Increasing Caster Level for blaster: is it worthy it?

[fikoantunes]

How good is pursuing “+Caster Level” when it comes down to blaster casters?

At mid levels it may be good, as all those dice variable damage spells will benefit from it. But let’s say you’re already at level 15-16. What’s the point spending feats/gold to grab +2/+3 CL if most damaging spells have a cap like 10d6/15d6? Wouldn’t be better allocate those resources somewhere else? (metamagic, for example).

Please note that I’m talking about only casters that rely on destructible spells. Buffer/debuffers/summoners it’s a different story. And it’s about CL increase, not spell progression.

[MisterKaws]

Not much, even if you're relying on something like a Spellwarped Wings of Flurry as your main blasting source. you're better off investing in metamagic.

[Eloel]

At low levels, it is AMAZING. At high levels, it becomes significantly less useful, but it's still good for bypassing SR etc.

[Flickerdart]

It varies by level.

At low levels - so good!
When you pick up your 1st level spells, they all have caps of around 5 dice. But 5 dice is a lot when your enemies don't have that many HD. 17.5 average damage off a kelgore's fire bolt kills pretty much everything you'll run across, and it's not that hard to hit the cap (Bloodline of Fire, Spellgifted, Primitive Casting gets you there).

At medium levels - okay
As soon as the 5-dice cap starts chafing, spells like scorching ray and orb of fire show up. Getting 15d6 over 10d6 isn't super impressive right now, though. It's only worth it if you're able to stack on multipliers like Empower, but mitigating the costs of those multipliers digs into your ability to pump your CL.

At high levels - mediocre
Typically, high-level spells like polar ray will cap out at CL 25, not 20, so it's useful to have some CL boosting. But the benefit has gone down from a 400% increase to a 50% increase to a 25% increase in damage output. In the meantime, you've got all your Maximizes and Split Rays and Energy Admixtures online by this point, and it's highly unlikely that things you want dead survive your attacks with or without the CL boosting.

tl;dr
If you're starting the game at level 1, dumping a bunch of resources into CL boosts is a great investment that will never become useless. However, it drops off in usefulness, so you should never invest much more into it than at the start. If you're starting at later levels, it's not worth it to invest much at all. There are exceptions (such as Circle Magic or Master Spellthief shenanigans) where the benefit greatly outweighs the cost, but as long as you're paying real resources for every CL you gain, the time to stop approaches quickly.

[fikoantunes]

Indeed, indeed. Flickerdart summed up in a clean, didactic way. And everybody else seems to agreed: it's not good at later levels. That's what I needed to know, thank you guys!

[Psyren]

Even putting aside the SR thing though, you have to keep in mind that there are pretty much no blasters that ONLY blast. Even Warmages and Warlocks do other things, such as buffing themselves or debuffing X foes/level. For those spells, CL-dependent variables like duration, number of targets and ability to be dispelled matter. Your CL also matters for whether your blasting spells can be counterspelled by Dispel Magic, or just plain dispelled in the case of ongoing ones like Acid Arrow and Stinking Cloud.

[fikoantunes]

Even putting aside the SR thing though, you have to keep in mind that there are pretty much no blasters that ONLY blast. Even Warmages and Warlocks do other things, such as buffing themselves or debuffing X foes/level. For those spells, CL-dependent variables like duration, number of targets and ability to be dispelled matter. Your CL also matters for whether your blasting spells can be counterspelled by Dispel Magic, or just plain dispelled in the case of ongoing ones like Acid Arrow and Stinking Cloud.

I have a point there. No high level caster is a one-trick pony.
So I think it depends on the player's knowledge of optimization to balance between +CL and, say, metamagic/other stuff.

[animewatcha]

Part of this can depend upon if you have reserves of strength and can get around the stun.