Variant Rule: How Sorcerers learn spells......

Stop me if you've heard this one before......It suddenly occurred to me that to better illustrate the whole thing about a Sorcerer's magic coming from "within" and how he doesn't use spell books and all that, well, what if he needs to EXPERIENCE a spell before learning it? For instance: A Sorcerer's at the appropriate level with which to learn the *Web* spell, but has no books or scrolls or anything of that nature. So what's he do? He finds somebody who he's relatively sure has this spell and proceeds to get that being to cast the spell on him! How he does this, I don't know. However, I think it would simulate well the "inner magic" aspect of the Sorcerer. In other words, once Web has been cast on the Sorcerer, he now knows what the Web spell "feels" like and thus, can cast it later on after meditating a bit on the whole experience of having been the recipient of a Web spell.

Further, this would help to justify why the Sorcerer gets a d6 for HP rather than the d4 as Wizards do. It's because the Sorcerer spends much of his time pissing off other spellcasters and having spells cast on him. He needs the extra HP to keep him alive in the process of "experiencing" new spells, and thus learning them!

Opinions?

Quality role-playing tool. I like it a lot, a whole lot. One question though - does that mean sorcerers can learn unlimited spells? That would be unbalancing. To make it even more interesting you could restrict the class that casted the spell on the sorcerer just to sorcerer and bard, or make sure it wasn't from a scroll. As long as your characters aren't munchkin then it sounds like a lot of fun.

"too bad i made the save, i really wanted to get hit by that disintegration ray!"

I don't like it very much
How could you get Detect Magic? Or Light?
or the Spells with a range of : personal?
It's a fine variant for some spells though

Observing and "feeling" the use of the Weave of magic should be enough. Not necessary for the spell to be cast upon the Sorcerer. Just so that they see it in action (i'd say in real battle not just cast to show, but I'd allow Mage Duels to count). Sorry, I run primarily in the Realms where there is a weave and rules for Mage Duels.

Geez, instead of editing a double post down to inane dribble, we should really be allowed to delete them!

Matafuego said:

I don't like it very much
How could you get Detect Magic? Or Light?
or the Spells with a range of : personal?
It's a fine variant for some spells though

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Dunno. Obviously, there's a few bugs to work out, but I wasn't in the "bug working out" mood while coming up with the idea! Perhaps very low level Sorcerers HAVE to adventure with higher level Sorcerers and Wizards and Bards in order to experience their magic and learn from it. Maybe if the low level Sorcerers are respecful enough of the higher level spellcasters, the latter will look favorably upon the former and cast *light* or *darkness* or *magic-missile* on them. LoL!

micr0c0sm said:

Quality role-playing tool. I like it a lot, a whole lot. One question though - does that mean sorcerers can learn unlimited spells? That would be unbalancing. To make it even more interesting you could restrict the class that casted the spell on the sorcerer just to sorcerer and bard, or make sure it wasn't from a scroll. As long as your characters aren't munchkin then it sounds like a lot of fun.

"too bad i made the save, i really wanted to get hit by that disintegration ray!"

Click to expand...

Unlimited spells? No. There probably would be a set limit per level & modified by Charisma on how many spells a Sorcerer would be allowed to know at any given time.

Tuzenbach said:

Dunno. Obviously, there's a few bugs to work out, but I wasn't in the "bug working out" mood while coming up with the idea! Perhaps very low level Sorcerers HAVE to adventure with higher level Sorcerers and Wizards and Bards in order to experience their magic and learn from it. Maybe if the low level Sorcerers are respecful enough of the higher level spellcasters, the latter will look favorably upon the former and cast *light* or *darkness* or *magic-missile* on them. LoL!

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Ah! And from this exercise we derive the concept & terminology behind the "Sorcerer's Apprentice"!

;~D

Liquidsabre said:

Observing and "feeling" the use of the Weave of magic should be enough. Not necessary for the spell to be cast upon the Sorcerer. Just so that they see it in action (i'd say in real battle not just cast to show, but I'd allow Mage Duels to count). Sorry, I run primarily in the Realms where there is a weave and rules for Mage Duels.

Click to expand...

I've no idea what "weave" magic is, but how about this? If a spell is cast upon a Sorcerer he's 80% likely to learn it from the experience. In instances where it's impratical to learn a spell from "feeling" it, he can try to learn the spell from "seeing" or observing it in action. In this case, the Sorcerer has a chance to learn it equal to his charisma + his level or whatever.

"Learning" a spell equates to successfully casting the spell. Thus, if a Sorcerer wants to learn *magic missile* (and has been struck by one in the past), he attempts to cast it. Failure means that one spell slot has been used up for that day. Success means that he's learned the spell. Of course, since it's impractical to learn a spell in combat, this may make things even more interesting for the Sorcerer.

Perhaps every failed attempt at casting a spell grants an improved percentage on all further attempts at learning it? I'm thinking yes.........

OK. I want to thank you three dudes for participating with the whole "feedback" thing for my idea. Much abliged!