Making a wand based blaster in pathfinder

[rel]

I have tried making a damage dealer who uses wands (think a blastificer / wand adept style build from 3.5) in pathfinder a few times but they never seem to work.

That said, I've have recently had a lot of people tell me it is not only doable but easy so I'm giving it another go.

This post will hold the requirements for the build, mostly for my own reference but also to help anyone that wants to weigh in with advice.

Whenever I put a functional (or non-functional) build together I'll post it on this thread and try and refine the idea.

So, without further excessive explanations...
Build Requirements

Item Based Resources
The main thing that seperates this type of character from a more conventional one is your resources are costly items refreshed with downtime and money. Effectively, a build should not have per-day resources but per-adventure resources. This distinction is important and results in a very different play style. Using some sort of per day refresh mechanic, reskinning a bow as a wand, etc is not an acceptable option.

no third party
The last few pathfinder games I played featured a no third party rule so I'm going to build with Paizo material only. Obviously using 3rd party material, porting material from 3.5 or writing my own class would trivially solve my issues but it isn't an option for this excercise

damage dealer
This characters main role is delivering damage and it has to be good at it. What's more, every attack costs money so this character should be better at damage dealing than a build that deals damage for free.
Greatsword fighter should be doing less damage just swinging away than a potential build is dealing. Since you should be spending substantial money on every shot.

Elastic WBL
Tricks for making extra money are assumed to be in effect, plan on getting about 1.5 times WBL for a build.

[rel]

Alright so I tried building a straight wizard to take advantage of Staff like Wand but it doesn't seem to work.

Ignoring levels 1 - 4 entirely and just looking at the point when you get craft wand.

Level 5
I have craft wand and make a CL 5 wand of lightning bolt. I'm doing 5D6 or about 18 damage per round if the enemy fails the save.

If I instead craft 2 CL 3 wands of scorching ray and flaming sphere and alternate them I get up to about 20 damage per round assuming everything goes right.

A level 5 fighter can reliably do more damage than that just swinging his sword even after you factor in the miss chance and other circumstances.

A best case of 20 damage per round at level 5 is not good enough.

Level 7
I can craft a CL 7 wand of fireball or lightning bolt for 7D6 or about 25 damage per round.

A wand of scorching ray 7 fires two rays at 4D6 each 8D6 damage assuming both hit maybe 30 damage per round.

If you claim empower works on scorching ray (I don't think it does) and allow a wand to be crafted with a metamagic feat (again, pathfinder doesn't seem to give you the option) then you can craft a very expensive CL 7 spell level 4 empowered scorching ray wand that deals 6D6 twice. Damage per round of about 42 assuming both rays hit.

Note this is maximum damage; the best case scenario.


Meanwhile fighter has his second attack and haste by now. Being conservative and factoring in miss chances, not being able to full attack, etc still leaves the fighter with more damage just for showing up.

Level 11
staff like wand comes online here so you can make wands cheaper but not necessarily better.

A cheap(ish) intensified lightning bolt or fireball wand (provided metamagic wands can be crafted) provides 11D6 damage at best or about 38 damage. At least the enemy failing the save is now more likely.

The highly dubious empowered scorching ray wand deals 63 damage at best.

A level 11 fighter would struggle to deal less than twice as much damage per round.

What am I missing? How do I up the damage to something respectable?

[Forrestfire]

In 1pp-only Pathfinder, even highly-optimized full spellcasters attempting the blaster role struggle to contribute as primary damage dealers. The damage amounts simply can't keep up, and thanks to the rocket tag, highly deadly nature of Pathfinder combats, blasting falls short if it can't bring riders. Generally, mages go for Dazing Spell, but that's out of the question here.

There are very few ways to optimize magic item blasting in Pathfinder. Staff-Like Wand is basically the best of them. Under the constraints you've listed (wands and primarily a damage dealer), I can honestly say that I do not believe your goal is possible to achieve in a 1pp-only environment. The game simply doesn't support it.

(Also, per CRB page 549, you can put metamagic feats in items, but it increases the effective spell level. A wand of Empowered scorching ray costs as much as a wand of a 4th-level spell).

[EldritchWeaver]

3PP Spheres of Power might provide what you need. Firstly, even without wands you can get unlimited "fireballs" (damage type may be differ) doing uncapped CL damage. That's without metamagic stuff, but then metamagic is eating spell points (SP) so no more unlimited. For wands (which work somewhat differently - the magic item creation has been revamped for SoP) there is the Wand Wielder feat, which allows your CL to be used instead of the wands. But otherwise a wand is a mini-caster - you need a base sphere plus the additional talents to get things done as if doing it yourself without spending the very limited wand's SP, so this is somewhat expensive. Also, since one feat is required, you can at best get the single-target attack. But considering your "I wanna load up myself with magic items" approach, the wandslinger (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/wandslinger) might be of interest. It is a gunslinger using wands like guns.

[rel]

Thanks, 3rd party is not normally an option for me in pathfinder but I'll keep it in mind.
I'm currently trying to make a rogue / wizard gish build but it isn't quite coming together; The damage simply isn't there.

It looks like I'll have to give up on this idea.

[Florian]

It´s a pretty futile attempt to try and out-damage the more dedicated weapon-based classes due to their ability to stack more and more static damage boni.

There´re still three ways to go at it:

H-Elf Sorcerer (Orc or Draconic bloodline, Blood Havoc) 1/Wizard (Evocation/Admixture) 5/Cyphermage 2/Wizard (Evocation/Admixture) 6-11/Cyphermage 3+ (Bifurcated Magic and Arcane Training ART).

The Havoc Sorcerer dip will net a static +2 damage per damage die while the racial trait will offset the loss in CL. Cyphermage and Enhance Scroll/Insightful Scroll will give some scaling ability before Staff-Like Wand comes online.

H-Orc Sorcerer (Orc or Draconic bloodline, Blood Havoc) 1/Occultist (Panoply Savant) 1+ VMC Wizard.

Same basic principle. The Blood Havoc Sorcerer dip to gain the +2/die damage, a fully loaded evocation implement to gain the flat damage bonus.

If you want to get hard-core, It´s Samsaran Sorcerer (Orc or Draconic bloodline, Blood Havoc) 1/Wizard (Evocation/Admixture) 5/Magaambyan Arcanist 1/Wizard (Evocation/Admixture) 6-11/Magaambyan Aranist 2+ (Vile Domain trait, Mystic Past Life ART) VMC Paladin.

Take the above principles, slap on some paladin spells and smite using spells.

As a side-note, you might want to have the Occultist as a cohort ...