orange Ioun Stone (30k), Ring of Arcane Might (20k), and Ring of Mystic Fire (7500, fire spells only, also includes charges that boost overall fire damage))
- Metamagic rods (especially Energy Substitution: Fire), Rings of Wizardry, etc. (Every spellcaster wants these)
- A Tumble booster (optional, most useful in really tight quarters.)
- Spell knowledge expanders, such as a Drake-Helm, Runestaff (or, if Dragon material is available, Knowstones).
- Unique to this build, you've got plenty of countermagic effects, and should probably consider equipment listed in the Dispelling & Counterspelling Compilation(x) when going shopping.
- Additionally, +Turning Level items pack a surprising wallop for a relatively low price, although you don’t want to invest too much in this unless you're fighting undead frequently.
Equipment that boosts turning level
[sblock]Unless otherwise noted, these are persistent effects, sorted by price.
Flametouched Iron Holy Symbol (EbCS, +1, 750, slotless, nonmagical)
Ephod of Authority (MIC, +1, 800, Torso*)
Talisman of Undead Mastery (MIC, +2/+3/+4**, 3000, Throat)
Scepter of the Netherworld (LM, +3, 9000, Held)
Phylactery of Undead Turning (DMG, +4, 11000, Throat)
*Part of the Vestments of Divinity set, marketed to paladins or clerics. Some of the set might interest you but it isn't a must-have.
**Charged item, 3 daily charges, swift action to use.
There's also the Sacred armor/shield ability (BoED, +2, +2 enhancement cost), but this is almost certainly too expensive for our purposes. Similarly, some effects that might be useful for actually Turning Undead (such as the MIC's Rod of Defiance, which treats nearby undead as having fewer HD) won't be useful for us, since our preferred uses for turning level never reference the enemy undead HD.
Without eating into actions or conflicting with slots, you can get +9 to your turning level pretty cheaply. This boosts our build up to 20th effective turning level for a little over 21k, which could be a useful investment if you're fighting lots of undead or making frequent use of Turn Anathema (see below).
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You also have access to the entire paladin spell list, as well as the (surprisingly good, but not standout) Exorcism domain through spell trigger items, so you may want to invest in a staff or a few wands. (The actual "domain staff" from Complete Champion won't work, since it's divine-spell-only, but a normal staff holding the desirable spells is a possibility.) There are three paladin spells in particular you'll want to buy: Lesser Restoration (it's a damn useful spell in general, but as a paladin spell, it's 1st level), Favored of the Martyr (you need this if you want to unleash your full power late game; thankfully, the need to set this up acts as a natural leash, preventing you from breaking the action economy all willy-nilly), and, surprisingly, Turn Anathema (from Complete Champion; if you invest in +Turning gear anyway, this wand allows you to turn (but not destroy) [Evil] or [Chaotic] creatures as if they were undead. This is noteworthy in that undead tend to have higher HD than their CR, while most non-undead [Evil] or [Chaotic] creatures, such as outsiders, tend to have HD comparable to their CR (and they lack turn resistance), in effect being much easier to turn, and lack any immunity to the Turned condition (it's not a fear effect). It's also kind enough to let you make one such turn attempt during the spell's casting.). None of the wands are terribly critical to the core strategies, but can add some cost savings or unique options to the build’s actual gameplay.
Unique: Fire Sub shenanigans
[sblock]If you pick up a metamagic rod of Energy Substitution (Fire), you should also look into staffs, runestaffs, or drake-helm dragonshards containing non-Fire energy spells, both offensive and support. This can be used to pull non-Fire support spells onto your Fire blasts with ease, or to apply your divine-damage conversion effects to a wider range of energy spells.
The best of these for you is probably Creaking Cacophony (Bard 3; the Drake-Helm is not limited by spell list, so it will work), which adds a no-save Sonic vulnerability to a large area, in addition to forcing Concentration checks on enemy casters - swapping this to a Fire vulnerability can produce truly amazing effects. Vulnerabilities multiply damage, but they do so in a way that causes everything, including bonus dice and per-die bonuses like Raging Flame, to multiply normally, unlike standard D&D damage multiplication (i.e. against a vulnerable target, normal spells deal 150%, Empowered spells deal 225%, and Empowered Smiting spells (see below) deal 300% damage, and that's after all other modifications to damage dealt are applied). Vulnerabilities also cancel out immunities, which can be quite useful before you get your full divine damage abilities.
If your DM dislikes cross-list Drake-Helming or if you can't find Cacophony, a passable alternative is Energy Vulnerability (SpC, Sor/Wiz 3); unlike Cacophony, it can be blocked, so it will eventually go stale.
Another noteworthy choice is Acid Sheath (SpC, Sor/Wiz 5). Not so much for its retributive damage, but rather because it adds +1 damage per die to your [Acid] spells, and thus +1 damage per die to your [Fire] spells if subbed. This is cumulative with Raging Flame, and since it affects you instead of an area, it works better if you're on the move. (If a fire version of this existed naturally, it would probably replace one of the other 5ths in the main build.)
You can get a similar effect with Caustic Mire (CMag, Sor/Wiz 4), which, like Raging Flame, is an AoE effect that adds +1 damage per die to fire damage (though it doesn't last as long and isn't as big an area). Unlike Raging Flame, this one also affects ignition damage (so if you set someone on fire within both Raging Flame and Caustic Mire, they take 2d6+2 damage each round the ignition lasts), deals some damage of its own (1d6 per square entered, or 1d6 if they don't move), and slows ground movement within the area. Fire subbing this sets the damage type to Fire (which you can switch over to divine damage in time), and the damage is also no-save, SR:No. However, unlike vulnerabilities, it specifically references fire damage, and not [Fire] effects.
DeAnno (the author of the original Mailman) noted, downthread, that there's a few other nifty spells to pick if you take this route. Perhaps the niftiest, to me, is Boreal Wind (Frostburn, Sor/Wiz 5), which is natively Cold. It's a 20-foot-wide, 20-foot-high, out-to-Long-range Gust of Wind effect with a decent duration that deals 15d4 damage per round in the line (and can be redirected as a move action); a Fire-substituted version of this is a good candidate for all of your metamagic, divine damage conversion, and your Smiting Spell effect. As an emanation, it moves with you, so it's pretty easy to keep this damage flowing as you approach defended positions or hold the high ground.
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The Build.
Build Stub: Sorcerer 6 / Paragnostic Apostle 3 / Sacred Exorcist 6 / Silver Pyromancer 5.
1 – Sorcerer – (Metamagic Specialist) (Education, Arcane Disciple: Exorcism) (Magic Missile OR Nerveskitter, Sleep)
*
[sblock]Both of these feats are taxes that make the PrC prereqs simpler to meet, aiding with the "slow start" problem. Thankfully, they're at least fluff-consistent: an Educated individual would be more welcome in the Paragnostic Assembly, and exorcism is a logical area of study for arcanists of the Silver Flame.
Sleep is the usual long-range game-ender spell at level 1, so there's no arguments about including it. If you really want to, you can swap it for Color Spray, but I appreciate the longer range, particularly given how fragile starting sorcerers are.
Magic Missile is more for the Medium range than for anything else, and it still helps to have at least some force damage available when dealing with ethereal targets in particular, and all things considered you could do worse, especially early on. This is still a spell you can drop if you don’t like it - Nerveskitter is the ideal choice otherwise, as +5 Initiative is often an I-Win button in a way that Magic Missile can never be. However, because Nerveskitter will only be cast, at most, once per battle, it doesn't help much in your later combat options (such as Arcane Fusion), and can probably be handled just as well through a chambered wand. (That said, the wand can be dispelled or stolen, while your spell list is safe - if you're in a no-holds-barred environment, actually knowing Nerveskitter is the better option.)
Of course, nothing stops you from retraining between Nerveskitter and a combat spell as you see fit...
Originally I opened with Lesser Orb of Fire, which brings the fire mage theme online sooner, but the low Dexterity score makes that less reliable at this point. Plus, it's kind of poetic opening up with the standard PHB sorcerer starting package spells, don't you think?
[/sblock]2 – Sorcerer
3 – Sorcerer – (Empower Spell) (Lesser Orb of Fire)
*
[sblock]You can take this at 1 if you'd like, particularly if higher point-buy is on the table and you can get your Dexterity up there. The only reason to do so otherwise is if you want a fire spell at level 1. [/sblock]4 – Sorcerer – (Scorching Ray)
*
[sblock] Early on, Scorching Ray packs a decent punch and metamagic fodder; late-game you’ll be using it as tracer rounds to test for SR, Ray Deflection, or fire resistances on several targets. [/sblock]5 – Sorcerer – (Combust, Raging Flame)
*
[sblock] Raging Flame is an example of those nifty fire-only synergy effects: it causes your fire spells to deal +1 damage per die, and doubles the damage from being lit on fire. This little boost is enough to make a Raging-Flame Empowered 1d6/level fire spell deal more damage than a non-Raging-Flame Maximized 1d6/level fire spell - look at the Player's Handbook for clarifying text on Empower that's missing from the SRD which makes it clear how this works. Additionally, it’s a 1st level spell (meaning it can easily be squeezed into an Arcane Fusion later on) with a duration (meaning once it’s up it boosts each fire spell you sling at no extra cost, unlike Firey Spell). Noteworthy, it alters Fire-descriptor spells, not fire damage – a crucial distinction later on. Sadly, it’s an area effect and not a personal buff, so it works best in tight quarters.
Raging Flame is also cumulative with other +1/die effects, some of which you can handle later on through equipment alone. Examples include Caustic Mire (4th), Fire-Subbed Acid Sheath (5th), and Firey Spell (+1 metamagic). All of these per-die damage increases are applied before Empower multiplies the overall damage, and Empower is applied before vulnerabilities further multiply the overall damage. Stack on enough of these and prepare to be amazed.
Combust was picked as a powerful metamagic seed in the original Mailman for a reason (a 2nd level spell that deals a lot of dice of damage with no save is just begging for metamagic); here it just gets more support from fire effects, such as Raging Flame (A single touch isn’t all that impressive with Raging Flame, but its effect compounds as your spell-slinging efficiency improves.) Remember that you can deliver the touch attack for a melee touch spell at any point during the round you cast it, rather than simply as part of the casting itself.
[/sblock]6 – Sorcerer – (Practical Metamagic: Empower Spell) (Body Blaze OR Fireball, True Strike (replaces Sleep))
*
[sblock] A +1 level Empower is kickass for a blaster, and True Strike goes a long way to making sure one of your killer rays doesn't fall victim to a bad roll or high touch AC. (It's a swap at this point because you'll probably lack the spare spell slots to cast it before this - but now that 3rd level spells are available, your 1sts are free to serve as support.)
Body Blaze was picked over typical long-range damage choices because, in my experience, tight spaces and shorter ranges (i.e. dungeon rooms) are more likely to see combat than wide-open spaces, and if you’re in a place where you can’t fly, you’ll need as much help as you can get. Sadly, it’s mostly flat-damage instead of dice-damage (2d6+CL), and it’s technically a buff, so none of your spell support effects really synergize with it directly, which prevents it from being an obvious choice.
That said, it has its advantages and indirect synergy: curiously for an AoE effect, the damage it deals is no-save and SR: No, and it expands freely as you move (allowing you to “kite” monsters through tight spaces as you move and sling other spells, or deal damage with your move action (i.e. tumbling through enemy spaces). Tactically, your other spells support this, as you’re tumbling between targets (close-range rays and Combust) and this blankets the area between them with DoT effects.
If you're in a large, open campaign instead of a common traditional dungeon crawl, though, you'll want a long-range spell, which is the only real reason Fireball's considered at all. It's also a spread, so if you are in a dungeon, it can technically reach around corners, even pulling 180-degree turns if need be. However, since it allows SR and an Evasion-compatible save, it's a backup choice most of the time.
[/sblock]7 – Paragnostic Apostle – (Holy Texts, Lore, Manifest Ethos: Good) (Dispel Magic, Glitterdust, True Casting)
*
[sblock] As mentioned above, blaster builds tend to have a "slow start" problem - during the early mid-level game (i.e. around now), hit points expand beyond what damage can reasonably deal in one spell, and you lack the spell slots and high-level spells needed to compensate. More to the point, this is also when resistances start coming online. That's where Manifest Ethos comes in. Against any evil target (the majority in most heroic games), your fire spells deal half divine damage at no extra cost to you. This is also the same level where clerics start tossing around flame strikes, for what it's worth. Furthermore, these spells all retain the [Fire] descriptor, so they'll still work with Raging Flame.
The ability to start ignoring all resistances at this early point in the build is a huge benefit, even if it is somewhat limited at the moment (only to evil targets). On the positive side, the most deadly foe type that's completely immune to fire would be demons and devils - beings which always fall victim to Manifest Ethos.
Later on, you'll get the Sacred Flame ability, which does everything this does except against all targets. Manifest Ethos will remain useful only if you're planning on using non-Fire energy spells, which is a corner case. If you're not interested in this, and can retrain or rebuild at all after that point, replace this with Energy Supremacy (Fire) for an extra +1 caster level.
Oh, and Glitterdust? You can switch it for See Invisibility depending on your opponents or personal preferences. I like Glitter since it works on guys who are merely hiding, but against truly invisibile targets, See Invis is better.
[/sblock]8 – Paragnostic Apostle – (See Through The Veil) (Dismissal) *
[sblock] The closest you're getting to a "dead level" apart from the oh-so-awful Sorcerer 2.
You're getting Dismissal through the Exorcism domain, which is why the build has 14 Wisdom - you can't cast Dismissal without it. You won't actually be casting Dismissal for its intended purpose - it's a dead weight prerequisite used to get the real prestige classes online early enough. Curiously, it appears that if you picked up a staff containing Dismissal, you'd be able to cast it using your Charisma (as it is a sorcerer spell, just a higher level one). Such a staff may also contain other spells from the Exorcism domain which you might consider useful as well - they're usually not top-shelf picks, but most of them are pretty darn good on their own (and in some cases, such as getting Magic Circle as a 2nd level spell, you're getting a bargain.)
Also, See Through the Veil might be a weird choice now, but check back in two levels.
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9 – Sacred Exorcist – (Turn Undead, Exorcism) (Arcane Thesis: Orb of Fire) (Orb of Fire, Fly, Dimension Hop)
*
[sblock] Orb of Fire is, quite obviously, your mainstay from this moment on. It has a high damage cap (15d6), doesn't allow SR, and lacks a saving throw to reduce its damage. As an Instantaneous Creation effect, you can even hurl these things into antimagic fields and they'll continue to keep the damage flowing. Additionally, it has the potential to Daze a target, meaning your primary blast is also an action-denial machine. Pairing it with Arcane Thesis and Practical Metamagic: Empower Spell means that you can Empower it at an effective +0 metamagic cost; later on it will work quite nicely with your other metamagic options as well.
It's not perfect, though - the wording on Mettle will cancel the damage even though it doesn't allow a save against the damage. (It will still deal damage to undead and objects, subject to the usual energy damage interactions; it's Mettle specifically that will negate the damage.) So, if you're fighting enemy crusaders, hexblades, vigilantes (ha!), hellreavers, kinslayers, argent fists, or Deneith wardens, or anyone equipped with a Tabard of Valor (CChamp, only operates at half HP or less), you will need to fall back on an alternate spell.
Fly is a great support spell for everyone, but (depending on how vulnerable your gear is) might eventually become obsolete. If that's the case, alternative 3rd level support or specialist spells can be chosen instead. Examples include Alter Fortune or Shivering Touch - I consider both to be overkill and Fly to be a solid baseline, though, hence he main-build choice.
Dimension Hop is not entirely necessary here; you can pick a different 2nd if you wish. It's just my favorite standby among the second-level sorcerer spells. If you went with Shivering Touch instead of Fly, though, you might want to rotate Dimension Hop with Spectral Hand. Because Reasons.
[/sblock]10 – Silver Pyromancer – (Pyromancer, Purge Undead)
*
[sblock] Purge Undead is deceptively potent if combined with +turning, +arcane levels (like Sacred Exorcist and Paragnostic Apostle), in effect becoming an AoE, +2d6/level, +1 DC/level, uncapped blast with selective targeting against undead and ignoring undead incorporeal miss chances (and unusually for AoE damage effects, its saving throw type is Will, so Evasion does nothing, unlike, say, Wings of Flurry). Remember that observation that most incorporeals are undead? This is what lets you fry them with ease. If you’re fighting lots of undead early on, this is why you took See Through The Veil earlier, as it boosts your turning level. The biggest problem with Purge Undead later on is that it’s a separate standard action instead of something you can metamagic and squeeze into an Arcane Fusion, so once the action economy enhancers kick in you might have to do some juggling to pull it off.
Experienced optimizers might wonder why I’m taking Silver Pyromancer instead of Sanctified One of Kord if the goal is to deal divine damage with fire spells, as Sanctified One of Kord can pull that off with a one-level dip and is much easier to qualify for. It’s because of other synergies in the Silver Pyromancer, including Purge Undead, the free boosts from Smiting Spell, and the ability to use paladin wands without UMD. The three most noteworthy for you are Favored of the Martyr (most useful in a few levels), Turn Anathema (useful now, particularly with +Turning gear), and Lesser Restoration (since you can get it as a 1st level spell), as well as the generically useful Cure Light Wounds wands (although your team has probably been using these for several levels already).
[/sblock]11 – Silver Pyromancer – (Sacred Flame (half)) (Arcane Fusion)
*
[sblock] This is an absolutely essential spell, and an absolutely essential ability, online at the same time. Fusion can be used to squeeze out True Strike, Raging Flame, or True Cast along with Orb of Fire, Body Blaze, Empowered Scorching Ray (three rays at this point thanks to the Pyromancer ability), or Empowered Combust, all as a single standard action (Metamagic Specialist is needed to employ metamagic in an Arcane Fusion). Half of that fire damage is now pretty much unblockable (even against non-Evil targets now!), but it retains the [Fire] descriptor, meaning effects that alter fire spells (such as Raging Flame) remain useful, while things that specifically alter fire damage does not.
While I’m almost certain vulnerabilities fall in the second category (i.e. a [Fire] spell that deals divine damage would not have its output multiplied), it's possible to argue the reverse (as the description for vulnerability mentions energy effects, not specifically energy damage). If your DM rules the latter, keep your Vulnerability spells in mind; otherwise, now is about the right time to shelve them unless you have nothing better to do or want to strip an immunity.
At this point, Manifest Ethos is worthless to you unless you decide to use an energy spell that isn't fire-related. A few of them are listed below (in the variants section). If that's not up your alley, do what you can to switch around the paragnostic apostle's choices. Energy Supremacy (Fire) is a great fallback, and you did meet the requirements back when you entered the class.
[/sblock]12 – Silver Pyromancer – (Smiting Spell) (Twin Spell) (Firebrand, Celerity, Chain Missile, Spectral Hand)
*
[sblock] There’s a lot going on; let’s take it in order.
Smiting Spell is a free, stackable Empower (limited to your fire spells, but it’s not like you’d want to empower anything else), along with a few other sundry benefits. You can double up on its effect by using it to alter a Twinned fire spell, or by adding it on to another Empowered effect.
Firebrand was picked to give some useful longer-range AoE damage, as it scales rather efficiently and has some truly spectacular targeting for a nuke spell. It does allow a save (and it’s an Evasion-enabled save too) and SR, though, so you’ll probably want to combine it with a Truecast (carried over from a Fusion Orb / Truecast on the previous round) and generally only use it against weaker targets. (It deals damage – with a separate save – on the following round as well, which lets it double as a minor area deterrent. Interestingly, a handful of your effects, such as Smiting Spell, add a rider effect to a failed save (note: any failed save, even if Improved Evasion kicks in), and since Firebrand forces two saves on anyone caught in the initial blast, it gives two chances for such effects to take hold.)
Celerity is of obvious use here. Use your standard to cast Arcane Fusion, link Celerity to some other spell, and then within the Celerity toss out another standard action (possibly even another Arcane Fusion, which can itself contain another Celerity, and so on). While technically you can do chain Fusion/Celerity effects like this until your slots run dry and only get dazed once (at the end of the chain), in my experience it’s much more useful to be able to throttle down and toss these spells out as needed without having to press the “nova” button. That's where the Pyromancer's other well-known ability kicks in: pull out a paladin wand of Favored of the Martyr. Among other benefits, that spell renders you immune to Daze.
Chain Missile (thanks, DeAnno!) is a natural evolution from your Magic Missile, and will be used in largely the same manner (since it's also long-range, no-save, and Force-typed, capable of hitting those rare non-undead incorporeals). You're kind of lacking for good long-range damage, and this spell fits in like a charm. With Metamagic Specialist it can also be Empowered and chucked out of an Arcane Fusion, so if you detect a target at long range with less than 70 HP or so, you can down it with a barrage of force missiles as a single standard action without caring about aiming your rays. Once you get closer, though, your fire abilities will outstrip it.
As you might have gathered, I didn’t have a lot of amazing options for 2nds. Spectral Hand is perhaps your best choice, even though you don't have a lot of touch effects. It lets you deliver Combust (a strong single-target blast) and Dimension Hop (on your allies) at up to Medium range (so Combust now out-ranges Orb of Fire), and it lasts for quite a long time. It also appears to operate off of actual spell level instead of metamagic slot level, so you can use your metamagic freely on that Combust. (If your DM says that it works like Arcane Fusion, and looks at final slot level instead, you're fine: you can still deliver Empowered Combusts via a Spectral Hand.) Notably, this does NOT drain your actions, once you have the hand up: you simply touch with it as if it were you. If you're enjoying this, you should also look into magic items with other touch spells - the dragon-slaying Shivering Touch is the usual preference here.
Basically, Spectral Hand lets you pull off a different flavor of Ocular Spell hijinks on the cheap. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner.
My original choice (and a passable fallback in some games) was Ray of Stupidity. Use it against targets that have immense hit points but relatively low intelligence and no immunity to Int damage; it will either roflstomp targets or be all but useless. It can be barrels of fun if your enemy is mounted but didn’t properly defend their mount.
[/sblock]13 – Silver Pyromancer – (Persistent Fire) (Greater Dispel Magic)
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[sblock] Persistent Fire is largely a cosmetic ability that can be forgotten about, but I’m bringing it up here because at all because it actually synergizes with Raging Flame, which you’re probably already using for other reasons, and with Firebrand (since it forces two separate saves for each target). That said, ignition damage isn’t altered by Sacred Flame, nor is it actually spell damage, so the best it’ll get is 2d6, unmodified – and unlike most ignition sources, it extinguishes itself automatically, so it won’t even have a real chance to hinder their actions. You’ll appreciate this ability if your enemy lacks fire resistance (i.e. if your Vulnerability spell worked), but otherwise it’s just a bookkeeping thing. [/sblock]14 – Silver Pyromancer – (Smiting Spell (Blind) 3/day, Sacred Flame (full)) (True Seeing, Teleport, Dimensional Anchor)
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[sblock] Full divine damage (plus Raging Flame – it looks to the descriptor, not the damage type) on all of your workhorse spells (which are nearing their caps), plus a huge host of useful support spells.
I’m honestly surprised the original Mailman didn’t mention Dimensional Anchor – I know there’s a lot of good 4ths out there, but the ability to flat-out deny emergency exits without a save certainly merits a mention, especially if you’re already fighting using ray spells. It seems that every single high-CR opponent, particularly among the evil outsiders that you happen to be really good at fighting, has such a teleport available, so being able to shut them down with a single spell (and a spell that you can throw out through either of your Fusion spells, at that) is quite valuable.
If you're not getting Dimensional Anchor, my preferred fallback would be Enervation.
Depending on how secure your equipment is, you might want to replace Teleport with a cheap Belt of Wide Earth (MIC). This limits you to casting it just twice per day, but often that will be sufficient. If you do, you can learn another 5th level spell (such as Acid Sheath, if you have a Fire Sub metamagic rod) in its place. I prefer having Teleport available "as needed", so it's the main build choice.
Also, curiously, this is one of those levels where having a spell that allows a save is better than having spells that don’t. The blinding effect from Smiting Spell ONLY applies if the target fails a save against the base spell; if you throw out a Smiting Combust, for instance, the target won’t be blinded. Orb of Fire has a save (to avoid the daze effect, not to avoid the substantial damage), as does Firebrand (against multiple targets, and it actually forces a save twice, giving you two opportunities to blind, potentially against different targets as people move around.), and both cap at the reasonably high 15d6, so they're both good candidates for your smites.
[/sblock]15 – Paragnostic Apostle – (Penetrating Insight) (Practical Metamagic: Twin Spell) (Arcane Spellsurge)
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[sblock] More textbook Mailman stunts here. Unlike the standard Mailman you don’t have Invisible Spell to alter your support spells to standard actions while under Spellsurge, which changes the dynamic of gameplay a bit – however, you can use Twin Spell on Arcane Fusion itself, which allows it to be tossed out as either your swift or your standard while Spellsurge is up.
Paragnostic also double-stacks for Purge Undead, which should be dealing damage on par with Disintegrate at this point without any real equipment.
Finally, Penetrating Insight helps punch through SR just a little more (even on non-Fire spells), and as a nice bonus augments all your dispels. Check with your DM - as I'm reading this, it modifies the dispel check even if you're hitting the CL cap (i.e. Dispel Magic could dispel at 1d20+6).
[/sblock]16 – Sacred Exorcist – (Detect Evil, Resist Possession) (Limited Wish, Contingency, Wall of Force)
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[sblock] Read up on the Mailman for the proper use of these again; you can use Surge of Fortune with Limited Wish, Contingency is amazeballs with any sort of proper planning (your team should have some method of scrying ahead at this level), and Wall of Force is a surprisingly useful battlefield control spell for those times when your blasting simply won’t work.
Interestingly, Contingency: Arcane Fusion does not require you to specify in advance the spells you’ll cast through the Fusion, making it a very compelling choice. Pick the right trigger and you can trigger any two Fusion-compatible spells you wish on the fly without costing you an action, even if the spells you put in the Fusion aren’t normally compatible with Contingency. If you're not using Arcane Fusion, a fun alternative Contingency pick is "if I am dazed, cast Favored of the Martyr" - you store the companion spell in advance, so you don't need to dig out a wand mid-battle if you employ this.
[/sblock]17 – Sacred Exorcist – (Chosen Foe +1) (Greater Arcane Fusion)
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[sblock] You're probably picking Evil Outsider for your Chosen Foe. Against undead, you've got Purge Undead and your usual fire blasts; the things Chosen Foe boosts are more useful against those tricky outsiders and their frequent SR. Plus, the most common incorporeal non-undead (i.e. the only things that give your divine fire spells a run for their money) are all Evil Outsiders, so you may as well stock up on effects that counter them.[/sblock]18 – Sacred Exorcist – (Dispel Evil 1/wk) (Ocular Spell) (Moment of Prescience, Forcecage)
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[sblock] Noteworthy in that Greater Arcane Fusion can be used to toss out a Dimensional Anchor and a Forcecage at the same time, which is one hell of a shut-up-and-sit-down combo against the right targets. Its expensive material component prevents it from being overused.
Ocular Spell can be kind of bizarre, though it certainly helps with a blaster for obvious reasons, in particular its free-action trigger (which can be “cheated” on to metamagic spells if you load your eyes up while under the effect of Arcane Spellsurge; Metamagic Specialist will work here too, but is better conserved for actual battles) and ability to deploy just about any spell at a distance (notably Orb of Fire or Combust on the straightforward front, or nearly any spell via Limited Wish.). At this level the demand on your actions is intense, so Ocular’s ability to unload a double-barreled doom gaze as a free action make it an outstanding choice.
A possible alternative is Transdimensional Spell, but the foes you’d want to use it against (enemy mages that employ ethereal jaunts for tactical reasons) would need to be common enough to justify the feat choice over an equipment choice (i.e. a runestaff with Ethereal Jaunt, in this case). Ocular’s more of a generalist pick.
However, another alternative exists if you want something more straightforward - Firey Spell. It's a no-nonsense metamagic that I'd really like to have brought online sooner - +1 level for +1 damage/die on fire spells. With Arcane Thesis, this turns Orb of Fire into a wrecking ball even before pairing it with Raging Flame, and it pairs well with Firebrand and Combust as well. If you consider Ocular to be cheesy, Firey is perhaps your best alternative. (I consider Ocular cheesy myself, but a level 18 full caster can't afford to be too picky. I'm already ignoring Incantrix!)
[/sblock]19 – Sacred Exorcist – (Consecrated Presence) (Foresight)
20 – Sacred Exorcist – (Chosen Foe +2) (Mage's Disjunction, Greater Celerity)
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[sblock]Disjunction is both a natural development of your dispels and a useful way to even the playing field at the high levels - though at the range you prefer to operate, it's also a bit risky for you![/sblock]
Sorcerer spells known
[sblock]1. Magic Missile OR Nerveskitter, Lesser Orb of Fire, True Strike, Raging Flame, True Casting
2. Scorching Ray, Combust, Glitterdust, Dimension Hop, Spectral Hand
3. Body Blaze OR Fireball, Dispel Magic, Fly, Chain Missile
4. Dismissal, Orb of Fire, Celerity, Dimensional Anchor
5. Arcane Fusion, Firebrand, Teleport, Wall of Force
6. Greater Dispel Magic, True Seeing, Contingency
7. Arcane Spellsurge, Limited Wish, Forcecage
8. Greater Arcane Fusion, Moment of Prescience, Greater Celerity
9. Foresight, Mage's Disjunction
Plus, as mentioned above, anything you can find on a Drake Helm, Knowstone, Runestaff, or wand (including paladin wands and anything on the Exorcism domain). Good examples include Energy Vulnerability, Ethereal Jaunt, Shivering Touch, or Turn Anathema. If paired with an Energy Substitution (Fire) metamagic rod, also consider Creaking Cacophony, Acid Sheath, Caustic Mire, or Boreal Wind.
[/sblock]
Snapshot: Armed only with +6 items on Cha, Con, and Dex, with +5 Cha, +4 Con, and +4 Dex tomes, we’re looking at 208 HP, +11 base attack (+15 starting point with rays), and saves of +12/+9/+16 for the chassis, and CL 19 (20 for fire spells (or 21, if you managed to swap in Energy Suprmacy), with Penetrating Insight / Chosen Foe / Smiting Spell / True Cast / etc. to take out SR), and DC 20+level sorcerer casting (6/9/9/8/8/8/8/7/7/5 base spell slots). Your baseline turning level is 11; with no equipment, there's also a 30d6, Will DC 36 AoE Purge Undead effect over a dozen times a day; reasonably inexpensive gear can get that much stronger (anything that boosts your arcane caster level (for all purposes, not just fire spells, sadly) or your turning level will improve this pretty dramatically; a Ring of Arcane Might and the permanent turning gear listed above will raise this to 40d6, DC 41 for about 40k - half of that cost is for the ring - and that equipment sees use elsewhere through CL boosting or Turn Anathema, respectively).
With a +1 cost Empower, a +2 cost Ocular, and a +3 cost Twin (-1 to each of those for your Arcane Thesis: Orb of Fire) to employ with 5/day Metamagic Specialist, plus (Greater) Celerity (and the ability to bypass daze immunity via Favored of the Martyr if you need to go nova) and several other spells based around action economy ((Greater) Arcane Fusion, Arcane Spellsurge, Contingency, Moment of Prescience) and specific support for fire spells (Raging Flame, Manifest Ethos (early on, too!), 3/day Smiting Spell, Persistent Fire, and of course Sacred Flame), this build has quite a lot of support for its fire blasting. The main workhorses have no save or SR ((Lesser) Orb of Fire; Body Blaze shares these properties but is largely for show lategame; Combust is no-save but does allow SR) as well as bypass all immunities and resistances short of universal damage immunity, and occasionally have action-economy effects that usually don’t show up on a classical Mailman ‘for free’ (example: Orb of Fire may also daze the target (or blind a target through Smiting Spell), although that’s not the main reason you’re using that spell).
Finally, to combat your more exotic foes (including several evil outsiders, dark mages, and intelligent undead), you've also got some pretty powerful dispels (standard, Greater, and Disjunction, with Penetrating Insight - this appears to actually raise the check even if it's capped out; you can stretch this even further with equipment from the Dispelling & Counterspelling Compilation(x)) and a few spells designed to take out foes capable of teleportation or planar travel (Dimensional Anchor, Wall of Force, Forcecage), plus a few longer-range unavoidable Force blasts (Magic Missile and Chain Missile) to help you tag incorporeal or ethereal foes - or to simply add a bit of variety to the game.
Overall Strengths: On top of the typical “actually able to deliver damage regardless of AC, saves, or SR” aspect of a Mailman blaster? The damage output is higher (a large part of this is how Raging Flame and, more rarely, vulnerability interacts with Empower and Smiting Spell), and the spells often carry special effects at no real cost to you (Dazing, Blinding, Igniting (also augmented, but largely cosmetic), and so on). The major PrC lifting comes from Sacred Exorcist as well, which offers a much better (cleric-based) skeleton than your typical (wizard-based) PrC choices, on top of superfast scaling of Purge Undead and a few sundry class features. Additionally, the use of Manifest Ethos at the first available opportunity helps with the slow start to the early mid-level game discussed earlier. It's not a total solution (as this only helps with resistance or immunity, not raw damage, and even then only against evil targets), but it's a definite leg-up on the traditional blaster approaches.
Also, interestingly, virtually all of the fire support here isn’t actually a “buff” in the traditional sense (the only buffs are Favored of the Martyr, which is only needed if you're pulling out all the stops on a sustained massive nova strike, and Arcane Spellsurge, which is in the same broad category). You could be hit with a Disjunction and you’d still blast more or less as powerfully as I’m describing here. Thus, you don’t need to be quite so paranoid about incoming dispels, as realistically they'd only hit your equipment and/or Spellsurge.
Plus, come on. Fire mages capture the imagination, and it’s downright painful to see how hard they usually suck in standard gameplay. This one actually works. And even the secondary effects all fit well together.
Overall Weaknesses: There's a dearth of long-range spells here (basically, just Chain Missile and possibly Fireball). It was designed for dungeon crawling, not for long-range army-levelling artillery. The reliance on Favored of the Martyr to bypass Celerity's daze effects is a little annoying as well, particularly in the very late game (although I would be tempted to view this as a gentlemen's agreement of sorts: being able to bust open the action economy like that is something that you don't want to take lightly.) Additionally, you only have 5 uses per day of Metamagic Specialist (unless you pick up some hand-me-down +Int gear), which limits your craziest metamagic assaults to significant targets only.
I’m also deliberately holding back in some ways, as I’m not using Incantrix or some of the more obscure methods of making metamagic cheaper, and there’s no +0 slot universal metamagic available to monkey with casting times during Spellsurge (you have to tap into Metamagic Specialist to do that). Enervation is also missing, despite being a useful debuff.
There’s also a hidden weakness in the Silver Pyromancer, in that it loses its class features and needs to atone for any deliberate evil acts you may perform. This isn’t usually that much of a drawback (just think of yourself as an arcane paladin with a much more lax code of conduct and no grim trigger), but it did impact some spell choices. Notably, Avasculate is missing. It’s a spectacular spell for dealing with immense walls of hit points as a blaster (often capable of axing away hundreds of hit points without any arguments, and possibly also hitting their actions), but it’s also an [Evil] spell. (Then again, one could legitimately argue that if any foe has enough HP to endure more than one, or at most two, rounds from a team with a Mailman-styled blaster even without Avasculate, you should probably be fighting it using something other than HP damage anyway. This is why there’s the Greater Fusion (Dimensional Anchor / Forcecage) stunt – it lets you “seal away” your foes for a while.)
Finally, the Paragnostic Assembly has an oft-overlooked restriction of requiring a tithe to remain in good standing, and failure to cough it up will result in expulsion. While the Assembly's granted benefits don't actually help you at all (except potentially borrowing powerful magic items for short-term quests for knowledge), you need to be an active member to use your paragnostic apostle class features, which are essential to the build pre-Pyromancer and quite nice to the build post-Pyromancer. It's not too hard to keep your affiliation score low enough to keep the tithe at 5%, though, and while this does require payment, Wealth By Level rules explicitly ignore this sort of thing (they reflect the value of your actual equipment, not the total amount of money you've received over the course of an adventuring career).
Variants: There’s a lot of flex in the 2nd level spell choices, and the 4th level ones are tight to begin with (I opted for Dimensional Anchor rather than Enervation, for instance, as even though Enervation is an awesome spell, Dimensional Anchor prevents them from escaping, meaning it's you, not them, who sets the time of their death), and they can largely be tailored around as you see fit. I also didn’t really exploit the paladin or Exorcism domain spells: you might want to actually learn Favored of the Martyr as a spell known yourself, so you won't rely on wands. You don't really want Daze immunity until level 12 (when Celerity shows up), and that's also the same level you can start casting Favored if you can squeeze it in to a spell known, Drake Helm, or wand.
If you don't want the Dragonblood subtype, all it will cost you are your Practical Metamagic feats, which hurts a bit but isn't insurmountable. It does open up one of my original ideas, which was to use a dragonmark - any Least Dragonmark and the Mark of the Dauntless feat (Dragonmarked) will render you completely immune to stunning, confusion, and, most importantly, dazing, meaning you can cleanly unload chains of (Greater) Celerity spells without any drawback whatsoever. There's a bit of RP juggling here (usually, people with dragonmarks are under social pressure to work for their House, while this build requires you to work for the Church of the Silver Flame), but this shouldn't require more RP work than fitting a silverbrow human into an Eberron view of dragons.
Another useful feat to consider is Firey Spell (Sandstorm, it's +1 slot for +1/die to your fire spells). With Arcane Thesis, it's free for your preferred Orb of Fire (which has a generous number of damage dice with which to benefit), and is still quite useful for your other major blasts (Firebrand, Combust, and possibly Scorching Ray or Fireball). Adding this on top of Raging Flame makes Empower astonishingly strong - a simple Raging Flame + Firey Empowered Orb of Fire costs a 4th level slot and a 1st level slot (not coincidentally, this is exactly what a 5th level Arcane Fusion can cast, though you need to burn a Metamagic Specialist use on it or pair it with a regular Orb of Fire, with the Firey Empowered orbs coming next round) and deals 124 damage pre-vulnerabilities, which compares favorably to the Mailman's Twin/Maximize Orb of Force trick and is significantly cheaper. (Since Raging Flame has a duration, subsequent Firey Empowered Orbs of Force don't suffer any extra cost to get this benefit.) Depending on your preference, it might be worth replacing Practical Metamagic (Twin) or Ocular Spell to pick this up, and if you're dropping Dragonblood or if flaws are available this should definitely be your choice. (Without Practical Twin, Twin itself becomes, well, impractical; it's in the main build because of synergy with Arcane Fusion as well as the blast effects, even though it's expensive. Without Practical Twin, you might consider an alternative feat in place of Twin itself. Maximize Spell comes to mind, as does Energy Substitution (Fire), for all the rod reasons listed above.)
(In general, +damage/die is always worth considering. I found at least four such things that work with fire available to sorcerers: Raging Flame, Caustic Mire, Fire-subbed Acid Sheath, and Firey Spell. It's thus possible to get +4 damage per die on fire spells, which is added in before Empower multiplies things, which is calculated before a vulnerability kicks in. Stack all of that up and you can get a simple Orb of Fire to dish out over 250 damage from a 4th level spell slot, which is still low enough level to be Twinned. It's nearly 170 damage without the vulnerability, which can be reached with completely irresistible divine damage if you'd like.)
For that matter, if flaws are on the table, you can freely switch around your race into anything else with the Dragonblood subtype that can hit the ability score requirements (i.e. Spellscale). In some cases, this might be liberating fluff-wise: a dragonborn lesser aasimar dedicated to Bahamut and wielding platinum-laced celestial dragonfire against the dark forces of Tiamat would work perfectly here, rather than being a militant arcane templar and exorcist of the Silver Flame.
There you have it. A fire mage archetype brought to life in a way that, I think, doesn't suck and doesn't rely on Incantrix. I'm curious what you all think.
More of these writups to come, as I finish them (read: find time during procrastination / waiting-for-simulations-to-finish to put these together.)
Originally posted by aelryinth:
Tempest, I may be misremembering, but isn't there a feat in Sandstorm that bypasses fire immunity to cause half damage? I'm assuming it would stack with any other half damage feat, meaning you wouldn't need to take the pyromancer all the way through.
..which frees up levels for upping raw damage.
What you really want is some feat that adds +x/die, so your metamagic multiplies higher. Raging Flame is one of those effects. Acid Sheathe altered to fire is another one.
I can't think of any feats off the top of my head that add +x/die. I know there's a feat that adds +2/Spell level, so its a smaller bonus.
Note that there's two anti-evil/undead feats out there, both from Exalted Deeds. ONe is a +1 level stacking Empower against undead (Energize Spell?), the other is a +1 One Die Size Bigger against Evil outsiders (purified or consecrated, I forget). Now, that might not seem much, but combine it with a Maximize, and you're doing 8 pts/die+ other bonuses, which is QUITE respectable. I believe the Exalted wizard PrC gets enough feats to grab both of these.
Just throwing out nuggets for you.
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by NineInchNall:
There are two Sandstorm feats: Fiery Spell and Searing Spell. Fiery Spell adds +1/die damage. Searing Spell makes the spell ignore resistance entirely and half of immunity. Both are +1 slot level.
I'd prefer to avoid the whole thing entirely: Just take advantage of the fact that the Silver Pyromancer's ability is worded thus:
So sacred energy. Energy, got that? It's a type of energy. Since that's what it's #DEFINEd as, just use Elven Spell Lore and be done with it. Not losing a caster level seems a good thing to me.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Except the energy types, according to the DMG, are clearly acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic, and every other instance of divine damage simply says "power", not "energy". I imagine you'd have a harder time getting that to fly with any given DM than you'd have getting the DM to approve the Incantrix - and the Incantrix' cheese is already so strong that I went out of my way to avoid it.
Aelryinth:
I considered Firey Spell for a while, but ultimately having Raging Flame do the same effect but not much up metamagic slot costs or spellcasting timing turned out much better. It's generally not worth it as a +1 level, and anything that lowers metamagic to +0 would trip my cheese radar. Energy Subbed Acid Sheath was suggested as well, but it proved difficult to squeeze it in; it'd be prime drake helm + metarod material though. (All of these are examples of support for fire spells that's hard to find in other spell types: +1 damage per die is rather uncommon, except among psionic powers.)
Searing Spell likewise raises metamagic costs to avoid just a bit of immunities, when I'm interested in free modifications. That's why I avoided any extra metamagic that didn't actually amplify output dramatically; a decent damage spell becomes a lot less decent at +1 metamagic, hence why so many of the feats are Practical Metamagic.
There are other half-divine-half-fire effects out there (eg. Manifest Ethos on the Paragnostic Apostle; its only because of the prerequisites in assorted skills that I didn't do this), and even one very-likely-misprinted full conversion ability (Sanctified One of Kord), but I opted for the pyromancer because of the incorporeality issue (namely, if you can fry undead, you can handle most of the incorporeals you'll ever face) and for other little goodies (Smiting Spell adding more to save effects, for instance, plus being a free stackable Empower).
Regarding the other goodies: Turns out +1 per die often pushes Empower to be better than Maximize. Consider Orb of Fire: 10d6 (35) by default. Empowered orbs deal 10d6*1.5 (52.5); maximized orbs do 60. But, if they're used with Raging Flame, Empowered orbs do (10d6+10)*1.5 (67.5), while maximized orbs do 70. One extra spell level for +3.5 damage is piddly - and that's just with one +1/die effect added on there.
Originally posted by Andarious-Rosethorn:
I hope your cheese radar ignores Metamagic School focus as an exception. Actually even Arcane Thesis while it allows you to do some insane stuff is pretty easily circumvented by making oneself immune to the spell directly rather than attempting to circumvent the energy damage it's causing. Speaking of cheese radar, wow Nail, that interperitation of Elven Spell Lore? Classy.
Originally posted by piggyknowles:
Hmm. I know that Orb of Fire is kind of the gold standard for a reason, but since you're already using RotD, what about Wings of Flurry + Energy Substitution (Fire)? Uncapped damage in a sizable area with a daze rider and no friendly fire concerns is pretty nice.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Evasion. Plus Energy Sub only works on spells with energy descriptors, and Force is no more an energy descriptor than Fear. And since most incorporeals are undead, in most cases, Purge Undead is actually much better (Will, so no Evasion; 2d6/level with any casting/turning class (better than Empower) and is also uncapped; DC increases with CL and turning level, no SR, and only a friendly fire risk if you have undead on your team... Plus tuning level is dirt cheap to enhance after you've got the usual CL booster gear). I do like Wings of Flurry, but 4ths are very tight here (in part because Sacred Exorcist needs Dismissal).
Originally posted by NineInchNall:
Depends. The type of DM who would be likely to rule against ESL letting you choose sacred energy is likely to be in that same category of DM who would reject getting free celerity from Mark of the Dauntless. On the other hand, I've seen DMs approve things or interpret rules without anything like consistency. My brother's DM denied healing belts but allowed Manyshot to work as an attack-replacer (as in, a new Manyshot on each iterative attack).
But anyway, doing it all through class levels and without using wonky feats like ESL is a worthy challenge.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
True, I suppose; honestly, this is the first build in which I seriously played around with action-economy-breakers, since I typically consider them unsporting, and I'm not exactly a restrictive DM. (Our group still won't touch Polymorph with an eleven-foot pole though.)NineInchNall wroteepends. The type of DM who would be likely to rule against ESL letting you choose sacred energy is likely to be in that same category of DM who would reject getting free celerity from Mark of the Dauntless.
The Quick Recovery method is possible as well, although it monkeys with the feat timing (i.e. you'd have to grab Empower and/or Twin long before you have any business actually using Empower and/or Twin) and isn't quite as finessable in terms of the nova throttle (due to the unusual way Arcane Fusion's spells resolve, you can squeeze a Fusion into a Celerity, and cast both spells before the dazing. If one of those two spells is itself another Celerity, you can take a different standard action, perhaps tossing out another Fusion, and so on and so forth until you run out of useful actions to take. Then, all of the dazings come at once. If you're hit with five or six separate "You're dazed for 1 round" effects, you're still only dazed for 1 round).
Fluffwise, I think I'm actually more drawn to the dragonborn variant at the end than the dragonmark/dauntless version, even though this requires Favored of the Martyr. On the plus side, this is one of the few Celerity builds that can actually cast Favored of the Martyr without resorting to UMD or custom/artificer items (probably relegating Dimensional Anchor to a runestaff or drake helm or similar).
(Aside: Arcane Fusion is one of the few places where errata actually did something sane. Until I noticed that, I was terrified of the thought of using Sanctum Spell with this build, turning Arcane Fusion into a 4th level spell and going recursive: Yo dawg, I heard you like fusion, so we put a fusion in your fusion so you can cast while you cast and all that.)
That's kind of a running theme with several of our builds, you might notice. RT's in particular never rely on oddball feats or any equipment (occasionally to their detriment), and Andarious' usually use no more than two or three books including the PHB (often, it's me adding complexities to them during tuning).
Originally posted by New-Shadow:
You can also qualify with Dispel Evil, which can come from the Good domain through 1 of 2 ways: Arcane Disciple: (any good deity) or the first level of Rainbow Servant from the same book (CD). There are probably other ways to get it, but those are the 2 off of the top of my head.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
It's also 5th level, and since you need the exorcist's Turn Undead to get into Silver Pyromancer... at that point I'd just bask in the cheese and use Sanctified One, giving up on Pyromancer altogether. (I did consider this, although I liked the interconnection between this build's design goals and the Pyromancer's class features.)
It's unorthodox, but my first stab at this emphasized the "holy" part and actually used the domain access CChampion variant. Turns out the Exorcism domain gives access to Dismissal as a 4th as well as a few other cleric-y goodies along the way (including Magic Circle as a 2nd level spell, which is surprisingly potent; while not an absolute standout, it's not bad as far as domain spell lists go, particularly if you're dealing with evil outsiders as your villains), plus it's a perfect thematic fit. However, it proved to be cumbersome in that it stole *way* too many spells known, and for some bizarre reason the exorcism domain ability and the sacred exorcist's exorcism ability are completely independent. Overall, it wasn't worth it.
Originally posted by ObsidianConspiracy:
I do really like this build Tempest, it's just a slight shame Sanctified one gets you the same ability for a one level dip. I'm considering doing a Sanctified one with Holy scourge and the Warmage prc in Age of Mortals.
Still I see the synergy in the abilities and the silver pyromancer abilities do mean you need less in the way of spell longevity in undead heavy situations. Certainly solid and looks like good fun too
Originally posted by NineInchNall:
Heh, I'm about as unrestrictive as they come, myself. The party I'm currently running through the Age of Worms includes some rather silly things like a half-ogre half-minotaur and four unseelie fey.
The Quick Recovery method all but forces you to go nova, and it is thus worse for the game than the dragonmark method. The funny thing is that it is probably more likely to be accepted by the average DM, since it still has a "drawback." The dragonmark version of the build progresses much more naturally and doesn't have the unwholesome incentive thing to contend with.
Favor of the martyr is ... I think it's actually more on the iffy side. After all, it does say that the subject is immune to any effect that would daze. Celerity is the effect that would daze, so ... Yeah. Overall, the dragonmark version is preferable. For many, many reasons.
Every time I see Mark of the Dauntless, though, I can't help but be tempted to go nab Born of the Three Thunders, too. It's a +0 slot level effect, too, and adding prone+stunned to every spell is pretty awesome. It is, unfortunately, incompatible with the fiery design goal of this build. You'd need to pick up Energy Sub(electricity) qualify, and Energy Sub(fire) to change the spell back to fire so it could be used with the Pyromancer ability. Far too much of a feat investment, which makes me sad.
I don't see how the erratum fixes that for a character who has Rapid Metamagic, unfortunately. Unless you mean that "adjusted spell level" prevents it.
Yeah, it's trivial to come up with effective builds relying on equipment, paying NPCs to do the DCFS for you, or abusing the level loss difference engine. The most elegant builds use the fewest possible sources, and they're also the ones least likely to send the DM's BS detector into the red. As you stack source onto source, most DMs' tolerance wears thin. Three non-core books is probably the practical limit for getting things approved.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I don't think the "drawback != good for the game" observation gets enough publicity, but this example shows it perfectly.
To be perfectly honest, the build that got me thinking about this was one of DisposableHero_'s, doing a lightning/thunder mage concept for a quick-fire game designed to let us try out a huge number of characters in rapid succession rather than committing to just one. (My thought was, "He's doing lightning, why don't I take fire?" which led to the concept at the start of the build.) His thunder mage does, in fact, use Mark of the Dauntless / Born of Three Thunders (with the base dragonmark, poetically, being the Mark of Storm) - and, interestingly, he mixed it in with Energy Gestalt. That feat is one of those that makes you go "whaaaaaaa...?", but look what happens when you can spam-cast Electricity-admixed cold spells of Three Thunders with that feat: it adds a slow effect (or fatigue effect, if they save - friendly reminder that two fatigues give exhaustion, which is particularly nasty on anything that relies on its physique, and that there's no save to prevent the fatigue) and a free Empower (of all damage, not just of one energy type; vulnerability effects can amplify one of them further. This is on top of the damage increase from Admixture - the cost of which can be mitigated somewhat via Arcane Thesis etc...) to every spell after the first, along with the prone / stun from Three Thunders and whatever else the spell itself happens to bring along. It's kind of feat intensive, but when you're trying to work with novelty damage-based mage characters, them's the breaks.
(EDIT: Despite the feat intensity, I didn't mention that his build did not use flaws (rather, he was rather creative with dipping to "snipe" feats wherever he could while keeping his casting going). With them, it could probably pull the whole thing off by... about the same time Holy Fire gets its divine damage.)
I've seen him use Mark of the Dauntless on a wilder, which is similar in theme to this except the dazing is less common and it takes fewer feats to pull off. (He used the remaining feats for a Link Power trick that could easily be altered into "Wild Surge nearly any power twice" if we didn't consider that an obvious bug.) Since said wilder prefers electricity on his energy stuns as well, I can't help but think this is where he got the idea from.
Also, it says a lot that this level of feat intensity is downright painful on a wizard... but anyone doing a non-ToB melee build is conditioned to accept about this same degree of feat dependency. This is the nasty converse of the other bit of melee/casting feat conditioning, where melee sees +2 damage as an acceptable prerequisite feat while wizards see "roughly quadruple the number of spells compatible with your build" in the same light.
I was referring to the adjusted spell level - a sanctum Arcane Fusion still takes up a 5th level slot, even if it resolves as a 4th level spell, and thus you can't use Fusion to cast a second Fusion, even with Rapid Metamagic. When I first looked at it, it seemed like you could - which would allow a single 5th level slot to be used to cast a functionally unlimited number of 1st level spells (suck on it, Force Missile Mage), or a single 8th level slot to cast a functionally unlimited number of 4th level spells (infinite Celerity, ho!), and that metamagic could be applied to the spells contained in the Fusion with wild abandon (a twin Celerity is still a 4th level spell). Adjusted spell level thankfully slaps this back to merely "abusable" instead of "patently broken at face value".
Originally posted by NineInchNall:
Ah, I thought that's what you meant, but the errata said "spell level" so I thought I should check. I really, really wish that the 3.x authors had taken the time to be clear about spell level vs. slot level. It would have resolved sooooo many confusions regarding metamagic interactions. I feel like more than half of the rules disputes that come up during game time are due to lazy writing like this.
Or from when they decided to write some parts of the game as though for total beginners, eschewing precise game terms (e.g., animal companion hit die advancement). Or when they felt the need to recap some rule when introducing a new one (e.g., invocation casting time). Or when they did the spell inheritance "as X but blah" without being clear which parts were overridden (e.g., the alter self chain).
Mos def. It's the natural result of separating classes by some criterion and comparing only within those groups. Warrior types are compared only to warrior types, skillmonkeys to skillmonkeys, and casters to casters. What can you really expect from that methodology?
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
IT LIVES
Quite a nice build. The classe mesh well with the flavor which is extra nice for themed builds.
I really like how you use Turn Undead (well, Purge Undead but it's fueled by TU) to actually fight undead instead of using it to fuel DMM or something
Originally posted by DeAnno:
Kudos. This is a wonderful twist on my old build and I agree with a lot of the things you said here; crippling overspecialization tends to be a weakness of most common Mailman builds (a good reason to either avoid Arcane Thesis or take it twice) and you handle that pretty well with some intruiging backup options (Purge Undead
Forceward and similar is most certainly a pain, and while I often relied on a non-Force attack for such situations, the difficulty in pre-detection of Forceward is a complex problem convolved with the low duration and general obnoxious limitations of Greater Arcane Sight. Holy Fire is much more difficult for a paranoid or prepared enemy to no-sell and doesn't beg quite as loudly for an inefficient Dispel or Disjunction off the bat simply to remove the possibility. Ray Deflection however is still a giant pain, and puts you in the same kind of situation with Orb of Fire (though ironically, the close range instead of medium means you can at least consistently rely on Greater Arcane Sight if you want with it).
Looking at your spell loadout, you have a lot of goodies but you are hurting for range quite a bit, relying on Firebrand, Magic Missile, and nothing else serious at Medium and out of luck for Long. No enlarge either means you're fairly constrained to operate in close and hot, never as a sniper. That can be just fine, but it might be something to look at in the future (one of the reasons one might tolerate the mediocrity that is Fireball is the Range). Another thing to watch out for on Orb of Fire aside from the range is that sometimes the save effect can be a detriment, since a successful save allows a creature with Mettle to no-sell all your damage as well in a similar manner to Evasion.
On the topic of 9ths, I have fallen out of love with Time Stop and Vortex of Teeth types of shenanigans lately. Mordenkainen's Disjunction is disproportionately useful since most casters with large buff stacks who do not wish to be displelled will be very difficult to beat with Dispel checks due to asymetrical investment of gear, and on a 20th level battlefield those hard Dispel checks can be life and death rolls, rolls you do not have to make with Disjunction. The gear destruction is unfortunate, but often the types of people you will be using it on have very high will saves in any case. Even if one should be lucky enough to pick up a 3rd 9th, I'm actually a little enamored of the utility of the non-calling functions of Gate. It's a glamourous taxi and a one-way 20 foot diameter wall all in one! Using it as a wall in battle probably requires the investment of Sonorus Hum at 3rd, but that also has utility in supporting a free action 1/turn Telekinesis maneuver habit (maybe switching for Teleport, with Gate covering transportation). I know, Gate is often the type of spell that makes a build sort of irrelevant, but using it just for its non-XP draining functions can be a fun inversion.
Back on a more practical topic, the slow start heavy blaster builds have has always been an irritation for me, and I'm glad you mentioned that issue too. War Mage out of the quasi-3rd-party Age of Mortals is worth mentioning in this vein, simply because it is a fairly reasonable PRC to sell that happens to be especially proficient at blasting; many DM's allowing Mark of the Dauntless could probably let it into their hearts. Force Missile Mage is another quick money option, though that has significant problems with punch; if you can lawyer the excellent spell Chain Missile to work with FMM it becomes an interestingly servicable, if probably overspecialized, idea (you might look into including Chain Missile in this build in place of VoT actually, it solves your range and Force issues combined.)
Anyways, this was a fun thread to read, and I hope to see more like it in the future to bring back to mind the old glory days of the 3.5e physics engine.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Glad you like it! This turned out to be fun to build as well. It'd be a bit slicker (and have a tighter integration with the Paragnostic Apostle) if Education/Knowledge Devotion were worked in there somehow, I think, but the rest is just alarmingly well-connected.123456789blaaa wrote:IT LIVES
Quite a nice build. The classe mesh well with the flavor which is extra nice for themed builds.
I really like how you use Turn Undead (well, Purge Undead but it's fueled by TU) to actually fight undead instead of using it to fuel DMM or something.
And as for Purge, RadicalTaoist observed that pyromancers effectively change it from turn undead into burn undead, fittingly. I was also pleasantly surprised that the Sacred Exorcist I was already using to enter Pyromancer happened to double-stack for this ability, and came with a better class chassis - probably the only case I've ever had where I pick a class for a niche ability and it turns out to be pretty much the perfect fit for almost a majority of the build's open levels.
Interestingly, it's also the only time in an optimization context that I've seen Silver Pyromancer used for its clearly-intended purpose instead of as a way to assimilate the paladin spell list into more powerful casters (the arcane equivalent to the Prestige Paladin). There's even a legit reason to do so: if you're fine with buff rounds, Favored of the Martyr allows this build to work without Mark of the Dauntless (which you honestly don't need until Celerity comes online), and thus allows it to work with any race that can still hit the skill requirements. This effect also allows Turn Anathema to work, which is kind of odd if you have a reasonably high turning level (which you're probably boosting for Purge anyway, since doing so is rather inexpensive; it's natively 10 without any gear): evil outsiders, unlike undead, tend to have HD more in line with their CR and lack anything resembling turn resistance (example: CR 17 Nightcrawlers have 25 HD and an anti-turning aura; CR 20 Pit Fiends have 18 HD and, while they have several defenses against magic (i.e. Unholy Aura's laundry list of defenses), none of them work against turning), so you might actually be able to scare some devils into submission with a basic turn attempt. (I did look for other spells that interacted with turning for this reason, but only Turn Anathema was interesting. There is a paladin spell that lets them turn undead at a much higher level, but it's specifically referencing paladin level instead of caster or character level, so it won't work here.) And this is on a build that wasn't intended to optimize Turn Undead in any case!
Well, this is a pleasant surprise! Haven't heard from you in ages. (Although part of that is me: I didn't relocate to any other more active forum.)DeAnno wrote:Kudos. This is a wonderful twist on my old build and I agree with a lot of the things you said here; crippling overspecialization tends to be a weakness of most common Mailman builds (a good reason to either avoid Arcane Thesis or take it twice) and you handle that pretty well with some intruiging backup options (Purge Undead, who would've thought?). Problems of area vs single target, differing ranges, and other problems or boons with various spells really make the selection of actual blasts much more difficult than typical Battlefield Control specialists would guess. Working without the Incantatrix and only in the Ebberon setting instead of Faerun is interesting; Mark of the Dauntless is definitely cleaner than the Rapid Recovery dance I popularized, and iirc I mostly avoided it at the time due to a reluctance to mix campaign settings (that, and being a Kobold already ingame).
What really startled me about this is just how much of a surprise Smiting Spell was, in the context of your usual game against evil foes. A Smiting Firebrand has the DC of a 9th level spell, punches through SR at CL+14 (with the aid of a True Cast (which you'd want against multiple foes, instead of Assay, in this case) and nothing else; considering how native SR averages about CR+10, this is pretty reliable), hits everyone you initially blast with it twice, hits everyone who moves through its area before your next turn again, and blinds just about anyone it hits even before you consider the free Empower (on a spell that caps at 15d6, no less). Evasion will negate the damage, but won't protect against the blinding. It's not spectacular (especially since, oddly, you can't use it unless you're doing half fire and half divine), but for a blast effect, that's still enough to turn heads.
Similarly, working with fire had the fun little advantage of nicely solving the usual empower/maximize arguments, since there's at least three separate ways of getting +1 damage per die on your fire spells (I'm using Raging Flame for all kinds of reasons, but Firey Spell and an energy-subbed Acid Sheath are quite possible with equipment). Normally, even blasters would look over these tiny effects, but even one of them is enough to make Empower nearly as good as Maximize and a whole level cheaper, while two of them puts the average Empower significantly above Maximize. (This is not to knock the Mailman's favoring of reliability with Maximize's fixed value; just an interesting observation.)
There's also the minor but significant point that Forceward allows a caster to protect their allies, if they clump up, but otherwise I don't know what else to add to this. In terms of immunity, the number of creatures actually immune to Force are largely CR You-Won't-Be-Fighting-This-Ever, which functionally isn't much larger than the number of enemies with levels in Defiant (the only place I've ever seen immunity to divine damage) or enemies employing stunts that result in total immunity to all damage,
Like the original kobold mailman, I was sort of game-limited when I developed this: It was originally pitched for a procedurally-generated game we were trying out (as in, random map layout, populated on the fly with the random dungeon tables in the DMG and MIC, with only the barest of excuse plots to string it together and a rotating cast of characters (which may, themselves, be chosen randomly)). As a result, there's less of a need for long-range spells; even medium-range ones tend to hit blind corners before their range advantage is all that advantageous. This is also why I opted for Body Blaze instead of Fireball (as even though Body Blaze bypasses saves and SR, it really doesn't synergize with Empower or Raging Flame or similar, and gets its big advantage in tight spaces; there's also the possibility of tumble-dancing with it active if you want to be flashy).
That's a good observation on Orb of Fire - I actually forgot the wording on Mettle for this! Thankfully, Mettle itself is only available on a small list of sources - and all of them, I think, are PC class abilities (with only the crusader being common - and let's be honest, if you're trying to kill a crusader with damage, you're in for a fight anyway). Rings of Evasion exist; rings of Mettle do not (to my knowledge).
The only concern I have with this is that I was already cautious about cheese with the Incantrix. Disjunction is one of those spells that our group tends to politely forget exists (along with Polymorph, Wish, and similar), simply because it rips the game a new one. That said, there's plenty of room for it if you're in a game that demands constant Disjunctions, and the build's reasonably gear-independent (and almost entirely buff-independent: if you want to stop this guy in his tracks, you need to blow away his spell slots).
Gate literally rips the game a new one, but all of that tends to be its summoning ability; as a portal I agree with you it's rather interesting. (The size helps a lot.)
This is another area where I think the Education or Knowledge Devotion approach would be perhaps more optimal, since that would not only allow entry to Paragnostic Apostle (and its better abilities) one level earlier, but would also allow access to Manifest Ethos (Good) around level 6, giving you half divine damage on your fire spells against evil targets to tide you over until the pyromancer's class features kick in. This might also allow a better stat point distribution, as I don't think you'd need 14 Intelligence to pull this off anymore (even though pumping Cha any higher is hellishly expensive in limited PB formats). Sadly, I don't think I can do this without using flaws (or a buff round for Favored of the Martyr), but if you are using flaws, fire away!
My first stab at this build was an extension of an earlier low-level trick I'd been using involving Firey Burst (which due to sorcerer spell level progressions is almost as awkwardly timed relative to feat slots as Psionic Meditation is!), until I settled on the divine damage approach and realized that higher level fire spells were eating space that could be occupied by valuable support. It turned out to be nearly impossible to pull off, timing-wise, anyway, so it's probably for the best. (It's a feat I really want to like, and think could be actually useful in really low-level or casual formats, but there always turns out to be so much against it in secondary costs that it just never works out for me.)
I hadn't heard of War Mage, but now that I look it up, it does look like an interesting little package. Shame about it requiring three reasonably useless feats to enter and having ability score synergy that rewards sorcerer-style casting (when I see requirements like that, I naturally think duskblade, but that's Int-based), but that's not entirely unworkable - and it also grants a rather spectacular +3 damage per die over five levels. I'm kind of curious now and might play around a bit.
As for Chain Missile, that's a good observation. I honestly hadn't noticed it - spelldiving is not my idea of a good time, so I often miss things like that - and think it'd be a much better fit, overall, than Vortex of Teeth. I'll make the relevant change and credit shortly.
EDIT: In it goes. It'll need a bit of extra support to be a mainstay (as even empowered, it only dishes out a little over 50 damage or so at levels when critters usually average around 200), but it does fit a lot nicer than flying force fish on both a theme and a power front.
Glad you enjoyed it! There will be a couple more at least in the future, but in the meantime, you might want to click the link in my signature if you haven't already. There's 35 other builds in this style (admittedly, most are more warrior-oriented, but that's largely because of our group preferences), plus a few other one-off articles on other stunts.
Originally posted by aelryinth:
There was errata on the war mage that limited how much you could use the +x/die of damage ability. You might want to look it up. nerfed it hard for blaster builds, as I recall.
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by DeAnno:
For better or for worse... Tabard of Valor, Complete Champion p142. For 16k and a torso slot, you get Mettle, but only when at half hp or less. IT's pretty specialized because of that restriction, but still, it's threatening. Complete Champion, well, that was certainly a book alright.
I actually think War Mage is balanced largely due to the high feat tax on entry. You get a wonderful damage bonus, 2 of the feats back as MM, and the interesting ally defense effect all in the space of 5 levels with no lost CLs. It's also nice to have a good excuse to take Eschew Materials, which means you can function after being completely stripped of gear (unlike 95% of other characters). It also is impossible to fit in both Incantrix 10 and Warmage 5 on the same Sorcerer, which is nice since it sort of makes you choose (Sorc 6/War Mage 5/Swiftblade 9 is legit though).
One other spell that I remembered you might be interested in (I made a habit of book diving so a lot of this stuff is buried in my head) is Firestride Exhalation (Dragon Magic, 4th), which has some bad issues but is very action efficient getting teleportation and damage together. Typically I prefer Lightning Leap (Complete Mage, 5th) in that role but the natural fire typing of Firestride Exalation is better here. I'm not sure if you really have space, but it seemed worth mentioning for Knowstones or Runestaffs if nothing else.
For someone willing to invest in Energy Substitution and higher level damage spells, Boreal Wind (Frostburn, 5th) is a strategic scale nuclear weapon which will be greatly improved by the save DC enchancer here, and as always Lightning Ring (Spell Compendium, 8th) is tempting with its free action speed but disasterously inefficient in terms of spell levels and damage.
*searches internet* *thinks*
Lalala, Towers of High Sorcery, I can't hear you, because you aren't on the wizards errata page! I'm aware this is a little hypocritical.
Originally posted by Slagger_the_Chuul:
I feel kind of the same about Elder Evils and the Thrall of Juiblex; sure polymorphing at will is cool, but I really wanted to be able to summon more pudding.DeAnno wrote:
*searches internet* *thinks*
Lalala, Towers of High Sorcery, I can't hear you, because you aren't on the wizards errata page! I'm aware this is a little hypocritical.
Originally posted by samcifer:
Cool build. I'll look it over in more detail after the solstice.
Originally posted by Luna_Trigger:
Wow, this is pretty interesting.
I will say, though, that it strikes me as a bit out of the way. It's really cool, but isn't Searing Blistering Fiery easier than the PrC-hopping? I admit it becomes a bit more difficult without flaws, Incantatrix, and/or metamagic storm, but maxed, searing, blistering, fiery orb of fire seems easier and has higher damage, unless I'm missing something. Unless it's carriers you're going for, in which case isn't the Stormcaster abusing descriptor-changers easier?
Finally, on empower vs maximize, isn't maximize superior? As I understand it, Empower with Raging Flame is (Xd6 x 1.5) + X, as the +X is not a variable numeric. Thus, as best I can tell, maximize is strictly superior.
Either way, it's quite cool. I've never seen anyone work with Silver Pyromancer like this before.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
If I were doing this in theory instead of intending to field it at a table, I might have done something like this (and all of those feats were considered at different points). As it stands, metamagic storms are DM-dependent (as are most wondrous locations, really), and without Incantrix (which I find unsporting, to put it mildly) you can't simply ignore metamagic costs in feats or spell levels. One of my design principles for practical builds is "Costs exist for a reason - pay them, and if you're not cheating your way around metamagic costs, there's a huge difference in both build space and spell levels between the two propositions. (Seriously, setting aside how I feel about it at the game table, I think Incantrix spoils some optimizers, and the resulting builds are kind of lazy.)
Plus, look at the variants - if flaws are allowed (or if you are willing to drop Mark of the Dauntless, and thus are free to switch around the initial feat spent on the dragonmark itself), the build uses Education, which can get the half divine online as early as level 7 with . Honestly, I think this is more "optimal", but it depends on flaws (or giving up Mark of the Dauntless, which I'm not quite willing to do as a main build).
From the PHB (part of the explanatory text left out of the SRD):
For example, an empowered magic missile deals 1-1/2 times its normal damage (roll 1d4+1 and multiply the result by 1-1/2 for each missile).
The flat damage modifier is multiplied. It's not (Xd6)*1.5 + X, it's (Xd6+X)*1.5. (Or, if you prefer it old-school, in the Magic Missile example above, the random numeric result from a Magic Missile is from 2-5.) With that in mind, check the math - with +1/die, Empower's biggest gap relative to Maximize on an Xd6 spell is a whole 5 points of damage (at 20d6; most damage spells cap long before this, where the gap is even smaller), assuming average rolls. While Maximize is slightly better at every point, it's not "one entire spell level" better at any point - particularly because I'm getting the +1/die from Raging Flame (a single level 1 spell that applies to all fire spells aimed in the area, easily cast from an Arcane Fusion) rather than Firey Spell (an extra +1 spell level per casting). (Remember the context: I was designing this guy for a dungeon crawl.)
Things get even sicker if there's other tricks used (i.e. Acid Sheath + Energy Substitution for direct +X, or vulnerabilities from Energy Vulnerability (or Creaking Cacophony + Energy Sub, which is better but hard to squeeze in to a build like this)). Since Empower is a multiplier instead of a die-fixer, it continues to get stronger if you happen to get these "would be nice" effects, while Maximize doesn't. (Little quirks like this are well-known to fans of psionics, oddly enough, since per-die modifiers with flexible die numbers are kind of the order of the day there.)
Maximize is a great feat in general, but here, the ability to save a spell level without draining extra feats was worth more.
Honestly this is what tickled me the most about it. Most optimizers look at it as a way to steal the paladin spell list, when the class is clearly intended (fluffwise in particular) to be used as a fire blaster. Actually making a functional fire blaster was kind of the point of this exercise, which forces you to look at options a little differently.
Originally posted by Luna_Trigger:
The issue with that idea is that some metamagics are ludicrously overpriced. Also, maybe my views are odd, but I think both Arcane Thesis and Practical Metamagic are specific and/or expensive to be generally okay.
Personally, I'd drop the Mark. Between a Belt of Battle, which nobody should be without, and celerity, that's three spells you can vomit out, more if Ocular is on the table. If you didn't nuke it to death in that time, you're probably SoL anyways.
Also, I'd, rather than argue that it spoils optimizers, I'd say that it helps compensate for the horrid design of the Sorcerer, even if it does go a bit too far in that direction.
I'd totally missed that. Now I'm going to need to recheck all of my damage builds.
Thing is, though, Raging Flame and Fiery/Blistering Spell stack
Those feats are generally included in the standard stormcaster, aren't they? Load up on all the descriptor-check spells and items with and force them to eat +bajillion damage per die and half a dozen save-or-sucks.
Yeah, it's cool. I've seen(And made) quite a few odd blasters, but this is a first. Beyond the lack of Arcane Thesis, the build looks fantastic.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I'm with DeAnno (and you) in that I think Arcane Thesis is narrow and encourages overspecialization. On a Mailman build (the classic one or this one), which single spell would be worth the Arcane Thesis? Also, Thesis is more useful with multiple metamagics, and blaster builds are a little starved on that front (especially without Incantrix).
(The rest of your reply I largely agree with. I was trying something different from your typical stormcaster (see reply 14). I concur about stacking other +/die effects, but others can be squeezed in with equipment in all likelihood. And I'm actually more fond of the Education variant than I am of the main build, but I prefer writing these articles for lowest-common-denominator (which is why there's only barest-of-the-bare, only-numeric equipment present in the snapshots).)
As for my remark about 'laziness', I tend to gravitate towards Tier Three as a balance point preference - an intelligent group of players with a team of characters that conform to tier 3's expectations will never be lacking (on their own or as a team) unless the DM sucker-punches them (which realistically should happen occasionally, if only to keep up narrative tension), and won't encourage the kind of arms-race madness that Tier One tends towards. Incantrix - particularly with the Otyugh Hole in play - is so powerful that its use is more or less exclusive of this power level preference. If incantrix is allowed, its use is almost a no-brainer, and if you're using it, you tend to ignore all the sublter, more delicate interactions that it would steamroll. Example from here: You can look at this build and go "wow, that's interesting, I didn't expect that" in regard to the Pyromancer or, to a lesser extent, the Exorcist levels. Or, if Incantrix is allowed, you can just go "Nope, MORE METAMAGIC" and wind up both more powerful and less interesting.
I see limitations on your materials to be true fuel of the fires of creativity. There's no excuse for not knowing what's possible with a full set of tools, but if you limit yourself to actually using only a smaller set of methods, you'll find yourself getting creative. That's why I almost always prefer practical over theoretical builds, and why I'm honestly more fond of the Iron Chef builds on giant than I am of some of the "textbook" builds here. Boring Yet Practical is, well, boring - I prefer keeping things interesting as practical.
Originally posted by Luna_Trigger:
I dunno, I really like Arcane Thesis(Orb of Fire),
To be fair, my favorite Incantatrix-using build involves only 3 levels. Incantatrix's availability doesn't necessarily mean "lolmoarincantatrixlevels!"
I've got to at least partially disagree. While limiting blatant no-brainers like Incantatrix can be good, ham-fisted limitation(Such as restricting books) is rather destructive towards creativity because it limits both fun combinations from various books and more limited options, in my experience, just leads to fewer combos and more vanilla builds.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
You've got me curious. Usually, incantrix is a gift that keeps on giving, and lends itself to fallacious sunk-cost thinking over the Iron Will requirement (to say nothing of the Otyugh Hole).
I suppose I was a little sanctimonious there: I don't generally like book banning either (though I do tend to shake my head a bit at Complete Champion). At the same time, there are legitimate cases of at least partial bans (i.e. "We're in Eberron, so Faerun material is by default not allowed" - emphasis on "by default" - or "We're only playing from books we own"), and I do see build requests rather frequently that include more irrational restrictions. Practical builds that only the CO crowd can use are by definition less practical (or, if you prefer, less "optimal") for the audience as a whole.
It's the subtle, yet important, distinction between having every tool, and using every tool.
Originally posted by Luna_Trigger:
My personal favorite wizard build looks something like Wizard 5/Mindbender 1/Incantatrix 3/ScM 3 or 5/Divine Oracle 3-4/Some other advancement X, depending on my mood. With spontaneous divination, of course.
Now, it may not have the dumb, raw power of a straight Incantatrix, but Incantatrix 3 gives you what you really need, being free persists. Everything beyond that is gravy, albeit incredibly delicious gravy. Mindbender for Mindsight because Mindsight is so useful I don't think it needs any introduction. ScM makes up for some of the raw power your forfeiting, as well as adding versatility. Divine Oracle has some nice toys, but you're really here for the rerolls on CoP, and can be cut if you don't feel it.
Basically, the idea behind this build is to do everything better and with incredible flexibility. Metamagic Effect lets you Extend/Persist every buff, so you have a rotating buff routine and have a more flexible list. Depending on your mood, you can choose AbjChamp, Sacred Exorcist, Master Specialist, or really anything else, including more Incantatrix if you feel so inclined, although I don't think it's worth it at this stage.
It's worth noting that I like the adaptions of ScM, just because I have a personal distaste for gnomes, but it doesn't really matter.
Fair enough.
Originally posted by aelryinth:
A note that Maximize Spell works better when you increase the die size/type. For instance, Consecrate or Blessed or Sacred (?) Spell increases your die size against Evil Outsiders. In effect, it's +1/die of damage. With Maximize, however, that's +2 per die over a d6 spell, which is substantial once you start stacking dice up.
For Magic Missile, however, Maximize loses -2/die, and is literally .25 hp/die better then Empower, which is to say, not at all.
Also, for undead killing love, another 'sacred Meta' (Consecrate (?) Spell) is a free Empower for spells, that does NOT have Empower's "I don't work with Maximize" language, so it's a straight out +50% buff for +1 Metacost.
==Aelryinth
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
Oh? So you've checked IC out? Awesome
And yeah, I agree with that whole post. Classes like Abjurant Champion and Druid aren't my preferred bases for optimization at all.
Originally posted by Gazzien:
Wonderful to see these back again (and congratulations on being cancer-free~)!
I really like the focus of this build; I had a Sorcerer metamagic-abusing Firebrand a while back, but it fell into the "Yeah, it'll kill anything in one shot, but it's boring..." trap. I like this far more!
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Been cancer-free for quite some time (there's always a risk of it re-appearing, so technically I should say "remission" instead of "free", but mine was one of the easier ones to treat).Gazzien wrote:Wonderful to see these back again (and congratulations on being cancer-free~)!
I really like the focus of this build; I had a Sorcerer metamagic-abusing Firebrand a while back, but it fell into the "Yeah, it'll kill anything in one shot, but it's boring..." trap. I like this far more!
Firebrand has a few surprises here beyond its amazing targeting. It's pretty bland on face value (SR: Yes, Reflex Half, fire damage, the trifecta of "nonono"), but when you look at it as a Smiting Spell, it can hypothetically blind the people it hits as well as anyone who moves through the area you hit between now and your next turn; these people are also likely to be set on fire (augmented by Raging Flame - I sincerely wish Persistent Fire wasn't 1-round limited, as this would allow fire spells to continue to drain HP until the target took an action to put the fires out, but I digress) as well. Adding on other metamagic only makes this harsher (Twin is even better than most here).
DeAnno's suggestion of considering Boreal Wind via Energy Substitution is another interesting one, particularly if you're alone against a number of foes. Consider casting that from a staff (so it benefits from everything you've got) with a metamagic rod (switching it to fire) and set it up just before combat. This'll not only dish out pretty impressive divine damage (a literal divine wind, if you will) but will also interfere with all forms of mundane movement (it's a sustained gust of wind, which is equivalent to a severe wind, which checks (blocks) the movement of all Medium-sized creatures and knocks down all Small creatures) and, if you set it as a Smiting Spell, will also continually attempt to blind them every round. If you're using Holy Fire as a BBEG-styled fight (Eberron can easily use misguided Lawful Good types as villains), this is going to be an interesting hurdle.
They're bloody hard to navigate since the contests are usually just identified by number and the winners by character name. I'd prefer it if the index threads that listed the secret ingredients also linked to the winners, and if the winners' signatures named the ingredient in question. But they do show what I consider to be some of the best in the spirit of optimization out there - taking a pre-chosen concept (here, mechanical elements) and spinning straw into gold.123456789blaaa wrote:Oh? So you've checked IC out? Awesome. Any particular favorites?
Originally posted by Scraggled:
I've got a couple of questions about the build. How do you get Dismissal as a 4th level Sorcerer spell? Also: How do you qualify for Practical Metamagic without the Dragonblood subtype?
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
Er, whoops. That's a pretty big slip-up on my part.
The first version of this used Domain Access (from Complete Champion) to get the Exorcism domain, which has Dismissal as a 4th. (It also brought a few other cleric-style effects to the table, which are nice, but since that ACF, for some reason, completely locks in your first spell choice of each spell level, it really ate into spells known late-game, which is why I ended up dropping it). It looks like when I dropped it, I didn't correct for dismissal's level change.
As for the Practical Metamagic bit, that's a literal slip-up on my part. I've been working off of my notes, and I didn't write down that this required dragonblood.
EDIT: This table will be the corrected build. It uses Silverbrow Human (dragonblood + bonus feat), and needs 14 Wisdom. It drops the dragonmark (use a wand of Favored of the Martyr; you'll be able to activate it without any checks by the time Celerity is available) in exchange for Arcane Disciple (lowers the spell level on Dismissal) and an extra level of Paragnostic Apostle (which gives you half divine damage against evil targets much earlier, which should really help with the slow start DeAnno and I discuss above.)
Sadly, the lack of a bonus skill point also means that it still requires 14 Intelligence to have enough skill points to hit the requirements on time, which either means that Dexterity drops to 8 (on a ray blaster - this is painful early on) or the point-buy increases.
On a positive note, the narrative gets even more coherent, and the Exorcism domain is surprisingly good in terms of what spells you gain (time to shop for a staff). The spell progression is identical (except for Mage's Disjunction; it's problematic but it really is the best choice both mechanically and thematically), so the altered writeup will be almost unchanged.
| 1 | Sorcerer | Metamagic Specialist | Education, Arcane Disciple (Exorcism) | 1. Lesser Orb of Fire 1. Sleep 0x4 |
| 2 | Sorcerer | 0. _ | ||
| 3 | Sorcerer | Empower Spell | 1. Magic Missile | |
| 4 | Sorcerer | 2. Scorching Ray 1. True Strike 0. | ||
| 5 | Sorcerer | 1. Raging Flame 2. Combust | ||
| 6 | Sorcerer | Practical Metamagic (Empower Spell) | 3. Body Blaze 1. Nerveskitter (swap Sleep) 0. | |
| 7 | Paragnostic Apostle | Holy Texts, Lore, Manifest Ethos (Good) | 3. Dispel Magic 2. Glitterdust 1. True Casting | |
| 8 | Paragnostic Apostle | See Through The Veil | 4. Dismissal (Exorcism domain) 0. | |
| 9 | Sacred Exorcist | Turn Undead, Exorcism | Rapid Metamagic | 4. Orb of Fire 3. Energy Vulnerability 2. Dimension Hop |
| 10 | Silver Pyromancer | Pyromancer, Purge Undead | -- | |
| 11 | Silver Pyromancer | Sacred Flame (half) | 5. Arcane Fusion 0. | |
| 12 | Silver Pyromancer | Smiting Spell 1/day | Twin Spell | 5. Firebrand 4. Celerity 3. Chain Missile 2. Ray of Stupidity |
| 13 | Silver Pyromancer | Persistent Fire | 6. Greater Dispel Magic | |
| 14 | Silver Pyromancer | Smiting Spell (Blind) 3/day, Sacred Flame (full) | 6. True Seeing 5. Teleport 4. Dimensional Anchor | |
| 15 | Paragnostic Apostle | Penetrating Insight | Practical Metamagic (Twin Spell) | 7. Arcane Spellsurge |
| 16 | Sacred Exorcist | Detect Evil, Resist Possession | 7. Limited Wish 6. Contingency 5. Wall of Force | |
| 17 | Sacred Exorcist | Chosen Foe +1 | 8. Greater Arcane Fusion | |
| 18 | Sacred Exorcist | Dispel Evil 1/wk | Ocular Spell | 8. Moment of Prescience 7. Forcecage |
| 19 | Sacred Exorcist | Consecrated Presence | 9. Foresight | |
| 20 | Sacred Exorcist | Chosen Foe +2 | 9. Disjunction 8. Greater Celerity |
Originally posted by Scraggled:
Another little thing that I noticed: Rapid Recovery, mentioned in the Variants section, isn't the feat you're looking for, I don't think. Rapid recovery lets you use Vestige abilities slightly more often. The feat you're looking for is Quick Recovery, ff I'm not mistaken, from Lords of Madness.
Sorry to poke mostly-meaningless holes in things, but I'm a stickler, and had a helluva time trying to find a "Rapid Recovery" that did what was advertised.
Edit: I do, however, really like the build. It's refreshing to see a working fire mage, something that I'd been messing around with recently myself. I was going with Sanctified One, but I much, much prefer this build, and the flavor that comes along with it.
Originally posted by 123456789blaaa:
Some of them do, some of them don't. The inconsistancy is the result of having multiple Chairmen. Luckily the esteemed Mr.Ponies ,master of spreadsheets and lover of equines, is working on exactly what you want. First post links to the winners of the contests in a nice table format. The rest link to all the builds of the various contests in nice table formats.Tempest_Stormwind wrote:
They're bloody hard to navigate since the contests are usually just identified by number and the winners by character name. I'd prefer it if the index threads that listed the secret ingredients also linked to the winners, and if the winners' signatures named the ingredient in question. But they do show what I consider to be some of the best in the spirit of optimization out there - taking a pre-chosen concept (here, mechanical elements) and spinning straw into gold.123456789blaaa wrote:Oh? So you've checked IC out? Awesome. Any particular favorites?
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
By all means, poke away! If any mistakes slipped through, I'd love to fix them. (I view criticism as constructive, most of the time.) Plus, I don't want to mislead people - good example on the Rapid / Quick Recovery thing. (I forgot that "rapid recovery" was a separate feat - and my team can tell you that I'm notoriously bad with names.)
Also, your feedback has allowed me to figure out a way to correct the build - I've edited the table in my previous reply to show how it worked out. It gives up the dragonmark in exchange for being Silverbrow Human, but it also manages to keep the original spell progression and work in an extra level of Paragnostic Apostle earlier, meaning access to half divine damage (against evil foes) at level 7 (and an extra turning level, which boosts Purge just a little more). That should help with the blasters' slow start quite nicely. (And I sincerely hope DeAnno sees that.)
The main post has been updated to account for this. I really like how it's been tweaked, by the way.
Thanks, that really does help.
Originally posted by DeAnno:
Some of these nitpicks are things I should have seen, sorry about that. In particular the whole racial tangle is an annoying dance I've danced before, with no real good solution to simultaneously wanting Dragonmarks and the Dragonblood subtype (in theory a Silverbrow Human could be Dragonmarked but it stretches the rules uncomfortably.)
I always found Arcane Disciple to just be unbelievably painful. Casting off wis, not getting known spells, only getting the stupid spells once per day, etc etc. Maybe consider Axiomatic or Celestial bloodline from Dragon Magazine Compendium? You still get Dismissal as a 5th, but don't have to learn it and get a bunch of other spells known too, and they both fit with the fluff. I know Dragon Mag is always ugh but I view the Compendium as a cut above.
Axiomatic is particularly awesome actually, with Dismissal, True Seeing, Forcecage, and Discern Location all lined up just like that for the taking. Most of my castle in the sky Sorcerers these days take a DMC Bloodline feat, if only because the low amount of Sorcerer spells known in 3.5 is pretty punitive. (Air Bloodline is 75% of the reason I am so excited in general by the whole Telekinesis/Sonorous Hum thing, especially because it also comes with an option on Summon Monster VIII/Summon Elemental Reserve feat). It does cause a delay in Sacred Exorcist but really Arcane Disciple of all things is a huge amount of pain to go through for early entry by 2 levels, even with the whole ponderous slow blasting build problem. Taking Dismissal as your first actual 4th level spell is toxic enough to those middle levels anyway in my opinion, making the speeding ahead thing even less palatable.
EDIT: Some stealth editing happened while you were quoting, where I mainly moaned some more about Dismissal and gushed about Axiomatic Bloodline.
And yeah, Boreal Wind is insane. It's balanced sort of due to not being great at symmetric warfare, but still.
Originally posted by Tempest_Stormwind:
I don't use Dragon wherever possible, and as painful as Arcane Disciple is, it's not like we're actually casting Dismissal. (It does hurt in that Dex had to be lowered to fit in a 28-PB environment, but aiming at touch ACs and having True Strikes help.) My first stab at getting in used Domain Access, which doesn't cost a feat or Wisdom, but does cost nine spells known; most definitely not worth it.
Still, I'll look into them for interest's sake.
Also, the main post has been updated. Dropping the dragonmark (using Favored of the Martyr whenever daze immunity is needed - I'd view this as a gentleman's agreement not to break the action economy open unless your team is in waaaay over their heads) opened way to getting an extra Paragnostic Apostle level, and getting it in earlier. This enables Manifest Ethos at 7th level - in other words, you get the ability to deal half divine damage with your fire spells against all evil targets (read: devils and demons, particularly) right around the same time that damage builds tend to slow down. (It also solves the fluff problem of why a marked heir would be this heavily involved with the clergy instead of with house business.) Later on, once Sacred Flame comes online, you can either argue to retrain that to Energy Supremacy (Fire), or you can continue to use Manifest Ethos on other energy spells from a staff (such as Boreal Wind - great suggestion, by the way). And as sweetener, that's an extra turning level.
Originally posted by Scraggled:
Well then, in that case, I'm glad I could help. I rather like that tweak, as well. It's a smoother start for a rough style, and I wasn't too keen on Celerity Spam. Not that it's not good, but it's a bit much for my group, so I was trying to think of things to replace Mark of the Dauntless and the dragonmark, anyway.
Edit:
Unless I'm mistaken, you've got 1 too many 1st level spells known. I might be missing something, but a Sorcerer only ever gets 5 spells known for 1st level.
