Introduction
Sorcerers are defined by their Bloodline. Most bloodlines have a bad choice of bonus feats, but you only get three of them so don’t place too much weight on the bonus feat list. Also keep in mind that you get your bonus spells several levels after you begin learning spells of that level.
Also included below are the Wildblooded versions of bloodlines. Wildblooded abilities are listed under the base bloodline.
Disclaimer
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RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks. Also note that many colored items are also links to the Paizo SRD.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
Bloodlines
The Aberant bloodline gives you a diverse set of bonus spells, and some rather odd bloodlines powers. The powers are largely centered around polymorphing, but the only polymorph bonus spell you get is Shapechange at 19th level. Still, everything provided by the bloodline is fairly solid.
: Knowledge (Dungeoneering) is one of the better knowledge skills.
: You get a fairly decent selection which covers a variety of schools and situations.
: Nothing really great here except for Improved Initiative. Improved Grapple may be a good option if you plan to polymorph into something that grapples.
: Polymorph spells typically have fairly short durations, and Extend Spell can get you a lot of mileage. This largely removes the need for Extend Spell, which is pretty nice.
(Sp): A solid combat option at low levels.
(Ex): You probably shouldn’t be making a whole lot of melee touch attacks.
(Ex): This is a pretty cool ability, and you don’t loose it when you polymorph. It’s effectively the Fortification armor property, which can make melee much less scary for you/
(Su): Really solid spell resistance.
(Ex): This makes you really tanky in melee, which makes polymorphing a really great option for you.
: Only about half of the abilities on the table are good, and you definitely can’t depend on this ability to give you something useful in your current situation. You give up the extended Polymorph spell duration, which hurts.
(Sp): Dazed is a good condition, and the DC for this ability scales as you level to remain useful. If you don’t have a good spell to use, this is an excellent way to lock down a target for a turn. I would take this over Acidic Ray any day of the week.
The Abyssal bloodline is another polymorph bloodline. Your spells are, with a few exceptions, largely centered about buffing yourself to go into melee. This is a very dangerous place for a Sorcerer to be, and your bloodline powers don’t really give you anything useful to protect yourself.
: Knowledge (Planes) is okay, but generally situational. Identifying outsiders can be really nice, but it’s a very small subset of all of the monsters in the game until high level.
: Your spells are mostly buff spells,but you get some really good ones. Cause Fear is garbage, but everything else can make a huge difference in a fight. Unholy Aura is a really fantastic cleric spell, and it gives you and your allies some really fantastic defensive effects.
: This looks more like a list of Fighter bonus feats.
: DR for your summoned creature is pretty good, and with the exception of evil-aligned outsiders, there are very few things with the ability to bypass DR/good.
(Su): If you are close enough to use claws, you should either be running or polymorphed into something which already has some.
(Ex): Electricity damage isn’t super common, and neither is poison.
(Ex): Inherent bonuses are generally reserved for effects like Wish, which makes this pretty great. But you’re a Sorcerer, so you’re really only going to get mileage out of this while polymorphed.
(Su): Effectively doubles the usefulness of your high level summon spells.
(Su): Resistance to every energy type except sonic, and free telepathy. It won’t win you any fights, but it’s pretty cool to have.
: 2 extra damage per spell will stop matting by level 3 or 4.
(Su): By the time you get this ability, you can cast Fly. One level later, you can cast Overland Flight.
Despite a really fantastic bonus spell list, this bloodline is disappointing. The powers are nice, but considerably weaker than spells you have access to at the levels at which you receive abilities.
: Perception is one of the most rolled skills in the game.
: Several fantastic debuffs and save-or-suck effects.
: None of these feats make any sense for the bloodline, and they’re not good for a Sorcerer in general.
: You can join a hag coven.
(Su): As a standard action you can make a target shaken. Shaken is a pretty good condition, but spending a standard action on it is hard.
(Ex): Bonus to saving throws against a nice list of effects.
(Su): Staggered is a very powerful status condition, and the DC on this ability is respectable. The duration will largely cripple a target for several rounds. However, at this level you also have a lot of spells which will outright kill the target.
(Sp): Haunt someone’s dreams. If you can see them, and they’re asleep, and you don’t like them, you can probably just kill them in their sleep.
(Su): The DR is nice, but the spell resistance is pretty low.
So you want to play Aqua Man? Well this is the way to do it. You get to control water and even communicate with aquatic creatures telepathically.
: Just Polymorph into a fish.
: The bonus spells are certainly very water-themed, but they’re not particularly great.
: Really nothing useful for you.
: The bonus to caster level is nice, but water spells aren’t particularly impressive. The morale bonus to your summons isn’t going to get you a lot of mileage either unless you like summoning sharks.
(Sp): Sickened is a decent codition, but the nonlethal damage is terrible.
(Ex): The swim speed is nice, and you get some cold resistance and natural armor. The blindsense is situational, but fairly nice if it comes up.
(Su): If you can find a way to give your allies a swim speed, you get easy telepathy. The Suggestion ability is situational unless you bring your own fish, but the Demand and Greater Planar Ally abilities are pretty nice.
(Sp): This gives you a way to bring your blindsense into play.
(Ex): Fantastic resistences and cosntant blindsense.
: Unless you move around in a flying hot tub, you’re going to have trouble finding a use for this. Note to self: build a Sorcerer who moves around in a flying hot tub.
: Trip and bull rush in one effect. It’s not going to see a lot of use at later levels, but it’s nice crowd control at low levels. This is considerably better than dehydrating touch.
If you just want to be a really fantastic vanilla Sorcerer, the Arcane bloodline is how you do it. You lose the flavor of other bloodlines, but you get to be absolutely fantastic at metamagic, and your bonus spells fill a lot of functions which adventuring parties absolutely need.
: Pick any knowledge. You already have Arcana, so Dungeoneering or Religion are good options.
: If you’re the only primary cast in the party, your bonus spells cover almost every utility spell your party needs to get by in the world.
: Several solid options.
: Great for any offensive spell, and makes metamagic much more useful.
(Su): Either a super awesome familiar or a free spell per day. You generally have a ton of spells per day already, but one more certainly doesn’t hurt.
(Ex): Increasing the casting time of your spells when you use metamagic is a minor inconvenience, and this removes it a few times per day.
(Ex): Learn an extra free spell. Sorcerers’ biggest limit is their lack of spells known, so any new known spells are welcome.
(Ex): +2 DC to your favorite save or suck spells. Imagine adding a total of +4 to the DC of your enchantment spells.
(Ex): At this level, most charged based magic items will be fairly weak, with tbe esception of Staves. You have to use quite a few spell slots to replace the charges used, but this effectively lets you expand your spell list to include anything in the staff.
: This turns Sorcerers on their head. You suddenly have a flood of skill ranks, but likely lose all of your sorcerous charisma.
: Force damage is pretty great, but you give up Arcane Bond, which is really fantastic.
This bloodline attempts to turn the Sorcerer into a semi-melee DPS, and fails horribly. The spells don’t work to buff the Sorcerer, the feats provide no options which a Sorcerer should consider (except possibly Toughness), and the bloodline powers are weak and easily replicated with spells available long before the Sorcerer gets the abilities.
: Survival isn’t a particularly import skill, and you don’t get tracking, which is the most important use for it.
: Half of the spells attempt to make you scary in melee combat, and the other half are damage spells. None of them are particularly good, and the two ideas are mutually exclusive.
: The only decent option is Toughness, which still isn’t great.
: Cold spells are decent, and include some utility and damage spells which will be harder to resist.
(Sp): Unusable at first level, which is where you most need your bloodline powers. Beyond that, it is still only mediocre, and you can rarely justify doing this in combat instead of casting a spell which would do considerably more damage.
(Ex): The resistance is nice, but the rest is highly situational.
(Su): A decent defensive buff.
(Sp): Good way to escape or to prevent enemies from flying.
(Su): Nice resistences. You can give yourself immunity to fire witha spell, so the vulnerability is negligible.
: This adds a nice single-target crowd-control effect to your cold spells.
: Like a tiny cold-damage fireball. Or you could just cast fireball. Snow Shroud is a decent defensive buff, and giving it up for a lousy offensive option hurts.
The Celestial bloodline adds a little bit of support magic and healing to the Sorcerer. The bloodline powers flashy and cool to use, but not particularly powerful, and your feat choices are awful.
: Heal is a decent skill if you have the wisdom to back it up, and you hopefully put some points into wisdom to have good will saves. Your skill ranks are very limited, but you also don’t have a lot of healing options as a Sorcerer.
: Bless is a decent first level buff, and unless you have other morale bonuses available, it never stops being useful. Your higher level spells include some great buffs and ulitity spells, but the damage spells are not particularly great.
: A lot of really awful choices, and no really good ones. Why are mounted combat feats here? Who thought that was a good idea?
: DR on your summoned creatures is nice. Since they’re typically a few CRs behind what you’re fighting, this can go a long way to keep them in the fight.
(Sp): Offensively, this is really only nice because it doesn’t allow resistance of any sort. The really exciting part is that it provides you with a healing ability. At first level with 20 charisma, you get to heal 8d4 points of damage in a day, likely more than your cleric can do. It doesn’t scale much with level, but healing abilities for arcane casters are very hard to come by.
(Ex): Two resistances is pretty nice, but resisting 5 points of damage likely won’t change much.
(Su): Or you could cast Overland Flight. This would be green if it was continuous, or at least had a better duration.
(Su): Rerolls are fantastic.
(Su): The resistances are really good, and you gain permanent flight, and a permanent Tongues effect.
: This is a great idea if you want to become a mystic theurge as a Sorcerer. You don’t get all of the skill ranks from the Arcane/Sage bloodline, but you get insanely high will saves and you can build around a single spellcasting ability.
(Su): You give up Wings of Heaven, and now you can channel energy to heal people. Unless you continue to put resources into charisma, which is pointless with your new Bloodline Arcana, you won’t get to do it very often.
The spells are mediocre unless you’re underground and the feats are terrible in any case, but some of the bloodline powers are very powerful. If you’re underground for the duration of the campaign, this might shoot up to blue.
: Dungeoneering is one of the better knowledge skills, and allows you to identify a wide variety of very strong enemies.
: The spell selection is highly situational, but is fairly good if you’re underground. If your targets are flying, you will have some serious problems.
: Really nothing good here. You get several options to improve your Stealth and Percetion, but neither are class skills for you.
: If you took this bloodline, you are probably underground, in which case this is basically Spell Focus for all of your spells.
(Sp): Your CMB keeps pace with a fighter of your level, which can make this a fantastic support option.
(Su): Stonecunning is pretty dull, but temorsense is great, and the x-ray vision is fantastic.
(Sp): Highly situational.
(Ex): Pretend to be an earth elemental without needing to cast Elemental Form.
(Su): Dr 10/adamantine and resistance to several very pesky combat maneuvers.
: DR/Adamantine for your summons is pretty nice.
: This is a great option if you get pulled into melee, or if you like to polymorph. The duration isn’t great, but it’s almost a free stoneskin once a day.
Bad. Bad, bad… bad. All of the Destined bloodline’s abilities are bad (except Within Reach). The spells are bad. The feats are worse. Event the capstone is bad.
: History is really only important if your DM likes to use it in his plots.
: Nothing really exciting here.
: Unless your DM allows you to take Leadership, your options are almost all bad.
: Wow, one whole round!
(Sp): One round is totally useless in combat, but it might be nice for skill checks out of combat.
(Su): I’m not sure if the luck bonus is constant or if it only applies during surprise rounds. I would assume it’s only during surprise rounds, which is terrible.
(Su): Rerolls are great, but what you get to reroll is a pretty short (and terrible) list.
(Su): I hope you have good will saves. It might save your life once per day.
(Su): You’re probably not going to be making a lot of attack rolls, but not needing to roll for spell penetration is kind of nice.
: This is a nice appology for failing your concentration check, but you really shouldn’t plan to fail your concentration check.
: You should not be attack frequently enough for this to be useful.
The best part of the Djinni bloodline the spell list, which includes several spells which you would be insane not to take. The class abilities are somewhat dull, but they’re not all terrible.
: Knowledge (Planes) is okay, but generally situational. Identifying outsiders can be really nice, but it’s a very small subset of all of the monsters in the game until high level.
: A lot of really great options here.
: Improved Initiative is a great choice, but the other options are unimpressive.
: Changing the energy type for energy spells really helps the versatility of your spell list.
(Sp): Respectable, generic, and reliable. Good to have at low levels when your spell options are limited.
(Ex): Decent resistance to Electricity.
(Su): As the Air Elemental’s Whirlwind ability. Lots of fun, and a great crowd control effect.
(Su): Permanent flight. Fantastic.
(Su): Because it’s a spell-like ability, you don’t need to provide the 1500 gp diamond to cast Limited Wish. At this point you have Plane Shift as a spell, and can cast it 6+ times per day because you’re a Sorcerer.
The Draconic bloodline’s feats and spells are both excellent, but the bloodline powers are lackluster. If you don’t plan to lean on your bloodline powers, this is a very solid option.
: Perception is the most rolled skill in the game, and your wisdom should be passable.
: Lots of really solid, useful options. I’m a little surprised the 19th level bonus spell isn’t shapechange, but Wish is cool too.
: A couple oif very solid options. Power Attack might be good if you spend a lot of time in Form of the Dragon.
: Some extra damage is nice if you want to do a lot of blasting.
: Cones are much easier to use than lines, and fire damage is the most commonly resisted.
(Su): You should generally never be in melee combat long enough to need claws unless you’re polymorphing into a dragon. And dragons already have claws.
(Ex): Some mild energy resistance a small boost to AC. Not bad, but not super exciting.
(Su): This keeps pace with most of your damage spells, but the uses per day are very limited, and you have to be fairly close to use it.
(Su): Permanent flight is always great.
(Su): The immunities are nice, but the 60 foot blindsense is absolutely fantastic.
: You won’t need natural armor often, but the bonus gets fairly large at mid and high levels.
: Trade in your lousy claws for the generic energy bolt power. If you don’t plan to polymorph, you won’t miss the claws.
This is a hard bloodline ot use. The abilities, spells, and feats are all great for investigation and social interaction, but the bloodline offers almost nothing in the way of combat options. If you can lean on your allies and your other Sorcerer spells for combat, this bloodline allows you to serve as a diviner, a scout, and a face.
: Sense Motive is a helpful skill if you are the party’s face. Plan to spend traits to gain access to Diplomacy and/or Intimidate.
: Sleep is marked orange because you don’t get it until your 3rd Sorcerer level, at which point it is difficult to use due to the limited HD. The remaining spells are largely divinations, some of which are usually reserved for clerics. While these spells are powerful when they are needed, they are situational.
: Most of the feat options give you bonuses on conversation skills, which helps you to serve as the party’s Face. With Sorcerer charisma, you shoulnd’t have any problems in social situations.
: Against solo foes, this is fantastic. At high levels, this bonus will make you largely immune to the target.
(Sp): Replicate a cantrip. You don’t need to concentrate, which is nice, but it’s still a cantrip.
(Su): Initiative bonuses are excellent for spellcasters.
(Sp): This is a really cool ability for gathering information from unwilling targets.
(Sp): Arcane Eye is a fantastic scouting spell, and the added Symbol of Sleep effect makes it a remote-controlled bomb.
(Ex): This is fantastic for mobility and for defense.
: Ring of Sustenance does basically the same thing.
: You can cast Divination by the time you get this ability. You don’t need it as an ability.
Similar to the Djinni bloodline, the Efreeti version is fire-themed. The spell list isn’t nearly as good as Djinni bloodline, and the powers are slightly worse until the Efreeti bloodline’s capstone ability.
: Knowledge (Planes) is okay, but generally situational. Identifying outsiders can be really nice, but it’s a very small subset of all of the monsters in the game until high level.
:
: Improved Initiative is a great choice, but the other options are unimpressive.
: Changing the energy type for energy spells really helps the versatility of your spell list, but fire is also the most commonly resisted energy type in the game.
(Sp): Respectable, generic, and reliable. Good to have at low levels when your spell options are limited.
(Ex): Decent resistance to Fire, which is the most common energy type in the game.
(Su): You get to partially replicate giant form for a few rounds per day, but a Sorcerer generally doesn’t get much from being giant and muscular.
(Su): At this level you should be flying at 90 feet per round.
(Su): Because it’s a spell-like ability, you don’t need to provide the 1500 gp diamond to cast Limited Wish. At this point you have Plane Shift as a spell, and can cast it 6+ times per day because you’re a Sorcerer.
Elemental damage is the blunt hammer of spellcasting. It’s inellegent, it’s not versatile, and it’s easily resisted and avoided. This bloodline combines elemantal blasting with polymorphing into an elemental. Neither of these are particularly great options, so this bloodline isn’t particularly great either.
: Knowledge (Planes) is okay, but generally situational. Identifying outsiders can be really nice, but it’s a very small subset of all of the monsters in the game.
:
: Depending on what element you pick, your bonus feats can be picked to complement your favorite elemental type. Earth elementals will want power attack.
: While it only lets you change elemental spells to one energy type, the added versatility makes your elementals spells much more reliable.
:
(Sp): Solid low-level combat option.
(Ex): Extra elemental resistances never hurt.
(Sp): Being this close is dangerous, but granting your targets vulnerability to your element if absolutely devastating. Fly straight up on your next turn and drop a fireball where you were standing.
(Su): You wither gain a cool new movement type, or you get really fast.
(Su): Some nice resistences, but you already get them from Elemental Body IV.
: This limits your versatility, but it gives you quite a bit of extra damage.
(Su): The elemental resistance is situational, but the bonus energy damage on attacks is pretty nice. Summon a horde of things with lots of low-damage attacks, and throw fists full of dice at your enemies.
This is a really fantastic Enchanter bloodline. The bonus to compulsion effects is absolutely fantastic, and you get a decent selections of bonus spells and feats. Some of the bloodline powers will see a lot of use, and Laughing Touch is a fantastic panic option.
: Identify animals and fey. Helpful if you don’t have a druid or ranger handy.
: You get some good compulsions effects, and a couple of other useful spells.
: A few decent options, especially if you like to make ranged touch attacks into melee.
: Many of the best Enchantment spells are Compulsion spells.
(Sp): A good panic option, but you’re not going to go waving this around in combat. Note the lack of saving throw.
(Ex): I have literally never seen this come up in a campaign.
(Sp): Free Greater Invisibility.
(Su): Failing to overcome spell resistance sucks, so this is a nice reroll. No limit on uses makes it particularly effective.
(Su): DR 10/cold iron is nice, since most things don’t carry cold iron weapons. Fey and demons can still hurt your normall with their natural attacks because they also have DR/cold iron, but that doesn’t make this any less useful. Animals not attacking you is also mildly interesting. The bonus Shadow Walk is cute, but you’ve been casting it for 8 levels at this point.
: You don’t get one.
(Ex): Even with the -3 penalty, the animal companion is going to be much more useful than Laughing Touch.
(Su): This would be great if it was constant or if the duration was better.
Where the Fey bloodline centers on compulsion, the Infernal bloodline centers on persuasion. You get a bonus to DCs of Charm spells, as well as several bonus Charm spells, and Diplomacy as a class skill. This is a talking man’s Sorcerer.
: Your charisma is absurd, so why not take Diplomacy?.
: You get a good selection of offensive and utility spells.
: Your options are limited, and largely terrible.
: Charm spells aren’t nearly as good as Compulsion spells, but this fits the theme of the bloodline very well.
(Sp): If you are going to risk a melee touch attack, it needs to be for something far more powerful than Shaken.
(Ex): The resistances are nice, but situational.
(Sp): Basically Flame Strike, but no divine damage and it inflicts Shaken.
(Su): Permanent flight is fantastic.
(Su): The resistences are nice, and you get something like Darkvision, but you can see in color.
: Unless you’re casting spells during conversation, this will not get a lot of use. What you give up isn’t much better.
The bonus feats seem to assume that you have Bard abilities, but the bloodline porvides only one bard ability. The spell list is really the only redeeming quality of this bloodline, and even that is only average.
: Perform doesn’t really do anything unless you’re a bard. You get the bard’s Fascinate ability, but that is hardly enough to justify wasting 50% of your skill ranks.
: The spell list includes some really nice enchantment effects, and ends with one of the best kill spells in the game.
:
: Interesting. Still Spell suddenly gives you +1 to your caster level.
(Ex): The ability doesn’t list a DC, so I assume that you use the daze DC of 10+charisma. At low levels this is fantastic, but the complete lack of DC scaling means that it won’t work after a few levels.
(Ex): This is a fun ability, but you can just cast Hypnotism or Rainbow Pattern and get the same effect.
(Su): Or you could cast tongues.
(Sp): Or you could just cast Great Heroism with your crazy number of spells per day.
(Su): Still Spell isn’t nearly as important as Silent Spell, but I guess it’s nice to get for free.
Similar to the Djinni, but cold-themed and considerably worse.
: Knowledge (Planes) is okay, but generally situational. Identifying outsiders can be really nice, but it’s a very small subset of all of the monsters in the game until high level.
: Several situationally useful spells, and a couple of good spells at the high elvels.
: Improved Initiative is a great choice, but the other options are unimpressive.
: Changing the energy type for energy spells really helps the versatility of your spell list.
(Sp): Respectable, generic, and reliable. Good to have at low levels when your spell options are limited.
(Ex): Decent resistance to cold.
(Su): Mediocre damage, but blinds the target for 1d6 rounds unless they pass the reflex save.
(Su): There are plenty of easy ways to get a swim speed, and you won’t need it very often.
(Su): Because it’s a spell-like ability, you don’t need to provide the 1500 gp diamond to cast Limited Wish. At this point you have Plane Shift as a spell, and can cast it 6+ times per day because you’re a Sorcerer
This is an interesting bloodline which combines some miss chance effects with area control effects. With some clever application, you can hold enemies in place and stack several percentage miss chances on yourself as protection. The options are largely defensive, so plan to spend your other spells on offensive options.
: Planes is a mid-range knowledge skill. Identifying outsiders is very helpful at high levels when you face powerful demons, devils, and elementals.
: Your low level options are purely defensive, then you get a couple of offensive spells and Major Creation, then suddenly you’re expected to Polymorph. Polymorphing is something that you need to plan for during character creation, and it’s hard to introduce this late in the game.
: Not a lot of great options. Defensive Combat Training is important if you plan to Polymorph a lot.
: Having your spells dispelled isn’t going to be a common problem, but this is certainly good insurance.
(Sp): Entangle and deal a few points of damage. Tanglefoot bags are a solid item at any level, so this is pretty fantastic.
(Ex): Small amount of resitance to acid, which is uncommon, and resitance against petrification, which is uncommon.
(Sp): 20% miss chance is nice, and it stacks with other miss chances, such as Blur and Displacement.
(Sp): Combines of the best area control spells with one of the best escape spells.
(Ex): The resistences are nice, but the effects are fairly uncommon.
: This sounds terrible. You might hit yourself with Acid Splash, or you might Detect Magic yourself. Who knows?
: Highly situational, not reat damagt
This is a weird infiltrator/shapeshifter bloodline, but not a polymorph bloodline. You get some weird bonuses to conversation stuff and some divination spells, but none of the abilities really synergize.
: Why use disguise when you can learn Disguise Self?
: Some useful enchantment and divination spells.
: For some reason the feats list implies that you should be wearing light armor. This isn’t a combative bloodline, so I don’t know why that would be the case.
: Most of the time when you cast a spell, the effect takes place long before your enemies can act upon it. In the even that they do identify your spells, they are typically helpless to do anything about it.
(Su): A bonus to bluff several times per day.
(Sp): Read minds quickly a few times per day.
(Sp): Constant Nondetection is nice if you have enemies who are spellcasters.
(Sp): Well if they’re going to give it to you for free, there is no reason to not use it. Alter Self into something small with a cool vision type or movement type.
(Su): DR 10/piercing is fairly nice, and you become immune to effects like Dominate Person. At this level there are equivalent effects which affect outsiders, but this limits the way other spellcasters can hurt you.
This bloodline offers a lot of really cool, fun abilities, and many of them are very powerful. The spells are, surprisingly, the least useful pat of the bloodline. Polymorphing is a good option for this bloodline to make use of the Serpent’s Fang ability, and the bonus feats and class skill make you a viable face.
: Diplomacy is one of the best skills in the game, and you have the charisma to back it up.
: You get several excellent save-or-suck spells, as well as delay poison and the ability to summon dinosaurs.
: Some interesting feats for conversation skills, and and some weird feats which really don’t make sense of a Sorcerer.
: This includes Charm/Hold/Dominate Person. Expanding the list of creatures which can be affected hugely improves the utility of those spells.
(Ex): You should never be in melee enough to use this ability. Because it’s a shape changing effect, you probably can’t harvest poison from yourself. If you polymorph into something without a bite attack, you can use this to add a bite attack, which is likely your best way to use this ability.
(Ex): Speaking with snakes porbably won’t see a lot of use, but the familiar is pretty fantastic, even with the -2 level penalty. Plus, you can harvest poison from your familiar.
(Ex): The natural armor is really nice, but the bonus against poison and on escape artist won’t see a lot of use.
(Sp): Swarms are brutal enemies, and adding constitution damage poison to them is just cruel.
(Su): Polymorphing into a snake is a decent option at this point since you have access to the snakes poison, but the poison DC on your Serpent’s Fang poison is considerably higher than what you would get from polymorphing. So polymorph into the biggest cosntrictor snake you can be, then use Serpent’s Fang to be a poisonous constrictor. Of, and you’re immune to poison and paralysis.
: Miles worse than the default Bloodline Arcana.
Despite the weak first level bloodline power, the Shadow bloodline has a lot to offer. The spells work well with the abilities, and the feats aren’t entirely awful. If you want to play a stealth Sorcerer, you can’t do much better than this. At high levels, you get some very powerful bonus spells and some truly impressive powers.
: Sorcerers aren’t typically scouts, but I guess if anyone was going to be, it would be a Shadow Sorcerer.
: You start off slow, but the Shadow spells effectively give you access to entire schools of magic in one spell. This offsets much of the Sorcerer’s lack of versatility.
: You want Silent Spell. Staying hidden is highly dependant on not pronouncing your spell components out loud. The other feats aren’t terribly helpful unless you cross-class into Rogue or something.
: This should really help with your stealth, especially at high levels where you have Greater Invisibility and really need another bonus to stealth. Because +20 from invisibility isn’t enough.
(Sp): A melee touch attack that does a tiny amount of nonlethal damage, and inflicts Dazzled. Dazzled is basically the least useful status condition in the game.
(Ex): Darkvision is very important for stealthy characters, and this can save you the trouble of casting Darkvision. Keep in mind that this will enhance existing darkvision, so you can stack it with the Darkvision spell to get darkvision beyond 60 feet. When everything is relying on darkvision, the one who can see the furthest has a major advantage.
(Sp): This is a really cool combination of Hide in Plain Sight and Benign Transposition. You can hide easily with no cover, and the ability to switch your allies around has some really great tactical options.
(Sp): No save, no Spell Resistance, No darkvision, and they’re entangled. This essentially means you can walk through the area with impunity murdering people for 10 minutes per caster level. You may only get to use it once per day, but this is basically a guranteed win unless your enemies brought Freedom of Movement.
(Su): The Shadow Conjuration spells’ biggest problem is that they are only partially real. This considerably reduces that problem.
: You should be spending a lot of time in shadows or darkness, so this is really helpful.
: Help your fighter be stealthy. Shadowstrike is awful, so you’re not missing much.
The spell list isn’t fantastic, and the feat list is mediocre. The bloodline powers are interesting, but not super powerful.
: Knowledge (Planes) is okay, but generally situational. Identifying outsiders can be really nice, but it’s a very small subset of all of the monsters in the game until high level.
: You only get a few really good options at very low and very high levels.
: Improved Initiative is a great choice, but the other options are unimpressive.
: Changing the energy type for energy spells really helps the versatility of your spell list.
(Sp): Respectable, generic, and reliable. Good to have at low levels when your spell options are limited.
(Ex): Decent resistance to cold.
(Su): This is a great way to keep enemies far away from you or to push them off cliffs.
(Su): Burrows speeds are hard to find, and this gives you a great escape mechanism.
(Su): Because it’s a spell-like ability, you don’t need to provide the 1500 gp diamond to cast Limited Wish. At this point you have Plane Shift as a spell, and can cast it 6+ times per day because you’re a Sorcerer
This is a solid bloodline. Many of the spells are very powerful, and the high level bloodline powers are flashy and exciting.
: Identify animals and fey. Helpful if you don’t have a druid or ranger handy.
: Some really great options in here, but I’m not sure why Call Lightning Storm is on the list. It’s not a particularly good spell, and doesn’t really fit the theme.
: More options than most bloodlines, but most of the options are bad. Quicken Spell is crucial at high levels, and craft rod can be really nice if you like rods, but everything else is situational at best.
: Dazzled is a really bad status condition.
(Sp): The damage is a bit low, the AOE won’t help you much, and it’s a reflex save to completely negate.
(Ex): Low-light vision is situational, but you get two resitances and eventually you don’t need to breath.
(Sp): Excellent crowd control effect. Things are either fascinated, or they have to walk through a wall of cold damage to reach you.
(Sp): This is mean. You remove the target from combat, which is pretty nice, and deal some decent cold damage every round. Because they can make a new save every round, they will eventually return. Make sure that when they come back you’re ready for them. They’re going to be super unhappy about the unplanned space travel.
(Ex): You get immunity to cold, immunity to blindness, you can see in the dark, and you get fast healing. Very impressive.
: Shut down enemy casters for a round, then continue fireballing them.
(Sp): Cold damage is slightly more useful than fire damage.
: Instead of the weird fire wall effect, you get a scary combination of Ice Storm and Deeper Darkness. It won’t completely lock people down, but it’s an exciting crowd control effect.
Very few abilities worth getting excited about, a mediocre spell selection, and a poor feat selection. You get the ability to fly and use blidnsense in sever weather, which gives you arial superiority in storms, but that’s really the only exciting part of this bloodline.
: Identify animals and fey. Helpful if you don’t have a druid or ranger handy.
: Most of your options are situational, and they are all very weather-related.
: Nothing worth getting excited about.
: Increasing the DC of your spells is always nice.
(Sp): The duration is going to be very short at low levels where this matters most, and at high levels you have much better uses for your turn, so this will likely see very little use.
(Ex): Resistance to sonic is rare, and two energy resistances is nice. Reducing the severity of winds is nice when you can fly and still use severe wind to keep other flyers grounded. The blindense is pretty nice when you create fog effects but can still find your enemies.
(Sp): Decent damage, but it will be hard to affect more than one target.
(Sp): This is a really cool movement ability, and the damage is respectable. 15d6 damage will break through most solid barriers, including some stone walls if you roll well for damage.
(Ex): Some cool resistances, better blindsight in weather effects, and you can heal yourself with lightning damage.
: I hope you like using Control Weather to make it drizzle slightly.
: This give you complete control over flight.
Unsurprisingly, this is a necromancy-focused bloodline. The bloodline gets some good iconic necromancy spells, and the bloodline powers are flashy and exciting. If you want to control undead, this is an excellent option.
: Knowledge (Religion) is a very solid skill. You can identify undead, and it comes up frequently in adventures.
: All of your bonus spells are Necromancy spells, which makes sense. You get a few decent options, but nothing truly spectacular.
: Nothing really spectacular.
: Charm Person on zombies. Why not?
(Sp): Shaken is a great status condition, but you should not be marching around in melee touching people and you most certainly shouldn’t be spending two turns making people frightened.
(Su): Resistance to cold is nice, but resitance to nonlethal damage will probably never matter.
(Sp): Decent non-energy damage, and it pins targets in place. This is really great if you are surrounded somehow..
(Sp): This is a greta utility and densive ability. Walk through walls, walk through enemies.
(Ex): The immunities and resistences are nice, and you get to be ignored by unintelligent undead. Of course, at level 20 there are very few unintelligent undead.
: Better than charming mindless undead.
(Su): Grave Touch is terrible, and this give you an interesting healing mechanic.
Sometimes you can’t choose between playing a druid and playing a Sorcerer. This is the answer. You get a few decent druid spells and some amusing plant-related powers. Many of the bloodline’s powers and spells are highly situational, but they give you at a lot of really interesting options.
: Identify animals and fey. Helpful if you don’t have a druid or ranger handy.
: Most of the options are mediocre, but a few are very good options taken from the Druid spell list.
: A couple of decent options, but the mobility feets become obsolete when you learn to fly a level before you get the first feat.
: Sorcerers shouldn’t rely on AC for protection, but this could be nice if you like to polymorph
(Sp): Disarm and trip are both solid options, and your CMB with the vine will be respectable.
(Ex): Not needing to eat or drink is cool, but not very important. The bonus against poison is highly situational.
(Sp): The description doesn’t list a limit on the number of times you can affect plant life, which is scary. You would in theory walk the earth turning all plant life into very thick growth. Transforming other people into trees and plant creatures is interesting, but situational.
(Ex): I wouldn’t use this for anything but healing between combats. Mobility in combat is too important for you to sit there soaking up dirt.
(Su): The natural armor and tremsorsense are nice, and oyu get a laundry list of immunities..
: Charm plant creatures.
(Su): Extra AC for your summons.
