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Tempestfury
2014-10-08, 09:03 PM
This is blanket across Forgotten Realms as a whole, so I'm putting it out here instead of in any of the sub-forums, hope that's okay...

Question. Is it true that in the Forgotten Realms, that Sorcerer's at one time we culled or feared? In praticular, I heard that Netheril culled sorcerer. Despite being a nation of arcane to the highest degree.

Beleriphon
2014-10-08, 09:31 PM
This is blanket across Forgotten Realms as a whole, so I'm putting it out here instead of in any of the sub-forums, hope that's okay...

Question. Is it true that in the Forgotten Realms, that Sorcerer's at one time we culled or feared? In praticular, I heard that Netheril culled sorcerer. Despite being a nation of arcane to the highest degree.

As far as I know yes. The Netherese for the most part respected learned traditions of the wizard rather than in the uncontrolled power of the sorcerer.

Tempestfury
2014-10-08, 09:33 PM
So, they actually killed those with an innate ability to magic?

Beleriphon
2014-10-08, 09:36 PM
So, they actually killed those with an innate ability to magic?

Not totally sure on that one, but I'm fairly certain that they were rounded up and curtailed to at least some degree. Remember that Netheril was really more a series of culturally linked floating cities ruled by wizard kings than a nation. Also remember that this would be 3E addition to the lore of the Realms; in D&D, AD&D and AD&D 2E sorcerers weren't a class they were a name for wizards.

Tempestfury
2014-10-08, 09:39 PM
Curtailed is still a significant difference to outright culling... but yes, thank you for your answers.

And that Sorcerer's is a 3.0 creation. I did not know that.

jedipotter
2014-10-08, 11:57 PM
Question. Is it true that in the Forgotten Realms, that Sorcerer's at one time we culled or feared? In praticular, I heard that Netheril culled sorcerer. Despite being a nation of arcane to the highest degree.

Well.....it's complicated. See the spellcasters in Netheril were not any of the modern spellcasting classes: they were arcainists. Kinda more like 3E sorcerers. They could ''cast magic at will'' and ''did not memorize spells''.

Now the Elves feared and greatly disliked sorcerers. The 3E kind. They were 'shunned'' at best.

Scots Dragon
2014-10-09, 02:10 AM
This is blanket across Forgotten Realms as a whole, so I'm putting it out here instead of in any of the sub-forums, hope that's okay...

Question. Is it true that in the Forgotten Realms, that Sorcerer's at one time we culled or feared? In praticular, I heard that Netheril culled sorcerer. Despite being a nation of arcane to the highest degree.

Sorcerers were feared and disliked in the more heavily magical places like Thay and Halruaa (and to a degree some elven nations) as a way of explaining their lack of ubiquity compared with wizards. One thing that has to be remembered is that the idea of an inherent magic-user being separate from the learned magic-user isn't something that actually happened to be very central to the Forgotten Realms. And that's basically because the idea didn't exist yet; Forgotten Realms was introduced during the days of AD&D 1e, which only had a class known as the magic-user, as well as a sub-class known as the illusionist, which followed the general style and outlook of the modern-day wizard.

When D&D 3e introduced the sorcerer, they had to explain why it wasn't as well known as the wizard when making the campaign setting for the Forgotten Realms. They also had to do the same for school specialists in AD&D 2e, explaining that they were incredibly rare outside of certain locations such as Thay and Halruaa. There was, to be fair, a little more ground-work done on specialists by way of Secrets of the Red Wizards, and the mention of a magic-user who was basically a 'specialist in conjuration' in the campaign set, but formal rules weren't yet fully established.

At the end of the day, though, I like to ignore the existence of the sorcerer entirely since I play AD&D and the removal of the class doesn't really alter much in the long run. Any time I have to convert a sorcerer-specific NPC, I just occasionally consider making them a wild mage or a specialist of some kind, with the latter options usually being derived from their list of known spells.


Well.....it's complicated. See the spellcasters in Netheril were not any of the modern spellcasting classes: they were arcainists. Kinda more like 3E sorcerers. They could ''cast magic at will'' and ''did not memorize spells''.

It should be noted that after Karsus' folly, they had to largely re-learn how to cast their spells. The biggest and most obvious side-effect is that they basically wound up losing their ability to cast spells at will, instead becoming some of the earliest AD&D 1e magic users. Another side-effect of this was that they lost much of their early tendencies towards specialisation - no longer being inventors, variators or mentalists, but instead simply being generalists.

Tempestfury
2014-10-09, 04:18 AM
I see... well, thank you all very much for this information, I have learned ever more than I thought I would.

Melcar
2014-10-09, 04:25 AM
This is blanket across Forgotten Realms as a whole, so I'm putting it out here instead of in any of the sub-forums, hope that's okay...

Question. Is it true that in the Forgotten Realms, that Sorcerer's at one time we culled or feared? In praticular, I heard that Netheril culled sorcerer. Despite being a nation of arcane to the highest degree.

I did a quick search in my Netheril Boxed set, and the word Sorcerer is mentioned 3 times. INdeed sorcerers were a 3.0 creation, before that AD&D there were alle called mages. A mage was one who had the magical blood of sorcerers (so not everyone could become a mage), but who still needed the training and study of wizards. This was because that not only were a special talent required, like the sorceres have, but a lot of studying was needed.

THats why I dont think they had/have anything against sorcerers, since they called some of their items Scepter og the Sorcerer King. Dont thik they would call them that, if they hated sorceres, who did not exist at that time... at least not by that name.

BWR
2014-10-09, 07:45 AM
I did a quick search in my Netheril Boxed set, and the word Sorcerer is mentioned 3 times. INdeed sorcerers were a 3.0 creation, before that AD&D there were alle called mages. A mage was one who had the magical blood of sorcerers (so not everyone could become a mage), but who still needed the training and study of wizards. This was because that not only were a special talent required, like the sorceres have, but a lot of studying was needed.

THats why I dont think they had/have anything against sorcerers, since they called some of their items Scepter og the Sorcerer King. Dont thik they would call them that, if they hated sorceres, who did not exist at that time... at least not by that name.

Eh? I guess I could be misremembering things but I'm pretty sure you have that wrong. 'Sorcerer' is just another word for 'magic user'. It wasn't used as often as 'wizard' or 'mage', but it didn't have a specific meaning about where the magic comes from. The three terms were used pretty much interchangeably. At most it was more a cultural thing (Dragonlance's Wizards of High Sorcery or Dark Sun's Sorcer-Kings) or a power level thing (the head of the Three Orders of the Wizards of High Sorcery is called the Highmage while most others are just called wizards).

Scots Dragon
2014-10-09, 08:39 AM
Eh? I guess I could be misremembering things but I'm pretty sure you have that wrong. 'Sorcerer' is just another word for 'magic user'. It wasn't used as often as 'wizard' or 'mage', but it didn't have a specific meaning about where the magic comes from. The three terms were used pretty much interchangeably. At most it was more a cultural thing (Dragonlance's Wizards of High Sorcery or Dark Sun's Sorcer-Kings) or a power level thing (the head of the Three Orders of the Wizards of High Sorcery is called the Highmage while most others are just called wizards).

To highlight that point further, AD&D 1e's whole system of level titles supports that. The magic-user's level titles actually include 'warlock' (8th-level) and 'sorcerer' (9th-level), before the magic-user eventually reaches name level as a 'wizard' (11th-level). Later levels also, in a rare note, allow for the magic-user to become a 'mage' (16th-level) and 'archmage' (18th-level). There were a couple of non-magic user classes, with those being the wu jen, illusionist, and a few other sub-classes. The whole idea of level titles was abandoned in AD&D 2e, but things were still very different from D&D 3e's idea of wizard, sorcerer and warlock referring to different things.

In AD&D 2e, the idea of classes and sub-classes was refined so that there were four basic classes, those being the warrior, wizard, priest and rogue, with each one containing a number of sub-classes. Taking a sub-class was kind of obligatory, but each one had its own 'standard' sub-class that would serve as the basic option for most characters, those being the fighter, mage, cleric and thief - as a fun fact, they were all similar enough to their AD&D 1e forms that you could use the rules for them somewhat interchangeably. The mage's abilities being identical to those of the D&D 3e wizard ought to be familiar to anyone who's played Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment or Icewind Dale.

The wizard's sub-classes eventually expanded to include an explicit sorcerer class, which was in fact a cultural equivalent to the mage from the Al-Qadim campaign setting. It worked like an elemental generalist which had access to two elemental schools, drawing from the choices of wind, flame, sand and sea, and a number of 'universal' spells. It had absolutely nothing to do with the D&D 3e sorcerer, and probably shouldn't be considered in those terms.

EDIT: Incidentally, the Al-Qadim sorcerer was, in its own setting, highly respected.

Psyren
2014-10-12, 07:20 AM
Note also that Sorcerer (and Barbarian) were added to Baldurs Gate despite that game being 2e.

BWR
2014-10-12, 08:25 AM
Note also that Sorcerer (and Barbarian) were added to Baldurs Gate despite that game being 2e.

I'm pretty sure that was BG II, not the first one.

Beleriphon
2014-10-12, 04:26 PM
I'm pretty sure that was BG II, not the first one.

And the monk. It was because the game came out right around when 3E was coming out so they decided to put the new classes into the game so players could have some continuity between the editions in game.

Khedrac
2014-10-13, 06:27 AM
And the monk. It was because the game came out right around when 3E was coming out so they decided to put the new classes into the game so players could have some continuity between the editions in game.
Except the monk was in the first AD&D player's handbook so it was hardly added for 3E.

Yora
2014-10-13, 06:33 AM
Baldur's Gate had always been 2nd Edition. The new classes in BG2 were sorcerer, monk, and barbarian, which are the same ones that are in 3rd but not in 2nd.