What is the earliest the mailman build can come online?

[Lapak]

For those of us not familiar, what is the mailman build?

I don't know that anyone has answered this explicitly, so: the Mailman is a blaster-caster build that does one thing and one thing only: reliably delivers large amounts of damage. As you can infer from the thread, this involves using ranged-touch-attack spells that are SR: No so that the two biggest mitigations against spell damage (saving throws and SR) don't apply, then stacking ridiculous amounts of metamagic on them so you can punch above your weight. It's one of those optimization-builds that gets bounced around the forum on a semiregular basis, but it does have the distinct advantage of being tunable to the rules of the table (hence the discussion about how silly the DM will allow metamagic reducers to get) and since it's a pure damage build rather than a minionmancer who takes ten turns for every other player's one or a no-save-just-lose CC build it tends to be seen as less of a god-wizard and more of a plays-well-with-others to a degree.

It's the Shock-Trooper Ubercharger of the arcane set, basically.

[DeAnno]

One definition of PO that I've seen (from Piggy?) is dealing half the hp damage of a CR-appropriate foe in a single round. This leads to the question: is there a single build able to deal half the average hit points of a CR-appropriate foe from levels 1-20 without Arcane Thesis on the "standard" 4 encounters/day?

Obviously at the lowest levels you really can't, but it's not grim for so long because Scorching Ray and Practical Empower together are reasonably efficient from level 7 on. At that point you're dealing 12d6 = 42 with third level spells as ranged touch damage, and if fire and SR are bad they aren't as bad at level 7. A CR 7 averages 87 hp on that chart so by then you're practically caught up for as many rounds per day as you have third level slots (probably five.)

I would say most builds that are trying to look reasonable and be vaguely ready to go at level 6-7 without using Thesis are instead taking this track of Empower+Practical Empower (which also avoids Dragon Magazine) and using a variety of attack spells with it. Level 7 is also when lesser orbs are starting to get more efficient at 4d8 raw, and 6d8=27 for a 2nd slot so that's something, if not a completely adequate something. But you have to remember that that 27 is probably Acid Ranged Touch SR No damage so it's probably better than guy who's doing half again as much with his sword through normal AC.

[Anthrowhale]

Obviously at the lowest levels you really can't, but it's not grim for so long because Scorching Ray and Practical Empower together are reasonably efficient from level 7 on. At that point you're dealing 12d6 = 42 with third level spells as ranged touch damage, and if fire and SR are bad they aren't as bad at level 7. A CR 7 averages 87 hp on that chart so by then you're practically caught up for as many rounds per day as you have third level slots (probably five.)

I would say most builds that are trying to look reasonable and be vaguely ready to go at level 6-7 without using Thesis are instead taking this track of Empower+Practical Empower (which also avoids Dragon Magazine) and using a variety of attack spells with it. Level 7 is also when lesser orbs are starting to get more efficient at 4d8 raw, and 6d8=27 for a 2nd slot so that's something, if not a completely adequate something. But you have to remember that that 27 is probably Acid Ranged Touch SR No damage so it's probably better than guy who's doing half again as much with his sword through normal AC.

I played around with some possibilities a little bit. It looks like opening with the below works well? This leans on the planar sorcerer ACF at level 5 for half force damage and early qualifies for Incantratrix through Sanctum Spell which pulls double duty as a +0 metamagic to manipulate casting time with once arcane spellsurge comes online. Once you hit level 10 or so, the use of celerity allows you to exceed the benchmark regularly (quite possibly by to much). The weakest level is 4 where a Fiery Lesser Orb of Fire does only 3d8+3 fire damage, about half the benchmark.

Silverbrow Human: Bloodline of Fire
1: Fiery Spell
3: Sanctum Spell
Otyugh Hole Iron Will
I1: Empower Spell
6: Practical metamagic[Empower Spell]
I4: Ocular Spell
9: Quick recovery

[RNightstalker]

I don't know that anyone has answered this explicitly, so: the Mailman is a blaster-caster build that does one thing and one thing only: reliably delivers large amounts of damage. As you can infer from the thread, this involves using ranged-touch-attack spells that are SR: No so that the two biggest mitigations against spell damage (saving throws and SR) don't apply, then stacking ridiculous amounts of metamagic on them so you can punch above your weight. It's one of those optimization-builds that gets bounced around the forum on a semiregular basis, but it does have the distinct advantage of being tunable to the rules of the table (hence the discussion about how silly the DM will allow metamagic reducers to get) and since it's a pure damage build rather than a minionmancer who takes ten turns for every other player's one or a no-save-just-lose CC build it tends to be seen as less of a god-wizard and more of a plays-well-with-others to a degree.

It's the Shock-Trooper Ubercharger of the arcane set, basically.

Thanks, I appreciate that.