Another Sorc Tweak

[Merlin the Tuna]

Like everyone else in the world, I'd like to make some changes to the Sorcerer for the purposes of a campaign I'm putting together. Here's the long and short of it.

Important Notes:
Preparative casters will not be allowed, so don't use those as a benchmark. Obviously I don't want to reach that level of brokenation, but "I'd just be a Wizard" is not a relevant comment.
4 encounters per day will be a rarity.
I expect the campaign to end at about 10th level, so this doesn't necessarily need to be tremendously far-sighted in scope. If this totally breaks down at 17th level, sweet; that means it works for the actual power level it'll be getting used for.Intended Goals:
Versatility - A huge number of spells have been made, and I'd rather not see the same ones on every list. And everyone loves deepening their bag of tricks.
Ammo Reduction - I can't very well say "Yeah, you have 4 Time Stops... but only use one." Spells per day have to get pulled down.
Elegance - When faced with pages of house rules regarding individual classes, players often respond with "Okay, not playing one of those," immediately, and I'd rather not be forced to draw up tables.So, with that in mind, this is the cunning plan: Sorcerers will use the table given in the PHB for Spells Known to determine their spells per day, and vice versa.

The good is that it hits all three goals. Spells known spikes up, ammo reserves collapse, and it requires a single sentence while using existing tables. It also does a nice job of curving the daily spell loadout - half the time, he'll only be able to use one of his biggest guns once per day, but he'll have a whole mess of low-level slots available.

The bad is that spells known now look be a bit too beefy; the Sorcerer's (normal) spells per day chart rises to 6 pretty quickly, so it's both huge and flat. Maybe subtract 1 from each of those? I don't really know; part of me is going "Yeah, cool!" and part of me is doing the knee-jerk nerf.

The ugly is, how well does this integrate with other systems?
Bards
Favored Souls - Normally these guys know a lot more spells than Sorcs. Should these guys get bumped down to Sorc charts, or what?
Specialists (Warmage/Beguiler/Dread Necro) - The advantage these guys had (a mess of spells known) just disappeared, and now they look more or less like Sorcerers that picked their spells poorly.
Warlocks - They have the longevity factor, but the Sorc's repertoire is that much larger now. That invocation list will start looking pretty tiny.
Psionics - Extra powers/few power points? I confess to having no experience here, but I'd like to start getting into it a bit, so this becomes a somewhat important issue to address.So yeah, I'm open to ideas here; do you see any merit here? Should I try using a different table? (Maybe the Cleric's loadout should become spells known, and the Sorc's spells known should become the loadout?) Would a "+1 to everything" or "-1 to everything" smooth things out somewhat?

Thanks much.

[Fax Celestis]

I'd say use the Cleric's (or Druid's!) Spell Chart as "Spells Known", and the Sorceror's "Spells Known" as "Spells Per Day".

[Merlin the Tuna]

That's what I'm starting to lean towards. It's a more gradual, rounded progression, and it's big enough to have some options but not so big that anyone will become Adam West Batmen.

[Draz74]

I'd say use the Cleric's (or Druid's!) Spell Chart as "Spells Known", and the Sorceror's "Spells Known" as "Spells Per Day".

Leaves you, at every other level, knowing a spell but not being able to cast it. Unless you add "0" to the relavent parts of the Sorc "Spells Known" table ... and even then it requires a high casting stat.

[Kel_Arath]

you just made spontanious wizards. and you want to make it so people have more things to cast, less times to cast them? why dont you just let them choose between the classes that have more/less of each category, wizard/sorc cleric/favored soul

[Merlin the Tuna]

Leaves you, at every other level, knowing a spell but not being able to cast it. Unless you add "0" to the relavent parts of the Sorc "Spells Known" table ... and even then it requires a high casting stat.That's more or less what I've planned on doing. Doing otherwise would throw off magic item prices, since they're partially dependent on caster level.

And it looks like using Cleric spells per day as spontaneous spells known should do the trick. I just made a quick Excel sheet; using the Druid swings a couple values between -1 and +1 relative to the base Sorcerer's spells known, and it tends towards breaking even or even being one less than usual. So it looks like the Cleric progression will work a little bit more nicely in terms of what I'm looking for. So...

Sorcerers, Favored Souls: Spells/day as Sorcerer spells known. Spells known as Cleric spells/day. (Granting a single domain might be interesting, as well. That can be a pretty big boon, though. I'll have to think about that.)
Beguiler, Warmage, Dread Necro: Spells/day as Sorcerer spells known. (Using [original] Favored Soul spells known instead might be a nice perk, but I'm not necessarily sure they need that. It would also require cross-referencing splatbooks, which is rather clunky.)
Warlock: Should be fine as is.
Bard: Should be fine as is.
Psions & Co.: Remain a question mark, but I'm not sure they'll be involved anyway.

As for Kel_Arath's comment: Sorcerers have always been spontaneous wizards. That the idea they were designed with. As far as what I'm going for... I'm intentionally removing Vancian casting classes from the world for both flavor and balance reasons. Just as Psions, Ninjas, and Swordsages don't have places in some people's games, Clerics, Wizards, and Druids have no place in mine. That their book happened to come first doesn't mean I intend to force-fit them in.