Sorcerer Suggestions

[Slayer Lord]

As much as I enjoy being on the front lines of combat, I've been thinking of branching out. And though in practice they aren't quite as efficient as wizards, I've always been fascinated by the Sorcerer class. Therefore, I've decided that if my paladin dies in my current campaign, or for my next campaign, I shall play a sorcerer.

Having never played a primary caster before, though, I'd like some advice. Like, for example, what prestige classes would be good (our current campaign started at level 7), good feat set-ups, etc. I'm thinking mainly about being a combat caster, though summoning also sounds interesting. I'll also probably be good or neutral. Our DM doesn't like evil PCs.

Thanks for the help.

[Orannis]

I always liked sand shaper (adds a good number of spells to your spells known list) which is best summed up as Garaa from naruto.
Personally my fav has always been ultimate Magus. It combines my two favorite things in life, utility and EXPLOSIONS.
Feat wise I would suggest Versatile spell caster (Races of the Dragon).
One spell you will absolutely need is Arcane spell surge since it effectively lets you quicken all your spells without having to invest in any feats

[Slayer Lord]

Hmm, interesting. What sourcebooks are those from?

[jaybird]

Well, are you THE party primary caster, or A party primary caster? The first is a well-defined role, while the second is a lot more up for grabs.

[Slayer Lord]

Well we've got a wizard, but he mostly uses his spells for non-combat stuff and fights with alchemic materials. In battle I'd be the primary caster. Not so much outside of fights, though.

[Fable Wright]

I always liked sand shaper (adds a good number of spells to your spells known list) which is best summed up as Garaa from naruto.
Personally my fav has always been ultimate Magus. It combines my two favorite things in life, utility and EXPLOSIONS.
Feat wise I would suggest Versatile spell caster (Races of the Dragon).
One spell you will absolutely need is Arcane spell surge since it effectively lets you quicken all your spells without having to invest in any feats

No, it doesn't actually wind up like Gaara from Naruto at all. It gets a ton of spells, a few sandshaping abilities that don't have too much combat effect, some metamagic, and a few other abilities. Nothing in there does anything like Gaara's abilities, which are more or less close range combat attacks, a defensive ability, and then save-or-dies and battlefield control. He would be far better summarized as a refluffed warlock with a ton of homebrewed invocations.

As for the OP: There are a good number of guides on the internet for how to make sorcerers. I personally recommend taking a few summoning spells, as they are really flexible in what they can be used for. For example, Summon Monster III can be used to summon a hippogrif if you need a fly effect, and the spell-like abilities of demons you summon can be used in the place of spells you can cast; for example, you could use Summon Monster VII to summon a Bone Devil to start making dozens of walls of ice. There are plenty of other uses, as well. Don't take too many, though, as there is a lot of overlap and some of them don't add much. Definitely take Summon Monster 3 and 7, though.

Some links to handbooks:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2180.0
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7229

[Slayer Lord]

Hmm, interesting...

[Flickerdart]

You could do one of two things. You could specialize in a fun trick (if your wizard has out-of-combat utility covered, you can focus on blasting, which Sorcerers can be quite good at, or battlefield control, for instance) or grab as many versatile spells as possible. Things like Summon Monster (many higher-level summons have numerous SLAs, so the versatility is staggering) or Shadow Conjuration (casting spells from an entire school is pretty sweet) are good choices because they are effectively many spells for the price of one. Likewise, be on the lookout for options that give you more spells known, such as the aforementioned Sand Shaper.

A general guideline for a good sorcerer loadout is that they must have all of the following:

An offensive spell that targets one of each save
An offensive spell that does not offer a save
An offensive spell that does not offer SR (can be one of the above)
An offensive spell that bypasses all immunities (which are very common at high levels)
A direct damage spell, just in case
A way to escape if things go south
An effective way to attack more than one opponent
Means of ensuring that you do not get killed
Something to do for when it's not your turn


Spells that you should not have are:

Anything that can be put into a scroll or wand
Anything that you won't want to use at least once a day every day
Anything the Wizard can scribe and prepare when it's necessary
Anything that will become obsolete faster than you can retrain it
Anything that requires more actions to put up than necessary (you won't ever have time to spend more than one round putting up rounds/level buffs, and even one round of buffing is pushing it)

[Snowbluff]

If you are PF Sorcerer, Toppling Spell, Extra Traits: Magical Knack (Magic Missile), and the Feat that replace you Fey Arcana and 1st power for an Animal Companion. Enlarge Person, Mirror Image, Grease, Entangle all turned out pretty good in my list.

Toppling Magic Missile hit's multiple times, cause multiple CMD checks. Very good. An AnC Giant Frog can grapple people from 15 feat away.

If you haven't figured it out, battlefield control is my favorite Sorc style. <3

[Mystify]

Its may not be the highest optimization you can acheive, but a raycaster can be particuarly effective. There are plenty of rays with widely varying effects. You can then get easy metamagic (split ray) and double most of your effects for a mere +1 spell level.

You have direct damage capabilities, debuffing powers, anti-golem powers, and they tend to simply work. Esp. since you would value accuracy higher than most casters, and hence hit that much more often. You should still be able to slip in a few general-purpose utility spells in the mix. Like greater invisibility. Nothing better than attacking flat footed touch AC

[Orannis]

No, it doesn't actually wind up like Gaara from Naruto at all. It gets a ton of spells, a few sandshaping abilities that don't have too much combat effect, some metamagic, and a few other abilities. Nothing in there does anything like Gaara's abilities, which are more or less close range combat attacks, a defensive ability, and then save-or-dies and battlefield control. He would be far better summarized as a refluffed warlock with a ton of homebrewed invocations.

It really depends on how you use it, there are a few earth grapple spells (Sand coffin anyone?) which you can select. Plus if you are willing to get creative, use shapesand, and choose a few spells carefully to mimic his abilities (Stoneskin and greater stone skin=sand armor for example) you have at least a passable facsimile. Alas, only full wizards can ever approach the power of a main naruto character. This is more for fun

For the OP: Sand shaper is from sandstorm and UM is from Complete mage. I would suggest going UM if you want power since you slapping metamagic onto spells with reckless abandon is rather fun.
On further reflection I would also side with those suggesting conjuration as your focus since 1. it can do blasting better than evocation if that is your thing and 2. summoning hordes of creatures to maul everyone can be fun.

[Tenebris]

Have you thought of the race yet? There are very few with a Cha bonus, and even fewer of those without a Con penalty. Therefore, I'd suggest the magic-blooded template (Dragon #306 ?) - +2 Cha, - 2 Wis. You can also offset the Con penalty by applying the dragonborn "template", or just ignore it via necropolitan.

A kobold is always a solid choice, but requires talking to the DM about how much exactly you can break it. Yes, it certainly will be disallowed.

Incarnate construct magic-blooded phrenic warforged is nice: +2 Con, +2 Int, -2 Wis, +4 Cha, and a pile of psi-like abilities. The funny thing is you probably will retain your composite plating, which means +2 armor bonus to AC, ASF 5%.

[Medic!]

Typically with a sorcerer anything that continues your casting abilities without taking sorcerer is the way to go, since you gain no class features from the base class itself past a familiar.

Bloodlines are awesome for this, and there are quite a few cool PrCs out there, my personal favorite build is a Sorc with a minor fey bloodline (from UA) and into Incantrix from the faerun setting as fast as humanly possible. The one character I played with this build was focused on debuff rays like Ray of Exaustion, Enfeeblement, Enervation (this one can get CRAZY with Arcane Thesis) and a few touch or save-or-sucks like Touch of Idiocy (Spellflower from Spell Compendium and some familiar use can make this one devistating as a combo) with Feeblemind.

Initiate of the Seven-fold Veil is also a very cool PrC to look at that I want to try personally but haven't had the chance to yet.

Race-wise spellscales and necropolitons make good choices, or if you're going for more base flavor a gnome (or variant there-of) are great, especially coupled with reduce person permanancied. The sorcerer I mentioned above went necropoliton (LM) and would fire off rediculous numbers of enervation rays per round at 7 neg lvls per ray...more than enough to immediately end encounters with living opponents, or debuff them significantly for the rest of the party to play havoc with, and throw some delicious amounts of temp HP onto himself if anyone got any bright ideas.