Why sorcerer has slower spell progression?

[With a box]

It there something in book that justify this?
They have born with talent after all

[darksolitaire]

It there something in book that justify this?
They have born with talent after all

I guess that the reason is (perceived) balance. Sorcerers at the time did have more spells per day then Wizards. You could also justify it that Wizards use their vast intelligence to acquire their arcane powers, where sorcerers do it by being good looking :smalltongue:

[Telonius]

I believe it was intended to be more of a mechanical balance issue. Because Sorcerers were supposed to have more spell slots, they made the progression slower.

You could justify it by saying that Wizards have a more systematic approach to learning magic, so are able to master the theory sooner.

[FearlessGnome]

As the others said, they thought it was reasonable from a balance point of view. If you play with a very low level of optimization, the sorcerer being able to spontaneously pick whichever energy type of damaging spell they want can be seen as superior to a wizard, who is locked down for the day. In reality wizards are so much better than sorcerers it's not even funny, especially since some idiot decided they could have as many spells as sorcerers with Alternative Class Features.

I very much prefer playing a sorcerer, but mechanically wizards just win.

[Necroticplague]

Because they tried to make everything balanced in This edition, regardless of the sense it made. So they tried o make the ridiculous power of a sorceror balanced by making them have to wait a little to get all the fun stuff. Of course, try screwed that up by making them both able to get 9th level spells. And then there are the Swiss army tool spells, knowstones, and sand shaper, letting them crack one of their few limits wide open. So you can end up with seone who can suddenly decide to do anything, almost any time.

[HighWater]

Just piling on here.

The reason Sorcerers are delayed in spell progression is because the game designers thought that Spontaneous Casting from a small set of options was stronger than Prepared Casting from a wide set of options. This was a mistake: they did not realise that most of the sorcerer's relevant choices (what to do with my highest-level slots?) boil down to "I get to choose from an awesome set of -One Option- as I see fit". If that one option doesn't apply... tough luck.

They presumably also thought that they gave the vanilla Sorcerer more spellslots than the Wizard and that would also balance this. Sadly, already in the Player's Handbook is a way for Wizards to have similar spammability (School Specialization). Furthermore, bonus spells narrow the relative gap (they get equal amounts of bonus spells, at odd levels the wizard even gets MORE due to the extra spell level) and gaining higher level spells (and therefore more spellslots) a level earlier effectively eliminates the Wizards disadvantage in number of spells at low levels at the uneven levels. At high levels, both classes tend to have spells a-plenty, so the Sorcerer doesn't really benefit from his "greater number of spellslots" because half the time it doesn't even apply.

It's also quite possible they overestimated the weaknesses of Prepared Casting: Wizards are slightly more vulnerable to DM's specifically hindering their preparation-options (by targetting spellbooks, mostly). This doesn't come up all that much in play because Wizards always had ways to counter (back-up spellbooks, illusions, alarms), it's kind of a DB-move to begin with, it gets old pretty fast and Wizards get countless extra options that negate their spellbook-vulnerability in later supplements (tattoos, eidetic memory, etc.)

Another example of "Spontaneous is better"-bias can be found in their nerf of the one field where spontaneous casting can really pull out ahead: Spontaneous MetaMagic takes LONGER to cast because otherwise it'd be objectively better than prepared MetaMagic (subverted with MailMan-builds).

What they thought they were doing balance-wise when they didn't give the Sorcerer any feat-perks compared to the Wizards Scribe Scroll + 4 bonus feats: I don't know, I can't even...

It all lends some credence to what I have seen people suggest: the reason Sorcerers got the short-stick compared to wizards is because one of the lead designers (don't remember which one) hated the idea of sorcerers and tried hard to prevent them from having Good Things.


It's interesting they never really gave a fluff explanation for this. The closest I can find is the unwritten assumption that careful training & rigorous study is somehow better than inherent talent and intuitive understanding at teasing out all the options arcane magic provides. I guess you can defend that, but you could easily argue the other way around... Oh well, good luck with that!

[The Insanity]

Because just talent is never better than hard work.
In my games all 9th level casting classes use Sorcerer's spell progression. Yes, even Wizards.

[Galen]

Simple answer: when the Sorcerer class was originally created, WotC overestimated the value of spontaneous spellcasting. They deemed it to be so good that a whole level of delayed progression was needed to compensate. Now that we've all been playing 3.5 for over a decade, we of course all know that spontaneous spellcasting is good, but it's not that good.

[nedz]

Simple answer: when the Sorcerer class was originally created, WotC overestimated the value of spontaneous spellcasting. They deemed it to be so good that a whole level of delayed progression was needed to compensate. Now that we've all been playing 3.5 for over a decade, we of course all know that spontaneous spellcasting is good, but it's not that good.

Maybe you're right, but wasn't there something called 3.0 ?

[Squark]

Yeah, but charop really only picked up steam mid 3.5.

The Pathfinder devs, though, have no excuse.

[dascarletm]

Because just talent is never better than hard work.


Will Hunting would like a word with you. :smallwink:

[The Insanity]

Will Hunting would like a word with you. :smallwink:
Why's that?

[dascarletm]

Why's that?
no reason, just wants to chat.
I suppose you would need to see the movie to get that reference.

He solves problems while not working anywhere near as hard as other characters in the movie, due to his eidetic memory..... etc. etc.


The trope that some people are better than others without working hard yadda yadda...

and stuff.

[TypoNinja]

Simple answer: when the Sorcerer class was originally created, WotC overestimated the value of spontaneous spellcasting. They deemed it to be so good that a whole level of delayed progression was needed to compensate. Now that we've all been playing 3.5 for over a decade, we of course all know that spontaneous spellcasting is good, but it's not that good.

This basically.

Game dev's suck at their own game. They massively over estimated the spontaneous vs prepared balance. If the best thing you can think of to do with your caster is spam fireballs and lightening bolts sorcerer seems better. Once you figure out that's the worst option, not so much, once you add on that wizards get all the good ACF's, more feats, and better PrC's sorcerers fall way behind.

The only saving grace is that any full casting class is amazing, so "way behind" the Wizard still leaves you in universe breaking power level territory anyway.

[KillianHawkeye]

Well, according to the story I've heard a few times being passed around the Internet, the guy who originally wrote the 3E Sorcerer class hated them and the concept of spontaneous spellcasting, so he put them a level behind in the name of "game balance" but actually as a sort of punishment and it just stuck that way.

[LTwerewolf]

There's a few sources of the skip hates sorcerers rumor:

Frank wrote:

Wow. It's history day.

OK, I was kicked out from the WotC board because Skip Williams was let go during the shift to 3.5 (which at that time was a two man show of Ed Stark and Andy Collins). That's probably not very helpful, so I'll go into some more history on that.

Back in the days of 3rd edition, there were three main authors of D&D (Ed Stark, Skip Williams, and Monte Cook), and a playtesting staff. It was wild times, and noone appreciated the level of discussion and feed back we got, least of all me.

I used to post in an extremely no-nonsense, no embelishment style under the name "Frank". I would clearly separate opinion from direct text interpretation with line breaks, and I would quote the exact page numbers and rules statements that I was basing interpretations on. Like all the time. It must have been pretty annoying.

But it also lent my statements a good deal of weight on the WotC boards. When I made a rules argument, I'd bust out the actual rules and laboriously transcribe the statements point for point into quote boxes so that people could see the text I was basing interpretations on. That meant that when I said that a rule said XXX, it actually said that. And I'd even quote it.

This contrasted severely with the way Skip Williams did things in his capacity as "The Sage". He'd answer rules questions about the rules without necessarily having a copy of the rules on him. Sometimes the answers he'd give were... bad for the game. Classic examples include Monks holding torches and diagonal weapon reach.

But Skip Williams, in his capacity as "The Sage" had decided that the worst thing he could do was admit that he was worng. So he didn't do it. Ever. If he made a flippant answer on a chat room when he didn't have the books on him and someone would bring it up later, he'd never say "Sorry dude, I was way drunk, I have no idea what you're talking about." - he'd come up with some elaborate construction about why the answer was right all along. Sometimes he'd be forced to argue that two opposing answers from himself were both correct at the same time. This caused Skip and I to post answers to similar questions that were very different.

And when people brought up the differences (usually with an angry "But the Sgae says...") I would retain my implaccable demeanor. My standard answer would be something along the lines of "Skip Williams is on crack, the rules clearly say on page XX, page XY, and page XZ that it works like this...." And people noticed. And some people grew over time to hate me for it. But what ultimately got me banned was that some people decided that they agreed with me.

Josh Kablack, the same Josh who occasssionally posts here today and at one time worked on Exalted in some capacity, put up a fateful post on the boards. The title was "Skip vs. Frank: Sorcerers and Quicken Spell". You see, Skip Williams stated in his advice column, and in Tome and Blood, and in personal email, and in the FAQ, and probably embroidered on his underpants even that Sorcerers couldn't benefit from Quicken Spell because of the extra time it takes for a Sorcerer to use Metamagic. Well, under the third edition rules, that's not actually what the rules said. The rules actually said that if a spell took a standard action then it would take a full round to cast as a metamagic spell for a sorcerer. But the rules also said that if a quickened spell took a Fullround or less to cast, it went off as a Free Action (we didn't have Swift Actions back then, but the effect was the same). The rules didn't say that a Sorcerer took any extra time to cast a Free Action spell.

So regardless of whether you applied the feat transform before or after the metamagic transform, the end result was "Free Action". In short, as written, Sorcerers could totally use Quicken Spell with no problem at all.

And this produced a huge flame war. A flame war I didn't even particularly participate in because it was being waged by other people I had never met quoting Skip Williams and me back and forth at each other. Occassionally I'd bump in to correct someone on a page citation and that was about it. The whole thing went on for dozens of pages of replies.

And that might have been the end of it, but someone else started "Frank vs. Skip Part II" a thread about another disagreement between my own quotes and Skip's. And someone else started a "Frank vs. Skip III". And a part four. I think there was a part five. Part six I think was the one that got closed by moderators. Each featured a new issue and the only core structure was that it featured someone quoting me explaining what the rulebook said against Skip Williams explaining what he thought the rulebook meant.

I got emails from WotC game designers warning me that if I didn't stop it that bad things would happen to me. And I told them the honest truth - which was that I could not stop it because I wasn't even involved in their production. I didn't even know most of the people starting the threads or arguing on my behalf.

And when Skip Williams stepped down, so did I. The same day that he signed his mandatory resignation letter, I got banned from the WotC board. Did you know that when a lead designer steps down from a WotC post they get to ban anyone that pisses them off before they go? Well, you do now.

Oh sure, there was a final flame war going on that they claimed was my final warning. They said that I was being too rude to Rich Burlow - but that was just publicity. I hadn't actually said anything insulting or mean in that particular flame fest, nor had I participated in the actual flaming.

---

And then 3.5 came out, and the wording that I said had to be in the basic book if Skip wanted it to work the way he said it was written to work appeared like magic in the 3.5 PHB. And I'm still banned. And at this point, I'm not coming back because I don't care.

I no longer champion the notion that the rules as written can be exactly followed like a legal text. The 3.5 rules are simply too long to do that with. Sword and Fist was 95 pages long and even the 3rd edition DMG was only 253. You could seriously sit down and thumb through all of D&D in an evening and find every rule pertaining to a subject. You could put them all on the table and analyze how they interact.

3.5 made a second complete book about Wizards!. I have no idea what all the rules do. Noone does. The lead designers don't even participate in the production of all the books. There isn't a single person on the planet who has read all of the rules published for 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons.

So my focus has shifted. I no longer attempt to put exhaustive pictures of what the rules actually say together before I propose new house rules. I just don't even care any more. When I write stuff for my home campaigns I do so within the bubble of my own campaign worlds because I no longer believe that there is a default D&D campaign that we can share.

I haven't tried to shift a character from one campaign to another since 2003. And I don't think I'm likely to do so in the future.

-Frank

Then a post by a user named Yawgmoth:


Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003



I remember I was in a chat with Skip Williams once and I asked him why they thought the sorcerer was balanced when they get the short end of every stick and the answer was basically "if you want to play a wizard you should have to play a wizard." Then someone else asked him why he hates sorcerers so much, he threw a tantrum, and ended the chat.

So it wasn't so much that they were clueless, it's just that their lead designer belonged in grognards.txt rather than being in charge of anything.

But there isn't any evidence anyone has been able to show of Skip himself saying he hated them. I'm inclined to believe the first story is true, and that the second is not.

[FearlessGnome]

Man, I hadn't heard the name Skip Williams before today, but I'm already convinced he's the douchiest douche in roleplaying.

[LTwerewolf]

I don't personally have any experience with him whatsoever, as when I started on boards was a few months after he left the scene. Therefore this is all just hearsay.

[Yahzi]

Frank wrote:
IS that Frank Trollman, of Frank & K?

Everybody should read the Dungeonomicon. It's absolutely brilliant.

[chaos_redefined]

Judging from the way he wrote that post, I get the impression that it isn't.

[Zombimode]

It has the side effect of making Sorcerers less oppressively good then wizards, which is a good thing in my book.

[Sartharina]

It there something in book that justify this?
They have born with talent after all

Because the developer who made the sorcerer hated the class, and argued his nerfs were for 'balance' purposes. But seriously - he was to Sorcerers as SKR was to Monks.

[Manly Man]

Because the developer who made the sorcerer hated the class, and argued his nerfs were for 'balance' purposes. But seriously - he was to Sorcerers as SKR was to Monks.

The latter being even harder on his own target at which he sling filth.

[Astralia123]

Actually if I run a more optimized campaign from very low levels, I would have the sorcerers get higher spell levels at the same pace as wizards.

Trying to build a gish based on sorcerers is such a pain in the ass, and it really does not make sense as you can only choose so little amount of useful spells.

[Sartharina]

Also - Sorcerer 2 is a dead level. They learn a goddamn cantrip. Not even a real spell. I start sorc casting at level 2.

[Fizban]

I too would like to know which Frank this is. LTwerewolf, I don't suppose you have links to the posts for those quotes? I imagine they're either from another thread on here (in which case a bored person might track through the old threads for other clues), or from old dead versions of the WoTC forums. It'd be a nightmare trying to get those on the wayback machine but I don't think they have forums archived on there anyway. You've got more substantiation there than the last time I heard the rumor but I'd love some links to link my friends.

[LTwerewolf]

It is indeed Frank Trollman and if you want to track down the post it's on the gaming den from 2003. I simply had it copied into a text file, so I couldn't tell you the name of the post anymore. Apologies for that.


Edit: So apparently the original Frank post was deleted by accident by one of the mods, but that mod has reconstructed some of it here. (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=171)

That being said, I've never seen any evidence that Skip hated sorcerers specifically. I see several places where he has a misconception about how powerful they were, and then an argument with Frank over metamagic, which was more of a pissing contest over being right than it was sorcerers.

[atemu1234]

This basically.

Game dev's suck at their own game. They massively over estimated the spontaneous vs prepared balance. If the best thing you can think of to do with your caster is spam fireballs and lightening bolts sorcerer seems better. Once you figure out that's the worst option, not so much, once you add on that wizards get all the good ACF's, more feats, and better PrC's sorcerers fall way behind.

The only saving grace is that any full casting class is amazing, so "way behind" the Wizard still leaves you in universe breaking power level territory anyway.

Which just says a lot about the game, really. Monk was probably going to have full BAB, but the designers thought that would be too powerful.

[georgie_leech]

Which just says a lot about the game, really. Monk was probably going to have full BAB, but the designers thought that would be too powerful.

Eh, it's more likely a hold over from earlier editions where they didn't have the same THAC0 as Fighters and Barbarians and such. A number of oddities in design make a lot more sense when you think of them as stuff they just copy-pasted from earlier editions, like the general failure of baseline blasting to do meaningful hp damage; hp totals went up, damage stayed the same.

[SiuiS]

It was originally thought that having spontaneous access to a sorcerer's spells would be too powerful and had to be offset; after all, the poor wizard who only prepared two fireballs would be out of combat skill in two fights at level five, so the sorcerer out shining them with fireballs in every fight is going to make wizards redundant!

This is also why the sorcerer has no class features. Even WotC noticed this was bull, and proved it with the favored soul. Now it's just a legacy.


I believe it was intended to be more of a mechanical balance issue. Because Sorcerers were supposed to have more spell slots, they made the progression slower.

You could justify it by saying that Wizards have a more systematic approach to learning magic, so are able to master the theory sooner.

I just reverse them. Wizards get spells slower.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Man, I hadn't heard the name Skip Williams before today, but I'm already convinced he's the douchiest douche in roleplaying.

Gonna put on my Greybeard hat for a minute to share my thoughts.

For those who don't know; Skip Williams ran a regular segment in Dragon magazine. This column acted kind of like the customer service of later times offering common sense answers to rules questions. Like Q&A these answers often weren't RAW and he tended to rule against unintended combos. Also like Q&A he seemed to be lead more by the tone of the question than the rules of the game at times. More than anything he seemed to be an authority to reference when saying "no" to things.

This may sound very negative, but in the pre 3.0 days this sort of thing was needed. The rules were just a mess, yes even compared to the "glorious mess" of 3.5 with ported 3.0, pathfinder and cherry picked 3rd Party+ Dragon. There was interesting material everywhere that could presumably be tacked onto chracters at 0 resource cost.

It seems that like he maintained these same attitudes while the game transitioned to a more defined ruleset where he was contradicting functional rules rather than closing loopholes and giving his opinion on things that were legitimately vague. Being elevated from a personality to a developer also seems to have had an unattractive effect on his ego.

[Nightcanon]

To be fair, in the pre-internet days of 1st & 2nd edition pretty much the only way to get a rules adjudication was to send off to Sage Advice, which from my (admittedly shaky) recollection was very much RAI +/- DM decides in approach. With the advent of internet boards, rules lawyering about [book X says on page 321 and book Y on page 345, with source Z not specifically saying you can't combine the two effects] has become a viable away-from-table pastime in its own right (as this and other fora demonstrate!). Back then you either argued about it at the table with your group, which could get in the way of actually playing the game if a player declined to accept the DM's ruling, or you wrote in to Sage Advice at Dragon magazine. Internet-era grumpy Skip was probably just a bit slow to adjust to the new reality of people arguing back from a more RAW perspective.