[RPG] How to build a blaster/damage wizard or sorcerer in 3.5e

archetypecharacter-creationdnd-3.5eoptimization

'Blasting' in 3.5e, dealing damage using spells, is seen as inferior to battlefield control, buffing, and debuffing – in that it uses up more spell slots for less effect, takes longer to work, and is resisted by more types of monsters and enemies.

I know why this is, and that isn't the focus of this question.

I'd like to know what some builds, combinations of feats, classes, spells and magic items are that make blasting competitive with other spellcasters focused on things other than damage. Specifically looking for builds that;

  • Overcome the weaknesses inherent to blasting (low damage, resistances, immunities, SR, touch AC)
  • Maintain a degree of utility and aren't 'one trick ponies'
  • Directly do damage with spells, aimed at taking enemies out of combat as fast as possible, as many times per day as possible
  • Are playable from as low level as possible
  • Have some degree of 'flair' or 'theme' in their design

Both complete builds and simple suggestions or lists of usable/competitive elements for a 'blaster' spellcaster are both acceptable as answers. The one non-negotiable factor is that the suggestions or build must be competitive with relatively unoptimized spellcasters who are not blasters in terms of effectiveness.

Best Answer

The basis for optimized blasting in 3.5 is the mailman. Specifically, the goal is to have an extremely reliable nuke, that happens to deal enough damage to kill anything. Ultimately, maximizing damage isn’t the hard part, it’s making sure nothing is immune to that damage.

Force damage is usually a good starting point, since force is very rarely resisted. For these purposes, wings of flurry and manyjaws seem to come up a lot in conversation; wings of flurry, in particular, is a devastating sorcerer-only spell that deals d6/level force damage with no maximum.

For things that are force-immune, going with fire or cold, and then habitually using Searing Spell or Piercing Cold, works wonders. While fire and cold resistance/immunity are the most common energy defenses out there, with Searing Spell or Piercing Cold, at least 50% of your damage is going through, yes, even then. As far as I know, nothing in the game is immune to the special super-fire/super-cold damage that these metamagic feats give your spells.

And of course, you want ranged touch attack spells that don’t offer saving throws and are SR: No. This is getting you pretty close to a 95% chance of killing any opponent as a standard action.

The key thing to realize here is that we are talking about one or two very carefully chosen blasting spells. This “blaster” really doesn’t know many blasts. No wasting time with different energy flavors, because the force and super-fire/super-cold damage we’re working with is nigh unresistable. No grabbing different AoEs, because AoE spells allow Reflex saves and usually allow SR, and those are too unreliable; we’re going for the reliable single-target kill.

And that leaves all of our other spells for, ya know, everything else. Utility, you’ll have in spades.

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