What if I WANT to be a blaster caster?

[BrokeAndDrive]

Did a search for blasters, but all I found was an endless wall of "blast0rs sux0r! suk treeantmunk's dick instedd!"

But what if I don't want splinters in my mouth?

What if I WANT to be the guy who spams fireballs, lightning bolts, and meteor showers?
What if I WANT to be the guy who casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down?
What if I DON'T want to play chess with my enemies, what if I want to just fucking murder them?
What if I WANT to be what I see in every single fictional representation, from novels to movies to anime to video games to real-world mythology?  How many god/batman wizards have you seen outside of a min-maxer's D&D session or TO board? Would you even want to?

ImmortalSoul sums it up succinctly:

Most of the people I have ever played with were not content with playing the god-wizard in the background. The wanted to throw around lighting and fire and crush things with their magic and not just make other people (or summons, come to that) do the fighting for them. And I can really understand them.

Overly dramatic intro aside, how may one play the much-maligned evoker without gimping himself? Sure he'll never be as good as his god/batman friends (but then again, neither will sorcerors, swordsages, barbarians, rogues...). But, are there ways to optimize the blaster caster around his self-inflicted bum leg to at least win bronze in the marathon?

And please, minimize the blaster hatewanking. Surely one can find a fresh porno to watch by now.

EDIT: it doesn't HAVE to be an evoker, or even a wizard. But it should probably at least be a fullcaster (or fullmanifester... is that filthy greenskin really going to care whether the flames leaping off your fingers and strangling him is sourced from a musty tome, prayer, or mind-powahs? ), unless one can somehow make the paladin spell-smite better than a cleric.

[BruceLeeroy]

Play a Kineticist psion? They are pretty much paramount at blasting, until you bring in the super optimized sorcerers.

[LordBlades]

Play a Kineticist psion? They are pretty much paramount at blasting, until you bring in the super optimized sorcerers.

+1. Everything from the core design of psionic blasting powers to the way metapsionic feats work makes psions much better at blasting that wizards.

[weenog]

Don't be a GD evoker, first of all.  Evocation typically allows spell resistance, and often allows reflex saves for half damage -- iow anything with Evasion (which comes in wearable ring form btw) is going to laugh at you and take your lunch money.  If you insist on blasting as a wizard, conjuration is generally a better school with which to do it.

[Rebel7284]

Incantatrix does blasting well.  Also sorcerers for arcane fusion abuse make good blasters.

[Integral]

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19868534/The_Mailman:_A_Direct_Damage_Sorcerer

Might be useful!

[archangel.arcanis]

Yeah Psionics can out blast magic if you put some effort into it. The biggest thing is to keep in mind you will be setting your PP on fire so if possible have some kind of recharge mechanic to give you endurance.

Other than that I personally like the Warmage, especially if you can get War Mage (Dragonlance setting), and a decent int to make your cantrips viable weapons at low levels.

[weenog]

Oh, hey, critically important thing: anything that limits your options even more than just being a blaster, is a trap and must be avoided.  You do not want to be a Fire Savant in a fight with a red dragon and a bunch of fire giants.

[archangel.arcanis]

Oh, hey, critically important thing: anything that limits your options even more than just being a blaster, is a trap and must be avoided.  You do not want to be a Fire Savant in a fight with a red dragon and a bunch of fire giants.

Yes you do as long as you have been Sanctified by Kord. 

[Eardatch]

You may find some use in this:

Cleric (cloistered) 1 / Sorcerer 2 / Mystic Theurge 6 / Sanctified one (Kord, Holy Fire) 1

Finish up mystic theurge and/or go into Nar Demonbinder for more cheese.

Feats you need: Some early entry for mystic theurge, precocious apprentice and alternate spell source work. Later you can retrain these feats with PHBII retraining rules.
The key to the build is a dragon mag feat: Elemental theurgy (fire). It causes all caster levels of casting classes you have that can cast fire spells to stack for the purpose of caster level for fire spells. You need the fire domain. By level 7 for example you will have CL 11 for fire spells.
Further, you can make any and all your spells fire spells with the combination of snow casting and energy substitution: fire.

Sanctified one of Kord is there to get Holy Fire and thus bypass fire resistance and immunity.

If you go into Nar Demonbinder, its caster level should be abnormally high due to the way it calculates CL and your dual casting. This is a perfect way to abuse blasphemy and its cousins.

[spiral_rider_h]

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19868534/The_Mailman:_A_Direct_Damage_Sorcerer

Might be useful!

Definitely useful. I used that for a basis of a build using silverbrow human, a few different feats, and Mage of the Arcane Order for the last four levels.

[weenog]

Oh, hey, critically important thing: anything that limits your options even more than just being a blaster, is a trap and must be avoided.  You do not want to be a Fire Savant in a fight with a red dragon and a bunch of fire giants.

Yes you do as long as you have been Sanctified by Kord.  

I'd still rather be able to just break out a Cold spell, but you've got a point.  I was thinking about this disaster situation because a friend was just telling me recently about how that happened to her ex who used to brag all the time about his fire savant (which was not also a sanctified one of kord).  I'm not sure if that's why he's her ex, but I hope so.  I mean, I'd break up with someone for not seeing that coming.

[BeholderSlayer]

this should help

Specifically, CantripN's take. +5 damage per die and a free empower every round? sign me up.

of course it might be tough to get to the free empower with that setup, but +5 damage per die is like adding almost 1.5 die to each die. In othere words, it's about 250% as much damage as a typical blast.

[Waazraath]

Binder/wizard/anima mage/incantatrix/unseen seer makes a nice blaster: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19866226/Anima_Mage_Handbook&post_num=66#378471133

I'm playing a variant of it atm, great fun, great damage, lots of versatility.

[Sunic_Flames]

Well then, you have exactly two options.

1: The RAW way. Get a fuckload of metamagics, and a fuckload of metamagic cost reducers. Proceed to cast 30th level spells from 6th level slots. Have your performance be roughly on par with an unoptimized win spell caster. Except you're a one trick pony.

2: Lots and lots of houserules. Search this board for Sunic house rules and see what I mean. Blasting sucks substantially less when an Evoker throws a Standard and a Swift action Fireball, from 2 3rd level slots for 30d6+60, assuming a CL of 10. It also ignores SR. That's with zero optimization. Sure it comes with limits on metamagic cost reduction, but you shouldn't need those anymore.

[Ramaloke]

I'm a big fan of Hathran sorcerers for blasting. Silverbrow Human Female with Ethran and Leadership. Pump you CL to 40 and arcane fusion wings of flurry. 80d6 Damage per round in a 30 foot burst that ignores your allies and destroys your enemies.

[carnivore]

i like this:

Warmage 1/ Psion 3/ Cerebremancer 10/ .... finish with Psionic or Arcane Full Progression PrC for the last 6 lvls

get the best of both worlds, easy and fun to play
 

[awaken DM golem]

... or play 4e.

[kalaskaagathas]

If you go the Psionicist route, I'd recommend (shameless self plug inbound) Emo_Duck's Psionic Dreadnought.  Free recharge, virtually untouchable, and if you combine it with the Mad Minute trick, you can slay anything vulnerable to HP damage in one (long) round.

[Tyal-Kelvar]

Well, if you want to spam firery death on your foes... well, problem most casters have is running out of spells.  If the spell doesn't win the fight, needing several more after it to finish the job, you'd not last long into the day at all.  Still, that's only most casters.

Might I suggest looking into a hellfire warlock build for it? One using naberus to deal with the con damage?  That'd allow you to play a quite decent spammer of firery death, and I'm pretty use hellfire gets around immunity to fire too.  Not perfect, as all but your fire blasting wouldn't be very good, but at least you get to spam cast.  You wouldn't even need to pull bloodline shenanigans, as I believe casting all day means you can get away with a bit less damage... though, if a gm allows such cheesy power boosting, go for it.