SR Sorcerer?

[CapnWildefyr]

Off and on, I've read forum-goers thinking that sorcerer can be good, but... and there is always at least one major complaint. And, to me, a sorcerer is a mostly a CH-based wizard. There are differences, but the differences feel like they fall short of being cool enough to make a different class. I feel like sorcerers should be almost opposites of wizards in some ways. Then someone posited "Why aren't sorcerers and warlocks both SR-based?" That got me thinking.

What I ended up with is in the following link. I tried hard to really make a differentiation here, to provide new features that are not something someone else has AND which are useful WITHOUT being game-shattering. I looked at what makes a wizard a wizard, and what could be different, instead. I also tried very hard to maintain balance and to keep it simple and easy - not too much to write down or remember in the middle of combat. What this proposal really needs now is brave souls to playtest...

The crux of the changes are to go all-in with sorcerers being seat-of-the-pants casters. Improv artists instead of method actors. They use spell points all the time, but a more open version for truly flexible casting. They still use SP's for metamagic, and they still can chew through them like candy. I wanted sorcerers to be able to burn very bright but very quickly... and then burn out, as opposed to wizards who are in for a longer haul as LR-based casters. Why saddle a sorcerer with a spellcasting focus -- just like wizards? Why can't they BE the focus, if their casting is innate? And so on. (And all the while, hopefully not creating an over-powered mess.)

I listed my design goals at the end, along with some features/rules that can be tweaked either way to reduce/expand sorcerers' powers. I think it's very important to maintain balance, but without playtesting from different points of view... can't tell if I succeeded. The big adds are an ability to replicate magic spells, even if unknown, and an ability to absorb some magical spell energy to reuse it. I tried to keep the overall spellcasting power (defined as number of spell levels available per day) on par with wizards.

Anyway, if you have the time to check this out, and better yet, TEST it out, thanks in advance!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/olf823y3j56k1q7/sorcerer-redo.odt?dl=0

[Maat Mons]

Historically, the Sorcerer class came about by basically asking "What if Wizard, but without having to decide at the start of the day how many times you're going to cast each spell?"

If deciding at the start of the day how many times you're going to cast each spell sounds unfamiliar, it's because 5th edition got rid of that for everyone, Wizards included. So, basically, the entire concept that motivated the creation of the Sorcerer class became the norm for all classes. This means the class' one unique niche stopped existing, but for some reason, the class remained.

As an aside, 3.5 followed this up by (re)creating Psion, which was basically "What if Sorcerer, but using spell points, and you don't need a focus." So in a way, your version of the Sorcerer could be viewed as an update of the 3.5 Psion to 5e.