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Fixing mundane classes - a disciplined approach?
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<blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 5622878" data-attributes="member: 78958"><p>Despite my general agreement that battlefield control and buffing is the most powerful style of playing a caster, I have to say that damage casters do, in fact, work. Not as well as God Wizards, maybe, but you won't feel left in the dust by the rest of the party if you play a damage caster and know what you're doing. This might sound contradictory with what I said earlier, but it really isn't. Just goes to show how powerful casters are - even a subpar style of playing them will still yield results that are just good enough.</p><p></p><p>The reasons are the following:</p><p></p><p>1. Doing damage stacks with what the rest of the party is doing. Maybe you're not focusing on excluding half the opposition from the fight, but at least the opposition is going to go down a bit earlier with the damage you can deal added in.</p><p></p><p>2. You <em>will </em>be fighting bunches of mooks that your Barbarian or Paladin or whatever would take a few rounds to kill, and would take some annoying damage from. Some published modules are especially prone to throwing lots and lots of low to mid level opponents at the PCs (like Red Hand of Doom for instance).</p><p>3. There'll come a time when damage, any kind of damage, just a few d6s of damage, will finally take out that big nasty foe that's been battering your party into the ground for round after round. Giving your teammates another +2? Not the best option right now.</p><p></p><p>4. Whether a damage caster can shine or not really depends on the level range you're playing at. Damaging spells rely a lot on caster level, so if you can boost that, you'll be doing just fine until you're hitting the level cap on your spell. For example, if you can fire two Scorching Rays with one casting at 4th level like my Evoker will be able to (CL 7th due to Spellcasting Thematics and Bloodline of Fire feats), that's a lot of damage, even for a bossfight. So for the lower levels at least, damage is nice.</p><p></p><p>5. There are methods of applying rider effects to damaging spells, so the enemy isn't only damaged but also debuffed. I like me some double threat. Born of the Three Thunders is quickly becoming one of my favorite feats!</p><p></p><p>6. While you don't have to optimize much to do good battlefield control, you will also not be able to improve much on your battlefield control with <em>any</em> given degree of optimization. Sculpt Spell, that's basically all you can do. Damage, on the other hand, can be pumped pretty high with the right feat/class combo. So high, in fact, that it will be viable in most combats. Say you're 7th level. Your non-metamagicked Solid Fog may still be a superior option in many scenarios. But your Arcane Thesis'd, Energy Subb'ed, Split, Maximized Scorching Ray is also a 4th level spell, and will deal a <em>hundred </em>points of damage (well, almost), which can be split between up to 4 opponents if you need to. That's a nice damage spike for 7th level.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Empirate, post: 5622878, member: 78958"] Despite my general agreement that battlefield control and buffing is the most powerful style of playing a caster, I have to say that damage casters do, in fact, work. Not as well as God Wizards, maybe, but you won't feel left in the dust by the rest of the party if you play a damage caster and know what you're doing. This might sound contradictory with what I said earlier, but it really isn't. Just goes to show how powerful casters are - even a subpar style of playing them will still yield results that are just good enough. The reasons are the following: 1. Doing damage stacks with what the rest of the party is doing. Maybe you're not focusing on excluding half the opposition from the fight, but at least the opposition is going to go down a bit earlier with the damage you can deal added in. 2. You [I]will [/I]be fighting bunches of mooks that your Barbarian or Paladin or whatever would take a few rounds to kill, and would take some annoying damage from. Some published modules are especially prone to throwing lots and lots of low to mid level opponents at the PCs (like Red Hand of Doom for instance). 3. There'll come a time when damage, any kind of damage, just a few d6s of damage, will finally take out that big nasty foe that's been battering your party into the ground for round after round. Giving your teammates another +2? Not the best option right now. 4. Whether a damage caster can shine or not really depends on the level range you're playing at. Damaging spells rely a lot on caster level, so if you can boost that, you'll be doing just fine until you're hitting the level cap on your spell. For example, if you can fire two Scorching Rays with one casting at 4th level like my Evoker will be able to (CL 7th due to Spellcasting Thematics and Bloodline of Fire feats), that's a lot of damage, even for a bossfight. So for the lower levels at least, damage is nice. 5. There are methods of applying rider effects to damaging spells, so the enemy isn't only damaged but also debuffed. I like me some double threat. Born of the Three Thunders is quickly becoming one of my favorite feats! 6. While you don't have to optimize much to do good battlefield control, you will also not be able to improve much on your battlefield control with [I]any[/I] given degree of optimization. Sculpt Spell, that's basically all you can do. Damage, on the other hand, can be pumped pretty high with the right feat/class combo. So high, in fact, that it will be viable in most combats. Say you're 7th level. Your non-metamagicked Solid Fog may still be a superior option in many scenarios. But your Arcane Thesis'd, Energy Subb'ed, Split, Maximized Scorching Ray is also a 4th level spell, and will deal a [I]hundred [/I]points of damage (well, almost), which can be split between up to 4 opponents if you need to. That's a nice damage spike for 7th level. [/QUOTE]
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