Scorching Ray top damage.

[wulfster42]

Kinda curious about scorching ray. It doesn't seem to give enemies a chance to save, and doesn't deal with SR either, as long as you make the touch attack.....it does it's damage (from what I can tell).

It's also a very low level spell (level 2), so you could easily use metamagic feats on it.

Base damage is just 12d6 (once you reach high enough caster level (11 I think it is).

So I was curious about possible ways to cast alot of them, and to boost the damage.

You have the base level 2 rays that just do normal damage. I'm your an envocation specialist or fire specialist etc, you could possibly add extra damage per ray. If you can get sneak attack damage to spells, in theory you could get your sneak attack damage per ray as well (so 3x normal sneak attack damage).

Then you can enlarge them to use your level 3 spell slots

Empower them for level 4 spell slots

Maximize for level 5 spell slots

Quicken for 6 (which should let you cast 2 in a round) or enlarge + maximize instead.

Empower + max for 7

Empower + quicken for 8

And I guess Max+quicken for 9

So you could in theory get EVERY spell slot used for sorching ray.

Course you would need alternative spells to deal with fire immune enemies (although I guess sneak attack damage might still hurt them).

Normally you get 6 spells per spell level.......*9 spell levels = 54 base scorching rays per day. Bonus spells from stats though would add a significant amount (20 base + 4 from level + 8 from enhancement + 2 from that guys buff + 2 from ring= 36). 36 cha gives 24 bonus spells (2 of each of the higher levels...which is especially nice).

So that would be a total of 78 scorching rays you could cast (and quite a few quickened so you can actually cast 2 per round.

In fact looking at the above list you have 3 spell level slots used with quickened scorching rays of various kinds, with at least 8 per (since you get +2 in all of em). That is at least 24 rounds you can cast 2 scorching rays.

Damage wise it seems pretty decent. You probably will rest before using 24 rounds of combat most of the time.....so that means a minimum of 24d6 damage for each of those rounds, and you could save the highest damage ones for big fights.

Go with Max + quickened scorching ray as your first then empower + max as your second for instance. That would be 144 damage + 6d6 I think (think empower does 50% of the damage of a normal roll when combined with empower). So about 156 damage!!

[wulfster42]

Another possibly interesting idea, use reduce size on yourself to boost your touch attack AB.

It should give a +2 size bonus to dex (for ranged touch attack) and I think it gives +1 ab as well...so that would make you 10% more likely to actually hit with a touch attack.

Wonder if unarmed weapon focus adds to touch attacks?

[Mork]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1875178149
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1875178466

[Pink Eye]

I'm not sure if you mentioned this, but weapon focus ray gives you a plus 1.

[Pink Eye]

Originally posted by Mork:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1875178149
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1875178466

Oh my god, you deal more damage than my monk's fists xD
What level is that character by the way?

[Mork]

Its a lvl20 wizard scroll savant universalist at the very end of the game.

[Mork]

I think they nerf the arcane trickster, but before you could add sneak attack on all the rays. Now its only on the first one.

[wulfster42]

Oh sweet you can weapon focus Ray:) Just leveled up and discovered that.

Pretty awesome!

[wulfster42]

Woah! So many replies in like 1 minute lols!!! I just killed 1 room of stuff, leveled up and saw I could get weapon focus ray hehe. Sweet I'll check those all out!!

[wulfster42]

Oh, didn't see hellfire ray, nice, another option later on:)

I just figured you would add it for each ray, so 3 times.....sucks if it's only the first ray:(

No save still seems pretty nice damage wise though, but it looks like it does have to get through SR.....and you can only boost that a bit:(

I do wishyou could target multiple enemies with each ray though. Like hit 3 different enemies in 1 cast. I think you could do that in pnp.

[Mork]

Originally posted by wulfster42:

Oh, didn't see hellfire ray, nice, another option later on:)

I just figured you would add it for each ray, so 3 times.....sucks if it's only the first ray:(

No save still seems pretty nice damage wise though, but it looks like it does have to get through SR.....and you can only boost that a bit:(

I do wishyou could target multiple enemies with each ray though. Like hit 3 different enemies in 1 cast. I think you could do that in pnp.

Lightning is actually the way to go in my opinion for multi target.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1823871252

[wulfster42]

Woah!! that spell looks awesome.

Wasn't there a metamagic feat that increased the area of effect of spells? That would have really rocked in this game. I have been using fireball now though at least to destroy multiple enemies, but it's damage isn't good enough to always kill (especially if they save).

Luckily I have a nice pet to help in that case hehe.

[Pink Eye]

Aahaha, zap zap zap xD