Sorcerer feat comparisons in HoF

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These ratings assume a high level (20+) sorcerer in HoF whose primary function is to cast arcane spells, and who does not melee and is not a "decoy". They do not apply to other character builds which include sorcerer levels for utility.

Many feats are obviously not relevant or require many levels in another class. I haven't bothered to list those.


Spellcaster feats:

Aegis of Rime, Aqua Mortis, Scion of Storms, and Spirit of Flame require a significant stat investment: if a non-human wants these feats, he can't "dump" INT down to 3, but instead needs it to be at least 12. Spirit of Flame is by far the best of these, because it boosts Delayed Blast Fireball and Meteor Swarm. Although the other feats only apply to "capped" spells, and therefore give a smaller increase, they are recommended if the sorcerer is going to use those spells. The elemental resistances are too small a bonus to affect your decision on these feats.

Combat Casting is a must, as is maxing the Concentration skill.

Discipline is essentially one-half Combat Casting (excellent) and one-half Iron Will (OK). Recommended.

Greater Spell Focus: Enchantment is essential if the sorcerer uses offensive Enchantment spells, which he should.
Greater Spell Focus: Necromancy only boosts three spells, but those three are Skull Trap, Horrid Wilting, and Wail of the Banshee. Highly recommended.
Greater Spell Focus: Evocation is needed if you use evocation spells.
Greater Spell Focus: Transmutation only helps with Disintegrate and Slow. That isn't enough.


Armored Arcana is almost certainly a bad choice. I'm not aware of any armor or shield with a benefit that justifies spending feats on this. If there is, you'd pick up the needed Armor or Shield Proficiency with a single Paladin level.

Courteous Magocracy will at best trade one feat for four skill points -- a bad trade.

Spell Penetration is dubious if your party includes characters with spell resistance. The JUPP recommends against the feat.

Sub-vocal Casting is a wasted feat.


General feats:

Dash is more a convenience for the player than a benefit to the character. If you enjoy this feat, get it.

Great Fortitude, Iron Will, and Lightning Reflexes are a good place to spend extra feats, if you have any.

Luck of Heroes is awesome, if you're allowed to take it.


Bullheaded: Half of this feat is OK, and half is junk. Don't bother.

Deflect Arrows doesn't do enough.

Forester is useless for any character.

Heroic Inspiration doesn't do enough.

Improved Initiative is bugged. If it worked, probably everyone would take it.

Mercantile Background: get this with a different character.

Resist Poison is a waste.

Snake Blood: Half of this feat is OK, and half is junk. Don't bother.

Strong Back: get it with your high-STR characters, not your sorc.

Toughness: one feat for 3 HP is a poor trade.

 

Subvocal Casting isn't a waste. The worst thing that can happen to a caster and still be reversed is getting silenced. Subvocal Casting gets rid of the problem. Much more useful that Iron Will, in my opinion.

Combat Casting? Perhaps in the HoF mode, when you want your Concentration as high as possible. Otherwise, it's a feat that can wait.

Courteous Magocracy does seem somewhat useless, but this is because of the max value of Diplomacy checks and the fact that Spellcraft maxed out will (probably) still suffice for everything. Such feats are used to bring skills to higher level than just maxed out.

The saving throw feats aren't oh so great. I don't remember any of my spellcasters ever taking any, but I don't remember any of them getting past level 16, at least in an arcane spellcasting class.

Dash is not so bad. It allows for a quick escape. Especially if you have a level or two as a monk or barbarian, this can give you some collective edge. Or perhaps you have a rogue or ranger level or two and hide in shadows every now and then.

Forester is probably good for someone who isn't a full time ranger or druid but would still like to dabble with the skills they have as class skills. However, I don't suppose there's anything you couldn't do with your skill maxed from skill points alone -- unless it's cross-class for you, of course.

Deflect Arrows doesn't do enough, I agree. Heroic Inspiration doesn't seem to be much of a difference and it's not like it's wise to keep an arcane spellcaster below 50% HP long enough to make use of the feat.

Spell Penetration is helpful against the drow, the duergar and other such folks. Especially coupled with Spell Focus: Evocation and Spirit of Flame. You don't want to know what I did in the duergar base...

Speaking of Spell Focus, I guess it's a matter of choice. I don't play evil characters because it's no fun for me and the same way, I don't enjoy Necromancy. Enchantment might be lots of fun but I don't like it so much, either. Transmutation with Greater Focus might be funny, as in, isn't it funny to disintegrate a black dragon?

An artillery sorcerer should have Greater Spell Penetration, Greater Focus: Evocation, Spirit of Flame, Scion of Storms. Subvocal Casting if you want to be prepared, Dash if you want an edge when it comes to running. My first party had two sorceresses and one morninglord, all with Spirit of Flame, Penetration and varying levels of Spell Focus: Evocation. You should see the frying.

 

Elemental Feats will just require that you put 10+Int modifier skill points into Spellcraft. You are not barred from them if your Int is 4. Spirit of Flame and, to a lesser extent, Scion of Storm are good enough feats to demand being picked.

Combat Casting and Concentration should only come into the picture if the sorc is targetted and needs to roll the check. If there is no other use for these then ignore in favour of casting Improved Invisibility on the sorc.

Discipline is not that bad, pick if you have the feat points for it.

Great Spell Focii: Evocation, Enchantment and Necromancy are important, in that order. Transmutation does not make the cut.

One point of Armored Arcana to be able to cast spells while holding a shield may be Ok, but no more than that.
If you need the ability to use shields take a level of Paladin(Aasimar) or Cleric(Female Drow).

Spell Penetration puts your decoy in danger. Just let him cast multiple sunfires while holding a line of summons when faced with drow. Better yet, Mirror Imag the decoy and Horrid Wilt the lot of 'em.

Courteous Magocracy is a waste imo.

Rarely is the spell Silence cast, and even then it is targetted at the decoy. You need not worry about the Subvocal feat. Buy a few potions just in case.

Dash will come in use if the sorc is targetted. But how/why did he get targetted?

Great Fortitude, Iron Will, and Lightning Reflexes are to be taken only if you can think of no other required feats. Generally a Sorc should not need these.

Improved Initiative sounds interesting, if the fix works properly then it would be a must take.

Mercantile Background could be taken by a secondary sorc.

Forester, Deflect Arrows, Resist Poison, Snake Blood, Toughness are essentially useless.

Luck of Heroes, Heroic Inspiration, Strong Back, Bullheaded while not as bad, still will never be must takes.

 

I had three levels of Armoured Arcana with my paladin/wizard and so I used some great shields, but perhaps I could have spent the feats in a better way.

 

I usually like rapid-shot for times when i'm out of spells with a drow-sorc using a bow. I usually get through a lot of fights before i rest. At least the sorcs and the wizard has something to do then while my decoy with long-lasting buffs still have a decent AC to avoid being killed. For an arcane caster with 2-3 attack an extra attack/round seems quite much. All but the decoy and the Aasimar sorc with x-bows has that feat.

 

Chevalier, my comparisons were for HoF....

Shrikant, a non-human sorcerer with less than 12 Int only gets one skill point per level. I assume he is putting them all towards Concentration. Yes, ideally your sorcs will never take damage because they are protected by Mirror Image and decoy/summons, but the reality is that bad things happen (otherwise we wouldn't need a cleric).

I like Dash even when a character isn't being targeted, because it means less time wasted walking around. My Cleric has Dash + Golden Heart sword; whenever I reach a new board I cast invisibility on him and have him explore it all. I'll agree that Sorcerers can less afford to waste a feat on this luxury.

I think GSF: Enchantment comes ahead of GSF: Evocation. If the enemy saves vs an enchantment spell, it is wasted, but vs an evocation spell you will still do 50% damage.

I though Luck of Heroes gave a Luck boost, but it seems I was wrong.

Looks like we agree on the rest.

 

A 30th level non-human sorcerer has 11 feats.
SF/GSF: Necromancy
SF/GSF: Evocation
SF/GSF: Transmutation (yes, only two spells - but what great spells!)
SF/GSF: Enchantment (least important IMHO as one's Cleric [you do have a Cleric of Bane, right?] is better at casting these types of spells than any sorcerer while the sorcerer is a better blaster.)
Spirit of Flame
Scion of Storms

That's ten. Only one feat left. I would take one of Subvocal casting (why take even a remote risk?), Aqua Mortis or Aegis of Rime. No other feat is worth considering except Rapid Shot (but that's for normal mode so not relevant to this discussion).

Why take Combat Casting in HoF? If you need to use it, something went very wrong and you will be dead in seconds and this feat won't save you. CC is excellent for a high AC type who will only be hit on a 20, but in HoF a sorcerer will be hit by every attack.

Again, this may be due to our difference in play style, but I would never take dash. The last thing in the world I want to have happen is for my sorcerer to get ahead of my decoy. That would be bad. Dash is only acceptable for the decoy or an AC72 tank.

 

Evocation still does 50% damage after save but typically targets areas. Therefore, a large sum total of points of damage is avoided if a number of enemies makes a save. Enchantment, at least in my view, is more inclined towards either targetting a single creature or inflicting a mass but less drastic effect. Therefore, I think Spell Focus: Evocation is probably a tad better choice. Unless you have experience with Enchantment spells, have developed interesting tactics and your playing style is more in line with mind influence rather than massive elemental damage. Still, if you have the elemental damage feats such as Spirit of Flame, the lack of Greater Spell Focus: Evocation is quite a waste, IMHO, anyway. The other way round, if you have Greater Spell Focus: Evocation, it wouldn't be a good idea to skip on the elemental damage feats. The circle closes, hehe.

 

The problem with clerics casting Enchantment spells is they don't get Charm Person,Dire Charm, Confusion, Chaos, Dominate Person, and Mass Dominate (the bane cleric gets a few of these as domain spells but that is very limited).


If you sorcerer is getting beaten on, he won't necessarily be dead in seconds. Sometimes it is just one or two monsters who have snuck past the tanks; high concentrate skill can mean the difference between getting a charrm person off and getting disrupted. If the sorcerer somehow draws a lot of aggro and gets swarmed, concentrate might let you cast invisibility before you run out of HP. Even if you can somehow completely avoid melee, you will still get hit with spells and ranged weapons.

 

^Subvocal casting is a real waste. WHY, a caster's will save is high enough to resist Silence which is a second lvl spell. And if for some reason, you can not resist it (which is FAAR from likely) there are potions, scrolls and spell of VOCALIZE which makes this feat ABSOLUTELY useless. In HoF your will saves will be so high (hopefully) that you will not be silenced UNLESS in the very uncommon situation of rolling a natural 1 on the save.

^My cleric-mage had Greater Spell Focus on Evocation, Enchantment, Necromancy, Transmutation. He had 30 WİSDOM (potions+everygod ring) and 28 INTELLIGENCE(additional points+a robe in HoF) and needless to say all of his spells, either Divine or Arcane, was VERY HARD to resist. (YEAH I had to do some extreme powergaming but the result was satisfactory, (13cleric/17invoker for the favour of Wail of the Banshee, ultimate killer spell around!!!) but to building this char was a total pain thanks to spiffy 3E rules...)