D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

WoW's weird priests are a factor of them wanting to have a single priest class that wildly different races could play, even though, in the lore, the core priest abilities causes undead characters physical pain to use. They toyed with making the shadow priest the undead-only priest class, but didn't like having multiple versions of priests to juggle and balance and then lumped them all together in a single class with specializations.

In 5E, we'd represent Discipline, Holy and Shadow as different subclasses, each with their own large bonus spell lists, rather than having them all lumped together. This is one of the times where making something 5E would actually be better, in some ways, than how the original videogame handles it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Speak for yourself. Before I found my abiding love of Paladins (and before dragonborn were officially a thing), NG half-elf sorcerer was my go-to character. Magic-in-the-blood is an awesome archetypal concept with literally thousands of years of precedent.

Medea the Cosmic Sorcerer says "hello."

It would be far harder to come up with wizard antecedents than sorcerers, in myth, legend and fiction. Even Harry Potter, who casts spells without any kind of training or control, and whose powers are tied to his bloodline, is probably a sorcerer, as is the rest of the "Wizarding World."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Speak for yourself. Before I found my abiding love of Paladins (and before dragonborn were officially a thing), NG half-elf sorcerer was my go-to character. Magic-in-the-blood is an awesome archetypal concept with literally thousands of years of precedent.

Medea the Cosmic Sorcerer says "hello."

It is cool concept, it just has never been mechanically distinct. Like I have said many times, current warlock mechanics emulate the sorcerer concept better than the sorcerer ones do. And as it seems it was just born out of a desire to have class a bit like wizard for non-conceptual reasons, it is understandable it has not become distinct as the designers themselves lacked passion for the concept.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is cool concept, it just has never been mechanically distinct. Like I have said many times, current warlock mechanics emulate the sorcerer concept better than the sorcerer ones do. And as it seems it was just born out of a desire to have class a bit like wizard for non-conceptual reasons, it is understandable it has not become distinct as the designers themselves lacked passion for the concept.

Well. Other than the 5e playtest sorcerer and the 4e sorcerer. The latter was quite solid mechanically, and produced the only truly simple spellcaster D&D has ever had, the Elementalist: pick your element, start blasting. No build planning, no frills, no "which options do I take." Just pick an element and unleash.

And the former was one of the coolest goddamn class concepts D&D has ever generated. Which of course meant it was trivially easy to muster the 30% of players needed to destroy any chance it had of making it to print. Only the blandly inoffensive can survive the 5e playtesting environment (unless it empowers Wizards specifically, then it's a whole different ballgame.)

 

[Alzrius]

I'd actually challenge you on the healing thing in FF. It's very very much inspired by D&D itself, but its White Magic/Black Magic divide is actually distinct from Cleric/Wizard while still being the same overall concept.

White Mages heal, defensively buff allies, destroy undead, and (sometimes) get a really nice AoE bomb at high levels (Holy) and/or some enemy debuffs. Black Mages do not heal, but in many games they bring the most utility magic (e.g. teleports, scrying if relevant, avoidance), some offensive buffs, enemy debuffs, and always the most powerful and diverse "boom" options, usually capping out with Meteor.

Characters/classes which blend the two, like Red Mages or Sages, make sacrifices elsewhere in the doing. RDM is quintessential "jack of all trades, master of none" that makes them very similar to the modern Bard, while Sage (outside of its unique expression in FFXIV) is "pure white and black magic, BUT you run out of mana faster and are as sturdy as wet tissue paper."

FF is really one of the few franchises where the "arcane casters don't heal" thing is enforced about as well as it is in D&D itself. Which is to say, not much, but still somewhat.

You could have just played the music video.

 

[M.L. Martin]

It would be far harder to come up with wizard antecedents than sorcerers, in myth, legend and fiction. Even Harry Potter, who casts spells without any kind of training or control, and whose powers are tied to his bloodline, is probably a sorcerer, as is the rest of the "Wizarding World."

I would note that the sharp divide between the two is a 3E innovation; while wizards/mages/magic-users in earlier editions need training of some sort, it's entirely up to players and DMs whether the capacity for magic itself is learned, inborn, or granted.

I admit that part of me was grouchy that the Dragonlance: Fifth Age sorcerers got shoehorned into the 3E sorcerer despite having virtually nothing in common except the name.

 

[Shardstone]

Straight from Richard Baker himself, only a couple of weeks ago:

50 Years of D&D: The Sorcerer

Hello again! Continuing on my “reading more of the classics” swing, I moved on from Jack Vance to Michael Moorcock, diving into the latest of the new Elric novels to come out: The Citad…

richardbakerauthor.com

Absolute insanity.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I would note that the sharp divide between the two is a 3E innovation; while wizards/mages/magic-users in earlier additions need training of some sort, it's entirely up to players and DMs whether the capacity for magic itself is learned, inborn, or granted.

Is it? Wizards have always used Intelligence as their core stat. They develop spells through research, and can share those spells in written form with other wizards. High-level early-edition Wizards would assemble (or occupy) towers and take on students, setting up the next generation of magic-users.

I've never seen anything that would indicate that wizard skill comes from anything other than reading books and being instructed. Elf magic worked differently, to be sure, but that was a byproduct of the (IMO decidedly not-great, to put it mildly) "race-as-class" system. And once you get to 2e (I don't know if this was true of 1e), the Dual-Classing and Multi-Classing systems pretty much put to bed any notion that wizardry is only for the innately magical or for boon-granted powers. Imoen, from BG2 onward, is perfectly set up to become a dual-class Rogue/Wizard (and, IIRC, if you don't import her from the previous game, she will actually be a Rogue/Wizard.)

 

[CreamCloud0]

current warlock mechanics emulate the sorcerer concept better than the sorcerer ones do.

I’d have to disagree on that opinion, sorcerer’s metamagic is a great representation of their ability to intuitively twist the magic they channel, and the warlock having a small but intense magic capacity that gets topped up from an external source fits their story of being empowered from another entity

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I’d have to disagree on that opinion, sorcerer’s metamagic is a great representation of their ability to intuitively twist the magic they channel, and the warlock having a small but intense magic capacity that gets topped up from an external source fits their story of being empowered from another entity

Always on magical effects and rapidly recharging magic seem both to me like qualities an innately magical being should have. Meanwhile finely manipulating spells seems more like something a person who studied magic theory could do.