Tips regarding true flame build

[Lurch]

Hello, just joined the server (and forums), I assume this is a proper place to ask for help or clarification.

I just created an Orog true flame sorcerer, maximised constitution and took toughness, hardiness and dauntless as my first feat, gift and background. The whole idea is to build up enough hitpoints and resistances to hopefully not die immediately when someone looks at my guy funny. Eventually going to pick up four levels of barbarian for discipline as well as replenishing run speed, damage immunity and temporary hitpoints whenever raging. AC is purposefully in the sh!tter to synergise with elemental shield later on.

Is there any way a character like this can survive in a server like Arelith, assuming I'm masochistic enough to get to epic damage reduction? Or do I need to be babysat all the time by other party members?

Also: at 2nd level I seem to have 28 hit points already, which seems too much: (4 sorcerer + 4 con + 1 toughness) x 2 + 5 dauntless = 23 (not 28 like I seem to have). Any Ideas why?

[Swords to Rust]

You will probably be able to solo a lot of content, but not everything. Its typically how people build true flame sorcerers, except that you would be better off taking fighter instead of barbarian since four fighter levels lets you take EDR 3 and still have feats free for epic discipline, epic evocation focus, hellball and greater ruin.

[Kirito]

Hello, just joined the server (and forums), I assume this is a proper place to ask for help or clarification.

I just created an Orog true flame sorcerer, maximised constitution and took toughness, hardiness and dauntless as my first feat, gift and background. The whole idea is to build up enough hitpoints and resistances to hopefully not die immediately when someone looks at my guy funny. Eventually going to pick up four levels of barbarian for discipline as well as replenishing run speed, damage immunity and temporary hitpoints whenever raging. AC is purposefully in the sh!tter to synergise with elemental shield later on.

Is there any way a character like this can survive in a server like Arelith, assuming I'm masochistic enough to get to epic damage reduction? Or do I need to be babysat all the time by other party members?

Also: at 2nd level I seem to have 28 hit points already, which seems too much: (4 sorcerer + 4 con + 1 toughness) x 2 + 5 dauntless = 23 (not 28 like I seem to have). Any Ideas why?

If you're relying on elemental shield, be warned, breach will hurt you a lot.

As to the the HP... occasionally dauntless bugs out and gives double the HP it should. That's your difference.

[Lurch]

Gotcha on the dauntless issue.

I'm sceptical with regards to fighter levels so as to get epic spells on a true flame sorcerer, albeit they are better than any other nukes, they aren't spammable at all, unlike meteor swarms and everything else on this character (including free movement boost and ~50 temporary hitpoints every three minutes or so). Seems to me they don't much augment a playstyle of spamming great thunderclaps and incendiary clouds (at that stage of the game) from the cover of darkness.

The epic skill focus, spell focus and penetration feats do sound giddy though, since I want auto quicken III and EDR III, which leaves room for nothing else on a barbarian build. I'll have to consider it.

Also, what's the deal with familiars disabling XP gains? Are they meant to be only for scouting outside of combat and RP interaction?

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

Is there any way a character like this can survive in a server like Arelith, assuming I'm masochistic enough to get to epic damage reduction? Or do I need to be babysat all the time by other party members?

Bolded for emphasis.

I haven't played one in the UD, but I'm playing a TF. Mine is running max CHA and a 10 base con with 9 AC- so yours can definitely survive in dungeons equivalent to Kholingen by level 10. Darkness + a bunch of Walls of Fire are your friend.

This is actually arguably easier to do without a party since you can completely control initiation of fights and the positioning of the encounters.

Every level-appropriate ambush on the server will probably kill you when you're solo, though.

[Lurch]

It just dawned on me, true flame characters cannot utilize any magic sans evocation, which leads to an issue:

Healing potions are considered conjuration magic right? Meaning that they're out of the question and the only way of restoring HP outside resting would be to use healing kits. Looks like heal skill is pretty mandatory as well.

EDIT: Also, is there some consensus as to how much spell penetration is necessary to reliably pierce high level foes, assuming no party members to lower resistance with breaches?

[Wytchee]

If you have less than 25 caster levels, most normal casters should consider investing in spell penetration. However, since you've infinite spells, it's not as large a concern to you.

Also, consider that spell components are still a thing for you, so you won't be spamming meteor swarms. You'll be spamming IGMS and Firebrand. Which gets boring. Fast.

Blackguard might not be a bad option for the saves. As an Orog, you'll have the strength to spare for Power Attack and Cleave, which are both requirements. It also nets you Heavy Armor and Shield Proficiency, clearing up some general feats for you pre-twenty.

[Lorkas]

Healing potions are considered conjuration magic right? Meaning that they're out of the question and the only way of restoring HP outside resting would be to use healing kits. Looks like heal skill is pretty mandatory as well.

There's a craftable cure critical wounds potion that's mundane (Healing Draught). Still, I would recommend investing in Heal and buying healing kits--simply buying a stack of ten is far easier than crafting a stack of 10 healing draughts.

[Lurch]

Also, consider that spell components are still a thing for you, so you won't be spamming meteor swarms. You'll be spamming IGMS and Firebrand. Which gets boring. Fast.

I should mention that I retracted the character for some alterations, as I consider Harper mage pretty mandatory because it's the only way to get eschew materials, a crucial piece for a true flame character, allowing things like stacking empowered delayed blast fireballs for massive combat initiation, as well as the aforementioned meteor swarms, whilst not going crazy over spell components.

A Kossuthian pyromancer might work as a background, assuming one could qualify as a Harper, given flame weapon buffs, elemental shield and wall of fire spells as well. It's a shame that ice storm is so useful, as it goes completely against this concept.

All in all I think that given the choice, empower is preferable to maximize when feats are scarce, even with the sub-optimal missile storms, since empower calculations are different for most original NWN spells: (1d6 + 30) * 1.5 for 50 or so damage when hit by elemental shield, AFAIK. Empower also lines up better with 4th level spells so that they don't cost spell components before gaining the last Harper Mage level.

Why are feats so scarce one might ask? I was thinking of a human with maxed charisma, constitution secondary, ideally ending with 28 base cha, base 18 con (gifts), enough leftover int to get crucial skills along with Harper prereqs. Empower, quicken and auto quicken line of feats for obvious goodness. No EDR, instead getting epic spell focus and penetration as well as silent spell (so that somebody running silence isn't a complete character nullifier). Due to Harper feat requirements, this actually pushes one pre-epic feat into epic levels, though Harper Mage makes up for it with discipline and ESF discipline accompanying full caster progression.

In the end I would have a character with 30 caster levels, 36 spell penetration and up to (31 + Spell Level) DCs given full charisma buffs, whether items or external. The aim is to have the best possible chance of disabling threats outright so as to not need damage reduction or defense in the first place. Cloud of bewilderments (fort save stun/blind), gust of winds(fort save knockdown), great thunderclaps(ref save knockdown/will save stun), sunbursts(ref save blind) and Bigby line of spells could handle crowd control.

For example: Crushing Hand would have an AB of 1d20 + 56 and grapple check of 1d20 + 61, meaning a level 30 character given maximum BAB of 25 and medium size would need a strength of 44 or 46, depending on who wins ties, to have any chance to resisting it (1 in 400), if hit. Question remains whether these are suitable numbers for epic encounters. If 36 spell penetration is overkill, there's the option of including maximize or just raising base charisma even further to 30.

Clearly 3 levels of Paladin would do wonders in the save department, though it worsens every spell outside of thunderclaps (which ignores spell resistance), robs one more feat (due to losing a bonus sorcerer one), makes elemental shield easier to dispel and high level spells less damaging by a noticeable margin, so I'm doubtful it serves the aim of making overwhelming offense work as defense. Obviously this build would be even more risky than true flames in general, though it should offer more value in a party setting.

[Nitro]

I prefer maximize over empower, anything that takes the randomness away from a damage roll is a powerful ability, knowing your fireball will deal 60 damage every time you cast it adds consistency to your damage output, while empower could give you a spike of damage, but it could also give you less. It's like a less harmful choice between wild mage and regular wizard.

It should also be noted that Maximize gives better average damage on all spells that involve damage dice of D3's or larger rolls.
Math shamelessly stolen from the NWN 2 wiki

For example, with 1d6 empower will do more damage than maximize with a roll of 5 or 6, which has a 33% (2/6) chance of occuring. With 2d6, empower will inflict more damage than maximize with a roll of 9 or higher, which has a 28% (10/36) chance of occuring. With 3d6, empower will do more damage than maximize with a roll of 13 or higher, which has a 26% (56/216) chance of occuring.

The spell penetration line of feets seem somewhat unecessary if you're going full caster, very few things are going to have the SR to reliably resist you at that point.

Also a note on Arelith changes to spells, all the bigby spells have saves attached to them, and a lot of the high level PvE mobs have some absurd saving throws, to the point where you may as well be dealing damage instead of trying to crowd control them. (Not all of them mind you, bigby spam can trivialize some encounters, just don't plan on coasting all the way to victory on CC alone)

EDIT: Also, empower spell does nothing for elemental shield, or any other damage not directly inflicted by a spell

[Lurch]

Granted, maximize is better in the endgame, outside elemental shield and delayed blast fireball, those 2 things are rather big factors however. Also, meteor swarms are especially nice in either case, given the full 30 caster levels. I do agree about the reliable damage part though.

If spell resistance isn't a real issue, it seems more charisma would be a better investment after all. Given that, crushing hand could have a reflex save up to 41 in that case, good enough for most foes I assume. If not, then clenched fist has a fort save of 40. If not that then thunderclap has a will save of 39, allowing auto quicken to get another spell off in between casts. If we're talking about reliability though, having nigh unresistable ice storms and missile storms through epic spell penetration should have a value of it's own, say, against an epic divine caster.

EDIT: Damn, that sucks about elemental shield. I guess it makes the choice for maximize easier then.

[One Two Three Five]

Rather than starting a new thread: Is trueflame 24/Shadowdancer 6 worthwhile or just go with the TF/Bard?

[Improv]

I've tried to test build that and it seems like a terrible way to go to me.. you need to cross-class 46 skill points and use 2 feats just to get SD don't you? Then how will you possibly have enough skill points left over to get high enough hide and MS to make HIPS worthwhile?

[Lurch]

The only way I'd consider doing the shadowdancer thing is through a human with harper mage, again, since it gets the class skills needed. Additionally it gets discipline.

You could start with 14 intelligence, get a gift to boost that up to 16, meaning roughly 6 skills maxed out in addition to harper skill requirements (when accounting for 30 extra points from both prestige classes), which would be concentration, discipline, hide, move silently, spellcraft and tumble most likely.

The most jarring prospects would be the feat requirements: dodge, mobility are required, as are alertness and iron will if wanting to go the harper route for skills, spell focus and greater spell focus evocation, quicken and maximize spell are practically required after that. Dodge needs 13 dex at the very least, which means a very squishy mage with 10 or so constitution.

If hiding inside a darkness spell works, I'd rather just do that instead and forget about shadowdancer completely.

EDIT: Also, I don't see bard as ideal for a true flame, as UMD isn't so useful here and spellcraft is already a class skill. A monk would get a better fort save, evasion and deflect arrows. A Paladin would get even better saves though lose tumble.

[Lurch]

EDIT x2: Looking at the shadowdancer build again, I'd say the most reasonable stat distribution would be: 8, 13, 14, 16, 8, 19 (accounting for gifts). Taking off a point of charisma and natural leader background for more survivability. At this point I'd say it looks a bit more enticing.

Alternatively (with natural leader trait): 8, 14, 14, 16, 8, 19, getting 1 more point of dexterity for -1 fortitude saves in general

[Improv]

I still don't know. HIPS is great but infinite darkness plus high stealth gets you almost there anyway. Meanwhile something like a ranger dip would get you stealth, disc, animal empathy for temporary companions, a free greater or epic spell focus feat, the ability to set traps.. that's just one suggestion but seems way more versatile than the gymnastics you have to do to get SD. Rogue/Harper mage might work too and give a range of useful skills. I really would not discount the use of traps with a true flame, it opens up some interesting tactics and it's about the last thing anyone will expect.

I do hate to see Harper Mage taken just for eschew materials, so I hope there is actually interest in the high commitment of RP it takes to be a Harper. I also wish there was another way to get eschew for that reason but this is getting off topic.

[susitsu]

I know a guy with a few builds who likes to complain about people playing trueflame sorcerers.

Let me get him.

[Barradoor]

I know a guy with a few builds who likes to complain about people playing trueflame sorcerers.

Let me get him.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cfD ... sp=sharing

The best one is the Humility build. Because you don't have to play a true-flame sorcerer for too long before -delete_character x2