Regardless, my DM has accepted that I can use warmage. The character is not set in stone as far as feats go, currently I have very sub-optimal choices:
Rules: nothing from psionics books, eberron only books, or fay-rune only books, NO FLAWS. NO unearthed arcana stuff.
Here's what I have out already.
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Human warmage 8
Hu1: dragon-blooded
L1: Draconic vigor
L3: Draconic knowledge
L5: Draconic sight
Hu1: dragon-blooded
L1: Draconic vigor
L3: Draconic knowledge
L5: Draconic sight
Don't forget to take Arcane Thesis for some of your more favorite spells, when you can.
I like this setup on a Sorcerer base, personally. I love Maximized / Empowered / Arcane Thesis / Practical Metamagic'd Enervations.
edit: apologies I forgot to address your response. Arcane thesis just doesn't fit into my repitoire at this point.. I was trying to see how to increase my damage output, and I seriously doubt that with the DM I have right now she would allow the use of negative level metamagic (which removes the appeal of arcane thesis).
I already have one "sudden empower" as supplied by WM lvl 6. The only issue I have with the "sudden" line is that they are only once per day. This means that at 10th lvl I would have the option of one orb of maximized empowered orb of (acid, fire, frost, or force) for 93 damage! (60+31+2+1) it would cost me a 5th level spell, and I would still have the chance of missing my touch attack, but its so nice for what WM's are supposed to do!
edit: apologies I forgot to address your response. Arcane thesis just doesn't fit into my repitoire at this point.. I was trying to see how to increase my damage output, and I seriously doubt that with the DM I have right now she would allow the use of negative level metamagic (which removes the appeal of arcane thesis).
With Residual Magic at level 9, all your 1/day suddens become 2/day!
Needed feats for EVOCATION maximize spell warmage
Hu1: Maximize spell
Lvl1: Dragontouched
Lvl 3: Practical Metamagic (maximize spell)
Lvl 6: Spell focus: evocation
Lvl 9: Metamagic school focus (evocation)
Lvl 12: Rapid Metamagic (CM)
Lvl 15: Piercing Evocation (CM)
Lvl 18: Greater spell focus evocation
Strategy: Area blasting! Use popping spells like lightning bolt, fireburst, fireball, cone of cold. Also have a repitoire of save-or-suck targeting spells at my disposal. Yes I would still have orbs but they wouldn’t be as cheap as evocation spells.
Pros:
• Area spell damage WAAAY greater than conjuration
• Spell focus is useful
Cons:
• Saves! I hate it when my enemy can save for half. I REALLY hate it when they can save for No damage at all.
• Orbs aren’t evocation, so the warmage’s staple spell is left out completely.
• Evocation is a little overkill in the save or suck spells, and doesn’t have any really good single target spells
Feats for CONJURATION maximize spell warmage
Hu1: Maximize spell
Lvl 1: Dragontouched
Lvl 3: Practical Metamagic (Maximize spell)
Lvl 6: Spell Focus: Conjuration
Lvl 9: Metamagic school focus (Conjuration)
Lvl 12: Rapid Metamagic
Lvl 15: Empower spell
Lvl 18: Practical Metamagic (empower spell)
Pros:
• This build primarily focuses on overusing the orb spell line, empowered, maximized orbs of goodness. Yes the enemy will save to avoid secondary effects, but at 60 damage for most orbs (with only the enemy’s touch AC getting in the way of their loins), they’ll be hurting from the attack regardless.
• Single-target focus means no splash damage in groups.
• If necessary, cone of acid will provide evocation-like damage which can be applied, at the low low cost of being a level higher than most evocation spells (yes I’m still focusing on 3rd level evocation stuff).
Cons:
• Less area damage could mean less damage. If we have a group of enemies, I’ll probably be forced to pick off the most dangerous looking, ignoring possible threats.
• If enemy touch AC is high, my chance to hit is not good at all.. at level 8 with +3 dex mod I’ll be attacking with +7 modifier. This means that a touch of 17 or higher (we’re talking monks or agile enemies) will result in 50% of my spells being wasted. This is pessimistic, though, as some enemies actually have a touch AC of less than 10 (especially big enemies).
• I’m going to do a breakdown eventually, but how many conjuration spells do warmages actually have? It will be looked into, and I may have to write a handbook, but it’s about time I do for some class, may as well be warmage.
The problem with metamagic-centric Warmages is that they need feats. Lots and lots of feats. metamagic compounds upon itself, and the lower you drop the SLAs on metamagic, the more metamagic you can pile on. Which costs more feats. Warmages don't really get any bonus feats, which means they have trouble pulling this stunt off.
The Incantatrix is what made my version work because it got a boatload of bonus metamagic, as well as the godly capstone that reduces every SLA for every instance of metamagic by 1 (minimum 1). With that, Arcane Thesis, and maybe a couple cases of Practical Metamagic, you could pull off a thousand damage out of a couple mid-level spell slots.
However, without Incantatrix, is it still worth it? Maybe. A couple feats worth spending would be Enervating Spell and Practical Metamagic: Enervating Spell. It's like Empower, but only works against living beings. More importantly, it stacks with Empower Spell, Maximize Spell, and any other shenanigans you may want to pull.
Without extra feats from somewhere, though, and without Incantatrix, it's gonna be tough. You won't have feats to spare on fluff, and you really should pick one orb or another as your signature spell in Arcane Thesis. A few solid metamagic feats (Maximize, Enervating, Twin), and Practical Metamagic in at least some of those, plus the mandatory Rapid Metamagic, Arcane Thesis, and Dragon-Blooded... that puts you at overbooked.
Assuming only one instance of Practical Metamagic, a maximized, enervating, twin Orb of Fire boosted with Sudden Empower would deal... 15d6 maximized is 90 damage, doubled for twin is 180, +50% for enervating is 270, and +50% for empower is 405 damage from a ninth-level spell, the pinnacle of what you can achieve with that stunt.
Assuming only one instance of Practical Metamagic, a maximized, enervating, twin Orb of Fire boosted with Sudden Empower would deal... 15d6 maximized is 90 damage, doubled for twin is 180, +50% for enervating is 270, and +50% for empower is 405 damage from a ninth-level spell, the pinnacle of what you can achieve with that stunt.
Maximized, twinned, enervated, empowered, and sudden empowered spell:
Maximize spell states that empowering the same spell only adds half the results of a normal dice roll for that spell plus the maximized spell bonus. Unfortunately the extra damage then from sudden empower averages at +15 (half of 10d6 multiplied by 50%) and the normal empower would only add an additional 15 + half of the additional damage from sudden empower. Assuming an intelligence modifier of +2 (which is multiplied by the empower's) the new calculation for the damage from the metamagic you suggested shows that the average damage is (60+15+15*1.5+3+3*1.5)*200%*150%=315 damage. The maximum using the same equation above is 427 (instead of 15s you use 30s, the maximum gained from empowering). The worst case scenario with that equation is 240, which is still enough to kill a good deal of enemies even at 20th level.
Maximized, twinned, enervated, and empowered (sudden and normal don't stack):
After re-reading the sudden feats, I realized that you can't sudden empower and empower the same spell, which reduces the overall average results of maximized twinned enervated empowered spell to (60+15+3)*2*1.5=234. You can argue against this, but the feat sudden maximize states that "you can still use Maximize Spell normally if you have it", as well, all of the other sudden feats which don't benefit from multiple applications of the same feat say similar things. This leads me to believe that sudden empower doesn't stack with regular empower. I really doubt that the DM I have would allow them to stack.
You did bring enervated spell to my attention. Not personally having a libris mortis (but having one available in most campaigns), I didn't know such an awesome feat existed! Its so much better than empower for the simple fact that you can multiply the maximum (because of the wording).