I need a quick and easy to play Lvl 5 half giant or shifter sorcerer

[NOMster]

don't really see any sorcerer guides like i did for barbarrians, so please help me out here. I need a good build based around a half giant sorcerer that can be played easily by an 11 year old and that won't die. he has 9000 gold to spend also. the only other races he thought about was shifter (hurts cha though), so he settled on this. reason is we're also playing with a 5e group right now and his 5e character is a shifter sorcerer with giant soul origins and he wants to connect the 2 via some type of lineage. so he's good with either race, but not much else. he does want a raven familiar.

[daremetoidareyo]

what kind of spells does he predominantly want?

[zlefin]

do you make any changes to how la works, and/or do you allow LA buyoff? the half-giant race has a pesky +1 LA for some pretty unimpressive bonuses.

[NOMster]

what kind of spells does he predominantly want?

Fire is all he said

[NOMster]

do you make any changes to how la works, and/or do you allow LA buyoff? the half-giant race has a pesky +1 LA for some pretty unimpressive bonuses.

Didn't realize. think we will just go shifter despite the minuses.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

Make a Blaster. Take feats like Bloodline of Fire, Draconic Heritage (Red) and Draconic Power, Fiery Burst (excellent for kids!) and Searing Spell (Metamagic Sorcerer ACF). Take the Sphere of Fire (+1 Cl with fire spells, -1 with Cold). With Wings of Cover for survivability, you can make a decent blaster at low-levels by pumping CL like crazy.
This should be a dead simple build: throw fire at things. They die. Rinse and repeats.

[zlefin]

Didn't realize. think we will just go shifter despite the minuses.

ok; though using LA buyoff would also work, or just give him a fire giant bloodline for free and ignore the other bloodline rules or something; depends how muhc you want strict RAW vs adjusting things to work.

[NOMster]

Make a Blaster. Take feats like Bloodline of Fire, Draconic Heritage (Red) and Draconic Power, Fiery Burst (excellent for kids!) and Searing Spell (Metamagic Sorcerer ACF). Take the Sphere of Fire (+1 Cl with fire spells, -1 with Cold). With Wings of Cover for survivability, you can make a decent blaster at low-levels by pumping CL like crazy.
This should be a dead simple build: throw fire at things. They die. Rinse and repeats.

sorcerer sphere fire ACF is perfect. so for the first two feats, I'll give him fiery burst that sounds great also, then we'll work on the which other one to take first.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

sorcerer sphere fire ACF is perfect. so for the first two feats, I'll give him fiery burst that sounds great also, then we'll work on the which other one to take first.

It's also possible to take up to 2 Flaws for extra feats. Good flaws include "Noncombatant" (-2 to melee attacks, but with Fiery Burst you should never be rolling any anyway!) and Inattentive (-4 to Listen and Spot checks).

Note that Dragonblooded Sorcerer substitution levels (https://molivero.com/dndtools/USRD/srd/classes/baseCore/sorcerer.html#dragonblood-sorcerer) are a thing. You only want to take the first one (the others are terrible) but it gives you Draconic Heritage for free.

You can get 4 feats in total at level 5 (5 if you're a human), as well as Draconic Heritage for free. I'd suggest taking Bloodline of Fire, Draconic Power, Searing Spell, and Fiery Burst. If you take human, get Practical Metamagic (Scorching Ray).

Your total Caster Level for fire spells is therefore 5 +2 (bloodline of fire) +1 (Draconic Heritage) +1 (Sphere of Fire) +1 (Fiery Burst). That's a total CL of 10 for your fire spells like Lesser orb of Fire (5d8 damage is great for a level 1 spell!) and Scorching Ray. At level 6, learn Fireball!

[NOMster]

DM isn't doing flaws :(

[Troacctid]

I want to point out the Primordial Giant template from Secrets of Xen'drik, which you could apply to half-giant without increasing its LA. It would add +4 Charisma, +4 Intelligence, and give you your choice of invisibility or levitate at will as a spell-like ability. I think primordial half-giant is one of the rare +1 LA races that I'd actually be happy to take.

[NOMster]

Honestly I've tried and I can't get my head around LA buyoff. Like If we're starting at level 5, it basically means he loses the xp between 4 and 5 so he starts at 4? Is that it?

[ShurikVch]

so for the first two feats, I'll give him fiery burst that sounds great also, then we'll work on the which other one to take first.I'm sorry, but if character in question is 5th-level, it would be a bit problematic to give them Fiery Burst:
this feat required ability to cast 2nd-level spells;
sorcerers are got their 2nd-level spells at 4th level;
but they wouldn't get new feat on that level (nor, for that matter, on the next level).
Thus, unless you will spent 1st-level feat on Precocious Apprentice, Fiery Burst wouldn't be available at least until the 6th level

For another feats:

Those feats are may be taken only at 1st level
Bloodline of Fire (Player's Guide to Faerûn): +4 on saves vs fire, +2 CL to spells with [fire] descriptor
Red Draconic Heritage (Dragon Magic): gives Dragonblood subtype, Intimidate as class skill, bonus to saves vs magic fire, paralysis, and sleep; prerequisite to Draconic Power feat (+1 CL and +1 DC to [fire] spells)
Jinnbound – Efreeti (Dragon #319): +4 on saves vs fire, +2 DC to spells with [fire] descriptor

Fire Bloodline (Dragon Compendium): gives extra spell known at every spell level from the list (Hypnotism, Pyrotechnics, Tongues, Fire Shield, Cloudkill, Summon Monster VI, Delayed Blast Fireball, Sunburst, Meteor Swarm)
Mastery of Ice and Fire (Player's Guide to Eberron): spells with [fire] (or [cold]) descriptor could be cast as with Enlarge Spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#enlargeSpell) metamagic, but without increasing casting time or slot level; required Enlarge Spell
Red Dragon Lineage (Dragon Magic): spend arcane spell slot to produce 15' cone of fire which cause 1d8 fire damage per slot's level; those targets who're failed their Ref save (for half damage) also get the same damage at the next round

[Metamagic]
Blistering Spell (Player's Handbook II): +2 fire damage per spell's level, and targets who're failed their save got -2 penalty to attacks and checks for next round; +1 metamagic
Fiery Spell (Sandstorm): +1 fire damage to every damage dice; +1 metamagic
Radiant Spell (Dragon #314): creature damaged by [fire] or [light] spell also Blinded for number of rounds equal to spell's level (creatures who succeed on Will save, instead are Dazzled for 1 round); +2 metamagic
Searing Spell (Sandstorm): [fire] spells are ignoring any resistance to fire, and targets with fire immunity still suffering 50% damage; +1 metamagic


Also, how about the Domain Access ACF from Complete Champion? Fire Domain (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spellLists/clericDomains.htm#fireDomain)... :smallwink:

[NOMster]

So can he take domain access fire acf and sphere of fire acf as well as draconic heritage feat? Jesus.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

So can he take domain access fire acf and sphere of fire acf as well as draconic heritage feat? Jesus.

If he's a human (with the half-giant template), at level one he can take sphere of fire, Bloodline of Fire and Draconic Heritage. Then for his level 3 feat, Draconic Power.

BUT ask your GM if they're okay with (implied) retraining. That way you could take Fiery Burst as your level 3 feat, saying that your PC actually took something useless and then retrained it at level 4. If so, then I suggest doing this:
Take Bloodline of Fire and Searing Spell as your level 1 feats.
Take Fiery Burst as your "level 3 feat" (actually you'd have taken it at level 4, or taken something unimpressive like Spell Focus and then retrained it in the background).
Doing this gives you +3 CL with fire spells, an at-will Fiery Burst attack (inferior to a good fighter's attack, but better than a crossbow!), and Searing Spell in case you meet enemies with fire resistance.

EDIT: You'd have to take Precocious Apprentice at level 1 instead of Searing spell, and then retrain Precocious Apprentice into Searing spell at the same time as you retrained Spell Focus into Fiery Burst.

[daremetoidareyo]

I know you said sorcerer and I know how important the concept of the class name is for younger players, but...

How about warlock?

Unlimited flame blasts. Your patron is an ogre magi ancester. You can be a shifter. If you allow eldritch claws, you can be claw based shifter whose claws are wrapped in flames!

You get cool invocations as spells and you don't have to track uses and the charisma issue ain't that big of a deal.

[Troacctid]

If he's a human (with the half-giant template), at level one he can take sphere of fire, Bloodline of Fire and Draconic Heritage. Then for his level 3 feat, Draconic Power.

BUT ask your GM if they're okay with (implied) retraining. That way you could take Fiery Burst as your level 3 feat, saying that your PC actually took something useless and then retrained it at level 4. If so, then I suggest doing this:
Take Bloodline of Fire and Searing Spell as your level 1 feats.
Take Fiery Burst as your "level 3 feat" (actually you'd have taken it at level 4, or taken something unimpressive like Spell Focus and then retrained it in the background).
Doing this gives you +3 CL with fire spells, an at-will Fiery Burst attack (inferior to a good fighter's attack, but better than a crossbow!), and Searing Spell in case you meet enemies with fire resistance.
The retraining rules forbid retraining into a feat that you didn't qualify for at the time you got the feat it's replacing. If you want to do that, you need to mess around with dragonborn or whatever.

Also, half-giant is not a template.

[NOMster]

I really appreciate all the input. We started tonight so it's too late to change it now but definitely the stuff I got here helped and we'll keep the warlock in mind as a close family member in case something happens and this guy needs to be avenged.