Sorcerer Prestige

[ladditude]

Basically, our party needs an Arcane Spellcaster and we have two fighter builds in our party. Our DM is considering letting us rebuild one of the characters, so we are gonna go with the less effective fighter.

The problem is, he's kinda new, so we were gonna give him a sorcerer and choose his spells. That way, he has a limited amount of options without all the +2 here -1 here stuff that fighters have to deal with.

So I was wondering if there were any good prestige classes for the sorcerer. I'ld love to give him something like the Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep from NWN.

I know blaster casters aren't that great, but its what we need, pretty simple, and the guy is still fascinated by large, large numbers.

[Solo]

Fatespinner, maybe?

[Zincorium]

What about the Tainted Sorcerer?

Okay, maybe not. What would be really nice is a list of sources you're allowed to pull things out of, that way we can restrict the list to things you can actually use.

[Cuddly]

Make sure he has dispel (or greater dispel) on his list of knowns. And don't give him blasty spells; give him save-or-dies, buffs, and debuffs. They're (generally) more effective. For instance, haste and slow rather than any of the third level evocations.

If he absolutely wants to do damage, give him an orb of spell.

As for PrCs... a list of allowable material would be good. In general, classes without many requirements are good, since sorc are pretty strapped for feats. 3 or 4 level dip in fatespinner is pretty dang good.

[valadil]

Use the fast metamagic option from PH2, and give him Incantatrix for bonus metamagic. Residual metamagic to let metamagic repeat for free on the next turn.

What I like about this sort of build is that you don't need that many damage spells to be able to blast. Scorching ray, fireball, and an orb ought to be plenty. Just MM them up a notch. Then you still have room for save or die options as well.

[Cuddly]

Use the fast metamagic option from PH2, and give him Incantatrix for bonus metamagic. Residual metamagic to let metamagic repeat for free on the next turn.

What I like about this sort of build is that you don't need that many damage spells to be able to blast. Scorching ray, fireball, and an orb ought to be plenty. Just MM them up a notch. Then you still have room for save or die options as well.

Drop fireball and ray by banning evocation, and that's pretty good advice.

[edit]
You could make him a shadowcraft gnome. That may be a little more cheese than you're looking for, though.

[tyckspoon]

hmm. The Arcane Scholar's shtick is reducing metamagic costs on certain types of metamagic. Incantatrix is the closest to that that I am aware of.

It's somewhat less than optimal, but I've been wanting to play with a Force Missile Mage (Dragon Compendium) for a while. Prereqs are ranks in Concentration and Spellcraft (no great cost, you should be taking those anyway) and Combat Casting (sucks, but is a prereq for a number of other PrCs, at least.) In return you get two extra missiles on your castings of Magic Missile over 5 levels. Also 4/5 spellcasting advancement with the lost level right at the start, which is the part that makes it not worth looking at for serious optimization.

Still, Magic Missile is guaranteed damage against upwards of 80% of enemies. A pretty good number of the ones you can't affect with it are the ones shielded by Shield, and the class gets a feature to help deal with that. Apply Arcane Thesis and some metamagic shenanigans and it'd be quite respectable.

[ladditude]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that we are allowed to use any books. Like, if it is printed our DM will let us use it. Like we constantly face encounters two or three levels above our CR.

Its his first time playing since early 2ED so he has basically forgotten how to play, so I wanted to stick with point, click, boom spells for now.

[Leon]

So he's new, wants to play a point and click blaster and your going to choose his spells for him?

Just let him play a warmage and be done with it

[Zincorium]

I gotta second warmage on this. You don't have to worry about picking spells, just use whichever element/blast radius sounds good and happens to be on your list and use it. Advanced learning only comes up occasionally and it's not hard to figure out some good stuff to put on there.

[GrassyGnoll]

What about Malconvoker? If you're gonna be the charisma stud of the team you might as well put your ranks in bluff and diplomacy to work.

[konfeta]

Well, why not ask your DM to let you houserule the Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep into your session?

It's not a game breaking class, just one that will allow his sorcer do a lot more boom.

[Leon]

What about Malconvoker? If you're gonna be the charisma stud of the team you might as well put your ranks in bluff and diplomacy to work.

For a Newbie interested in Point and Click blasting, as good as the Malconvoker is it's not the most ideal for this situation

[Reinboom]

For a simple stepping stone prestige class:
Ruathar from Races of the Wild
No significant entry points (help an elf and 3rd level spells should cover it)
Full casting
Two good saves
4+ int abilities
d6 hit die
and static abilities that you don't need to keep checking on.


(It also gives the martial weapon prof and slightly faster BAB to get in to Abjurant Champion with just the addition of combat casting... )

However, if by 'published material' you mean this allows mongoose publishing...
You have just opened a can of worms.

[ladditude]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure anything published is in, but if it isn't in a book or magazine he won't take it.

We were considering warmage, but we weren't totally sure. So, if ya'll think thats good then I guess we'll just go that direction.

[Talya]

First off, go with the rapid metamagic sorceror variant. Familiars are almost, but not quite useless (especially if you PrC out), while metamagic is wonderful.

Forgotten Realms Faiths & Pantheons has a PrC called "Heartwarder." You can achieve it after 7 levels of sorceror, but it's very feat intensive, and some of the feat choices are sub-optimal for a sorceror. You also must worship Sune, be Chaotic Good. However, it grants 100% spellcasting progression, and you end up with greater spell focus: enchantment, spell penetration, a +5 inherent bonus to charisma, the ability to cry holy water, the "Fey" type, an additional +2 to charisma skill checks, and other goodies.

Just about every +arcane spellcasting PRC is good for sorceror, as they have no class features other than familiars and spellcasting.

[Charlie Kemek]

What about just being a beguiler? rogue skills, set spell list, light armor.

[ladditude]

No beguiler because he is still at the infantile stage where all he sees are big numbers.

I know Beguiler would be much better, but he wouldn't want to play it. Plus, we really want to keep him to spells with direct effects. You cast x thus y takes z damage.

BTW, Heartwarder looks sweet.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

What about Warlock?

It's got Eldrich Blast for all-day-long blasting ability. This should satisfy his 'point and click and boom' mentality

With the right Invocations, you can get some decent crowd control too.

Plus, you can take 10 on UMD, so you can use clerical stuff too. Pop a scroll of Divine Power or Righteous Might to really feel big and important.

[Vael Nir]

Use the fast metamagic option from PH2, and give him Incantatrix for bonus metamagic. Residual metamagic to let metamagic repeat for free on the next turn.

What I like about this sort of build is that you don't need that many damage spells to be able to blast. Scorching ray, fireball, and an orb ought to be plenty. Just MM them up a notch. Then you still have room for save or die options as well.

I just started playing a sorcerer like that with 3 levels in incantatrix so far... I have a warmage in the party as well, it's awesome. :D

[Burley]

What about Warlock?

It's got Eldrich Blast for all-day-long blasting ability. This should satisfy his 'point and click and boom' mentality

With the right Invocations, you can get some decent crowd control too.

Plus, you can take 10 on UMD, so you can use clerical stuff too. Pop a scroll of Divine Power or Righteous Might to really feel big and important.

Yet again, I agree with the Warlock. You want something simple that blows crap up. It's the Warlock.
Or the Dragonfire Adept for a different feel, and a different type of versatility.

[ErrantX]

Another few ideas, as newbies also tend to like to hit stuff with weapons too, is gish him out by having him go into Knight Phantom from the Eberron book Five Nations, and some Abjurant Champion. That way he could fight if he wanted to, cast in light armor, and still blow stuff up reasonably well.

Or go Warlock. Cleric + Warlock + Eldritch Disciple = hitting the "I win the game" button.

-X

[Mal666]

if he wants big numbers, and you dont want to give him evocation spells
then give him the Infernal Sorceror feats from the PHB2 (infernal sorceror heratidge and Infernal sorceror Howl)
that way he can always sacrifice spell slots to do a nice, solid ammount of damage, and doesnt need to worry about AoO from people standing next to him.

wall spells are the daddy for non-evocation sorcerors, and fogish spells (freezing, acid and cloudkill). remember to give him Dimension door though. its an escape for free card.
haste is better than slow, given it doesnt require saves, and gives the entire party an extra attack, +1/hit and ac.

prestiging him to a sandshaper(sandstorm) drops him a caster level and a feat (touchstone, city of the dead... its higher order ability is sweet though - mass charm monster 1/week. 4 uses total) but sandshaper gives him every physical buff, some taking up spellslots lower than they should and a mass of cone and utility spells that ignore SR. pluss some silly abilities if he wants to play with them, like regenning if he gets burried.