Sorcerer Spells Known <PEACH>

[dragonfan6490]

Howdy fellow Playgrounders,

So I'm a fan of Sorcerers. I know that Wizards are unequivocally better, but something about being able to cast spontaneously appeals to me. Now I'm sure that some of you, like me, find that you're a little restricted with the current way that a Sorcerer learns their spells and that the number of spells you know is a little skimpy. Well, I hope that I've solved that, drawing from the inspiration of how a Wizard learns their spells, I've done the same for Sorcerers, Bards, and any other spontaneous caster. Presenting, the new method for learning spells:

A sorcerer’s selection of spells is extremely limited. A sorcerer begins play knowing five 0-level spells and three 1st-level spells of your choice. At each new sorcerer level, he learns three new spells of any level the Sorcerer is capable of casting. (Unlike spells per day, the number of spells a sorcerer knows is not affected by his Charisma score) These new spells can be common spells chosen from the sorcerer/wizard spell list, or they can be unusual spells that the sorcerer has gained some understanding. Unusual spells must be approved of by the DM.

tl;dr: Sorcerers have more spells known that a basic Wizard without access to scrolls or enemy spellbooks, but not as many as a Wizard with the Collegiate Wizard feat.

So, what does the playground think? Please evaluate and critique honestly

[Jack_Simth]

Quite the upgrade.

At three per character level, spells known could look something like:

{table=head]Level|0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9
1|5|3
2|5|6
3|5|9
4|5|9|3
5|5|9|6
6|5|9|6|3
7|5|9|6|6|
8|5|9|6|6|3
9|5|9|6|6|6|
10|5|9|6|6|6|3
11|5|9|6|6|6|6
12|5|9|6|6|6|6|3
13|5|9|6|6|6|6|6|
14|5|9|6|6|6|6|6|3
15|5|9|6|6|6|6|6|6|
16|5|9|6|6|6|6|6|6|3
17|5|9|6|6|6|6|6|6|6
18|5|9|6|6|6|6|6|6|6|3
19|5|9|6|6|6|6|6|6|6|6
20|5|9|6|6|6|6|6|6|6|9[/table]

With all the splatbooks out there, that's probably a lot more flexibility than you want on one character at one time.

[bloodtide]

Most people play a sorcerer for the limited spells. They want to concentrate on just a couple effects.


Would your method toss out table 3-17 in the PH?


A sorcerer can know three spells of any level they can cast? What is to stop the sorcerer from simply picking the highest level spells possible?

How does access to more spells 'fix' a sorcerer?

[Jack_Simth]

A sorcerer can know three spells of any level they can cast? What is to stop the sorcerer from simply picking the highest level spells possible?

That's generally how Wizards do it when picking spells at level up.

How does access to more spells 'fix' a sorcerer?

Well, it's a power boost. Doesn't quite get them to Tier-1, but comes close. If you consider the Wizard to be the target balance point, then this boost 'fixes' the Sorcerer a bit.

[dragonfan6490]

This method does toss out table 3-17. And there is absolutely nothing stopping someone from picking only spells from their highest level possible, except for a sense of decency and picking spells that fit the character concept.

What this does is increase the versatility of a Sorcerer, making them either great generalists or giving them the ability to know virtually every spell of a single school if they want to be a specialist. I'm trying to bring the Sorcerer up to the power of the Wizard, without taking too much of the Wizard's things, but such things are always difficult when dealing with classes that fill the same niche. And yes, a Sorcerer will be more versatile than a Wizard on any given day, but with planning/foresight/scrying, a Wizard will still outshine a Sorcerer, just as they always have.

I've noticed in my tenure on the board, people have asked "how do I get more spells known for my Sorcerer?" This is sort of a response to that.

Thank you both for your critiques, I'm just providing some reasoning as to why I made this change. I take everything into consideration and hope to have more critiques before this falls to the second or third page.

[Jack_Simth]

What this does is increase the versatility of a Sorcerer, making them either great generalists or giving them the ability to know virtually every spell of a single school if they want to be a specialist. I'm trying to bring the Sorcerer up to the power of the Wizard, without taking too much of the Wizard's things, but such things are always difficult when dealing with classes that fill the same niche. And yes, a Sorcerer will be more versatile than a Wizard on any given day, but with planning/foresight/scrying, a Wizard will still outshine a Sorcerer, just as they always have.

In a combat round, a standard Sorcerer-6 that has two decent metamagic feats usually has more options for the round than does the Wizard-6 with three decent metamagic feats - because the Sorcerer can do metamagic on the fly, while the Wizard has to prepare it in advance (note: There's ways around this, but there's similar methods for a Sorcerer to pick up more options, so that's a wash. Besides - we're looking at the default state, here).

So this Wizard has a fixed number of options for a combat round after he prepares his spells in the morning. The Sorcerer can cast his 3rd level spell, either of his 2nd level spells, or one of his four 1st level spells (we'll ignore Cantrips, for now). He can also metamagic his 2nd level spells, or even his 1st level spells. With two metamagic feats (say, a +1 and a +2), that's as many as 17 options. The Wizard (we'll assume a generalist, for the moment) has 3 3rd level spells, 4 2nd level spells, and 4 1st level spells: 11 options (less if the Wizard prepared multiple copies of a given spell, more if the Wizard is a specialist).

If the Wizard actually casts one of his spells, his options go down. The first spell he cast removes one of his options, so he's down to 10. The next spell removes another, and so on. If the Wizard casts a long-duration spell before heading into the dungeon (Mage Armor, say), at the first encounter, he's only got ten options of things to do. The Sorcerer? Options aren't really changed after casting a spell - at least, not until the Sorcerer runs out of the top-tier spell slots. On the 3rd encounter of the day, the Sorcerer is pretty much exactly as effective as on the 1st encounter of the day. The Wizard, not so much.

Now, the Wizard makes up for this by being able to change out his 11 options from day to day (within limits).

This boost, though...

One of the things you find with prepared casters is that they end up with a generic list of prepared spells. Sure, it changes a little from day to day, but not by all that much. A reasonably well-built Sorcerer will usually end up with spells known that looks suspiciously like a Wizard's 'not sure what I'm facing today' generic spells prepared list. And the Wizard will usually have something very close to the same list every day, with a few specialty spells that end up on scrolls, or unused, most of the time.

With this boost to the Sorcerer, the Sorcerer can have the Wizard's generic spells prepared list as spells known, and have room for many of the lesser-used spells that a Wizard will want to pick up, and still keep the per-round option advantage.

[22Charisma]

So, I kinda love sorcerors too and have always been thinking of ways to add more spells to them. But I think that maybe it's adding too many spells?

I always thought it'd be cool to do that with some sort of (*GASP*)class feature (ON A SORCERER!?). Like I was toying with the idea of:

Blood Memory
When the sorcerer reaches 3rd level and every three levels after it he remembers a spell (two spells?) an ancestor before him had favored so much, it's essence became incorporated into his blood. He rolls a (2?)d10. The sorcerer may learn one spell of a school up to the highest spell slot known as dictated by the die roll (1-Abjur 2-Conj... 8-Trans[1-8 universal spells cannot be learned]) on a roll of 9 they may learn a spell of any school (including universal) on a 10 they re-roll.

This spell may be swapped out at 4th level and every even level after it as with other sorcerer spells.

I don't know if it should be one or two. With one it seems like only 6 additional spells isn't that much, but with 2 it would make it 12 and that seems like too much.

Also, it adds flavor, but if you don't like it, you can just tade it away at the next even level.

[Fizban]

I think you're on the right track, but you went overboard. If you had 2 spells known per level, it would be just fine. This is the same number used by the Psion, the psionic equivalent of the sorcerer (Wilders don't count, and Erudites are the psionic wizard). If you write up the table like Jack_Smith did for 2 spells at each level, you get something pretty close to the existing table, with a few less at lower levels and a few more at higher.

Basically, the only difference between the sorcerer's spells known table and getting a flat 2 spells known at each level is that the table forces you to choose some of your spells known from lower level spells than you have available at the time. Which is a completely bogus restriction. However, you're proposing more spells than the psion gets, which is also a bad idea. Since sorcerers can use metamagic spontaneously to give them "augment" options, the only difference between an psion and a sorcerer using the same spells known progression is that the sorcerers don't get bonus feats to pay for their metamagic. And the stupid delayed access to higher level spells.

Still, a lot of people don't want to change stuff in the core books, even as simply as adding bonus feats or changing a table. So, the only way to get more spells would be to pay for it (out of your smaller starting budget of feats compared to a wizard). If there's one thing I like about Pathfinder, it's that they fixed the Extra Spell feat: in Pathfinder, it grants you either one spells of your highest level available, or two spells of any level lower than that. If you got those kind of returns on the core spells known list when it forced lower level choices, I don't think anyone would be complaining. If you can get your DM to allow Pathfinder feats (probably by expounding greatly on how everyone thinks it's so much more balanced), then that should do you just fine for extra spells. Maybe I should go write that up and see...

Another feat I read about in a third party book was kind of interesting: it let you pay hit points to learn new spells. I think this would make for a great main class feature: up the hit die to d6 or d8, then after a certain level they can pay hp to learn new spells, at a 1hp/1 spell level rate. Both adjustments are permanent. It gives a really solid connection between the frail old magician that knows everything but gets knocked over by a stiff wind, and the strong magical warrior who knows very few effects but can take a lot of punishment. And it lets you turn Improved Toughness into a number of new spells known. I don't think anyone can argue that permanently sacrificing hit points isn't a significant cost either (well of course they can, but if they're going that far then we're just ignoring them).