I don't get the 'Explosive Spellcasting' feat

[DracoSuave]

Well, the flavor of it is that sorcerers, being the masters of chaotic bursts of energy, have the ability to tap into that chaos and make it work for them a lot more than others. But they can't exactly make that shot more accurate without building up the Spellfury beforehand.

On the other hand, a wizard are less about guiding the chaos, and more about making things work as planned. So they can exclude targets, or make a single roll more accurate, or any other number of things.

Compare Raging Storm and Tempest Magic, same tier, but one is a sorcerer feat (Storm Magic, in fact) and the other isn't. They both give the same feat bonus to damage, but Tempest is just a bit.... well... more. Restricted feats are supposed to be better than normal feats, that way it's a lure for taking the class.

 

[Blackbrrd]

hmmm whatever, probably wrong

 

[Plane Sailing]

Eh - it's nice to transfer 6d10 damage to a target you care about, instead of one you don't... like a minion.

This is what I thought when I first read the feat - pretty sweet, I thought.

Bingo. Area attack, six minions & one boss-type monster, and you crit two minions... suddenly, the feat is pretty sweet.

However, this didn't occur to me - and it really ramps up the power of the feat if you happen to have a lucky series of rolls!

 

[CapnZapp]

The existance of class-unique feats -are- as much a feature and calling card of that class as their features and powers.

Though one that makes it very much harder to get an overview of how a class works, to form yourself an accurate image of what the class does well and less well.

 

[Trevelyan]

However, this didn't occur to me - and it really ramps up the power of the feat if you happen to have a lucky series of rolls!

That's a key difference between Explosive Spellccasting and Sorcerous Flux.

SF only lets you swap two rolls, which is usually going to be enough if you get a single crit out of an AoE attack - just swap the crit with the roll for the other target. It also means, incidentally, that you can swap a miss for a hit, say be swapping the 3 you rolled against your preferred target for the 18 you rolled against some other guy.

Where ES really shines is on the margins - if you happen to get a couple of crits out of a single AoE attack then you can put all of the extra damage on the target of your choice. What makes this less of a fringe case is the extreme size of high level wizard burst and blast effects and the reasonable liklihood that they will be criting on a 19-20 at that stage. Multiple crit attacks still won't be the norm, but being able to put 12d10 on a target is very nice.