Offensive caster shaman

[Nemni]

I would like to make an offensive caster shaman. I love spontaneous casting, I love high charisma casters and I would like something sturdier than a sorcerer. However I am wondering if it's really viable for both PvE and PvP?

What school would work well? Evocation for blasting? Conjuration for Drown spells? Necromancy for Finger of Death and Harm? Not investing in a specific school at all?

I would rather use DC spells than blasting, but I worry that in PvE everything you really need to kill quick has very high fortitude saves. And in PvP I wouldn’t be able to dispel others before casting my DC spell (unlike a mage) and thus I would risk running up against many players with very high saves or even complete immunities (like vs death).

It also seems like blood magic is a must to balance out the stat needs (and I love the concept of it), but then I would be hitting myself with an average of 43,5 damage every time I try to cast my best spells. That means that retrying with for example Mass Drown until it hits could be fatal to my own char

Is there a way to make this work and does anyone know how, please?

[Rhifox]

Evocation gets you more bang for the buck. Almost all of your offensive spells are evocation; you only have a few conjuration and necromancy spells. If you do go necromancy, it would be solely for single target attacks. You'd want to pick up at least a few hierophant levels to double your Harm damage, though that would require multiclassing in order to get the 15 religion ranks.

Blood Magic does hurt a lot but can be partially negated by healing spells. You'll want to spare some attribute points for Constitution regardless though if you're going to be using it a lot.

Is an offensive caster shaman viable? Eh. I've never found blasting on any caster to be very good, because buffing and melee will always be superior. But you've got a lot of spell slots and a lot of easy-use AOE spells that you don't have to worry about hitting yourself or companions/party members with.

Speaking of companions, try to pick up the telthor companion. It's not a spell, but it can tank and it can dish out damage, and will be helpful in allowing you to conserve your spells when only fighting single opponents. It requires 3 feats though, which is pretty heavy.

[Nemni]

Thanks for the reply!

It's like you say, blasting is rarely that great right? So that's why I rather go for DC spells. But if that is not functional...

Double harm damage seems great, but the problem remains in PvP that a lot of people would be immune to it, right? Seems it would be harder to become immune to a drown at least.

[Rhifox]

Water Breathing allows immunity to drown I hear, though how often people cast that on themselves I don't know. If you became known for using it in pvp it'd probably start getting used, though.

You could probably get away with putting focuses into Conjuration while still maintaining effective Evocation DCs. With a basic test build I'm getting 23+spell level on non-focused spells and 26+spell level on focused ones (27/30 once you include blood magic). Evocation spells don't need high DCs as much, so you could afford to go Conjuration for Drown DCs.

[metaquad4]

I advise something like this:
http://nwn2db.com/build/?229464

However, I would add in 8 hierophant. You'd lose 2 CHA, but you can make that up be taking the following:

+1 Caster Level from hierophant, 2 times (+1 DCs, makes up for lost CHA)
Blast Infidel
Faith Healing

DC should be 32+Spell Level, which is excellent.
(Calculation: 10+4 (Epic CL Bonus, 32 CL)+4 (Blood Magic)+2 (Blackguard Aura)+12 (CHA)=32+Spell Level)

[Eclypticon]

I'd build something with hierophant and blood magic for sure.