Does the Sorcerer Have a Reason to Exist?

[Catullus64]

More accurately, I suppose, would be the question of "Does Sorcerer have a reason to be its own class?"

Now I'm not a D&D historian, but I understand that the Sorcerer as we know it today really got its hooks in during 3rd Edition, when prepared spellcasting was a lot more restrictive; Wizards and most other casters had to allocate their specific spell slots to specific spells. Looking at the SRD, the Sorcerer really is just "Wizard, but with a different casting ability score, and a more flexible casting system." It doesn't really express a very distinct theme or archetype from the classic D&D Wizard; it's a different mechanical take on much the same concept.

Well, now every caster class has more flexibility; a prepared caster doesn't lose any flexibility relative to the spells-known caster (he arguably gains it). And there are other primary spellcasters who use Charisma, so that mechanical chestnut is no more. So what is the Sorcerer's justification to be its own class?

In the beginning of this edition, the cordoning off of Metamagic into a Special Sorcerer Toy seemed to be an attempt to justify the sorcerer's existence, rather than manifesting a clear class identity. Post-THC, any spellcaster with a feat can borrow that Special Toy, so it doesn't even do that anymore, seemingly a tacit admission that that particular mechanic doesn't have any thematic reason to be confined to one class. Thus the Sorcerer, a class that, in my opinion, has always been defined by mechanics rather than clear theme, is no longer all that distinct mechanically.

The theming that is there is weak; it's extremely metaphysical and abstract most of the time, with vague talk of bloodlines and innate magical power. It's one of three classes where your subclass is, narratively, the entire basis of your class, as represented by you choosing it at 1st Level. The other two such classes, the Cleric and the Warlock, ask you to be specific about the source of your power, and place your relationship with that source front and center; they ask you to commit to goals and ideologies for your character. The Sorcerer's problem is that you just passively are magical. And I would argue that by making "magical lineage or transformation" the only consistent thematic throughline of a class, you implicitly make that less of an option for other characters.

The Sorcerous Origins themselves don't really seem to do much to help, since each one is so disconnected from the others. The Wild Mage and Clockwork Soul could (and did, in editions prior) work as Wizard variants without losing any of their theme; the Divine Soul and the Aberrant Mind have to borrow their cool themes from another class, or another class's subclass.

I should probably just accept that this is just part of the game now: the class has its adherents, and it probably will keep showing up in whatever future versions of the game come after, and that's fine. But I do hope that if D&D is going to stick with the Sorcerer even after its mechanical raisons d'etre are no longer relevant, that the creatives driving the game put effort into giving it a more compelling and concrete class identity.

[PhantomSoul]

I have some of the same feeling (actually, about a lot of classes seeming ill-defined thematically). I'd like the idea of having Sorcerers attached to Planes or to (Magical) Creature (Sub)Types... which leads to wanting to fuse Sorcerers and Warlocks (same expected concepts) and have the Sorcerous Origin be about the way you became Magical, with a separate Magical Affiliation. Metamagic could even still be the "innately magical" perk.

And despite (maybe because of?) playing a Bladesinger, I've also found I really wish Wizards didn't get subclass bloat; Generalist + School-based Wizards. Other options could be higher-tier variants (basically, prestige classes being wizard subclass options).

But oh well; the classes are mostly ok. And narratively I see why the Sorcerer can be justified despite that I don't think its mechanical distinction or conceptual subdivisions are that clear. (Hell, just giving it a Spell Point variant as a baseline would be a start!)

[Democratus]

It would be nice if each different type of spellcaster had their own separate mechanic.


Wizards: Vancian casting from books
Sorcerers: Elemental energy channelers
Warlock: Pact powers based on patron


As it is everyone not only uses the same magic system but, for the most part, shares the exact same spells.

[Amnestic]

(Hell, just giving it a Spell Point variant as a baseline would be a start!)

This is what I did.

Also made them a CON caster instead of CHA.

[Catullus64]

Also made them a CON caster instead of CHA.

Great. You've just hijacked my thread into another "Sorcerers as CON casters" debate. Thanks. :smallwink:

I guess that when I talk about theme in a class, a lot of my thinking goes towards what its pre-D&D inspirations were, and the Sorcerer really comes up short.

Aragorn gave us Rangers. Conan gave us Barbarians. (However you feel about those characters as bases for the classes, they definitely play a huge part in how people think about them, and are certainly compelling enough to drive a class.) Fighters and Rogues... you know, actually existed. Clerics, Monks, Paladins, and Druids all draw upon (highly fantastical versions of) real-world religious and martial traditions. The bard draws upon a wealth of both folkloric musician-heroes and literary minstrel tropes. Magic is very frequently attributed to literacy and reading, or to bargains with supernatural entities, in both myth and fiction, so Wizards and Warlocks have a lot to draw upon. I'm not saying that the classes need to be narrowly defined by these traditional characters and archetypes, but they at least need to have them as a point of departure.

What does a Sorcerer have? Every hero I can think of defined by a "special lineage", from Heracles to Harry James Potter, would fit better into one of the other classes. The only characters I can think of who really feel like D&D Sorcerers... come from D&D-licensed or inspired fiction. If the other classes have mythological and literary DNA, the Sorcerer is stiflingly inbred.

[Willie the Duck]

More accurately, I suppose, would be the question of "Does Sorcerer have a reason to be its own class?"

I would reframe the point a bit. I would say that mechanically (in an edition where the wizards are only doing pseudo-vancian casting) there isn't enough to distinguish the sorcerer and wizard classes from each other (and the thing that is the distinguisher -- metamagic -- isn't thematically tied to the sorcerer so much as a thrown bone to try to make them distinct). One of them could go, or the two be rolled up together. However, that's not to say that it is the Sorcerer that is being removed.

Here's the thing. Thematically, 'magic in the blood' or 'born of a magical background' is, honestly, a lot more common in mythology, folklore, and fantasy literature than 'studious guy who learns magic from dusty old tomes.' The former has Merlin, Gandalf, Alucard, Harry Potter, any and all of the mythological gods or demigods or children of gods who use a lot of magic (Circe, for example), and many more. The later has some of the heroes/villains of Appendix N material, Aleister Crowley, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Wizard of Id (and sooome of the D&D derived novels). When it comes right down to it, if we are to theoretically roll up the wizard and sorcerer, I'm not sure it should be the wizard that is left standing at the end of the day (although it probably would be named wizard, just because more people probably like that name).


Magic is very frequently attributed to literacy and reading, or to bargains with supernatural entities, in both myth and fiction, so Wizards and Warlocks have a lot to draw upon. I'm not saying that the classes need to be narrowly defined by these traditional characters and archetypes, but they at least need to have them as a point of departure.

What does a Sorcerer have? Every hero I can think of defined by a "special lineage", from Heracles to Harry James Potter, would fit better into one of the other classes. The only characters I can think of who really feel like D&D Sorcerers... come from D&D-licensed or inspired fiction. If the other classes have mythological and literary DNA, the Sorcerer is stiflingly inbred.
Not really at all. Much of those folklores predate regular literacy. The guy with dusty old tomes is something of a post-renaissance invention. Most folklore and mythic casters either were imbued, or were just magical and how wasn't clear.

[Garfunion]

In my opinion the 3.5 sorcerer was created for players who wanted a more simpler less book keeping spellcaster. The 3.5 sorcerer even had a feature that allow them to ignore spell components.
The current version of the sorcerer is really just a shell of its former self. Most spell casters now cast spells the same way the sorcerer once did, additionally some spell casters can also recover lost spell slots giving them more spells casts per day. The meta-magic feature just isn’t enough to make it a unique spellcaster.

If I were to get rid of the sorcerer I would;
Turn metamagic back into feats and have them cost spell slots again. I would also have the wizard choose between a slightly upgraded version of ritualcaster(wizardry) or arcane recovery(sorcery).

[Catullus64]

Not really at all. Much of those folklores predate regular literacy. The guy with dusty old tomes is something of a post-renaissance invention. Most folklore and mythic casters either were imbued, or were just magical and how wasn't clear.

There's folklore and there's folklore, and there's a lot of it, even after the Renaissance. My point wasn't that no magic-users with inborn magical powers and ancestries exist in mythology (I'd be a fool to make such an easily disprovable claim), but that I don't see the D&D Sorcerer taking strong influence from any of them.

Less relevant to the argument, but I would venture that pre-literate societies are the reason for literacy and books being viewed as magic in some tales (I'll just list the student from The Franklin's Tale and Prospero from The Tempest as examples, even if those might have been written for literate audiences): to an illiterate person or class of persons, writing seems like a sort of magic in itself.

[Hopeless]

I've always perceived Sorceror's as the original arcane spellcasters and Wizards who are the most common came about later developing their abilities to overcome the difficulty they had trying to duplicate what sorceror's can do.

So everybody thinks Wizards are the original arcane spellcasters instead of stepping back and asking what came before them?

To me Wizards have always been rivals with sorcerors but nobody has ever asked what came first!

[Democratus]

Indeed. This is one of the super fun things to consider when building your game world.

How did magic come to be? How was it first used? Was it taught to humans by the gods? By learned elves?

[Catullus64]

I've always perceived Sorceror's as the original arcane spellcasters and Wizards who are the most common came about later developing their abilities to overcome the difficulty they had trying to duplicate what sorceror's can do.

So everybody thinks Wizards are the original arcane spellcasters instead of stepping back and asking what came before them?

To me Wizards have always been rivals with sorcerors but nobody has ever asked what came first!

I can't quite tell if you're joking or not. Neither Sorcerers nor Wizards really exist; someone made them up. When we're talking about them as D&D classes, the one that came first is the one that the game designers made up first, which is the Wizard (even if it hasn't always been called that). The D&D Wizard can't have copied the D&D sorcerer, because the Sorcerer didn't exist!

If you are joking, I've just blundered right into it. If not, then you're discussing a subtly different point about in-game fiction than the one I was discussing about class design and inspiration.

[Sandeman]

I think the Jedi in Star Wars are kind of sorcerers. Sure its scifi and not the fantasy genre, but still.
Yoda isnt an analytical bookworm that give Luke lots of texts to study. He teaches Luke to feeel the Force.
Clearly more sorcerer than wizard to me.

[KorvinStarmast]

I've always perceived Sorceror's as the original arcane spellcasters and Wizards who are the most common came about later developing their abilities to overcome the difficulty they had trying to duplicate what sorceror's can do.

So everybody thinks Wizards are the original arcane spellcasters instead of stepping back and asking what came before them?

To me Wizards have always been rivals with sorcerors but nobody has ever asked what came first! Sorry, this is in error. Who came first was Magic Users. And Wizards > Sorcerers. :smallcool:
Magic-Users from level 1 through 11 (Men and Magic, page 16)
1 Medium
2 Seer
3 Conjurer
4 Theurgist
5 Thaumaturgist
6 Magician
7 Enchanter
8 Warlock*
9 Sorcerer
10 Necromancer
11 Wizard

If you go back to Chainmail (page 33, 3d edition):
_______________Morale Rating___Point Value
Wizard_________ 50___________100
Sorcerer________40___________ 90
Warlock_________30___________80
Magician________25____________70
Seer___________20____________50

Wizards have always been superior to Sorcerers.

[St Fan]

I very much agree with Hopeless's position; in fact, I had started to develop a variant of wizards close to sorcerers even when playing 2nd edition, to fit with spellcasters coming from primitive societies that wouldn't be literate.

Sorcerers are the original arcane casters, the ones who dabbled in magic thanks to their special bloodline while their contemporary still lived in caves and huts, and before anybody invented the written words (or the gods granted that boon to mortals, whatever the world's background is).

Wizards came later, streamlining the principles of magic and making it a science, gaining in flexibility but lacking the natural talents and powers of sorcerers.

Wizards also come mostly from rich/educated backgrounds, while sorcerers can show up anywhere, and thus are more likely to be of lower extraction.

[KorvinStarmast]

Wizards came later Not in D&D, ever, nor in Chainmail. :smallcool:

[Willie the Duck]

There's folklore and there's folklore, and there's a lot of it, even after the Renaissance. My point wasn't that no magic-users with inborn magical powers and ancestries exist in mythology (I'd be a fool to make such an easily disprovable claim), but that I don't see the D&D Sorcerer taking strong influence from any of them.
You state:

Magic is very frequently attributed to literacy and reading, or to bargains with supernatural entities, in both myth and fiction, so Wizards and Warlocks have a lot to draw upon. I'm not saying that the classes need to be narrowly defined by these traditional characters and archetypes, but they at least need to have them as a point of departure.

What does a Sorcerer have? Every hero I can think of defined by a "special lineage", from Heracles to Harry James Potter, would fit better into one of the other classes. The only characters I can think of who really feel like D&D Sorcerers... come from D&D-licensed or inspired fiction. If the other classes have mythological and literary DNA, the Sorcerer is stiflingly inbred.
I pointed out a number of mythological and literary precursors to the "special lineage" spellcaster (including Merlin and Gandalf, which if not the top 2, certainly are in running for the positions. Do you disagree with this (I'm genuinely unclear)?


Less relevant to the argument, but I would venture that pre-literate societies are the reason for literacy and books being viewed as magic in some tales (I'll just list the student from The Franklin's Tale and Prospero from The Tempest as examples, even if those might have been written for literate audiences): to an illiterate person or class of persons, writing seems like a sort of magic in itself.
Possibly upon occasion. It would be interesting to break down an example (of one that was made of non-literate audiences).

Regardless, my position is that all the themes should still be represented (plus one that I don't think is represented in 5e, and that D&D has traditionally had trouble represented -- a magician whose power source is learning-derived instead of lineage or pact/investiture, but from a non-literate/oral tradition society), but certainly the mechanical distinction in 5e is exceedingly anemic.


Not in D&D, ever, nor in Chainmail. :smallcool:
It was pretty clear from context that he wasn't talking about which class first occurred in D&D.

[KorvinStarmast]

It was pretty clear from context that he wasn't talking about which class first occurred in D&D. Indeed, but D&D is the context of this conversation, or so it seems to me, so anyone's private head canon can be anything at all. I am also intending a playful tone, not sure if that is coming across.

I don't know if I'll ever get this campaign up and running, but I am planning for next year's beginning in the world where my brother and I DM that the only arcane casters allowed are warlocks. (It will be on the other side of the world from where we are DMing currently)

The Sorcerer class was IMO a bad idea, specifically because of the use of Charisma as a casting stat. (not for any deep and profound love of Vancian casting. Point based has its merits, and lots of it).

I've ranted on that before, so I'll spare the group another such rant.

[Catullus64]

You state:

I pointed out a number of mythological and literary precursors to the "special lineage" spellcaster (including Merlin and Gandalf, which if not the top 2, certainly are in running for the positions. Do you disagree with this (I'm genuinely unclear)?


Regardless, my position is that all the themes should still be represented (plus one that I don't think is represented in 5e, and that D&D has traditionally had trouble represented -- a magician whose power source is learning-derived instead of lineage or pact/investiture, but from a non-literate/oral tradition society), but certainly the mechanical distinction in 5e is exceedingly anemic.


Let's look at those two examples you mention, since they're widely known. Yes, they have an origin that is expressly supernatural (mostly, at least, with Merlin; dude's been around for centuries and has had every origin story under the sun, with the only consistent element being "does magic stuff for Arthur."). But that's in the abstract. What do they actually do? They provide guidance, counsel and information. They have knowledge of the order of the world and much of its forgotten lore. They're old, and lots of what makes them powerful is just how much they've seen and experienced. Their spells depend on language, and Gandalf speaks at least once about knowing spells. These are clearly figures whose magical powers derive from art and learning.

Even if they fit the criterion for the sorcerer class of "having a magical origin", they don't act like D&D Sorcerers, nor would a D&D player who wanted to replicate either of them be best served by choosing a Sorcerer for their class, any more than would a character who wanted to portray Heracles or Harry Potter. That's what I mean when I say that the D&D Sorcerer doesn't draw upon these characters or their archetypes.

I'm with you all the way on that second point, and wish the Bard class would lean harder into that dimension.

[KorvinStarmast]

Even if they fit the criterion for the sorcerer class of "having a magical origin", they don't act like D&D Sorcerers, nor would a D&D player who wanted to replicate either of them be best served by choosing a Sorcerer for their class. That's what I mean when I say that the D&D Sorcerer doesn't draw upon these characters or their archetypes.
There was a book some years ago called "Master of the Five Magics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_the_Five_Magics)" that took a young sorcerer from apprentice to 'pretty good at this sorcery thing' which I think fits pretty well some of what WoTC was trying to capture in 3e with sorcerer. if you have not read it, I'd recommend it.

I guess I have to resurrect what Gary Explained in Strategic Review on why, for a gamified system, he went with Vance. (Since that decision, a variety of point based systems have come up and many of them are quite playable). The core value there was a balancing approach of "make it difficult and dangerous and subject to failure" rather than the "I Win" button that it became in 3e (LFQW discussions apply of course). It is a pity that this exposition was not available to us when the three little books came out in that box. It was issued in 1976 in the last Strategic Review was ever published.

The four cardinal types of magic are those systems which require long conjuration with much paraphernalia as an adjunct (as used by Shakespeare in MACBETH or as typically written about by Robert E. Howard in his “Conan” yarns), the relatively short spoken spell (as in Finnish mythology or as found in the superb fantasy of Jack Vance), ultra-powerful (if not always correct) magic (typical of deCamp & Pratt in their classic “Harold Shea” stories), and the generally weak and relatively ineffectual magic (as found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s work). Now the use of magic in the game was one of the most appealing aspects, and given the game system it was fairly obvious that its employment could not be on the complicated and time consuming plane, any more than it could be made as a rather weak and ineffectual adjunct to swordplay if magic-users were to become a class of player character. The basic assumption, then, was that D & D magic worked on a “Vancian” system and if used correctly would be a highly powerful and effective force.
The article goes on to decry the players to apply the rules as (sparsely) written to instead replicate what he called "comic book hero" style of magic that is overpowered.

Enough on that, the original article is I think useful from a game design perspective, but with enough effort a points based system can work.

[Amechra]

I think we just have one too many spellcasting classes, and they're stepping on each-other's influences.

Arguably, Warlocks and Wizards should be the same class - most magic people who drew their power from their education ultimately drew it from being able to deal with spirits in one way or another.

Of course, that also brings in questions like "why are Clerics and Warlocks separate classes", which aren't really that productive.

---

Part of the problem is that spellcasting seems to have been primarily designed for Bards and Wizards, in that 5e's casting pushes you towards playing a generalist. Sorcerers and Warlocks end up feeling kinda vague because they're supposed to be magical specialists. Due to how spells are designed, though, there's no real payoff for specializing, so Sorcerers and Warlocks are left out in the cold. Clerics run into a similar problem (where pretty much every Cleric uses the same spells), but that feels less egregious because their list has less overlap with other spellcasting classes.

I think we wouldn't have these discussions if the system allowed you to make spellcasters that were heavily themed without tying your hands behind your back. If I'm a Sorcerer with a Fire Dragon bloodline and I only pick up spells that are tightly related to that theme (fire spells, personal defensive spells, and stuff that frightens or dominates others), I'm going to be worse off than someone else with the same bloodline who decided to just grab good spells, because there's no reward for following a theme.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think we just have one too many spellcasting classes, and they're stepping on each-other's influences.

Arguably, Warlocks and Wizards should be the same class - most magic people who drew their power from their education ultimately drew it from being able to deal with spirits in one way or another.

Of course, that also brings in questions like "why are Clerics and Warlocks separate classes", which aren't really that productive.

---

Part of the problem is that spellcasting seems to have been primarily designed for Bards and Wizards, in that 5e's casting pushes you towards playing a generalist. Sorcerers and Warlocks end up feeling kinda vague because they're supposed to be magical specialists. Due to how spells are designed, though, there's no real payoff for specializing, so Sorcerers and Warlocks are left out in the cold. Clerics run into a similar problem (where pretty much every Cleric uses the same spells), but that feels less egregious because their list has less overlap with other spellcasting classes.

I think we wouldn't have these discussions if the system allowed you to make spellcasters that were heavily themed without tying your hands behind your back. If I'm a Sorcerer with a Fire Dragon bloodline and I only pick up spells that are tightly related to that theme (fire spells, personal defensive spells, and stuff that frightens or dominates others), I'm going to be worse off than someone else with the same bloodline who decided to just grab good spells, because there's no reward for following a theme. Bravo for your excellent critique of the "kitchen sink" design paradigm.

Mechanically, I like what is in the D&D 5e system which is a "mostly Vancian" scheme based on the capacitor principle: you charge up this magical power before hand, and then you discharge it when you cast a spell. It's a means to limit the power of magic and also force a player to make meaningful choices. That the tightly constrained original Vance model made spell choice an even more restrictive choice was playable, but I think the slight relaxation of "you can swap in this slot for that spell of that level" makes the game more playable without screwing up power.

What's missing, though, is how dangerous magic is to use as compared to the power it provides.
A fantastic example of this in fiction is Robin Hobb's first three Farseer (Assassin) novels; magic does neat stuff but it comes with a cost.

[Catullus64]

I think we wouldn't have these discussions if the system allowed you to make spellcasters that were heavily themed without tying your hands behind your back. If I'm a Sorcerer with a Fire Dragon bloodline and I only pick up spells that are tightly related to that theme (fire spells, personal defensive spells, and stuff that frightens or dominates others), I'm going to be worse off than someone else with the same bloodline who decided to just grab good spells, because there's no reward for following a theme.

Something about your phrasing here just made something click for me, and I think I know now what fantasy people are trying to emulate in D&D with the modern Sorcerer: superhero comics! There's something very X-Men-ish about the Sorcerer and its language, and it definitely pushes (unsuccessfully, as you point out) towards grabbing a narrow bunch of similarly themed spells, which are closer to replicating the themed powers and easily self-insertable origin story of a superhero. (The word "Origin" really should have been a clue for me.)

Thanks, Amechra! Now I want rid of the Sorcerer even more, but for different reasons.

[KorvinStarmast]

Something about your phrasing here just made something click for me, and I think I know now what fantasy people are trying to emulate in D&D with the modern Sorcerer: superhero comics! There's something very X-Men-ish about the Sorcerer and its language, and it definitely pushes (unsuccessfully, as you point out) towards grabbing a narrow bunch of similarly themed spells, which are closer to replicating the themed powers and easily self-insertable origin story of a superhero. (The word "Origin" really should have been a clue for me.)

Thanks, Amechra! Now I want rid of the Sorcerer even more, but for different reasons.
From that same Strategic Review article:

To further compound the difficulties, many dungeon-masters and players, upon learning of the more restrictive intent of the rules, balked. They enjoyed the comic book characters, incredible spells, and stratospheric levels of their way of playing. Well and good. D & D is, if nothing else, a free-form game system, and it was designed with great variation between campaigns to be allowed for — nay, encouraged! Of course, there are some variations which are so far removed from the original framework as to be totally irreconcilable with D & D; these have become games of other sorts and not a concern of this article. On the other hand there are many campaigns which were scrapped and begun afresh after their dungeon masters consulted us or after they read other articles pertaining to the play of D & D as conceived by its authors — just as there will probably be some dungeon masters ready to try again after reading this far. It is for all of these referees and their players, as well as those who have played the game pretty much as was desired but were never quite positive that you were actually doing so, that the foregoing was written.

[Kane0]

Ah, I see we’ve hit the sorcerer portion of the rotation now.

The sorcerer thematically has a niche but mechanically doesnt quite deliver. It was developed late in the playtest cycle and recieved less polish than other classes.

With 5e making all casters spontaneous another mechanical distinction was required, which you can see with spell points and metamagic but it wasnt quite fully developed by release so here we are.

Just like the ranger if you remove the class, cut up the features and redistribute them elsewhere you lose more than you gain.

[Catullus64]

KorvinStarmast, always ready with the Gygax. Must be Thursday.

In seriousness, I do admire your ability to produce apropos quotations of the man on demand, and your interest in applying his... curious philosophies to a game that has grown so far beyond what he seems to have envisioned. Did you know the man personally? I sometimes get that feeling from your posts.

[KorvinStarmast]

KorvinStarmast, always ready with the Gygax. Must be Thursday. In seriousness, I do admire your ability to produce apropos quotations of the man on demand, and your interest in applying his... curious philosophies to a game that has grown so far beyond what he seems to have envisioned. Did you know the man personally? I sometimes get that feeling from your posts. Never met the man, though I'd have liked to spend an afternoon with him while he was still alive. I got into the game before AD&D was published (1975) so I grew up with reading that oddly contorted Gygaxian prose and game style as the default. We played other systems (Traveller, Empire of the Petal thrones, Boot Hill, Metamorphisis Alpha, Gamma World, RuneQuest, Chivalry and Sorcery) but the original stood the test of time.

Honestly, without B/X and BECMI/Mentzer/Moldvay/etc, I don't think D&D would have done as well as it did do. Those two clean up efforts were a great success: presentation was a lot cleaner, the writing and editing was superior (yes, Mr. Kask, I know that you did the best that you could), the concepts simpler to grasp and and better organized. Frank Mentzer and the gang he worked with deserve a lot of credit.

Easier for new players to embrace. I think D&D 5e has succeeded at that aspect of it admirably. And oh by the way, in one of the groups I now play in, the player discarded his sorcerer and picked up a warlock with the re-spec. :smallwink: In my brother's world, the group I am in has no sorcerer when my brother DMs. When I DM, one guy has tried out a draconic origin sorcerer, and he's finding it clunky to play. Each group (among these players) has had a wizard since we started in 2014. Each group has had a cleric. No sorcerers until last year.

When I got into it, OD&D just as Greyhawk had come out, and Blackmoor was looming, even as a very smart high schooler, it wasn't written for kids. It was written for adult geek wargamers, and not particularly well written at that. But we wrestled with it and had an absolute blast. The first few times we tried to figure out the magic system we had no idea that it was Vancian, or how it was 'supposed' to work. Heck, only one person in our high school group (he's now a published author and spent some years as an editor) knew who Jack Vance even was. My low level magic user threw a lot of oil flasks and held the torches a lot. Reaching ninth level, Sorcerer, was a big freaking deal. And then we all went off to college and that campaign no longer exists.

TSR: they were indies, and all that comes with that, when they started out.

[Amechra]

Thanks, Amechra! Now I want rid of the Sorcerer even more, but for different reasons.

As much as I also dislike superheroes, I think this is a bit of an overreaction. :smalltongue:

Though that does remind me of something which really drives home that WotC doesn't know what to do with Sorcerers. In Eberron, why isn't there a Dragonmarked Origin for Sorcerers? "I am especially good at my people's natural magic" is a coherent character concept that fits with the wider setting (Siberys Dragonmarks are a thing), and it would be way more balanced than having a bunch of subraces that add a bunch of spells to any caster's spell list.

The weird thing is that there are a bunch of races that have "innate" magic, so you'd think that the Sorcerer would be your go-to for when you wanted to play a Drow/Forest Gnome/Tiefling/etc that happens to be a magical prodigy. But nope! That's not what the subclasses support.

[KorvinStarmast]

The weird thing is that there are a bunch of races that have "innate" magic, so you'd think that the Sorcerer would be your go-to for when you wanted to play a Drow/Forest Gnome/Tiefling/etc that happens to be a magical prodigy. But nope! That's not what the subclasses support. Hmm, seems to me that Tiefling fits into sorcerer, particularly wild magic and shadow, nicely. As do Dragonborn. (Or are you just addressing Eberron?)

[Amechra]

Even when it does line up, it's still kinda awkward. Like, a Drow Shadow Sorcerer should be a thematic shoe-in, but that adds in a bunch of Shadowfell themes that don't really fit the idea of "I'm a normal Drow that just happens to be very talented with Dancing Lights/Faerie Fire/Darkness".

[JonBeowulf]

I completely redesigned the Sorcerer in my world to make them not just a different flavor of Wizard.


Spells became abilities that could be used the appropriate times a day based on spell slots for that level.
Players chose a source or type of magic at level 1 (Fire Sorcerer, Transmuter Sorcerer, etc.).
Abilities (spells) were limited to only things that applied to the level 1 choice (fire spells, transmutation spells, etc.). This obviously made some choices better than others, but it allowed for some interesting NPCs.
Expanded the available abilities (spells) by adding from other lists or re-skinning current ones.
Dropped all verbal and material components so abilities look like abilities (no more "I am infused with innate magic... watch me cast a spell exactly as Wizards do!").
Metamagic remained as-is.

We had concerns about it being too restrictive, but the players ended up really enjoying the freedom to do magic like Carrie or Pinhead or Elsa or Dobby or whoever. It also made Wizards seem more like Wizards, so double win!

[Luccan]

It exists to provide a mechanical backing for the "natural mage" concept. It also exists because it's seen as part of the identity of D&D, which I will assert is actually as good a reason as any. A class based game takes part of its identity from the classes available in it.

[ZRN]

Ah, I see we’ve hit the sorcerer portion of the rotation now.

The sorcerer thematically has a niche but mechanically doesnt quite deliver. It was developed late in the playtest cycle and recieved less polish than other classes.

With 5e making all casters spontaneous another mechanical distinction was required, which you can see with spell points and metamagic but it wasnt quite fully developed by release so here we are.

Just like the ranger if you remove the class, cut up the features and redistribute them elsewhere you lose more than you gain.

Well put. Also, I think just like with a lot of game design discussions on internet forums, problems with a class or system (in this case, the sorcerer class) tend to get diagnosed as deep and existential when they're really just about power level, and a quick buff or nerf would fix things.

In this case, I think the Tasha's subclasses did a lot of the work in "fixing" the sorcerer by including fairly strongly themed subclass spells.

[Dork_Forge]

I will preface this by saying that I am a fan of the Sorcerer, both in concept and mostly execution. I also do not like the multiclassing lite feats they threw up in Tasha's.

I personally think there's flaws in what you propose for a few reasons:

-You are hanging on to previous editions, it doesn't matter what they were when they were created, that isn't how 5e casting works

-The Sorcerer has both Metamagic and Flexible casting as a core to their chassis, both only found in their class (no Metamagic Adept does not count). The Sorcerer clearly has a mechanical identity in having not many spells, but being able to push and manipulate what they do have.

-Metamagic Adept does not make anyone a Sorcerer. 2 SP a day without Flexible Casting is incredibly few and a SP limit of 2 just makes many things impossible.


Separately I think that the Sorcerer suffers a little bit (as does the game imo) from Wizards being stupidly overtuned. There is no need for Arcane Recovery in the Wizard main class, they don't need it for balance reasons (and it makes absolutely no sense thematically) and it (combined with too many spells) just cements the idea of why choose? The Wizard would be better off if they nixed the Arcane Recovery, cut down the number of spells they get and give them some actual ability other than 'I cast spells.'

Odds and Sods:

-Sorcerous Origins shouldn't be similar to each other, they're the defining thing amongst Sorcerers and diversity here is best

-What class/subclass do you think the Aberrant Mind is stealing it's thing from? The closest thing we have to an Aberrant before Tasha's was the GOO, which is very different and there's sadly no true Psionics class in the game.

For Funsies:

My Sorcerer fix

-Sorcerous Recovery- Once per day when you finish a short rest, you may regain spent Sorcery points equal to half your Sorcerer level, rounded up.

-Additional spells known at 1st and 5th level

-Additional metamagic option at 7th level

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I will preface this by saying that I am a fan of the Sorcerer, both in concept and mostly execution. I also do not like the multiclassing lite feats they threw up in Tasha's.

I personally think there's flaws in what you propose for a few reasons:

-You are hanging on to previous editions, it doesn't matter what they were when they were created, that isn't how 5e casting works

-The Sorcerer has both Metamagic and Flexible casting as a core to their chassis, both only found in their class (no Metamagic Adept does not count). The Sorcerer clearly has a mechanical identity in having not many spells, but being able to push and manipulate what they do have.

-Metamagic Adept does not make anyone a Sorcerer. 2 SP a day without Flexible Casting is incredibly few and a SP limit of 2 just makes many things impossible.


Separately I think that the Sorcerer suffers a little bit (as does the game imo) from Wizards being stupidly overtuned. There is no need for Arcane Recovery in the Wizard main class, they don't need it for balance reasons (and it makes absolutely no sense thematically) and it (combined with too many spells) just cements the idea of why choose? The Wizard would be better off if they nixed the Arcane Recovery, cut down the number of spells they get and give them some actual ability other than 'I cast spells.'

Odds and Sods:

-Sorcerous Origins shouldn't be similar to each other, they're the defining thing amongst Sorcerers and diversity here is best

-What class/subclass do you think the Aberrant Mind is stealing it's thing from? The closest thing we have to an Aberrant before Tasha's was the GOO, which is very different and there's sadly no true Psionics class in the game.

For Funsies:

My Sorcerer fix

-Sorcerous Recovery- Once per day when you finish a short rest, you may regain spent Sorcery points equal to half your Sorcerer level, rounded up.

-Additional spells known at 1st and 5th level

-Additional metamagic option at 7th level

Sorcerers are great, and I'd second most of what is written here.
The Tasha's 'fix' seemed to be an attempt to appease people who didn't like sorcerers and wanted them to be more like wizards (and the other full casters) by adding a bunch more spells. This just added confusion mechanically and as some have stated here, some of the subclasses started to overlap. The subclasses added should have been distinct and embraced what made sorcerers unique and fun.
We have a couple of players who like playing them, though frankly none who have really sunk their teeth into Warlock, so for our group if there was a spellcasting class on the chopping block that would be it.

[Telwar]

In my opinion the 3.5 sorcerer was created for players who wanted a more simpler less book keeping spellcaster. The 3.5 sorcerer even had a feature that allow them to ignore spell components.
The current version of the sorcerer is really just a shell of its former self. Most spell casters now cast spells the same way the sorcerer once did, additionally some spell casters can also recover lost spell slots giving them more spells casts per day. The meta-magic feature just isn’t enough to make it a unique spellcaster.

If I were to get rid of the sorcerer I would;
Turn metamagic back into feats and have them cost spell slots again. I would also have the wizard choose between a slightly upgraded version of ritualcaster(wizardry) or arcane recovery(sorcery).

I remember hearing that at one point in the 3e dev cycle, they realized a rather large chunk of the spell list was wizard-only, and it felt better to have another caster who could use those, but still be mechanically different.

In retrospect, I do wish in my 3/.5 days I had played a sorcerer, since I was terrible at the metagame of "read the DM's mind on what we're doing today," and the limited spells but more slots would have been perfect for me.

Since 3e, it's been a stepchild of the game. They clearly didn't get around to finishing the sorcerer for 5e, and as said earlier, the wizard steps on it's toes a lot. I also remember crying on playtester forums that wizards should get metamagics. I would like a revised sorcerer, more than a revised ranger TBH.

[Amechra]

Honestly, Wizards should be the class that's kicked from the game. Seriously, outside of subclasses, Wizards have Arcane Recovery and then get nothing new until 18th level. They are Good At Casting Spells Because They Learn Good.

An Int-based Tomelock would cover the same thematic space, while simultaneously giving you a more interesting twist to that theme (Since your different types of 'Wizard' are "Where did I get this knowledge from?" instead of "I did my Wizard Thesis on this kind of magic.") Make an Archmage patron, and you're pretty much set as far as the standard Wizard fantasy is concerned.

[Catullus64]

Honestly, Wizards should be the class that's kicked from the game. Seriously, outside of subclasses, Wizards have Arcane Recovery and then get nothing new until 18th level. They are Good At Casting Spells Because They Learn Good.

An Int-based Tomelock would cover the same thematic space, while simultaneously giving you a more interesting twist to that theme (Since your different types of 'Wizard' are "Where did I get this knowledge from?" instead of "I did my Wizard Thesis on this kind of magic.") Make an Archmage patron, and you're pretty much set as far as the standard Wizard fantasy is concerned.

See, with spells, spell slots, spell levels, and the eight schools of magic being a thing that the general casting system uses, it feels like the casting system was designed with Wizards in mind first, and then retrofitted to everyone else. (I'm not saying that's how it was actually designed, I'm saying that's what it feels like.) I would keep the Wizard as it is, with subclass options to differentiate the how of their spells rather than the what: the scholar, pact-maker, and inheritor ideas that the three 5e mages try to cover could all fit within that. Clerics and Druids and Bards and such could have their own mechanics entirely divorced from the spellcasting system, because what they're doing isn't casting spells, per se.

The Wizard can retain "I casts da spellz" as its core identity, without needing to distinguish itself from a billion other guys who can also cast spells. Although in this hypothetical system, my vote for the name of the unified mage class is, funnily enough, Sorcerer. Such a sensuous word, with its musical, dactylic rhythm, its sinuous s's and faintly trilling r's. Much better word than Wizard.

[Kurt Kurageous]

My reason for getting rid of sorcerer follows some others.

The sorcerer was a reaction to 3rd ed complexity. In a simpler system, its just not that distinct anymore.

But my reasoning is this:

The wizard devotes years to learning magic through study and practice to even get to 1st level. Sacrifice.
The warlock sells their life/soul out to some extradimensional being, surrendering their autonomy. Sacrifice.
The sorcerer just declares, "I'm special." No sacrifice.

Sorcerer is the laziest choice, and metamagic makes it slightly more complex with a class-only mechanic. It's an insult to wizards and warlocks that they have to compete with sorcerers.

So I really don't like sorc. I don't like DMing sorc.

[Dork_Forge]

My reason for getting rid of sorcerer follows some others.

The sorcerer was a reaction to 3rd ed complexity. In a simpler system, its just not that distinct anymore.

But my reasoning is this:

The wizard devotes years to learning magic through study and practice to even get to 1st level. Sacrifice.
The warlock sells their life/soul out to some extradimensional being, surrendering their autonomy. Sacrifice.
The sorcerer just declares, "I'm special." No sacrifice.

Sorcerer is the laziest choice, and metamagic makes it slightly more complex with a class-only mechanic. It's an insult to wizards and warlocks that they have to compete with sorcerers.

So I really don't like sorc. I don't like DMing sorc.

How is selling out for power not 'lazy?' This feels like you think the RP investment of Sorcerers is lacking, which is more of a person problem, than game problem.

When my powers emerged I accidentally killed my entire village. Sacrifice.

People hunt and shun my kind out of fear, ignorance and misunderstanding. Sacrifice.

When my powers emerged I horrifically scarred 60% of my body. Sacririce.

The only real difference here is that the Warlock and Wizard choose to be casters, where as Sorcerers don't get that choice. In no way does that mean that they don't sacrifice for/because of their power. A Sorcerer could take years to learn how to safely control and contain their magic, the difference between a Wizard and Sorcerer in that comparison? The Sorcerer could accidentally cause any number of calamities if they don't learn to control their power. The Wizard needs to find a new major.

[Democratus]

My reason for getting rid of sorcerer follows some others.

The sorcerer was a reaction to 3rd ed complexity. In a simpler system, its just not that distinct anymore.

But my reasoning is this:

The wizard devotes years to learning magic through study and practice to even get to 1st level. Sacrifice.
The warlock sells their life/soul out to some extradimensional being, surrendering their autonomy. Sacrifice.
The sorcerer just declares, "I'm special." No sacrifice.

Sorcerer is the laziest choice, and metamagic makes it slightly more complex with a class-only mechanic. It's an insult to wizards and warlocks that they have to compete with sorcerers.

So I really don't like sorc. I don't like DMing sorc.

You can become a wizard instantly by multi-classing into it. No lifetime of study or practice required. :smallsmile:

[Kvess]

I am really into sorcerers because of their X-Men-like origin. There is something compelling to me about a hero who is born with abilities that those around them fear and don't understand, which shows up in fiction time and again. Plus, a young wayward caster with an innate connection to magic is a great foil for cabals of aging wizards who hoard magical secrets.

The biggest obstacle for Sorcerers in 5e, and the biggest reason why threads like this pop up, is that there are tons of power magic users, including three other classes that cast spells using Charisma. Paladins are half-casters and Warlocks have pact-magic, but there is little that mechanically differentiates a Sorcerer from a Bard, so one of them is bound to feel superfluous — and Bards get a bunch of perks that have nothing to do with spellcasting.

With that in mind, I would be quicker to demote a Bard to half-caster or a Rogue subclass than I would be to discard the Sorcerer. Bards in previous editions weren't all-powerful casters who could snag spells from other spell lists — they were jack-of-all-trade skill-monkeys who had a modest amount of magical aptitude.


The wizard devotes years to learning magic through study and practice to even get to 1st level. Sacrifice.
The warlock sells their life/soul out to some extradimensional being, surrendering their autonomy. Sacrifice.
The sorcerer just declares, "I'm special." No sacrifice.

Sorcerer is the laziest choice, and metamagic makes it slightly more complex with a class-only mechanic. It's an insult to wizards and warlocks that they have to compete with sorcerers.

If you don't enjoy DMing sorcerers, this might help: The difference is Wizards and Warlocks wanted their power, while Sorcerers didn't ask for it — and I think that contrast makes them interesting. Imagine all of the people they might have hurt when their powers first manifested. Imagine how townsfolk would react to a child who creates fire when angered. Imagine having to leave your village and your family behind because you were different, and you didn't get a say in it. Imagine the lives they could have or would have lived if they weren't destined to be sorcerers. There's so much to explore there.

[Catullus64]

How is selling out for power not 'lazy?' This feels like you think the RP investment of Sorcerers is lacking, which is more of a person problem, than game problem.

When my powers emerged I accidentally killed my entire village. Sacrifice.

People hunt and shun my kind out of fear, ignorance and misunderstanding. Sacrifice.

When my powers emerged I horrifically scarred 60% of my body. Sacririce.

The only real difference here is that the Warlock and Wizard choose to be casters, where as Sorcerers don't get that choice. In no way does that mean that they don't sacrifice for/because of their power. A Sorcerer could take years to learn how to safely control and contain their magic, the difference between a Wizard and Sorcerer in that comparison? The Sorcerer could accidentally cause any number of calamities if they don't learn to control their power. The Wizard needs to find a new major.

I mean, choice is a pretty big difference. If I cut my finger by accident, nobody says that I sacrificed anything. If someone chooses to devote their life to study, or to sell their soul to a nebulous entity, it says something about them, and what kind of person they are; it necessarily begs the question of what goals drive them, what they want. By contrast, having power and specialness passively happen to you, even if it is costly, doesn't say nearly as much about you as a character. I can see how a DM could develop the perception that Sorcerer is more attractive to lazy roleplayers.

I'm not so naive as to think that axing the Sorcerer would put a stop to people inventing cliche backstories about being born with special powers from a magic lineage with great destiny and all that, but I still don't think that character type needs an entire class dedicated to it.

I am amused by the juxtaposition between "I killed everyone in my village by accident" and "People shun me out of fear and ignorance" by the way. I know you listed them as separate examples and not one character, but the thought just made me giggle.

[Dienekes]

You can become a wizard instantly by multi-classing into it. No lifetime of study or practice required. :smallsmile:

I believe the implication is that your character was supposedly doing their research between scenes if they choose to take levels in Wizard. Just as they were apparently trying to figure out a way to make a pact with some abyssal creature if they take a level in Warlock. Or started juicing and drinking only protein shakes and talking about their “gains” if they take a level of Barbarian.


How is selling out for power not 'lazy?' This feels like you think the RP investment of Sorcerers is lacking, which is more of a person problem, than game problem.

When my powers emerged I accidentally killed my entire village. Sacrifice.

People hunt and shun my kind out of fear, ignorance and misunderstanding. Sacrifice.

When my powers emerged I horrifically scarred 60% of my body. Sacririce.


For the sake of being an annoying pedant. Technically none of these are sacrifices they’re just tragedies. Sacrifice means giving up something you value. It is something someone chooses to do. Unless the sorcerer in question killed all their friends and family on purpose to gain ultimate cosmic power it’s just really unfortunate that happened to them.

[Kane0]

Honestly, Wizards should be the class that's kicked from the game. Seriously, outside of subclasses, Wizards have Arcane Recovery and then get nothing new until 18th level. They are Good At Casting Spells Because They Learn Good.

Hmm. Either split the Wizard into four classes (each focusing on 2 spell schools) or rework it into a Mage class with a very limited core spell list and greatly expanded subclass ones (like, reverse of the cleric list/domain spell numbers), which leaves much more room for real features.

Eh?

[Kvess]

I mean, choice is a pretty big difference. If I cut my finger by accident, nobody says that I sacrificed anything. If someone chooses to devote their life to study, or to sell their soul to a nebulous entity, it says something about them, and what kind of person they are; it necessarily begs the question of what goals drive them, what they want. By contrast, having power and specialness passively happen to you, even if it is costly, doesn't say nearly as much about you as a character. I can see how a DM could develop the perception that Sorcerer is more attractive to lazy roleplayers.
If someone didn't want to be a magic user, you can very easily ask the opposite question: What did they want to be before they found out that they were sorcerers? What did they lose, leave behind or give up, and how does that inform the kind of person they are? How does it set them apart from someone who sold their soul for power?

If you have a sorcerer or warlock in your campaign, I highly recommend creating a rival for them from the other class, because there is an obvious tension there. Maybe the sorcerer feels that the warlock is a power-hungry maniac who threw their soul away for 'gifts' the sorcerer would gladly give up. Maybe the warlock feels that the sorcerer is an ungrateful brat who had everything handed to them by destiny. You could look to this very thread for inspiration.

[Sigreid]

Not my thing, but some people seem to really like it. That's really the only reason for it to exist that counts.

[patchyman]

Part of the problem is that spellcasting seems to have been primarily designed for Bards and Wizards, in that 5e's casting pushes you towards playing a generalist. Sorcerers and Warlocks end up feeling kinda vague because they're supposed to be magical specialists. Due to how spells are designed, though, there's no real payoff for specializing, so Sorcerers and Warlocks are left out in the cold.

The problem is that Wizards and Bards don’t give anything up into order to be the “generalist” spellcasters. Their spells should be weaker, or they should get them later, but make up for the drawback with greater versatility.




I think we wouldn't have these discussions if the system allowed you to make spellcasters that were heavily themed without tying your hands behind your back. If I'm a Sorcerer with a Fire Dragon bloodline and I only pick up spells that are tightly related to that theme (fire spells, personal defensive spells, and stuff that frightens or dominates others), I'm going to be worse off than someone else with the same bloodline who decided to just grab good spells, because there's no reward for following a theme.

Perhaps some sort of junction systems, where knowing multiple spells of a same type make each spell of that type you cast more powerful.

Or a different system, where you must learn the weaker version of a spell to learn the more powerful (Firebolt becomes Burning Hands becomes Fireball).

[KorvinStarmast]

I may rub a few of you the wrong way, but the wizard doesn't spend years in a library studying: the wizard Player Character spends his development on a never ending journey of discovery and experimentation and field trips. He is constantly trying to apply what he has learned, and what he hypothesizes, to real problems. And she takes copious notes, keeping track of what works and what doesn't work.

The wizard Never Stops looking for new ways, or ways others have hit upon by study, experiment, or good luck to solve the same or similar problems. (writing out what he/she finds in her notebook)

Notebooks filled with notes and observations, like any good field biologist or engineer. Or inventor. (And I once again foam at the mouth and opine that artificer is a sub set of wizard).

That's a wizard.

Not a scholar who never sees the light of day and goes blind reading dusty old tomes. The dusty old tomes are reference books. The development is gained through field testing: adventures. The advancement of the art. And, in the process Some Wizards Die to advance the body of knowledge.

:smallyuk:

So did test pilots, and aeronauts, for decades, which is why you can now fly safely from Sacramento to Vegas.

Otto Lillienthal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal): case in point.

[Fryy]

Q: Does the Sorcerer Have a Reason to Exist (or to be it's own class)?

A: Yes, as much as the Warlock, the Artificer, or any class which is not Fighter, Cleric, Rogue Thief, or Wizard Magic User.

[Tanarii]

The crazy part is in 4e they had a great niche they filled. Magical striker. The 4e warlock was a mess, and hadn't really handled that role very well.

Whereas in 5e it's the other way around. Sorcerers are a mess, Warlocks are amazing.


Edit: oh also Dragonborn Dragon Sorcs actually got a benefit from having a high Str.

[Dravda]

I think we wouldn't have these discussions if the system allowed you to make spellcasters that were heavily themed without tying your hands behind your back. If I'm a Sorcerer with a Fire Dragon bloodline and I only pick up spells that are tightly related to that theme (fire spells, personal defensive spells, and stuff that frightens or dominates others), I'm going to be worse off than someone else with the same bloodline who decided to just grab good spells, because there's no reward for following a theme.

Reading this really made the sorcerer class "click" for me. Such a tightly-themed character would be awesome! The problem, like you say, is that you'd pretty much have to homebrew your entire spell list to be viable.

And if the solution to playing a class effectively is "just write half the thing from scratch," that's about as damning a condemnation as I can think of. :smalltongue:

[Amechra]

The crazy part is in 4e they had a great niche they filled. Magical striker. The 4e warlock was a mess, and hadn't really handled that role very well.

Whereas in 5e it's the other way around. Sorcerers are a mess, Warlocks are amazing.


Edit: oh also Dragonborn Dragon Sorcs actually got a benefit from having a high Str.

A 5e version of the Elementalist would be interesting. It was basically a cantrip caster who also got utility spells and an X/encounter boost to their at-wills that was more-or-less Twinned+extra damage.

[ezekielraiden]

More accurately, I suppose, would be the question of "Does Sorcerer have a reason to be its own class?"

Honest retort question:
Does it need a reason beyond "people like it" and "it doesn't cause you problems due to existing"?


A 5e version of the Elementalist would be interesting.

Agreed.

[Frogreaver]

Honest retort question:
Does it need a reason beyond "people like it" and "it doesn't cause you problems due to existing"?



Agreed.

Depends on how much you consider wizards not getting metamagic to be a ‘problem’ ;)

[Catullus64]

Honest retort question:
Does it need a reason beyond "people like it" and "it doesn't cause you problems due to existing"?



In the order of the classes, its inclusion feels haphazard, for reasons articulated in my posts above, and I'm not convinced that the things which people do like about it wouldn't work just as well (or better) if its mechanics and threadbare themes were folded into other classes and game systems.

As for why that constitutes a problem for me... I guess I'm kind of an aesthetic minimalist. I like systems where everything has a clear place, works of art where no detail or energy is wasted. A class that seems to lack a strong identity (again, see posts above for why I think the Sorcerer so lacks) is like an excess brushstroke. It just kinda bothers me.

Not trying to say that just hacking off the class would suddenly make D&D into some work of High Art (it's a silly game about rolling dice and playing make-believe, I haven't forgotten that), but I still think that aesthetic concerns like that are useful guidance for game design.

[Dienekes]

Depends on how much you consider wizards not getting metamagic to be a ‘problem’ ;)

I think there’s two theoretical questions being asked here.

1: is there enough narrative space to make a distinctive unique casting class based off the fluff of it entirely being inborn/natural magic as opposed to the wizard’s learned magic?

I think the answer is yes.

And 2: Does 5e do a good job of making such a class and matching how one would expect a natural born casters spell slinging to be different from the learned casters?

My answer is no.

I don’t think Metamagic was a good fit for the Sorcerer class. Just from a fluff standpoint mastering a spell so intimately that you can fiddle with its base properties sounds like something that a Wizard would learn to do over time.

I’ve mentioned it before, but if I was starting from the ground up and wanted to make a class that had natural access to magic, that magic was in some way internal, but did not get the schooling to learn to master it like a Wizard, I’d have made them use the Warlock spell slots per short rest mechanic.

It sets up the magic as being somehow internal, since they have to rest between uses. They don’t get to fine-tune how strong their spells are by up casting them, instead all their spells get stronger as they get stronger. And Eldritch Blast does a half decent job of being the aggressive blaster spell that Sorcerers occasionally get slotted into when people try to make a more strict distinction between the wizard’s and sorcerers type of magic they’re best at.

[Thunderous Mojo]

KorvinStarmast, always ready with the Gygax. Must be Thursday.

In seriousness, I do admire your ability to produce apropos quotations of the man on demand, and your interest in applying his... curious philosophies to a game that has grown so far beyond what he seems to have envisioned.
I would love for you to start a new thread on this topic!
This is tongue in check, but your words have a theatrical flair that intimidates the rubes..... but it remains to be seen if there is substance behind them.🥸⚔️

Gary designed RPGs for decades. His views changed, over time.
(More accurately, as he became older, he re-appreciated a "rules lite" approach)

Europe and the United States at the Fin de siecle, (the end of the 1800's and the beginning of the 1900's), were so enamored of "PROGRESS!!" that many believed history was not valuable.

Perhaps, I am misreading your tone, Catullus, but one might, perhaps, sniff a hint of hubris, in lofty proclamations of "curious philosphies" and being left behind. It reminds me of the tone of newspapers during the Fin de siecle. 😉

I may rub a few of you the wrong way,
Korvin...Illegitimi non carborundum.
In another reality, Gary would have called you "friend". 🖖

Depends on how much you consider wizards not getting metamagic to be a ‘problem’ ;)
The sorcerer class used to bother me. It doesn't anymore, precisely because some people do love it.

5e almost got the sorcerer class right. Font of Magic is the breathing heart of the class. A Sorcerer's Spellcasting should be limited, similar to how the Warlock class is. This represents that even with innate talent, a Sorcerer picks up some of the basics of 'formal magic'.

The bulk of magical effects should come from Sorcery points. The TCoE Aberrant Mind gives an example of this. I would advocate that in addition to the list of Thematic Sorcerer spells as seen in Tasha's...the class also has the opportunity to chose additional spells to be added akin to the Magical Secrets ability of the Bard class.

That is how I would approach the Sorcerer class.

I would like to re-work Metamagic. Magic-Users are more akin to 5e Wizard class than the Sorcerer class. "Metamagic" began with the Extension line of Magic User spells. This was further accentuated in 2e, with the Wild Mage, which was a type of Wizard Specialization.

If you have ever seen the Dark Crystal, when the Crystal cracked the split created Skeksis and urRu. This is fairly analogous to what happened to the 'splitting' of the Magic-User.

Unlike the movie, I don't think the Crystal can be rejoined...I don't think it should be....the Sorcerer class just needs to be able to stand on it's own terms, and stop constantly referencing the Wizard or Magic-User.

[Millstone85]

I’d have made them use the Warlock spell slots per short rest mechanic. It sets up the magic as being somehow internal, since they have to rest between uses. They don’t get to fine-tune how strong their spells are by up casting them, instead all their spells get stronger as they get stronger. And Eldritch Blast does a half decent job of being the aggressive blaster spell that Sorcerers occasionally get slotted intoI would go as far as to take the entire warlock class and reflavor it as a sorcerer. First, it gives us the celestial, fey, fiendish and genie bloodlines that aasimar, elves, tieflings and genasi are still waiting for. Then our sorcerer gets to become more learned about their magic, or to pursue some martial training, or to see their power manifest as a superior familiar. Meanwhile, the warlock could be reinvented as an Int caster.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I believe the implication is that your character was supposedly doing their research between scenes if they choose to take levels in Wizard. Just as they were apparently trying to figure out a way to make a pact with some abyssal creature if they take a level in Warlock. Or started juicing and drinking only protein shakes and talking about their “gains” if they take a level of Barbarian.



For the sake of being an annoying pedant. Technically none of these are sacrifices they’re just tragedies. Sacrifice means giving up something you value. It is something someone chooses to do. Unless the sorcerer in question killed all their friends and family on purpose to gain ultimate cosmic power it’s just really unfortunate that happened to them.

Awesome analysis!

Dork_Forge asked how selling out is not also lazy. I agree it is, just not as lazy as sorcerer IMHO.

I'm glad that this sparked discussion.

[Catullus64]

I would love for you to start a new thread on this topic!
This is tongue in check, but your words have a theatrical flair that intimidates the rubes..... but it remains to be seen if there is substance behind them.🥸⚔️

Gary designed RPGs for decades. His views changed, over time.
(More accurately, as he became older, he re-appreciated a "rules lite" approach)

Europe and the United States at the Fin de siecle, (the end of the 1800's and the beginning of the 1900's), were so enamored of "PROGRESS!!" that many believed history was not valuable.

Perhaps, I am misreading your tone, Catullus, but one might perhaps sniff a hint of hubris, in lofty proclamations of "curious philosphies" and being left behind. It reminds me of the tone of newspapers during the Fin de siecle.


Called out. Never fear, though, for my theatrical words are never tainted by anything so crude as substance.

As for "curious philosophies", those are words of high praise coming from me, because those are always my favorites. Check out the author quoted in my sig if you don't believe me. But to warn another away from hubris is always a good turn, so thank you.

I'm not a student of Gary Gygax. I know something about the game he helped design, and something about the game that it turned into over the course of decades, but I certainly don't know his thinking process. Thus my admiration for KorvinStarmast's attentions to his words was sincere.

I'm inclined to agree with the latter part of your post when you say that Sorcerer could be something more interesting if it embraced its unique mechanics and made them more central to the class. I do think that would only solve part of the problem, though; these mechanics would still need a stronger thematic identity than what the sorcerer has going for it now to tie them together, or else those mechanics might as well be options for other classes to play with.

[Amechra]

Depends on how much you consider wizards not getting metamagic to be a ‘problem’ ;)

Wizards getting on-the-fly metamagic would be... well, I'd hate it. A lot. I'd hate it less if they could make permanent alterations to spells when learning them, but that's something that would need defined spell research rules.

Then again, I'm of the opinion that Wizards shouldn't get spells like Enhance Ability or Polymorph in the first place — all of their spells should do one thing, not a half-dozen related things. It should be easier to scribe/develop spells that are variants of ones you already know, but you shouldn't be getting package deals.

One thing that consistently frustrates me about the Wizard is that it feels like you have access to everything, to the point where it looks like Wizards who don't go adventuring are idiots. Sure it's dangerous, but it appears to be the fastest way to develop your magic. Wizard magic is thematically an academic discipline, so it is very bizarre to me that you're doing the equivalent of advancing your knowledge of high-energy particle physics while on a camping trip.

The benefits of being an adventuring Wizard should be that you have a nice tan, good conditioning, and that you're being exposed to the world outside of academia, not that you're fast-tracking your way to esoteric magics. The whole "you get two free spells on level up, because you did research while camping after an exhausting day of hiking/fighting/trying not to die" rings hollow to me. I think I'd be happier if Wizards started with a book full of spells that they couldn't cast yet that you gradually leveled into, while scribing spells into your book as a reward for adventuring got greater emphasis.

And before you start (yes, you, the one reading this) — I've heard the arguments about why adventuring Wizards developing new spells isn't as ridiculous as it might initially seem. I just find them thoroughly unconvincing. I'd accept the whole "they're constantly testing magic and keeping notes" thing if they were limited to learning spells that were variations/improvements of ones they already knew, or spells and monsters they had seen. But the fact that a Wizard can go "oops, I know Simulacrum now" even if they're an Evoker who has expressed no prior interest in Illusion magic absolutely shatters that illusion for me.

This isn't a problem that's isolated to Wizards, by any means — it's not like Bards need to be exposed to spells before they pick them up as Magical Secrets, or like Rogues need to have used a skill before to take it as an Expertise option. But the basic class fantasy of "you're a travelling scholar who masters magic through study" clashes with the reality of "yeah, you just get whatever spells you want, regardless of whether or not there's an in-fiction reason for your Wizard to have done research on this."

[Kurt Kurageous]

If you don't enjoy DMing sorcerers, this might help: The difference is Wizards and Warlocks wanted their power, while Sorcerers didn't ask for it — and I think that contrast makes them interesting. Imagine all of the people they might have hurt when their powers first manifested. Imagine how townsfolk would react to a child who creates fire when angered. Imagine having to leave your village and your family behind because you were different, and you didn't get a say in it. Imagine the lives they could have or would have lived if they weren't destined to be sorcerers. There's so much to explore there.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Its my experience with (essentially power gamers) undeveloped backstories.

I get the allure and opportunity to explore the soul of a sorcerer. The lonely wandering sorcerer...like a certain lonely wandering shaolin monk in a 70s TV show. Cool idea, but he never joined a party.

So I suppose we could agree on sorc being interesting, and perhaps needy for companionship as their reason for joining.

Thank you for opening my mind on sorc.

[Kurt Kurageous]

(And I once again foam at the mouth and opine that artificer is a sub set of wizard).


Absolutely agree. I thought that's what artificer was (since I mostly skipped from 1ed to 5th) when I read about it, a different school of magic that combines conjuration with transmutation.

My understanding of the word artificer is one who creates something artificial/inorganic. As opposed to a fabricator, which is either a person who just makes stuff up (lies) or reworks material into something useful.

[Ankheg]

I don’t think Metamagic was a good fit for the Sorcerer class. Just from a fluff standpoint mastering a spell so intimately that you can fiddle with its base properties sounds like something that a Wizard would learn to do over time.

Not really sure about that. When they designed sorcerers as inner-magic spellcasters, metamagic definitely might seemed fitting - As Sorcerers were defined by their will to shape world around them. It's not about getting in intricacies as it was in 3rd ed, as ability to manipulate forces. If you were gonna gift a certain class with such powers using some previous ideas, metamagic is a good fit.

Not that something else should probably be done about their abilities.

[Amnestic]

If you don't enjoy DMing sorcerers, this might help: The difference is Wizards and Warlocks wanted their power, while Sorcerers didn't ask for it — and I think that contrast makes them interesting.

I'd just like to note that this isn't true for all warlocks and is explicitly called out as not necessarily being the case for at least two patrons (GOO and Fey). The fluff is there for warlocks to enter into 'pacts' unknowingly/without explicit consent and have it 'forced' on you.

[Dienekes]

One thing that consistently frustrates me about the Wizard is that it feels like you have access to everything, to the point where it looks like Wizards who don't go adventuring are idiots. Sure it's dangerous, but it appears to be the fastest way to develop your magic. Wizard magic is thematically an academic discipline, so it is very bizarre to me that you're doing the equivalent of advancing your knowledge of high-energy particle physics while on a camping trip.

The benefits of being an adventuring Wizard should be that you have a nice tan, good conditioning, and that you're being exposed to the world outside of academia, not that you're fast-tracking your way to esoteric magics. The whole "you get two free spells on level up, because you did research while camping after an exhausting day of hiking/fighting/trying not to die" rings hollow to me. I think I'd be happier if Wizards started with a book full of spells that they couldn't cast yet that you gradually leveled into, while scribing spells into your book as a reward for adventuring got greater emphasis.

And before you start (yes, you, the one reading this) — I've heard the arguments about why adventuring Wizards developing new spells isn't as ridiculous as it might initially seem. I just find them thoroughly unconvincing. I'd accept the whole "they're constantly testing magic and keeping notes" thing if they were limited to learning spells that were variations/improvements of ones they already knew, or spells and monsters they had seen. But the fact that a Wizard can go "oops, I know Simulacrum now" even if they're an Evoker who has expressed no prior interest in Illusion magic absolutely shatters that illusion for me.

This isn't a problem that's isolated to Wizards, by any means — it's not like Bards need to be exposed to spells before they pick them up as Magical Secrets, or like Rogues need to have used a skill before to take it as an Expertise option. But the basic class fantasy of "you're a travelling scholar who masters magic through study" clashes with the reality of "yeah, you just get whatever spells you want, regardless of whether or not there's an in-fiction reason for your Wizard to have done research on this."

Interestingly in a different thread people were discussing ways to limit the phenomena of wizard’s getting access to everything and essentially turning into a big soup of all the best spells.

This isn’t really relevant to the discussion at hand so spoilered.


It was a blip on the thread but these were the options that came up.

1) Each Wizard must outright ban learning spells from certain schools. Not the most subtle approach but it is the most direct at forcing wizards to not pick everything while still being wizards.

2) Split wizards into multiple different classes each with access to only 2 or 3 schools. This is even more of a forced diverging of the class than 1. But I kind of worry about class bloat with it. Just to get every combination of 2 schools is like 20 classes. Maybe we could knock it down to 7 with each focusing on one Primary School with subclasses picking a second.

3) You cannot add more spells of other Schools into your Spell Book than you have spells in your Primary School. This limits the cherry picking but still allows a dumpster dive of a dropped simulacrum or something.

4) You can write any spell into your spell book. But actually casting them has prerequisites equal to the Level of the Spell - 1 that you can cast. My personal favorite of the options listed. Which I bring up because it effectively answers one of your criticisms of the Wizard’s casting. You want to cast a Simulcrum? You need to have 6 other Illusion spells in your book you’ve been practicing before you can think of casting that Simulacrum. Even if you found the scroll for it lying in a treasure trove. Better get to practicing some Illusion magic to work your way up to it.

Anyway, thought it would interest you that others shared some of your concern with the wizard and were thinking of ways to fix it.



Not really sure about that. When they designed sorcerers as inner-magic spellcasters, metamagic definitely might seemed fitting - As Sorcerers were defined by their will to shape world around them. It's not about getting in intricacies as it was in 3rd ed, as ability to manipulate forces. If you were gonna gift a certain class with such powers using some previous ideas, metamagic is a good fit.

Not that something else should probably be done about their abilities.

And from that I can see some metamagic like their ability to eschew material components would fit. I could even see something like having their will make their abilities stronger. But that’s about it. Being able to do fine-tuned control or change the nature of the spells at a base level? That should require training there. And it flies in the face of the Wild Magic Sorcerer, also known as the most flavorful sorcerer subclass of the lot.

[Sception]

I'd say the problem is not that the sorcerer isn't sufficiently thematically distinct from the wizard, but rather that the wizard is overbroad to the point that it really shouldn't be one class but several.

The wizard, as printed, is a class better suited to a game that only has two classes - Wizard: who can cast spells to do literally anything, and Muggle: an npc class for the wizard's non-magical sidekick who carries the wizard's stuff while standing between them and their enemy's swords and arrows.

[ezekielraiden]

I guess I'm kind of an aesthetic minimalist. I like systems where everything has a clear place, works of art where no detail or energy is wasted. A class that seems to lack a strong identity (again, see posts above for why I think the Sorcerer so lacks) is like an excess brushstroke. It just kinda bothers me.

Not trying to say that just hacking off the class would suddenly make D&D into some work of High Art (it's a silly game about rolling dice and playing make-believe, I haven't forgotten that), but I still think that aesthetic concerns like that are useful guidance for game design.

This then leads to a follow-up question: Are you willing to commit to the notion that the only aesthetic D&D should pursue is a minimalist one? Minimalism doesn't play nicely with most other aesthetic goals, it's kind of exclusive, or at the very least it requires top billing. A half-minimalist design...isn't really minimalist at all, is it? It's just not bloated, or at least it won't feel all that minimalist.

That's really the problem I have with any pro-minimalism argument. It's really, really hard to defend why your particular line in the sand is appropriately minimal, but anything further would be inappropriately minimal. It suffers from a mathematical induction situation, where it comes across as totally arbitrary that you stop the induction at your chosen point rather than taking it further. And then you get the problem of "there are only two classes" (or even "there is only one class," at which point you've turned the whole game into chunky point-buy).

Fundamentally, the core assertion is, "You can capture most/all the meaningful parts of X by just taking Y and making a few changes, thus we should just replace X with an opt-in mod for Y." But "most/all the meaningful parts" is a terribly squishy standard, and it then invites the question, "Okay, but why not check if Y can also be condensed into a slight modification for Z?"

Why stop at condensing Sorcerer into Wizard? Why not combine in Bard as well, since music is itself a language (it has its own script, even!) that is studied academically, even by those who perform it? Why not combine in Artificer? Why not merge Druid and Cleric, I mean, we already have Nature Clerics. Why not merge Paladin and Ranger into Fighter--those are obviously just different stylized versions of the Eldritch Knight, and Barbarian is just a Fighter with more HP that gets angry. Etc., etc., etc. It actually IS a slippery slope, because the very argument in favor of merging Sorcerer and Wizard works for numerous other classes. At which point, you either must defend why "you can get MOST of X by just tweaking Y, so just dump X and make an X-mod for Y" only applies in this case, or

As a separate thing: I think you've casually dismissed some arguments that should have received more attention. Why Wizard primacy? You've noted that the structure of spellcasting has a certain academic nature to it, since spells have schools....but surely that's putting the narrative cart before the horse. The first magic-users would surely have been everything but Wizards: those with in-born talent, or those who get their magic from gods or nature, or those who receive it as payment for services rendered, or those who tap the inherent magic of music (something humanity has been doing on Earth for more than 42,000 years). Wizards are the johnny-come-lately of magic, those who have found a place in a tradition that predates them by millennia, because all those things (blood, faith, deals, and music) predate the origin of writing by rather a lot, even if you presume most D&D worlds were populated by spontaneous divine creation and not by evolution.

More importantly: Can you name a single thing from the Wizard mechanics that actually reflects any meaningful representation of doing legit research, constructing new spells, that sort of thing? Because I'm hard-pressed to see any of that whatsoever. Arcane Recovery is literally "take a nap, have more spells," no research needed. The upper-level features are about spells you've used so often they've become rote-memorized, they're the antithesis of being related to research and development. The word "research," as far as I can tell, never appears in the Wizard class. The only--literally only--feature that even vaguely relates to this stuff is adding spells to your spellbook....which is primarily a matter of spontaneous discoveries while doing field work, or copying the work of someone else. Fundamentally, the 5e Wizard isn't a researcher or theoretician at all, she's a scribe.

Or, to give you a tough nut to chew on of your own: If it's so bad that other classes can now get metamagic because of a feat, what's the Wizard's excuse for not having anything worth stealing? The only feature that can be stolen from the Wizard class is a feat available in PHB1: Ritual Caster, except multiple other classes get that too. Oh, and Arcane Recovery isn't even unique to Wizards, because Land Druids can do it too. The Wizard has effectively no unique non-subclass features. How is that minimalist, when you could literally represent the Wizard with nearly any other full-casting class and achieve success because there's so little to copy?

I also think you're just, flatly, wrong that the Sorcerer "has always been defined by its mechanics." In both 3e and 5e, its thematics have been the reason it exists, and the mechanics sort of figured out post-facto. (Of course, I vastly prefer the 4e approach, where Wizards and Sorcerers actually do things differently, but that's a whole different thread topic. I also dearly miss the Sorcerer they presented earlier on in the playtest, which was REFRESHING and NEW instead of tired and traditional, but again, separate thread.)

People like the idea of Cha-based casters. People especially like the idea of the character with a raw well of magic power bubbling to the surface, both empowered and constrained not by intellect or perceptiveness or good decision-making or patience, but by sheer self-confidence (or even self-assurance). That idea is reasonably linked to the idea that you only have a small pool of options (compared to the nerds who can put in the time to study...if studying ever actually mattered for Wizards...), but they last longer or are more potent for the doing. 5e, wanting to cut back on all spell availability generally, went the route of potency.

(As an aside: dunno if you've ever looked into what you can actually DO with the Metamagic Adept feat, but 2 SP really doesn't get you much....especially when you can't refill it except by resting. It's far less of a theft than it seems, particularly given the above stuff with Ritual Caster or how Eldritch Adept, even with its serious restrictions, can get a few really special tricks even for non-Warlocks, like at-will false life, beyond-super darkvision, or several niche but powerful abilities. Imagine how useful being able to read all writing would be in an intrigue-heavy or archaeology-related game!)

[Thunderous Mojo]

Called out. Never fear, though, for my theatrical words are never tainted by anything so crude as substance.

As for "curious philosophies", those are words of high praise coming from me, because those are always my favorites. Check out the author quoted in my sig if you don't believe me. But to warn another away from hubris is always a good turn, so thank you.

I'm not a student of Gary Gygax. I know something about the game he helped design, and something about the game that it turned into over the course of decades, but I certainly don't know his thinking process. Thus my admiration for KorvinStarmast's attentions to his words was sincere.
👍 Never, doubted your intentions....some levity, and some jocularity amongst fellow posters is a Good Thing(TM)! Thank you, for providing and contributing to the levity!

(I would love to see a separate thread, on the topic of Gygax and today's game. Gygax has a complicated legacy, and stated some bone headed proclamations in his Sorcerer's Scroll column in Dragon)


I do think that would only solve part of the problem, though; these mechanics would still need a stronger thematic identity than what the sorcerer has going for it now to tie them together, or else those mechanics might as well be options for other classes to play with.
Even taking the Sorcerer class, as it is, (The TCoE Sorcerers subclasses notwithstanding), there is a difference in play between a Wizard and a Sorcerer.

Leaning into the design philosophy of the Aberrant Mind, to have the Sorcerer class derive it's power not from the expenditure of spell slots, but off spending Sorcery points and adding in Sorcery Point based abilities,(as were previewed by the U/A precursor to TCoE), and as demonstrated by the Shadow Sorcerer, I suspect might be sufficient to clearly define the class.

If a Sorcerer could retrain their Thematic Sorcerer spells from a spell list that includes options contained from multiple class' spell list like the TCoE Sorcerer sub-classes, and have class level gated options to periodically add any spell ala a Bard's Magical Secrets....I think that gives a very different feel to the class.

A Sorcerer should have a Hedge Witch feel. Formally trained Spellcasters in Fantasy fiction are routinely portrayed as looking down and persecuting those that master magic without going to "their institutions", precisely because many of these sorcerers master powers the formally trained lack.

Also, the Sorcerer wanted a Pepsi and the Wizard would give it to them.🃏
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOVP. ELxmyInOYD5EoNsc20uuDAHgFo%26pid%3DApi&f=1

[RSP]

One issue I’ve always had with the 5e Sorc is, since his magic is innate, what the heck have they been doing with their time? They get limited skill options, and next to none weapon profs, and no armor prof.

The Starting at level 1 fighter spent a lot of time learning all weapons and armors, and a fighting style. A starting at level 1 Wizard spent all their time studying arcane tomes.

The fluff is that Sorcery chooses the Sorcerer (“Sorcerers carry a magical birthright conferred upon them by an exotic bloodline, some otherworldly influence, or exposure to unknown cosmic forces. One can’t study sorcery as one learns a language, any more than one can learn to live a legendary life. No one chooses sorcery; the power chooses the sorcerer.”), so what did the Sorcerer choose to do with their time?

Apparently nothing at all, according to the mechanics: every Sorc ever created just wasted away their time until they became an adventurer.

[Catullus64]

Alright, Ezekielraiden, you've given me a lot to respond to and think about, so pardon if I only get to some of your points while I let some of the others stew a bit.


This then leads to a follow-up question: Are you willing to commit to the notion that the only aesthetic D&D should pursue is a minimalist one? Minimalism doesn't play nicely with most other aesthetic goals, it's kind of exclusive, or at the very least it requires top billing. A half-minimalist design...isn't really minimalist at all, is it? It's just not bloated, or at least it won't feel all that minimalist.

That's really the problem I have with any pro-minimalism argument. It's really, really hard to defend why your particular line in the sand is appropriately minimal, but anything further would be inappropriately minimal. It suffers from a mathematical induction situation, where it comes across as totally arbitrary that you stop the induction at your chosen point rather than taking it further. And then you get the problem of "there are only two classes" (or even "there is only one class," at which point you've turned the whole game into chunky point-buy).

Fundamentally, the core assertion is, "You can capture most/all the meaningful parts of X by just taking Y and making a few changes, thus we should just replace X with an opt-in mod for Y." But "most/all the meaningful parts" is a terribly squishy standard, and it then invites the question, "Okay, but why not check if Y can also be condensed into a slight modification for Z?"

In a way, you've got me on this one. My appeal to minimalism wasn't me attempting to provide a threshold of minimalism which D&D should meet, it was just another attempt to articulate why the Sorcerer bothers me, personally. Everyone is going to have their own feel for where meaningful detail stops and redundancy and bloat begin. I was just observing that the sorcerer is one of those points for me. Clearly yours (and many others) differ.

All I can say in defense of my own particular line in the sand is that it's not trying to exclude the details that other people enjoy, so much as it is trying to question whether said details (Metamagic, the story beat of a mystical origin, Power Overwhelming) ought to be class of their own, or whether they should be held in common by other character types. After all, don't they square well with the core themes of other spellcasting classes? Clerics with divine parentage, Wizards developing variants on their spells? And I certainly don't think that one class should have a stronger claim than the others on the theme of "being powerful."

IF each detail that people enjoy about the Sorcerer can also be made to work as part of one of the other classes that exist (still the point in dispute, I know), then Sorcerer lacks a clear reason to be. I was trying to make that case for the Sorcerer. I acknowledge that someone else could also extend that argument to any other class, any other mechanic, and that would be its own discussion. I'm not a fan of excluding arguments because they would be absurd if applied comprehensively, because we almost never intend to apply our arguments comprehensively, and would have to deprive ourselves of a lot of useful tools if we did.


More importantly: Can you name a single thing from the Wizard mechanics that actually reflects any meaningful representation of doing legit research, constructing new spells, that sort of thing? Because I'm hard-pressed to see any of that whatsoever. Arcane Recovery is literally "take a nap, have more spells," no research needed. The upper-level features are about spells you've used so often they've become rote-memorized, they're the antithesis of being related to research and development. The word "research," as far as I can tell, never appears in the Wizard class. The only--literally only--feature that even vaguely relates to this stuff is adding spells to your spellbook....which is primarily a matter of spontaneous discoveries while doing field work, or copying the work of someone else. Fundamentally, the 5e Wizard isn't a researcher or theoretician at all, she's a scribe.

I don't think I was trying to make an appeal to the Wizard as any kind of researcher or scientist. It's someone who learns spells from books, end of story. Although if you want to know what I think does distinguish the Wizard, simply having Intelligence as its casting stat does matter, since Intelligence says other things about what kind of character you play; it has game consequences outside of spellcasting, and therefore the Wizard's mechanics tell you something about the sort of person who will be a Wizard. It involves memorization and attention to detail. The connection between the Sorcerer's Charisma and their casting ability is a lot woolier, as so many before me have said.


(As an aside: dunno if you've ever looked into what you can actually DO with the Metamagic Adept feat, but 2 SP really doesn't get you much....especially when you can't refill it except by resting. It's far less of a theft than it seems, particularly given the above stuff with Ritual Caster or how Eldritch Adept, even with its serious restrictions, can get a few really special tricks even for non-Warlocks, like at-will false life, beyond-super darkvision, or several niche but powerful abilities. Imagine how useful being able to read all writing would be in an intrigue-heavy or archaeology-related game!)

That was one point on which I was absolutely only speaking from my own point of view. Any Sorcerer build concepts I had in mind, I mentally re-categorized into other classes once it became possible to take Metamagic options, however limited, on other character classes. This proves that my interest in the Sorcerer was only ever mechanical. Except Wild Magic, I guess, for which I still have a soft spot, but that's it. You can disregard any argument of mine that hinges on Metamagic Adept if your thinking is not the same, I'm not overly wedded to that point of argument.

Also, I don't know how well you can spell this out without getting off-topic, but I never saw the playtest Sorcerer. I'm interested to hear what it did that you considered refreshing and new. It might sway me towards seeing the potential that the class has.

[Thunderous Mojo]

One issue I’ve always had with the 5e Sorc is, since his magic is innate, what the heck have they been doing with their time? They get limited skill options, and next to none weapon profs, and no armor prof.
Autodidacts don't spend less time, developing their talents.

Wallace had to acquire years of experience,(and a high fever), before he could describe Natural Selection. Elton John can play a piano tune after hearing it, but he still needs to practice, and composing a tune, (which is like casting a spell in this analogy), requires serious effort.

Intelligence typically means "learning things more quickly".

[Hecuba]

Not really at all. Much of those folklores predate regular literacy. The guy with dusty old tomes is something of a post-renaissance invention. Most folklore and mythic casters either were imbued, or were just magical and how wasn't clear.

Dusty old tomes, yes - to an extent. But there is a very real distinction to be made between magic as secret knowledge and magic as inhuman origin much further back. If anything, part of the problem is that - if you go back far enough - both ideas get gobbled up by the priestly caste.

Consider for example the difference between an Oracle and a Seer in Ancient Greece. The Oracles are playthings for the gods - conduits, not always willingly, for their will. The Seers worked by methodological magic to interpret the reflection of the gods' will through the world. In actual practice, the Oracles generally had learned priests to interpret the actual prophesies they received - putatively because they were merely the vessel for the gods' message and couldn't interpret it without knowledge (but more realistically because they were likely high out of their mind).


The larger issue is that there is a fairly limited narrative space to interact with "magic as something you are" when it exists in contrast with "magic as something you learn and do." You can fight against it and overcome it, or you can hide it from persecution. Or you can succumb to it. Unless you want to ignore it or play an egotistical narcissist who believes it makes them extra special, there aren't a lot of other options. If you want to focus on it, it almost has to be a nature vs agency concept. Which can work, but doesn't have the flexibility in application of a skill you learn through hard work - which can be applied to many other goals of characterization without so readily subsuming them.

[Amechra]

Also, I don't know how well you can spell this out without getting off-topic, but I never saw the playtest Sorcerer. I'm interested to hear what it did that you considered refreshing and new. It might sway me towards seeing the potential that the class has.

Long story short, you started the day as a half-caster, but would transition into filling a different role as you spent spell slots (it might have actually been points, come to think of it). Thematically, casting spells expresses your inhuman heritage and causes more of it to "show through".

I'm not sure how well it would have carried forwards (it did only cover levels 1-3), but it was an interesting concept. Mechanically, you're looking at bursts of power that leave behind lingering buffs... and now I want a half-caster that buffs their cantrips for the rest of the encounter/day whenever they cast appropriate spells.

[RSP]

Autodidacts don't spend less time, developing their talents.

Wallace had to acquire years of experience,(and a high fever), before he could describe Natural Selection. Elton John can play a piano tune after hearing it, but he still needs to practice, and composing a tune, (which is like casting a spell in this analogy), requires serious effort.

Intelligence typically means "learning things more quickly".

Your analogy doesn’t work. The fluff says the magic chooses the Sorcerer. Elton John chose to learn instruments and can choose not to play a piano at all: a Sorcerer cannot choose to “not play” (at least according to the fluff).

Further, if their bloodline only makes it easier for them to learn magic but still requires practice, as you seem to be suggesting, then how come they have less skills and proficiencies than a Bard? Do they not practice their ability? Does innate magic require more practice than non-innate magic? If innate magic requires the same amount of studying as learned Wizardry, how is that innate magic? Why do Bards, whose spells do the same stuff, if not more based off their better list than the Sorc, require less studying than innate magic?

Partially, this is a failing of the Background system (which should’ve been designed with weapon and armor profs), but it still doesn’t make sense from the Sorc fluff.

[KorvinStarmast]

The wizard, as printed, is a class better suited to a game that only has two classes - Wizard: who can cast spells to do literally anything, and Muggle: an npc class for the wizard's non-magical sidekick who carries the wizard's stuff while standing between them and their enemy's swords and arrows. A problem with your analysis there is that the Magic User (which WoTC made into Wizard) had to patiently be a team player for a significant number of levels or they'd never survive to be a wizard. As originally envisioned, and immense amount of their adventuring career was 'going out and finding spells to put into their book.' (Per D&D and AD&D as it originally was played). But the other part was that they needed to rely on their beefier comrades to even survive the adventurs of delving into a mad wizard's old tower to uncover those spell.

Getting that feel into the class has been beaten to death by WoTC, but even with TSR it created the problem of "balance it by making X feature annoying" which is increasingly seen as sub optimal game design.

So I'll go back to: the wizard isn't an academic. The wizard goes out to increase their collection of spells (this is very much a piece of the Vancian fiction {I recently re read all of Vance's stuff from Dying Earth stories} and underpins why that convention was first chosen.) You won't get more spells if you don't go out and find, steal, or discover them.

How to mechanize that into a game isn't necessarily easy. When people critique the Vancian system as "clunky" or "awkward" (which it is) I wonder at how to get the fiction that it's based upon across.

I think that D&D 5e has reached a nice compromise, but perhaps only 1 free spell per level up would fit the fiction better: go out and find, steal, or buy others.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Your analogy doesn’t work.
"yeah well like that is just your opinion man" 😉✌️
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP. W9SisnIhXOGR-FV-f6ofUQHaDe%26pid%3DApi&f=1

This is a subjective topic, so agreement is not required...opinions will vary.

The whole idea of "Education"; is that guided instruction allows someone to reach a level of proficiency at a faster pace, then attempting to discover on one's own, the principles being taught.

It is indeed faster to copy the wheel, or be taught how the wheel works, then to attempt to create the wheel, out of whole cloth.

I personally love philosophy, but have never formally studied it.
I've spent years reading and re-reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Yet when I talk to someone whom has taken a semester long course on the same work, those that have had formal instruction often understand points of context, that I was unaware of.

Formal instruction, formal education, distills the years or centuries long efforts of experts and geniuses and reduces the knowledge into segments that are easier to digest and learn.

[KorvinStarmast]

Formal instruction, formal education, distills the years or centuries long efforts of experts and geniuses and reduces the knowledge into segments that are easier to digest and learn.
But in something like flight training, where you have to take what you learned and apply it, the education part of this is only part of it. The practice and application - go out and do it! - is a crucial part of the mastery process. Education takes you this far: after that, you have to go out and apply it. See also engineering.

Look at magic as engineering or as learning to fly: you have to go out and do it or you'll never progress. :smallcool:

Which takes me back to sorcerers: I've met a number of, and served with a number of, very talented "born with it" pilots who are ... dead. They relied on their talent and (in my opinion, though I ought not to speak ill of the dead) didn't immerse themselves in the study as most of the rest of us did (because we had to). Those were sorcerers; natural talent who are (often) a danger to themselves and others. To frame this in terms of that pop culture movie Top Gun: Iceman was a wizard, Maverick was a sorcerer. You might find it interesting that in the ten years after that movie came out, most of the professional aviation safety journals that we had on our required reading list identified a few dozen problems with Maverick such that he's the archetype of the guy in your squadron who was dead, even though he was a great stick. . Hollywood gave him plot armor. :smallyuk:

The Wild Magic sorcerer sort of captures this in D&D 5e, but I think it needs a rescrub to make it more playable: awesome magical talent, but potentially a hazard to self and others.

Magic being inherently dangerous, as a concept, has been lost. Which is unfortunate.

[RSP]

"yeah well like that is just your opinion man" 😉✌️

This is a subjective topic, so agreement is not required...opinions will vary.



But in something like flight training, where you have to take what you learned and apply it, the education part of this is only part of it. The practice and application - go out and do it! - is a crucial part of the mastery process. Education takes you this far: after that, you have to go out and apply it. See also engineering.

Look at magic as engineering or as learning to fly: you have to go out and do it or you'll never progress. :smallcool:


Sure (and in no way do I think every class has to follow the fluff; I actually lean more towards the opposite: if you want to write your own fluff, it’s usually fine with me), however, that’s not what the Sorc fluff states. It specifically uses “innate” magic, which is the opposite of studying. People have to study to be a pilot for months (years? I don’t know), but birds do it innately.

Pilots are Wizards and birds are Sorc in this analogy. While the Wizards are spending all that time studying to learn to fly; the Sorc can just do it, yet has nothing to show for how they spent the months they didn’t have to spend studying magic.

[Amdy_vill]

yes, mechanically sorer inhabit an interesting design space and one that I think 5e need. Sorcerers inhabit a design space based in a Spellcaster built around their class abilities. this idea is executed better in other editions and systems than in 5e but the design space is interesting. other casters really mostly on spells or mostly on class abilities and build their mechanical presence around that, where the sorcerer is really the only class the fuses spell casting and class feature holistically. now we can argue if sorcerer unjustly stole some of this from wizards and so on but the design space is interesting and unique compared to the other class feature-heavy casters or spells heavy casters.

In 6e or 5.5e or whatever is the next major design change of dnd, I would like to see sorcerers design space explore more and let its power get pushed a bit more so it can as you put it "Have a reason to exist". the problem is wotcs built then nerf mentality and not the idea and design space of sorcerer.

[Amechra]

When people critique the Vancian system as "clunky" or "awkward" (which it is) I wonder at how to get the fiction that it's based upon across.

Part of the problem with how D&D handles Vancian casting is that it's not a very good implementation, and it never really has been.

"Vancian" magic basically involved imprisoning spells in your head. A really powerful wizard could hold on to maybe a half-dozen at a time, and each one was impressive and potent. It honestly has more in common with 3.5's Binder than it does with the Magic User.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Quote Originally Posted by Thunderous Mojo
"Formal instruction, formal education, distills the years or centuries long efforts of experts and geniuses and reduces the knowledge into segments that are easier to digest and learn."
Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast:
"But in something like flight training, where you have to take what you learned and apply it, the education part of this is only part of it. The practice and application - go out and do it! - is a crucial part of the mastery process. Education takes you this far: after that, you have to go out and apply it. "

To me the quotes above are not in the least contradictory. In fact, I believe the two quotes are complimentary.

The "doing" part differs depending on the disciplines. Professional Philosophers read and publish. Pilots fly aircraft. Sorcerers and Wizards bend magic, or channel magic, and cast spells.

[RSP]

Quote Originally Posted by Thunderous Mojo
"Formal instruction, formal education, distills the years or centuries long efforts of experts and geniuses and reduces the knowledge into segments that are easier to digest and learn."
Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast:
"But in something like flight training, where you have to take what you learned and apply it, the education part of this is only part of it. The practice and application - go out and do it! - is a crucial part of the mastery process. Education takes you this far: after that, you have to go out and apply it. "

To me the quotes above are not in the least contradictory. In fact, I believe the two quotes are complimentary.

The "doing" part differs depending on the disciplines. Professional Philosophers read and publish. Pilots fly aircraft. Sorcerers and Wizards bend magic, or channel magic, and cast spells.

But again, the Sorcerer requires no training: it’s innate (“inborn; natural”). Wizards require training; Sorcerers do not. Flight training is what Wizards do; Sorcerers just fly.

Korvin's example of pilots who have a natural aptitude to grasp aspects of flight training isn’t a good analogy for Sorcerers, but rather more like describing what an Divination Wizard does: they’ve a better grasp at handling the Divination parts of their Wizard studies.

[JoeJ]

But again, the Sorcerer requires no training: it’s innate (“inborn; natural”). Wizards require training; Sorcerers do not. Flight training is what Wizards do; Sorcerers just fly.

I don't know about that. Deryni powers are innate, but they require training to use.

[Segev]

The notion of an innate spellcaster with one or a few very specific spells they know, but have mastered to the point that they can do unique things with them, is interesting. D&D spells + 5e metamagic just...doesn't quite do it. It doesn't manage to give enough flexibility to whatever spells the Sorcerer does know to make them feel like they are the masters of them. They almost need some sort of Invocation-like feature. :smallfrown:

[Democratus]

I don't know about that. Deryni powers are innate, but they require training to use.

Agreed. If sorcerer powers didn't require training - then Sorcerers wouldn't have levels.

They would just be able to do all the things.

[Amnestic]

The notion of an innate spellcaster with one or a few very specific spells they know, but have mastered to the point that they can do unique things with them, is interesting. D&D spells + 5e metamagic just...doesn't quite do it. It doesn't manage to give enough flexibility to whatever spells the Sorcerer does know to make them feel like they are the masters of them. They almost need some sort of Invocation-like feature. :smallfrown:

Kinda wondering if the mastery stuff would be enhanced if metamagic just didn't have any cost at all, just freely apply it to every spell you cast (but no more than one metamagic per spell still).

[Snails]

The weird thing is that there are a bunch of races that have "innate" magic, so you'd think that the Sorcerer would be your go-to for when you wanted to play a Drow/Forest Gnome/Tiefling/etc that happens to be a magical prodigy. But nope! That's not what the subclasses support.

The Wizard is a fine class for the D&D game.

But if we really look at mythological sources, including many modern D&D influenced mythological sources, including many comic books and movies, a large portion of the niches are better addressed by a Sorcerer than a Wizard. Drow are an extremely strong example of "My blood flows with magic!" that fits beautifully in the Sorcerer class.

Likewise, Divine Soul Sorcerer may be a more natural fit for how the Cleric is used than the Cleric class.

Instead of "Books! Books! Books! You can learn or do know ALL these spells!" we could have mechanisms by which individual Sorcerers can apply themselves to books and learn a few new spells, even if that is not how they learn most spells.

Wizard could then be a class path of Sorcerer, where flexibility of learning via books is their schtick.

Since abandoning the 1e Illusionist, D&D has done such a poor job differentiating within the Wizard class that it would be reasonable to throw in the towel on this class being a full class with subclasses. (Of course, the Generalist Wizard is a special kind of bovine, so this will not happen. But purely based on mechanical arguments, I would sooner ditch the Wizard as an independent class that ditch the Sorcerer.)

Tangent...
It would not have been difficult to create genuinely interesting Specialist Wizards, BTW. The 3e Psion showed us a simple way: make a few particularly potent spells available to only the specialist, while the bulk of the spell list is shared by all. Unfortunately, I think some believe that it would be unfair if the Wizard stopped being "Books! Books! Books! You can learn or do know ALL these spells!" I genuinely believe some players are offended by the idea that their Wizard might not be allowed to picked the optimal spells from the Wizard spell list, which prevented Specialist Wizard from really being a thing.

[Garfunion]

Agreed. If sorcerer powers didn't require training - then Sorcerers wouldn't have levels.

They would just be able to do all the things.
Forgetting about growth. As the sorcerer grows the capacity for magic increases, awakening more magical effects(spells). As the wizard grows they must learn how to shape this magic into spells.

[cookieface]

Seems like a pretty easy solution would be to say that, due to their innate magicking, Sorcerers do not need any material components for spells. Currently they only have 11 spells on their list that have material components with a cost, and two of those are the Blade cantrips. Either remove the rest, or leave the ones that wouldn't break the game without a gold cost.

Heck, I'd say even say you could go as far as to remove ALL components (including Verbal and Somatic) from a Sorcerer and make them un-Counterspellable. That alone makes that close to a Wizard in power, IMO. And thematically, just say they have innate spellcasting as a result ... they don't need a magic wand or magic words to cast spells, they just do.

ETA: For balance, just reduce their modifiers somehow, so that they can't have crazy save DCs on top of being un-Counterspellable.

[RSP]

I don't know about that. Deryni powers are innate, but they require training to use.

Sorry, but I’m not aware of who the Deryni are.

I can innately (try to, at least) defend myself, which, indeed, would improve with training. However, the fluff of Sorcerers is that there power comes from their bloodline. The fluff of Wizards is that their power comes from studying (from PHB “Though the casting of a typical spell requires merely the utterance of a few strange words, fleeting gestures, and sometimes a pinch or clump of exotic materials, these surface components barely hint at the expertise attained after years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study.”).

So, from fluff, it’s fair to equate bloodline=“years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study.” It doesn’t make sense to then say, “oh, Sorcerers also need years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study,” as that would defeat the purpose of the source of their power.

However, contradicting the fluff, Sorcerers have nothing mechanically to show for whatever they chose to do instead of years of apprenticeship.

[RSP]

Forgetting about growth. As the sorcerer grows the capacity for magic increases, awakening more magical effects(spells). As the wizard grows they must learn how to shape this magic into spells.

As I see it, that growth is leveling past level 1. But at level 1, a Sorcerer’s power comes from their bloodline (or touching the planes or whatever), vs from years of study.

Both Wizards and Sorcerers can increase their ability and capacity, but how they start is what’s significant here.

[MaxieZeus]

As someone who has played two separate Sorcerers, I want to bring up my experience with them, and the big flaws with them.

My first character was a Wild Magic Sorcerer / Fey-pact Warlorck. the flavour being my mother was a fey, and both magics from my classes mixed to give me what i had. Mechanically, i made the class because i wanted to screw around with wild magic, and took the warlock levels so i could quicken eldritch blasts. But narratively, my character was more plot-driven by family drama, not magic.

My second character was Hill Dwarf Dragonblood Sorcerer with 2 levels in Tempest Cleric. This was a really weird class built around the fact that you couldn't really deal damage by grappling at the time, so I was using Shocking Grasp to simulate it. And built a melee sorcerer with as much HP as a Barbarian due to all the passive HP buffs from Hill Dwarfs and Dragonbloods. The cleric levels were just to give me access to inflict wounds for more touch-based magic, and i dipped into Tempest specifically because i was using lightning magic a lot. Flavour-wise, I was primarily a disgraced cleric, the actual sorcerer stuff didn't really affect me as a character.

In both instances, I picked a sorcerer because of a specific mechanical quirk the subclass offered, and built around that. The warlock and cleric stuff always played a more plot-relevent function to my character, and i ended up using these extra classes as flavour dressing for my sorcerer who otherwise had nothing.

There's nothing about a sorcerer specifically that gives you plot. You're more likely to be driven by your background or your race or a second class. But this isn't unique to sorcerers.

Rogues and fighters are as much blank slates as the rest really. I made a rogue/barbarian once that was an exiled noble, who used STRENGTH for damage, and their barbarian rage was reflavoured to be a zen-like martial where he tunnel-visioned into the moment, like a Rurouni Kenshin type character. a fighter is literally just someone who is good at fighting. Barbarians, Paladins, Monks and Rangers are ALL much more flavourful and plot-driven than the fighter.

But I think that's a bad thing.

those characters I made were fun. sure a lot of the classes have distinct playstyles, lore and themes that guide the player and shape their mental image.

But sometimes we just want a class that does something.

I think that's why we got so many Sorcerer subclasses in each book. same with the Rogue. These classes are really simple flavour-wise and it helps the subclasses define what they are.

It's just the Sorcerer is the most blank slate class in the game. It's JUST power. There's no skill, no backstory, nothing is needed to explain or drive the sorcerer as a character. That is all personal. You don't make a sorcerer because you want to play as Merlin or Aragorn. You play a sorcerer because you already have an existing identity and just want some power to go along with it.

[Luccan]

Would there be a problem with Sorcerers having exclusive access to metamagic if it was called something else? AFAIK, metamagic is entirely a 3e thing, so it's always struck me as a very 3e focused complaint

[Asisreo1]

More accurately, I suppose, would be the question of "Does Sorcerer have a reason to be its own class?"

Now I'm not a D&D historian, but I understand that the Sorcerer as we know it today really got its hooks in during 3rd Edition, when prepared spellcasting was a lot more restrictive; Wizards and most other casters had to allocate their specific spell slots to specific spells. Looking at the SRD, the Sorcerer really is just "Wizard, but with a different casting ability score, and a more flexible casting system." It doesn't really express a very distinct theme or archetype from the classic D&D Wizard; it's a different mechanical take on much the same concept.

Well, now every caster class has more flexibility; a prepared caster doesn't lose any flexibility relative to the spells-known caster (he arguably gains it). And there are other primary spellcasters who use Charisma, so that mechanical chestnut is no more. So what is the Sorcerer's justification to be its own class?

In the beginning of this edition, the cordoning off of Metamagic into a Special Sorcerer Toy seemed to be an attempt to justify the sorcerer's existence, rather than manifesting a clear class identity. Post-THC, any spellcaster with a feat can borrow that Special Toy, so it doesn't even do that anymore, seemingly a tacit admission that that particular mechanic doesn't have any thematic reason to be confined to one class. Thus the Sorcerer, a class that, in my opinion, has always been defined by mechanics rather than clear theme, is no longer all that distinct mechanically.

The theming that is there is weak; it's extremely metaphysical and abstract most of the time, with vague talk of bloodlines and innate magical power. It's one of three classes where your subclass is, narratively, the entire basis of your class, as represented by you choosing it at 1st Level. The other two such classes, the Cleric and the Warlock, ask you to be specific about the source of your power, and place your relationship with that source front and center; they ask you to commit to goals and ideologies for your character. The Sorcerer's problem is that you just passively are magical. And I would argue that by making "magical lineage or transformation" the only consistent thematic throughline of a class, you implicitly make that less of an option for other characters.

The Sorcerous Origins themselves don't really seem to do much to help, since each one is so disconnected from the others. The Wild Mage and Clockwork Soul could (and did, in editions prior) work as Wizard variants without losing any of their theme; the Divine Soul and the Aberrant Mind have to borrow their cool themes from another class, or another class's subclass.

I should probably just accept that this is just part of the game now: the class has its adherents, and it probably will keep showing up in whatever future versions of the game come after, and that's fine. But I do hope that if D&D is going to stick with the Sorcerer even after its mechanical raisons d'etre are no longer relevant, that the creatives driving the game put effort into giving it a more compelling and concrete class identity.
Does any individual class have a reason to exist? They can all be divide into a "mage" "warrior" "healer" type system and there's really no particular reason why a wizard, cleric, or fighter is given any special treatment. I mean, most of these classes have spell/feature overlap with classes that also fall within these three archetypes.

The question is: would you be content with a system with only three distinct class options or would you like some with similarities between each other but a breadth of differences across.

[Democratus]

The question is: would you be content with a system with only three distinct class options or would you like some with similarities between each other but a breadth of differences across.

The White Box has only 3 classes and is pretty fun. I still occasionally play games with that system.

[cookieface]

I think my biggest concern about "Why sorcerers?" is that they seem like a subset of Wizards in a way that no other class feels in regards to a more "generic" class.

What are the major differences, anyways?

Prepared spells vs known spells: (OK, Wizards have their own unique spell system, but it still boils down to this key difference, mechanically.) The logic seems like a character should be able to "know" more spells than they can "prepare", since prepared spellcasters have access to a larger spell list but are limited by what they can do on a given day. However, in tier two (which I'll use for most comparisons) a wizard with +4 to INT is going to have between 6 and 9 spells prepared each day. A sorcerer gets 6-11 spells known from levels 5 to 10. So not a huge difference in the daily available spells there, and Wizards have the leg up on how many different spells they have available in general. (Admittedly, Sorcerers have a slight edge on cantrips known.) Still, this leans towards the Wizard.

Spell list: Please. Wizards have many, many more spells to choose from (323 to 206). And what's worse, there are fewer than ten spells in the game that Sorcerers have access to that Wizards do not (not counting subclass spells). Definite Wizard.

Spell recovery: Wizards get Arcane Recovery (equal to 1/2 Wizard level), Sorcerers get Flexible Casting (math adds up to more than what Wizards get). Wizards get them on a short rest, Sorcerers get them as a BA. Wizards are free, Sorcerers come at the cost of Sorcery Points. This goes to Sorcerers if we are strictly talking "who is better at gaining more spell slots", but given that Metamagic is probably the better use of SPs, this is likely a Tie.

Additional spell abilities: We're talking Metamagic for Sorcerers here, and they have several good options and several meh options. Some of the options are duplicated by Wizard subclass abilities (specifically Evocation Wizards). Still, I won't argue that Wizards are close here; Sorcerers are built on their ability to change their spells. (Still, thematically I agree that it makes way more sense for these things to go to the class that is all about studying and perfecting the craft of magic, rather than the once that can just do it innately.)

Subclasses: Wizards get both more and some of the best subclasses in the game. Thematically, they generally make sense (though Bladesinger does kinda seem like the outlier here, though it has its specific flavor admittedly) while the Sorcerer subclasses feel more and more like stretching to give more to their class. As others have mentioned, several seem like they would work better, thematically, as Warlock subclasses. Wild Magic almost feels like it should be part of the base class. Gotta give this to Wizards, considering Divination and Scribes are amazing in their own right.

For me, it comes down to this: Mechanically, Sorcerers are just weak wizards. It's completely possible to reflavor a Wizard or Warlock to give them the Sorcerer backstory and have a mechanically better character. In my opinion, they need something to make them worthwhile instead of Wizards, and Metamagic isn't enough (especially when something like Careful Spell is massively outclassed by Sculpt Spells). Larger known spell lists, drastically different spellcasting mechanics ... something. I said previously that taking all components out of their spellcasting might be a simple and sufficient fix. Also, getting subclass specific spells known is big as well -- it gives them a throughline of "what kind of magic are you imbued with" more than they had previously.

[clash]

I mean the part about sculpt spell and careful spell is a poor comparison. The abilities are intended for completely different uses. Sculpt spell is for only evocation spells. Whereas careful spell is really useful for aoe spells that don't deal damage. So pretty much the furthest from evocation. Not really relevant, just wanted to point that out.

The easy of your arguement exactly illustrates the issue. Sorcerer needed to be mechanically distinct from wizard rather than mechanically inferior.

[JoeJ]

Sorry, but I’m not aware of who the Deryni are.

Deryni are a race of sorcerers in a series of novels by Katherine Kurtz


So, from fluff, it’s fair to equate bloodline=“years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study.” It doesn’t make sense to then say, “oh, Sorcerers also need years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study,” as that would defeat the purpose of the source of their power.

However, contradicting the fluff, Sorcerers have nothing mechanically to show for whatever they chose to do instead of years of apprenticeship.

While the wizards were studying their little hearts out at Adventuring University, and the fighters were sweating in the gym, the sorcerers were ditching class and smoking pot.

[Thunderous Mojo]

But again, the Sorcerer requires no training: it’s innate (“inborn; natural”). Wizards require training; Sorcerers do not. Flight training is what Wizards do; Sorcerers just fly.
All characters require Experience. So if a Wizard is conducting magical experiments, and research as they adventure..a Sorcerer is by living an exciting life, activating the innate power within.

Your not flying at 1st level, unless you have wings.

A Satori is a sudden awakening of self and universal understanding. Typically one needs to lay some groundwork for these realizations. On very rare occasions, a satori will just come to someone.

RSP are you stating all sorcerers are born with a complete understanding of their magic and have access to 9th level spells from birth? No sorcerous character, can have a voyage of self discovery because that is too close to "training"?

[cookieface]

I mean the part about sculpt spell and careful spell is a poor comparison. The abilities are intended for completely different uses. Sculpt spell is for only evocation spells. Whereas careful spell is really useful for aoe spells that don't deal damage. So pretty much the furthest from evocation. Not really relevant, just wanted to point that out.

The easy of your arguement exactly illustrates the issue. Sorcerer needed to be mechanically distinct from wizard rather than mechanically inferior.

I have literally never thought of using it in this way. To me it's always been a weaker Metamagic option because it still wound up doing half damage on stuff like Fireball and Synaptic Static. But yeah, that is a much better use...

[Segev]

I mean the part about sculpt spell and careful spell is a poor comparison. The abilities are intended for completely different uses. Sculpt spell is for only evocation spells. Whereas careful spell is really useful for aoe spells that don't deal damage. So pretty much the furthest from evocation. Not really relevant, just wanted to point that out.

The easy of your arguement exactly illustrates the issue. Sorcerer needed to be mechanically distinct from wizard rather than mechanically inferior.


I have literally never thought of using it in this way. To me it's always been a weaker Metamagic option because it still wound up doing half damage on stuff like Fireball and Synaptic Static. But yeah, that is a much better use...

I'd be interested in some concrete examples of spells to use it with that take advantage of this property.

[PhantomSoul]

I'd be interested in some concrete examples of spells to use it with that take advantage of this property.

Hypnotic Pattern is a standout because there's only ever one saving throw, but really any spell that has (a) no ability to select targets within the area, and ideally (b) lasting effects or that has nothing happen on a success [so as close to save or suck/die as possible]. Fear works well too, especially if you have a larger area to delay repeated saving throws.

[cookieface]

I'd be interested in some concrete examples of spells to use it with that take advantage of this property.

Fear and Hypnotic Pattern fit the bill. I'm sure there are more. Hypnotic Pattern seems like an unnecessary usage, since it should probably be used before the fight really gets going and can therefore be cast on a group that doesn't include allies more easily. Fear, on the other hand, is enticing.

It actually doesn't specify that the saving throw be on the turn you cast it (or be activated directly by you) ... so something like Wall of Fire works too, though it would still do half damage to allies.

[Segev]

Fear and Hypnotic Pattern fit the bill. I'm sure there are more. Hypnotic Pattern seems like an unnecessary usage, since it should probably be used before the fight really gets going and can therefore be cast on a group that doesn't include allies more easily. Fear, on the other hand, is enticing.

It actually doesn't specify that the saving throw be on the turn you cast it (or be activated directly by you) ... so something like Wall of Fire works too, though it would still do half damage to allies.

Hm. Prismatic Wall?

[RSP]

All characters require Experience. So if a Wizard is conducting magical experiments, and research as they adventure..a Sorcerer is by living an exciting life, activating the innate power within.

Your not flying at 1st level, unless you have wings.

A Satori is a sudden awakening of self and universal understanding. Typically one needs to lay some groundwork for these realizations. On very rare occasions, a satori will just come to someone.

RSP are you stating all sorcerers are born with a complete understanding of their magic and have access to 9th level spells from birth? No sorcerous character, can have a voyage of self discovery because that is too close to "training"?

{Scrubbed} I specifically stated “at first level”. At no point did I say anything close to what you’re asking about in your last paragraph.

I’ve also quoted the actual text of the classes and compared them, the text of which tells how the classes get their power.

{Scrubbed}

You seem to indicate in your first paragraph that every game needs to define itself by your personal rules of how characters progress. I disagree (a game can start at level 10 with our characters having any experience points - there’s a method of leveling in which PCs progress based on plot development and not experience points gained); however, I also don’t care to debate your personal idea of what you think a 5e PC requires to level.

It’s a very simple thing I’m stating: the RAW class description states Sorcerers gain their powers from innate sources, not from time spent working to gain those powers. Conversely, the RAW class description states Wizards get their powers from years of study.

Despite the requirement of years studying for Wizards, they have equal proficiencies as a Sorcerer, who had years free to pursue other things (yet mechanically are left bereft of the effect of having this time).

Note: this is all at first level. A 1st level Wizard and a 1st level Sorcerer can each cast two 1st level spells before needing to rest. The Wizard acquired this ability through years of study. The Sorcerer through some innate source (like their ancestor being exposed to Planar Forces).

Anything past first level is up to the campaign story to develop. A Wizard character may gain 3 levels over 5 in-game days, in a campaign. There’s no way to explain his gaining of 6 spells as research done between levels as they were in a dungeon the entire time fighting for their life. A Sorcerer in a different campaign, might not level once over a month of in-game time, despite spending that month working with and controlling their innate magic.

Again, after level 1, the explanation for being a certain level is campaign dependent; at level 1, we have the class fluff.

[PhantomSoul]

Fear and Hypnotic Pattern fit the bill. I'm sure there are more. Hypnotic Pattern seems like an unnecessary usage, since it should probably be used before the fight really gets going and can therefore be cast on a group that doesn't include allies more easily. Fear, on the other hand, is enticing.

I'd also give Synaptic Static an honourable mention; the "protected" target will still take damage, but they avoid the potent nerf effect.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Please don’t try and warp my words to make it seem like I was making an absurd point, just because you don’t like the information that supports what I wrote.

That was never my intent, I was asking clarifying questions. My apologies if you took offense.

Be Well!

[clash]

Blade ward, thunder clap, gust of wind, web, fear hypnotic pattern, sleet storm, stinking cloud, confusion, storm sphere, earthquake, can all benefit from careful spell without your allies suffering damage. Obviously the cantrips are not going to see use of it burr the rest of the spells are very plausible

[ezekielraiden]

Alright, Ezekielraiden, you've given me a lot to respond to and think about, so pardon if I only get to some of your points while I let some of the others stew a bit.
No worries. I've had some insomina, so checking back up on this slipped my mind. Even if that weren't true, I welcome a measured response.


My appeal to minimalism wasn't me attempting to provide a threshold of minimalism which D&D should meet, it was just another attempt to articulate why the Sorcerer bothers me, personally.
Fair. The issue, then, is to look for ways to meet in the middle (as always).


All I can say in defense of my own particular line in the sand is that it's not trying to exclude the details that other people enjoy, so much as it is trying to question whether said details (Metamagic, the story beat of a mystical origin, Power Overwhelming) ought to be class of their own, or whether they should be held in common by other character types.
Believe me, I don't think the 5e Sorcerer was well-designed, even within the confines of just 5e. It's more clearly one of the classes that suffered from the designers failing to coalesce around a firm design idea until very late into (or even after) the public playtest. But for a converse, consider the "Warlord problem": throughout the vast majority of the playtest, the design team were explicitly and openly supportive of a martial healer-supporter option, but they went all-in for the Specialty thing (sort of like a pre-made feat package with some possible extra goodies)....only to then abandon Specialties entirely, leaving the Warlord-type-option no home whatsoever. Instead of facing that and addressing it, they just stopped talking about the Warlord-related options and, presumably, hoped no one would notice.

That's the other side of the coin compared to Sorcerer: minimalism applied, but failing to actually live up to the desired goals. It's a problem absolutely worth keeping in mind, given how significant the pushback against the lack-of-Warlord was.


After all, don't they square well with the core themes of other spellcasting classes? Clerics with divine parentage, Wizards developing variants on their spells? And I certainly don't think that one class should have a stronger claim than the others on the theme of "being powerful."
Sure, but you can say the same for almost any class. A highwayman robber Rogue resembles a Ranger. A Champion and an armor-wearing Berserker are almost two peas in a pod. A Devotion Paladin and a War Cleric, or a Light Cleric and a Celestial Warlock. Heck, a Tome Warlock and a Wizard. Classes are not generally well-suited to exclusive embodiment of a specific theme; in general, they are more like "ready-made" for supporting a certain theme, which would require more extensive explanation or more handwaving if you started from a different class.


I acknowledge that someone else could also extend that argument to any other class, any other mechanic, and that would be its own discussion. I'm not a fan of excluding arguments because they would be absurd if applied comprehensively, because we almost never intend to apply our arguments comprehensively, and would have to deprive ourselves of a lot of useful tools if we did.
While that's fair, the problem isn't so much that YOU wouldn't apply it comprehensively--it's that doing so invites other people to apply it comprehensively. Or not even necessarily comprehensively, just apply it one more time. "Why do we need both Paladin and Cleric? They're both armor-wearing, divine-magic-using classes. War Clerics even get features with the same or similar name to what Paladins get. Just make Paladin a subclass of Cleric." And then that person has someone else say, "Well, if we're merging Sorcerer into Wizard and Paladin into Cleric, why do we need Ranger? It's literally just a Druid-style Eldritch Knight. Heck, everyone knows Beastmaster doesn't even work right, so we can just jettison a well-known bad class and provide animal companion rules that aren't meant to be balanced within the subclass framework anyway." And then a fourth person comes along and has their own minimalism argument.

Whether or not it actually ends up minimalizing every class out of existence, an argument from minimalism alone openly invites a challenge to half or more of the game's classes (you did Sorcerer, but Warlock, Druid, Ranger, Paladin, Bard, Barbarian, heck even potentially Rogue and/or your choice of Wizard or Cleric could be argued.) It's not like this is a hypothetical even; there are already people calling for reducing the game to the "core four" or even further.


I don't think I was trying to make an appeal to the Wizard as any kind of researcher or scientist. It's someone who learns spells from books, end of story. Although if you want to know what I think does distinguish the Wizard, simply having Intelligence as its casting stat does matter, since Intelligence says other things about what kind of character you play; it has game consequences outside of spellcasting, and therefore the Wizard's mechanics tell you something about the sort of person who will be a Wizard. It involves memorization and attention to detail. The connection between the Sorcerer's Charisma and their casting ability is a lot woolier, as so many before me have said.
I'll need more on that, I haven't been reading the thread closely. What makes the Sorcerer's Cha connection an inferior distinction compared to the Wizard's Int association? Bards, for example, are typically quite literate (after all, The Bard, IRL, was Shakespeare), and they study the language of music. Warlocks, particularly Tomelocks, also scribe their spells.

Part of the reason I push the "research" angle, though, is that it's one of the ways we actually COULD differentiate Wizards from Sorcerers without eliminating the latter. Make doing research, stitching together bits and pieces of forgotten lore, etc. actually important to the process or joy of playing a Wizard. Bring back the Playtest Sorcerer (more on that later), where you really are struggling to hold onto your sense of self and always flirting with being absorbed by your superpowered crazy side.


That was one point on which I was absolutely only speaking from my own point of view. Any Sorcerer build concepts I had in mind, I mentally re-categorized into other classes once it became possible to take Metamagic options, however limited, on other character classes. This proves that my interest in the Sorcerer was only ever mechanical. Except Wild Magic, I guess, for which I still have a soft spot, but that's it. You can disregard any argument of mine that hinges on Metamagic Adept if your thinking is not the same, I'm not overly wedded to that point of argument.
Fair enough.


Also, I don't know how well you can spell this out without getting off-topic, but I never saw the playtest Sorcerer. I'm interested to hear what it did that you considered refreshing and new. It might sway me towards seeing the potential that the class has.
The Playtest Sorcerer used a spell point pool, called Willpower, rather than regular spells. It also had "Sorcerous Powers," which behaved like spells (including SP cost) but were not actually spells--and thus couldn't be learned by anyone else. Finally, as the Sorcerer's Willpower drained away, they would get various continuous buff effects, flavored as their second soul (the one with the magic power) slowly encroaching on them, taking over their body. Resting to restore their Willpower returned them to normal.

The only example we got to see was the Dragon sorcerer, which verged into mage-knight territory. It could use heavy weapons and armor, and after you spent certain amounts of Willpower, your hands would become claws, increasing your baseline damage. Your origin-specific Sorcerous Powers were Dragon Strength (do more damage on your next melee attack) and Dragon Scales (reduce incoming damage, gain resistance to your ancestor's element). Thematically, the idea was that as your Willpower ebbed, your "other soul" would come to the fore, changing your body and even your mind a little. There was the threat that you might become a horrible nightmare creature, completely consumed by your second soul, left to wander the world as a rampaging monster. (Implicitly, this meant going somehow beyond 0 Willpower, so it wasn't something that was supposed to happen in ordinary play. Still super cool though.)

Dragons, being beefy and kick-butt-y, mean a Dragon Sorcerer would become more of a bruiser over time. We never saw any other Sorcerers, but presumably a Chaos Sorcerer would become explosive and fluid of form, a Shadow Sorcerer would become Rogue-like with mega stealth and life drain, a Storm Sorcerer would manifest literal actual thunder and whiz around the battlefield as a lightning bolt, etc.

[Isaire]

The only example we got to see was the Dragon sorcerer, which verged into mage-knight territory. It could use heavy weapons and armor, and after you spent certain amounts of Willpower, your hands would become claws, increasing your baseline damage. Your origin-specific Sorcerous Powers were Dragon Strength (do more damage on your next melee attack) and Dragon Scales (reduce incoming damage, gain resistance to your ancestor's element). Thematically, the idea was that as your Willpower ebbed, your "other soul" would come to the fore, changing your body and even your mind a little. There was the threat that you might become a horrible nightmare creature, completely consumed by your second soul, left to wander the world as a rampaging monster. (Implicitly, this meant going somehow beyond 0 Willpower, so it wasn't something that was supposed to happen in ordinary play. Still super cool though.)

Not going to lie, that sounds frigging awesome, if difficult to design - trying to balance being good at two things (spells / innate powers) and your sorcerous "other", without being two weak or strong in either phase, is non-trivial. I can see that being awesome fun to play though, and it's certainly unique (in D&D class terms).

[Amnestic]

The Playtest Sorcerer used a spell point pool, called Willpower, rather than regular spells. It also had "Sorcerous Powers," which behaved like spells (including SP cost) but were not actually spells--and thus couldn't be learned by anyone else. Finally, as the Sorcerer's Willpower drained away, they would get various continuous buff effects, flavored as their second soul (the one with the magic power) slowly encroaching on them, taking over their body. Resting to restore their Willpower returned them to normal.

The only example we got to see was the Dragon sorcerer, which verged into mage-knight territory. It could use heavy weapons and armor, and after you spent certain amounts of Willpower, your hands would become claws, increasing your baseline damage. Your origin-specific Sorcerous Powers were Dragon Strength (do more damage on your next melee attack) and Dragon Scales (reduce incoming damage, gain resistance to your ancestor's element). Thematically, the idea was that as your Willpower ebbed, your "other soul" would come to the fore, changing your body and even your mind a little. There was the threat that you might become a horrible nightmare creature, completely consumed by your second soul, left to wander the world as a rampaging monster. (Implicitly, this meant going somehow beyond 0 Willpower, so it wasn't something that was supposed to happen in ordinary play. Still super cool though.)

Dragons, being beefy and kick-butt-y, mean a Dragon Sorcerer would become more of a bruiser over time. We never saw any other Sorcerers, but presumably a Chaos Sorcerer would become explosive and fluid of form, a Shadow Sorcerer would become Rogue-like with mega stealth and life drain, a Storm Sorcerer would manifest literal actual thunder and whiz around the battlefield as a lightning bolt, etc.

That sounds pretty cool, definitely sounds like it was mechanically unique enough in execution to stand on its own and really brought the magical lineage thing to the forefront.

[RSP]

That was never my intent, I was asking clarifying questions. My apologies if you took offense.

Be Well!

How did you come to that conclusion, though? Did something I posted lead you to believe that was really my argument?

[KorvinStarmast]

Deryni are a race of sorcerers in a series of novels by Katherine Kurtz I tired of her Marty Stus before I got to the end of the third book. The first two books I enjoyed well enough. If I can find original Camber trilogy I'll read it, but I think I'd have enjoyed them more if I'd read them when they came out (I first heard of them late 70's).

While the wizards were studying their little hearts out at Adventuring University, and the fighters were sweating in the gym, the sorcerers were ditching class and smoking pot. Heh, that fits our current party to a T (where one of the players is a Dragonborn Draconic origin sorcerer.

Hypnotic Pattern is a standout because there's only ever one saving throw, but really any spell that has (a) no ability to select targets within the area, and ideally (b) lasting effects or that has nothing happen on a success [so as close to save or suck/die as possible]. Fear works well too, especially if you have a larger area to delay repeated saving throws. Careful is definitely good with those two.

[Amechra]

Would there be a problem with Sorcerers having exclusive access to metamagic if it was called something else? AFAIK, metamagic is entirely a 3e thing, so it's always struck me as a very 3e focused complaint

Metamagic actually first showed up in 2e as a set of spells that you could cast to alter another spell. Hence the name.

[Luccan]

Metamagic actually first showed up in 2e as a set of spells that you could cast to alter another spell. Hence the name.

Ah, thanks. 2e is probably the edition I'm least familiar with.

[Lokishade]

My opinion on the Sorceror's existence is that, no, it doesn't belong in the DnD setting.

Here's why.

The fantasy of DnD, as reflected by its most recognizable system of experience levels, is that of patiently working your talents towards greatness.

And it was especially true concerning magic. Because magic is so powerful, it is supposed to be hard to understand and complicated to wield. It was reflected in the long hours of study, the research materials you have to gather and the fact that it was impossible (in older editions) to wear combat gear and cast arcane spells at the same time.

It even shaped the quests you had to undertake at some point. Because the reason a Wizard wants loot is not to brag with swag. He wants to consume it for his craft. A Wizard doesn't buy a library because he wants to be the boss of the place, but because he NEEDS a safe place to store all his knowledge. He can even come to the point where controlling a whole town as though it was a giant lab would be nice.

And then comes along: Maybe he was born with it. Maybe it's Sorceror.

Narratively, the Sorceror doesn't make sense. How does he get stronger? What does he do, exactly? Does he go like Goku and screams until he gets more power? Even if it is in his blood, drinking the blood of other Sorcerors to get more power, or dragon blood, or demon blood, or fey blood doesn't work. The Sorceror just grows and that's it.

Worse, he grows not into something he wants, but into something its PLAYER wants. And he has the stats of a Wizard, not because it makes sense, but because the developpers of the game wanted to balance him. The Sorceror is a walking metagaming concept that takes me out of the fantasy of DnD every time I think too much about it, as opposed to anyone else.

The Fighter has to undergo training. Pump iron, get swole. Makes sense. And it will always serve as a grounding factor for any fantasy. Same goes for Rogue and Bard, who get better skills through practice and experience. Yes, even the Bard, who casts through Charisma, doesn't ruin the fantasy for me because I understand that he mimics all other casters by singing and dancing their spells. It is even reflected in the fact that he memorizes a much smaller list and he can use a musical instrument as a focus.

The only other "new" caster that makes sense to me is the Warlock. In fact, the concept of the Warlock can basically replace the Sorceror, as far as I'm concerned. Magic always comes from somewhere. You either brute force it into your own like the Wizard and it takes a lot out of you, or you ride someone else's coattails, like the Cleric and the Bard. And now the Warlock. The world isn't supposed to just give you magic just because you have a pretty face. The Cleric serves a god, the Warlock makes a pact and the Bard travels far and wide, his artistic talent catching the magic in what he sees and hears.

And the Warlock is what the Cleric is, but for arcane magic. He even has the same hit die as the Cleric. And it makes sense. He's not dedicated to get swole like the Fighter because he has a venue of power, but he's not confining himself to the library like the Wizard either. And making a pact with an obscure entity is, mechanically speaking, what the Cleric has been doing since its inception.

The Warlock can even fill in for the "powers at birth" trope. What's preventing the parents to make a pact with an otherworldly being concerning their unborn child? You can have your Edgelord or your Chosen Hero right there. The Warlock can be so much more than just the poor fool who tries and bring Chtulhu to the world for the lulz (and even then, it's more compelling than Sorceror).

But the Sorceror? Narratively speaking, it's the powergamer arguing to bend the rules at the table and the DM telling him yes. I'm trying, but it doesn't get deeper than that.

[Amnestic]

Narratively, the Sorceror doesn't make sense. How does he get stronger? What does he do, exactly? Does he go like Goku and screams until he gets more power? Even if it is in his blood, drinking the blood of other Sorcerors to get more power, or dragon blood, or demon blood, or fey blood doesn't work. The Sorceror just grows and that's it.

I mean, yeah? Dragons don't get stronger magic by drinking dragon blood, they do it by being magical creatures whose magical talents grow as they do.

You talk about pumping iron to build up fighters making sense, but that's literally how sorcerers work - they pump their figurative magic muscles, and by stressing those they get stronger at it.

Now you can talk about whether charisma is the right stat for them or not, and there's plenty of discussion to be had about cha vs. con, but the idea of a natively powerful caster whose magic is tied into their bloodline works absolutely fine in settings where magical creatures are just inherently magical. You seem to be treating it as if it's a 'thing' inside his blood, rather than it just being his blood, his muscles, his bones, his mind. Sorcerers are, at their core, magical creatures. Just like dragons, and fey, and fiends.

[CMCC]

I think the Jedi in Star Wars are kind of sorcerers. Sure its scifi and not the fantasy genre, but still.
Yoda isnt an analytical bookworm that give Luke lots of texts to study. He teaches Luke to feeel the Force.
Clearly more sorcerer than wizard to me.

Someone skipped TLJ. The Jedi texts are important learning tools throughout their existence. But that goes for basically all religions and even many fighting/ martial traditions.

[Thunderous Mojo]

How did you come to that conclusion, though? Did something I posted lead you to believe that was really my argument?
I was asking the question in all earnestness. To add explanation, I'm a very straightforward person, and really don't chose to ask leading questions, or try to "trap" people into endorsing a position to only discredit it.

In earth mythology certain personages are born with complete enlightenment. Some are reputed to have attained enlightenment in the womb. In mythological terms these personages are often characterized as having cesarian deliveries. That is why I was referencing Satori, in a prior post.

I actually think it is a very inventive concept for a sorcerer, in character, to have the knowledge of their full and complete self. Of course, being an 'enlightened' being, the sorcerer choses not to 'overstep' the natural balance. Flexible Casting could be presented as the Sorcerer, subtlety exercising part of their full power.

D&D being a game, (no 1st level sorcerer is casting 9th level spells), but nothing stops the "in game character" from stating they "know what they are, and past, present and future are one". I think it could be a fun character.

Evidently, I expressed myself poorly, and evinced an attitude that seemed hostile. You have my apologies for that. Sometimes I just "stick my foot into it" as it were..🥺. Even if we disagree, I certainly didn't want to have you feel attacked, or belittled...my apologies again, if you felt that way.

[Lokishade]

The identity of DnD's magic is best represented by the Wizard and the Cleric. You either devote yourself to research in order to pierce its secrets, or you beseech the power of magical beings. Magic isn't supposed to just be given to you. Even the Bard works for his magic by traveling far and wide, mimicking the spells of those he encounters by singing and dancing their spells.

Getting your magic through practicing your will, that basically makes you a god. And since Sorceror is a class, that means you can just decide to have magic at anytime. Seriously, what's actually preventing you? Your resume can litterally say:"Through my service in the King's Guard, I trained hard enough to achieve the rank of Battlemaster. Then, one day, I decided I had magical powers."

In DnD, we play humans, elves, dwarves, half-orcs, tieflings, etc. And any of them can be anything. High Elves all have magic, but not equally. And that difference is explained by what they pursue as a profession.

The Wizard's magic comes from study, the Cleric's magic comes from the god he prays to and the Bard's magic is art, thus borrowed from the breakthroughs of Wizards and the revelations of Clerics alike. The Warlock makes a pact with a being capable of granting powers, similarly to the Cleric, but for the arcane.

But the Sorceror's magic, how exactly is it brought forth? He's not studying. He's not praying. He's not mimicking. He doesn't need to make pacts with shady magical beings. What does he actually do? And if he does nothing and it just occurs naturally to him, why does he have a d6 for health? He's not wasting away in a library like the Wizard to be so frail. In fact, if it just occurs naturally to him, what's preventing him from training hard to be as martially proficient as the Fighter?

I'm trying to figure out the Sorceror with what is actually written, but I can't. If only it was written that in order to become a Sorceror at level 2, it was specified you had to drink dragon blood or something, that would make sense. What if a sigil of power was carved onto your flesh and caused you horrible pains, but gave you magical powers? That would explain the d6 and even the Con save. But I'm making up things here.

[J.C.]

Sorcerers are really good, but they are hard to play. You have to know what you want ahead of time, so the class is for more experienced players. Getting enough value out of Metamagic to justify being a Sorcerer over a Wizard requires a high level of understanding of the underlying mechanics of the game.

[Amnestic]

The identity of DnD's magic is best represented by the Wizard and the Cleric. You either devote yourself to research in order to pierce its secrets, or you beseech the power of magical beings. Magic isn't supposed to just be given to you. Even the Bard works for his magic by traveling far and wide, mimicking the spells of those he encounters by singing and dancing their spells.

There are numerous magical creatures that have innate spellcasting. You are just, factually, incorrect in your assertion that magic isn't just something you can 'have'. Because dragons and nymphs and unicorns and couatl and so many more show otherwise.



Getting your magic through practicing your will, that basically makes you a god. And since Sorceror is a class, that means you can just decide to have magic at anytime. Seriously, what's actually preventing you?

Nothing, in the same way that nothing prevents you from suddenly becoming god's chosen one (cleric) or having studied for years in magic (wizard) or suddenly getting a bunch of skill proficiencies and expertise (rogue).



Your resume can litterally say:"Through my service in the King's Guard, I trained hard enough to achieve the rank of Battlemaster. Then, one day, I decided I had magical powers."

Sorcerer levels are represented by their inherent magical bloodline 'waking up'. The PHB describes a few situations how this might be triggered, but presumably your character would have their own situation, if you wanted to go Fighter/Sorc multiclass.

PHB99:

Some sorcerers can’t name the origin of their power, while others trace it to strange events in their own lives. The touch of a demon, the blessing of a dryad at a baby’s birth, or a taste of the water from a mysterious spring might spark the gift of sorcery.So too might the gift of a deity of magic, exposure to the elemental forces of the Inner Planes or the maddening chaos of Limbo, or a glimpse into the inner workings of reality



But the Sorceror's magic, how exactly is it brought forth?

Read the PHB entry on sorcerers and it tells you how.

[RedMage125]

While the wizards were studying their little hearts out at Adventuring University, and the fighters were sweating in the gym, the sorcerers were ditching class and smoking pot.

I frequently use a "Students taking a math test" analogy to explain Wizards/Sorcerers/Warlocks.

Wizards are the students who studied the material. They understand it, they can get the right answer and show their work.

Sorcerers just "get it". They're the brilliant, but lazy students who can look at a complex equation, write the correct answer, but seem stumped when asked to show their work.

Warlocks...they're cheaters. They made a back-alley deal to get the answers to the test (and/or they're sleeping with the teacher). They can regurgitate the answers they memorized, but have no idea why or how they're right. Or even if they're right.

[RSP]

I was asking the question in all earnestness. To add explanation, I'm a very straightforward person, and really don't chose to ask leading questions, or try to "trap" people into endorsing a position to only discredit it...

...D&D being a game, (no 1st level sorcerer is casting 9th level spells), but nothing stops the "in game character" from stating they "know what they are, and past, present and future are one". I think it could be a fun character.


Apology accepted, but I’m still curious how you concluded that was my argument (that 1st level characters should have 20th abilities). I thought I was being very particular with my statements (“at first level...”) and my quotes.

But the point stands: the Sorcerer (at 1st level) gets its abilities not through any training, but through an innate ability. The Wizard (at first level) must have spent years training. When the Wizard must have spent years dedicated to training (just to get to level 1), why do the two classes have essentially the same abilities and proficiencies?

The answer I was suggesting, is they shouldn’t: the Sorcerer should have some sort of skill, armor and/or weapon proficiencies to show for not having to do that in-game training for years. Or at least have something to show for it.

Though, again, I see this more as a failure to properly empower Backgrounds. Two Soldiers (the Background), who have trained together and fought together, learning the same stuff, decide to become adventurerers: one becomes a level 1 Fighter. The other, because of their bloodline, discovers they’re now a level 1 Sorcerer.

Skills shouldn’t be associated with the class you’ve just started your journey in, they should reflect how you got to that point (which, to me, is better reflected in what the game made as Backgrounds).

Sorry for a little bit of a rant, but to get back on thread, the Sorcerer should be its own class: however design flaws limited it to being a sub-par Wizard, most of the time. Had they better accounted for the characters they represent in the description fluff, they wouldn’t have this issue.

[Millstone85]

The answer I was suggesting, is they shouldn’t: the Sorcerer should have some sort of skill, armor and/or weapon proficiencies to show for not having to do that in-game training for years. Or at least have something to show for it.Indeed, the lore should be that "Unlike bookish wizards, warlocks sorcerers supplement their magic with some facility at hand-to-hand combat. They are comfortable in light armor and know how to use simple weapons".

[5eNeedsDarksun]

After numerous posts on a couple of threads from people who think that Wizards and Clerics 'earn' the right to cast spells, I have to ask why do you feel this way? I mean in past editions there was potentially level 0, training time, and a great deal of adventuring required to 'level up'. It seems to me that any character simply picks up a spell book or holy symbol (with the required ability score if it's a multi class) and starts casting in 5e.
I would hope some of this is role played at the table, but based or RAW, a character can be in the middle of a dungeon, earn some XP, and start being a Wizard or Priest.

[cookieface]

Indeed, the lore should be that "Unlike bookish wizards, warlocks sorcerers supplement their magic with some facility at hand-to-hand combat. They are comfortable in light armor and know how to use simple weapons".

I think something like this is good reason for Sorcerers to be CON based casters. They'd be so incredibly SAD that you could effectively almost MC without actually MCing (drop everything into CON right away, along with CON saving proficiency, and you have your HP, casting stat, and concentration stat all compiled into one). Then your second stat can be whatever you want.

Want to be super smart, Sherlock Holmes type who is an investigator and knows history perfectly? Pump INT.

Want to get into the thick of things in melee with some big weapons? Pump STR.

Want to be a charmer who can talk their way into and out of any situation? Pump CHA.

etc etc

Then this would be easy to tie into their Origin features as well. Draconic gets STR saving throw proficiency and some martial weapon proficiencies (and armor). Shadow gets DEX saving proficiency and some other bonuses related to that. Divine gets WIS, etc etc. Doesn't have to map perfectly onto current subclasses even, since this would rewrite the entire class.

And being purely CON-based balances their progression out a bit with other primary casters, since as it's been mentioned several times in this thread, they are basically just lackluster Wizards by mechanics.

[cookieface]

The Wizard's magic comes from study, the Cleric's magic comes from the god he prays to and the Bard's magic is art, thus borrowed from the breakthroughs of Wizards and the revelations of Clerics alike. The Warlock makes a pact with a being capable of granting powers, similarly to the Cleric, but for the arcane.

But the Sorceror's magic, how exactly is it brought forth? He's not studying. He's not praying. He's not mimicking. He doesn't need to make pacts with shady magical beings. What does he actually do? And if he does nothing and it just occurs naturally to him, why does he have a d6 for health? He's not wasting away in a library like the Wizard to be so frail. In fact, if it just occurs naturally to him, what's preventing him from training hard to be as martially proficient as the Fighter?

I think what you're discussing here is the insanity of MCing as a narrative tool. MCing into Cleric, for instance, is something that should only be allowed from a narrative standpoint in very specific cases. Someone doesn't wake up one day and suddenly have a magical divine connection.

Personally, MCing only really makes sense for a few of the classes. Warlock? Sure. Fighter? Yeah. Rogue? Okay. Pretty much every other class is predicated on being absolute masters of their craft, who have spent their lives working on their skills (or are sorcerers, who naturally have these abilities and therefore can't just manifest at level 7 or whatever).

[RSP]

Indeed, the lore should be that "Unlike bookish wizards, warlocks sorcerers supplement their magic with some facility at hand-to-hand combat. They are comfortable in light armor and know how to use simple weapons".

Ideally, I’d have it be something like

-Prof in Light Armor and Simple Weapons, and
-Choice of one of either Prof in Med Armor, 1 Skill, or Martial Weapons

This, to me, would better express that the Sorc had time on their hands to fill. Might need some fine tuning, but is the right direction, in my opinion.

[Sindal]

I looked at sorceror and what they offered.
I looked at wizard and what they offered.

I picked sorceror and am happy with the choice, because it offered me something I wanted narratively, thematicly and mechanically that the wizard didn't have even with all of its options (and wizards already have a lot of options)

Seems enough reason to me for it to exist.

[Eldariel]

I completely redesigned the Sorcerer in my world to make them not just a different flavor of Wizard.


Spells became abilities that could be used the appropriate times a day based on spell slots for that level.
Players chose a source or type of magic at level 1 (Fire Sorcerer, Transmuter Sorcerer, etc.).
Abilities (spells) were limited to only things that applied to the level 1 choice (fire spells, transmutation spells, etc.). This obviously made some choices better than others, but it allowed for some interesting NPCs.
Expanded the available abilities (spells) by adding from other lists or re-skinning current ones.
Dropped all verbal and material components so abilities look like abilities (no more "I am infused with innate magic... watch me cast a spell exactly as Wizards do!").
Metamagic remained as-is.

We had concerns about it being too restrictive, but the players ended up really enjoying the freedom to do magic like Carrie or Pinhead or Elsa or Dobby or whoever. It also made Wizards seem more like Wizards, so double win!

Do you happen to have the rules, spell lists, etc. somewhere? 'Cause I'd steal the hell out of that.

[Lokishade]

I once played an adaptation of Iron Man in a game of DnD. At that time, Artificer was only found in UA which we didn't use. I used a simple solution for my build.

I picked the Fighter at first level for proficiency with heavy armor and took the rest as Wizard, Abjurer (Arcane Ward's temp HP was the feature that felt the most like a magical suit of armor).

I fluffed the Wizard as getting his powers from a magic gemstone that blew up when he was near, embedding shards in his chest (that was the end of the campaign's intro and our entry to level two). Due to the magical energies they radiate, the shards are a hazard to my character's health, which is reflected by getting the lowest hit dice of the game from then on.

But these shards gave my Iron Man ersatz new powers. From then on, he would use his magic to craft magic items, refluffed as suit upgrades, and research spells to better draw out from his chest shards and understand how his new powers work.

My character was, narratively speaking, a Sorceror. But, mechanically, I preferred to remain a Wizard, because that class has a clear identity, which inspired WotC to write tons of subclasses to choose from. The Wizard also has a concrete in-game way of expanding his powers, something the Sorceror lacks.

Seriously, if the Sorceror disapeared from the roster, the Wizard would just pick up all his stuff, including his sorcerous origins, and be an even more versatile character both mechanically and narratively.

And it's more narratively compelling to be caught up in research to better understand the rocks inside you, vs. "I have these rocks inside me, now I have all the powers I want".

[ZRN]

Ideally, I’d have it be something like

-Prof in Light Armor and Simple Weapons, and
-Choice of one of either Prof in Med Armor, 1 Skill, or Martial Weapons

This, to me, would better express that the Sorc had time on their hands to fill. Might need some fine tuning, but is the right direction, in my opinion.

An alternate take is that the sorcerer does a different kind of training than a wizard, but it's still time-consuming and hard work to get better. (Think of basically any anime magic training montage.)

[ZRN]

But these shards gave my Iron Man ersatz new powers. From then on, he would use his magic to craft magic items, refluffed as suit upgrades, and research spells to better draw out from his chest shards and understand how his new powers work.

My character was, narratively speaking, a Sorceror. But, mechanically, I preferred to remain a Wizard, because that class has a clear identity, which inspired WotC to write tons of subclasses to choose from. The Wizard also has a concrete in-game way of expanding his powers, something the Sorceror lacks.


How is this mechanically closer to a wizard? It doesn't make sense for this character to do any of the stuff that differentiates a wizard (such as buying and memorizing spell scrolls, or changing spells prepared every day) without major refluffing, at which point, how is it not easier to just say he "better draws out from his chest shards" whenever he levels up and learns new spells? The sorcerer has the exact same "concrete in-game way of expanding his powers" as every other class in the game: he levels up and gains new abilities.

[PhoenixPhyre]

An alternate take is that the sorcerer does a different kind of training than a wizard, but it's still time-consuming and hard work to get better. (Think of basically any anime magic training montage.)

Exactly. Not all training is mental. For a sorcerer, the struggle is not to understand, but to control and empower. A sorcerer (in fiction) has all his known spells (for his entire career) baked into his "DNA"/soul/whatever. Whether at birth or otherwise is less important. Switching out spells is entirely a game-level ease-of-use thing. But until he's got the spell slots/experience/personal strength to use them, they're latent.

This is also how you can be a sorcerer-from-birth but not gain access to the spells until later, when you've unlocked the (personal and idiosyncratic) key to manipulating them.

Sorcerers can learn, they just can't be taught. They grow through personal character development. And this takes just as much effort as a wizard's bookishness, just different effort.


How is this mechanically closer to a wizard? It doesn't make sense for this character to do any of the stuff that differentiates a wizard (such as buying and memorizing spell scrolls, or changing spells prepared every day) without major refluffing, at which point, how is it not easier to just say he "better draws out from his chest shards" whenever he levels up and learns new spells? The sorcerer has the exact same "concrete in-game way of expanding his powers" as every other class in the game: he levels up and gains new abilities.

Personally, I like the Discworld approach. Sourcerers (ie sorcerers, those born with magic) are the ones who create new magic. Wizards are custodians and collators, but they can't actually make new magic except out of bits of the old stuff. So a sorcerer does <thing> and a wizard figures out how to replicate it. But the wizards rely on the sorcerers to come up with new ideas and new effects, since the search space is so large and so...hostile...that trying to brute force the combinations just doesn't work (or tends to blow up those that try).

Oh, and as a note, this forum frowns on double-posting.

[KorvinStarmast]

I frequently use a "Students taking a math test" analogy to explain Wizards/Sorcerers/Warlocks. I like how you present that. *cackle* :smallsmile:

Sorcerers can learn, they just can't be taught. They grow through personal character development. And this takes just as much effort as a wizard's bookishness, just different effort. They learn through trial and error. :smallwink: Oldest method of learning in the book. And some sorcerers, or would be sorcerers, die from that. Magic is dangerous.

All sorcerers are, to one extent or another, conceptually wild magic sorcerers. That basis, unfortunately, has been lost in (1) the mechanics, (2) the decision to link the class to notions of draconic blood (granted, the name of the game is Dungeons and Dragons, and Draconic language is by lore in 5e the oldest language in the world and the original language of magic), and (3) the "oops, we almost got that right" Wild Magic Sorcerer origin.

Shadow and Divine Soul are nicely complementary to each other, but neither of them personifies that 'trial by error' theme of, as you say, learning to control this weird power that is within the person from birth.

Granted, one way to mitigate the danger is for the potential sorcerer to have a mentor as they grow up. Perhaps all of the ones lacking a mentor died due to the power of magic, uncontrolled, creating situations where they simply died. Those who remain alive are PCs, who by default had a mentor or other guide to help them deal with these raging hormones chaotic/dangerous powers that erupt from within. (And that's a bit of X-Men, the first movie, thematically)

[Luccan]

Probably worth noting Sorcerers did get proficiency with all simple weapons in 3.5, not that it mattered much then or would matter much on its own here, given they don't have any abilities that synergize weapon attacks and spell casting.

[PhantomSoul]

Probably worth noting Sorcerers did get proficiency with all simple weapons in 3.5, not that it mattered much then or would matter much on its own here, given they don't have any abilities that synergize weapon attacks and spell casting.

yeah, it makes more sense without cantrips (mucking things up?)

[Luccan]

yeah, it makes more sense without cantrips (mucking things up?)

Honestly, I hope they can figure out how to balance out combat cantrips and weapons next edition. As is, there's no reason for most spellcasters to use weapons.

[Segev]

Honestly, I hope they can figure out how to balance out combat cantrips and weapons next edition. As is, there's no reason for most spellcasters to use weapons.

I'm pretty sure that's working as intended. Cantrips are supposed to be what casters use, because it lets casters feel like casters rather than weak fighters.

[RSP]

An alternate take is that the sorcerer does a different kind of training than a wizard, but it's still time-consuming and hard work to get better. (Think of basically any anime magic training montage.)

Sure, but thats an alternate take to the RAW fluff (which is all I was pointing out). And that take makes less sense compared to Bards: innate magic (Sorc) takes more time to learn and train than learned magic (Bards obviously have more time to learn more skill, weapon and armor proficiencies as they get those and similar spells and the same slots at level 1).

[RedMage125]

I like how you present that. *cackle* :smallsmile:
*bows* Happy to entertain


They learn through trial and error. :smallwink: Oldest method of learning in the book. And some sorcerers, or would be sorcerers, die from that. Magic is dangerous.
There's a thought. Sorcerers aren't any more uncommon than wizards. But so many do not survive the initial manifestation of their powers. And in a world with dragons, griffons, etc., someone disappearing without a trace is just brushed off as "monster must have got 'em".



All sorcerers are, to one extent or another, conceptually wild magic sorcerers. That basis, unfortunately, has been lost in (1) the mechanics, (2) the decision to link the class to notions of draconic blood (granted, the name of the game is Dungeons and Dragons, and Draconic language is by lore in 5e the oldest language in the world and the original language of magic), and (3) the "oops, we almost got that right" Wild Magic Sorcerer origin.

Shadow and Divine Soul are nicely complementary to each other, but neither of them personifies that 'trial by error' theme of, as you say, learning to control this weird power that is within the person from birth.
I, too use Draconic as "the language of [arcane] magic" in my world.

And as much as classic and traditional tropes and fluff are something I enjoy, I also like going outside the box, as well. Case in point, the only sorcerer I have ever played was an Eladrin Gold Dragon Sorcerer. Gold Dragons, as per the MM, start to have an effect on their environment. In my character's background, these environmental effects had begun to bleed over into the Feywild, and began affecting "him" when "he" was young. Thus, Dragon Magic Sorcerer. I don't think the power necessarily needs to be with the person from birth, so much as it is a power that is inside them now.

A character who was, by chance, too close to one of Evard's shadow magic experiments gone awry might have been exposed to blast of Shadow energy, making them a Shadow Magic Sorcerer (so...more Fantastic Four than X-men :smallwink:). A Divine Soul sorcerer could be someone who was "chosen" or gifted with their powers (the mechanics are entirely mutable with the fluff of a Celestial Warlock).



Granted, one way to mitigate the danger is for the potential sorcerer to have a mentor as they grow up. Perhaps all of the ones lacking a mentor died due to the power of magic, uncontrolled, creating situations where they simply died. Those who remain alive are PCs, who by default had a mentor or other guide to help them deal with these raging hormones chaotic/dangerous powers that erupt from within. (And that's a bit of X-Men, the first movie, thematically)

Have you read the OotS prequel book "Start of Evil"? Because this exact parallel happens with a young Xykon. A potential mentor (in a wheelchair) tries to recruit him to the "S-Men".

[Millstone85]

Sure, but thats an alternate take to the RAW fluff (which is all I was pointing out). And that take makes less sense compared to Bards: innate magic (Sorc) takes more time to learn and train than learned magic (Bards obviously have more time to learn more skill, weapon and armor proficiencies as they get those and similar spells and the same slots at level 1).Honestly, everything makes little sense when compared to bards:

How come the average warlock only found the time to train with simple weapons, as opposed to simple weapons and a handful of martial ones, when the warlock took a shortcut with their magic and the bard didn't?
Why are the ultra-studious wizards, including the necromancer who specializes in the energies of life and death, still unable to wrestle healing and resurrective spells from the gods, when some guy with a lute will totally bring you back to health or even life?
Why do rogues get so much competition from bards on the skill-monkey business, even before the latter start casting ability-enhancing spells?

Methinks it is actually bards who are unexplicably these masters of all trades.

[JoeJ]

Honestly, everything makes little sense when compared to bards:

How come the average warlock only found the time to train with simple weapons, as opposed to simple weapons and a handful of martial ones, when the warlock took a shortcut with their magic and the bard didn't?

Methinks it is actually bards who are unexplicably these masters of all trades.

Warlocks had plenty of time to develop those things; they just didn't do it. The reason they're warlocks at all is that they're lazy. If they were willing to work for what they wanted, they wouldn't be making ethically gray (at best) deals with eldritch entities.

[Tanarii]

Warlocks had plenty of time to develop those things; they just didn't do it. The reason they're warlocks at all is that they're lazy. If they were willing to work for what they wanted, they wouldn't be making ethically gray (at best) deals with eldritch entities.
That doesn't fit the PHB lore at all. They're delvers into ancient secrets, and once they find some, they're driven to go out and seek more actively (becoming adventurers). They're no more lazy than you're average Wizard or Fighter, and certainly less so than your average Cleric.

[KorvinStarmast]

Have you read the OotS prequel book "Start of Evil"? Because this exact parallel happens with a young Xykon. A potential mentor (in a wheelchair) tries to recruit him to the "S-Men". I have indeed read Start of Darkness.
Not one of the better volumes, to my taste; the S Men parody was worth about half of a laugh. One of the best lines in that book was in the cafe when Xykon, pre Lich, discussed the difference between a good cup of coffee and a bad one. His later difficulty with coffee was an appropriate comeuppance.
(I am a many year coffee addict, so that bit really scored well with me).


Why are the ultra-studious wizards, including the necromancer who specializes in the energies of life and death, still unable to wrestle healing and resurrective spells from the gods, when some guy with a lute will totally bring you back to health or even life? All bards went to college. That is the only class where that is specified. :smallwink:
One of the best things we learn in college is (1) how to do research (heh, steel magic secrets by doing research) and (2) we learn how to learn, as well as how to do both anaylsis and synthesis and (3) we learn how to learn new things without a teacher leading us by the nose by using a systemic approach. (Well in theory, you will graduate from college that in your tool kit. If you didn't, whomever was setting up and guiding you through your course of study short changed you :smallfurious: ).

That doesn't fit the PHB lore at all. They're delvers into ancient secrets, and once they find some, they're driven to go out and seek more actively (becoming adventurers). They're no more lazy than you're average Wizard or Fighter, and certainly less so than your average Cleric. Amen. Warlock are magical entrepeneurs, I think, in terms of being "self starters" as a personality type.

[RSP]

Honestly, everything makes little sense when compared to bards:

How come the average warlock only found the time to train with simple weapons, as opposed to simple weapons and a handful of martial ones, when the warlock took a shortcut with their magic and the bard didn't?
Why are the ultra-studious wizards, including the necromancer who specializes in the energies of life and death, still unable to wrestle healing and resurrective spells from the gods, when some guy with a lute will totally bring you back to health or even life?
Why do rogues get so much competition from bards on the skill-monkey business, even before the latter start casting ability-enhancing spells?

Methinks it is actually bards who are unexplicably these masters of all trades.

Rogues study combat more than Bards (as shown in being able to make much deadlier strikes than any other class).

I imagine, in the fluff-to-mechanics, Bards get quite a bit more than they should, though, they’re also not horribly well defined in terms of what it takes to become a Bard. Here’s what I see in their fluff:

“Discovering the magic hidden in music requires hard study and some measure of natural talent that most troubadours and jongleurs lack.”

Not sure where “hard study” falls on the spectrum of “innate” and “years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study”, but obviously it left plenty of room to learn skills, armor and weapon proficiencies. And, obviously, Sorcerers should have more proficiencies than they do, if going by the fluff.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Rogues study combat more than Bards (as shown in being able to make much deadlier strikes than any other class).

I imagine, in the fluff-to-mechanics, Bards get quite a bit more than they should, though, they’re also not horribly well defined in terms of what it takes to become a Bard. Here’s what I see in their fluff:

“Discovering the magic hidden in music requires hard study and some measure of natural talent that most troubadours and jongleurs lack.”

Not sure where “hard study” falls on the spectrum of “innate” and “years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study”, but obviously it left plenty of room to learn skills, armor and weapon proficiencies. And, obviously, Sorcerers should have more proficiencies than they do, if going by the fluff.

My headcanon around all of this is twofold--

1. Bards aren't really arcane casters anymore in 5e. Instead, they're a completely separate style (working term: harmonic magic). Hence why bards can heal, but "regular" arcane lists don't get healing spells (the exception being Divine Soul sorcerers who get it from their subclass, but the thematics there are obvious).

2. Progressing arcane spellcasting "directly"[1] inherently has certain opportunity costs. Specifically, resources that could go into physical things like training for proficiencies (ie weapons, armor, skills), increasing durability (ie HD), etc. all instead have to go into opening spell slots and building the "arcane" side of the soul. That is, the physical and the arcane compete for resources. Divine and harmonic spellcasting don't have these costs, generally reverting you to the "standard" HD, etc.

So the penalty for having full arcane casting on your own merits is a weakened body and fewer proficiencies. This, not "lack of time" or any other reason, is why Sorcerers don't get more proficiencies.[2]

Total headcanon, but it works for me.

[1] Warlocks don't get their arcane spellcasting honestly--it comes from someone else. So that's why they get armor and bigger HD. And artificers trade more physical for less arcane casting.

[2] Outside of the whole game-centric/game-balance reason-set.

[JoeJ]

Rogues study combat more than Bards (as shown in being able to make much deadlier strikes than any other class).

I imagine, in the fluff-to-mechanics, Bards get quite a bit more than they should, though, they’re also not horribly well defined in terms of what it takes to become a Bard. Here’s what I see in their fluff:

“Discovering the magic hidden in music requires hard study and some measure of natural talent that most troubadours and jongleurs lack.”

Not sure where “hard study” falls on the spectrum of “innate” and “years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study”, but obviously it left plenty of room to learn skills, armor and weapon proficiencies. And, obviously, Sorcerers should have more proficiencies than they do, if going by the fluff.

The way I interpret it is that classes don't exist in the world; they are purely player-facing. As far as the characters know, there is no general rule about how many proficiencies a "sorcerer" can have, or what those proficiencies can be; the character is just proficient in whatever they've managed to pick up during their life so far. The reason why a character didn't, for example, learn to wield a halberd, or pick locks, or wear heavy armor, or cast Guidance is some unique combination of circumstances, interest, and individual apptitude. The player can decide (if they care to) the details.

[Lokishade]

Honestly, everything makes little sense when compared to bards:

How come the average warlock only found the time to train with simple weapons, as opposed to simple weapons and a handful of martial ones, when the warlock took a shortcut with their magic and the bard didn't?
Why are the ultra-studious wizards, including the necromancer who specializes in the energies of life and death, still unable to wrestle healing and resurrective spells from the gods, when some guy with a lute will totally bring you back to health or even life?
Why do rogues get so much competition from bards on the skill-monkey business, even before the latter start casting ability-enhancing spells?

Methinks it is actually bards who are unexplicably these masters of all trades.



I figure that, while the Bard studies his magic intently, he's a copycat at heart. It's less the raw forces of the universe he studies and more the caster themselves. He adapts the magic he witnesses into song and dance. Going by that logic, Bards shouldn't be the ones to invent new spells in a setting.

As for Warlocks not having access to more weapons... I think the class could do with a few tweaks. I believe they should be as well equipped as Clerics, since the way they acquire magic is essentially the same.

As for competing with Rogues... well, it's true that Bards are a little silly in 5e.

[Tanarii]

Honestly, everything makes little sense when compared to bards:
True dat. Sorcerers could go because they're mostly just known spell Wizard clones that use Cha. They're not really mechanically differentiated enough to matter.

But Bards just don't make any sense thematically. They kinda sorta did as a Fighter->Thief->Druid PrC, where they studied with the Druids and became Celtic-Druid-loremasters. But ever since 2e they've been on a down hill slide thematically, cumulating in becoming full casters in 5e. At least the initial subclasses of skald and Druidic lore master had some of the old thematic sense to them. Unfortunately per the PHB they're still troubadours at heart, who have somehow become expert arcane casters due to music.

[Lokishade]

Not sure where “hard study” falls on the spectrum of “innate” and “years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study”, but obviously it left plenty of room to learn skills, armor and weapon proficiencies. And, obviously, Sorcerers should have more proficiencies than they do, if going by the fluff.

This is my feeling about Sorceror. If they don't put effort into magic that comes to them naturally, they SHOULD have time and energy to invest in defending themselves. Their martial proficiencies should be on-par with the Cleric.

Conversely, I you're really adamant about giving the Sorceror the same stats as the Wizard, make the magic come at a price. Dragon blood is poisonous to anything that is not a full dragon (making the half-dragon races short-lived), leaving you frail and sick, but able to wield the arcane like a natural ability. The lightning bolt that struck you did a number on your health, but hey! Magic! In older editions, it was clearly stated that nobody enchanted themselves with Permanency, because it would drive them insane. There's precedent, magic SHOULD have consequences and it should inspire game mechanics if you make a class out of it.

There should be ways to fluff this type of magic. As wizards quest for books and scrolls, Sorcerors should quest for things like dragon blood, fey dust, magic rocks, etc. Whatever is thematically appropriate to their flavor of powers goes. And there should be unique mechanics to it.

[RSP]

The more I think about it, if Wizards really are that intelligent, they’d ditch the years of apprenticeship and studying, and just be Lore Bards, which essentially gives them a lot more free time with roughly the same magic ability. Plus, playing for a room is better than paying for inks.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The more I think about it, if Wizards really are that intelligent, they’d ditch the years of apprenticeship and studying, and just be Lore Bards, which essentially gives them a lot more free time with roughly the same magic ability. Plus, playing for a room is better than paying for inks.

That takes charisma. And wizards are nerds. :smallbiggrin:

[Dork_Forge]

True dat. Sorcerers could go because they're mostly just known spell Wizard clones that use Cha. They're not really mechanically differentiated enough to matter.


Not mechanically differentiated enough to matter?

-Different casting stat (with the associated knock on effects)

-Different method of building a spells list

-Extra cantrip

-Flexible casting

-Metamagic

-Different subclass structure

They're quite a bit different, if anything this is on the Wizard for being so bland rather than the Sorcerer not being different. As shown above the Sorcerer has quite a bit of difference from the Wizard as well as a unique class identity. The Wizard's identity is 'I know a lot of spells' which isn't much of an identity to begin with.

I'd make a couple of tweaks to the Sorcerer for QoL, but imo the Wizard was a big misstep. Cut out Arcane Recovery, cut their default number of spells down and then give them actual class abilities. As it stands they're overtuned and overly bland and I don't understand why the thread's question is so oftenly applied to Sorcerers and not Wizards (besides them being grandfathered in).


Oh and Sorcerers get an extra dagger!

[Tanarii]

I'd make a couple of tweaks to the Sorcerer for QoL, but imo the Wizard was a big misstep. Cut out Arcane Recovery, cut their default number of spells down and then give them actual class abilities. As it stands they're overtuned and overly bland and I don't understand why the thread's question is so oftenly applied to Sorcerers and not Wizards (besides them being grandfathered in).Whichever's clever. But given that 5e was all about keeping the grognards, if it had been a choice between one or the other I'm pretty sure Sorc would have gone.

As I understand it, it barely made the cut, and without a lot of play testing to fully bake it. OTOH that could just be internet groupthink I've absorbed along the way.



Oh and Sorcerers get an extra dagger!Say no more, I'm sold! :smallamused:

[RedMage125]

My headcanon around all of this is twofold--

1. Bards aren't really arcane casters anymore in 5e. Instead, they're a completely separate style (working term: harmonic magic). Hence why bards can heal, but "regular" arcane lists don't get healing spells (the exception being Divine Soul sorcerers who get it from their subclass, but the thematics there are obvious).
Remember that "Theory of Magic" thread awhile back? The one where you called Paladin spellcasting "out-stubborn the universe"?

I covered bards in the same thread where I used the "math test" example for Wizard/Sorcerer/Warlock.

Bard magic is different from Sorcerer or Warlock magic drastically. Bards tap into the Echoes Of Creation, the lingering effects of the sounds of the world, and magic itself, being formed. Some Bards claim it was "sung" into existence, others perceive these echoes as the tones that the creation created, like the high-pitched ping of a drop of water striking a pond in a cave. At any rate, it is these echoes that Bards learn to tap in to, attune to, and replicate to a degree. The Seeker of the Song Prestige class in 3.5e was a great example of this, as they learn to more precisely replicate the actual forces and energies of that creation, instead of using those echoes to create distinct spell effects. These echoes are still dependent on "the Weave" (as Forgotten Realms terms it, in any other setting this would just be the flow of magic throughout the multiverse) in order to bring the effect into existence.


[1] Warlocks don't get their arcane spellcasting honestly--it comes from someone else.
I refer back to the "cherated on the math test" example, lol.



There should be ways to fluff this type of magic. As wizards quest for books and scrolls, Sorcerors should quest for things like dragon blood, fey dust, magic rocks, etc. Whatever is thematically appropriate to their flavor of powers goes. And there should be unique mechanics to it.

This kind of reminds me of Lilith using Eridium to boost her siren powers in Borderlands 2.

[Lokishade]

This kind of reminds me of Lilith using Eridium to boost her siren powers in Borderlands 2.

This! How cool would it be if something like that was hard-coded in DnD 5e? Balanced as a nice risk vs reward mechanism?

[RedMage125]

This! How cool would it be if something like that was hard-coded in DnD 5e? Balanced as a nice risk vs reward mechanism?

Sadly, I think that's too close a parallel to drug use for inclusion in D&D.

[Dienekes]

This! How cool would it be if something like that was hard-coded in DnD 5e? Balanced as a nice risk vs reward mechanism?

I mean the mechanism of going on an adventure to find something to boost your strength already exists in the game as your normal everyday loot. If you want to fluff some Sorcerer specific stuff like that for your players it could work. It's no different than Wizards getting their spells off corpses.

[Catullus64]

But ever since 2e they've been on a down hill slide thematically, cumulating in becoming full casters in 5e. At least the initial subclasses of skald and Druidic lore master had some of the old thematic sense to them. Unfortunately per the PHB they're still troubadours at heart, who have somehow become expert arcane casters due to music.

Culminating means reaching the highest point. If something's on a downhill slide, it can't culminate. :smallbiggrin:

More seriously, I think the Bard hit its thematic sweet spot in 2e-3.5e, when the text framed spellcasting as just another one of the many diverse things bards pick up from a life of wandering minstrelsy, just like armor proficiencies and thieving skills. (That only works if they're not full casters, though.)

[Democratus]

Culminating means reaching the highest point. If something's on a downhill slide, it can't culminate. :smallbiggrin:


Culminate means to reach a conclusion or end. :smallcool:

[KorvinStarmast]

But given that 5e was all about keeping the grognards
Or luring us back

As I understand it, it barely made the cut
Too bad it wasn't cut. :smallfurious: I will now don my adamantine armor and try to deflect all of the inbound missile fire from those who love sorcerers. Look, I loved my Shadow Sorcerer. But I could have lived without him.

[Tanarii]

Culminating means reaching the highest point. If something's on a downhill slide, it can't culminate. :smallbiggrin:


Culminate means to reach a conclusion or end. :smallcool:

Cumulate. Not culminate. As in "ending up with a heap (of properties)"

[NovenFromTheSun]

Thinking about the question f what sorcerers do with all the time not studying magic has put me on the side of reimagining them as the gish class.

[Amechra]

Cumulate. Not culminate. As in "ending up with a heap (of properties)"

"Cumulate" is really rare in general use, and "culminating in" could replace "cumulating in" in that sentence in a way that a) still makes a coherent sentence and b) uses a phrase that far more people are familiar with. So it's not surprising that you had two people correct your "typo".

This is one of those times when a broad vocabulary actually hindered clear communication, and where you probably should've picked another way to phrase that. :smalltongue: