Caster level boosting

[Tyndmyr]

How high of a caster level can you get at say, level 1(or other low levels), without resorting to infinite pun-pun style loops?

Bonus points if it works with any race.

I can only thing of a couple, and they're all pretty specific. Anything fairly general would be ideal for low level optimization(blasty spells are actually pretty potent at level 1 with some extra CLs tacked on).

The usual shenanigans to get a level 2 spell to qualify for Fiery Burst will get you a +1 CL bump to fire spells, but it's pretty feat intensive.

[Curious]

As mentioned in another thread, Witches with the Coven hex can pump CL up by +1 for each member, so it can be as large as you can get it.

[Tyndmyr]

As mentioned in another thread, Witches with the Coven hex can pump CL up by +1 for each member, so it can be as large as you can get it.

Really? That's pretty cool. I admit that Witch is not among my usual classes. Where's it from, and when can you get this hex?

Could be a remarkably solid dip if it's written generally enough.

[Curious]

Pathfinder SRD. Can't link right now, but it's an easy google. Witch also comes highly recommended as a SoS-based caster with various Su debuffing abilities that never run dry.

[Tyndmyr]

Ah, that's rather less helpful, Im afraid. My group generally plays straight 3.5, so PF stuff is only occasionally an option.

[FearlessGnome]

Be a human, take one flaw and the trait Spellgifted [Probably Evocation].

Feats:
Flaw: Practiced Spellcaster (for the other schools)
Human: Iron Will (Prereq)
Level 1: Reserves of Strength

Have CL2 for one school, 1 for everything else, and the ability to raise CL by 3 for any spell at the cost of being stunned for three rounds.

Edit: Add another flaw for Precocious Apprentice, and take Combust. 5d8 Fire damage should end one big monster at level 1. Only use it when being stunned isn't going to kill you once the target is dead, though.

Edit 2: Or ignore the trait, and swap Practised Spellcaster out for the Regional feat mentioned below. Combust now deals 6d8 Fire damage once per day.

Kill them all. Kill them with Fire.

[Incanur]

The Bloodlines of Fire regional feat gives +2 CL for fire spells. Divine Spell Power gives up to +4 if you're lucky. A 1st-level cleric could manage CL 3-7 for fire spells with combo.

[dextercorvia]

Human Domain Wizard (Fire)

Spellgifted Trait (Evocation)
Feat: Bloodlines of Fire
Human Bonus feat: Spell Thematics
Flaw: Iron Will
Flaw: Reserves of Strength

This gives you a CL of 9 for your Burning Hands spell, busting the Cap for 9d4 damage in a 15 foot cone.

[Qwertystop]

Wow. Evocation is generally considered the weakest school.
Fire is generally considered the weakest energy damage type.

All the optimization so far is for Fire Evocations.

IT IS GOOD FOR SOMETHING!!!

[Tyndmyr]

Wow. Evocation is generally considered the weakest school.
Fire is generally considered the weakest energy damage type.

All the optimization so far is for Fire Evocations.

IT IS GOOD FOR SOMETHING!!!

Evocation out of the box isn't fantastic...but with a little optimization, you can make it do some fantastic things. Sufficiently large quantities of fire can kill basically anything.

[Qwertystop]

Evocation out of the box isn't fantastic...but with a little optimization, you can make it do some fantastic things. Sufficiently large quantities of fire can kill basically anything.

Except stuff that's immune.

[Tyndmyr]

Except stuff that's immune.

See also, yet MORE fire, aka Searing Spell.

[Qwertystop]

See also, yet MORE fire, aka Searing Spell.

Wow...

The worst energy damage in the worst school has the most supplementary boosts for it...

[Tyndmyr]

Wow...

The worst energy damage in the worst school has the most supplementary boosts for it...

It's the most commonly immune/resisted, but it also has the most spells for it, I believe. And other types have advantages like tearing through items easier. So, "worst" is relative.

Also, I believe that strictly speaking, cold may have more supplementary boosts for it than fire does. Searing spell just happens to be a particularly good one.

And yes, people do rather over-emphasize evocation being bad. A specialized evoker can be remarkably lethal.

[FearlessGnome]

Searing Spell will let you deal half damage against anyone, no matter how absurd the image is.

Fire Elementals? On the Plane of Fire? KILL THEM WITH FIRE!

I like Evocation. And especially at very low levels, Evocation benefits more from silly caster levels than most other schools.

[Tyndmyr]

Searing Spell will let you deal half damage against anyone, no matter how absurd the image is.

Fire Elementals? On the Plane of Fire? KILL THEM WITH FIRE!

I like Evocation. And especially at very low levels, Evocation benefits more from silly caster levels than most other schools.

I've actually done the above. Someone said it was silly. Then someone else said, "Yer body is mostly water, but I bet I could kill you with water", and everything went merrily on.

[Chronos]

And it's not like you're going to encounter many things immune to fire (or to much of anything else) at first level, anyway.

[Person_Man]

Increasing Caster Level (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872350/Raising_Caster_Level)

The sky is basically the limit, though at level 1 the most you could probably squeeze out would be +5 (1 from your race, +1 for base feat, +1 from human feat, +2 from 2 Flaws).

[dextercorvia]

Before the end of level 1, you should be able to afford one of those fancy holy symbols from CC.

And clerics can get up to +3 from their domains.

[Flickerdart]

Arcanist's gloves (MIC) gives you +2 CL 2/day for 1st level spells.

At 1st level, you can't do any of the really crazy stuff (Psiotheurgist, I'm looking at you), but there's still a bunch. For instance, a Cleric 1 with Spellgifted (Conjuration), Summoner domain, Domain Focus (1), Primitive Casting (Human), Dark Speech (Flaw) and Divine Spell Power (Flaw) can pop CL12 Summon Monster I, and that's without using any items or Reserves of Cheese.

Similarly, a 1st level Wizard can take the Energy Affinity variant, Bloodline of Fire (1), Cali****e Elementalist (Human), Elemental Spellcasting (Flaw), Spell Thematics (Flaw) and Spell Gifted for +7 to Fire spells without getting stunned into uselessness every time.

The trick to getting max CL is stacking descriptors - for instance, if you are summoning an Evil Outsider with the Fire subtype (such as a hellhound) you get the Summoning bonuses, the Fire bonuses and the Evil bonuses all in one package.

[dextercorvia]

Arcanist's gloves (MIC) gives you +2 CL 2/day for 1st level spells.

At 1st level, you can't do any of the really crazy stuff (Psiotheurgist, I'm looking at you), but there's still a bunch. For instance, a Cleric 1 with Spellgifted (Conjuration), Summoner domain, Domain Focus (1), Primitive Casting (Human), Dark Speech (Flaw) and Divine Spell Power (Flaw) can pop CL12 Summon Monster I, and that's without using any items or Reserves of Cheese.

Similarly, a 1st level Wizard can take the Energy Affinity variant, Bloodline of Fire (1), Cali****e Elementalist (Human), Elemental Spellcasting (Flaw), Spell Thematics (Flaw) and Spell Gifted for +7 to Fire spells without getting stunned into uselessness every time.

The trick to getting max CL is stacking descriptors - for instance, if you are summoning an Evil Outsider with the Fire subtype (such as a hellhound) you get the Summoning bonuses, the Fire bonuses and the Evil bonuses all in one package.

Dark Speech is hard to get a Cleric 1.

Where are Primitive Casting and the Energy Affinity variant?

[Flickerdart]

Oh whoops, forgot Dark Speech's requirements.

Primitive Caster is from Frostburn, and gives you bonus CL for adding components to a spell. Energy Affinity is from UA, and trades an Evoker's familiar for +1 CL to an energy type.

[dextercorvia]

Oh whoops, forgot Dark Speech's requirements.

Primitive Caster is from Frostburn, and gives you bonus CL for adding components to a spell. Energy Affinity is from UA, and trades an Evoker's familiar for +1 CL to an energy type.

Energy Affinity is better than the Domain Wizard then, since you aren't limited to the single spell per level. I always forget those have names.

[Rubik]

The arcanists gloves are great for psionic manifesters if you can convince your DM that they'll work with psionic powers.

After all, a 1st level power remains a 1st level power, regardless of augmentation.

Also, binding a metamagic rod to your hands chakra gives you +1 CL for any spell cast through it.

And don't forget Overchannel and wild surge for psionic powers! Relevant partially because of the spell-to-power erudite.

[JaronK]

Persistant Consumptive Field is one of the biggest single boosts, but it requires the ability to cast the spell (Cleric, Archivist... not sure if you can get it via Arcane Disciple from anywhere). You get a +50% boost to caster level from that spell, and casting it multiple times in a row can get you to as high as twice your caster level -1. Just keep casting Extended Persistant Consumptive Field once per day.

Note that this also sends your strength through the roof.

JaronK

[kulosle]

So it hasn't been mentioned yet, but you should really look up all the cheese there is to have with the kobolds. "Do you want to start the level 1 campaign as a level 4 sorcerer?" "Yes I would like to break your game." there is a lot more cheese to it as well like letting you qualify for wizard and sorcerer ACF. It's all really silly.

[marcielle]

Note the Ardent. If you can max out your Manifester(caster) level, I think you can actually learn a high level power many levels earlier. This being due to the fact that Ardents power levels are technically only restricted by how many PP they can spend in a turn, which increases with manifester level. There might have been a hole in this plan but I can't really remember.

[Flickerdart]

The exact reason that Ardents can learn fancy high-level powers is that they don't have a "maximum power level" table, and only have a reference to the highest level of "powers they can manifest". Unfortunately, it is much harder to increase ML than it is to increase CL, and Ardents get so very few powers known anyway, that they are more useful for plugging holes in gish builds than they are as a primary chassis (Dominant Ideal notwithstanding).

[marcielle]

True, but learning a power several levels earlier than you really should. Possible or poot? Also, assuming full arcano-psionic transparency, would normal CL raising tricks work? What about Magic Mantle? Going nova is already a given for most psionics users and IIRC , it is more cost efficient to use a higher level power than pump up a lower one.

[jaybird]

Wow...

The worst energy damage in the worst school has the most supplementary boosts for it...

Metamagic makes all the difference for an Evoker, to the tune of a Fireball with a 20d6 cap with 2 feats if you're playing 3.P. Of course, you literally need to plug every feat you get into it (Combat Casting and Eschew Materials feat tax for the amazing War Mage PrC, for example), but you should be able to pump 3-figure damage pretty routinely by mid levels.

[Flickerdart]

True, but learning a power several levels earlier than you really should. Possible or poot? Also, assuming full arcano-psionic transparency, would normal CL raising tricks work? What about Magic Mantle? Going nova is already a given for most psionics users and IIRC , it is more cost efficient to use a higher level power than pump up a lower one.
Psionic transparency doesn't work on everything, and most of the good CL boosters are either feats (which don't affect psionics) or high level spells (which are tough to get to).

[hex0]

Evocation out of the box isn't fantastic...but with a little optimization, you can make it do some fantastic things. Sufficiently large quantities of fire can kill basically anything.

Be creative. If they are immune to fire, they may not be immune smoke inhalation or collapsing stuff falling on their head. :smallamused:

[marcielle]

Psionic transparency doesn't work on everything, and most of the good CL boosters are either feats (which don't affect psionics) or high level spells (which are tough to get to).

What about just overchannel and practiced manifester? Leraning powers as an Ardent 6 levels higher should be enough anyway since any more would mean you run out of PP after 3-4 manifestations.