I am looking for advice for a “make things go boom” sorcerer or battle sorcerer.
Here are the perimeters
10 th level
Most races allowed
Most books allowed (no eberon, FR, or 3rd party)
This is for a game were magic items (including scrolls and wands) largely don’t exist and making them is damn near impossible. Even ascess to mundane gear and alchemical items is greatly reduced.
DM has called shot rules, so ranged touch attack spells that do high damage would work well with this system.
I am not looking for any pun-pun or nuke city combos, I just want to be really good at make thing blow up (I would not mind having some battle field controls spells too).
You probably know this, but blasting is generally suboptimal. Put simply, damage does not keep up with monster HP. (The simplest illustration: Most damage spells go up by +1d6 (+3.5) per level, frequently with a save for half. Most monsters go up more than +3.5 hp per CR, as well as improving their saves and unlocking abilities like energy resist and spell resist.)
That said, you're trying to make a warmage style sorcerer, so this thread should give you a quick overview. If you want battlefield control spells, try here; most of those count as battlefield control depending on how they're applied, and they'll give you bang for when your blast fails.
With called shot rules, definitely consider Spellwarp Sniper.
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With called shot rules, you will want to use spells that make multi-touch attacks.
"I shoot all 5 scorching rays at him. Called shot face" roll 5 touch attacks. Oh good. One hit. (This assumes face is the auto kill shot. just aim at whatever takes the most -X to hit, and has the best result. Then spam attacks at it)
Also, ask how magic missile works with these rules? It auto hits your target, you might be able to auto call the shot?
As for some nice blast spells, I am partial to the Orb of ___ line.
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I know blasting is not optimal, but I was interested in playing a character that was optimized to do something sub-optimal but fun . The hope would be that I would end up with a middle tier character in term of capability, and at least to get to roll lots of dice. Besides due to idosycrincies of the DM and the game world, many foes can only be hurt by ultra rare magic weapons (spells like magic weapon or magic fang will not get past their DR) or magic damage. Thus a blaster is less sub-optimal in this game (also the DM nerfed power attack, so it only does 1 to 1 damage with two handed weapons).
What book is spellwarp sniper in, and what does it do?
Krusk,
The called shot rules are not strictly codified but are generally adlibbed by the DM with a few guidelines. If someone takes "a lot of damage" to a certain part of the body the DM will come up with some negative effect based on the location of the hit, the manner in which the wound was inflicted, and other circumstances. Also you can only make called shots with spells that require hit rolls (so MM is out).
Sometimes a hit to the head can instantly leave someone dying regardless of remaining hp, but most other times the target might be dazed, stunned, blinded, take massive negatives to rolls etc. Sometimes the DM will roll a d10 to determine how severe the hit is. Frankly I find the whole system clunky, arbitrary, and just plain terrible, but since we are stuck with it I am trying to make the most of it. So basically a maximized scorching ray or orb spell to the head will probably inflict some significant negative effect that will make it worth the -8 to hit.
Sometimes a hit to the head can instantly leave someone dying regardless of remaining hp, but most other times the target might be dazed, stunned, blinded, take massive negatives to rolls etc. Sometimes the DM will roll a d10 to determine how severe the hit is. Frankly I find the whole system clunky, arbitrary, and just plain terrible, but since we are stuck with it I am trying to make the most of it. So basically a maximized scorching ray or orb spell to the head will probably inflict some significant negative effect that will make it worth the -8 to hit.
Orb of Acid to the junk.
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bastion Press had a Magic Missile alternate that did fire dmg, long range, and +1 Missile over the standard one.
It would be ideal for meta-magicking to the moon.
You didn't tell us what PrC's or feats are allowed. Basically, the only way to make a good blaster is Metamagic efficiency and stacking metamagic feats. This basically means sticking witha level 1-2 spell, and overspecializing in it as you Meta it up to do mroe dmg in higher slots.
It's not hard to get a blaster who can do 100 pts of dmg in a round, but you definitely need the right resources for it.
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If you are really wanting a blasting type the warmage from Complete Arcane is pretty powerful and gets decent armor and weapons compared to a sorcerer. He gets the same number of spells per day I think and they are almost all blasting type spells but he can cast any spell on the list without preparing it ahead (like a sorcerer) which is 8+ spells for each spell level. The types of damage the spells do are varied enough to take out any monster, fire spells for ice monsters and vice versa and also force spells for incorporeal creatures. Pretty much any good blasting spell you can think of he has or he can get. He also gets a few feats and abilities that allow him to increase the damage of his spells. He is one of my players favorite classes and he loves to show me how many spells he has left after having destroyed my hordes of bugbears. His favorite low level spell is fireburst (2nd lvl spell) which does 1d8 damage per caster lvl to all adjacent creatures (is probably not effective for a lvl 10 however because it maxes out at 5d8). He likes to use it on the pesky fighters who try to disrupt his spells. A higher level version of the spell is called Greater Fireburst (5th lvl spell) which does the same thing but in a 10ft radius around you and maxes out at 15d8. If you really want a sorcerer though he can also get this spell.
Thanks for the info, but I am not a fan of the warmage. The class spell list is too narrow, although I want to concentrate on blasting I want a few utility spells handy as a backup. I was thinking of using the battle sorcerer variant from unearthed arcana which has decent BAB, HP, and the ability to wear armor but lets you assemble a custom spell list.
