Sonic Sorcerer

[Mordaedil]

After my last game got put on hiatus (sadly before the character you people helped me design got introduced), we started a new game with new people, who are hopefully a bit more active.

After a character I wasn't too excited about, our game got delayed and I planned out a far better concept I am way more on fire about; A sorcerer specializing in dealing sonic damage. Now, I've done a bit of research already and seen what others have suggested on similar builds, but I am a bit confused about certain things, so I figured I'd run it by this forum to get to the grounds a bit more. Mind, I'm not really going for optimization, but clarifying how things actually work and ways to circumvent them is entirely welcome.

So my idea evolved a bit after conception and I decided to try to aim for Abjurant Champion as the crux on meeting my desires with it. I rolled 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 11 for stats. The plan so far is to take the Battle Sorcerer replacement (sacrificing 1 spell known and 1 spell per day, I know, it's a crime), grab the metamagic specialist feature instead of a familiar and multiclass into fighter for second level. This will give me a pretty decent amount of hit points, and a bunch of proficiencies that I don't need to pay dearly for (by doing something dumb like spending a feat on Armor Proficiency: Medium) and my first level picks are for Combat Casting and Battle Caster, and to grab Exotic Weapon Proficiency for Bladed Gauntlets as my fighter feat (better gauntlet suggestions are welcome). The plan is to grab a total of 4 levels of battle sorcerer and two levels of fighter, before entering abjurant champion.

That is some heavy loss of casterlevel right there, but am I understanding the 5th level ability of AC correctly in that I only need to take levels in a martial class after leaving it? Will I basically end up at 19 levels of caster at level 20? Does it include spells known or is that a common misunderstanding? What feats would you people recommend, for both flavor and mechanics?

Martial Feats I reckon I want: Power Attack (for requirements), Shock Trooper (for that ability hot damn), Cometary Collision (gonna need improved bull rush for that though), (as much as I want hurling charge and greater powerful charge, the DM has banned that Miniatures handbook at our table), Combat Brute (same as shock trooper, but boosts power attack).

Magic oriented feats: Clap of Thunder(flavor), Quicken spell, empower spell, maximize spell.

The plan is to get a mithril full plate and put spikes on it and go to town by shoulder-checking monsters and punch them with the gauntlet.

[Kaleph]

That is some heavy loss of casterlevel right there, but am I understanding the 5th level ability of AC correctly in that I only need to take levels in a martial class after leaving it? Will I basically end up at 19 levels of caster at level 20? Does it include spells known or is that a common misunderstanding? What feats would you people recommend, for both flavor and mechanics?


There's a misunderstanding - you boost your CL only, i.e. only those variables that depend directly on CL (range, Duration...), but there's no effect on spell known.

For the other points, let me think a bit about it. I don't really see the Need for the fighter dip, I'd consider instead stalwart + battle sorcerer combined - although here the hit to spells known/available really hits...

EDIT


Martial Feats I reckon I want: Power Attack (for requirements), Shock Trooper (for that ability hot damn), Cometary Collision (gonna need improved bull rush for that though), (as much as I want hurling charge and greater powerful charge, the DM has banned that Miniatures handbook at our table), Combat Brute (same as shock trooper, but boosts power attack).


Also here I see some issues. Are you using two weapons (two gauntlets?)
If you use power attack you should definitely get a 2-handed weapon. I think cometary collision is for flavor only, since mechanically it's a poor choice.

EDIT


my first level picks are for Combat Casting and Battle Caster


I cannot check now, but are you sure you fulfill the requirements for battle caster? I'd go with mage armor at the lowest Level, and medium mithral armor with twilight enchantment as soon as it becomes available...

[Mordaedil]

Battle Caster's requirement is that you possess the ability to wear armor without spell failure, which I do. I don't have the armor proficiency for the next tier yet.

The lack of spells known kinda breaks the mold on my original plan here, I was kind of hinging it around that. Might just go back to my plan where I don't bother with fighter dip, albeit I can't see a situation where Martial Arcanist benefits anyone now. Like, what point is your caster level going to matter more than spells you know?

According to my reading, Stalwart doesn't "stack" with Battle sorcerer, at least not in any positive capacity.

I suppose Cometary Collision doesn't really do much if you need to ready an action, which isn't going to happen as a spellcaster. Also, my stats atm don't allow me to really wield two gauntlets, sadly. I rolled a 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 11 for stats. My DM suggested putting 15 to strength, 13 to dex, 12 to con and 14 to charisma, leaving 11's for my intelligence and wisdom, sorry I didn't mention this in the OP, gonna edit it now.

[Kaleph]

Battle Caster's requirement is that you possess the ability to wear armor without spell failure, which I do. I don't have the armor proficiency for the next tier yet.

Ok, now I had the time to check, you get the ability from the battle sorcerer. If your idea is to go full-plate, then yes, you need battle caster; still, I am personally of the idea that a mithral breast plate (possibly + dastana) does a wonderful job, but I understand this doesn't match with the flavor you are requesting.



The lack of spells known kinda breaks the mold on my original plan here, I was kind of hinging it around that. Might just go back to my plan where I don't bother with fighter dip, albeit I can't see a situation where Martial Arcanist benefits anyone now. Like, what point is your caster level going to matter more than spells you know?

Actually martial arcanist doesn't make too much sense in my book, since when I go gish I tend to have my CL higher than my BAB anyhow.



According to my reading, Stalwart doesn't "stack" with Battle sorcerer, at least not in any positive capacity.

You still have 1 spell known (Minimum) of your higher spell Level, and you get weapon Focus (but only on a martial weapon) for free and +2 HP/Level, which brings you on average to have, as a sorcerer, the same HP as a barbarian. Consider that what you loose at your highest Level, you get back in comparison with the 2-level fighter dip, since you get Access to higher Level spells.



I suppose Cometary Collision doesn't really do much if you need to ready an action, which isn't going to happen as a spellcaster. Also, my stats atm don't allow me to really wield two gauntlets, sadly. I rolled a 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 11 for stats. My DM suggested putting 15 to strength, 13 to dex, 12 to con and 14 to charisma, leaving 11's for my intelligence and wisdom, sorry I didn't mention this in the OP, gonna edit it now.
If you use two gauntlets and armor spikes you have actually 3 weapons - but, RAW, you don't get access to multiweapon fighting. So, I'd plan carefully which weapons to use. Also, are you sure you have room in your build to get the 2WF feat chain, or do you plan to use magic items (gloves of balanced hands...)?
Note: if you're using power attack, I'd use a martial 2H weapon and armor spikes as secondary weapon, as long as you have enough feats/stats.

[Mordaedil]

Nice advice all around. Regarding the mithril stuff, I just really want my AC up there as I won't be grabbing something like mage armor (since my DM insist it doesn't stack with regular armor, which is fine, it is Armor AC after all.) Until I can afford mithril I will be going with a breastplate anyhow.

I'll check with my DM on his take for the Martial Arcanist, maybe he just decides to house rule it in favor of the better version. Otherwise, I'll just go with a 4-level dip instead.

Regarding Stalwart, I just mean my DM would have me pick one or the other, not both, because he feels they do the same thing, just a difference in focus.

Well, I was thinking one gauntlet and only use the armor while being grappled (or rather to deter grappling) and the gauntlet idea is sort of with the flavor that it takes in air and blasts out the sonic spells I will be using. My dex isn't going to be high enough to go down the two weapon fighting tree and as you point out, I'll be pretty starved for feats as is. Why gauntlets? Because it leaves my hands free to cast spells.

[J-H]

If you are willing to compromise and do "thunder and lightning" instead of pure sonic, vheck out Stormcaster from Stormwrack. You get a free Stun rider on a bunch of your spells.

[danielxcutter]

Oh, btw, you'll love Energy Substitution. Change Fireballs into sonic explosions!

[tiercel]

If you're big onto sonic damage delivery, you might like Infernal Sorcerer Howl (PHBII Heritage Feat), which converts spell slots into cones of sonic damage.

Not bad if you are going for a non-squishy sorcerer, since you mightn't mind getting up close and personal, and the sonic damage is (Su), so no AoOs, no SR. Downside: burns through two feats, and the prereq (Infernal Sorcerer Heritage) is no great shucks; also, whether you're good with the fluff of INFERNAL POWAAHHHH BURNS IN MAH VEEEIIINS...

[Mordaedil]

If you are willing to compromise and do "thunder and lightning" instead of pure sonic, vheck out Stormcaster from Stormwrack. You get a free Stun rider on a bunch of your spells.
I just might, because I saw that and felt like it would just add to how metal the character already is.


Oh, btw, you'll love Energy Substitution. Change Fireballs into sonic explosions!
I looked at Energy Substitution and it has the limitation that you can only swap between fire, cold, electric and acid. Sonic is left out!


If you're big onto sonic damage delivery, you might like Infernal Sorcerer Howl (PHBII Heritage Feat), which converts spell slots into cones of sonic damage.

Not bad if you are going for a non-squishy sorcerer, since you mightn't mind getting up close and personal, and the sonic damage is (Su), so no AoOs, no SR. Downside: burns through two feats, and the prereq (Infernal Sorcerer Heritage) is no great shucks; also, whether you're good with the fluff of INFERNAL POWAAHHHH BURNS IN MAH VEEEIIINS...
Yes, I was considering this, but that is kinda why I went with clap of thunder, because I only have to spend one feat and I'll be wading into melee and punching dudes with a sonic charged punch. Although, it's worth keeping on the radar for the future, just in case I end up squishier than I'd like and need to make some distance.

[danielxcutter]

I looked at Energy Substitution and it has the limitation that you can only swap between fire, cold, electric and acid.

Wait, really? I didn't know that...

Oh, you might like Sonic Weapon. It's nice on a gish character.

[Mordaedil]

Wait, really? I didn't know that...

Oh, you might like Sonic Weapon. It's nice on a gish character.

Yes, don't need to worry. I got the Spell Compendium app before it went down and I filtered on Sonic descriptor spells.

Here's the spells I'm aware of (albeit I might not take all of them):
(Some spells from Magic of Faerûn keep showing up, but I try to avoid the ones in that book because they are usually rebalanced in the Spell Compendium)

0 level: Sonic Snap, Slash Tongue(not a sonic spell, but it seems appropriate)
1st level: Death's call, Bonerattle, Lesser Orb of Sound, Sonic Blast.
2nd level: Ironthunder Horn, Shatter, Sonic Weapon, Dissonant Chant and for the absolute fun of it; bone fiddle.
3rd level: Great Thunderclap, Shatterfloor(!), Sound Lance, Sonorous Hum, Bridge of Sound, Resonanting Bolt.
4th level: Orb of Sound, Shout.
5th level: Cacophonic Burst, Cacophonic Shield, Channeled Sound Blast, Resounding Thunder, Shrieking Blast, Sonic Rumble.
6th level: -
7th level: Cacophonic Shield (again?)
8th level: Greater Shout
9th level: Wail of the Banshee

I won't be just taking sonic spells mind, but it's a good thing to kow what options are there already.

[Thurbane]

Great Thunderclap is one of my personal favourite spells.

Infernal Sorcerer Howl feat (PHB2) depending on your alignment.

You might find some more ideas here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?438487

[tiercel]

Metal eh? It occurs to me that if you like sonic and are OK with delayed casting progression, bard/lyric thaumaturge might be a comparable chassis for you. Bard casting plus is not so different from sorcerer casting minus (especially dropping two caster levels), and LT gives you Sonic Might to juice those boom spells.

Plus there's always Sublime Chord casting, especially if you think you'll be playing significantly past 10th level or especially past 15th. --Or if you like the "thunder and lightning" theme, there's Stormsinger from Frostburn. Now your enemies literally been... thunderstruck.

Depends how much skillmonkey/face you want to stir into your build, but bardic music / bard ACFs can be pretty tasty. (Heck, commit blasphemy and *trade in* Inspire Courage for Inspire Awe, whose save runs off your Perform check. Combo with Haunting Melody or pick up Intimidate as a class skill/Fearsome armor/ImperiousCommand or just throw down [Fear] spells and make your insipid, mewling excuses for opponents COWER BEFORE YOU MWUHAHAHAHAAA *cough*)

[Kaleph]

Why gauntlets? Because it leaves my hands free to cast spells.

Please consider, that it's the understanding of many, that you can wield a 2H weapon and still be able to cast a spell. Freeing one hand for the time you cast a spell, while you hold the, say, greatsword with the other (as long as you have a reasonable strength, which you should have anyhow), and grabbing the hold again afterwards is considered (at least by me and my fellow players) a free action.

[Darrin]

I looked at Energy Substitution and it has the limitation that you can only swap between fire, cold, electric and acid. Sonic is left out!


Yeah, the 3.0 version had [sonic], but the 3.5 update removed it. The typical way around this is substitute to [electricity], and then use Born of Three Thunders (Complete Arcane) to make it half [electricity], half [sonic]. The downside is you get dazed on your next turn. So take Quick Recovery (Lords of Madness) to make a Will save against the daze, or take Mark of the Dauntless (Dragonmarked) to make yourself immune to dazing.

If your DM allows retraining feats or Dark Chaos Shuffle, then consider Bard 5/Lyric Thaumaturge 5/Sublime Chord 2/Abjurant Champion 5/Ruathar 3 (swapping Favored/Primary Contact from Cityscape for metamagic feats). Sonic Might adds +1d6 sonic damage per spell level. I was working on a build with Persistent Spell in there as well (24 hours of [sonic] flame daggers), but it was a hot mess trying to shoehorn all the feats I needed into it.

[mabriss lethe]

Energy substitution: electricity leads into Born of the Three Thunders, which is a rather fun feat, and fits into your theme well enough.

[Mordaedil]

Please consider, that it's the understanding of many, that you can wield a 2H weapon and still be able to cast a spell. Freeing one hand for the time you cast a spell, while you hold the, say, greatsword with the other (as long as you have a reasonable strength, which you should have anyhow), and grabbing the hold again afterwards is considered (at least by me and my fellow players) a free action.
After discussing it with my DM some, I've decided to go with a halberd for now, and have spiked gauntlets for back-up/looks.

Also after deliberation, I've also decided to go with mainly battle sorcerer (taking one level of fighter to qualify faster, but when is still up for debate) before abjurant champion and then go with eldritch knight for the rest, which should land me at roughly the same spot as if I decided to take two levels of fighter.


Yeah, the 3.0 version had [sonic], but the 3.5 update removed it. The typical way around this is substitute to [electricity], and then use Born of Three Thunders (Complete Arcane) to make it half [electricity], half [sonic]. The downside is you get dazed on your next turn. So take Quick Recovery (Lords of Madness) to make a Will save against the daze, or take Mark of the Dauntless (Dragonmarked) to make yourself immune to dazing.
I am already feeling the feat starvation pretty strongly, since I sacrificed my familiar for metamagic specialist, I can take quicken spell, which is very fitting for shooting off sonic spells in melee.

That daze though, jeez. It takes a few too many levels for me to quite justify taking it early, but I'll see what I can do about it.


If your DM allows retraining feats or Dark Chaos Shuffle, then consider Bard 5/Lyric Thaumaturge 5/Sublime Chord 2/Abjurant Champion 5/Ruathar 3 (swapping Favored/Primary Contact from Cityscape for metamagic feats). Sonic Might adds +1d6 sonic damage per spell level. I was working on a build with Persistent Spell in there as well (24 hours of [sonic] flame daggers), but it was a hot mess trying to shoehorn all the feats I needed into it.
DM allows retraining within certain bounds, but ultimately he can call something as "too much effort required" to retrain. Though if I went bard, it wouldn't really be a sonic sorcerer anymore, heh.

[mabriss lethe]

The daze can be worth it, though. If you can hit a good number of enemies in a single area attack, you can basically shut down a encounter. Denying the actions of multiple opponents is definitely a more than fair tradeoff for the penalty.

[Rebel7284]

Getting immunity to daze is also pretty nice with Celerity ;)

[DarkSoul]

A level of Archmage for the Mastery of Elements ability will let you energy sub. (sonic) on the fly.

[Mordaedil]

Thanks guys, we'll be starting our first session this weekend, I'll let you know how it turns out. Since we're starting at level 1, there's still some room for improving things over time, but it's always nice to discuss potential paths to take as we go. (also, I can't go bard, because as my DM kindly reminded me, that was what I had in mind for the character I scrapped to make this one)

The plan so far seems to have 10 feats to play around with. I know the DM has planned a tournament for us to enter at around level 8 (because I helped him design it back for his previous campaign which got put on hiatus) so I want to enter it with this character and to pull it off, I'm looking at the invisible spell metamagic, which would otherwise be a really subpar choice of feat.

So to summerize; With my build as is (human, battle sorcerer going fighter/abjurant champion/eldritch knight(not sure if this is worth it tbqh, the attack bonus is nice, but the lost HD makes me wonder if just taking a second level of fighter would give me the feat I need and then I can move on with my life)) I'll get a total of 10 feats, 7 regulars and 3 bonus feats. Two are going for Combat Casting and Battle Caster, since I picked the Metamagic specialist package, I might as well pick up empower and quicken and if I want that invisible spell and clap of thunder, that leaves me down six feats and I'm left with four, two of which are fighter feats.

Does anyone reckon (Greater) Heavy Armor Optimization and Armor Specialization feats are worth it?

[animewatcha]

If you plan on being good aligned. Look at luminous armor and greater luminous armor spells.

[Mordaedil]

If I was good-aligned, I would probably have picked paladin instead of fighter, but alas, evil aligned.

[Mordaedil]

We had our first session this Sunday and things went pretty well.

Well, for some things anyway. We were off to explore a mansion that was suspected to be home to a lair of goblins holding an artifact golden gauntlet made entirely out of gold (a claim several of us found dubious at best) so we went in and started the old exploring rooms one-by-one of this mansion.

Because we were using roll20 the game kept presenting us with fumbles whenever we rolled 1's, which we didn't really play by, but the DM tried to at least make it a bit humorous without endangering us when it cropped up. So after I was the one that charged in the first room, basically kicking the door over a goblin causing him to immediately pass out (we rolled damage and everything) I passed an intimidate check that basically made every goblin in the room shaken. Not that there were that many, but it definately shifted the fight in our favor, as I cut goblins down with the halberd, the others struggled taking down the other goblins, the mage tried to whack one with his staff, but it just took it out of his hands and started hitting me with it instead.

And that's where the first thing went wrong, I decided to cast my first spell of the session, while everyone was distracted, but my ranged touch attack isn't extremely braggable, so I missed and it went past the goblin I was aiming at, hitting the bathroom stall behind him, causing the sucker to be covered in his own excrement. He didn't live very long after that though, and the other times we fought basically went down the same, I even drew a throwing dagger and threw it successfully, grappled a goblin that was unable to defend himself and beat him to death with my spiked gauntlets, taking my time doing so. The wizard also once again lost his staff fighting the goblins in the kitchen.

We convinced a goblin wizard to help us out with dealing with the goblin chief, and when we fought him, he successfully cast 'web' from a scroll trapping the entire room except us in it. Well, it just so happens the other player was an elemental summoner, so he conjured up a tiny elemental right in the middle of the thing, making things immediately troubling for the goblins. I tried to use my spell again and missed yet again. I reckon I am slightly cursed in this regard.

We spent a few rounds essentially picking off the remaining goblins, the DMPC (we were short on players, so this is what it came to) basically took out the goblin chief and we just had to wait and watch as the rest burnt to a crisp in the webbing they were trapped in. The poor wizard having learned his lesson with the staff after dropping it twice now came armed to the teeth with kitchen knives that he threw around, to a greater success.

After claiming the gauntlet, we were basically made chiefs of the goblin tribe at the manor, but most of them seemed to just run away after we had declared ourselves their new chieftain. And that's roughly where we ended our first session, after 8 hours. (the DM had to draw the maps as we went, so there was some down-time while he was doing so.)

Thoughts: I really have focused my eyes on Heavy Armor Optimization(and it's Greater variant later), which will give me +1 AC -1 armor penalty (+2, -3 later) which will be very handy to use with a Mithril Fullplate, which will make such a thing into a +10 AC, -0 Armor Check Penalty armor. And it will count as medium for purposes of Battle Caster allowing me to wear it at the same time. But to do this effectively, I've found I have to take a fighter level as my fifth level (first feat requires BAB of +4, I'll have +3 at 4th and and 5th level of battle sorcerer), and I can take it as a fighter bonus feat. I could also take Armor Specialization later for an added 2/- DR way later.

The question I have is whether I should adopt eldritch knight or take another level of fighter and then continue as a battle sorcerer after Abjurant Champion. I'd really like the extra BAB from EK, but I must admit that the survivability chasis of a d8 is much preferable to a d6 of the EK.

Does anyone know for sure if I should pick one over the other?

[danielxcutter]

Eh, Heavy Armor Specialization kinda sucks. Spend the feat on something else like Smiting Spell.

Edit: Also, cool fight.

[Mordaedil]

I'd really love it if Explosive Spell worked on my spells, but all sonic spells (with the exception of Shatterfloor) use Fortitude or Will saves.

On the bright side this build is very good at killing rogues.

[danielxcutter]

I'd really love it if Explosive Spell worked on my spells, but all sonic spells (with the exception of Shatterfloor) use Fortitude or Will saves.

On the bright side this build is very good at killing rogues.

Oh yeah, Rogues have crap for Fort and Will saves.

Btw, ever heard of the Invisible Spell metamagic feat? +0 adjustment for doing exactly what you'd think.

[Mordaedil]

Oh yeah, Rogues have crap for Fort and Will saves.

Btw, ever heard of the Invisible Spell metamagic feat? +0 adjustment for doing exactly what you'd think.

Yes, it's my 6th level feat pick. :smallbiggrin:

So far I've doted down Empower Spell as my other metamagic feat (since it requires I know one other), but do you have any suggestions for anything better? My DM will allow me swapping them out until I've actually used them.

[danielxcutter]

Yes, it's my 6th level feat pick. :smallbiggrin:

So far I've doted down Empower Spell as my other metamagic feat (since it requires I know one other), but do you have any suggestions for anything better? My DM will allow me swapping them out until I've actually used them.

For a gish, Empower Spell is actually kinda sub-optimal... Actually, just look at this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?321715-The-Gish-Handbook). I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it.

[Mordaedil]

After like a month now, we finally had another session with combat in it (we've had 3-4 sessions with pure RP and since then have added 2 new players to our part; a bard and a ranger)

The session begun with our ranger getting a letter from a cult we were investigating, telling him to meet the other members at the graveyard. He headed off, and I quickly told our bard we had a change of plans; she was to stalk our ranger from a safe distance and we'd follow her, but badly (we were a battle sorcerer, wizard and cleric, we were not going to go unnoticed if we went as a group)

The ranger arrives and finds one of the friends he made inside a crypt, stabbed through the chest and he delivers a final warning before dying. He then makes his way down into the crypt, hearing the sound of combat.

The bard follows, and moves silently after him.

Then the rest of us come in and we make a ton of noise and remove the blade from the stomach of the guy as we talk loudly about what we're doing before proceeding down without masking our prescence.

The crypt is dimly lit, but not in a bad way, several coffins and a bunch of corpses everywhere. Our ranger turns over the fresh corpse in one of the crypts, who has been scorched. It is Mike, another friend he made earlier. He examines the other body in the crypt, a previous queen of the city we're in, but her right hand is missing, cleanly cut off. The rest of us stumble into the chamber and before we can do anything, a woman suddenly makes her appearance known. A wizard steps out from invisibility and snaps her fingers and suddenly all of the dead guards and various cult members raise from the dead as zombies. It's a fight.

The ranger uses his bow once, before realizing it is a bad idea to use a piercing weapon against an undead and draws a longsword to fight Mike. That is almost all he does in this encounter.

The bard, realizing how poorly her rapier would perform, decides to leap over some coffins to stab the wizard, doing so successfully.

I charge one of the zombies in the corner while asking the cleric to protect our wizard. I deal a significant amount of damage. The wizard drops the sword he was still holding and casts mage armor on himself. The cleric, controlled by our DM is about to pound one of the three zombies surrounding her. I suggest she turns undead instead. Cue a five minute break while the DM looks up the rules and subsequently turns every undead in the encounter. The wizard realizes she's in a tough spot, but proceeds to defensively cast Fist of Stone and tries to punch our bard. She fumbles and provokes an attack of opportunity as consequence. The bard fumbles her attack of opportunity.

After everybody stops laughing, we continue, Mike and ranger have their duel of misses, the wizard moves awkwardly around the zombies to get into range to cast a spell, and I delay my turn until after the zombies act, so I can attack of opportunity the zombie I was fighting to death and then make my other actions, which include trying to hit the wizard with a lesser orb of sound. The cleric smites some zombies with the wizard using his belt of healing charges to destroy the undead and the enemy wizard decides to go invisible. The bard attacks her square, missing her, I run over and throw my caltrops at her square (mistake, apparently) and the wizard just leaves the square unhurt.

The bard runs for the only exit to block it, only to run into the wizard, and proceeds to stab her, successfully this time, and then I run over and swing at her, but I miss due to concealment. We know after this turn that she has left the room as the door closes and it is sealed with Hold Portal. The rest of us kinda get the picture and start cleaning up the zombies. The bard cries a bit that she's useless, so I suggest she sing and indeed this proves to be highly successful in removing the last of the threats, before the wizard removes the Hold Portal with an Open/Close spell (DM's call)

...

Now, I have to say, I am pretty proud of how my sonic sorcerer turned out, even this encounter wasn't a big problem, despite messing up the rules regarding how caltrops worked, and my lesser sound orb still missing to hit, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I just should stick to swinging my halberd around. Until after this session when I realized something I hadn't considered.

I happen to have the cantrip for Sonic Snap, and I decided to replace Empower Spell with Lingering Spell earlier, which isn't normally a great choice, but that combination is pretty much always going to be better than doing nothing by missing my touch attacks.

Other than that, I've realized just exactly how much damage I'll be doing in a single charge, which is frankly kind of scary. Enlarge weapon increases the halberd damage from 1d10 to 2d8, by casting true strike and using Arcane Boost (damagex2) for a higher level spell slot, then charging with power attack, at character level -1 power attack, we're looking at a scary accurate charge that can seriously mess someone up. And best part is that I can go even further if I have time.

We are now currently short of level 3, but I have a good idea of what to get.

[danielxcutter]

I'd say you're doing fairly well!

[Mordaedil]

Been a while since I had anything to progress on here. Things have happened, but I didn't feel right about updating it until we had gained at least another level for some reason.


Since last session here, we've had a few weekends where we played and some we didn't play, and only a couple where we actually got experience.

The DM had imagined we'd be a bit more sleuths than we were, but I don't think our party was quite cut out for the kind of campaign he had imagined for this city. We didn't ask around much at all and we barely visited the plot NPC's he had ready and we didn't even speak with the wizards that were harassed by this cult.

But we all learn and move on to more familiar territory.

The ranger returns to the cult hideout now with information about his dead "friends" and this mysterious wizard lady (named "Red" from now on)

Turns out she was there ahead of him and was using the cult for her own ends, but curiously she doesn't implicate our ranger or attack him, instead putting her frustration out by making them aware of our bard as an agent.

After explaining what happened at the tomb to the leader of the cult, he's taken there by the cult leader who doesn't quite believe our ranger with his ridiculous claims that Red is a wizard without proof. At the graveyard, the cult leader instead suspects "certain adventurers that the queen has hired", namely us rather than the less likely story that his lover is a wizard. He orders our ranger to go home and rest, but the ranger wants to stay behind and watch for clues, but butches his stealth roll really badly and the cult leader just finds his squatting behind a tombstone where he's dragging a corpse to. He makes a bad excuse and he urges him again to go home to cool things off.

The awkwardness is very palpable.

Our ranger later learns where Red lives and follows her to her home which is a 1-story shabby building with a fence and poorly tended garden and there are no people around, where he spies on her through her window, watching her eat dinner and then states "I hide in the crowd". We're all a bit confused and the DM cries out loudly "Where are you hiding?!" and determines he hides awkwardly in a bush. As she moves to the back of her house, he moves in and attempts to pick the lock. He rolls a decent roll, but even the weakest lock in D&D has a ridiculous DC, so he still fails, since he doesn't have ranks or anything. And instead of trying anything else, he just gives up and goes home.

I dunno how to call this kind of bad luck, but it's made him into sort of a comedic foil for our group, wherein he tries to do something and just can't do it well.

Later we're clued into Red's plans, albeit seeing as she invited us there herself, knowing we are who we are, we all suspect a trap and try our best to prepare for it, but our guess is off by a few miles.

We meet at the graveyard again, all in a group this time and we quickly notice something is wrong: There's blood all over the gravestones. Our wizard recognizes a ritual is connected with the pattern of the blood and quickly cleans it up by summoning a tiny water elemental that sucks up all the blood. Red appears before us, taunts us, vanishes and runs into the upper district, before a large explosion blows a hole in the wall and several zombies rise from the ground; there was more than one ritual circle painted down.

Instead of a combat encounter, we got a 4th edition style skill challenge, where we all rolled to participate to attempt to get a number of successes before a number of failures. This also marks the first time I actually hit with my lesser Orb of Sound! We drawed (drew?) twice before we got enough successes, so we failed to stop her plans, but we were able to catch her at the last second, when she just teleported away from inside of a repulsion field. We were clearly dealing with quite the high level wizard (at least 7th level, I determined by an earlier check). Aaand then we discovered she also hit the palace way deeper inside of the upper district where she stole a certain macguffin (genesis relic, if that tells you anything about how bad it'd be)

Since we had predicted she would strike at the necromancer tower as a backup, that kinda meant we misled the guards there, so I feel we kinda messed up.

The queen's counciler certainly wasn't too happy with our performance as we let the palace get hit without a warning.

Later, we found the cult leader already in stockades, clearly having been charmed or dominated by Red. As he got quite agitated as we questioned him, one of the NPC guards knocked his lights out, to our bards dismay. We then decided to go to Red's house and break in if necessary and search for clues. And inside we found... Red, bound and gagged. Turns out our high-level wizard (for ease, I'll call whoever that is Blue from now on) was a using some form of shapeshifting to impersonate this person and cause the havoc. Uncertain what to do, she wanted to serve sentence with the cult leader, because it was quite true that they were close, albeit she wasn't really in the cult herself. Being the only one with a different outlook on things, I offered an alternative path where we break the cult leader out of the stockades and leave the city by carriage to a safe-haven we have outside of the city. That was a bit in the extreme even for my DM though as it'd basically bar the city from us, so she decided to quietly turn herself in, facing whatever justice would take her.

Our bard, ever distrustful of father figures or authority, decided to follow her to make sure she wouldn't be mistreated by the guards. And while following Red and the guards for a bit, the bombshell dropped that Blue (or so we assume) assassinated the cult leader in stockades with a fire spell similar to the ones in the tomb. Red now got rather aggitated, but a calming assurance from our bard settled her back down so they could take her into arrest.

Next, we decided we needed an audience with the queen to update her on the situation, and as we did so, she seemed rather demure and uncertain on what to do, as not giving the citizen blood would likely cause a riot. Her advisor then offered us money in trade for silence on what had transpired in this case behind the scenes and our anonymity would be assured. The other good-aligned party members all rejected this blood-money and some even tossed it to the ground and left the room in turn.

In the end, I was there alone, debating whether to take the gold or...

I warned them that the current course of action will lead to further trouble later on, when it would come to light that they executed an innocent and prioritized the lives of mages over that of their people. I cornered the advisor by talking around him and made him exceedingly mad, and had another opportunity to just take the money and leave with smug self-satisfaction, but...

I decided now to appeal to the queen and her ruling. "What would you have me do?" she asked. "My queen, a ruler does not ask her subjects how she should rule, they rule and the subjects follow."

And then she asked the advisor to leave the room and called back the rest of my party to reward us properly and make us public investigators for the throne.

And that is the story of how my evil-aligned PC stayed the execution of an innocent. We had some alignment discussions here, but this just happened to coincide with one of my characters other goals; seeking prestige and she thought having the ear of a competent queen to be more valuable than a demure queen ruled by shadow agents that weren't herself. It's always kind of vague what attributes fall into an alignment, but sometimes roleplaying the character is more important than roleplaying her alignment.

This also concludes our adventures in this city, and now we're heading for other regions, but we will return to this city regularly as it is "the" magical capital of the campaign setting.


This is also where we gained enough experience to gain our 3rd level (finally) and become half-decent at what we're doing. I picked up Death's Call as my second 1st level spell, which I realize is a subpar choice (5 damage, what?) and I mainly picked because I like the idea of shouting like a super-saiyan and basically pushing people back a bit, which is how I'm going to play it off as, until my sorcerer realizes she's not actually a monk using ki blasts. Also picked up Battle caster as the plan is to go with Mithril Full Plate once I can afford it. The 500 gold I got for this adventure is a tiny drop in the bucket, but it'll add up as we go.

The DM said at a point he has plans, but I am wary of asking too much what that means.

By now, the obvious sticking point for anyone experienced in D&D as most of you reading this are, I take it you've noticed I am lacking an abjuration spell to qualify for Abjurant Champion. I okay'd with the DM in advance that I will be picking that spell as my first level into the class and consider it part of the training to become an abjurant champion, as it will also kind of fall into pattern with when I realize I am using magic, and shield seemed a lot more "obvious magic" to me than the other spells I've set to take until then.

In the meantime, prepare for a lot of shouting.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

If I was good-aligned, I would probably have picked paladin instead of fighter, but alas, evil aligned.

there is an evil Paladin if you still want one.

[Mordaedil]

Were you thinking of the anti-paladin or the paladin of tyranny/slaughter? They aren't quite right either.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Were you thinking of the anti-paladin or the paladin of tyranny/slaughter? They aren't quite right either.
I was thinking of the Paladin of Tyranny/Slaughter.
I do think the Paladin of Tyranny work for your PC from the information you gave in this thread but it is your choice.

There is always the Blackguard but I think the requirements are to high for your build.

[Mordaedil]

I'll keep it on the table, but currently my alignment is Neutral Evil, so I can't do with either of them at the moment. Though we'll see if alignment doesn't change in the coming time.

[Nifft]

Power Word spells might be a good fit for Mr. Sonic, in specific I'm thinking of Power Word: Pain (RotDr).

Now, for optimization, you're a Battle Sorcerer so your spells known are few. That means learning bonus spells is relatively better for you than it would be for a regular Sorcerer.

That leads me to Dragonblood substitution levels.

At level 7 -- which it's unusual for a Sorcerer to reach, due to PrCs, but you're a Battle Sorcerer so you can't PrC out -- you can either learn 1/1/0 new spells (of your choice), or you can learn 1/2/1 new spells (fixed list based on alignment). IMHO the fixed lists are a good deal for you, even with the one gimpy spell (darkness or fog cloud, depending).

The other thing about Dragonblood sub levels is you get Draconic Heritage at level 1 (in trade for your familiar). This is nice because it's one less feat you need to get to Draconic Legacy, which nets you another 3 bonus spells known.

As a Sonic Sorcerer, your choices are Battle, Emerald, Howling, or Pyroclastic. IMHO the good best spell list of those is Howling. You can see all the lists in Races of the Dragon, p.103.

You'll also benefit disproportionately from a [Bloodline] feat, which are all in the Dragon Compendium.

[Mordaedil]

I don't think I have that book, I'd have to read up on it before I'd feel confident in persuing it, especially since I'm only actually taking 4 levels in battle sorcerer and the rest are prestige classes (for now, anyway. Why can't I PRC out of them?).

After the last session, we decided to leave the capital behind after final negotiations and we advanced to level 3 and got paid by the queen. We did not spend a lot of time, just enough for the wizard to pick up a new eternal wand of mage armor, freeing a few spellslots of his. The ranger also picked up a couple of special arrows as defined in Arms and Equipment Guide.

We took the carriage and traveled south, towards a small town between our next location and the city we came from.

But on our journey we were waylaid by bandits and we had to defend ourselves.

The DM rolled up and determined that the difficulty of the encounter was above our level, so we sat down and mocked his map a little bit and people started drawing on it while he put down the monsters and added their stats. He got a bit grumpy, and in a jovial manner threatened to kill the ranger for this as he was the one mocking it the hardest.

So, we're facing down 9 orcs wielding falchions and packing javelins. We roll initiative. I roll the worst of everyone, a 12, so I go last, while the orcs go first, with a 17 initiative. This is just going to compound, by the way.

The orcs move in first, and then start chucking javelins. The DM rolls openly who they target. 4 is apparently our wizard. They all rolled 4 for target. Our wizard hasn't cast mage armor yet, so he takes two javelins to the chest, bringing him to 0 hit points. At this point, we start to argue what 0 hit points mean, since apparently not everybody knows the rules for being disabled. The rest of the javelins hit the carriage, causing it to dazzle them for a turn. (DM being nice, really)

So we start the combat, the ranger fires a rapid shot at the incoming orcs and misses one so badly he has to spend his move action restringing his bow. The other shot was an alchemist fire arrow, but even base damage of 5 was enough to kill the orc, so he kills the orc, and then it catches on fire, leaving a burnt-flesh smell on the battlefield. Our bard runs out of the carriage and start to attempt to stab the first orc on our left flank, but misses. Our cleric charges out the right flank and starts to fight the upcoming three orcs. The poor wizard uses his belt of healing and heals himself with 1 charge, then retreats to the back of the carriage. I charge out to the left to support our troubled bard, and I use my Death's Call spell, dealing 3 damage and causing one orc to become fatigued.

Now the orcs are getting rough, two of them start hitting me and they both hit and one strikes a critical hit, reducing me to a quarter of my health. The bard takes a nasty hit, the wizard gets cut by a falchion and is his by a third javelin, reducing him to 0hp again. The ranger so far has not been attacked, but the cleric is getting badly beaten.

Our turn again, the ranger fires his bow again, rolling double-critical on a single orc, hitting it in both its eye-sockets so hard his offspring felt it. Our bard again tries to attack, but again misses. The cleric steps back and casts a spell that grants fast healing to all within range, which includes herself, the ranger and the wizard. The wizard uses another charge to heal himself. I 5-foot step so that I can flank the orc the bard is fighting and I try to bring it down, but I miss, which is a huge let-down. The dice just weren't on my side.

The orcs then follow me and strike me down to -2 as they got flank this time. More orcs move in on the two people in the carriage. The cleric gets criticalled and is dropped into negatives.

Things look really dire.

Fast healing brings her back to life, however and she can heal herself. But first the ranger shoots down some more orcs and gives them the finger to provoke them, the wizard throws out orbs of fire and summons tiny fire elementals to occupy the enemies and the bard tries her best, but can't hold off three orcs on her own and she's eventually brought down to -8, but manages to succeed her stabilization roll straight away, so her life isn't in danger, while I lose HP every round at this point. We're eventually down to the cleric, wizard and ranger, the ranger holding the survival ratio here, having not even been hit once. The wizard even managed to kill someone with his quarterstaff and his elemental managed to hit an orc in the groin enough times to kill one of them.

The DM wasn't joking when he said that this encounter would be hard and we really felt it.

After we got healed and put back on our feet, I was planning on doing something to the corpses, but we ended the session before I could make up my mind. I thought of decorating the wagon with their heads, but the cleric shot that down as unsanitary. Stringing the bodies up as a warning seems like a good idea though. These orcs belong to the legion that have stolen something my character is after as part of her private agenda, so it makes sense to send some sort of message back.

I'll take ideas until Friday at any rate.


DM and I have kind agreed to that her source of power is based in aberrations rather than dragons, which is why she has slitted red eyes, albeit she has no direct clue as to how far back that goes or what exact creature it was. My DM seems to think Aboleth have some sort of connection with sonic powers, but I'm not entirely sure on that end. I've so far figured one of her ancestors was once struck by the Aberrate spell and that has sort of carried down, otherwise the only aberration (or heck, creature in general) I've found with a connection to sonic is; the Destrachan.

Ideas, insights, possible feat choices or spell ideas appreciated. It doesn't have to be a big part of the character, but so far I have no clue on feats to take from level 12 and onward. Level 6 is Disguise spell and Level 9 is for Clap of Thunder.

[Calthropstu]

To make a sonic sorcerer is no easy feat... you need to get your base land speed to almost 6k. And be a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog... which is not a playable race so you'll have to make it.

[Mordaedil]

To be fair, timestop cast multiple times can allow you to move to near supersonic speeds, even more if you stack movement spells before stopping time.

We ended up burning the orcs at the urging of the party cleric.

We managed to sell off the masterwork dwarven waraxe and we've now decided to strike at their base camp, where there are 40 orcs or so left. We'll figure it out.

[Mordaedil]

We sadly had a bit of a case of delayed sessions due to some connection issues, so we haven't had time to play until this weekend and we had a new player join us, this one is also a battle-sorcerer, but he's going pretty heavy into dragon disciple and getting as many strength bonuses as possible.

Though for some reason he decided to play as a very awkward social-anxiety nerd, so his character introduction was him weirdly mumbling to himself, mistaking the girls in our group as a bunch of prostitutes.

Okay, the story there is a bit of a long one. I'm playing a female character, the DM is playing a female cleric for us and the wife of one of our players is playing her own gender as an elven aasimar bard.

The guys of the group have fairly decent survival checks, so we decided to split up where the boys (the nature bois as they've taken to calling themselves) decided to head out to scout for the orc encampment, while we would recruit some heads to help us take on the camp. I decided to seek out a tavern and check inside for some able-bodied warriors. I found a couple of dwarves whom I sat down and recruited by appealing to their sense of pride and racism for orcs. We took a drink to their successful recruitment. The elf bard meanwhile, having spotted a group of other elves in the tavern decided to approach them instead to attempt to recruit them. But the way she approached them made them misunderstand her motives and they seemed to be general elven commoners down on their luck and just kind of desparate to get laid. When we eventually left the tavern she just kind of explained she didn't recruit them because they were just interested in taking her body as payment.

Meanwhile, the new guy had been under the caravan-master's wing for a while in this town, seeking employment to escort caravans. There were rumors going around that we had taken down a raiding party of orcs, but the rumor seemed to imply we were prepared for them and that we had no issues doing it. He was kind of interested in this rumor and decided to try to find us, but he was just watching us awkwardly from a distance and followed us to the tavern, where he got kind of stuck due to social anxiety and could only watch from a distance away as the cleric remained outside the tavern. Once we came out, he only had the last sentence of the previous paragraph as context and thus wondered out aloud "Are they prostitutes?"

Our conversation continued between us a bit and suddenly he exclaimed a bit too loudly, alerting us to his prescence. Our bard started chasing him, while me and the cleric decided to figure out how to recruit maybe some cleric to aid our other hires.

The nature boys found the orc encampment easily (he rolled a 32 against a DC of what I can only assume at strictest terms was 17) and they decided having found it and done a casual scouting was about as good as they could do without more backup and without getting closer, so they returned.

The bard and the dragonsorc had an hilarious exchange where some misunderstandings were cleared out and more were made, we all met up and got introduced and we kinda ended up calling the session there.

We discussed several plans for assaulting the encampment, but I reckon we should try to get some more people along before trying to assault it. The cleric (controlled by the DM) seems to encourage we talk to them (which we deem rather risky) and the bard is suggesting we poison them (which involves sneaking into their camp and is really risky) and my and the rangers plan seem to be to survey the camp and take out patrols or raiding parties until we've weakened them before we assault them.

[Mordaedil]

It's going to be three weeks until the next session, so I might as well fill you in what happened last time.

Still going around recruiting new hirelings to deal with the orc encampment, we managed to recruit a few more soldiers, and our bard arranged for throwing a concert to recruit people for the event. Meanwhile our ranger decide to find a tavern and starts to bully some nerd playing dice in there, starting to ask questions about Red from Nova. He makes a run for it, bumping into my character as I was leaving the militia barracks.

We saw he was a necromancer based on an amulet he was wearing and we started questioning if he had a small cult he belonged to, before we figured out he was a certified necromancer wizard from Nova. We then decided to recruit him to help us since he left to get some experience on his own.

Next our bard came with the news about the concert, we only had to get rid of a few squatters at a ruin that would serve as her stage and for some reason, they thought my character would be a good pick for chasing them off. I was going to turn it off coyly before giving in, but then she started demanding getting payment for her services to the recruitment effort and part of the payment was "behave nicely", which just lit a fire in my head. So I instead silently went along with the group to these ruins.

Once we got there, one of the squatters got up to our face asking us to "get outta there" in a rude fashion. Our ranger promptly decked him in the face, leading to the some of the other squatters breaking a few bottles and the like. The dracosorc prepared a club for fighting and the bard tried to use diplomacy to calm everyone. She rolled a 30. And just as she said she did that, I interrupted her with a "I charge the hobo with the broken flask and I deck him in the face!"

Cue hobo fight. There was roughly 12 of them. Two castings of Death's Call reduced them to 3, which the ranger and dracosorc drove off, while the rest of the party refused to participate.

The DM awarded everyone 50xp and some members complained that these were the dirtiest 50xp they ever had gotten.

Good times.

[Mordaedil]

Is there any interest in reading these developments from anyone or should I just let the thread slide into obscurity now that I got most of the answers I need?